Losing, all types of failing at stuff, like rushing around out of Fear, is actually a habit. Its a habit caused by an underlying, often repressed emotion, a mind state, that you cannot bear, so you bury it, cover it, hide it from yourself, which is probably the worst thing you can do..
But losing is not caused by Fear, even endemic low level fear, losing is caused by Sorrow, by hopelessness, by ‘despair’, another Latin into French word that literally means ‘no spirit’, more correctly a lack of ‘your’ consciousness of spirit. See, when you do things in the Spirit of Sorrow or Despair, however unconsciously, you are actually asking to fail, demanding it, expecting it.. You WANT to fail, you want more of the same feeling..
This post is the 2nd of a set of 3, of the big blind spots as Key Lessons that gifted folks have in life that should be dug out and dealt with. Fear we have done, as fear is the worst one in daily life, its constant if weaker, but sorrow is almost as bad, hitting with less frequency but often much harder. The last one I will do later is speech, your indifferent, uncontrolled, unwanted gossipy and pointless chat, which like fear is more of a constant problem, but unlike fear can be the ultimate in self sabotage as you don’t tend to know you are doing it, even at the time. In case its not obvious, these 3 blind spots are here this early as they are the ones that hate any attempt at spiritual progression the most, and will actively attack anything you do in that vein, because they know it will be the death of them. So don’t be sad if they act up, as you are clearly doing something right..
Key Lesson: Once the habit of losing gets into you, you become a victim, one of the most dangerous EGO mind states there is, a victim of despair. Despair kills 800,000 or so people a year on this planet, by their own hand – rich or poor, healthy or sick, clever or stupid, beautiful or ugly. And its a particular problem for the unschooled Gifted of this world. Know this, whatever sorrow or regret or despair you have inside you must be unearthed and brought out into the light, cause it has to go, its spiritual Cancer. But it don’t have to be that way.
Along with Fear driven rushing, this is one of the worse blind spots you can have, cause you ‘accept’ it as part of life, as part of life’s judgement of you – you are a failure… But it is not, indeed its part and parcel of the whole ‘your mind state fucks you if you let it’ thing. Sorrow paralyses you, stops you, removes your enthusiasm, your spirit, your energy for life better than just about anything. Despair is a pit, a deep, empty hole where nothing matters anymore..
Now, Sorrow, like Fear is a thing in itself, and a thing that builds over time, feeds off you, controls you, acts against you, fools you through your EGO. But sorrow is different to Fear, sorrow hides, deep inside you, and waits for its cue, waits to punch you in the face big style, sorrow has no interest in just nipping constantly at your heels, sorrow is all about the big picture, the important moments of your life, the stuff you really want. That is how sorrow gets its jollies, about really hurting you, particularly undermining your opinion of yourself, showing you what a loser you are.. So you start to believe it. Sorrow is a bad, heartless bastard, and there is no reasoning with it, no challenging it, pushing it slowly back into its cage, Sorrow has to be broken on the wheel, totally and without mercy, every time it sticks it ugly ass medusa head up…
Be clear on this – the ‘spirit’, your actual unconscious mind state you do anything in is WAY more important that what you actually do, as that is the message you are sending out to the universe when you do it, the emotion you attach to it actually IS the message you send, actually is what you do. I know this is close to the current new age fad of imagining your wish fulfilled for the ‘positive thinking’ brigade, but its really not about that. On the left hand path we call that Mind Magic, and I’ll do a separate post on it later, as plenty of folks have asked, for now know that real positive thinking is a form of magic, a form of necromancy, of asking ‘spirit’ for help, pure and simple… Yep, you are doing it wrong.
No, this is about your unconscious mind state, and how it shows itself, so like Fear, it IS about the spirit you actually do things ‘in’, you are just NOT AWARE OF IT and you cannot wish that away, imagine it away, its a shit stain on your soul that don’t rinse out that easy, hell you have probably been working on it for a while. Indeed, unlike Fear which can be faced directly and used to build your Willpower, your ZHI, (you can ‘feel the Fear and do it anyway’), you CANNOT face sorrow directly. That will just make it worse, it has to be done by using the cure for sorrow, the antidote, the spiritual detergent, based on your quality of you consciousness of spirit. If you ‘feel the sorrow and do it anyway’ then you are properly knackered, it will get worse, much more quickly, as many have found to their cost..
And it gets worse.. see sorrow is not just an annoying self created demon, always lurking around to see what you are doing, see if its important enough to bother with, another opportunity to remind you what a fecking loser you are. No, sorrow is a Curse, an actual curse, sorrow contaminates others, people around you, people you love or hate the most – you literally project it onto them. Believe it or not the most ancient of all curses, those found cut as Runes onto stones often wish people Sorrow, rather than death, for this very reason, because sorrow is often, foolishly, used as a very effective weapon, as its way easier that killing folks. But that’s another story.
‘So what the hell does that mean’ you ask.. so, lets work it up for you, this is more complex than Fear, so pay ‘attention’…
The opposite of sorrow is NOT Happiness its Courage or Conviction, powered by the strength of your Enthusiasm. Both of these come from your ‘lower’ self, your PO soul, and are consequently much deeper in you that Fear, for example. Now you cannot generate either of those directly, so you need to generate them from their sources of ‘feeling’, which for Courage is the feeling of Victory, Winning and for Enthusiasm is the feeling of Air in your lungs, Breath, specifically the energy in breath. Yep, suspend your disbelief, this is the left hand path, we use hard core Daoism for our versions of emotional transformation..
These are the 2 things you need to generate in yourself, AFTER you have purposely brought Sorrow to the surface, ready to stab it in the face with a gleam in your eye.. Oh, yes, sorry, forgot to say, when dealing with sorrow, particularly anything with even a tinge of depression, like grief or despair, it helps to get MAD. See Sorrow is a VERY low level energy state, the next one down is literally death. So in order to do ANYTHING against sorrow, you need to temporarily lift your energy a few notches, and Anger is the very best way to do that, something along the lines of ‘this is not fair, I’ve done nothing to deserve this’ is fine, the content don’t matter so use what you like to give you that spurt of energy. And yes I will do a post on the energy states of various emotions later, seems like you all wanna jump ahead a bit.
So then you need to do some prep, you need to be ready. First find something you KNOW you can do, ‘win’ at, and do well as a challenge. Simple as you like, but it must involve a tussle of ‘Wills’, of your will against something else’s, preferably a person or animal. Then, make that thing do what you want, as a ‘I want this now’ type deal, (there must be some basic level of resistance), then remember the sensation, cause that is what Victory, and hence conviction feels like against others, at a low level. I’m saying you need to manufacture a win against someone, and remember the feeling. Then move on, fast. As a last resort you can use a retail experience or some other form of purchase scenario, they won’t care, as many older people, when they get close to the end, become ‘difficult’ – they do this naturally. But do, please try and have some ‘class’..
Separately you need to practise a simple deep breathing exercise, so take 10 deep breaths in and out quickly, 3sec in, 3secs out, hard as you can, count to 6, 1-3 inhale, 4-6 exhale, and repeat x10, don’t pause in the middle. I mean fast and hard, focus on lifting your chest, NOT pushing your belly out. This is the fastest way to get energised with spirit temporarily, its a primitive form of Heart Washing, as the Daoist’s call it, as that is what you are trying to achieve, but I will teach you the proper way to ‘fire breathe’ later, should you want to burn it out good and proper, and sweat a good bit too.
Now the advice is in 2 parts:
- If sorrow about a current thing comes over you in the moment, get mad and reject it immediately, dwell on it, feel it and then tell it to fuck right off. Remember the sense of victory from above whilst breathing deeply and forcefully until the feeling of sorrow passes, you don’t repress it, it PASSESS.
- If sorrow is something sitting there, from long ago, as a form of depression, and you want to work on it, then find a quiet, bright space, alone and secure, and think back to anything that caused you major sorrow, as far back as you can go – you want the roots of this bad boy, not its head. Then dwell on it, make it feel bad in your chest, remember it clearly, the pain, the suffering for as long as you can stand, knowing that is all ancient history and does not, in itself, matter now, which you keep in the back of your mind. After a while you will start to wonder why you feel this way even now, given its long ago and far away, and that’s what you want. Then pull up the sense of victory, do the breathing, then move on fast. Literally snap out of it, straight away, on command, it should be easy, but remember it needs to PASS, you DO NOT REPLACE IT with a distraction.
And that’s it.. Sorry, but just for my own amusement, have you ever noticed yourself do this exact same thing naturally, particularly when you were younger..?
Anyway, last couple of bits before I finish. Much as a sense of victory is the best way to banish sorrow, many unschooled gifted, particularly the high libido types, (who feel their emotions very strongly) do something else – they use ‘attention’, the spiritual power of other folks attention on them, to give them a quick boost of spirit, particularly with big sorrow, with strong sense of grief as children. Don’t, it does not fix the problem. It just covers it for a few moments, indeed it tends to make you much worse, as it attaches this freak show style of behaviour to the sorrow, and they start to go together, in a very real sense, you get a double whammy of crap. This is hard to fix, once it becomes second nature, your go to method for dealing with despair, but the advice is the same as above, just way more of it – do the 2nd part of the above once a day if able.
The other classic variant of this for spiritual types is what a lot of the much weaker sensitive do, they become addicted to highly controlling behaviours, that constant sense of low level victory. Now, I’m not suggesting you turn into some controlling monster just to be able to cope with your sorrow (much as you would be surprised at how many unschooled, powerless but very sensitive types do go that way..). No, you use this sparingly, and if possible with people who understand you have a ‘problem’, so they can at least forgive you. Indeed it will help ‘you’ keep it to a minimum to know they in some way ‘pity’ you, but are strong enough to help when needed..
However, with this one I HAVE to read you the warning label again… Now it is kinda ironic that weaker spiritual types tend to want ‘to control’ others to feel better, and the stronger ones tend to want to ‘be controlled’. But… to be clear, if you have turned to constant abuse of drink, drugs, self harm, violence against yourself or others, or any type of extreme, creepy or dangerous attention seeking behaviour to cope with depression, you need to go to the doctor. NOW. This blog is not intended to help people who have got into real trouble, as it is way too complex to do like this, I would have to know you, and I don’t. I am truly sorry for you, but please get some help, maybe even consider the Right Hand path, as that is what it is there for. Ask for help, for spiritual comfort, as anything is better than doing nothing.
To finish up, start to deal with your sorrow and I promise your luck, as you currently see it, will change. If you have slipped into worse behaviours in order to cope I’m happy to chat to you privately, should you wish too. Know this in the meantime – sorrow, unlike fear will NOT go away through lack of ‘use’, sorrow will wait your whole life to fuck you again if it has too, so it has to be ‘cured’. The reason I mention this is that, as we all know, there is a stigma associated with Sorrow, even in the spiritual types of the world – we associate it with weakness, mental weakness, which means you are a victim. I know people on every type of path you can imagine, genuinely gifted folks often doing it to the max, from hardcore East Asian Ascetism to fully paid up members of Opus Dei, and trust me even the most destitute hermit, living on a rock off the west coast of Ireland looks down on the depressed, because all you are ever trying to do with spirituality is feel a bit better.
Don’t hate this ‘pity’ from folks like us, its an enhanced part of our natural revulsion for death, in any form, use it.., use it to spur yourself on, and know what an amazing life waits for you on the other side of your sorrow. So discover and get used to, (or get over any natural or bred out dislike), of the ‘Sense of Victory’ as quick as you can, it is closely allied to the sense of ‘Power over yourself’ and done together leads to the sense of ‘Victory over yourself’. This is the daddy of all spiritual characters, it leads to what some on this path call the ‘Grand Style’ of character.. a feeling you may have glimpsed when you were totally comfortable in some simple, routine, solitary job once, where you no longer have to plan, to try, to even think about it. Your courage increases to such a degree that life is so easy, you can frankly handle anything in the moment with out giving it a second thought…
Quote to end as always.. from the man himself, the man who saw what winning actually means and craved it all his life, so I’ve picked a personal favourite from his many, MANY examples…
‘The grand style arises when beauty wins a victory over the monstrous.’ – Friedrich Nietzsche
Laters..
TOB
