Team:Life

Control is a myth. Yet, feeling out of control will make us lose our minds.

Feeling strong absolutely increases the likelihood of sanity and peace. That strength can come in many forms and it’s best to pursue a number of them.

Strength in numbers, bodily strength, belief that we are capable and can defend ourselves, strength in actual hard-earned truth and especially not being too conflicted internally. Being resolved, even in something that is wrong or useless does increase strength. We see it all over the place.

I’m not judging, just illustrating why we do the things we do and why we may feel the way we feel. If we depend on strength in numbers or strength via shared ideology and that team is nuts, that’s the cost of that source of strength.

Fear makes people crazy. It also makes them huddle. Don’t join a fear cult. They feel strong but they’re not. You’re constantly undermined by the fear and it makes people huddle together more tightly in their insanity.

There are threats out there but making ourselves strong without using our imagination for the fear machine is the way to go.

Arguing is a great opportunity for growth. But not in the way most people will probably think, initially.

Most of the time, we're not arguing in a formal contest, like court or with a true stakeholder in the issue argued, someone who can materially affect an outcome.

Except when we're children. And, most arguing, I'm saying, is an outgrowth of childhood, but without a parent who will give or not give us a cookie. So, it's pointless.

The real benefit of arguing is just looking at ourselves. Why am I doing this? Why does it matter what this person thinks, who is not able to affect anything outside of my psyche, which is mine in the first place.

If you're arguing, most likely you're not in charge of yourself. That's a great place to look and get to work.

Or you can continue to make up obstacles and guards to your peace and happiness. That'll at least keep you busy. 😉

Mobs are attempting, whether they realize and say it or not, to usher in a change of consciousness. These changes and the perceived evil or neglectful forces can feel so daunting that the mob is usually a complete mess. But that doesn't mean that it isn't worth it to look as deeply as possible into the change they embody without necessarily endorsing the means, tone, etc.

It's a classic not seeing the forest for the trees situation. Sometimes it serves to break up the mob to help bring about the change because the mob is more likely to destroy than create. Children do that.

This feels like our country in a nutshell. We have some truly unskilled mobs with little self-awareness but they're convinced they're further along than another mob, so they should continue and ultimately wield power over others, neither side looking for anyone to help articulate the situation so we can absorb it and deeply consider.

Do we have too many victims? Sure.
Do we have too many people hiding behind bullies or their wrongheaded idea of deities they think will protect them and rubber stamp their efforts? Sure.
Do we have too many people with no idea what it means to become an adult? Definitely. And they want to be in control, like children do. From fear and perceived righteousness. When we grow up, we see them for what theybare and differentiate from them and don't feel overpowered by them into needing to be a player in the drama.

The answer is only to grow up and understand what that means. But these forces are going to do what they're doing in the meantime.

If people understood that the real meaning of sobriety and dangers of insobriety goes way beyond the use of substances and is so far beyond a phenomenon limited to individuals, we'd be so much better off.

There are unsober families, religious, social and political movements, courses of study, humor and many more examples. Look for the swaying of emotions and you'll find them.

Being influenced by unsober movements usually leads to personal insobriety. Radicalism, anger and closed-mindedness follows easily and we become sick.

Everyone needs things to be the way we need them to be until we finally stop it. And if we don't go along, it occurs as threatening.

That's what we all put each other through. We teach each other to do it because we keep doing it. It's exhausting, isn't it?

Imagine stopping.

A main way we get ourselves in trouble is by making the unreal real, denying or losing touch with the actual real and being able to tell the difference.

Hint: If it exists in our heads, it's likely not real.

Being different just for the sake of it is ultimately the same energy as assimilating. We're just assimilating with the idiosyncratic ("out") crowd. Just a smaller and differently egotistical crowd. Neither are true self expression.

True self expression is still servitude (oxymoronic, huh?), surrender of the ego to something that must come out. We are letting go of protective personal authority to allow this expression to fully be what it is. It's an allowing.

Sometimes the words just confuse.

If being upset is your compass you will overuse it. And it will overuse you.

Becoming disillusioned with someone means that now you are aware of where they're actually at. Usually a you thing and a them thing. Belief can be dangerous and hiding the truth of who we are can be typical.

Many of us need much more help than we admit. If we have a judgment about that or fear or shame, we're taking everyone on a ride they don't need to be on. It's actually much more humane to get out of our own heads and admit our actual experience to someone who can lead us to support if we need it. It's also more humane to ourselves to believe that something is wrong when we think we see it and not stay deeply tied to the results of their condition.

Responding to a sense of pressure to become one voice, one thought, one idea with others is unnecessary and leads to loss of self. Illness.

And being against others thoughts as if they threaten you viscerally shows you have lost yourself. It happens.

We are each our own universes, formed and shaped through personal distortions that we either live with and force on others and/or ourselves or we do the work of liberation. Liberation has zero to do with what anyone else does, especially because how they occur to us is always colored by the universe that we are.

Offer agreement sparingly. It's not necessary. Suffer disagreement well, without departing from yourself.

You hear all the time that it's either fear or love. Who's really buying that? There's something off about it. It may be true, even but the way to find out and give it a chance is not to make us afraid of being afraid, making fear wrong and making love right, because that's love from fear. Some people are even as****es about this. 😆

It's remove fear and see what happens. Be diligent, go beyond what you think is a fear-reduced state. Keep calming and see what happens.

Conspiracies, ideologies, fears, grandiosity, status, stories, even meaning are all made up. Just because many people may share some of these things doesn't make it less made up. It just makes it real that crafted or acquired energies can be shared.

We're introduced to imagination before knowing the difference between it and life without it. It's seamless, although we do have names for things that we have the awareness to know are made up (dreams, visioning) and it can be argued that we are left without a good barometer for the difference. Also, we're left without hard knowledge on how to use it and stop it. So, we wind up with belief and our propensity to defend it. We also are enchanted by our own imaginations, whether that's being enchanted by fear or wonder.

We can't get a hold of this consuming power without being willing to stop it completely. Stopping it may mean losing things we rely on emotionally because we have realized they're not in fact real. That's absolutely going to happen if we learn to stop it. The benefit of stopping it is how much intentionality we gain with it. A lot of what we value deeply is made up. The bad news is realizing that but the good news is that we can create it.

Demystification has its consequences.