Hello WZ,

Sorry to hear you are in pain right now.

Thank you, Gopi. I appreciate that.


"I will admit I have been very depressed, anxious, scared, and feeling sorry for myself over the past few months. Sometimes I wonder where the line is between feeling sorrowful for yourself versus wallowing in self-pity."

As Mystress has pointed out, grief is a natural and healthy part of dealing with loss. Wallowing in self-pity is about repeating victim narratives. When we grieve, we are actually fully alive by acknowledging the depth and pain of what we have lost - it is a testament to our love. When we wallow in self-pity, we cast ourselves as dis-empowered, weak, and helpless about our own life and tend to believe that others/life is being unfair - we feel wronged. Poor me. As someone who has lived with depression since childhood, I can tell you that it is very easy and tempting to slip into self-pity. Byron Katie's 'Four Questions' is really effective about shedding light on victimhood.
Q3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
Q4. Who would you be without that thought?

One thing I noticed for myself is that I was much more FAMILIAR and at times even felt comfortable replaying the victim narrative. Sometimes it is more comforting to tell ourselves that 'everything is awful' because that is better than 'I don't know' (which is truly terrifying when we are in pain and feel helpless).

Quote
"I am sad to say that I have still not managed to ground eight times a day for 45 days."

Nothing to feel sad about. Trust your body. Work with your body instead of trying to impose external discipline. Pay attention to how your body feels after you ground. You following your breath is good as Mystress said above.

I’m thinking I’ll make it a goal to ground at least once every day. When I set the goal of 8 times a day, I feel stressed, overwhelmed, harried and resentful. But doing it once or twice a day is no thing. For the 4 ½ weeks I grounded everyday I noticed 4 groundings per day was a comfortable amount for me. But if I can’t ground I’ll continue to observe the breath.

About anger - one of the books I read about anger had a simple but effective insight.
Your anger is not about what happened but about your perception of what happened.
For example, let's say we agree to meet for coffee at 10:00 AM. You are late. And you have been late to our previous appointments. So I get angry because I feel you are being disrespectful. My anger is about my perception of what has happened. You may have been stuck in traffic this time. Or you may come from a culture where it is socially acceptable to show up late for informal meetings with friends. The fact remains same: you showed up late. However, my reaction to the fact depends on what I am telling myself about what is happening.
'I am in pain' is witnessing.
'I deserve pain, that Goddess wants me to feel pain, and that the pain is all part of the greater plan for my life.' is your perception of what is happening.

Not trying to diminish or invalidate your pain, feelings and experiences.
It is ok to feel angry. Goddess made us human so that we can fully experience all human emotions and feelings. It is ok to not know why you are angry. It is ok to feel overwhelmed. It is ok to feel scared. Give it all to Goddess. Leave it at Her feet - 'Goddess please take this from me and transmute it as you see fit. Thank you!' Ground and drink water.

Hang in there friend. One day at a time.
Namaste!
Gopi

Thank you for your words of wisdom, Gopi. I feel truly blessed to be getting such compassionate support from you.

WZ


* Edited by Mystress to change red to brown.

Er, in that reply to Mystress I meant to say I had a spirit of *unforgiveness*. Sorry for the typo.

WZ wrote: Yeah, I’m probably misquoting you from something I half-remember from the days of the k-list in the early aughts. I should probably stick to quoting FST and K-teacher, eh?

  No big, just explaining why I did not answer some questions directly.

So grief is a reflection of love but a form of resistance?

  Yes. Grief is very human, a process of recovery from loss. It is not the only way to recover or the only way to respond to loss. You would not need a process to recover from loss, if you were already at peace with it. There are some cultures like Tibetan that approach death and loss differently.

  I thought of Byron Katie too, for her techniques to reduce harmful thoughts and emotional misery but I thought you already know of her. I have been slowly working my way through her new book, "Loving what is" to resolve some persistent stuff in my own life and a few months ago I came across this Oprah interview where she talks about using the process to resolve grief.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCkZvVBY7g

  My point though is that depression is a specific mental illness, -  where grief is a process. Depression means there is something wrong with you that needs to be fixed, and that is leading you to these cycles of self judgment. Grieving people are expected to act a bit crazy, it is forgivable. Re-framing your emotions as grief instead of depression is a way to be kinder and more self accepting. You can be more pro-active too, using ritual, sometimes creating some type of funeral rite for what is lost can be a comfort.

There were a couple of Facebook conversations this month where I got angry at something a friend said and was tempted to ask “Wtf is your problem?” But then I thought “Is this really worth losing a friendship over” and the answer was no. I’m glad stayed calm, and practiced diplomacy and didn’t let my anger rule me.

Yeah... regrets for friends lost due to PMS, is one reason I started spending the first 3 days of my moon in isolation, meditation. I am also wary of responding from Witness because people persistently project anger onto that, like someone would only be so direct if they were very pissed.  Ultimately, anger is your own, the choice to respond with anger is your choice, based on your perspective and is best resolved inwardly. I find, if I get curious about what is really triggering my anger and resolve it inwardly, sometimes I find smooth diplomatic words to share my thoughts sometime after.

  To use Gopi's example of a late friend making him feel disrespected- what if the friend did not show at all and you found out the next day they died in a car accident on their way to see you? The bad thoughts about the friend would shame and haunt you... especially if you left angry texts for their next of kin to read.  Anger jumps to unkind conclusions and always thinks it is right, but it is always based on some kind of wrong idea that comes from the inside, not the actual events. Anger signals insecurity, it is fear based and investing in fear always gives a bad return.

  Imagine, if, instead of making a torch of her anger and running around with it setting other grieving peoples torches afire too until she had a lynch mob focused on punishment, Candace Lightner had set aside her anger and acted from love? Alcoholism is an illness.
  >40 children of Norwegian politicians were massacred by a white supremacist at a holiday camp in Norway a few years ago, but the people chose not to be vengeful, they did not increase security, get paranoid or take steps toward a police state (as many countries have in response to terrorism.) The whole country, chose not to respond from anger, to take the higher ground. That is Grace. 


Er, do I want Goddess to be my sadistic Domina? I’m no longer a masochist and only submit when I can see it’s in my best interests. Can Goddess be loving, compassionate, and gentle as well? I don’t mind touch love spanks and kicks in the butt but I’m not interested in sadism or cruelty.

  Yes, that is the question I wanted you to ask yourself. Goddess respects our free will, so if you project punisher onto Her, that will be your experience of Her but not because of anything She is doing eh? The limitations we project onto Her out of our fear have no effect except to limit our experience to what we believe.

  Before I wrote FST, I knew absolutely that all of the problems people have with kundalini, are self created of their resistance. Buddha said, pain is part of life but suffering is optional. The pain just IS, a sensation... it is our thoughts about it that cause suffering.

  Personally, I learned self hypnosis from a book in grade 6 and have used it so much to deal with pain that my sense of it is totally messed up. I can have a migraine and not even notice until I wonder why I am getting nauseous. I learned so long ago to block it out, and it kind of went autopilot.

Post op in the hospital, 2009, went for a bit of a walk, asked the nurse why was I getting cold sweats? She said it was from pain and it might be time for more morphine. I was really surprised, I had not been aware of the pain. That was not the only bad turn I had there because of it. Confused by side effects of pain, not realizing what they were because  I was not noticing the pain that caused them, not asking for the amount of morphine my body needed to rest instead of reacting to pain trauma.

  Sometimes when my legs get cold they start to cramp, but I experience the cramps as flashes of electricity that are extremely pleasurable... until it gets to the point where it feels like its trying to tear the tendon loose from the bone. Cramps as extreme isometric exercise is one thing, taking damage is overkill. 

  Some types of pain can still get me, body will over ride to make me aware to stop with the repetitive stress by giving me carpal tunnel pain from my fingertips to my temples.

Too much of my pain control comes of leaving the body to escape it, not a good long term strategy as the body becomes frail with too much time spent out of it. The body still feels the pain and is distressed by it, and feels  abandoned too.
   Long way of saying, self hypnosis can be helpful with chronic pain, if you don't overdo it.

I tried the experiment and yes, there is a huge difference. I was much easier able to tolerate the pain the second time.

  It is a simple little experiment but the results are absolute in demonstrating that our experience of pain is dependent on our approach to it. There is a switch in the brain that sends adrenaline and fear, or endorphin and bliss depending on whether we accept or resist. Pure evidence of the power of our free will to affect our experience of life. "Pain is part of life, suffering is optional." Resistance makes suffering. Gratitude is the opposite, it is acceptance plus joy. It works for emotional pain too, it works for any problem to turn it inside out and show silver linings of higher purpose. Gratitude, turns pain into bliss, turns problems into gifts, turns poverty into abundance.

  Do you remember the "Power of Gratitude" lesson? I do, am curious who else does?

  I had a very strange experience yesterday.

  Still, kind of shaking my head at it and wondering about my sanity.

  The power of gratitude lesson is companion to the power of love lesson, I remember recording the video for it, the contents of the essay, my intention to add the pinch test and some homework to it with the upgrade, and move it up to come earlier in the course. I looked for it to use a quote from it and discovered, it does not exist.  I kind of freaked, started searching my files, earlier editions wondering it if got overlooked at some point... it seems it never existed. WTF.

I search the site files for the word "gratitude" and about a dozen lessons came up mentioning it, and a truckload of posts from the old tearoom archive, and some archived chats. No lesson. I have no explanation except what I posted to my facebook yesterday, about ADD, is my life.   https://www.facebook.com/TheADHDGift/photos/a.295383650628079/1027287757437661/?type=3&theater

I looked at the energy structure of the course, it is there... (Students are blocked from seeing that, because spoilers) but it doesn't have a page, it connects to parts of other lessons. 

I have to wonder, since my mind image of it existing was so clear, and so much of the teaching is energy-based, if students have been getting it anyway? The number of times it has come up in tearoom suggests, maybe not.      

    Are you saying I have a mix of PTSD, pain and trauma? And that pain is trauma? That’s an interesting way of looking at it. For me, I would say that severe pain is traumatic and remembering episodes of severe pain makes me fearful of experiencing more. After I’ve had a week of bad pain, I remember it and it makes me fearful of doing anything that might create more pain.     

  Yes, you have PTS like you have been experiencing decades of torture and captivity against your will.

Me and post op cold sweats, even if my mind was not feeling the pain,  the body was and experiencing trauma, we usually associate cold sweat with extreme fear. I was not feeling it because I was not in my body (fight or flight: I fled) but the cold sweat was physically externally noticeable. Pain is traumatic unless you can flip the endorphin switch with gratitude.

We have no ability to really remember pain eh? Most emotions,... you remember being happy, it makes you happy. Remember being sad, feel the sadness again. Women don't remember the pain of giving birth, only their emotional reactions to it, and not always accurately.  You cannot remember the pain, you remember the trauma you experienced from the pain, which in turn is giving you more resistance to the pain and you discovered how that makes it feel worse.

  It is a self perpetuating downward spiral that can only be stopped by a different approach to the pain itself. You have to stop fighting, surrender, make peace with pain.

  When I have done workshops about engaging endorphin, for kink or pain management, I give out cheap bamboo chopsticks (new, from the $ store)  and instruct people to take off one shoe and sock, so they can use the chopstick to whack the calloused parts of the sole of their foot. Very light cane on very thick, (though quite sensitive) skin is really safe, so matter how hard they whack themselves when the endorphin starts surging, it is all sting and no weight so they can't get more than a slight bruise.  Using the mantra of gratitude most people go "over the top", runners wall, endorphin flood in about ten minutes.  The early christian flagellants thought the euphoria was from being flooded by the Holy Spirit.

  You know, endorphin is chemically nearly identical to heroin, and heroin is almost the same as my post op morphine... but internally generated from sensation and attitude. It is not a total answer for pain, or I would not keep tylenol and CBD on hand but it certainly mitigates especially for mood.

  When the circling rats in a maze thoughts come up, remind yourself it is PTS symptom and retire some sock puppets.  Think of all those years of resisting pain, and know you may have built an army of them.  All the crazy thoughts you get when pain is bad, what if each is a sock puppet voice? How would the pain be different if all the fearful mind voices fell silent?

If Goddess has no need to torture people, and yet people get tortured by each other, and Goddess is all things, then doesn’t Goddess at least permit if not condone torture?      

  Ah, that is the question of the ages, and the validation of atheists. Why would an all powerful God of Love, allow evil and suffering to exist?  Respect for free will.  If Thou Art God, then ask your self. Ask the Fire Serpent. Buddha would say, the suffering is optional.
  Jung said there is no coming to consciousness without pain, I can tell you the pain comes of resisting the changes. It is in the nature of ego, to resist. The only way to do an end run around ego is to use free will to choose surrender.

I guess accidents happen and pain happens and accepting that is the way to go. I do think it’s possible for Goddess to heal me but I think for now focusing on accepting the pain without resistance is where it’s at for me. I don’t think Goddess has taken the pain from me because when I offer it, I’m in a sense, trying to get rid of it, and judging it as bad. So perhaps using the mantra with breathing is something for me to try.

  I wished a miracle for you, and one for myself too! For me, it will get better with waiting and that is my best comfort. For you it has been mostly a process of decline and that is harder.

   Hope is fear of the future and a desire to control outcomes, it takes you out of the moment. We can have fantasies about purpose and hold the idea that some day we find the magic key, or supplement or attitude and the health issues disappear ... and sometimes it happens, like the discovery vitamin C cures scurvy. It is ok to keep an eye out for gifts like that.

  Fantasies of hope are food without substance. Here and now, dealing with what Is, is the place of power.  With every moment, in your free will choice to love or fear, accept or resist. That is our greatest power we have, to change our personal reality and life experiences.



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

This is turning out to be such a lovely thread and I am learning a lot.

Quote"Here and now, dealing with what Is, is the place of power.  With every moment, in your free will choice to love or fear, accept or resist. That is our greatest power we have, to change our personal reality and life experiences."

Thank you for that timely reminder Mystress.

The source of my anxiety is based on expectations about the future, at times a worst case scenario. I have a few friends who live with various types of chronic illness, some manageable and others painful, and almost all of them tend to get worse with age. As you mentioned about druid's declining eye sight, I find that most people with chronic illness give into despair, which is very much understandable. Based on my own experiences with depression, here is my pattern of expectations:

(1) Everything I do has to be done in the best way possible or it is not worth doing at all. I will wake up with huge amount of enthusiasm, an elaborate plan that is impossible for any sane human to achieve for the day, and then realize I am extremely tired to do anything right now because just thinking about the enormity of what needs to be done (according to my version of the plan) is exhausting. So now I am tired and feeling guilty about not doing something that I think should only be done perfectly. My perfectionism is a desperate attempt to control what is beyond my control.

(2) Focus only on flaws and forget to enjoy the ride. As a researcher, I choose to work on complex issues but then also forget that my work feels difficult at times because I chose to do difficult work and not because I am dumb. Instead of acknowledging that we learn by making mistakes, I sometimes turn to self-flagellating myself. I have gotten much better at reducing self-harming thoughts and actions but it is still tempting at times to want to give into 'I am so stupid and I deserve this'. Recently I caught myself repeating some bullshit about 'I am not good at this' and then my Guide immediately responded 'How would you know? You never tried.' And I felt caught red handed. Fear of failure fueled by high expectations of self focusing only on your flaws leading to 'Dead on Arrival'. Oh my Goddess... I think I just described my dating life. LOLZ... I guess it is 'air your dirty laundry' day   

(3) Always aim to work at 100% efficiency and make self care optional. There is always one more thing that needs to be done. I am not sure if all the items in my 'To do' list will be done before I die. LOL. I have noticed that at times I feel guilty for not working and am very easily willing to abandon my own self-care as optional. I am working on changing this by making myself to do things that are fun for me but without any agenda. I am becoming more assertive about taking care of my own needs. And I have learned through experience that when I don't put so much expectations about performing 100% and instead focus on having fun with my work, then things somehow turn out ok one way or another.

I attended a writers retreat for 21 days. One of the techniques they taught us was to stop writing before you exhaust yourself. At first, this did not make much sense. But after following it for few days, I started noticed a difference in my attitude. I actually started looking forward to the next day morning's writing session. When I write till I exhaust myself, my brain starts associating writing as a tiring activity that requires a LOT of energy. No wonder I feel anxious about starting to write on a low energy day and wait around for motivation to start again. Instead if I stop before exhausting myself, my brain starts associating writing as an exciting, fun, and challenging activity and I look forward to coming back to it next day. I have started used this insight in some other aspects of my life like exercising and find it helpful to not aim for 100% efficiency all the time.

(4) Nothing is good enough. This is when I know I am experiencing depression. Feeling stuck, defeated, disillusioned, and like a failure. Self-pity, cynicism, numbness, restlessness, indulging in escapist fantasies, and a lack of wonder for life. When I am depressed, I am very convinced that everything is crap for all of eternity and so what's the point anyway. I once a met stranger who had a semicolon tattooed on his wrist. I asked him about it and he said it was about suicide awareness and support. I asked him 'What keeps you going?' and he said 'I don't know what will happen tomorrow'. I found that to be a humble and powerful response to my own suicidal thoughts.

When I interact other people who face depression and anxiety, some of them ask me 'But what is the point anyway?' During my twenties, I was looking for a reason to justify to myself why it was worth getting out of bed everyday. If I have to do all the hard work, I at least wanted to know that there was a fool-proof correct answer to my life's problems somewhere down the line. In short, I wanted some sort of guarantee that if I do the hard work, life will turn out to be worth the pain and suffering. During my early teens, I believed in organized religion which taught me to follow a point-based system with a surveillance by God - do good, go to heaven. do bad, go to hell. Reality shattered that belief system for me in my early twenties. After that, even though I was not looking for any specific belief system, I wanted to have something to personally believe in and hope for. I have reread pages from Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning and found several helpful lessons. One of my favorite quotes is Frankl's answer to the dreaded 'What is the point anyway?' question:

Quote“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by lifeâ€"daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

That's a lot more than I wanted to say. But I guess it had to come out.
I also like this story from Osho about making judgments -
https://oshostories.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/old-mans-horse/

Namaste!

Grief is very human, a process of recovery from loss. It is not the only way to recover or the only way to respond to loss.

What are some other ways to respond to or recover from loss?

You would not need a process to recover from loss, if you were already at peace with it. There are some cultures like Tibetan that approach death and loss differently.

I’d be interested in hearing more about the Tibetan approach.

My point though is that depression is a specific mental illness, -  where grief is a process. Depression means there is something wrong with you that needs to be fixed, and that is leading you to these cycles of self judgment. Grieving people are expected to act a bit crazy, it is forgivable. Re-framing your emotions as grief instead of depression is a way to be kinder and more self accepting.

Is it possible I have complex grief and the depression is both a symptom of that and a mental illness? I mean, I do tend to exhibit the classic symptoms of mental illness and antidepressants do help. But then, I agree with you 100% that I am grieving, and have been experiencing the stages of grieving since age 6. Thinking of myself as mourning a loss does make me more compassionate towards myself.

I went through my notes on my phone and saw that I had written to ask my psychiatrist about complex grief and chronic sorrow.

You can be more pro-active too, using ritual, sometimes creating some type of funeral rite for what is lost can be a comfort.

Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly mournful I see myself in a coffin, pale with red lips and wearing a white gown. DB comes in dressed like a vampire and holds my hand. It’s actually very comforting.

Ultimately, anger is your own, the choice to respond with anger is your choice, based on your perspective and is best resolved inwardly.
Anger jumps to unkind conclusions and always thinks it is right, but it is always based on some kind of wrong idea that comes from the inside, not the actual events. Anger signals insecurity, it is fear based and investing in fear always gives a bad return.

Are there ever circumstances where anger is justified? Isn’t it normal to feel anger when boundaries have been violated, or an injustice has been committed? Are you saying it’s ok to feel the anger, resolve it internally, and then respond in a way that isn’t angry?


Post op in the hospital, 2009, went for a bit of a walk, asked the nurse why was I getting cold sweats? She said it was from pain and it might be time for more morphine. I was really surprised, I had not been aware of the pain

In 2019, I was in the worst pain of my life, post-op from an ankle fusion with a tooth that needed a root canal and violent GI cramping. I remember being completely calm and detached, thinking “Who’s that screaming? Oh…that’s me.”

Too much of my pain control comes of leaving the body to escape it, not a good long term strategy as the body becomes frail with too much time spent out of it. The body still feels the pain and is distressed by it, and feels  abandoned too.

   Long way of saying, self hypnosis can be helpful with chronic pain, if you don't overdo it.

I remember back in 2003 when I was an FST student for the first time you told me that always having music in your head is a sign of being in perpetual trance. You asked me what I was hypnotizing myself from. When I am feeling terrible, focusing on a song I like helps me tune out the pain. I have a good ear for music and recreating songs in my head is easy once I’ve learned the song. I think it has been a life-long coping mechanism for me.

It helps that Pip likes music too.

I tried the experiment and yes, there is a huge difference. I was much easier able to tolerate the pain the second time.

  Yes, you have PTS like you have been experiencing decades of torture and captivity against your will.

That’s an extreme way of putting it, but if I’m being honest, it is how I feel sometimes, with Goddess as the Inquisitor.

Pain is traumatic unless you can flip the endorphin switch with gratitude.

I have been experimenting with the mantra you gave me and it has given me more of an appreciation for my body. Even on bad pain days there are still small pleasures like drinking tea, brushing my teeth, taking a shower, sitting in the sun, and lying on a soft bed. And I’ve started to have memories of all the good times I’ve had with this body over the years.

We have no ability to really remember pain eh? You cannot remember the pain, you remember the trauma you experienced from the pain, which in turn is giving you more resistance to the pain and you discovered how that makes it feel worse.

If I remembered the pain, I’d be screaming right now! But yes, the trauma lingers and creates resistance.

  When I have done workshops about engaging endorphin, for kink or pain management, I give out cheap bamboo chopsticks (new, from the $ store)  and instruct people to take off one shoe and sock, so they can use the chopstick to whack the calloused parts of the sole of their foot.

Ha ha, being a masochist worked very well for me until 2008 when I started having globalized soft tissue pain. But getting a spanking was wonderful for taking my mind off my sore feet before things declined.

  When the circling rats in a maze thoughts come up, remind yourself it is PTS symptom and retire some sock puppets.  Think of all those years of resisting pain, and know you may have built an army of them.  All the crazy thoughts you get when pain is bad, what if each is a sock puppet voice? How would the pain be different if all the fearful mind voices fell silent?

I never thought of applying the sock puppet resolution to my pain. Thanks for the tip.

If Goddess has no need to torture people, and yet people get tortured by each other, and Goddess is all things, then doesn’t Goddess at least permit if not condone torture?       

  Ah, that is the question of the ages, and the validation of atheists. Why would an all powerful God of Love, allow evil and suffering to exist?  Respect for free will.  If Thou Art God, then ask your self. Ask the Fire Serpent. Buddha would say, the suffering is optional.

That’s the answer my intuition came up with, that Goddess respects free will. I guess it is we who judge things as good and evil. It might be better to say those things are what they are, to be cliché.

  I wished a miracle for you, and one for myself too! For me, it will get better with waiting and that is my best comfort. For you it has been mostly a process of decline and that is harder.

   Hope is fear of the future and a desire to control outcomes, it takes you out of the moment. We can have fantasies about purpose and hold the idea that some day we find the magic key, or supplement or attitude and the health issues disappear ... and sometimes it happens, like the discovery vitamin C cures scurvy. It is ok to keep an eye out for gifts like that.

I prayed for a miracle for 6 years and got worse, so I gave up praying. I think being taught that God was going to heal me meant I never fully accepted that it was ok to be sick, to be disabled, and to be in pain. I think it would have been better had I prayed for strength and acceptance.

I never gave up believing it was possible to be healed though, and I still think it’s possible, whether through a miracle or science.


  Fantasies of hope are food without substance. Here and now, dealing with what Is, is the place of power.  With every moment, in your free will choice to love or fear, accept or resist. That is our greatest power we have, to change our personal reality and life experiences.

Thank you Goddess
For this body
That can feel
Pain and pleasure

 WZ Wrote: What are some other ways to respond to or recover from loss?

  See perfection in it. Gratitude is helpful for that.

  Avatar to Planet, I inquired, as I sometimes do, about a possible intervention on the fires blazing in Alaska and Siberia.
"No." Gut discernment added a clear "Hands off."

  Naturally I wondered about it. Is the spectacle part of the consciousness change, scaring people into going green?
  Didn't feel right, manipulation via fear is not Her style, it is more something we do to ourselves... besides, it could just as easily be interpreted as validation by the "End Times, Yay!" crowd. So I set it aside as something that would become clearer in time.

  This morning I responded to someone in a Bowie fan group talking about where his inspiration came from. I mentioned the thing about the song "Five years" being pretty accurate to the current state after the UN announcement. Someone asked me for a reference and so I had to search and discovered that was not the UN, it was Harvard science and the IEA.
   The northern ice cap is melting, the north pole is a pond. If we lose the northern icecap and the permafrost melts, it will release so much methane... methane is 30x worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, there will be no coming back from it.

  That is when I got it, She is burning off the methane!  My jaw dropped open, amazed! Besides trees, we have developed many technologies to recapture carbon, with more coming every day but methane?  Over such a large area? She is burning it off at ground level before it escapes into the atmosphere.

  "And enriching the soil" I heard... ashes are fertilizer, nitrogen. I contemplated permafrost turned to forest or farm.

  "and sterilizing it"

   Her wisdom and mercy astonished me.  We know the glaciers and permafrost hold ancient diseases, already there was an outbreak of anthrax in reindeer in arctic Europe. A unique strain of the virus, turned out to have come from a melting glacier.  Burning the permafrost to protect us from plague.

  While writing this, I got the punchline, because laughter really is the nature of spirit.

    Goddess is lighting Her farts on fire.

    The fires are still a disaster for the folks living there, I can have the complacency of distance.

  So climate scientists say the melting permafrost releasing methane will kill us all, and Goddess the Planet Mind is like, "Hold my beer, I got this..."

  Was doing some self-healing, got an impulse to give thanks for fibroids. Got back an insight that the stress I was experiencing in 2012 was redirected into growing fibroids, to protect my liver. I am grateful for that! 

I’d be interested in hearing more about the Tibetan approach.

  I encourage you to do some research on it. A few points:
   They are Buddhist, they believe in reincarnation. For the Lamas they go out looking for the next incarnation when the old Lama dies.
  They believe in letting go of attachments, the funeral rites are about supporting the bardo journey of the deceased, moving on into  their next incarnation. They believe the soul stays near the body for three days after death so they sit with the dead in vigil, praying for their safe bardo travel and letting go emotionally so the grief and loneliness does not call the dead to hang around.
  Tibet is a low resource country, they do not have wood for coffins or cremation, or soft soil for burials. The sacred bird is a Vulture.  The deceased are given a "sky burial," stripped naked and fed to the vultures in a sacred ritual at the top of a high tower.
  Prior to the Chinese invasion, Lamas and monks who were known for spiritual attainment, would instead be arranged into a lotus meditation pose in a high, cold arid cave and left to mummify. After that the corpse is taken out, dressed up and applied preservative (sometimes, gold leaf) to keep mold and insects away. Then it is put on a special platform in a temple to become an object of veneration and prayer.
  Tibetan prayer beads are skull shaped, they meditate on death every day to feel more alive.
 
Thinking of myself as mourning a loss does make me more compassionate towards myself.

  Yup. I am not a psychiatrist, to be able to diagnose you. A little beneficial spin doctoring is all. NLP stuff, re-framing the picture with a different interpretation can changes feelings, thoughts and behaviors. Many sides, many views to any story and you have free will to choose. 

Are you saying it’s ok to feel the anger, resolve it internally, and then respond in a way that isn’t angry?

  Yes. Anger, always believes it is justified.  That is the nature of anger, it always thinks it is right, but anger lies. Anger represents a loss of control, it takes over like a possession state. To feel anger is natural, but to act from anger is usually a mistake. Anger represents a type of fear and investing in fear is bad for your head and your results.

  Ya know, if as some say, we plan the important stuff of our lives before conception, that we choose our parents and DNA to fit the plan... Do you ever wonder, "WTF was I thinking???" I have sometimes.  If you were a shaman I would say, time travel back to before your conception and ask your higher self. I don't know how well it works for vamps and regular folks but I encourage you to try it. 

WZ Wrote: What are some other ways to respond to or recover from loss?

See perfection in it. Gratitude is helpful for that.

I asked Goddess to show me the perfection in my declining health. The answer I got was that it brought me back to my family. I asked to see the perfection in the accident that caused the RA and I was shown that before I crossed the road, I hesitated and looked both ways as taught by my mother. I thought I had enough time to cross the road, so I ran forward and got hit by the corner of the truck. Had I not hesitated I would have been hit full on and could have died.

I remember having a dream in the hospital that I went to heaven and saw God and Jesus, and that they told me to go back to my family. I told my family and friends about it, but they told me it was just a dream, and that made me feel sad. I sometimes wonder about that.

    Goddess is lighting Her farts on fire.

LMAO!


Was doing some self-healing, got an impulse to give thanks for fibroids. Got back an insight that the stress I was experiencing in 2012 was redirected into growing fibroids, to protect my liver. I am grateful for that! 

I am glad you are getting some new information on that. Fibroids are much better than a damaged liver, I assume?

I’d be interested in hearing more about the Tibetan approach.

I encourage you to do some research on it.

Perhaps I should read the Tibetan book of the dead. It's got to be better than researching DNRs and MAID.

 
  Tibetan prayer beads are skull shaped, they meditate on death every day to feel more alive.

My inner goth loves this.

  Yup. I am not a psychiatrist, to be able to diagnose you. A little beneficial spin doctoring is all. NLP stuff, re-framing the picture with a different interpretation can changes feelings, thoughts and behaviors. Many sides, many views to any story and you have free will to choose. 

Well, I can always do research and talk to my doctor. And check with discernment.

Are you saying it’s ok to feel the anger, resolve it internally, and then respond in a way that isn’t angry?

  Yes. Anger, always believes it is justified.  That is the nature of anger, it always thinks it is right, but anger lies. Anger represents a loss of control, it takes over like a possession state. To feel anger is natural, but to act from anger is usually a mistake. Anger represents a type of fear and investing in fear is bad for your head and your results.

I thought of a good example of 2 times when I got angry at a violation of my boundaries. When I went to kink parties, I would occasionally get groped by someone I didn't know well. Sometimes I told them off. Other times, I went home, waited until I calmed down, and wrote them an email explaining why what they did was a consent violation and how that's frowned upon in the kink community. I generally got better responses when I took the time to educate, and even got some apologies. Some people remained petulant and sulky on being called in, or tried to convince me I wanted it, so I knew who to avoid.

Shadow is letting me know that once when I was drunk at a party I grabbed a guy's ass, and that I am not above reproach.

  Ya know, if as some say, we plan the important stuff of our lives before conception, that we choose our parents and DNA to fit the plan... Do you ever wonder, "WTF was I thinking???" I have sometimes.  If you were a shaman I would say, time travel back to before your conception and ask your higher self. I don't know how well it works for vamps and regular folks but I encourage you to try it. 

My HS says I was thinking that I would learn to bear my arthritis with grace. I asked her if I was doing that and she said I was learning. She said someday I will attain grace, kissed me on the forehead, and told me she has faith in me.

Dear Mystress,

Other than focusing on songs I like, what are some other ways I could use hypnosis to deal with pain? Are there any websites or books or CDs you would recommend?

I was having a really bad day a few weeks ago where I was in brutal pain and really anxious and feeling quite sorry for myself. I got dropped off in my wheelchair for bloodwork at the hospital, only to be told bloodwork was only done for daycare patients and I had to go up the road. My taxi was booked and paid for by the government who require confirmation of attendance letters, which the receptionist refused to give me. I went outside and sniffled a little. Then I noticed two older women talking, and saw that they were amputees. They were talking about their problems, but they weren’t whining. They were strong. It put things into perspective for me.

I’m still having some trouble with gratitude. I tend to say “I’m grateful, but…” It is easier for me to focus on what is wrong with something than what is right. Thanking Goddess for my body which can feel pain and pleasure still sometimes feels forced. But I can thank Goddess for this body, with all its aches and pains. I guess that’s the same thing.

Many times when my pain and depression get really bad I beg Goddess for death. I have often resented Her for not letting me die in the accident when I was 6, for making me stay alive through horrible pain. But sometimes I trust She’s keeping me alive for a reason. With spiritual healing and medical advances, things can get better. And if I have to have a painful disability, at least I live in one of the most socialist countries in the world with one of the best healthcare systems. There is that.

And it’s exciting that Mystress and DreamWalker have used the new tech to put the arthritis into remission! Now we either need to find a way to reverse joint damage or I just have to become fully bionic. 

WZ

Hello WZ,
Thank you for sharing.

Quote"Many times when my pain and depression get really bad I beg Goddess for death. I have often resented Her for not letting me die in the accident when I was 6, for making me stay alive through horrible pain. But sometimes I trust She’s keeping me alive for a reason."

I have experienced suicidal thoughts since I was a child. I do not have suicidal thoughts anymore for the past 5+ years (Thank you Goddess!). Not saying I understand everything about your life but I can relate to some of what you say because I have been in those dark places. I have tried to take my life multiple times (do not recommend it to anyone) and I really don't know why/how I am still alive in one single piece with sanity. I trust that I am alive because She wants me alive.

When you are frustrated, yell at Her! Give your anger, frustrations, disappointments, expectations, pain, and sense of helplessness to Her. Lay everything at Her feet - 'Goddess... Take this from me and guide me.'

Personally, I have found that I tend to focus on what is wrong with my life when I am too scared of facing the future. During my K-awakening journey, one of the scariest experience for me was fully acknowledging and realizing my own power. It may seem counter-intuitive but we are not afraid of being powerless but we are really terrified of being powerful - meaning accepting responsibility for our own lives. It is easier to blame others and outside world for my misery. It is terrifying to accept responsibility for my own life because that means both good and bad are my own doing.

I am not a certified therapist but I do believe that people who grow up with trauma as children tend to have this kind of problems. The script of 'I am good for nothing' has been played over repeatedly as trauma victim so much that it is both familiar and comforting. When you step out of your own victimhood, it can be terrifying. Have you heard the saying [b'Known devil is better than unknown angel'[/b]? Humans crave familiarity. This is also why lots of people stay in abusive relationships even though they know better - the prospect of finding a new healthy relationship is scarier than the reality of staying in a abusive relationship because the latter is familiar.

Sometimes I catch myself repeating the 'I am good for nothing' as a sneaky excuse for being lazy or avoiding to try new things. When you begin learning something, everyone sucks and we slowly get better with practice. When I am in victim mentality, I would immediately quit trying because 'I suck at everything' and 'what is the point?'. I had to learn and accept that anything worth of value requires time and effort invested. Also I cannot suck at everything because I haven't tried everything. So I had to learn to change the script in my head 'No... I do not suck at everything. I am new to this and I will learn by doing more.' It takes time and persistence to reverse ingrained habits but it can be done.

Next time you focus on something negative, ask yourself 'What am I afraid of? What am I running away from?'
See what comes up.

HUGS
Gopi

HI Gopi,

There is a lot of wisdom in what you have posted in this thread. I really appreciate being given support from someone who has been where I am now. I always respect guidance more when it's given by people in similar life situations as mine. I have been yelling at Goddess, believe me and shouting at Her to guide me.

You're right that we focus on the negative when we're scared of the unknown or our own power. I think I will ask myself these questions you suggested the next time I find myself saying "I'm grateful, Goddess, but..." or I am finding fault with myself or my life.

Thank you for your words of wisdom, and your support. It's much appreciated.

Blessings,

WZ

I have been tallying up my groundings on a paper calendar for 2019 and I've made some progress though I am still not grounding 8 times a day for 45 days. In January, I I grounded 6-8 times a day for 3 weeks. In February, I grounded 6-8 times a day for 2 weeks. In March I did 8 times a day for 1 1/2 weeks. In April I grounded 8 times a day for 1 week. In May I grounded 8 times a day for 3 days.In June I grounded 4 times a day for 4 days.In August I grounded 2-4 times a day for 6 days.

Things picked up in August. I grounded 1-2 times a day for 1 week. Then I grounded 3-6 times a day for 3 1/2 weeks. In September I grounded 4 times a day for 1 1/2 weeks. I basically grounded every day for 42 days, which is not quite the goal but close to the goal.

I wonder sometimes if I am a bit too goal-focused about grounding. I know that the more one grasps for spiritual goals, the more far beyond their reach it tends to be. There comes a point at which one has to stop grasping for spiritual goals. I don't know if I am there yet. All I know is that 98% of the time when I ground I feel better, and doing it daily really enhances and enriches my life. I want to get back into my morning routine where grounding and FST were part of that. Perhaps that's a good goal for now.

This past Thursday I just came out of a 2 week period of intense suicidal ideation brought on my severe chronic pain and depression over my narcotic usage. I just felt so miserable and hopeless. My best friend picked up on it and starting checking in with me every day, and I told my mom and psychiatrist what was going on. Since Tuesday I've been tired and sore, but not anxious or depressed. I have been getting spiritual help from some very good friends and it has helped me heal.

I have had some good medical reports lately and I am significantly less stressed about my health. It looks like I'll be getting a new right shoulder in December. I'm super-excited though a bit trepidatious. Surgery is painful and a hassle, yo. But I'm grateful that I'm finally in the right place to get treated for so many of the physical and psychological problems that have bothered me for so long. Moving to the city was definitely the right choice even though I do feel lonely sometimes not having made any new friends or social connections yet. But, I'm sure that will come with time. In the meantime, I am thankful for days of calmness and productivity. Thank you, Goddess.

Hello WZ,
Glad to hear that you have a good support system. Thank you Goddess.

On really bad days, I gave myself very small and immediate goals.
For instance, when I finish first grounding for the day, I set the intention that I want to ground again after an hour. I also do not allow myself to worry or try to 'figure out' big questions beyond the 1 hour. When my depression used to be really bad, I had to be strict with myself and focus only on the next task and not worry about what comes after. One step at a time. Trust in Goddess.

Also, I used to read a set of affirmations from Peter Walker's work on cPTSD everyday morning.
"Every mistake is an opportunity to practice loving myself."

Have a lovely weekend.
Namaste!
Gopi