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17Feb 2018

Attachment Theory: When Can & Can’t We Trust Our Feelings?

0 Psychology, Writing 0

This morning I read the following post from a friend of mine, which inspired me to write a follow-on post on Attachment Theory and developing discernment when listening to your feelings.
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Re: Avoidant attachment discoveries

Feeling reality tilted on its side tonight.. Huge new territories of emotion to be felt and healed are coming to the surface due to my relationship, showing me that I honestly can’t always trust what I feel. It’s a wild experience to say the least.

Backstory:

We had been in a dance of me being avoidant and him being fearful/angry/reactive about me pulling away, but then after getting some support he figured out how to just be grounded in himself and let me freak out without it rocking his boat. (A big step!)

Tonight:

What has been so utterly bewildering has been my wildly fluctuating feelings towards him–this week for days at a time feeling absolutely CONVINCED that I felt nothing and needed to break up with him, so many signs pointing toward that inevitability.

Then tonight, simply by him staying calm and gently pointing the mirror back at me, it melted through the ice in my heart and I broke into tremendous sobs coming from somewhere inside that is truly terrified of this kind of intimacy.

All of a sudden, there’s my love for him again, mixed up with all this fear and old grief, I found myself back in my tender feminine (not the one who always pretends to be in control), surrounded by a pile of tissues, grateful and confused, and it all feels amazing and totally nuts at the same time.
Totally nuts.

Thankfully, I have another dear friend who is going through her own avoidance dance in her relationship, and we’ve been sharing notes. She feels just as crazy as I do, flip flopping all over the place, one moment feeling the love and then ready to end it all just like that.

We are slowly learning that we have to STOP trusting our own very real feelings and justifications that make us want to flee, finding out what’s underneath.. It’s like reading a novel where you find out the narrator actually has a mental illness or something and you can’t trust their version of reality. Except in this case it’s ME.

Good lord, I wasn’t prepared for this one.

————–

Thank you for this beautiful, vulnerable share.

I can’t recall another post by someone else with avoidant attachment who articulated the dynamic inside themselves so clearly and powerfully.

It’s a real gift, because it invites everyone who has been in the anxious/avoidant dynamic an exit route from the confusing drama to the higher perspective where healing and transformation can take place.

You’re pointing to some really important questions, especially in our sub-culture which exalts the primacy of feeling your feelings and following its truth.

“When can I trust myself?”
“When can’t I trust myself?”
“Who is the self I am trusting?”
“Do I have one self or many selves?”

The way I see it, we have many parts of ourselves. Put simply, without getting into Internal Family Systems Theory our Buddhist/Vedic Theory of Mind, we have higher selves that connect us to our higher truths, our purpose, soul and Spirit. And we have lower selves which often come from fear and lack, and hide in the shadows, attempting protect us from re-creating or re-experiencing unresolved trauma from the past.
Paraphrasing a fellow commenter, it’s important to see the rightness in our lower selves and have compassion for them. They are justifiably trying to protect us from getting hurt again in a way we were before.

So that brings us back to the critical question of “When can I trust myself?”. Because if we answer that question wrong, such as by simply concluding that we can’t trust ourselves, we could end up in a negative spiral of doubt, paralysis and giving our power and authority away to others.

A better approach to the question, “When can I trust myself?” is to first attempt to see the different parts of ourselves and trust that every part is pointing to something true, while recognizing whether a part of ourselves is higher or lower, more mature or less mature or has a larger or more limited perspective.

The parts perspective can enable us to see that one part of us can love someone deeply while another part wants to shut off the love in order to feel safe, because it is afraid of being hurt (usually again).

And because the lower parts of ourselves are wired deep into our nervous system whereas our higher parts are much subtler, and communicate with us primarily in quiet moments, almost like a whisper — when there’s a conflict between higher and lower parts, the lower parts almost always win. They are louder and can command much greater emotional intensity. Our bodies by default just want us to survive, we have to retrain them to thrive.

This is such an important subject because it points to all the ways our higher parts can be obscured. Insecure attachment is one way higher parts of ourselves are obscured but so many things obscure our higher parts in a way that renders us unable to essentially “trust ourselves”:

Depression, anxiety, addiction, poverty, trauma.

The journey to living as radically abundant love is the acknowledgement and integration of all our lower parts so the higher ones have a clear vessel to shine through.

Blessings to you for doing this work and inviting so many others on to the journey with you with your sharing.

15Feb 2018

Pithy Post Potpourri – Winter/Spring 2018

0 Artificial Intelligence, Biohacking, Coaching, Creativity, Culture, Dancing, Economics, Education, Entrepreneurship, Futurism, Health, Investing, Learning, Life, Life Purpose, Meditation, Motivation, Music, My Personal Journey, Philosophy, Physical Fitness, Poetry, Politics, Psychology, Relationships, Sexuality, Spirituality, Sports, Startup Science, Success, Systems Thinking, TrueSelf, Video, Writing 0

If you and your partner(s) can’t both reliably access a state of awakened awareness beyond the ordinary sense of self then any exploration of non-monogamy will inevitably lead to an increase in pain and suffering.

#PsychographicEntryCriteria

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When you lose your cool, when you get triggered do you tell yourself to raise your game and live up to a higher standard?

Or do you justify why it was okay to lose your cool and ascribe fault to other people and external circumstances?

This is one of the key regular decisions that separates the extraordinary humans from the ordinary.

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I love my morning meditation view so much.

There is a reason yogis go to the mountaintop.

The sparkling, harmonious, blissful, spacious, luminous nature of reality is unassailably clear.

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People who don’t utilize the tool of debt and credit in their life have been afflicted by a false sense of lack.

They lack sufficient belief in themselves.

And they lack a willingness to invest in themselves for the long run and to bet on themselves.

The question for analyzing whether debt and credit is worth utilizing is very simple:

Can you create more value, faster with the money you are loaned than the interest rate you are given?

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One of the worst decisions the masculine can make is to seek comfort.

The masculine grows through setting big goals, pushing to exhaustion and then savoring accomplishment in the recovery phase before setting a new bigger goal that lies beyond the new expanded comfort zone.

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From the higher perspective there is no such thing as rejection.

There is just energy jostling around trying to find its way into proper alignment.

From the higher perspective there is no such thing as failure.

There is just feedback about what needs to be improved and recalibrated.

—

Black Panther was so much better than the Last Jedi.

Plot and Story Arc.

Character Development & Consistency.

Visual Effects.

Empowering portrayal of Cultural Minorities.

…the script for Luke Skywalker was particularly terrible…acting like someone who was never a Jedi

…so many of the Star Wars characters felt like forced affirmative action plays rather than authentic casting.

…One disappointing feature of the Wakandan’s was that for being so technologically and culturally advanced in many dimensions, they still had an Ethnocentric Worldview when looking to the outside world, opining about how to help downtrodden and oppressed blacks around the world rather than how to help downtrodden and oppressed humans with their technological prowess.

All for now. No time to be a detailed movie critic.

—

I am currently reading the Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo.

Who else has read it?

My personal website is titled In Quest of Super Humanity and I’m coming to see how my intuitive guidance has been (previously unbeknownst to me) plugged into the same source as Aurobindo’s, especially with respect to his articulation of the Supermind and its Divine Unfolding through Humanity’s Involutionary Process.

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Your body is an instrument that the Consciousness of your Soul learns to play.

An Evolved Soul is therefore a masterful musician.

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Back on my own again and restarting my cooking skills after 2 years of dormancy.

Immediately noticing a shift in my relationship to food preparation as I’ve deepened my relationship to the fundamentally universal nature of subtle energy in all things.

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Succinct infographic of a lot of misguided class warfare and anti-wealth sentiment from the Liberal Left.

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Always remember that how we react to every moment of our life will reinforce either our negative habits or positive habits. No matter how challenging life may be, each moment can be seen as either a problem or an opportunity. If we can understand this, we can start to bring our entire life to the path.

~ Chamtrul Rinpoche

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You might ask, ‟If I have Buddha nature, why can’t I perceive it right now?”

It is because, like gold hidden in its matrix, that nature is hidden by our habits that we have accumulated since beginningless time. These habits have been created by our disturbing emotions and then reinforced by the actions that those disturbances have produced.

~ Shechen Gyaltsab

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The ultimate nature of the mind is empty and without basis. It is intangible like empty space. But this is not a nihilistic view. Self-arisen, primordial consciousness is original, clear consciousness. Self-arisen and self-illuminating, it is like the essence of the sun.

~ Guru Rinpoche

 

19Jan 2018

Our New Free Personality Test is Now Ready!

0 Psychology, TrueSelf 8

Who wants to take it?

You’ll learn your Primary Enneagram Type, Tritype and Instinctual Stack and get a free report like the one attached, which is based on over 25 years of research and refinement from some of the leading experts in the field.

It just may be the best and most accurate personality test in the world today.

(Most tests only get your type right 65% of the time. Ours does 85-90% of the time).

And we will be making it even more powerful and insightful soon.

I’d also love some feedback before we push it into Prime Time on to some large email lists.

(Note: works on all platforms right now except some iOS/iPhone versions, which has a bug we’re currently fixing)

29Dec 2017

On Accountability Partners for Visions, Goals, and Resolutions

0 Culture, Health, Life, Life Purpose, Motivation, Philosophy, Physical Fitness, Psychology, Success 0

Personally, I almost never use accountability partners or other people to hold me accountable to my goals or resolutions.

I am accountable to myself and the high standards I set for myself.

And that is all I need.

If you need someone else to hold you accountable to your goals and resolutions that probably means you have these two things going on:

1) You don’t want it bad enough.

You need to increase the compellingness of your vision, goals and resolutions and anchor them with more burning desire, emotional intensity and physical movement.

2) You have unresolved parts conflict.

Part of you wants to realize your vision, goals and resolution, but other parts don’t.

This can happen because other parts have other conflicting beliefs or fears about what will happen if those visions or goals are realized.

Like, “What if I’m too successful and I can’t handle it”…or “what if xyz people don’t like me anymore once I make this change in my life”.

You have to consciously talk to the different parts of yourself and get in full parts alignment within yourself.

In the interim, if accountability partners help you move towards your vision, goals and resolutions, then use them…as progress will create the momentum and confidence for more progress, and eventually taking off the ‘training wheels’ of accountability buddies.

29Dec 2017

If You Want to Level Up Your Consciousness…

0 Education, Philosophy, Psychology 0

YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE INTERPRETATIVE NATURE OF YOUR MIND.

When I type in caps I am not yelling.

NOR HAS ANYONE EVER YELLED IN THE WRITTEN WORD FOR THAT MATTER.

How do you know I’m not sitting here in Zen?

Your mind only imagined I was yelling through the interpretative process of converting symbols on a page into an auditory dialogue inside your head.

if you want to level up your consciousness…

YOU NEED TO DECONSTRUCT YOUR REACTIVITY.

You need to increase your Witness Consciousness.

WHERE DOES THE PROGRAM IN YOUR MIND LIVE THAT INTERPRETS CAPS AS YELLING?

What if all caps meant whispering?

WHY ARE YOU SO PERMEABLE TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD?

How is it that by typing in all caps I can rev up your nervous system?

WHAT IF YOU COULD CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE HOW TO INTERPRET AND MAKE MEANING FROM ANY PHENOMENA THAT ENTERED YOUR REALITY?

Real yogis can.

“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” – Bruce Lee

27Dec 2017

Do You Want to Know the REAL SECRET to Healing All Your Neuroses and Trauma?

0 Coaching, Meditation, Motivation, Psychology, Success 1

It’s this.

 

Despite the satirical callousness of this approach, it is not without merit when used in its proper context.

From a neuroplasticity perspective whatever we give attention to is biologically strengthened, and whatever we ignore is biologically weakened.

The neurons associated with particular experiences literally grow or die based on how we respond to them when they enter our consciousness.

The oft-used pithy phrase is “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”

The biggest missing ingredient from going from comedic awakening to realization is ‘how’.

“How do I stop my ingrained patterns of thinking?”

The answer is:

a) The right training in meditation to learn how to control your thoughts

b) the right therapeutic methods to activate and release childhood trauma and attachment disorders

c) Finding loving, accepting friends, family and healers, who hold you as both perfect as you are and your potential on the other side of your healing

17Dec 2017

If You Intuitively Sense Something is “Off” with Someone, Is There a High Likelihood They’re a Depraved Abuser?

0 Culture, Learning, Life, Politics, Psychology 0

One things I’ve been mulling on with the #metoo movement is reconciling the statistical prevalence of all the people who do depraved shit: Domestic Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Pedophilia, Incest etc

And who the people are who are committing these crimes?

How many of them silently live in the communities and social events we co-mingle with?

As many people who I have intuitively sensed there was something ‘off’ with them, have been outted as Alleged Depraved Abusers, I’m wondering how reliable the intuitive impression of something being off about somebody is a predictor of Depravity?

By my back of the napkin calculations, it seems like it very likely is a very good predictor.

Take a look at the statistics:

Domestic Abuse: 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been victims of [some form of] physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime.

Sexual Assault: One in four women and one in six men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

Pedophilia: Self-report studies show that 20% of adult females and 5-10% of adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident;

Incest: an overwhelming incidence of sexual abuse happens within the family. These statistics are well known among industry professionals, who are often quick to add, “and this is a notoriously underreported crime.”

So unless all of these crimes are highly clustered amongst a very small subset of people, rather than these types of crimes being more individual distributed

i.e. is it more likely there a few people who commit domestic abuse, sexual abuse, pedophilia and incest, or is more likely there some people who commit domestic abuse and others sexual abuse but not both?

I would lean to the crimes being more evenly distributed.

And if that’s the case then I roughly estimate 15-25% of the population commits these Depravities.

And I would wager that the intuitive sense of something being ‘off’ about someone is picking up on connection to these Depravities… either as a Depraved Perpetrator or a Depraved Victim, or more likely both — as abusers were usually at one point in their life the abused. As abuse is a notoriously hard behavioral, physiological and karmic cycle to break.

What are your thoughts on this?

Does this rough bayesian inference estimation method of Off-ness correlating to Depravity make sense? Can anyone better at Bayesian math tan me put some more rigorous bayesian math behind this?

05Dec 2017

Trauma Contextualization

0 Culture, Health, Life, Meditation, Motivation, Philosophy, Psychology 0

One of the best models of human development maps us along 3 dimensions: Waking Up, Cleaning Up and Growing Up.

I write about all 3 and I think some of the confusion and critiques I’ve received about my writing would benefit from more explicit contextualization within this model.

Basically, Waking Up comprises the Spiritual Path, Cleaning Up comprises the Trauma Healing path and Growing Up comprises the journey of increasing the depth and complexity of dimensional areas like our mind, heart, worldview and skills.

While these dimensions of our being are somewhat independent, where uneven development is the norm rather than exception, (such as people with high intellect but low moral development) there are also many thresholds or necessary but not sufficient configurations.

The most relevant example of this I would like to illuminate is the relationship between Waking Up and Cleaning Up.

As Eastern Spirituality has come to the West over the last 50 years it is has been noted how much most Westerners struggle to make progress down the Eastern paths of Spiritual Awakening and Self-Realization.

It has become clear that one of the primary reasons for this lack of progress is the high prevalence of trauma in Western Culture.

And there seem to be strict limits on how much Spiritual Progress one can make if they have unresolved deep trauma.

In fact, it is advisable if one has deep trauma, to focus most of their energy on healing their trauma rather than spiritual awakening.

Progressing along the spiritual path when deep trauma is present often results in frustrated stagnation or perhaps worse, dangerous Guru Madness – where the spiritual awakening is real but is coming through the person with a frequency of disassociated trauma lurking in their shadow, often with disastrous consequences for their students.

When I say deep trauma, I’m primarily talking about traumas that occurred in early childhood such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, or unsafe home environments where domestic violence and fighting was present in the family system.

These types of traumas create deep energetic patterns within the nervous system that makes much of the natural Growing Up processes more challenging.

However, if one can source a container or foundation within themselves where the nervous system is stable and integrated, and smaller life traumas can be experienced within that container or on that foundation, than Spiritual Practice can be highly effective in healing that damage by directly cutting through its False Nature.

In summary and conclusion, whenever I am posting about Spirituality and Awakening, please assume that it is directed to people who are unburdened by deep trauma, and that those that are burdened by deep trauma have a different mountain they need to climb first.

26Nov 2017

Liberalism Has a Victim Mentality: The Opioid Crisis

0 Health, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Spirituality 0

Middle America has a pill based opioid crisis.

And liberals have a victim belief induced opioid crisis.

I mean seriously look at all the people who liked and shared this drug cocktail. 

If you want to take drugs and numb yourself from real living by believing you’re a victim, endlessly trapped in the trauma of your past, then follow the advice of the post in this image.

If you want to live the great adventure of chasing the destiny of your Higher Self then, naturally, follow my feed.

 

20Nov 2017

Trapped in a Story of Healing

0 Health, Life, Life Purpose, Motivation, Psychology 0

Many people are trapped in a story of healing, often as mode of avoidance of something deeper and more painful — not knowing and living their life purpose.

So they hide behind the story that they can’t pursue their life purpose because they’re ‘broken’, ‘wounded’ or ‘just not healed enough yet’.

The question isn’t whether you are fully healed.

Life is constantly producing damage as we live.

So we must constantly cycle between stress and recovery.

The question for people focused on their healing is,

“What would you do if you were fully healed and why are you not doing that now?

And, “how will you know when you have healed enough to pursue what your Higher Self wants to pursue?”

For biological healing, say for an athlete this is simple.

When they tear their ACL, they rehab for 9-12 months and resume their athletic activities once the knee can handle a sufficient weight load and the leg has sufficient mobility.

Emotional, Psychological and Spiritual wounding is more subtle and complicated, less objective, and much easier to hide within.

Often when people overcome the fear to go after what they really want many of the other ailments heal themselves relatively naturally and effortlessly.

It is said that the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

So if you are struggling to heal and you don’t know why you are here on Earth and what you’re here to do, I encourage you to go deep into that exploration and see if progress on that journey, doesn’t end up resolving much of the healing you’re seeking.