What gives human life its meaning? Feelings. And where do we find feelings? In the body.
Life is a weird affair of a mind relating with a body; sometimes completely "in" it, other times it feels dissociated from it.
The human brain can split like this. A human can see and experience it's own consciousness as somehow 'above' the "vessel" of his body.
Yet, this is an absurdity! Where is "up" there? What are we experiencing in this "up here".
It's an emptiness - yet filled up - with a...I can't even find a word for what it is, but 'divinity'; something inexplicable, yet present at all
times in our witnessing of reality.
Were all witnesses to our own lives. None of us remember the beginning of it. For me, it feels like "i exist", I have memories of around 3 or 4.
Before then, I do not know. How utterly, utterly strange that is.
We each enact a new day in our existence on our way to something we don't know.
In any case, we live our lives and do what we do - whatever it was in life that you 'landed upon', the people, the face, culture, family and the
emotions and meanings associated; we landed upon the world, took up what was their in the environment, and 'felt ourselves become'.
Besides the existential wonder of being and knowing - or fearing - that there will be a time of non-being, that can strike some fear in you.
But would it? Depends. Depends on where your mind is. Is it 'up here' in the head? Or down in the body?
In the head implies a certain degree of affective dissociation. Emotions 'consume' our attention and places us in our bodies. Without emotion - or
engagement with a stimulating world - we are just this still, placid, yet still something, awareness.
Yes...But to really think, and contemplate.
It's the body and the messages it conveys that structures our experiences. Too bad kids don't know this. Too bad, indeed, that so many people
encounter life where people abuse them.
You can't control this: it just is. The bare, naked, harsh as $hit fact: life puts you in a place, and you gotta find a way to make it work for you.
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My mother abused me as child. She was abused. So she became anxious and scared - as any sentient being will do.
And when were anxious, we discharge our anxieties on others. Our capacity to tolerate stimuli goes down. Appearances, things - the random activation
of dysregulated emotion - and the world is interpreted in a sortof way.
How unfair is it, really...that some people - just because - are forced to experience horrifying existential facts: the experiences that lie out there
- a potential to any nervous system - and yet people go about their lives "locked" in a perspective on things. A face of suffering, fear, anxiety,
as blank and stereotyped as a word. As misleading to the non-empathic eyes - the uncurious, unopen heart - to what another human reality is
experiencing. How the world feels; and how they want nothing more than to live peaceably, and healthily, and joyfully.
When you're being yelled at again and again by a mind that cannot tolerate negative feelings - you too pick up the negative feelings. The contagion
'spreads', though sinsterly: because we each discharge in different ways; a sad face or a petulant look. A menacing laugh or a timid despair. Two
people can experience two different feelings with each other, yet both be under the pull of unacknowledged traumas - fears - defenses against pain and
suffering.
The gold nugget of reality is ignored, because the dichotomy: the fact of pain, suffering, and most of all, fear, is never addressed, never
challenged: run away from.
And yet, mysteriously, beautifully, thankfully, you are forced: forced by the very fact of feeling forced, to explore, mentally, meanings and
significances of experiences. Why am I so easily aroused: so easily brought to the experience of abject terror, anxiety, in my chest and my limbs?
You can only imagine how someone, anyone, would as a matter of survival - in perfect conformity with evolutionary theory - search and search until
something rings true from within. A meaning which quiets your heart, softens your nerves and leaves you feeling at peace.
Peace - this concept, if we were to place it in a conceptual space, would be between Fear and Love. It's in the tension of these two states, keeping
them bound in awareness, that one encounters an awesome love, compassion, and sense of well being for all that is.
You begin to accept, know, and tolerate, that life is a process. It's flowing, naturally, always, in a beautiful way, towards something mysterious,
yet bringing into being - US - in a process that began long ago, though now allows the reality of a human being confronting the nature of reality.
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Is it possible - knowable - to be curious about other minds without succumbing to horrible traumas? Or do you need to suffer to know truth - the
essential vulnerability - FEAR - that lies inside each of us and works through us both knowingly and unknowingly.
I do believe it's possible. Plenty of people, fortunately born into good families, with a loving, compassionate mother, and doting father, and they
come into the world curious/ Curious little minds, capable, and interested, in understanding other minds. Willing, even, to encounter and know
another persons horror.
At such moments, a 'sharing' occurs. Minds are fundamentally so alike, that two minds connecting in this way 'know' reality in a common way.
That fear exists, we exist alone - prisoners of our own brain and body; needing, fundamentally, NEEDING! To be held, quite frankly, by something "out
there".
Look no further than the people beside you.
Shame, Fear, Anxiety. They're all horrible, but they each have a different quality to it. When you're in throes of any of them, you can say to
yourself 'this is the worst'. But shame is unique. Shame keeps us from looking at each other in the eyes. From speaking, intersubjectively, from
talking about what we actually feel - and to even go deeper, into explanations about the feelings I'm having about my feelings. Shame can create
difficulties, but unless we really challenge it, it unconsciously directs our minds to thoughts that wont put us into an emotionally vulnerable
position. It says "don't speak up". "Don't talk about that". Don't talk about political or philosophical or scientific things. "These aren't
the people". Sometimes, shame can be appropriate. But far more often, it rules our mind by making us afraid of feeling it.
However bad shame, though, FEAR and the anxiety that accompanies it is fundamentally worst. In fact, FEAR will make you gladly challenge shame, put
yourself into vulnerable situations with others, and to speak, honestly, from the heart, about one really feels. This is so, because the fear which
shoots adrenaline into your veins - is a fundamentally horrific experience\. If you haven't ever experienced it, true fear, I'm not sure if
I should say 'you're lucky', but I'm tempted to.