Musings

People yearn to be seen for who they are – to suffer, scream and cry before someone else. They want to be seen naked, stripped of all their masks. They desperately yearn for someone who understands them.

This is why there’s nothing sexier than the image of a villainous character who reflects the darkness inside.  It fosters the illusion that “this person can understand my darkness” and admiration that “this person is honest in ways I cannot be.” Also the fantasy: “I could save tis person… I could make the villain change for me.”  The dark, lost, fucked up monster. “My love would save him.” And the ego cries on.

We are all the villain of our own story.
We make the choices that bind us.

If you’re true to yourself, nothing can destroy your integrity. Not even death, because your message will live on in the hearts of others.
There’s no enemy, no villain, except the mechanisms by which you tear yourself down.
We project that villain onto others, and others can serve as ‘tricksters’ or truth-revealers in our own life, to open our eyes to our own biases and push us to confront our demons.
But the only one who can confront your demons is you.
The rest is a backdrop which can only serve as a reminder for what we already know in our hearts.
Anyone who says something like “I’m not a great man, I’m just a regular guy” – wrong. Gandhi and Peterson and MLK also were just regular people.
There’s nothing about anyone that inherently makes them great, or destined for greatness.
“Privilege” may make the path easier, but in and of itself, it does not ensure greatness or mediocrity.
Those choices come only from us.

You can be a “great man” or “great woman” in the context of your own life.
Not everyone has to be world famous, to be great.
Mediocrity is a temptation that lures us. It’s easier to avoid making waves.
When you make a statement, grow and expand, you come up against boundaries, challenges and difficulties.
It’s easier to say “fuck it, I’ll just do what’s easy, what remains unchallenged.”
And the idea of a villain or an enemy is also tempting.
It’s easier, it’s the path of least resistance – to hate and fear another person, instead of delving into ourselves.
The peaceful path is not always the wrong path. Sometimes excess drama and challenge is also the path of least resistance, a projection of “war” out into the world instead of focusing on the battles inside us, which are most important.
The path of least resistance comes in many forms, and all of them are the devil’s lure.
Our character is determined by whether or not we succumb.

A type is a living breathing pattern that manifests through living breathing people. Once someone has years of experience with typology, the type starts to come to life. There’s more than words on a page; there’s a rhythm, a chemistry. This is what type really is. And once you understand that rhythmic essence of the types, then the descriptions become a ‘guide’ rather than scripture. Jung and Gurdjieff knew this – they were describing archetypes, not full people, and both were careful to explain that their systems (Cognitive Functions and Enneagram, respectively) were about a fundamental underlying gestalt which underlies the psyche of anyone that embodies that archetype.

If you can feel the types, and see them in motion in actual humans, it is clear that no description on its own is adequate. The various descriptions are maps and the people are the trees and the houses. The underlying gestalt of each archetype is clearly the same throughout each system, even if descriptions by different authors contradict each other – at least to my eye. Not everyone sees the world the way I do, but I certainly don’t gain much anymore from arguing about this description vs. that. It is a necessary stepping stone toward understanding what type is, but I don’t see how tit for tat cut-and-paste does anything to bring a type to life and make it breathe, so that a human may embody its essence. Once we get past that second-grade cut and paste, we graduate to the world of archetypes and rhythm of the world. Yacking about this definition vs that, is no longer relevant.

When you hear a piece of music, do you argue that someone else played the notes in a different syncopation? Fur Elise is Fur Elise, no matter who plays it. It can be to a rock beat, a jazz beat.. it’s still the same fundamental melody and chords. This is what makes it Fur Elise. You can argue that someone completely changed it, but if you heard that intro and you said “Fur Elise!” then your gut knew what song it was. This is the same for types.

What is femininity?
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Cultural ideas are arbitrary. What remains consistent is the biology that we can’t get away from. However, transgenderism forces us to reconsider and ask ourselves: is masculinity and femininity purely biological? One might argue that some transpeople are ‘going with the trend’ (a very un-PC thing to say!) – but there are also transpeople who we would never know were born with the biology of another gender. So, how can we justify saying gender is just biology? At the same time, cultural ideas are even less important because of how much they change. So what the difference really is – is energetic. It’s about tapping into archetypal energies, which is something we do unconsciously.

This was an old post of mine on a similar topic:

Before Aphrodite, there were other depictions of the “Goddess of Beauty.” In the Sumerian Tablets, this was Inanna. She was later known as Ishtar.

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She was the Goddess of War. She seduced men and tricked them at the last minute. She was sent to rule over areas near India, which is why Goddesses like Kali were given importance there later, endowed with war prowess and trickster-like sexuality. 

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In these early cultures, someone like me would have been closer to what is seen as the Ultimate Feminine. Warlike, opinionated, hyper seductive, determined.

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Over the years, the Western cultures took the sex and war out of female ideals, and turned them into modest, plain, sexless robots with pristine morals. The ultimate saint is Jesus’s mother who gave birth to the Messiah without having sex.

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This is, by no means, a universal, timeless way of viewing an ideal woman.

Aphrodite is a cousin of Mary. She’s jealous of other women who are considered beautiful, but never warlike. Compared to Innanna and Ishtar, she is more modest – instead of squeezing her privates with a taunting smirk, she covers them with a coy smile.

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Yet, Inanna was here first.

In the summaries I’ve read of Sumerian tablets, she was lusty, dangerous, strong, seductive, magnetic, ruthless. Her desire was visceral, and her style embodied the trickster, tricking and laughing at her prey. There were major themes in “justice” and cunning tactics for war. 

The meaning of Beauty changes over the centuries.​ Femininity is constantly redefined, but Abrahamic ideals have shoved our femininity into a tiny box that neighboring cultures borrow from. Real women with blood in their veins need only to be themselves in order to lay this stereotype to waste.

Some people love to hate Slytherin and all it represents.  Yet Slytherin is an archetypal necessity that possesses tremendous merit.

Without competition the world would stagnate.  Knowledge (Ravenclaw) and kindness (Hufflepuff) are both wonderful, but very localized.  What can you do with knowledge if there isn’t an ambitious Slytherin broadcasting it?  It just dies with you.

How do you get great ideas out in to the public eye?  You think the world just lets that happen?  No. Galileo and Jesus’s head are always on the chopping block. 

Ravenclaws can yap about knowledge but, when push comes to shove, it’s a Slytherin who is going to take their ideas and actually change the world with them. Hufflepuffs can be sweet and nice but when push comes to shove its Gryffindors fighting the war up at the front line to defend them. Otherwise it’s all North Korea and the rich powerful run everything.

You may not assume the Slytherin would want to broadcast your kindness and knowledge, but understand, that’s what Slytherins do to get ahead.  They take something that people need so that they buy it and thus they get paid.

Slytherins are shit heads, but they are necessary for the world. They may be broadcasting an idea because they want to make money or be famous. But they’re still selling it. While Hufflepuffs are resisting competition because they don’t want to hurt anyone, Harry Potters, Hermiones and Snapes are up front and center defending and fighting for what they believe.  Rowling is a Hufflepuff herself, but her book centered on Slytherins and Gryffindors for a reason: because thats where the world moves.

Still, Hufflepuffs are equally necessary to the world, because kindness is a thing worth defending. If that doesn’t exist, Gryffindors will go back to sleep and Slytherins will take over.

I am a thousand percent Gryffindor. I’ve always been ambitious, but my big heart defending what I believe is first and foremost and I’ll die in the fire of my loyalty and integrity. If there’s one thing that stops me from “making it big” it’s my big stupid heart.  I work hard, but I won’t sell a lie. That is the death of me. And it can be stupid, but it’s the way I’m wired. Still, I’m smart enough to recognize that without Slytherins, people like me would have no purpose and nothing in society would move.

This is not to say that (archetypal) Hufflepuffs utterly and completely lack ambition, but rather, that they are under the delusion that they don’t have to step on any toes to actualize it.

“What’s wrong with your voice?”

Since I lost my voice to Lyme Disease and was left speaking in a whisper, random people at stores or restaurants ask me what’s “wrong” with my voice.  Without missing a beat, they tell me to stop smoking (which I have never done), to try seeing a doctor or drinking tea, or offer other unsolicited advice which suggests I am a complete idiot who brought this “defect” on myself, by neglecting my own health. When people learn that I used to sing, they tell me I must have been singing wrong. In some cases they say it’s karma or a punishment. No matter what I tell them about my diligence and my top notch doctor, they come up with alternative options, paranoia about medication and suggestions… as if I have not tried everything in my power to cure myself.  

The reason they do this is they want to believe they have control over their own lives. The thought that, like me, disaster could strike and leave them crippled or stripped of their greatest passion through no fault of their own, is too harrowing to face. So they have to project their fear on me, by convincing themselves that I deserved my cruel fate, and as long as they do things more correctly than I did, they will fare better.

After 20 years of being asked this question any time I dare to shop in a new store or call a company, it doesn’t hurt me emotionally anymore, but it never fails to remind me how fragile the human mind is, and how lucky I am to have been forced to face major losses and struggles in my early life, so that I could grow stronger. 

The “oppression olympics” mindset is a real threat to our safety and the integrity of our society. It has already eroded our morals, self respect and respect for others, so our moral integrity is going down fast due to the effects of this mindset taking hold over the last century. Yet people take for granted what we DO still have.. freedom to choose our job, sexual freedom, freedom of choice in many areas.. people won’t realize how important these liberties are until they take them away by trying to force everyone into “equality.” 

What equality really means is oppressing the strong citizens so they can be brought down to the level of the weak, and the only people with real power are those in government. So it ends up being a divide between the well-to-do government and everyone else.

What we want to improve is opportunity, but we cannot fool ourselves into believing this can ever be equal without forcing everyone to be the same at the cost of their personal choices. 

The sentiment underlying the current “apologize for your advantages” type of social pressure is that the strong must be made weak so that everyone is equal..except the government, the great Big Brother savior. If you read Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” he outlined the path for this type of ideology to become mainstream: by infiltrating the schools, the media, the government. Hillary Clinton trained with him and his influence is all over Obama’s speeches. What is happening now is not some “stupid accident,” but rather, the result of almost a century of radical leftist indoctrination. 

In the 1920s, Woodrow Wilson changed a lot of information in our history books to underline how horrible slavery was , our horrible slaughter of the Natives, etc. While these incidents are genuinely awful, slavery and conquest lies at foundations of every country but the other countries teach their children national pride. Here we have been taught for a century to be ashamed of ourselves. And this is why Lincoln’s prediction – that America cannot be defeated from outside, but that we will destroy ourselves from within – is coming true.

Did anyone ever notice that there are no black heroes in our history books? Looking back at paintings and documentation there were plenty of black war heroes, the first self-made female millionaire in the country was black, and there were black governors early on.. and they used to be in the textbooks. They were taken out so that black people would feel like they were never given a chance and white people would feel like blacks contributed nothing of value to the country (of their own volition anyway), and whites would also feel guilty for looking down on blacks and oppressing them. This would create an us vs. them divide that would become impenetrable.. and that is what we’re seeing today.

And the problem is, people are now feeling they aren’t entitled to the things they earn. Is this true… well, I understand the logic behind it: not everyone had the same opportunity. That’s a very easy sell. Problem is, have the radical leftists (meaning, modern liberals).. thought about the effects of this message that we are seeing right before our eyes? People aren’t willing to work hard anymore, to do the hard labor and discipline that it takes to improve.. because they can get more sympathy and empathy – not to mention government privileges, ranging from health benefits to lower taxes to welfare – by having less, and they don’t feel entitled to improve anyway.. everyone will hate them and they’ll have to give giant chunks of their income to a government that spends it on bullshit like war and governors using our tax money to pay off women who they assault to keep them from complaining. 

Motivation has been sucked out of our society, and we are made guilty for feeling entitled to our own earnings. This is the result of the mindset which lead to shaming people for their advantages, earnings and privilege, regardless of the merit underlying the complaint. And people love to complain about what’s wrong, and fix it by shaming other people.. but they don’t stop to think about where this is leading and what good could possibly come of this mindset becoming mainstream. We are seeing the effects, divisiveness, anger, hatred, violence and poverty among the citizens rising up now.. and if that isn’t enough proof that their shaming ploy didn’t work, I don’t know what is. Trump won because people were so sick of being silenced, shamed and belittled for having anything good in their lives or disagreeing with leftist jargon.. people were so relieved to hear “grab her by the pussy” and other such “I don’t give a fuck what you think” attitude, that they voted for this person to be our president. The left wants to believe it’s about racism, and there is definitely a percentage of racists on any side and arguably a higher percentage voting for Trump… but if they actually make people feel like they can be honest as I do, they would talk to a lot of people who tell them directly (in secret) that they voted for Trump, but they’re not telling their friends, but the reason is they’re sick of being silenced. It’s not just me either – some major media personalities, including major leftists like Russel Brand, have postulated the same thing and some have even done some research into statistics backing this up.

The left has gotten too complacent since the 60s.. too complacent about their rightness and the “obviousness” behind what they’re saying, without looking at the effects their mindset has reaped. They need to listen to people respectfully, stop hating and putting down the “other side” and actually watch the right wing media they’re cursing at (even though they’ve never actually given it a chance)… they need to wake up.

Now don’t get me wrong.. I’m not claiming that the right, the conservatives or the republicans are “The Answer” either. I had more hope for the left, but at this point it’s a cesspool of ignorance, shaming people for seizing opportunity, creating and honoring divides between people, and applauding weakness. I am not a fan of either “party” or mass mindset, and from the outside, it all looks quite ridiculous.

To be clear, I don’t judge the left for being heartfelt about the have-nots, but I notice that they aren’t thinking about the real living consequences of their “morals” and how they are enacting them and pushing them on society.  The problem with unbridled morality is that people aren’t thinking about the consequences of seeing them through. If there were more careful distinctions being made about the society that would realistically result from a certain mindset playing out in full, many people would address these problems in a different way than they do now.  The problems are real, but they are calling out problems and hates and blames and shames instead of sitting down to think about solutions.

Either that or they are busy thinking about who is right and who is wrong (morally) which isn’t as much the question as who is getting hurt and how do we fix that? And a quick-fix solution, like force-taking money from one guy and force-giving it to another, may put a band-aid on the issue but in the long term the consequences of this turn to loss of motivation as a society , expansion of government, more rules, laws and regulations, and less trust in ourselves to pull ourselves up, and more riots.

We would benefit from stepping back and thinking about what has worked historically; what mindset pans out in a timeless way, among people, to lead to social productivity long-term.

To my fellow Chronically Ill:

Next time some healthy person gives you unsolicited medical advice implying that you “aren’t trying hard enough” to get better, or some pseudo-spiritual nutjob starts preaching about changing your mindset, here’s a piece of advice:

Look that ignoramus straight in the eye – even if it’s your friend. Look them straight in the eye and say, “Does it scare you to think that a person could take all the right pills, adopt all the right diets, pursue all the deepest psychological healing, and still remain ill? Does it scare you to think this could happen to you? Does it scare you to think that even if you did manage to attain some ideal spiritual enlightenment, you could still contract a physical illness that ruins your life or kills you? Can you look that TRUTH in the eye, and accept it? Accept that your life is not in your control, yet still do your best to do what you can, love while you can and strive for health in the best ways you are able? When you learn to do that, you just might be as spiritually enlightened as I am, and thus you would not feel the need to project your fears onto others.”

The ego resists seeing its own defenses.

We need our defense strategies (enneagram) and biases (functions) for a reason. These strategies give the mind a pattern that it can learn to protect itself from chaos.

The defenses work on automatic..so uncovering the truth about them weakens them and leaves the ego bare, exposed, raw.

Over time it helps to see ourselves, so that we may use our defenses but prevent them from using us …

But at first, exposing the truth about our automatic reactions and “inner settings” forces us to change. The ego resists changing because it is scared of exposure and chaos…rightfully so. Whether or not someone types correctly, it is only a strong ego that can digest the true meaning of its own type… and even then, the ego will continue defending itself by creating distortions around that idea, such as taking pride in your type, being ashamed, creating internal drama around it… all of which distracts from looking at the self objectively. Embracing the deep value of typology, on an egoic level, is a lifelong journey.

I don’t think of people as having flaws. I think of every quality a person has as potential.
Let’s suppose you start with being a very receptive person. Your worst potential then is to lose your own voice completely; whereas a possible best potential is to channel and navigate the energies of the world.
Any quality someone has, has potential to be their best or worst.

I’ve always said, my best AND worst quality is my passion. My passion can go to the realm of manic obsession, singularity of focus at the expense of all else.. or it can get channeled in a way that inspires others.

I’m a vampire at my worst and a vessel at my best.
Is that a flaw? No. Is it an asset? No.
It’s whatever I make it.
But trying to be something else..to embody something that isnt naturally “me” … is.. not going to work.

I think it’s best to discover what makes you “you” and then channel it.
And in channeling it, there will be mistakes, there will be glory, there will be pain…
but as long as there’s growth, it is worth it. Nothing worth having comes easy. Nothing worth DOING or BEING comes easy.
I have always been very hyper aware of whats wrong with me as in, what other people can’t accept or can’t love; but I also feel like I’d be fine if only I was on my home planet.
But, I’m not.. so the best I can do is bring memories of my home planet to Earth, to help others discover themselves, to communicate, to give them ..whatever it gives them. Hope, escape, introspection…whatever.
Not everyone will care or notice. But I can only share my own truth.
What more can anyone do?

When people start thinking in terms of “flaws” vs. “assets,” what they’re really doing is plugging in to what others want or expect them to be.
When they think of themselves as “potential” or “energy” ….
then perhaps there’s a chance of learning what to do with that energy.

“Flaws” is a myth that society has drilled into us.
Something is only a flaw if you let it destroy you.