Day 226: The Thrill of Freedom

Last month my mother came to visit as well as Gian’s parents who came to visit for a long weekend. While they were staying over they were sharing stories of us as small children. Once of these stories consisted of how both Gian and I – each in our own setup as little kids – would be the ones ‘destroying other childrens’ / siblings’ sand castles’.

As my mother was telling the story, I remembered how I experienced myself in those moments.
It was a really strange experience – this typical evil ‘destroying someone else’s sandcastle’. It starts with first seeing someone put all this effort, bucket by bucket, sand heap by sand heap – where every singular action eventually accumulates into this ‘great’ thing as a sand castle. And then for a moment just conceptualizing and playing with the idea of ‘I could just destroy all this’ and ‘I could just undo all of that in ONE single moment’. And that’s where this weird feeling starts creeping in. Because you are able to conceptualize this scenario, you are able to see that you can actually do this and that you could indeed in a single act, a single moment undo everything your brother/sister/friend has built. And inside yourself there’s this inherent ‘feeling’ that this path/scenario is not cool and that you shouldn’t do it. But just because you can feel that you shouldn’t do it – the possibility/ability of you going there and doing exactly that doesn’t cease to exist. So an interesting conflict/friction emerges as you can tell you should and of you going there and doing exactly that doesn’t cease to exist. So an interesting conflict/friction emerges as you can tell you should and yet you can. And this is actually quite confusing – because nothing is stopping you from doing something you know is inherently uncool. And then you start imagining destroying the sandcastle and then you move yourself to actually go there, and oh boy the moment you cross that line, that point of ‘I’m really doing this’ where you know you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing (and not because someone else told you that it’s wrong , but just because you know you wouldn’t want this to be done unto you) – it creates such a rush of energy, such a thrill – because you’ve just done something which ‘shouldn’t be possible’, you know you crossed a boundary.

Then depending if there’s any adults around, you’d either get reprimanded or only have to deal with a crying sibling/friend, and within that you don’t really learn anything about what just happened and what you experienced.

Because this whole event, is a point of ‘freedom’. I had the freedom to destroy someone else’s sandcastle. And just because I could, I did.

So as a child you are faced with these situations where you can do all these things yet that doesn’t mean that you should to them. And there’s no-one around to explain to you how all of this works (cause your Parents are too busy protecting their own freedom to take advantage of you, so they’re not going to tell you to not indulge into freedom because they know that would just make them look like hypocrites). In the end – the only one that is able to stop you in a moment of ‘freedom’ is you. Freedom is really just a test of character. Freedom is where you are able to set your boundaries. Freedom is not about ‘what you can do’ but who you are and what principles you live by no matter ‘what freedom’ is existent.

And I mean, what are we seeing in the world today? We still have children who in the meantime have grown up to be adults, destroying other children/adults’ sandcastles/work/effort/livelihood. We live in a world where you are able to seize power and place others into submission, where you can place yourself in a position of superiority and exploit another. That freedom exists – but does that mean that you should do it just because you can?

We live in a world of absolute freedom, which really only means that the option, the possibility of abusing one another in the most extreme ways is existent. It’ the FreeDoom to Doom one another – something we’ve been doing quite successfully since the beginning of our existence. Maybe that is what the old Bible story is really telling us, the one about Adam and Eve and the Snake – maybe it’s just there to show us that we ‘just can’t help ourselves’ but making irrational, stupid decisions which are not in our best interest. And even though this story supposedly took place at the dawn of time – we still haven’t changed – we are still unable to live by simple guidelines and principles such as ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’, simply because we’re addicted to the thrill of freedom.

Day 225: Fear of Freedom

While working on re-defining the word 'No' and in general looking at all the particular charges, layers and dimensions I had attached to the word 'No' over the years -- an interesting point opened up (well many opened up lol). This one in particular was a fear point, whereby I had created a fear towards the word 'No' in relation to 'Freedom of Choice' / 'Freedom of Expression'.

Growing up in Belgium, our country was considered to be a very 'modern' society. Part of that meant that we were 'multi-cultural' with many people living in Belgium coming from various different cultural backgrounds and religions. With this, we were taught to be 'tolerant' and `Respectful of other people's beliefs'. Only if we take on such an attitude along with one of 'minding your own business' approach - can we live 'peacefully together'.

When you're being taught all these things, it all 'sound nice' and 'seems to make sense' (because you don't necessarily want other people to question your beliefs). Afterwards in my life, especially during teenage years and later -- this 'Freedom point' and 'having to respect others' freedoms' started bothering me. This was because I would for instance ask someone for help or ask someone to assist me with something, where without their assistance i would not have been able to pursue the point, and they would simply say 'No' and when asking further as to 'why not' -- it would simply be a matter of 'because I don't want to / feel like it'. Or if I would question friends' behaviour I would get a response of 'I can't change who I am' and ' either respect and accept who I am or don't be my friend' type of response.

What I did not like about these points is that I felt powerless within these situations. I could sense something was 'off' but had these rules that we lived by such as 'respect anther's beliefs' and 'respect other people's choices/freedom' which pretty much told me that I was not allowed or supposed to ask questions any further - but leave it at that and would have to merely 'swallow' whatever response I had gotten as this was the collective agreement that had been made. It was really more of a compromise everyone had accepted to live by, where "there's going to be people doing and saying things that you don't like, but as long as you leave them alone they will leave you alone as well and then we have 'peace' ". So we're never really completely satisfied and actually disagree 'but we'll take it' -- and now we have twisted and turned this act of 'just taking it', into some 'benevolent' and 'integrity' dimension -- where it has become a 'good' and 'positive thing' to do -- while it's really just a matter of avoiding each others’ disagreements for the sake of avoiding conflict because we can't really trust each other to behave 'rationally'. So as long as we 'play nice' we do not have to be faced by and with our underlying unpleasant and irrational behaviour. So this whole 'respect another's opinion/freedom/beliefs' is really actually a negative manifestation, as it finds its origin within negativity itself -- but now we've brainwashed ourselves to believe that 'it is a good thing'.

To be continued

Day 224: Bernard

Written on 13/08/2013

Shortly after I had received the news that Bernard had passed away and had a moment for myself -- I said his name:

Bernard

I wanted to look at what would come up -- what Bernard had meant for me -- and all I got was an impression of vastness - a vastness that went into all directions, a vastness that never stopped.

There were no words, no pictures, no memories, no feelings that could describe or capture what Bernard had meant for me, what Bernard meant for this world.

Even now as I try to dig up memories, try to dig up anything at all -- there is nothing. It is as if our minds are just too damn limited to even in any way record what Bernard was and stood for -- as Bernard was not something which could just be reduced to some memories or pictures -- Bernard was way beyond that.

When I look back at specific events -- it was not so much what we were doing or how he was doing / saying things that stuck with me, but his ever stable and unwavering presence. Bernard had a way of Earthing you, bringing you Here.

I was never quite comfortable around Bernard. In general, I have never been much comfortable around people. When meeting new people I would be reserved, first wanting to see what another person's "ammo" was before engaging with them, so that I could be 'prepared' and modify my behaviour as to minimize any conflict -- and only when I had properly gauged the other person and had established for myself how to 'behave' around them -- the discomfort would fade away.

This never happened with Bernard. There was no 'gauging' Bernard, of establishing a pattern, no way of determining the 'rules' he lived by. Bernard did not live by any rules -- he was Bernard and he was simply here. He was solid as a rock as the Principles he stood by and lived in every moment -- yet fluid like water, being able to adapt and change as the moment saw fit. He was consistent in his message yet unpredictable in his expression. Bernard was not limited by moods or things happening around him to determine who he was going to be, he was here as everything and could become any expression at any time -- purely self-willed. He could be the sweetest, gentlest man -- making me burst out in tears as I did not know such gentleness could exist. He could also be the thunder and lightning rocking your foundation -- making you question your entire beingness.

Bernard showed us what was possible if we let go of our accepted and allowed limitations as what we consider it to be, 'to be human' -- and within that he was more than 'just a man'. And at the same time he showed what 'just a man' can do, as he still lived by the same "laws of physics" that we all have to abide to. He still had to eat, drink, shit, sleep. He still only had 24 hours in a day like the rest of us -- and yet he has been able to accomplish what no-one has ever done before, he accomplished the 'extra-ordinary' -- but of course, that is only because we within ourselves had settled for the ordinary.

There will probably be more things coming up as the day(s) go by as all the things I have learnt from Bernard -- from interacting with him online and having lived with him for the past 5+ years. Everything I am and the life I currently live I have him to thank for -- and for that I am eternally grateful.

Thank you Bernard.

Related articles

• Day 450: The Power of Now Illuminated
• Day 223: Words and the Hidden Battle of Energies
• Day 458: Facts and Feelings: How to Stop and Prevent Brainwashing
• Day 460: Transhumanism: the Rise of the Machine - Part 1
• Day 452: The Depression Scam
• Day 464: Looking for Purpose
• Day 465: The Desteni Threat

Day 223: Words and the Hidden Battle of Energies

Within being pregnant and walking the preparation of walking/living with another as myself within having to stand as example, I have been working a lot with Words. I have been closely studying the Parenting: Perfecting the Human Race Series for instance which pretty much can be translated into the Science of Words and has been very interesting to listen to (You can download Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 of the series for free FYI from the Eqafe website). The baby to be has also been sharing points through the portal whereby he will give an update on his personal process and also assist and support me in indicating what words/points to work with that he can already see is impacting him. So it’s been words, words, words for me lately and I have been enjoying the process quite immensely in working with words and dissecting my relationship with words, which are essentially like Maps to ourselves.

My mother is now also visiting for a bit and now I have been able to observe the ‘Science of Words’ quite clearly as well in my communication with her and hers towards me. This is the person who raised me with her words, so it has been quite interesting to see what comes up within myself as we talk and discuss things.

The first thing I noticed is that I would react a lot more towards my mother than I would “normally” do with any other person, and the reactions would also not make much sense – in the sense that it was clear that they were being ‘irrational’. So when I first noticed that I got that I had to start slowing down more. What was interesting then was how I could see while we talked that she would be for instance sharing a story or making a point, but there would be like a ‘shadow story’/’shadow message’ attached to it. Where if you look at the words by itself, it seemed like she was just ‘sharing a story’ – but then looking at the undertone of the story as the energies connected to certain words – there was an additional message connected to it, like the message was ‘bugged’ with a particular energy, sending me a message. I would then receive this ‘energy’ message and resonantly react to what she is saying – first not really knowing exactly ‘what’ I was reacting to, and then slowing myself down and spacing out what had just happened I could tell the exact words that had been energy-laden and how within looking at the composition of the energies along with the words used – I could see a sense of ‘manipulation’ coming through essentially, as I had reacted in fear to the particular story she told which made me want to re-consider some of the decisions I had made (which I know my mother doesn’t completely agree with lol).

In a way, I felt like I had been ‘shot’ with an energy bullet – where on the surface, our communication appeared nice enough, but the shadow conversation that was taking place as energy exchange felt like a stab in the back.

Fascinatingly enough though, I found myself doing the exact same thing an hour or so later – where I was sharing with her something that in itself as ‘just the words’ seemed innocent/genuine – yet I had attached a particular energy to the words, kind of last minute, to deliberately and specifically generate a reaction of fear within her – where as I was saying the words I saw an opportunity to ‘get back’ at her and was able to induce some sense of fear into her. As the last bit of words came out of my mouth, I already realised what I had done and immediately went into shame and regret – because obviously this is not cool and was completely unnecessary. Yet at the same time it was cool to witness this type of communication/interaction within a ‘Mother/Daughter’ set-up/scenario – where I could really see everything I had learnt so far about words in action, being able to witness how this practically plays out in a parenting relationship, how we have this whole other layer/dimension of communication existent between human beings that we are basically not even aware of and how definitely our relationship to words and usage of words has become one of complete deception and manipulation instead of honesty and integrity. So this was a cool reminder/wake up call, re-emphasising the importance of working with words, working with Vocabulary and the work that needs to go into preparing oneself to become an effective Parent, because you have to basically re-design your whole Living as all the Words you use to re-align them to what is Best for All where we no longer ab-use and mis-use words but become Living Words which mean exactly that which they are, and are straight to the point without any Hidden Agendas.

Day 222: Surreal is the New Real

While working in the nursery in the mornings I have been listening to the Metaphysical Secrets of Imagination Series from Eqafe. Having gone down the road of ‘Eating Disorders’ I find this series very supportive in terms of providing structural guidance in terms of how we create our self-image and how one can assist and support oneself in deconstructing one’s relationship with oneself as an ‘image’ to getting to know yourself as a physical human being.

So while I was listening to some of the interviews I was relaying the information back to the time where I was participating in Eating Disorders as well as my hobby of taking pictures and editing them.

What I noticed for instance when I went through a period of Eating Disorder within obsessively and compulsively looking at pictures of models (which all go through extensive photo manipulation firstly through lighting/set up and then secondly through digital manipulation such as photoshop), what I was drawn to in each image/picture would be the ‘surrealness’ of what was being portrayed. I would for instance like particular curves or body shapes because they were on the border or within the realm of being surreal.

Having gone to art school and playing with taking pictures a lot in my life, I started noticing that what makes pictures ‘pop’ and what people seem to ‘respond to’ / like some pictures while not others (including myself) was their level of surrealness. Nobody enjoys a plain picture that you randomly took of your street and the houses in it. Not unless it has got some nice ‘angle’ to it and you ‘play’ with the colours. So the moment something looks ‘better’ than what it actually looks like in reality = you have a nice picture.

I mean, we just have to look at for instance the whole Instagram phenomenon, Why is it so popular? How come everyone is suddenly taking nice pictures? It’s because instagram allows you to for each and every single picture you take, to alter it and change the way it actually looks like in reality. You have your various filters which open up ‘different moods’ for your picture to be displayed in. Some are more dark/sad while others have a summery/funtime feel to it. You can play with the brightness and the contrast, manipulating the intensity of colours as to what it looks like compared in reality.

I mean, in the beginning of photography what was great was the ‘factual’ aspect of the whole invention. When you draw or paint a person there’s always a level of personal interpretation and style that will influence the accuracy of the representation of what it is that you’re drawing/painting. As photography evolved, we could take/make pictures of things and have an actual representation of what it looks like in reality. And ever since we’ve achieved that – we’ve just gone backwards again by finding new ways of manipulating and warping reality through photography and photo manipulation.
Looking at it, it’s like reality has become ‘not good enough’. Taking a normal picture of one of your friends just randomly, casually as what is there in the moment is now ‘not good enough’ anymore. It’s a ‘bad picture’ even though it merely just shows what happened to be in front of the lens at that particular moment. Unless a picture has been edited, it has already lost all interest. It's just 'too boring'.

So now we live in a society which makes use of visual stimulation such as pictures extensively. We have things like tv, the internet, magazines, books, advertisement, etc. Each time these visual media will show us something which is surreal – unreal really. And we’ve become so accustomed to it that we don’t even notice it. We now actually believe that we live in this surreal reality that and that we’re just not ‘matching up’. We’re never good enough, we’ll never look as perfect as those people on tv / pictures / magazines. I mean, there’s a reason for that, it’s because they’ve been made unreal/surreal so it’s not practically possible to become that way and yet we will buy into whatever product/service that promises us to get a step closer to such a state of being, while all the while it’s impossible = the perfect consumerism trap.

Day 221: Who’s the Bad Guy? Who’s to Blame? - Part 2

This blog is a continuation to the otter story in Day 222: Who’s the Bad Guy? Who’s to Blame? – Part 1.

What most people will do when they find out they have a ‘predator problem’, is to find the animal and kill, say by trapping it, gunning it or putting out bait with poison. Killings may not occur anymore and it looks like the situation is ‘fixed’. This is however a very limited way of looking at things, where we look at a problem in isolation of its context. We’re in fact not really fixing anything by just ‘killing the animal’, but merely removing a symptom of a bigger problem.

Each animal has a very specific habitat/environment which supports it, which is supposed to provide the animal with its suitable diet. When a disequilibrium takes place in any one of the points that keeps everything going / keeps everything in place in terms of having a functional ecosystem where all are supported, things start going wrong one by one.

If you take the otter for instance, he’s supposed to be eating fish, crabs and frogs. He is living in a ‘humanized’ area where there is not much ‘wild nature’ available for him to thrive. There are limitations like fences and waters which have been polluted due to human activity. Now there are no crabs and fish around, and he doesn’t have much other place to go that would be more suitable in the direct environment. So now he’s eating whatever else he can get his hands on: ducks, geese, chickens, random birds. He does not really want to eat these animals but was forced to because his environment was out of harmony. Now we have for instance a situation where we have no more male ducks left and thus the ducks have no way of making babies (though we can just buy more males, but this is not always possible in every situation). So there, another point of disharmony has been created which will have further consequence. When I put out birdseed for the wild birds in the morning by the river, I also see a lot of his poop lying around. What’s interesting here is that he is not even able to digest the meat he is eating properly. There are lots of undigested pieces of meat present in his poo. So obviously, this diet is not for him. So it’s really kind of a lose-lose situation where ducks and geese are dying and at the same time they are dying so he can sustain himself but it’s not really doing the job.

So it’s easy to go ‘oooh look, there’s the culprit! Damn otter!!’ – but he is also just being a victim of his environment and the conditions he found himself within. We can then keep on pointing at each little point that was out of place somewhere down the line that caused him / drove him to the behaviour he currently adopted for the sake of survival. The thing is that, just like with the money system, we can’t just fix nature and the animals by only changing ‘one point’. Nature and the Animal Kingdom are one whole, one interconnected system. To fix one problem you really have to always go back to the whole and ensure that the whole system is sound and in a state of harmony in all ways. If you look at Nature, it is quite fine working and sustaining itself, by itself, when left alone. Once you bring in the human factor, disharmony starts occurring as we through our ignorance and arrogance start appropriating land that we believe are ‘entitled’ to, which animals then lose. So if we really want to point fingers for these type of events where predators come and eat livestock – it’s really a matter of pointing it at yourself since the human has been the main cause of disrupting harmony in the nature and animal kingdom. We are also the only one’s who are in a position to fix this and to restore balance to the earth.

Related articles

• The Interrelatedness Of All Animals, Including Humans
• Day 220: Who's the Bad Guy? Who's to Blame? - Part 1
• 27 Animal Facts That Will Brighten Your Day
• Basic Income Guaranteed and Animal Rights
• Day 413: Nature: the Reflection of Human Nature