I’ve started to see a lot of stuff about myself, and how I have been the one blocking myself.
I’ve always had the feeling of wanting to be actually free so bad but being “held back” by obstacles which I felt were much more complex and difficult to surmount than those described by others so far.
And of course there are “real” obstacles that you face as an identity doing this. It’s part of the process, one that people might cunningly skip over, because it is indeed scary and dramatic - and one is pretty much alone in doing it. I know in my case, one seemed to understand the burnout, the nervous system exhaustion, the trauma, the sex addiction, the ill health etc etc etc - except to say “feel good”. Which seemed like telling someone on fire to take a few deep breaths!
It became clear that I was someone who ostensibly wanted to become actually free more than anyone else in the world, but at the same time I was just simply unwilling/unable to feel good. And in my ‘automatic’ state I have felt a constant pull towards creating nervous system activation, as if addicted to anxiety and excitement at the same time. Terrible but the distraction and escape which produced these effects was somehow badly wanted.
It’s taken a lot of intention to get familiar with these obstacles and understand this entire web of social identity issues, feeling/belief clusters and even physiological effects that have catapulted me around from left to right. In fact more than just identifying the issues or being familiar with them, I’ve had to get way deeper with it to have any chance of untangling myself from them. Some of them were so shameful and perverse and silly and addictive/repetitive and seemingly rare (things I hadn’t heard reported by others) that it made them so hard to look at and address. Others of them felt so “pre-established”, so axiomatic to who I am that trying to undo those beliefs was like trying to disprove 2+2. In other words, I truly believed these things that were the objects of my own abuse! These beliefs seemed deeply coded into my nervous system, propelling me headlong into the same old situations and feeling states I professed as an actualist to want to avoid. Like saying “I don’t want to hit myself in the face with this hammer” and then doing it straight after (or even at the same time!). Encountering and undoing one’s own cunningness is very difficult…
Desiring actual freedom at identity level is simply not enough to achieve progress. The intent to feel good needs to penetrate one’s whole being, that nothing else will be accepted within the integrated system. You can’t blame parts of you for not playing along - you need to take out the magnifying glass and really figure out what’s going on. This is complicated when many different issues are connected together into a total tangle. In my case I have had to understand that while I like feeling good, I didn’t want feeling good. There were other things I wanted much more, like power, status, security, love, perfect circumstances, a perfect body, immortality…anything to cure the ocean of insecurity llinside of me. Anything but feeling good.
I have had to fail SO hard at all of that, and look at all of that (as much as I didn’t want to), to get to a place of authentically choosing to feel good. And once in a feeling good state it’s remarkable how those things which totally ran one’s psyche before become obsolete and powerless. Until they crop up again at least…I find even one’s own values change when feeling good - the powerful and nefarious instincts are no longer poisoning the well and benevolence is invited in, quite automatically.
Feeling good becomes a value in itself from this vantage point, and is felt to be something incredibly valuable to have and to share. It creates a whole new way of looking at the world and being in the world - all because oneself has changed as the lens through which everything is experienced and perceived. I have been the block all along. Which we always knew but it’s weird to see how true it is…