Day 40: I Can't Watch This - Part 4

Here I continue Self-Forgiveness statements for
Day 37: I Can't Watch This
Day 38: I Can't Watch This - Part 2
Day 39: I Can't Watch This - Part 3

ART by Andrew Gable

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself show myself a picture of myself as a very young child swinging a black cat around by it's tail until it died. Within this picture, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see this picture as an outsider and/or observer where I am watching a scene of a me-child with soft, curly baby-hair in a diaper.  When and as when I place myself inside myself as a child, I experience nothing - no emotions, no fears, no cares - and the actual act of swinging the cat by it's tail was 'something to do' in that moment - I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to know, with 100% certainty, if I in-fact anticipated that the cat would die or not as I have allowed myself to become my consciousness and separated myself from myself to such a degree that I do not trust my memories prior to starting kindergarten at age 5.  Within this realization of where I am at the moment when I look back to myself at the age of 3 or 4 when I killed that cat, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see myself as not caring if I removed a life.  I forgive myself that I see myself as a person that does not care nor do I have to care because who I was at 3 or 4 was my 'natural state of being' and thus have given myself permission to be a person that is going to do what I want REGARDLESS of the consequences.

Because of this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give myself permission to do what I want, regardless of the seen and/or justifiable unseen consequences because I can use this memory of myself as an excuse of 'it's who I am/it's my TRUE nature' to do whatever I want to myself and other living and breathing beings/creatures because it is what interests me in the moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the excuse of 'she didn't know any better' where I accepted myself as not 'knowing any better' because within that, I saw that I was free from blame.  What I did not see what was going on is that even though I was TOLD that I was free from blame, I was not.  Because I questioned myself as I saw others reacting in fear, embarrassment, and mistrust - over and over again, I abused myself with blame, embarrassment, and doubt over and over and over again until I made myself 'sorry' where I was sorrowful and experienced grief and remorse for what I had done to prove to myself and the world that I was 'a good girl, -really-'.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to express myself as a Sorry-Good-Girl-FOR REAL as a means to make the pain of guilt, remorse, and embarrassment to GO AWAY.  Even though I have said I AM SORRY over and over and over again to absolve myself from my guilt of hurting, disappointing, scaring, manipulating, lying to, and/or not seeing myself as being good, I was absolved from NOTHING.  As:

• I did not change when I said and expressed my sorry-ness.
• I continued to abuse myself with the memory of what I had done as what I saw was 'wrong'.
• I accepted what I have done as 'wrong' and abused myself with my wrongness and so I have allowed others to become the authority of me where I accept what others told me of myself as being wrong and thus allowed myself to be mentally/physically/socially/emotionally abused as a person 'in the wrong'.  I allowed myself to believe/tell myself/see myself as 'deserving it'.
• I rationalized have that my abuse of others was/is 'okay' and/or justifiable if another was in the wrong or had 'done me wrong' or 'broken the pre-determined rules'.
• I saw MYSELF as abused and thus saw myself in others that I saw as being abused as -I- had been abused and from this I judged and then became angry with back-chat - and when I expressed my anger and disappointment at another for their wrongness, I expected to see and/or hear sorry-ness and if I did not see/hear sorry-ness then I would express my anger to others where I would demand JUSTICE and thus build a jury of my peers who would assist me in the persecution of the abuser where we would decide/agree AS A GROUP whether or not to 'let it slide', 'make it hard' for the accused via the threat of exile until we determined they could be trusted again, DEMAND CHANGE, or remove them from ourselves completely.  But ... if any time the accuser came to us and expressed their utmost sorry-ness, sorrow, and remorse for their 'wrong', we accepted the abuser back ... and said, "Aww. See.  Look.  They are trying to change."  And then, "Maybe we were too hard on them ..."

What I did not see here within this pattern is how guilt and the possibility of oneself/the group being in the wrong absolves each other from actually having to change.  I also did not see how Self-Doubt sabotages any chance of change in ourselves, each other and the world which tells me that we have not allowed ourselves as a group within our agreement of the system to stand for anything with 100% certainty which indicates to me that we are all aware that this cycle/system is really messed up - however, we are trapped in it within neutrality, as 'nothing we can do about it' as 'oh well, best thing I can do is cover my own butt'.

And how did this ENTIRE CYCLE start? In that ONE MOMENT of REACTION.

Within this realization,
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself NOT to see, realize, understand, and thus apply myself as a responsible, solution-directed PARENT where in that one moment where I had the choice to 'React' or 'Do Not React', I REACTED.  Because I have seen being able to react as normal, understandable, justifiable, and MY GOD GIVEN RIGHT as a human being with emotions, feelings and pre-determined expectations of RIGHT and WRONG, I did it. I did not see how the consequences of this one moment would perpetuate a system/pattern/cycle/entrapment of myself, others in my life, humans, animals, and all other Earthlings within outrage, abuse, guilt, and complacency.   

To be continued.

Day 39: I Can't Watch This - Part 3

Here I continue writing out my 'I Can't Watch This and I Don't Have To' Character.  For context, see Day 37: I Can't Watch This, Day 38:  I Can't Watch This - Part 2, and the Earthlings documentary.



So as I've been walking this point, I saw that I was reacting to something specific about seeing the dog get thrown and then given the 'go' to be crushed in the garbage truck.  I began taking out the dog and inserting other variables and testing my reactions.  I found that if I imagined a child or any animal being thrown around then thrown in that I had the same pissed off, frustrated, and wanting to save the child or animal response.  However, when I pictured any anonymous average Joe walking down the street, my reaction wasn't as strong - not cool but neutral - I mean, I could give Joe a story of how he's got kids at home that would grow up without a daddy to get myself to react but I could reason that they still had their mom so - eh, life goes on.  What was it?  What was the variable that I was missing?  And then I saw the eyes - it's in the animals and children's eyes as a confusion, a 'what are you doing to me? I can't help who I am', an innocence.

Innocence. In-No-Sense. In No Cents?!? What has No Cents? A crazy homeless person.  I plugged that variable in and got the same animal/kid reaction.

Dictionary Definition of Innocence:

in·no·cence  (n-sns)n.

The state, quality, or virtue of being innocent, as:

a. Freedom from sin, moral wrong, or guilt through lack of knowledge of evil.

b. Guiltlessness of a specific legal crime or offense.

c. Freedom from guile, cunning, or deceit; simplicity or artlessness.

d. Lack of worldliness or sophistication; naiveté.

e. Lack of knowledge or understanding; ignorance.

f. Freedom from harmfulness; inoffensiveness.

from Latin innocentia harmlessness, from innocēns doing no harm, blameless

Looking at this dictionary definition, my reaction is validated and makes sense because if I am seeing these kids, animals, and some humans as lacking something that is required to survive on their own in this world of evil, greedy, untrustworthy, abusive exploiters and manipulators, I want to save that which I see is helpless.  And further, if I have judged the kid/creature/human as innocent, I want JUSTICE goddamn it. ROAR.

I'm a curious character which is another point all together and probably one of the many reasons that I LOVE Desteni because if I ask a question, I'm going to get an answer - the easy way or the hard way - it's entirely up to me.  So, I go for it: What am I not seeing here? What's the whole story?  If I were standing in that Go Man's shoes, what would make me not give a care about the 'innocent' look in any being's eyes?  Ahhh yes - if the being did me wrong.

And there it is.  Sure, it would take me a LONG time to get to that point and no I probably wouldn't go for the Garbage Truck crusher death but I would not put it beyond me to consider it.  

Enter GUILT as a response to the thoughts: Oh crap. There's some people that get upset about animals being hurt (like me in my 'I Can't Watch This' Character) are going to read this and become angry, confused, or have a WTF Moment. On the other hand, I'm being honest.  Seriously, we allow this bullshit every minute of every hour of every day and not for one moment do the majority of us get off of our butts and do something about it.  Like, for real, as a permanent solution. 

To be continued.

Day 38: I Can't Watch This - Part 2

Here I am sharing my walking my thoughts, emotions, feelings, reactions, memories, fears, and my 'I Can't Watch This and I Don't Have To' Character that I have created to distract myself and justify the distraction of myself from the abuses in the world.  For context, see Day 37: I Can't Watch This and the documentary Earthlings.

ART By Anna Brix Thomsen

To begin, when it was suggested to watch Earthlings, within my mind I saw and thus assumed that the documentary would be about human beings as when I see and think the word 'Earthling', it means 'Human' to me.  I expected that I would be watching a video about Adult Human Behavior or 'Humans Behaving Badly'.  This was not the case at all as the creators of this documentaries starting point is:  All that is here on this Earth is an Earthling - the animals, the plants, humans, everything - we are all equally trapped within this prison.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that an Earthling is not only myself and my fellow human beings but all that is birthed from, inhabiting and equally driven to survive on/with what is here as an Earthling on Earth.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to 'feel bad', guilty, and remorseful for allowing myself to separate myself as a Human Species from all other 'species' and that is here on Earth with me. 

Guilt.  Where does this guilt come from?  Why do I feel bad for the animals, specifically?  Why do I feel like a bad person for allowing the exploitation and abuse of animals? Why is it that I feel so badly within myself that I tell myself that 'I can't deal with this ... I can't look at this ...I cannot live nor survive out my day with these pictures of abuse and killing of animals in my mind ... I have to take a breath, forget about it, and move on with my day so that no one can see that I have become seriously fucked up and upset about this ...  I cannot force my guilt, sadness, and grief on another so I'm going to walk away and pretend that it never happened ... I'm not going to talk about this and risk having another be as messed up and confused as I am about this right now...'?

Trust.  I do not trust that my fellow human beings will be able to handle seeing what we have accepted and allowed as a race.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see and realize that I do not trust myself to be able to handle seeing the abuse that I have accepted and allowed to exist in this world.  I have not seen that I do not trust myself to remain stable in breath without reacting or 'doing something stupid' like abusing/hurting/harming myself with abusive and judgmental thoughts and/or actions. Within this, I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see that I have manifested my fear of not trusting myself where what I was protecting myself from as abusive thoughts/actions/reactions actually became me as guilt, remorse, sadness, and physical discomfort.

Within my relationship with animals, specifically, where in my life experiences did I become guilty, remorseful, saddened and distrustful?  Where in my life experiences/memories with animals do I see that guilt, remorse, sadness, and distrust were not a consideration/did not exist within me?

Throughout my life, I have been told a story of when I was a very young and how I had killed a cat by swinging it around by it's tail.  I was told that I 'didn't know any better' but at that point, it is said that I could not be trusted with animals because there was fear that I would kill them.  As I got a bit older I wanted a cat or an animal companion and I was told 'no'. I would often hear how I killed a cat.  Even though it would be laughed off, I heard shame and embarrassment under/within the laughter.

How did I forget that as a child I struggled because someone was looking to find any clue of themselves in me and could not find the likeness to themselves.  To me, it seemed like I should have been more like others and when I was not, I saw that they were disappointed.   What was wrong with me?   I wanted more than ANYTHING to be accepted and get physical attention and I wanted to change to make us happy and content together but no matter how much I tried, it never got better - it got much, much worse.

I said that I would be good.  And the consequences of me not being good were scary.  I was told over and over and over again that all I needed to do was say I am sorry but this was difficult for me as I never experienced being sorry for anything that I had done until much later in my young life when I learned that bad people did not feel remorse, guilt, sorriness or badness for what they done to others and that good people are sorry, remorseful, and honestly admit their guilt and thus seen as trying to reform.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to tell myself that I am a bad person and that I was a bad child because I killed a cat.   I have not allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that when I was a child I did not see myself as a 'bad person' but instead, I saved the memories of myself acting impulsively/harming animals without consideration/thought from which to become a good person as an adult that would not harm another animal again by reminding myself over and over again that I am guilty of abuse of animals and thus experience shame, remorse, and disappointment with myself.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see and realize myself as equal to others as I look for myself as a Good Person in others.   When I watched those beings throwing a dog into the trash crusher, I was shocked, disappointed, angry, and experienced remorse and sorriness for the dog as an innocent victim of humans - this is precisely how I have allowed myself to be taught to react.  And as the Good Person illusion that I have projected to others and thus manipulate myself to believe that I am from fear of the consequences of being a Bad Person, I placed myself in direct conflict with myself and became the 'I Cant Watch This and I Don't Have To' Character where I remove my physical body from a situation that I do not want to see, pace as I struggle with conflicting thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories within myself of myself and who I tell myself I should be, and then go into a fuzzy-zombie-sad-trying-to-be-happy state/expression of my mind-job of myself.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to be honest with myself so that I could see the truth of who I am as what I was before I formed conscious thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories.  I was nothing.  I was here.  Nothing here was better, worse, more deserving, less deserving, nor any other definition of anything.  We are here or we are not.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realize, and be honest with myself that I fear who I am without my thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories that 'keep me in check' and keep me walking a straight, good, and acceptable path because if it weren't for my reactions to my memories and my conflicting thoughts, I fear that I would become a killer and abuser.  Within this, I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see and realize that my fearing myself as an abuser and killer has changed nothing aside placing myself within a bubble of denial - I am killer and from fear, I have become an abuser. All humans are in agreement with this denial of the truth of ourselves, the killing, the fear, and the abuse and so we are equally in agreement that we are to remain imprisoned here until we have reformed and can show time-and-time again that we have become what's best for life.  This is how our system works.  We've created it, supported it, accepted it, allowed it, and thus we Earthlings must be the one's to change it.

To be continued.

ART By Ann Van den Broeck

Day 37: I Can't Watch This

 

I was chatting with Anna Brix Thomsen this morning and we were discussing 'animal production facilities'.  I did not realize the extent of these facilities - how big they are and how many of them exist.  I also did not realize that these facilities are where the majority of our meat that we eat comes from as I live in an area of the United States that has been mostly cut off from the rest of the world, there are many beings that still farm here in rural areas, and I wanted very much to believe that these cows, pigs and chickens that I am eating had a good, happy life before they died.


So, this was a eye-opener for me.  It -should- have been obvious that the majority of the meat that I consume is from/of living, breathing creatures that never see a pasture, a patch of grass, or experience the feel of a gentle breeze against their flesh ... obvious because there are very few actual working farms and farmers.  Myself, I was raised to believe that farming was hard, painful, and non-profitable work - why would anyone accept the hard life of farming if they did not have to?  There was someone else out there somewhere that would raise all happy farm animals for me to eat and not only were they really good at it, they were also content doing it! Go me! Within my imagination, it was a win-win scenario.


Anna suggested that I watch the documentary 'Earthlings'.

At 17:28 minutes out of 1:23:22, I had to stop watching. I stopped the documentary, shot up from my seat, walked out the room and began to pace.  Within me I said, "I can't watch this ..."  I soothed myself by telling myself that I 'don't have to watch this'.

I realize that this soothing of myself by telling myself that I 'can not' and 'do not have to' watch this is me trying to get away and not take responsibility for a reaction. And where I am reacting, I see that I have investigate.  Another concern is that I left the room and became very uncomfortable with myself and myself in my physical body - there's something within what I was seeing at that moment about myself that scared me to an adrenaline-survival point.

 The image is still burned into my mind:

A dog is thrown under a garbage crushing truck that is leaking liquid -- I thought,   "Okay, okay.  The dog is going to be okay.  He's just under the truck and there's some sort of nasty stuff dripping on him.  They're not going to put him in there ..."  In the next moment, from a visual cue to 'go' from a man standing off to the side, another man throws the dog into the back of the garbage truck and they turn on the crusher...

This is where I stopped the documentary and experienced/directed myself with my 'I Can't Watch This' Character.

I'll be sharing self-forgiveness in my next blog.

Day 36: You, Sir ... are an asshole - Part 2

Art By Marlen Vargas Del Razo

Self-Forgiveness, Self-Correction, and Self-Commitment Statements from Day 35: You, Sir ... are an asshole


I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to 'point a finger' of blame toward/at others outside of myself.  I have seen myself pointing my finger of blame at others but have not wanted to be honest with myself because I have not wanted to take responsibility for myself, my judgements, and my fears as I see/saw it as 'easier' to abuse an other, mind-job an other and expect another to take responsibility for themselves rather than to stand and direct myself.

Within this, I forgive myself that haven't accepted and allowed myself to realize the extent and harshness of/from which I have been abusing and mind-fucking myself with judgements and blame.  As I have separated myself from others and not brought anything outside of my physical body back to my myself, I have not given myself the opportunity to see the consequences of my actions/reactions because I have been in my mind where I drive myself to manifest my self-interests.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as my mind to create an 'uncomfortable' sensation within my physical body when I am faced with the truth of myself with myself and/or an other.  Instead of committing myself to standing where I face my messes, take responsibility for myself, and directly change my patterns, I re-treat into my mind where I can recall and then express all of the information and memories that I have collected but have not walked nor become clear within myself.

I commit myself to take responsibility for myself and direct myself.  I commit myself to stand as a living example of this written and spoken commitment.

I commit myself to stop the conflict, abuse, judgement, and blame within and as myself.  I commit myself to investigate all points by bringing all that I have separated from myself back to myself.  I commit myself to direct myself to solutions that are in the best interest of all and that all can agree to and within this, I commit myself to becoming the solution and thus commit myself to no longer compromising myself or others.


When and as I see and/or hear myself pointing a finger of blame at an other, I stop.  I breath.  I see, realize, and understand that I am reacting to a point that I have not yet become equal and one as myself with.  From here, I see these reactions as a gift of myself that must be brought back into/as myself gently without judgement, blame, and/or unreal expectations of myself  - thus, I move and direct myself to self-forgive myself for all of my reactions so that I can clear myself, free myself, change myself, and trust myself to stand as/for equality, oneness, and actual living.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a personality that I can become that myself and others will accept and allow because of the polarity expression within the  character as my mind and my physical body where I am communicating/expressing both the positive and negative of myself and others as the 'You, Sir ... Are An Asshole' Character where: YOU, is the calling out of another to blame/judge/expect change, SIR is a patronizing/dishonest/manipulation of a word I've defined as how one communicates respect and ARE AN ASSHOLE as defined and expressed by myself would place another as a HUGE JERK.  Within this conflicted/polarity expression of words/communication, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to physically express a cocky smile and an injection of charisma as a means to get away within/as not having to take responsibility for my words, actions, and reactions.

Within this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself for using the 'You, Sir ... Are An Asshole' Character and thus experience remorse and guilt where I tell myself that I have hurt and fucked with another and thus am 'unworthy' because I KNOW better.  And within this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to tell myself as the opposite that 'HEY! I -do- know better ... I know sooooooooo much more than the other person and thus my actions are completely justifiable/understandable!"  And within that, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to then tell myself who I am as the neutral version of myself when I say within myself, "Oh well. Whatever.  I screwed up. We all do.  You live and you learn.  You move on to try again another day ..."

Because this 'You, Sir ... are an asshole' Character is an expression of polarity, an abdication of myself, a compromise of myself, a lie and an abuse of life,

I commit myself to not ever using/assuming the role of the 'You, Sir ... are an asshole' Character to blame, judge, and/or express points that I have not walked myself to/as others.

When and as I see my 'You, Sir ... Are An Asshole' Character come up within me, I stop.  I breath.  I remove myself from the person/event/experience and investigate myself - I see, realize and understand that if this character is coming to the surface of myself that I am already in survival mode and thus remove myself in that moment before I compromise myself/another and within this, I slow myself and self-forgive myself to see where I have not been effective and self-correct.