Monstaville Book II. Chapter 46

46

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”

- Robert Frost.

Naturally, if you are sad and unhappy for whatever reason, your energy is likely to be reduced and you might be somewhat subdued or withdrawn. If you are a more introverted type of person, aggressive or competitive people might regard you as a suitable - vulnerable and helpless - target for their predatory desire for power. They want to reinforce the belief that their way of being makes them happy so they can feel superior and justify their coarse existence while you, in contrast, are weak and stupid in a world in which survival belongs to the fittest. Dull Knives are the most dangerous ones.

They might be happier with their lives but only because they have yet to suffer as much as you and have not experienced the depths of their consciousness. Their happiness is founded on a limited, egocentric degree of identity, often a very physical one. They regard you as weak only because they are clinging to a narrow sense of self and personal power. Once some crisis occurs to crush that illusion, the tables are turned. They are cowards, not warriors. For, the warrior also engages in the great battle of his/her life which is with him or her-self. As ‘all rivers lead to the sea’ so do all conflicts lead to the war within and, ultimately, to the triumph of the higher over the lower self.

I wanna live, I wanna love
But it`s a long hard road out of hell.
I wanna live, I wanna love
But it`s a long hard road out of hell.

- Marilyn Manson (from the song ‘Long Hard Road Out of Hell,’ written by Marilyn Manson and Twiggy Ramirez, 1997).

If a person is essentially unhappy, they can be an easy target because they have insufficient power, will, confidence, joy or energy to express, which are protective forces in themselves. People with power and who abuse it prey on the weak and vulnerable. Bullies take what power they have left because they can and enjoy it and have something to gain from it, even potentially. Some people’s lives are hard. Some introverted people are oversensitive and feel the pain in their lives more acutely. Some extroverted people are not sensitive enough and rarely reflect on the experiences in their lives or how they feel. If you don’t like yourself, or you don’t enjoy life, or if you are having difficulty coping, some people will reinforce that. They will give you more suffering as though it is okay, as if you accept that tortuous existence. They feel that they can have fun at your expense even though there is no invitation or acceptance of their involvement in causing you further misery. They have no right to add to your problems but these people are buried in their unconscious and driven by their animal instincts. They are like the Borg Collective in Star Trek: no individuals. We live in a time of change where both young and old souls are having to live together. That’s what we are dealing with. I believe that many older or more enlightened souls are now being born into this world and that they will guide others. A higher proportion of old to young souls on this planet of ours will inevitably change things for the better.

Know your rights!

I probably have aggressors in my life because I tend to react and may have developed the habit of using power too impatiently over several lifetimes. Now, I am unable to retaliate at the time without thinking. My choices are therefore to accept and suffer abuse, submit and allow them to walk all over me (inviting attack!), or get really angry and suppress the anger by doing nothing, or get angry and retaliate later when it is possible, or get angry or depressed and don’t retaliate but just do whatever I feel like doing (like my selfish, aggressive neighbours), or don’t get angry or depressed, find something to distract myself so I minimise my own suffering and then either take revenge, or do nothing or behave selfishly like them, or don’t get angry or depressed and send them love or positive energy and either behave selfishly and irresponsibly like them, or let it go.

“Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.” – Richard Bach (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Arrow Books Ltd, London, U.K., 1977).

 

What you need to avoid is:

1. Creating karma, thus prolonging the misery or continuing the behaviour pattern so this kind of conflict finds you again.

2. Getting into dark moods, disturbing and depressing your consciousness, making yourself miserable and potentially ill.

3. Being fearful: this makes you more powerless and unable to sort things out.

4. Stupid, thoughtless behaviour you will regret later! For example, you need to minimise the violence and preferably avoid violence on any level altogether. The less violence the better, the more successful - providing the strategy is effective.

“Only by understanding can we get the better of destiny.” - Hermann Hesse.

“Ignorance is caused by fears. People fear what they don’t understand.” – Angelica Wandering Angel.

“Whenever we're afraid, it’s because we don't know enough. If we understood enough, we would never be afraid.” - Earl Nightingale.

“What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.” - Krishnamurti.

“There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.” - Richard Bach (The Bridge Across Forever, Pan Books, London, U.K., 1984).

“Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it.” - Jean de La Fontaine, Fables.

Retrospective inserts.

“Fear is the Ultimate Prison…The time has come for us to escape the Fear Prison and walk out into the light of Freedom. To be ourselves without the fear of what anyone may think of us. To say what we feel...it is our birthright…Know that many have come before you. Knowledge is Power. Share it, and use it so that we may together make a significant difference in this world. We are the generation that has been entrusted with the future of mankind.” – Julio Gilberto (from a blog on MySpace).

"Some catastrophic moments invite clarity, explode in split moments: You smash your hand through a windowpane and then there is blood and shattered glass stained with red all over the place; you fall out a window and break some bones and scrape some skin. Stitches and casts and bandages and antiseptic solve and salve the wounds. But depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer: At first its tumorous mass is not even noticeable to the careful eye, and then one day - wham! - there is a huge, deadly seven-pound lump lodged in your brain or your stomach or your shoulder blade, and this thing that your own body has produced is actually trying to kill you. Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realise that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live.

In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead. The actual dying part, the withering away of my physical body, was a mere formality. My spirit, my emotional being, whatever you want to call all that inner turmoil that has nothing to do with physical existence, were long gone, dead and gone, and only a mass of the most fucking god-awful excruciating pain like a pair of boiling hot tongs clamped tight around my spine and pressing on all my nerves was left in its wake.

That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal - unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.

And the scariest part is that if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he'll never know. There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, 'Gradually and then suddenly.' When someone asks how I love my mind, that is all I can say too."

– Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation. Young and Depressed in America: A Memoir, Riverhead Books, New York, U.K., 1995).

“The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.” - Walt Disney.

1. A theory: We live in alienating times. However, it is possible that my tendency to contract rather than expand socially, to shy away from the world, commenced prior to this lifetime on Earth. Certainly, my childhood experiences caused me to withdraw completely and escape into my own inner world as an oversensitive and artistic boy. This, and the fact that I never really fitted into any group, has meant that I have stood alone for the most part, being both vulnerable and rebellious in relation to the hostile world outside. I have always enjoyed my own company and have always had much creative expression and study to occupy myself with. Over time, however, I lost the balance, particularly as poverty has trapped me in a ghetto in which I do not belong and as my workload has increased.

The attention difficulty I have also experienced has also taught me to appreciate clear communication as well as conscious awareness. In addition, I have realised the importance of paying attention to my feelings and sharing them. This is all very evident as a major learning theme in my birth chart. As a result of these conditions, it could be that, since I did not actively go out and meet new people, or embrace people, when I had the chance, or, indeed, appreciate the friends I had and go and see them often enough, I ended up in an environment where there is nobody for me to connect with or visit. In other words, I did not invest enough energy and attention into this part of my life, my social and emotional needs. Consequently, I inadvertently invited not only a social vacuum but, since nature abhors a vacuum, actively hostile neighbours in order to motivate me to find the solution, to go out and establish contact with the civilised world again (wherever that may be!) or at least to develop a hunger for fulfilling friendships in contrast to the debilitating effect that my celebration of independence eventually had on me. No doubt, from a higher perspective (and much to my disbelief!) where I need to be having drawn this sorry state of affairs to myself for my own growth.

2. Not putting enough energy into the world socially has meant that I am not only isolated (which is cool with me) but also the recipient of darkness in an area in which I have not expressed sufficient Light. Consequently, this imbalance is corrected by social interaction of a nature that is potent enough to get my attention. Devils have been honing in on my own darkness, trying to extinguish my Light, and basically stimulating some level of attention and activity. This means that I am on the lowest rung of the social ladder, the realm of conflict, perhaps! All because I did not – or could not – do enough to establish or give enough time and attention to a nourishing, supportive and empowering network of friends. And I lost the friends I had because I did not actively seek and find them. They were temporary acquaintances rather than true, like-minded friends. However, I do not really feel an affinity with English people, at least not those I have met since moving to London. I mean there don’t seem to be many people on my wavelength. But perhaps I ought to be more sociable regardless. I mentioned this dilemma to a friend and she told me that such a negative belief about English people is likely to create a vicious circle instead of improving the situation. I guess it became a conscious acknowledgement after moving to London and has increased over the years as a result of my experience here. On the rare occasions that I visit people outside of London, however, I am reminded that I do not really live in the ‘real’ England anyway and I do start to feel more at home (some people observe that the whole country is now unrecognisable and has been renamed ‘Come on in’). My friend advised me to affirm positive social intent. She, however, is very watery and Celtic and therefore fits in easily with the hippy/New Age social ‘stratum’ here which I never have.

“Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.” – Richard Bach.

Perhaps the reason for not being more outgoing socially is that I am oversensitive and shun the emotions of fear and discomfort I often derive from interaction with people. That fear itself is plausibly what has attracted the very people I most do not want to interact with – whom, in fact, I have shunned entirely and whose existence I am reluctant to recognise, thereby casting my karmic net into the sea of Oneness to catch those who would serve me by showing me the error of my ways; a cosmic paradigm against which I arrogantly and defiantly rebel! They do exist and they deserve to be loved equally…apparently. Yet, it is all too easy to love the lovers and not the haters! The number one issue might well be that I myself have always been reluctant to receive love. This is undoubtedly an issue that is rooted in previous lifetimes and might well be the very cause of being hurled into such a negative arena in childhood.

“The Sufis (the lighthearted, mystical Muslim sect which includes whirling dervishes) say it is easy to give with an open heart, but to reach enlightenment you have to learn to receive with an open heart, which is far more difficult.

                Kabbalah (the lighthearted mystical ‘yoga’ of Judaism, involving among other practices, meditation on the ‘tree of life’) literally means ‘to receive.’

                In Taoist thought, to give is a function of yang energy, while to receive is a function of yin. Any preponderance of one over the other will eventually cause an imbalance affecting all aspects of your life, including your health, wealth and happiness.”

- Barefoot Doctor (Dear Barefoot. Taoist Wisdom For Everyday Living, Atlantic Books on behalf of Guardian Newspapers Ltd, London, U.K., 2004, p.95).

These are the tears I've been crying my whole life

Like an ocean of desire

I'm reaching through the noise

Across the dusk of time

Within the lilting lies

I am singing out to you.

- From >The Crying Tree of Mercury= (The Smashing Pumpkins, lyrics by Billy Corgan, 2000).

“You have all been seeking love for your entire lifetime. Well, you are about to find it. You will find an amplified version of that which you have already been experiencing. Love is a difficult thing to achieve while you are in the third-dimensional reality, as you all know. You have been trying in many ways to grasp on to this elusive experience. It has been scarce here. It will be more abundant in the future, much more abundant. The fact that it is scarce in the third-dimensional reality is an aberration. It is not the rule in the universe. Actually, love is the essential ingredient, the essential building block of all the universe. So you volunteers have come here to bring a little bit more love to an atmosphere which has been quite devoid of it. You have all succeeded in various degrees, but now it is time for you to return to your true state and your true allotment of this precious elixir. For you can only share that which you have in abundance. Most of you are still struggling to have even enough for yourselves.” – Sananda (channelled through Eric Klein, The Crystal Stair. A Guide to the Ascension, Oughton House Publications, CA, U.S., 1990, p.129-130).

“And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.” - Friedrich Nietzsche.