Thursday, August 9, 2012

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

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