I have found and realize that I used to judge and dislike people that would place tags upon others – I didn’t realize that I was in fact doing exactly the same, no only within my secret mind toward others in an automated way, but toward myself as a ‘choice’ within the suit that I wore as a personality.
I read very interesting realizations on Bella’s blog Relationships as Limitation Bubbles & Fear as Self-Abuse which ties in with a point that I have also lived throughout my life and it was only last night that I realized how we have projected onto others our own acceptance, perceiving ourselves to be rejected or even fearing being rejected which can only exist if self-acceptance is not in place.
I remember my mother talking to me when I went through a ‘difficult time’ of facing being bullied in school and becoming very sad and worried about it, and she would say ‘don’t care about what others say, whatever they think and say to you is only about themselves,’ and this supported me for a while and made me ‘stronger’ in a way – however only as temporary fix because the origin of the point was not sorted out, which was self-acceptance. I was only 7 or 8 years old then, so this wasn’t even within my ‘frame of reference’ at the time.
When going into junior school/ secondary school, I began struggling with going into a bigger school and seeing how people had these different ‘groups’ that would not talk to each other. I came from a school wherein the last year of elementary school we were less than 10 in the class, and we would all talk to each other and hang out together. Thus going from this small group into a group of almost 40 -in a generation of 6 groups – certainly broadened my perspective of how people would behave in terms of ‘friends’ and having their particular ‘gangs’ so to speak. I would talk to most of the people in my class, however I still would avoid not talking to some that I had judged for whatever idea of myself I had as ‘not being compatible’ with them, mostly based on preferences/ personality and level of ‘intellect’ which was another point that I would use as a means of separation.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from people based on how I could ‘get along with them’ or not in relation to ‘intellect’ and being able to relate to others within the starting point of identifying myself as a certain personality
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to discriminate others based on the idea of ‘intellect’ and comparing myself to others and within that, deciding ‘who I would talk to’ in relation to how I would classify people in terms of them being ‘intelligent’ or not.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become an intellectual elitist wherein I would avoid talking/ getting along with beings that I deemed as slower/ dumb without realizing that in that I had become my own personal-limit to get along with others in means of conviviality.
What I realized last night is how I had gone through a process of being ‘left out’ of a group of friends and went through the fear of having to spend recess time alone – which is something that petrified me at that time – and how I eventually did the same ‘segregation process’ toward others. It’s fascinating to see how in my mind I was ‘the victim of those that didn’t accept me’ but in fact, I had done the exact same thing not only in school, but with people in my family and virtually with any person walking down the street that I would immediately profile and decide if I could ‘talk to that person’ or not, all based on my own preferences/ likes and ideas of myself. I had disregarded the fact that I was also doing the same that had been done onto me, yet I justified it with my self-belief of ‘not everyone being able to get along’ and having the ability to choose who to talk to or not.
We become our own dictators within our self-regime of who we like, who we judge, why we judge and vindicate all of that because of being a particular ‘personality,’ which in my case was also a perceived ‘odd one’ that found her place within such category, and eventually accepted by others within that same tag. And this was not only with ‘classmates’ -even though school was the main ‘realm’ I lived through within my life – but also toward family members or any other being that I would then decide I would like or dislike. I would be very judgmental and laconic, almost ‘rude’ when expressing with people that I had decided I would Not want to talk to for the reasons mentioned previously, and I can remember this experience as a ‘knowing’ that they simply wanted to communicate and talk – yet in my dictatorship they would not ‘fit in’ within the type of people I wanted to hang out with – so I would avoid replying or following a conversation with them. However, I wore the suit of ‘being the solitary one’ as a defense and excuse to actually be able to decide who do I talk to and who I don’t in terms of ‘closer relationships.’
It was interesting because I could talk to people, but when it came to having ‘close friendships’ I had none, not until high school with one person in my entire generation.I became judgmental and/ or ‘picky’ and created this idea of myself as ‘knowing better’ than them, eventually only ostracizing me to the point of spending my time alone, just having a ‘bad time’ every time that I was not in class until I eventually got used to it for the lack of a better experience.
The point with all of this is realizing how within my mind I was ‘rejected’ but in fact, I was the only one that had created such self-imposed rejection and separation through my own value schemes. I became very aware that the moment that I found ‘someone’ that I could ‘relate to’ based on how we profile relationships and types of people, I was extremely open and enthusiastic about talking and sharing, it was almost an immediate ‘friendship’ that I’m now aware was one of those necessary preprogrammed points in order for me to get into various experiences later on in my life. However the point of recognition between both of us came through this self-ejected stance wherein we would believe ourselves to be ‘outcasts,’ yet we were the only ones that had ejected ourselves, simply because of being existing in an almost elitist way toward the rest of the people. And I’m sure that this is how it works. Even the ‘outcasts’ had their group and would look at you weird if you dared to talk to them – lol I remember this and realized how weird it was that people that perceived themselves to be ‘rejected’ would actually reject another from approaching them. But I did the same so – it has been the way we have ‘accepted’ social-relationships to function, which is quite fucked up to say the least.
So, high school to me was the time wherein I went from being quite an uncomfortable loner to a ‘loner’ that had been able to integrate and share and speak with everyone in my class. I would not ‘hang out with them,’ but I deliberately would talk to everyone. I realized that I had antagonized myself toward the ‘beautiful people’ and I actually learned quite a cool ‘lesson’ once that I opened up and communicated with them. It was funny because they had accepted me as this ‘rebel’ and I had accepted them as the ‘pretty people.’ One of those girls once told me something along the lines of ‘just because you perceive ourselves to care about how we look and are shallow doesn’t mean that we are stupid.’ I realized in that moment how I had in fact placed myself as ‘above them’ all the time and that they had just voiced out the backchat that I had held as ‘tag’ on them and they knew, and they accepted that as a fact, and we would still talk in the classroom.
I have to bring up the point that this is a Jesuit school and there’s people with loads of money the same as people that do not have that much money and I was just in between. Money would be a factor that decided ‘who’s who’ within school – however the education was based in us recognizing our ability to work together, communicate and not discriminate one another. That was a very cool aspect about it because it did support us to leave our ‘differences’ aside when it came to getting along, this made our conviviality a lot easier, even if being around 37 people in class.
I had a specific relationship that went from absolute hate to a very cool acceptance or even ‘school friendship’ with someone that dared to challenge my ‘self righteousness.’ He was part of the ‘rich people’ that I had judged as too ‘cocky’ and believing himself to be ‘more’ than the rest, which was the point that absolutely vexed me – never realized I was doing the exact same thing of course.
I’m actually grateful about the policies in that school. Somehow because I was a ‘good student’ and I had a history of being ‘isolated,’ our counselor called me to her office one day when we were about to finish the first year in high school and asked me ‘who do you want to be with in your next year’s class and who do you Don’t want to be with? So I only gave the name of one or two girls that I could work well and get along with in terms of school work – when I had to choose the person I did Not want to be with, I chose this guy, stating that I could not stand his guts. From that moment on, I remained with those girls for all three years of high school, but also with the same guy, which was quite a cool move from our counselor even though I had expected to not see him again for the remainder of my stance in that school. This allowed me to face my fear of having to ‘deal with him’ in my class.
What happened is that because were deliberately placed in the same class, we worked out our differences through actually communicating. We stopped sitting in opposite sides of the class and eventually would sit close so that we could talk and debate about stuff from life, school, politics. Eventually I learned a lot from him, I realized that we were able to work together in school works and place our preferences aside when it came to working in teams. At the end of high school in our final ‘spiritual retirement,’ we both forgave our initial hatred toward each other and recognized our mutual appreciation and learning-process within walking through the ‘hatred’ point toward each other in front of the entire generation. I realized how much I had judged him and how much he had judged me essentially because of having stepped onto each others’ toes all the time, just because of how we perceived each other to be as ‘different personalities’ or types of people or ‘too opinionated’ lol. That was a cool moment because to me, he had represented ‘hell’ and someone I could not ‘stand’ at all, and in the end he became probably a ‘good friend.’
We supported each other in one way or another to get a notch down from our ego and self-righteousness, we both walked through the resistance, cease the fear and judgment and eventually end up appreciating each other. Sounds like a cool story – and I’m quite sure that if this was able to be worked out with everyone in this world, things would really change. I guess that was a very specific case wherein I allowed myself to get to know a being, in spite of how we were ‘opposite personalities’ and our world/ reality/ lives were apparently ‘too different’ – however when placing that aside, we realized that communication does not have to be based on relating to each other’s preferences and ‘lifestyles,’ but actually talking about stuff that relates to all. He’s a lawyer at the moment and he is from a family of politicians. I would tease him saying that when he would be the president, he should give me a project to paint somewhere or do some artwork for a governmental building, lol.
Alright, wrote a lot on that, but that’s part of my realizations of how I lived this ‘isolation’ simply because I had chosen it, I had imposed it onto myself because I eventually realized it was all my own creation and deliberate decision to ‘not fit in’ because I had created myself as ‘not wanting to fit in’ – it really wasn’t like something that was suddenly imposed onto me = I created it, and it was mostly from this idea of being superior/ knowing better/ being better by myself. At the end of school, when my only friend wasn’t there any longer, I would just stay in a place wherein I could watch the sunset and read a book. I wasn’t feeling ‘rejected’ any longer, it had become a ‘decision’ still based on personality, however I wasn’t uncomfortable about it in that moment, because I would be talking more to people while being in class.
Things changed when hanging out with people outside of school. Suddenly I was not being ‘accepted’ because of being able to talk and relate to others in school terms, but this was about personal relationships that one develop as friendships based entirely on personality – no practical ‘teamwork’ here. And that’s where the oddity began for real, because even though I was able to ‘choose’ who to hang out with, I went through a face of fearing losing such relationships – until I faced my ‘biggest fear’ which was losing these people, being ‘once again alone.’ And, for the most part, I’ve been ‘alone’ for the past 5 years –except one year when I went to the farm – wherein my life was simply going to school, having the regular interactions with people in class and that’s it. I never went to a single ‘party’ in college and that might be as odd as can be, but I wasn’t simply interested in that. A ‘fear’ of ‘having missed the entire art school experience’ comes only now that I’m done with it, fearing that I didn’t use the opportunity to the maximum to actually develop skills there, but only ‘went through it’ mostly because of placing all my focus and attention to the process we’re walking here – however this is only a mind fear, as in ‘being missing out the party/ missing out on life’ which is something that took me quite a while to grasp, simply because of that same idea of ‘living through experiences.’
When stopping friendships and relationships, I realized that I had to now face myself after having feared losing everyone – even if ‘they’ meant 3 people or 4 to the max – and stand alone.
For the past almost 2 years I have been alone and I see it as a necessary time to get comfortable in that aloneness, simply because of how much I had feared it yet desired it at the same time. It’s an odd game that we play wherein in fact we all seek to be able to get along with each other and we can only ‘fear’ it because of other fears, judgments, even being used to ‘being alone’ as well, which I can recognize wherein at times I simply wanted to be alone again when being with lots of people. Entering a relationship in fear of losing it is already something that I can recognize going through as well.
So within all of these fears and eventually facing them in real-life, I was able to recognize the energetic addictions that we develop toward either being alone/ not being alone as a point of self-definition, an experience that we feed as ourselves which keeps us bound to one pole or the other, instead of standing within this point of self-acceptance as an individual = alone – yet the point is to stop the experience of ‘loneliness’ which has been quite a process for me. And I had only lead me to a single spot: getting to a point of self-acceptance, self-enjoyment that I had realized I could experience after having been so addicted to/ attached to living my ‘life’ through and with others and being constantly seeking our ‘next greatest excitement’ through various ways.
I stopped avoiding being alone and embraced that point as an ability to appreciate myself, which I hadn’t done before, even when ‘being accepted by others’ I would take that as an ‘add on’ to my self-appreciation, never ‘gave it to myself/ accepted it as myself’ so to speak. And now, I am starting to realize that it is only within this starting point of self-agreement as self-appreciation, self-acceptance standing alone that I see how these dependencies to either being accepted/ rejected, being ‘in’ or ‘out’ of a particular social context was only existent within me as a self-imposed limitation based on my personality/ ego as preferences, judgments and essentially the ‘elitist’ eye that I would view everyone with, wherein I would deliberately decide who do I mingle with and who do I just ‘talk to in means of not generating enemies’ which was another story. I went through making sure that I would talk to everyone in order to not generate any antagonism as the one that I had experienced with the guy that I wrote about earlier on. This is how I see politicians functioning at the moment with people, they tend to want to not generate any conflict/ antagonism/ rejection with the people, so they present themselves in a particular way expecting to always be liked, never opposed, even though the opposition becomes an inevitable thing within this world.
So – fear of being alone and my various judgments toward people became quite a cool thing to walk through within my life, probably not even realizing much about it because we tend to only keep certain details about our experience of the past in our mind, which makes us either love it or hate it and remove all the actual interactions that might have led to a tiny bit of a change and realization through interacting with people. The point is that if I had not allowed me to, for example, get along with that person that I had judged extensively or even ‘detested’ at some point, I would not have allowed that point of expansion within myself. I remember people asking me ‘how was I able to ‘stand him’?’ because in their mind schemes we were like oil and water and could not fathom us getting along – so that’s an indication how even at the eyes of others based on these same ‘schemes,’ we tend to segregate each other and categorize wherein anything that simply could not ‘get along with each other’ is seen as an aberration within their ideas of ‘how the world should be.’ It was actually quite cool to be vulnerable with each other and get to know that in spite of his perceived ‘fame and fortune,’ he had a really tough time within feeling rejected and hated by most of the people – which was a similar pattern another similar guy once shared with me -which revealed another aspect of how I had been part of those people that despised him simply because of perceiving him as conceited and ‘too cocky’ to give a fuck about anything. But in fact, he dealt with a lot of internal conflict because of how everyone would judge him, without allowing themselves/ ourselves to actually get to know him. So, it was cool getting to see the other side of the coin and break-through those limitations.
I share this because to me this was an experience that changed my approach toward beings, allowed me to not discriminate just because of how people would look like or how I would profile them. When getting to college and having various different types of classmates, I was able to get along with most and realized that it could only be a judgment that kept me from speaking with others. And from there and later on in art school, I mostly remained ‘alone’ as in not always being with someone in particular – yet was able to share, talk and enjoy other’s presence. That was definitely also because of already been walking this process and facing all possible judgments on my face.
From this perspective I would see myself ‘out of the circuit’ of how people would get along with some and dislike others/ judge others and segregate themselves – it was like me being just ‘there’ and not really playing the game of taking a particular side or antagonize another in particular – as it seemed it sometimes ‘worked’ there. It was actually odd for me to get along with someone and having some other person saying hi to me, yet not saying hi to the other person I was with simply because they had a ‘story’ behind. I simply did not follow through such separation, I would then explain how I would not stop talking to someone based on what others might think about them. It’s fascinating how within a single classroom you get all of these different ‘groupings’ that oppose each other – no wonder how when looking at the world, we have wars manifested out of that single separation that – once again – begins with a point of identification that separates us from the rest, from realizing we are in fact one and equal and have to now establish a conviviality based on Equality.
This is how to wrap this up, I agree with Bella and everyone at Desteni on how we have realized that Equality is the solution to all separation in this world, this is the only way that we can in fact sort our differences out not by ‘tolerating them’ or ‘getting along with it’ – but actually self-forgiving them within the realization that they have been specific mechanisms to divide us and in such division, be easily polarized and controlled. Equality means then the actual realization of our full potential if we dare to work as equals. For that, Desteni as a group is already proof of that, wherein a single Life Principle can become the driving force that keeps the cohesive stance of each other as equals.
It is only Equality that can prevail in this world.
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2011 From Misfits to Worthing Ourselves as Life: Destonians – 2
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