Racism Induced By Hearing BLACK LIVES MATTER Too Many Times

Gulp!! I prefer to get an mpression of what the world outside is really like by taking a look myself. It's not a good idea or very healthy to have your mind chock full of other people's opinions, speculations and bold assumptions if you're only going for a quick walk around the block.

Increasingly there's a sense for me that people who don't really feel part of the fabric of their immediate community, and rely upon social media and other outletd to help inform their perceptions and views on the general mateyness of humankind - there's a very definite feeling that the world we see on the news and the world experienced walking down the street are completely one and the same now. Joining the dots and making causal connections between the two worlds is just a done thing now. And so the rage you feel rise almost immediately now at having to hear yet another activist, rich celebrity or bank advert proclaim BLACK LIVES MATTER for the fiftieth fucking time today, and it's not even fucking 6pm!!! I mean, really??? FFS!!! Shut the fuck up about BLACK LIVES FUCKING MATTER already will you! You're making me feel like I want to be racist to you just to shut you up....

That kind of simmering anger has been all over show in recent weeks and I'm not a big fan of speaking on behalf of other people I don't know. Could be many different reasons, and the fact that our waking lives already involve arduous daily missions just to ensure ensure our mental selves make it too - forced each morning to ignore, avoid or navigate routes around the pressures, distractions, temptations and humiliations shat onto us from by marketing, advertising and PR machines always busy rethinking more effective carrots for us to increase the yield....

We're not to blame for a lot of the bad feelings we end up taking responsibility and then making ourselves feel guilty for. Having said that, if this is your pressure cooker we're all living in and you are the one turning up the heat then I'm sorry, but you are a full on sadistic knobhead!😂

I've just remembered why I started this status update and maybe I should have mentioned it early. It's just an example of what I was talking about and how the social climate with regards to sensitive topics can change rapidly. Just a few photos.

A couple of weeks back I wrote about a bike I went for in the local woods and my initial concerns even before leaving the house as the murder of George Floyd was all that was on TV at that time. I had a few concerns riding my bike in the woods early in the morning because I'm big and black and just about everyone else in my village is white. Plus I enjoy taking pictures of trees and sunlight and shadows and nature in general, and if a tree looks particularly nice I might stand still and look at it for 20 minutes straight because it's worth it.

Anyway, by the end of my bike ride tears of affirmation were making it hard for me to ride home safely. When I got in I posted the story, with a huge tree pic, in a facebook group for lovers of Britain's Ancient Trees. The group isn't political at all usually, and functions as a kind of sanctuary for those wanting to temporally escape the harshness of reality, but the admins allowed my story and members really liked it more than anything I've ever posted. It was nice being able to resonate with strangers like that, especially considering how charged the world outside of the group was at the time. Some of the messages people were sending really moved me, but as I need at 2 hours just to reply to one person, replying to everyone was never going to happen so I didn't bother starting.

And then just last week, maybe it was one of the admins, I'm not sure, posted a link which may have alluded to or mentioned BLM somehow, I don't know. All I know is that when I popped my head in it was like a brawl in the saloon in Blazing Saddles. The type where you just punch the nearest person standing next to you if you don't have an enemy.

Absolutely brutal it was! Longstanding members announcing their permanent departure from the group like they did it every day. I turn my back upon this veritable treasure trove of glorious oaks, majestic beeches and much more besides! You are all dead to me because I read the letters BLM for a third time in this group. The tranquility of this once idyllic sanctuary has forever been soiled by the insipid skidmarks of reality.

Then the admins pulled the shutters down on the place after someone suggested having a cyber-riot. I'm gonna go and check if it's back online now..

What I realised about the way I respond during a extended period of depression

Nearly all of the negative things that you say are assumptions. They are NOT facts, because they have not happened yet. 

People should never make assumptions about their future simply because it feels like things will never change. The simple fact is that it is literally impossible for anything to stay the same. Things can only get worse or get better. It's your choice. Things remaining as they are forever isn't actually something that can happen, so forget about it.

Listen to your thoughts or go through your writings or trains of thought and highlight the facts and separate them from the assumptions. The things that can be said because they are true, and the things which will become true if you keep telling yourself they are already true when they aren't.

Dont ruin your life investing the power of your belief in assumptions which the end up becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. Never EVER declare that whatever negative experience is happening for you, will carry on like that forever, because you have no right to claim such a thing before it's actually takes place, and whether it places or not is entirely your choice.

Don't conserve what little you have during lockdown. Generate more.

When you're low on energy, low on morale, low on self-belief, just low in general....it might seem like the best strategy is to conserve what few resources you have left for those parts of yourself you think are the most important or valuable. 

But you only have to look at how the The Conservatives operate to realise why replicating their mistakes and applying austerity to our own bodies will never leave us feeling better.

You have to invest your resources into things which are real and here, now. Not promises of what you'll get in the future. You have to invest your resources in things which are natural but also feed everything else, making the pursuit of dreams and ambitions possible to begin with. Investing in the living environment around us in order to help it make more of itself to nourish others.

Our True Nature Is About To Return

When people are confined for long periods of time, and their desire to resume the normality they know and are accustomed to is still denied them, their internal urge to 'do what they normally do' gradually builds up inside, becoming noticeable on their surface the longer confinement continues.

 

Because the outlets they had to channel themselves into are no longer available, and if they don't have adequate replacements or substitutes for what they need in the meantime, the desire to transgress the boundaries keeping them in, keeping them safe, starts to increase. 

So the warlike man may make enemies of those within his vicinity not because he sees them as an enemy or a threat, but because his nature requires an enemy to fight in order to feel like it is acting in accordance with itself. And if there is no one around to fight then the warlike man will attack himself.

Your Anxiety Is Telling You Where Your New Strengths Lie

Your anxiety is telling you where your new strengths lie.

When I was at uni I would often walk into the campus library with my rucksack all packed with the day's study materials, find the nearest available computer to sit at, and just stare at the screen blankly for what felt like 2 hours, but was probably closer to 30 minutes. Occasionally I'd scroll through the day's news and current affairs headlines before preparing to head home, feeling like a total fraud, and an embarrassment to my friends and family, who had such high hopes for me.

The dark void I carried around in my chest, a black hole from which all light was unable to escape, would begin pulling my vacant heart down, as I sat on the bus back towards my halls of residence, wishing to never arrive. All attempts to prevent my heart from free-falling through self-administered pep talks, always failing - making the rushes of despair and the urge to sabotage myself beyond all repair increasingly alluring. Open planned libraries were the worst. It felt as though the only direction safe for me to look in without being stripped naked by the scrutinizing gazes of my fellow students was at the floor. But what do you expect when you're smoking tons of weed every single day!!!

That period of my life I think was bordering on full on depression to be honest, and I was only able to feel sad about the state I was in long after I'd begun to get better. Sadness, for me, feels like a temporary sense of loss for something, and so I didn't feel sad for myself at the time because I didn't have anything left I could lose.

In order to stave the ominous pull of depression manifesting, I feel like sometimes people just have to throw themselves without thinking into the deep end of their current anxieties - against the wishes of their protesting ego, in order to realise that they do actually possess the strength of will to overcome the adversity they are in or soon must face.

A lot of my anxiety over the years has stemmed precisely from not wanting to realise this fact - from not wanting to find out if I would sink or swim should I decide to take it on. I would cling to the delusion that by choosing to remain in limbo, in a state of perpetual inaction via the means of procrastination - by refusing to enter into a confrontation with my anxiety, I could stay protected from its debilitating effects. But what ended up happening was the complete opposite to what I'd hoped for. The anxiety created by denying that I needed to take action simply lay dormant within me - silently growing in its intensity, until eventually becoming a new, and even more corrosive source of anxiety which dwarfed the original.

FFS!!!

Thankfully, after thousands of failures, denials and refusals to act, I began to accept the lesson which had been staring at me all along. The best way in which I could become stronger was by flipping the script about what anxiety actually means to me. Anxiety is simply a signal informing me where I must apply myself next. And I'm finding that the rewards from conquering the challenges that confront me when I locate its origin always outweigh any benefits I thought I would have obtained had my anxiety decided one day to magically fuck off and disappear forever!

Anxiety is like a loot box in a computer game, in the sense that if you dare to smash it, you get rewarded with additional life skills, weapons and bonus health to aid you on your quest, because you dared to take the risk. And it's all for free too!!!

And so the more anxieties you have, the more potential strengths there are for you to acquire. You just have to take the plunge, and build up your plunge taking muscles over time. Don't think too much. Just leap into your anxiety and start kicking its pathetic little ass as soon as your feet touch the ground!  

Nothing good ever comes from trying to avoid things that are located inside your head because wherever you go the bastard just keeps following you around! Anxiety and shadows have a lot in common in this sense.

  

Science of Sleeping - The Tip of the Iceberg

Feel free to say "Duh!", but the best way to eliminate unwanted chatter in the mind, improve focus and concentration, banish anxiety and nervousness of an origin you can't work out, reduce the disabling effects of feeling overly self-conscious and over-analysis of everything which leads to you limiting yourself, improve the clarity and quality of your thoughts, increase your conviction and confidence in any decisions that you make, reduce the rattling bodily tensions and tightness in the chest which has no obvious psychological reason to be there, improve the quality of spontaneous ideas which just come to you without having to try, increase your willingness to accept and respond in the moment to the chaotic randomness of daily life...etc etc etc...

The best way to achieve all this in one fell swoop, for FREE TOO! - is by getting 8 hours of blissful deep sleep. I know. Duh!!!

Whenever I'm fortunate enough to have such a rejuvenating gift bestowed upon me I praise and give thanks to Hypnos as soon as I arise - The God of Sleep. Mate! You da real MVP!!!

But in addition to my belief that a fictitious Greek deity is responsible for my peaceful slumber, there must be a science, or at least, concrete measures I can take to maximise the chances of sleeping well. 3 things that were different about last night's sleep which I'll be trying again tonight to see if it wasn't just a fluke were:

1. Using a sleeping mask to block out all light. I don't want the sun to wake me "naturally" thanks. I'd rather have some more quality Zzzzzzzzz... instead. The actual truth which led to this revelation that everyone apart from me already knows was that I fell asleep with my virtual reality headset on again. This is something I unintentionally do often, and friends who have photographed me in this dystopian state have been compelled to create albums with these images because it looks so weird.

2. Bed is set at a slight decline to utilise gravity. Two notches of wood of around 1/2 inch were placed underneath the legs connected to the headboard. Not noticeable enough to feel like I was kipping on a slope, but enough to encourage bodily fluids to continue on their natural paths and not to remain stagnant as they normally would do on a perfectly horizontal mattress.

3. Pillow height and shape was fashioned to fit the space in between my shoulder and head perfectly, so that both head, but more importantly, my neck, felt wonderfully cradled when sleeping on my side.

Again, these mundane insights are probably what many people do anyway, but I think there are also a lot of people who just jump into bed and hope for the best, who see sleep as a game of Russian Roulette for their mind and body. Sleep is where your day starts before it starts so it's crucial this period is as high a quality as you can make it. I feel the same way about the importance of comfortable footwear and the use of insoles to correct one's gait, but can't be arsed going into that right now.

Satirizing Satire with Satire

Satire: the great neutralising agent of the rage of injustice. Both the weapon to attack the enemy with and comfort blanket to retreat under when the tribulations of life become all too much. The nation's pressure valve. For those moments when you need to attack a formidable opponent and also demonstrate the futility of doing so. That unique armour piercing blade, fashioned over the ages by humanity's wittiest intelligentsia, who claim it will immobilise any opponent through the subtle manipulation of their psyche. Armed with the sharpest satire, they say you can defeat any opponent by simply agreeing with them more than they agree with themselves, and at once your enemy shall find themselves licking their wounds, boo-hooing to the winds. But beware of wicked fearmongers who will falsely tell you to beware of Snatchers; a terribly unsporting class of opponent who collect the barbed exaggerations you throw at them, then present them to their army of followers as proof you are supportive of their cause. Meanies.

The Magic of Spelling

Reading a good story can be a magical experience. Not only in the way they can make us feel, but in the wizard-esque magic spell sense - in that they can have a powerful effect upon matter itself if cast correctly. Like the transformative effect upon depression hearing a talking cure can have or the instant lighting up of synapses in the brain the news of winning the lottery produces. If spells can have a direct effect upon the material world if cast correctly, and stories have the potential to be magical, then not been able to spell properly means not being able to release the magic in your story because it contains errors.

Seeing yourself as a Sieve

The benefits of being a sieve

For some, a pause in their journey can offer a rare moment of quiet contemplation, a chance to plan an alternative route toward their destination or an opportunity to get off the ride altogether.

Other things can provide benefit by not being stopped.

Like a sieve which is having water poured into it from above, I let things pass through me. Whatever it is. I don’t hold onto anything because I can’t. I’m a sieve. It’s not something I’m capable of. It’s not my purpose.

That’s not to say that everything is in one ear and out the other. There’ll always be some sort of residue or trace left behind, however temporary, along the surface of the sieve where the water hit it, and that is where I came into contact with an experience head on, looking straight at it as it touched me before carrying on its way through.

I try not to hold onto any powerful experience or emotion running through me, whether it be beautiful, terrifying, hopeful, sad etc. Of course I try to feel it fully in the moment, and savour it in real-time, not file it away to be unpacked and perused over another day. I try to be 100% present. Right here. Right now. 

Looking long-term, I’d rather focus on what kind of residual mozaic will be left upon my soul after being touched by so many different hues of experience, and having some sort of overall shape or form in mind today as I go forward. A life-time piece of internal art which many people hope to only complete when they know they are experiencing their final hours, comfortable and wanting for nothing, surrounded by all the people that love them.

Seeing myself as a sieve I think was a strategy I had to adopt because I feel things too much. I needed a way to carry on feeling the essence of things but not have to block out those things that were too painful or too beautiful for me to contain. 

Holding onto things, even amazing things, trying to preserve them inside me forever always becomes too much, and something eventually gives way because I’m not allowing whatever it is, to carry on its way. And so the concentration inside increases as I harbour the experience/emotion against its will, and at some point  it will become toxic to me.

Asperger's Syndrome and the Importance of Expressing Oneself Honestly

I had a really interesting conversation with a group of people who have Asperger's syndrome about whether or not they found it easier to express themselves online. Several of the comments caused me to think about how many of the obstacles they face mirror those of people who don't have Asperger's, but the ways in which both groups handled these obstacles differed.

When you communicate in writing, you basically are posting something which contains past, present and future. As people with ASD tend to gravitate towards others with similar interests to their own, if they're reading a post which is long and they get to a boring bit they can easily skip to the next interesting part. A bit like taking a remote control out and pressing the fast forward button at someone rambling on about their passion for drainpipe design in real life

One person recalled that they were always the only person in class that would put up their hand if they knew the answer. To them it seemed like "everyone else was too scared to contribute anything to the discussion". Often in lectures at Uni, I watch the lecturer ask basic questions to check whether the students are up to speed on the essential elements of a subject and be met by a hundred blank faces staring back at them.

Often in the real world people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will struggle to respond immediately or need a bit more time to respond so they can gather their thoughts. Being online means that they can take as much time as they need to say precisely what they want to say.

Things got really interesting when on the topic of expressing yourself honestly a person wrote "Without the social programming, I don't think we are as aware of societal pressures. Being partially mind-blind also helps with not knowing or caring as much about what people think.

It's kind of like how humans aren't embarrassed or hyper-aware of themselves around their pets. When there is nothing in your brain that "connects" you to a certain species you feel free to do as you please (not in a bad way). It's like how you can still care what your pet thinks, but also not care. You certainly don't care if your pet thinks you look fat or if he questions your career choice. That's what it's like to have ASD, for me at least."

Another person said "I am the opposite of mind speaking because I don't get exhausted, I just get mad at myself and feel like a coward for not speaking up and I feel dishonest. I also refuse to have opinions about things I care nothing about and I don't have opinions on lots of things so people won't really get an honest answer out of me because I don't care. I don't care what you have on or what you have on your head so I won't really have an opinion about it if nothing is on my mind about it. You just catch me off guard if you ask "What do you think of my hat/outfit?" and my automatic answer is "I don't know.""

Other people were more direct: "I say what I want when I want to. I'm a good person so if I step on someone's toes I assume they will give me the courtesy to explain myself. If not, fuck em."

The most intriguing response for me was by someone who almost saw their Asperger's as a gift, bestowed upon them in order to help them thrive in the new world that is rapidly being created around us:

"I know I am fairly alone in this camp but, not only do I not believe that ASD is any kind of error or aberration to the progress or evolution of human-beings, but I also believe it is occurring for many reasons to point us towards greater advancement.

Regardless of how easy or difficult it is for someone to accept their own nature, transcend a lot of the outdated social norms or ways of thinking and being, I believe those with ASD have specifically chosen to be born in a way where any deviation from authenticity will be acutely felt. They will not be able to lie to themselves or others about who they are, what they think, feel or want.. without experiencing tremendous awareness of this falsity, and it is in this awareness, this driving force to honor themselves, that a lot of anxiety, depression and suffering is born.

Point being, neurotypical and neurodivergent people can both suffer from the sometimes crushing presence of external expectations and standards, but the neurodivergent are coming forward in large number, as a large conscious energy, to move beyond it, to complete a paradigm shift."