How to help.. Or at least not get in the way (part 1?)

There is a story that needs to be written, but I'm not too sure how to write it.

I know you want me to tell you how to love a broken person and how to help them mend, but I'm don't think I know how to do that yet. I know a lot about how not to do that. I'm pretty sure that you can't actually fix anyone and that a person's healing can only come from within.

What I maybe can tell you about is a little bit how not to become broken yourself as you love a broken person.

I need to write this because I was broken a bit this week in a way I was not expecting. This has helped me learn more about myself and what I was doing wrong. Now I will pass it along to you.

OK.
In the beginning.. Loving broken people led to me breaking lots and lots. I think why I broke was because I am a very oblivious person and I tend to see people as their best selves. Whenever they would do something that I thought was out of character for them (as in, behave in a way that was not like their best self)  I would shatter and feel betrayed.

Silly me! Didn't I know that no one can live up to those kinds of standards, let alone someone who is broken. By the way, the type of brokenness that the people I love mostly deal with manifests into addictions. So yeah, not our best selves indeed.

Someone once told me that you can not trust people. You can only trust them to be themselves.

This is good advice, however, if you learn and know by heart all the ways that a broken addicted person is going to possibly behave (the lying, the anger, the throwing of things, the cheating, the saying horrible things, that other person they become who hates you and especially, ESPECIALLY the falling off the wagon again (and again and again and again and again))  then probably you are going to end up with a heart full of contempt.

You know contempt. The one that knows exactly what the other person is going to say or do before they walk into the room and already hates it and has a snipey comeback. Anyways, I found out that contempt leads to hate and is the killer of relationships. We do not want contempt.

What we can use this for is awareness. We can and must be aware of these things! Because they are a real part of life when you love a broken person. When you are aware of these things then you have a choice to make. Can I love this person? Can I really love them even if they never change? You don't have to you know. You are allowed to walk away. If you stay and you can't really love all of them the way they are right now then you will only bring them and yourself more pain and nothing good will come. Please, please! Be brutally honest with yourself.

If you decide to stay and to love then know it will be hard and you can't save them. You have to let them go. By that I mean... They may not be able to or want to change and they might go deeper into a darker hole. There may come a time where it is too unsafe to stay (Then you must go. Trust your gut. Do not stay. The choice is made for you. I'm not even kidding.) . There may come a time where that other person they become hates you so much that they leave and you must let them.

You still there? Alright.

This is where my oblivious nature has helped me to love. I am aware. My eyes are open. But I hold this place in my heart and their life open for them to be their best self. I can treat them like their best self because I see them that way. When they don't act that way I am not surprised or betrayed, (although it still does hurt) because I know about that. I am aware. My eyes are open.

Something beautiful happens when you treat someone like they are their best self (instead of treating them the way they deserve. {walking on egg shells, suspicious, nagging, sad and depressed when they are around, chip on your shoulder}). They slowly let down their guard and begin to act more and more like their best self. They will fall down again and again. But when you give them a chance to see how great life can be in the in between times you give them a glimmer of a hope of a fighting chance to find a reason to want to try.

If all they ever get is what they deserve then they have no reason at all to try. Would you?

That's kind of all I've got.

This week I was blindsided because it came from someone I was not expecting. I was not expecting that they should be that kind of broken, or that I would care. But now I am aware.

I have much more to learn and in the end I must let it all go anyways.

Ps, this is also an oversimplification for the purpose of communicating  this to you. There are other things going on and I will try and share them as they come to me.

Just Breathe

Between you and I...

I feel like I may be on the verge of something. Like an epoch or a paradigm shift. My thoughts are all hollow. My mind feels like a vast empty castle full of barren walls and nothing. I look at everything I've written and it all sounds like a broken record.

Empty, empty, empty

Oh, all good stuff and full of insight, sure.. But all of it wrong and empty.

It feels a lot like it felt like to lose my faith. That feeling like when I had to question it all without knowing the answer. Everything was unsatisfying.

Where do I look. Where do I turn. I wonder if it lies deep within the empty stillness.

Astrology

I have recently come to an interesting epiphany on astrology.  I can't look at this idea in the same way any more.

I have always had a hard time believing that the effects of astral bodies determined our personalities. Then my teacher had me learn about the native American medicine wheel (which is pretty much the same idea as astrology). The book I read explained that it was believed that whatever cosmic forces that you were exposed to while you were being formed (in the womb) had an effect on you and could determine aspects about your life.

Okay, but it still sounded pretty far fetched to me. The planets and the stars have a very negligible affect on us here.

Then I learned about epigenetics! I learned that when we are first conceived many of our epigenetic markers (the chemicals surrounding our DNA that have a great deal of influence over which genes get to be expressed)  are stripped away. You start as fresh as you are going to get. Right away though, begins the time when some of your most important and influential epigenes are laid down. This time is your development in your mothers womb. Sound familiar?

Some examples of things that influence your epigenes are your mothers stress level and lack of, or abundance of food. These things have a direct corilarion to things like your own ability to deal with stress, and can be a determining factor in your future mental health. Also, there are determining factors here for your metabolism, cardiac function..  So many things!

Then I remembered that, though the stars and planets were worshipped by many ancient people, they were also used as a very accurate calendar. So when you look at an astrological chart and see when someone was born you will also know when that person was in the womb.  All of the people born at the same time would have been exposed to the same seasonal variables (their mothers exposed to the same stresses and availability of food) at the same times of development. It would not be surprising at all for them to have some very similar epigenetic factors.

The one thing that has always bothered me about astrology though, is how people seem to use it as an excuse for bad behaviour. "oh, I'm sorry, but you know, I'm a libra, it's just how I am".  I think how ever you choose to believe (or not believe) in astrology, any insights into yourself and your behaviour should be used as a way to help you grow as a person.  Know your strengths and weaknesses.   Take action to maximize your potential and minimize the effects of your weaknesses.

On Marriage

Once in a while people talk about marriage. Is it something people should still do in this day and age? Up until recently I have thought.. Meh! Does it even matter? Lately though, I have begun to realize that maybe I didn't understand the question. So after letting that thought incubate, I now realize that we need marriage now more than ever.

First I must explain what marriage means to me. To me it used to mean what happens when you have a ceremony and sign some papers and then you get to share a last name and a bank account. Now I think that a marriage is something much more. It is like the birth of a new being.

When you commit to be in this type of relationship with someone, you commit to building something together that is greater than the two of you alone. You decide to love this person (please see my other posts about love), but there is more. It's like you put the needs of the marriage above the needs of the individual. This is huge, because the needs of an individual and the needs of a relationship can often be at odds with each other and the difference can be extremely difficult to see from the inside.

There will always be times when people are not at their best. There will always be times when people are jerks or don't understand or really really really fuck up. Individuals looking out for themselves will face all of these challenges differently then individuals in a marriage.

By the way.. I think you can have a marriage and not be married. I also think that it's very easy to be married without really having a marriage. But I do believe that a real marriage (with or without a piece of paper) is a prerequisite to a family (which is a whole other sort of entity like a marriage or a tribe).

Epigenetics

I have been learning about epigenetics lately. Epigenetics is the theory of how the genetic information stored in our DNA influences (and is influenced by) all of our different cells differently. That is why, even though each one of our cells carry the exact same genetic information, but we can have such amazing variation in the different types and function of our cells.

The root word of epigenetics is not genetics like you might think, but epigenesis, which has to do with how one single fertilized egg can develop into a whole entire human, with our vast array of cell types.

In both epigenetics and epigenesis, the environment inside the cell determines how the genetic code is read and used which in turn influences the environment inside of the cell. The other (vastly important) thing that influences the cell and drives this feedback loop is how the cell (chemically) interacts with its neighbour cells. This is why the location of a fetal stem cell in the developing embryo determines what type of cell it will become.

Location! Location! Location!

It makes me think about how everything around us shapes us and influences us. We think this thought because of something we heard before, or this makes me afraid because of something that happened to me... And it never stops. Everything and everyone around us is affecting everything and everyone else in a never ending cycle. Some might call it karma.

It's important to remember because we often get upset about the ways we differ from people in opinions, feelings and beliefs. We must not forget how we have come to have the condition we are in and know that they have come to their condition in their own way. Have compassion. Maybe choose to be influenced in a different way.

Oh yeah, and that's the other cool thing! If the conditions change, everything changes!

They did this experiment where they took some human malignant melanoma cells and placed them in the midst of a group of chicken stem cells.  The most amazing thing happened. The cells dedifferentiated from dangerous cancer cells into extremely healing embryonic stem cells.

This sort of dedifferentiation happens naturally you know. It happens to some types of our cells (like cartilage and bone) when we sustain an injury, or more dramatically in lizards and amphibians when they lose a limb.

It's interesting how a horrible thing like an injury can bring about the most miraculous of changes.

Poop

Sometimes I think that our thoughts are like poop.

At first we don't know about poop. We just do poop. Sometimes we poop in diapers and it gets uncomfortable but all we know to do is just sit there until someone comes to change us and clean us up. We think it's someone else's job to take away our yucky poop.

Other times we just sit in our poop. We don't know what to do with it so we just sit in it and play with it and examine it and generally make a mess of things. We can even ask for help with this poop situation. We can find someone to talk about our poop with. They might even help us see poop we didn't even know was there! But unless they show us how to use the toilet it can't do much good.

When we hang out with wise gown up people we might realize that there is another way. They aren't covered in poop all the time, although they must poop.. We all do. That is when we learn what to do with poop!

When you use the toilet you can have your poop but it doesn't have to cover you and make your life stinky and uncomfortable. You just do your business. You even get to see what your poop is all about..  "Oh look, I need to drink more water" .. Or, "Wow, that was some yucky uncomfortable pooping just now. I'm not going to eat there again any time soon." But after that, you get to flush and be all squeaky clean again.

Yes, everybody poops! But it's important to remember to flush.

Mindtrap

This is how i feel right now, today.
Depressed. Alone. Devoid of value.

I'm not sure if I feel this way because I started thinking this way, or if I am thinking this way because I feel this way.
I think it started with the thinking actually. I was thinking about how afraid I am to be myself. (not that I even know what that is). I mean.. I was thinking about the filter that I always have on before I say or do anything, and realizing that I am probably not being my genuine self because of it. But then I was thinking about how I probably do need a filter because of how selfish and uncaring I can be deep down. This made me even more sad. Because I want to not be that person. I want to be the beautiful helpful person who people want to share their tine with, but instead I get to be human. Poor me.

I did see something inspiring earlier that I would like to come back to. It was about giving and receiving. Like.. How one should experience (in your interaction with people you care about) receiving (a touch, a glance, a kind word) and giving (all of the above) both seperately and yet in the same moment.

Ah, there it is.. I remember now. You got me again ego..with your thinking and believing. I remember that there is so much in the experience of now that can be useful in bringing me back out of that ugly place (if I am willing to let it). If I really care about being that kind of person I want to be, doing something as simple as experiencing giving and receiving will make that happen more quickly and thoroughly than any thinking could ever do. I think it is called mindfulness.

Hopefully i can just avoid the mind traps in the future.

Supernatural

I have recently come to realize that I no longer believe in the supernatural. I think instead that all of everything is completely natural. It is just that we do not understand the mechanics behind all of our perceptions and experience.

Throughout history humans have made up stories to explain the things they did not understand, that's all. Through these explanations people found comfort and a kind of framework that they could use to work with and manipulate forces that they did not understand very well.

Unfortunately, these stories have also often been used by powerful people to control the weak.  And also, it is often difficult for people to let go of their stories when new information comes to light.

There is still so much in this world that we do not understand. I really want to engage in the full experience of this life and I am wondering how to go about this. I am wondering if we need to drop the stories all together and just become more quietly aware, observing the experience of every moment and letting it change you. Or perhaps if we place our minds into these existing frameworks that we have created there may be more yet to learn.

.. One thing this summer is teaching me...

Life will flow through like water, finding each crevice and rough patch. Where you once thought you were strong you find yourself crumbling away, changing the shape of your reality. After the rushing torrent has broken the floodgates and you survey the new landscape you realize that the strength you thought you had was really in the life flowing through and not in the dam you built to contain it. 

...Go with the flow...