You take a cab to go to work. You see how the usual stress of the city is now surrounded by a strange atmosphere of passivity wherein you can only hear a car horn here and there, like asphyxiated claims that are immediately self forgiven, the drivers have finally understood that causing noise only makes things worse. You put your hand on your mouth as you recall that you’d usually lit a cigarette in moments of distress like this. You rather breathe through the cravings and stop the usual complains to get one right away.
This time you decide to strike a little conversation with the driver while daring to ask directly ‘what are you working with’ and interjecting onto his personal process and his latest realizations within his writings. The Taxi driver shows you how he uses his cell phone to take notes and writes further notes on a notebook that his wife gave to him the day that their divorce was self-forgiven, they decided to rather work with themselves instead of bombarding each other with guilt and projected blame. There’s a picture of his family on the cover of the handmade notebook that he places back beneath his seat as he grins with a sense of satisfaction about his reconciliation. And you can’t help but see how you experience a warm fuzzy desire to have such a ‘happy family’ as well – but you understand that you haven’t even gotten yourself out of the daily misuse of your mind while continuing indulging in fantasies, eternal self-loathing backchat that you project onto your boss while seeking for the next great ‘hype’ to come into your life in the shape of two perfect legs on high-heels.
You breathe to step out of the daydream and in that moment, you expose the actual experience you just created within your mind to the taxi driver, and you dare to express out loud: I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire having such a family, without realizing that this is stemming from my inability to first focus on my own self-agreement wherein I must first stop any desire to create a relationships with another being if I haven’t yet sorted out my self-relationship first. Taxi driver smiles back at you through the rearview mirror and you go into yet another experience thinking ‘Is he mocking me?‘ However he knows that you thought that, and clarifies ‘I am grinning at the bogey hanging from your left nostril, actually’ – and so you suddenly nervously rush to pick it up with the piece of napkin you are always obsessively clinging on to in your left hand, somehow you always fear this happens to you, never realizing how you created such fear in the first place. You feel like someone’s got control over the situation, then realize it’s your own control issues in the desire to be perfect all the time that keep you bound to these nonsensical inner conversations – step out of it because you see that you’ve arrived to your work place. You let him know that you’ve arrived while still feeling the blush cooling down as you rush to step out of the cab. Breathe, you’re only a few steps away from the place – no need to rush.
Workplace: 17th floor tower in the upper east side of the city. You make the religious stop to the only ‘decent’ coffee shop there is available across the street. You glance at a woman that has decidedly made you realize that she is watching you as you pick up pace and enter with a sense of flair to the coffee shop after her. She breaks the spell by turning back and saying: ‘I’m not flirting with you, if that’s what you thought, I am actually working through these obsessive patterns I’ve developed to always flirt with strangers – I apologize… I’m working with it’ – She seemed rather honest about her words, she only smirked twice at you in a condescending way while saying that – that’s fair. You strain your face in means of regret for it all being yet another trick in your mind to have you react without being actually Here while doing so. You remember how it was a lot ‘easier’ to create these type of random fantasies with strangers when you didn’t have to be self honest about your imagination and inner experiences in the moment; you know that such ‘randomness’ would serve as a trigger point to your daily – and obsessive – masturbation habit. Yes, you’ve had to work with it to see how all your frustration and apparent inability to cope with stress is actually thoughts that you can work with, instead of trying to clear the entire build up through a little stroke of luck to then fall into the same pit of stagnation within your own mind.
In that moment you bring yourself back here to realize that you froze for a moment as it is still a bit ‘unusual’ to get such frankness from any given stranger at a coffee shop.
You go to the counter and look up to see the menu wherein you allow yourself to always ‘ponder’ what you want, yet always choosing the exact same drink. This time you explore something else other than the regular triple espresso with a full milk shot. As you wait for the cashier to come back to the front, you read the ‘Self Forgiveness of the day’ on the blackboard along with the special mixes of the day, and realize that it is way better than reading phony ‘have a good day’ wishes or fortune cookies for that matter– this time it is actually something that relates to you: I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become so irritated at the sight of a self-honest world, because I still want my ability to throw tantrums and be constantly mad at everyone – you read the tags on the electronic board that is making sure people get to read the same statement in coffee shops around the world – just as you are – and share their own insights about it.
The cashier gets back to the counter. You ask for your next big hit, a dark roast Italian with a bit of milk because you have come to the conclusion that you must stop being an addict to overloaded coffee and sugar. You stare at the cashier as you hand him your card while asking if there is something going on today? He takes a deep breath in the moment, looks up as to recover the sense that he’s ‘here’ and working and shares how he’s just having a rough time having to let go of the death of his father. He then proceeds to forgive himself for having accepted and allowed himself to be so stressed out and rather concerned about his mother now being alone and having no place to stay now that the pension is gone. You look at him in the eyes and let him know that for now, there are no risks to take, that if he doesn’t have enough money he must take his mother to a social security retirement house until we are able to establish an Equal Money System wherein no worries about money will ever create such distress within him or his mother. e He seems to find some clarity and comfort with your words, he understands that the events we are facing are the outflows of having lived entire cycles as humanity in absolute oblivion of what life is, and placing unbearable price tags on it.
He apologizes for the entire ‘stressfully awkward moment,’ however you realize that he could have been you, in the exact same position, actually it is you in fact – you let him know that it is cool that he opened up right there in the moment and forgave himself, for that is the only way to take responsibility for our own shit and not allow such mental storms to tamper our effectiveness during our everyday work, but instead focusing on how to stop all reactions. You are even amazed at how you were able to pull out such an eloquent stream of words that were actually supportive for another. He seemed to be more stable as he goes to the back to prepare your drink.
You turn around and look at the people in a regular every-day morning coffee session with work colleagues, sharing their tablets filled with self forgiveness statements that each one reads as if it was Every day’s Times paper – at least there’s no more ‘opening bell’ to praise and pray to for better days. Somehow you still see yourself out of that loop, you still fear to open up about the gnawing insecurity you experience every time you have to speak in public, or even when having to present your latest project to a boss that is sorting out his anger management issues and using you as a testing ground for it. You see the ridiculousness of having to increment your confidence as you speak to him, because of the fact that there is no one you have to ‘convince’ or blackmail here as people are now considering investing in projects that are sustainable and long-term solutions for the betterment of humanity. Yes, dealing with engineering water purifying plants was so extensively disregarded and deliberately neglected in the past that you still wonder how you made it into a future where these projects started getting more attention and budget, of course. You then see how futile it is to be stressed about it as you’ve got a monthly income grant which keeps you and everyone else off the old surviving-payroll. You breathe as you take your freshly brewed Italian cappuccino and decide to mingle around others and decide to strike a conversation now that you don’t have to be at 9 am sharp at work, but can take a moment to enjoy the coffee without death-threatening consequences.
You decide to talk to the Self-Forgiving flirtatious woman that had let you know how you were just a nice mirror for her own old-patterned issues. Somehow that made you still flattered about the entire situation and becomes a trigger point to break the ice with saying how you have just uploaded a blog recently wherein the ‘being intimidated by flirtatious women’ point was opened up. She looks up at you and smiles back, she grabs her cup back and sips the black coffee inviting you to read the lines that she has just written out of the recent event with you, wherein a memory of a very similar event in her past popped up. It was written out through statements of self forgiveness that the woman read out loud in order to establish an uncanny vulnerability in the moment, which you still find yourself internally cringing about and becoming distrustful as you start wondering ‘why’ is she even sharing that with you, but you bring yourself back here to see how you should simply dare to do the same sometime. You find this woman attractive for her assertiveness and openness to share her ‘intimate world’ – yet realize that all fantasies that would usually ensue from here stop there, you have work to do, you can only continue seeking for some panties to follow as long as you don’t sort out your inner obsessive delusions about finding a sense of ‘fulfillment’ outside of yourself. You’ve got to let go of it all for now, and get back to the real world.
You decide to leave your blog link to her, letting her know that you’ll also be writing out the inner experience about the entire event and thank her for also being a cool mirror to reflect upon. She strikes a smile after going through an almost imperceptible refraction of unconditional expression – you know it’s tough to, for the first time, allow your teeth to show now that you know that the other can’t be judging you about it.
You grab your bag and leave the coffee shop not before saying to the cashier ‘Hey man, that was a cool shot and… breathe’ with a gesture in your face that shows real compassion, because you truly mean it.
Now you head up across the street to the 17th floor tower that you occupy right at the middle of, and as you go into the elevator you switch into your mind and go into a quick reflection on the events and how you would have experienced the entire sequence of events in the past. You remembered about how women were an absolute mystery that you could only fantasize daring to talk to. You could have simply been in a bad mood and yelled at the taxi driver for being ‘such a slow jackass’ while lighting up cigarette after cigarette and blamed the cashier for exposing having ‘emotional unsorted issues’ while making you wait for an extended period of time to make your regular triple espresso with one milk shot, then making you feel usually miserable for how subservient he would stare back at you when realizing it was not fair having such a bossy costumer early on in the day. You remember the absolute stress you had while boiling the same old hatred toward the expectation of dealing with your boss that would usually end up spitting the ball of fire back at you.
All of that is gone. You breathe out of the memory and arrive to your office, you log onto your computer to catch up reading the blogs around the world and sharing yours. Somehow even if the world system is crumbling apart like a cookie on hot coffee, you see that people are truly creating a sense of neighborism around the globe that has been absolutely far more shocking and unexpected than any other utopian dream of your youth. You are still holding on to ‘the old you’ by one single thread that you are about to cut off if you are able to implement a new water system that will enable people from places like Haiti or Somalia to benefit from their coast lines, and provide potable water for all. Somehow your inner world of anxiety, despair, devious fantasies and absolute self-loathing stops for a moment as you realize that if it wasn’t for you being here, such system would not have been able to exist.
You sip your now cooled down coffee and as you unwrap the wooden mixer, you realize that the napkin had a note on it: I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be ashamed of letting you know that you have a bogey hanging from your left nostril. I’ll make sure I let you know next time – thanks for the advice. Pat.
You experience an immediate rush of blood to your face, then you breathe and eventually laugh out loud about it and realize the dimensional shift that went on in the cab while still backchatting about your fantasies and rushing to step out of the cab. The woman had seen it on your face the whole time, yet she didn’t seem perplexed or put off by it– it shocks you for a moment while actually considering how the usual embarrassment is not as prominent as it was before. That’s progress.
Anyways, back to work, you’ve got an entire machinery to place on the move in this world – your daydreaming can be put on hold. You remind yourself that for now, you cannot be following that which you like to be your driving force, but stick to what must be done in the name of a better world for all.
Somehow the cup seems to not be half empty anymore.
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Further context
The writing came up when creating a hypothetical moment in 7 years of having established Self-Forgiveness and Self-Honesty as a daily regular application for the majority of people in this world. Everyone being aware of the tools of Self-Support through writing themselves to freedom, and actually living and applying it in an open manner with each other. This means that the capitalist system was still in place, however a Basic Income Grant would have managed to get people out of the debt-loop as banks and corporations slowly but surely start adapting to a new system of income through redistributing it back to health care and educational systems. Everyone would be aware of each one’s ‘points’ that are being walked in their individual processes so that no matter who you talk to or encounter yourself interacting with, they would be able to openly share and get feedback – or at least open communication – without any fear that your ‘secret mind’ could be exposed with strangers.
Human beings start becoming really compassionate to one another now that the ties that money would bound each other to hierarchical strains are being slowly but surely equalized to a best-for-all economic model.
A sci-fi story? No, a future in the making I’d say.
Check out
Desteni Forum
and the Equal Money System website to realize that we are in fact able to create a world wherein we reform the current system of debt and control that we have enslaved each other to in our reality.
Supportive reading:
Day 7: Letting Go of Regret
MarlenLife's Blog 