When I thought about the old advice given- to “Be passive” and “Just do what you’re told”, I wonder how many suffered because they didn’t fight. When I think of the old adage, “Better on my feet than on my knees”, I wonder how many had died in vain with their soles buried deeply beneath them. When I thought about any approach to fighting, the thing that stuck out most was the cause. Of course, the opponent must be considered to be effective but in order to fully effective we must understand the reason for the approach; the cause for the action. Why act at all? What are we fighting? What are we really fighting for?

Mostly for the thought of, “What have we got to lose?” Just, ourselves. Only everything. Adjust ourselves. Own everything. Own ourselves. Adjust everything.

“We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard.” -JFK

This is where “Choosing our battles” becomes the choice of many lifetimes. We all fight our own battles. Why can’t we win them for the collective? Would choosing to fight our own battles be the utility of weaponized healing to eradicate the enemies within? Would winning our own internal wars wage a ravage of healing tides that fight off insecurities and fear with sharp awareness and strong hearts?

We can’t fix anything until we fix ourselves. Individual fixings. Healing our solitary masses. We all hurt the same way, but different.  Maybe, if we share how we’re healing, the repair will become the thing we’re fighting for instead of against. Our power may even exceed our expectations.

In order to fix my world and in turn THE world, I have to understand myself and growing is not wasting my time. Although, I did build a couple of lives I’ve hated. Had to demolish both of those. It’s ok. The first I held onto tooth and nail. Fought for it with my everything. Refused to let go. Lost myself in it. Carried around the weight of it like a growth beneath my skin. It was hard to get past it because it would flare up every now and again. Make its presence reknown.

I had to build a life I could hide in from it. I had to shield myself from it. I had to run further and further away. But it always found me and would drag me out by the ankles every fucking time. It took a lot of fighting it off before I realized I could fight it off. It took a lot of “What the Fuck?” to unfuck the fear that kept me from unhiding. The fear that he would take them. The fear of the lives they would have. The fear that I wouldn’t be able to protect them. The fear that he would hurt me and hide me and lie about it out of spite. Because he had tried before. Because he had tried so many things before. Because I had failed. Because he had failed. Something had failed. Or so I thought.

I didn’t see the stains of it all over me. I thought it was just my color. I didn’t realize that I had learned to not trust anyone nor believe in the goodness of their intentions. I was attracted to people and circumstances that reminded me of prior situations in which I had failed to receive my desired outcome so I would reenact the parts and get mad at the replacement parts when they didn’t know their lines. But again, and again the same character. Like those films about reincarnation where the spirits keep repeating. Different faces, different names, same eyes, same intentions.

It was me who was the problem. Trying to gain acceptance in male dominated industries because I was too little and girls weren’t allowed to play street hockey. Trying to be heard in a room full of talkers. Hiding under the table to feel the squishy, rubbery, “pop” of the fake grapes and Styrofoam apples that were certainly not meant for eating. Feeling upset that people kept wiping their shoes on me. Feeling the coolness of the window breeze into the cramped undercarriage of a room that forgot I was there. To feel most at home and comfortable when I could hear all of the voices of the people who couldn’t see me.

I didn’t have to be under the table. I could have been in the yard; up in the cherry tree. Because I couldn’t play hockey, I got to ride bikes with Meaghan and Dawn. I didn’t need to be afraid to sit at the table or participate in the game. It turns out, I am very uncomfortable there. I would much rather be on my bike. I would very much rather be in a cherry tree. I would much rather hang out with Meaghan. I would rather break my life down again than to hide another moment. Than to cower beneath a table or allow anyone’s threats to retreat me.

I need no approval to live. I need no cover to hide. I need not fight to be. To exist. To love and learn and express and shine and to make good for myself and children and to build a life with a solid foundation grounded on my terms, protected by my own boundaries.

I asked about female philosophers and why they were always also something else. A writer, a scientist, an artist, maybe, perhaps, but always something else and other than just and only. I always found it odd that a man could make his life by speaking and repeating himself and having others follow him around listening to him speak and repeating after him. It’s a true and historical phenomenon. Some didn’t even actually write their own thoughts, the people who listened would transpose them for them and then it wasn’t necessary to do anything other than speak.

The unequivocal answer to the question lay in female practicality. Women would feel such actions of merely speaking would be a waste of breath and effort unless some other beneficial function materialized from such rhetoric. Otherwise it remains mere rhetoric.

There’s a divide amongst us but it isn’t a straight razor’s edge. It’s not even a sword. It’s granulated shards of fractured glass that are so scratched and sharp nothing would want to be seen through them. We don’t even know who we’re cutting. It’s not even glass anymore. Just sharp, sandy, dust that will embed itself in our skin if we attempt to clean it up without cover. Bleeding from cuts we can’t see. Big shards first, then sweep the rest up dry, vacuum the edges in the places the broom won’t reach, wipe the floor with a damp cloth. Be mindful walking barefoot for a while until the confidence of clean floors comes back and we decide if the windows actually need to be paned. Is the replacement now a complexi-glass that won’t even break with bullets? Is it an open-air market with breathable curtains that block the view but are easily cut or torn? Is it the invisible nothing that can’t be seen or cut or torn or broken? Was it ever really anything at all? Was it ever really clear? How can the nothing that is everything be divided? Can it ever be small enough for our sandy eyes to see?

Poverty consciousness is a trauma response that inhibits effective decision making and nullifies the inaccurate perception/ assumption that it is the fault of the individual as opposed to a systemic problem the has cultivated fear response strategy instead of helping to improve the situation of the impoverished allowing them to know what decisions they should make. In the position of poverty, the values are inherently different than that of others who are fortunate enough to have more than their basic survival experience and an underlying condition of trauma. Poverty, on psychological terms, can be described as any type of severe lack very much including any emotional needs that the emotionally impoverished may have suffered through not having. The system could be any authoritative group which deprived the individual from their basic needs. This could be society, government, institutions, religious organizations, companies, friend groups, or family. By recognizing that the entire system is sick, we are able to better understand the source of lack and resolve the poverty issue at its core.

It’s this premise that pushes us to do things, be a part of things, participate in stuff, without really understanding the implications or agendas or why. We need to fulfill something that is lacking, whether internally or externally. I’ve been told, nature abhors a vacuum.

What is dividing us? What enforces the repulsion? Why is there a battle between men and women? Why do we feel one side must be submissive? What deeply engrained fear centers does it poke within us? Why is it such a trigger? For everyone? Like it or not, the world is dissolving because of our childhood issues. When are we ever going to grow up?

It took a lot for me to kinda grasp some of that. Most I’ll have to accept never knowing. We always know more than we think we do and always much less than we’ll admit.

We all have those experiences that crack our shells. Paint the world the colors it is. I’ve been grappling with a few of my own. The little things that build up to big things where you can only learn the things you did because of the things you’d already learned. And it’s just what was needed. Even though it was greatly unwanted. Because the battle within demands healing. I had to really look at this second life I had created and why I’d place myself in it. What kind of poverty consciousness drove my desire to continue accepting terrible behavior as a substitute for self-abandonment? In this case, should I be passive?  Should I stand my ground and wait to be buried? Is this the hill I want to die on? Is it worth it to endure? What qualifies as success in this circumstance? Can that only be measured in value?

 There was one time I was doing yard work while texting on messenger, he (we’ll just call him “He”) asked me what I was doing and I told him I was pruning my apple tree. A little while later when I sat down on the swing, he texted me, “Ah, that looks nice.” I was like, “Whoa. He can see me.” You’d actually be surprised how often the average Joe is spying on their neighbors, or exes, or employees. Any doubts you have can be quelled by the size of the market catering to such wants and needs. I have been spied on quite a bit. It’s happened so often, I’m past anger and into annoyance. Technology has given people with nothing to consider a whole lot of other things to do. And people with control issues some type of creepy, make-believe power that anyone with and Ebay account can possess. Ah! The world in which we live. The government may be watching you, but your neighbor’s girlfriend’s cousin’s roommate who saw your picture on Facebook, might be watching you too. Just to feature the real real. It’s a thing.

I figured as much when he had asked earlier if I was an exhibitionist. That’s when I stopped watching Netflix in the bathtub. He asked if I was going to blow dry my hair. How’d he know I do that?

It was a game and I wasn’t sure the piece of my involvement or the purpose for the play. I was pretty sure it was to monitor the information I was gathering and the means by which it was dressed. Keep your friends close and the competition closer. At first, I thought it was business. I always knew it was about ideas. At first, I thought it was about business, and science, and reputation. But, I think it’s about much more than that now.

I figured they had been watching for a while. There was another one who kept me tied up in all kinds of “calls”. Recordings of conversations that seemed to be digging for answers. There was definitely something going on behind the scenes that not only was I not privy to, but intentionally excluded from. They even went so far as to show up at the last minute to a place I’d said I would be. I had said I would be there for several months before hand but they showed up with no warning and then the one followed me and the other around. I even got to meet the one they all follow. I walked right up to him and showed him my work. He was clearly impressed. He saw my notes. He saw my drawings. He knew what he was looking at and he complimented me. It was a moment of my universe that connected me to the rest of it. I felt like all the weird shit that had kept me out was finally going to have some purpose that was going to help all of mankind and the guy who’d been trying to figure it out for fifty years was very much in reality patting me on the back. He was so sweet. It was so humbling.

So, the one I went to see, who had been sending me pictures and projects and working with me and asking me questions and making some progress, got up on stage to give his talk. He said he’d been working with me and nothing had come of it. Very subtly but quite publicly denouncing and dismissing my work and involvement.  I pretended not to notice. It wasn’t really a jab, was it? I pretended not to notice when he put people between us in photos. We aren’t really together, are we? I pretended not to notice he stopped sending work. But kept sending, “I love you’s”.  Now I would only receive reading material and articles, songs and what seemed like duplicated text conversations. Even though, the work we did then predicted “seasonal” earthquake occurrences and even some other seriously notable observations. Which will be significant in and to the future. Even though I knew better. Even though I acknowledged that I was lying to myself. Even though I knew the ideas were right. I helped myself be wrong because I loved him. Or, I loved the idea of not being under the table, of being a part of the conversation. Of having a friend. Even though I wasn’t. Even though I didn’t.

There were many, many, times shit like this would happen. They always knew/know what I am and was doing and would strike out with things before I could even put them up on posts or videos or even speaking them to a friend in the room and suddenly actual human beings would be addressing the conversation that they were not only not included in but not in the room, building, phone, computer. Where are these mofo’s? Are they in the television sets? They’re probably in the fridge.

 I’d usually make sure to discuss these instances with a few select friends and family to ensure that I wasn’t losing my mind, becoming paranoid, or projecting fears. At first, they definitely thought I was nuts. It’s super weird after all. But after four years of this shit, they now remind me of “that one time’s” because there’s so many, I can’t keep track anymore.

It wasn’t just the ambiguity of a watchful perch. It was the way Myself and others were treated for asking questions. For including information outside of the prescribed dogma, and for having good ideas.  To be called names, threatened, stalked, accused, weird, weird things. Something deeply disturbing and unhealthy is going on and it has little to so with joyful discovery and a lot to do with power, control, and whatever else I can’t care about. It’s not for me.

The most destructive thing about it is that it is not the intent of most members of the community who are just amateur enthusiasts who have no idea what kind of wolves are prowling. We fall for it, hook, line, and sinker because we are predisposed to the fringe and are happy to be in the acquaintance of others who share our enthusiasm, interests, and feeling of being outsiders. This is the feature that is being exploited. It’s what makes us easy prey. And easily directed to follow the leaders who promise us privy passage to some place those who would reject us aren’t smart enough to go. It’s super sad. It’s the point of poverty consciousness that drives this machine and it will drive itself into the same place it advocates against with an army of misguided followers ranting and waiving flags behind them. And all of those who did not know they were even following, just got caught up in the currents. I was vetted often and regularly discarded but still always watched until they caught me by the heart and that exactly the fissure that shattered all of it.

The mainstream actually knows all of this already. Your only opponent is yourself.

It just sucks çuz I wanted it to be real. I wanted them all to be better people and realize that this modus operandi is multum bullshitis. Because any method used to over throw an existing method must invariably be different in structure as not to rebuild the very thing that was sought to be torn down. “You can’t build a new ship out of old wood.” Or, whatever. A big lesson I learned from this very example because I was doing the exact same thing. It’s how I learned. ‘Cept, my ship was my life and your ship is a battleship. How about you stop judging me for my dishes and get your uninvited ass out of my kitchen, freaks. So creepy. I must have some pretty decent information. Must be pretty good at something to have had a neighborhood watch.

I can’t speak for what drives others. What I can speak to was the statement that was the hammer that cracked my glass. The first truly honest thing I can confirm.  – “We have different values.”

Absolutely. As much as the science is intriguing, as much investment that was made, my gage of success is not measured in the value of power, or pretense, or followers, or my name in a book a hundred years from now. What good is any of that if we’re all sick from the damage it causes? If we’re all lost and angry and mean? How does that help the world? What I value is humanity. How I gage it is in how we treat each other, friend, acquaintance, or stranger. Mostly how we treat the vulnerable and weak. The stock of the second life I was building plummeted when I saw the cruelty and exploitation of the humans who were in it to help. When I saw the baselessness of intellectual malice for fun. A sport. Underhanded  plays that can wipe out people’s lives with a hack, a video, a laugh, and a high five. This is not the company I wish to keep. Believe me, if you are not in on it, you’re a pawn in it. A piece to be played. It isn’t worth it. Raise your value. Raise your standards.

I was trying to earn something. Certainly, wasn’t money.  Respect, maybe. Pride, yeah, I guess. An answer to something, definitely. I could list my resume of work but it didn’t earn me any of that. I could mention my education and name drop people I know. Hand you my card. Direct you to my videos. Tell you to watch my head talk. Nonsense. So much of it. I have no right to tell anyone what to think about anything. But I still have a voice. I still want to be heard. I still want to contribute to a service that evolves humanity. But in a humane way. In a compassionate way. In a way that embraces the nuances of curiosity and rejoices in discovery.

I’m not a scientist. Never have I claimed to be. I am an artist who is driven to express and create from what I see. I am a writer so I write about what I know, what makes me curious, what’s exciting, or sad, or amazing. Occasionally, I write fictional stories that are only believable because they touch on some truth within us. What I have been writing here is a truth that is unbelievable because it touches a fiction within us. I am writing about the lies we tell ourselves. The things we eat and feed on to satiate a hunger within, drink to quench or numb or desires. When what we should really devour is our terrible fears about who we think we might be if we ever quit eating. What would be left of us if we digested all of our fear?

I thought I was going to use these strange visions in my head to help humanity by contributing to the advent of some new kind of machine or tech that would give us free and simple communication using natural means and heal some of the damage that we’ve caused. Turns out, I might not have to reinvent that wheel if we could just take a minute and see the power we possess. The clean and free energy that is our natural communication with the self. That all this preaching about eating organic and we’re still feeding our souls shit. That maybe, just maybe, it’s the infrastructure of the self that must be rebuilt if the system is to ever heal or change. That we musn’t be afraid of eating our fear. If we don’t, it will just continue to eat us.

High hopes. She’s got high hopes. Hot plasma drives in the sky hopes.

I thought I could withstand the adversity and insidiousness and bypass the rhetoric to still obtain the information needed to further my personal directive. Create something that makes the world better. Sounds cliché and legit. But artists are like priests. We don’t get to pick our fate. We are who we are. We cannot not go toward the calling. The pull is too strong. It’s blinding. It’s a tortured gift. And it becomes enflamed when violated. It becomes poison when used for the forces of selfishness and greed. It becomes polluted when the intentions are not pure. And it makes me sick.

I thought I was dying. I thought there was some sickness or disease taking over my body and I was going down. I went to the doctor for a year. Got every blood test they would give me. Got MRI’s and nerve tests. I was low on D and iron. But that was an easy fix that left me no better. It wasn’t a disease that was making me sick. It was my attitude. It was the people around me. It was what I was allowing my gifts to be used for that was destroying my body. I had to let go of it.

I had to say, “Enough is enough.” And disconnect. Completely.

It’s not that I don’t want to study the petroglyphs and megaliths and plasma. I do. God do I ever. There’s so much to learn and share. But I fear that in the current state of the human being, the powers will not be used for good. They’ve barely scratched the surface and look how they’ve already been exploited. I have to look at how I’ve been handled. How this work and participation are being handled. Not only by those with the power to do damage with it, but also by those who are being used for the same exploits, unaware, and unknowingly willing to give their gifts to the same powers that be. Fuck no. It’s not your show.

I have stepped back so I could see. It’s one of the first things a master painter will tell you. “Step back”. It’s the only way to get a true perspective on what is before you.

When I stepped back and took a good long look, I cried. I cried for months. I was angry. I was angry at them but I was also angry at me.  I didn’t want to be angry anymore.

The weight of the anxiety that accompanies any drive is proportional to the weight our value of the task adds. If it feels heavy and we think it’s going to be heavy, it just gets heavier. We keep adding more weight. Until we can’t carry it or it picks us up and carries us off to places we might not want to be.

It’s not so simple as just walking away. I wasn’t crying only for this. When a living thing experiences a threat or stressor, the living thing acclimates itself by building in either a warning system, a defense mechanism, or both. Those new features are transferred to the next generation in the special codings of the species’ DNA. Sometimes these new features become so predominant as to create a whole new subspecies and if great enough, an entirely new species. That is how evolution works. And it can happen in an instant. In one individual’s DNA, that change is transferred to the very next generation and then carried for generations to come. Sometimes growing into an elaborate feature or sometimes being buried through nonuse only to surface again multiple generations later without warning. DNA is funny that way.

So, when I say I was crying for my ancestors, it was because the anger and sadness of their experiences has created warning systems and defense mechanisms in my DNA that my own experiences have only fortified and added to. I don’t want to carry it around anymore.

This experience, this “event”, was that catalyst necessary to help break the codes residing in my spirit.

These engrained patterns appeared again and again throughout my life in the forms of my actions and decisions. I was a terrible mess. A ball of insecure fury with an eye for spotting treason. All I really wanted to do was to play and learn and discover. Most of all I wanted to be loved and accepted. Isn’t that what we all want?

I couldn’t see why I was different. Only that I was. Only that I wasn’t included. Only that I was happier alone because I didn’t have to pretend or explain or filter or be silent. It was the few kind hearted adventurers who would lend me strength and hold mirrors up to the beauty. To the knowing. To the rarity of wisdom. It was those healers that changed my plight. It was them who saved my life.

I put myself in positions where I was vulnerable and would rage against the dying of my light. When I was the one who kept putting me in darkness. Some of which, I could not escape.

I thought all of these lessons had taught me enough to jump, tuck, and roll. I didn’t realize how much they would break me. Nor how many more there were still coming.

When they did come, and I couldn’t lie to myself anymore, I knew it was time to leave. I knew it was time to feel it. I knew it was time to cry.

But you can’t just take one step back. That’s not enough to see. So, one by one, my foot falls tipped away until all of my toes were in the background. Until The house had become a hill and the town had become a map and the world was a spot on a diagram of the universe. Then I shined a light behind myself so I could see where my shadows fell. Where I was dark. Was it my darkness or an overlay of silhouettes? And at that distance, I could see the distortion of the lives, the skew in the perspective.

It turns out, it’s those little maps that saved me. All the screenshots, and saved videos, all the times friends and strangers reminded me, all the unprompted responses from humans who can’t help but let me know they’re watching, because what fun is torment if the victim isn’t aware they’re being tormented? What power has the tormentor then? What good is support if you can’t feel its presence?

And for what? For me to truly see who we all are? For the light to be shine behind all of us? For me to quit the stupid game because I want completely different results? Because My magic is sacred and so are you. And we are worthy of more. Of better.

So, I cried. I cried and cried and cried and cried. I took antidepressants because I know it disqualifies me from your game. Blue pill, red pill, right? Remember when you asked me that? I hate taking medicine and I still cried anyway.  And I knew you’d be watching. I’ve been nuts before. I know my limits. I acknowledge my crazy and my sanity too. I stopped taking them a long time ago when you weren’t looking. Because what I am is not depressed. Though, I was. What I am is a sane person who still has a lot of feelings because I’ve had a lot to deal with. What I am is an artist who can see things differently. What I am is a soul who has too much clear direction to be too far lost. My success cannot be measured in anything material except for the continued existence of my being. That is a true success. To be in one’s own skin and feel like that’s right where you’re meant to be. And the only way to get that it to be willing to tear it all down and let it be what it was because that’s not you anymore. That’s miraculous.

I was not ready to teach you because you still had so much to teach me. I want my words and work to mean something. There’s a lot of competition and fiery debate. There’re commercial and governmental spies. There’s a whole world of hungry people scared for information. And I will not contribute to the demise.

When I do speak, It’s well researched and well-thought-out. Because I don’t want the bad energy of teaching people the wrong direction. I know how to make mistakes. Who would any of us be if we weren’t at some point, wrong?  I can teach you all about that. And that is what some of this is about. Being wrong. Admitting it. Making mistakes. I don’t want to repeat them. I don’t want to respond to the experiences passed on in my DNA. But the truth is that all of those defense mechanisms needn’t be applied if I tune into the warning systems and strengthen those through discernment. Turn that weakness into a strength.

Some might say I’ve failed and, in some regards, I did. But I didn’t. I won. I win. Winning. I overcame. I did not back down. I backed up, backed away. Took a good fucking look. At the records I kept. At the journaling I have done. At the unbelievable loving support that I have gotten from real love, real friends, real strangers, and real me. I picked up my shit. Took it to that dirty dusty room all of my grandparents’ souls were living in. And we cried. We looked at it, felt it, forgave it. We realized the strength it has taken to live our lives and to embed such strength in our cells and our walls and our DNA.  We realized how much it means to our children. And I could feel them grieving. I could feel them singing. I could feel them healing.

We are a past that we can never go back to; we are the present that is yet to be; we are not the future that we are creating. Or at least, we don’t have to be.

Many ancestors have visited me. Friends I never met in life and a few I did. People who still walk with us have been guiding me, teaching me, showing me the way. It would be an afront to their loving efforts to keep anger. It would be a dishonor to their lessons if I stayed the course. They came to shift the wind. The storm they brought was strong. I am rebuilt. Anew. And I want something different. I don’t want to fight anymore. I want dignity and self-respect. You can’t unbreak the shards. But you can melt them down. What once was a window to see through, is now cup to drink.

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