He's A Hippie (And Some Other Cool Stuff Too)

Ocean Lover. Recovering corporate climber embracing his hippie self. Energy healer, psychic, musician, writer, devoted family man. 

[hippieman7096]

14 Months...and a day

Dear diary. OMG where to begin. I came up on the end of last year and knew I was sinking. It was getting progressively harder to stay conscious. Now here I am November 18, 2020 and so much has happened. The "virus" hit in March. I haven't been in the office for longer than two consecutive days since. Hard to tell which way is up. We moved into a new house. Daughter is in the middle of senior year, not in the school building. We're coming up on making some decisions about what college she will be attending in the fall. Almost 18 years later and here we are on the cusp of sending her out into the world.

TBH I just don't have any answers at this point. I'm stuck in my house. I feel like I'm imploding. Hard to even describe what it feels like. Life is not as bad as it was a few years ago financially. The challenges are different but of the same caliber. Not sure what else to say rn. More to follow.

[hippieman7096]

12 Months...and a day

On September 17, 2018 I went back on the grid. For the first 6 to 8 months I was very conscious of my own sobriety from the dysfunction of the construct and the way I learned to operate within it. I just passed 12 months back on the grid a few weeks ago and it's been getting progressively more difficult to stay balanced. The pressures of the machine set in on me. The constant grinder that life became before I was taken off the grid and stripped of my identity has started to assert itself. I'm tired. I'm starting to get sucked in by the drama at work. I'm starting to react to it. We're working on buying a house. There's all the pressure to maintain the shit I'm gathering around me, all of these possessions, this self-fulfilling prophecy of doom constantly worrying about hanging on to it all. It becomes the master and I the slave. I feel like I can see it now. I'm aware of how fucked it all is, this system. It can suck the life out of a person trying to sustain the identity and all the shit that comes with it.

I'll be honest, not only do I see it I now know with certainty that I don't want it. It's not worth it any more now than it was before I was able to see the slavery for what it is. I have no more control over his life than I did 18 months ago when we didn't know where our next meals were coming from. You either release control and submit to life or fight with it and let it eat you alive. I'm not interested.

[hippieman7096]

Finally I Am There

I don't know when it started but at some point in my life things got out of control. I wasn't good enough and acceptable to those that were supposed to be there to support me. My existence became about satisfying them and fulfilling their wants and expectations not about fulfilling myself and realizing who I am and what I want.

When I started working this experience translated into me existing for my job and to satisfy the company and the people within it. My existence became about making sure I did what they wanted me to do so I could be acceptable to them and they'd give me a paycheck in return so I could live.

I spoke yesterday about how I've finally stopped the cycle. I've finally recognized that I cannot satisfy the requirement. I can't jump through their hoops anymore and do their song and dance for money. In this sense the support my extended family has given us to keep us housed, fed and afloat has served the purpose of forcing me to reach a point where I would finally give up trying and let go of the need to constantly work my ass off and kill myself trying to satisfy the expectation that I work and work and work myself to death for this system.

For the first time in my life I can face the fact that I am a complete and utter failure at trying to satisfy the desperate need I created all those years ago to be accepted and good enough so I could be loved.

I sit here today with no direction. I voluntarily chose to stop searching for employment even though that choice is completely unacceptable when judged against the circumstances which are dire at best. I chose to stop killing myself trying to be good enough so I could get a job and save myself and my family from doom. I chose to not be at cause in my own safety, security and acceptance.

It's liberating being here. I have potential. I have ideas. I can set a goal to run a 5K or I can finally write that book I've been thinking about or I can finally write that album I've been thinking about all these years.

I'm able to accept myself for this. I am able to say that who I am is not contingent on whether of not I can support myself right now. I am not good enough but I am ok with that. I don't exist solely to satisfy that endless need to be accepted and loved. It feels good being here.

[hippieman7096]

So it's been 15.5 months now without finding a job. I've gone through phases with this. It has been very much like the stages in the grieving process:

I find myself now landing somewhere in the last four at any given time with an occasional visit to number three. To say I'm worn out and frustrated would be an understatement. I have literally exhausted every avenue I could think of to no avail. At this point I believe you could say I've reached the point where I no longer have the capacity to keep going around the same circle over and over again.

Look, the truth is what is and has been happening to me for the last 15+ months is outside of the confines of the unemployed and struggling storyline. A spirit came into my life and decided it was time to strip me bare in order to make me what I need to be for a higher purpose. I sit here and fret and freak out and do everything in my power to try and logic/negotiate my way out of it and there is no conclusion. There is just more brick wall and me running into it.

I have finally reached a point where I am ready to accept that 1) I can't make this stop by any overt action I take, 2) I can't keep beating my head against the wall going to interviews and sending out applications over and over again and expect the situation to resolve, 3) I must submit to whatever outcome occurs here, 4) I must allow whatever spirit force exists out there to intervene and take care of this.

Now understand I hate religion and the way I am talking sounds a whole lot like the whole "give it over to 'god' speech and I guess in a way it is that. At this point I can't save myself and I need whatever force there is that sponsors my existence be it a higher power or my higher self or whatever to help me find my way through not only this but the rest of my life. I guess you could call it my coming to terms moment where I give up control completely and allow the universe and the situation to run their course.

I have set down my guns and walked away. I have given up the fight. I am living day to day and stopping the negotiating and bargaining trying to find my way out on my own.

I am fully in the hands of the unseen and I am better for it of this I am certain.

[hippieman7096]

The Spirit That Took You

As of tomorrow I will have been out of work and non-self sustaining for 13.5 months. As each day passes I give up a little bit more of the connection I have to the system and the belief I have that being a part of it and “productive” within it will result in my life having any kind of meaning at all.

Each day I’ve been out of work I’ve sat here and felt guilty. I’ve felt like a failure and a bad person because I am unable to care for myself financially. I have hung it on myself like a millstone and thrown myself into the ocean of self-doubt and depression and sunk to the bottom.

It’s dark and cold down in the depths of that sea so I try harder to swim upward hoping the chain will break and I will be able to escape. It doesn’t happen. I just stay there.

But I do have a new perspective on life after what I’ve been through. The fact of the matter is I have a choice. I can choose to evaluate myself and my circumstances and focus on the negative aspects of it or I can move into acceptance, offer what I have to change it and let it go.

Truth be told, the latter is the hardest thing for me to do. It’s hard to let it go when you feel like you’re the only one who’s trying to change the situation. There then is another fault in my thinking, believing I am alone in this and believing that I’m the only one who can help it.

I was watching a movie yesterday and an inquiry was made as to whether one of the characters believed in god. As I thought about that question I realized that to exist on this plane one must believe in something. To simply float out here with no belief in anything supporting us seems non-functional.

Something else does make this thing run I can tell you I believe that. I sort of feel like it’s a matter of coming to terms with that and accepting that there is something else out there running things and I’m simply along for the ride as it does so. My evidence is the literal years of effort I have put into forwarding myself and my life using my own abilities and finding no resolution.

At some point I must step back and acknowledge that I am not in charge. Sure I have free choice but that does not mean I decide the entirety of the design of what shapes around me after I make a choice. If I did my entire life would instantly be aligned with what I want.

There is a degree of freedom in this perspective. If I am willing and able to let go of the belief that I am in control of the outcomes then I can put in the efforts required to live my life and make the choices necessary when such is required but between those things in the grey areas I’m just living my life with no expectations and no demands on myself or my life to be anything other than what it is.

I have been receiving help from family during this episode of unemployment. The family member giving the help is not comfortable with the situation. He’s old and has a particular perspective on the world. When it comes to unemployment and dealing with what I’m dealing with he is not accepting.

His perspective is you should do whatever you have to do to survive, even if that means take less pay, shortchange yourself and live in squalor until things improve. This is a perspective shared by most people. It’s the “responsibility” lecture and if you don’t fit the profile you’re a loser, end of story.

Were it just me in the mix I believe he would likely tell me to go live on the street. His view would be that I am “lazy” and unwilling to work and thus deserve to have nothing because you have to work and you have to accept what you get without questions. We all have to live regardless.

That fact says a lot about the realities of how nearly impossible it is to let go in this world. There is this judgement around not taking whatever I can get and even though I have literally thrown everything I have at fixing the situation to include applying for plenty of “lesser” jobs in an effort to meet the definition of “responsible” and self-sustaining it doesn’t matter.

Whatever drives this machine we call life wants me here in this position. I can tell you that because I’ve watched as I’ve had opportunities literally right at the doorstep simply disappear into thin air. The employer expresses an interest, they tell me they’ll call me back with an offer or they tell me to be at a certain place to go through a final interview and then NOTHING happens.

It’s actually very eerie how everything simply goes dead every single time I try. I can tell you if you’re not in it and experiencing it you wouldn’t be able to understand. When the spirit comes for you to destroy your identity and take your life away there is no discussion and there is no “productive” or “responsible” there is only acceptance and if you can’t do that then you will simply sink because there’s no other option.

You simply accept that you’re dead and exist until the spirit that took your life decides to revive you.

[hippieman7096]

Something Is Missing

There's something missing. You can't put your finger on what it is but regardless of where you are, what you are doing or your life circumstance you never feel at peace or in balance. The ticking of the clock in your head is just a little bit off. The fear is always just under the surface. There's no context. No one is there to explain to you what is happening and why things are off. No one is reassuring you that what you're experiencing is a part of a larger process. Everything is just a half a nanosecond incorrect and you can never correct it as hard as you try.

[hippieman7096]

In This Moment

The dull ache of the dead man walking the construct alone. No future, no past only here now in this moment.

[hippieman7096]

When I was 25 I went through the breakup of a 3 year relationship. I didn't love the girl really. When I met her I was in love with someone else. I got involved with her because I had a hole in my life the size of Kansas and needed somebody to fill it and this poor girl came along at just the right time. I had reached a point with the other girl I was really in love with where I knew it wasn't going to happen. I didn't want to be alone so off I went with a fill-in flame and no fucking clue what I was doing. In my own defense I did try to beak it off with fill-in. It got ugly and sad and she started to cry and I caved. Let me tell you, pity is not love. I found this out the hard way because three years later she fucked another man in my living room while I was away on business. It was the most bitter and violently horrible broken heart I ever had and the thing that was funny about it was I never loved her in the first place. Which then begs the question why so bitter? Well the story is as long as the sea is wide but let's just say I had a lot of issues around abandonment. I guess you could call it my Achilles heel. I don't love you but I'll be with you just so I don't have to be alone. Great strategy that gets a guy nowhere in life.

Well anyways, like I said I was heartbroken and bitter and stumbled out into the world alone and just as fucked up as I had ever been. I took to drinking. I drank so much my body started to argue with me about it which was painful but it's amazing what a guy is willing to put up with when he doesn't give a shit if he lives or dies. The hole got deeper and after I had dumped off everything that had defined me to that point as a human being a crazy thing happened. I got dumped again and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

See there are a couple of things to remember that I'll tell you now - Not The Doctor off of the album Jagged Little Pill and me believing I was healed. I'll begin with the latter. It had been about 7 months since my breakup (and at this point I'll clarify that the breakup was my sanity not the relationship). I was feeling better never mind the steady stream of hard alcohol and testosterone driven bar hopping insanity binges with my ex-divorcee best friend. I was back together, all healed up and ready to move on with my life. No better way than to hit the bars so there I was sitting there with my buddy getting hammered when the cute little waitress decides to take a liking to me. I, being bathed in alcohol and false bravado, congratulated myself as she handed me her phone number and told me to give her a call. Such a fucking hero I was.

So I called her. We went on a date. It was nice like one of those sweet moments you experience when you're 15 and you kiss a girl for the first time. That was until we got to her house and things got intimate then I pretty much came apart and started hanging on for dear life. She, of course, didn't want that as she had just come out of a breakup of her own so she sent me away politely. Before I left she told me the details of her story and how she just couldn't handle having to take care of the emotional shortcomings of another man so soon.

In the background on the stereo the song Not The Doctor off of Jagged Little Pill was playing softly.

Somehow it all made sense. I left quietly and went home and thought long and hard about who I was and what I was doing with myself and my life. I guess you could call it an Aha!moment.

I listened to that song today for the first time since those events 23 years ago. It was good to be reminded of that moment. It was good to remember that suffering and pain can produce a good outcome. I needed to.

[hippieman7096]

I can't say enough about the dissolution of any ability to exist as a human being. I put energy and effort into being visible to the outside world and nothing happens. Its like falling in an 80 foot hole in the middle of nowhere.

I have disappeared from a existence.

[hippieman7096]

Variations on a Theme

I've gone around the circle a few more times since my last posting and every time I do I can't believe I'm still here. It really has become something of a game at this point. I get up and I see what life has in store for me today. It's a crapshoot really. I mean I can try and effect it by taking some kind of overt action to point myself at getting something or going somewhere but once I do I notice that the moment passes. It's almost as if, regardless of how things manifest or come together, the actual experience was just going through motions and I could see myself doing it while it was happening and then it was over and now it's a memory only. It was just an event, a moment like you'd see in a movie, which comes and then is gone and you were watching it happen like a disassociated third party.

I believe we slide into this place as humans where we think we are in control of these things that happen, anything that happens. I'm slowly but surely getting to a place where I don't think I'm in control at all. I've been hanging onto the belief that universal control comes to here and then I take over and I'm at cause and thus I matter and I am validated through that status. I create my life through the choices that I make. This makes it my story. I don't have that in place to a very great extent at all anymore. I believe it is my calling to recognize that I have no control at all over what happens, literally none. I mean nothing. The universe is doing this thing I call my life and I'm just watching it. I literally wake up at the behest of whatever the cosmic force that drives this whole thing wants.

Now understand this IS NOT religion. Religion is a construct just like the rest of it. It's a framework of thoughts and behaviors a person can follow to define universal control. It's labels and names of actions and things and they're all figments, no more real than me or you. We're all just figments and we're making up words and thoughts to define it but not even really that because all that has ever been already was from the beginning of time which is also an illusion. You can't make up an idea that was already there, you can only repeat it. Again, back to what I was saying about noticing that there is a mechanism of control here and part of that mechanism is applying already defines constructs to moments to create variations on the theme.

[hippieman7096]

Every day I wake up I feel empty. Nothing is real anymore. Its like I died and now I'm just walking through the day either extremely uncomfortable or freaking out because you can't be dead and expect to maintain a family or an existence as a human being.

It's indescribable what it feels like to mean nothing.

[hippieman7096]

Faith is a big word for me. I grew up in an environment of religious dogmatic say one thing but do another antics where everyone spoke an ideal but rarely lived it and their explanation was always original sin. "Well you know I wanted to live the ideal but I couldn't because I was tempted by the devil and too weak to hold the course. I know I'm a sinner, I repent and I promise not to do it again."

Now when you're like me and low-grade autistic your mind works on structures of process. When you learn that kind of process the one thing you integrate is the belief that you are always doomed to fail. It's not that you care about the ideal. It's clear the ideal is desirable but no one reaches it so you categorize the potential for doing so as small and move on. It just becomes normal to see the thing you'd like to achieve as improbable in your reality. You learn to be a loser. The creative engine that is you becomes caught up in the dysfunction of the mind trying to process the psychotic system you have been programmed to live in and you fail to identify your own potential.

Enter Faith. Now see faith is the fix in the religious system. Since you can't produce what you choose because your creative self is disengaged you are taught to believe that something outside of you, some kind of force, has your back and if you trust in it you'll get what you are looking for. "Just have faith" they say, believe in the lord and it will all work out. All the while in the background they teach you that to get what you want from this "lord" they're talking about you have to support the church, follow its system and do what your elders and your pastor say to do. You obey and from your subservience you get what you need. Thus faith becomes enmeshed with the belief that you perform for what you want instead of truly knowing its out there and doesn't require your input to come to you. Faith in that system then isn't knowing, faith is believing and they are two totally different things.

I bring this up today because I am in a place right now where what will best serve me is to step back from my efforts to run the program I learned and let what I need manifest instead of continuing to try to make it show up by running the system. See in my mind I'm programmed to DO something to get something. I'm programmed to see faith as performance which means that I have to show the universe that I am worthy. If I show it that I am worthy by doing specific actions then it will deem me fit to receive and give me what I want. Without the actions on my part I will never get what I want. Remember you're a sinner, a failure. The only way to get what you want is faith and the only real faith is what the system tells you and the system tells you to work for the system. So you work for it and run around the circle your entire life getting pretty much nowhere.

Now in my case it doesn't come not because I'm unwilling to pit in the effort, to "work for it" as they say. Mine doesn't come because I've been removed from the ability to play in that arena anymore. I literally cannot continue to behave that way. I've been put in a position where the process is: Set intention, step back, allow the creative potential to operate. This the only option. The work In doing isn't producing anything. There is no other way. Faith must be real which is to say that I am compelled to KNOW that what I want is already there before I can even see it and getting it does not require subservience but rather a very intense presence. Faith is a non-action-oriented state of being not a dance routine.

[hippieman7096]

I want to take a few minutes here and talk about the initiation I’ve been experiencing.I keep talking about death and as I bring that word into the discussion it occurs to me that something like that isn’t a small matter. It’s heavy and I think that there’s an implication behind it which is compelling me to place here in writing what the word I’m using means to me and what this experience has done to me as a human being.

A number of years ago I discovered, almost by chance, that I have the ability to calm and alleviate physical pain and suffering in the human body with my hands. One day I was giving my wife a massage and she noted that there was a considerable amount of heat coming out of my hands. I thought it was interesting and when she observed that it wasn’t something that had happened in the past with other people, even when she’d gone to get a massage, I stopped and wondered. We kept talking and I told her about how since I was a child I’ve put my hands on my stomach when I had the flu or nausea and the pain goes away. She, again, observed that she didn’t know anyone who could do this and that it wasn’t just an ordinary thing.

Now understand this wasn’t my first run in with “stuff that people don’t normally do.” Since the late ‘90′s I’ve been involved in other activities that would be considered “out of the ordinary” such as talking to the dead, seeing the future, talking to my spirit guides and having direct communications with the higher power via automatic writing. I have pages and pages and pages of communications that I’ve done over the years. It’s been quite remarkable, actually.

So anyways, I bring this up because since the late ‘90s my life has been an extended series of nearly insurmountable challenges, likely the biggest prior to the current initiation being a nine month period in 2002/2003 where I had my ability to sleep stripped from me. Since then it’s been employment instability. I’ve been assailed by colleagues at every job I’ve worked. Beyond this I’ve found myself repeatedly stuck in positions that were dead ends and found myself forced out due to my inability to control circumstances. Each time this happened I’d be unemployed for months on end and our family would be brought to brink of utter destitution before it would resolve. While it was going on I have to say I didn’t really understand the depth of what was occurring. I knew that the universe had a purpose and the higher power and my guides were communicating to me about what was happening but it wasn’t until a few years ago I really began to grasp what they’ve been saying to me all these years about who/what I am and what it all means.

After I lost my last career role four years ago things really started to come apart within my life and my psyche. I had recently relocated to Oregon and the experience of removing myself from the physical construct I had been using to define my external reality for the better part of 20 years prior was like ripping the foundation out from under a house. I literally came apart mentally and emotionally. As I have mentioned in past postings over the course of three years I was underemployed working the absolute worst job I’ve ever done making 1/3 what my family needs to survive for 18 months followed by entering then abruptly being driven violently out of two career- track positions. It was almost as if some unseen darkness had turned its hand against me and my family and was trying to destroy us.

As this was happening I utilized every resource I could to try and discern what was happening and understand why things just didn’t seem to want to stay together for any length of time. In my conversations with the higher power and my spirit guides I kept getting this message about Dark Night of the Soul and Shamanic Initiation. I researched them both online and discovered that people who display similar profiles to myself as relates to apparent psychic and healing abilities go through versions of an experience that literally destroys their lives. In antiquity it appeared that the tribal shaman would literally be killed by a spirit and brought back to life under a new set of identity parameters defined by the spirit world and not their old identity. I read story after story of modern-day individuals who would speak of years-long struggles that had come to be referred to as “Dark Night of the Soul.”

Now understand I’m not illogical. A major component of my identity is my logical self. As I read the information and dissected what was being said, especially around the “Shamanic Death” I looked at myself and decided that it really couldn’t be that bad. I was still alive, I was still here. I hadn’t gone through that level of suffering. There was no way I was that. I couldn’t be that. I didn’t want to be that, honestly. What I really wanted was to get back to my life and move on. My family needs resources and my wife and I have big plans for where we want to take ourselves as far as having a home of our own, a new car, a stable financial situation, plenty of support for our offspring and the ability to take a vacation once in a while.

That was a year ago.

I’m not going to go into detail about what has transpired since then. What I will say is the reality of what I have gone through the last 12 months is the closest thing I could equate to death without actually dying. I literally sit here today destitute. The universe has found means to provide for our most basic needs up until now but the reality of the human identity in this modern world isn’t so much about means as it is about self-realization. I can tell you with the utmost certainty that the only realization I’ve come to the last 12 months is that a force beyond any human capacity has intervened on my life and has systematically taken apart my identity as a provider and a productive and integrated human being bit by bit. There has been no option and no discussion. Having the ego that I do I have not rolled over and gone quietly. I have continued to struggle and resist but I can tell you it has been pointless.

I am completely and totally at the behest of my creator and it’s will for my life.

Which brings me to my closing point. I discounted for very long time the premise that the higher power and my guides have been putting to me over and over again that I am a Shaman and my calling is to use my abilities to help people. This direction is not where I want to go. It’s not conducive to a normal life and I want to do it when I’m ready which is not right now. To further reinforce my argument I’ve read opinions from individuals online who make the point that a “real” Shaman is one who has experienced the actual Shamanic death. I look at me, I’m still alive, I didn’t die. It’s all quite simple. I’m not a Shaman. Now can I get on with my life?

As I sit here today powerless and with zero ability to do anything to fix the destroyed life I see laying in pieces around me I’m finding myself compelled to believe what I hear the higher power saying to me about my calling and question the purist assessment that a Shaman must die a physical death to actually be one. I don’t think anything is that black and white. There’s a component to this that is highly personal and directly related to my relationship with source. I think it begins there and I think as I move forward the only real choice I have is to let this play out to its end and recognize that the person that I was is no longer. He is being replaced by something else, something sponsored by a force beyond this construct. What that means is fluid and where it takes me is something that will define itself in each present moment. Nothing is ever fixed or permanent in the space of ultimate reality, this I know for certain.

[hippieman7096]

The Last

I have no friends. This is my reality. It didn't start out that way. In the distant past I had a lot of friends. As my initiation progressed and my life continued to come apart, spiraling out of control I stopped talking...to anyone. Dying does that to a person. It becomes the only reality you know and it's not something you can talk about because it's too heavy for even your friends to deal with. So you're left alone to die without human contact. It's a function of the process.

Things have actually escalated the last few weeks to the point that even the closest friend I have, the one I've kept in touch with over the years who is uniquely equipped as a human to sit with a person who's dying is going as well.

See this is what happens when the spirit comes to take your life, even the closest friend you have can't stay with you. It just gets to be too much for them. He tries, he really does but no one can stay with a dead man. At some point their life has to go on. I am thankful that I had him this long.

[hippieman7096]

"Networking"

The one word I hear all the time while executing the employment search process is networking. See the way it works is you use whatever resources you have at your disposal to put yourself in a position to be "noticed" by someone inside an organization you want to work in.

Maybe you get on a social media site and stalk an executive inside the company. Maybe you find out who the manager is that you would need to sit in front of to get hired and search their social media accounts to find out details of their personal life so you can be at the right place at the right time to "accidently run into them." Maybe it's their kids baseball game. Maybe it's a nice social event they'll be at that you can accidentally crash. Even better you can try getting on LinkedIn and connecting with 17 people inside the organization and hitting them up periodically to ask for a meeting or maybe coffee.

Now I ask you what's wrong with this equation? Well first of all one must ask themselves if this type of shit hasn't been tried before. You can bet a manager who's at their kid's ball game and is suddenly approached by a total stranger who's acting like a fucking leech knows EXACTLY what that person's M.O. is. You can also bet that the 17 people on LinkedIn you try to "network" with don't give a fuck who you are or what you're doing. If anything you're just a disruption in their busy day. They don't fucking know you and trying to use a social media connection to make it look like you're best buds so they can help you get in the door is so transparent it's sickening.

To me networking is another word for cheating. You don't want to get in line like the rest of the honest people following proper HR protocols which are applying for the job and going through a fair and honest interview process to determine the best qualified candidate. No you have to try and cut in line and get yourself something for nothing.

Truth be told this is how shit goes, though. This is really how it works. We live in a society that welcomes cheating and side stepping protocol to get what you want. We live in a society where a hiring manager is empowered to embrace a culture of imbalance in the hiring process. We live to kiss ass.

I've never done it. It disgusts me. I'd rather be hired honestly knowing that all the other people that wanted the job I ended up getting had a chance just like I did and we all had a fair opportunity to show our stuff.

Post-Script: To further drive home the point I am making I want to talk about a recent experience I had in which networking was the primary suggested motivator.

I went to a job fair last week. This was a respectable event. It has some excellent employer engagement and some good opportunity to speak to actual recruiters about actual vacancies. What was interesting was how strongly the sponsors of the event pushed the networking angle as the primary reason for attending should I choose to.

I did my diligence with it. I went to 2/3 of the booths and had a chance to talk to a lot of people. I asked about open positions I had found online and showed off my resume. It was all very nice and the recruiters acted interested as they had surely agreed to do with the sponsors. As it went along I couldn't help but get the sense that I was really just another disruption in these people's days. This wasn't a surprise I suppose. They're employed already, they don't know what I'm dealing with trying to get a job. To them I'm just a duty they have to perform. They don't care and I can tell you that it showed.

Now at the end of each conversation I made it a point to test this networking opportunity claim the sponsors gave by asking each recruiter for an email address so I could keep in touch. I mean if we're making a connection and networking then it follows that we would stay in touch and email is the best way to do that, right?

Wrong. Of the 20 recruiters I asked two of them gave me an email address. The rest gave me canned web addresses to find online that would direct me to "special resources" to help with my search inside their webpage with the exception of one who have me a LinkedIn. They were clearly not interested in speaking to me after the event and a couple of them fell just short of dismissing me for asking.

The "networking" opportunity wasn't an opportunity at all. It was honestly the exact result I expected because I know from experience that networking is a made up word to describe a concept that is truly useless.

[hippieman7096]

Labels

I love the labels society places on people - Anxiety, Depression, etc. The list is endless. There’s always gotta be a word to describe what a person is going through in processing their life experience and it always leads to them being directed to some solution that society made up because that’s what society does. It creates problems and then manufactures synthetic solutions to solve them instead of just saying “You know this shit is fucked up and there’s really nothing we can do except sit here and watch it be that way until it’s done which will happen because everything in life is cyclical.” Nobody wants to make the observation that we are a society bent on control and we’ve created an entire cultural story around that which has been choking our ability as a race to process naturally through the human experience for aeons. The very thing that is supposed to help us ends up being our slave master.

I bring this up not because I want to criticize people who face these challenges, make light of human struggle or minimize the quality efforts of people out there genuinely trying to help other people get through it. To me it’s bigger than that. Human struggle is a very close reality that I’ve known for most of my life. It’s all too personal to me. I’ve been around the ride. I’ve gone out there and solicited help and support from other people, from support professionals and from the system. I’ve talked about my own personal fucked up train wreck until I couldn’t anymore and then I talked some more after that. I took medication. I took herbal remedies. I mediated. I did yoga. I went an sat on top of a hill and looked out over the beautiful vista in front of me marveling at the beauty of nature. I sat by the ocean and let the sea swallow my pain over and over and over again.

Then I went back to the wooden structure I live and sleep in and waited for my life to change.

It did not. At least not because of any actions I took to try and make it so.

The reason is very simple and it has nothing to do with any actions I take. It has to do with perspective and the way I’m programmed to look at the world around me. Here’s what that looks like in real time: Engage in whatever activity I am pursuing to help distract me from the suffering and emotional struggles I am going through. Return to my dwelling and feel OK for a few hours. Then the program in my head that I can’t get rid of starts up again. The one that picks away at my sanity every day like a plague telling me how fucked up I am and how my life is less than optimal and that it’s not OK to be here like this without trying to fix it. That need to DO something about my screwed up circumstance right now immediately because if I can’t be at cause in my existence on this rock then I have zero value to myself or anyone else.

Now STOP there. It’s not the label placed on the emotional response to these experiences that is killing me and killing us. It’s a system of control that’s got us so hell bent on systematic servitude masquerading as “self-reliance” that we can’t breathe and we know it’s wrong but we don’t know how to stop it. Instead of recognizing that we’re stuck in a system that we can’t stand and our feelings and emotions are expressing our unhappiness by causing us to exist in a very uncomfortable fashion we accept the label that we’re not right, believe the implication that’s inherent to that which is that we, not the system we operate in, are faulty and unless we submit to the belief that we need help and we need the system’s fix which is either chemical or action-oriented we can simply sink and die because the system of control does not care if one of us falls out. It has billions more to suck energy off of. We’re just single cells in a behemoth organic entity grinding through its days in slavery to a system it can’t even see.

I submit to you that the sickness is not us. We’re made to believe it’s us because what is making us sick is the very fabric of the world we perceive around us. If we deny the very thing that supports us then where are we to go? If we do not give servitude to the “God” we’ve been told to follow then what are we to expect in return. We are, after all, only human. Frail and in need of external support, a savior, if you will. 

Herein lies the challenge for me as I go around in circles between the programming and the potential that exists outside of it, potential which seems impossible to get to because getting there means I have to give up my life as I understand it.

This is very simple. I have been made aware of the matrix of control we exist in. I didn’t ask for this knowledge and what comes with it directly. It wasn’t a thing where I consciously said “Hey universe I’m enslaved to a life that I can’t stand, I don’t want this anymore, I need out.” I think at the subconscious level I was saying that and I think that depending on the individual contract for a particular lifetime you go the route you have to go. In this case my route has been years and years of financial, emotional and personal struggle as I’ve been made aware that I am a slave and the only way to not be that anymore is to literally give up the life that I have.

Now understand this is no easy task and this identity that I call me has not gone quietly into the sunset. It has fought tooth and nail the entire way and the thing that’s interesting is the universe does not care. It will take you down the path you contracted for. So it really just comes down to being willing to accept the contract and that the identity that is “you” in this life is not the sole driver of how that contract plays out. You have to accept that something beyond yourself, which in some ways is yourself though not this self you know as a singular entity, is running its own program through you and that program supersedes the matrix program which was really always only meant to be a construct for you to experience what the contract specifies.

Now all of this starts to move into the realm of religion and its belief in a “God” out there that drives your life and you’re just the fallen sinner in need of guidance. This is where I struggle with this whole message because there are veins of truth to the religions human beings have created, one of which is the reality that humanity is not at cause in what is happening to it. I mean it is but the design of that and how it intertwines with the larger whole is a message for another day I suppose.

I just know that we all have a choice in how we process this life we live. We can look at our environment, evaluate our circumstance and see ourselves as the sole cause of it walking the path in front of us using the inputs we’re given by our limited psyches which are based upon false constructs designed to feed us information to enslave us. Or we can recognize that what we see in front of us is illusory, awaken to the programming of the system of control we live in and get dragged through hell on our way to figuring out who and what we really are and what we’re doing here which ultimately seems to have very little to do with anything other than what is happening right now and absolutely nothing to do with the labels society places on you. 

[hippieman7096]

The Need

On the 5th of May I counted 12 months unemployed. This being the second cycle of such in the last 24 months. This within the last four years where I was unemployed/underemployed the sum total of two and a half years.

The universe is seeing fit to take me apart piece by piece. I have been following the guidance I have been getting from my higher self and my connections to the other side who have consistently advised me not to work unless the position was adequate not only to support our basic needs but to move us forward. I went round and round with the other side on this because the logical thing is to get whatever you can get until the right thing comes. Truth be told I did that for a year and a half and it almost bankrupted us. My gut has been telling me not to go that way again because if I do I'm circumventing something important that we must go through if we are to be able to move forward holistically and not just financially. I guess you could call it faith, I don't know. I just know that doing it has been absolutely brutal.

I have no friends left. Its not so much that I don't have people to talk to it's that I don't want to. I don't want to talk to other people about this godforsaken train wreck of a story. I don't want to try to explain to them deeper meaning and purpose of it. I've been called to be healer. When the call comes down for this there are no optional plans. You get taken apart and that's that, no further discussion. The last four years of my life are a testament to the Shamanic initiation.

Let me tell you something - Shamanic initiation is highly personal. As I've gone through this experience of being beaten senseless, had my life ripped out from under me and been denied at every turn as I've struggled and fought against this spirit that has taken me down into a living hell the one thing that always comes to the surface is the reality that I DO NOT control my life. The identity that I believe myself to be means nothing beyond how it can be used by the higher power to forward it's agenda, not mine.

As I said, I am fighting this spirit that has come to claim my life. Identity does not die easily, especially mine. I have lived through wars in past lives. I am an energy mover on the other side. I am powerful, as powerful as a god. There is a core part of my being that is being forced into submission and the process is absolutely and unequivocally the most difficult and painful thing I've ever been through in this life.

No you can't tell that to your friends. You can't explain that to people. You can't explain to your family who has been there to help carry you through your living hell that you had to do what you did, that you literally did not have a choice. There was not going to be any "just get what you can." There was and is only destruction, struggle and death.

I am getting to a point now where being alive is physically painful. I sit in my house, off the grid, alone with the battle I face, totally useless while everything comes apart around me and this is the fifth time around this exact same cycle in the last 15 years. I'm genuinely starting to break. I simply lie there in my bed and beg the higher power for mercy. I ask it to kill me and it's response is that birth is death and that I am already dead. I live inside a mental construct within a matrix of artificial reality and that construct will die and there will be no discussion. I will give up my "life," this artificial framework of reality, that I believe is me. The higher power, my soul, is me and it wants me for its own purposes.

I am left with no option but to ride this out to it's conclusion. I have no choice but to absolutely and unequivocally submit to the fucked up circumstance I find myself in. Right now I'm able to get to the next moment. Anything beyond that is insanity because my life makes no sense inside the matrix anymore. I keep trying to make it fit, to reintegrate myself and the whole thing crashes.

My life is not my choice. The circumstances of my life are not in my control. See this is the thing, we as human think we have control. We think that our choices mean something overall. Sure the power of choice does define the layout of what might come next in my life but I believe that my choices make me the higher power of my life. I believe that I can control what happens and this is a lie. Its a lie the controllers of the matrix want you to believe so you'll believe the next one they tell you which is that you are the sole factor in getting the things you need to survive. You are at cause and within their system that means you work like a slave and they suck your energy dry and send you home every day exhausted and sick.

We're all fucking slaves and the really sick thing is, even now, even after all this time I've had outside of it where I can see what it is I'd give my left lung to be in it just so I could feel safe and secure instead of submitting to the path the universe has set me on to break me free of it. Therein lies the problem. The need fucking kills you and you don't wanna stop. It's the worst kind off addiction you could ever hope to be rid of.