Category : Articles
Sub Category : Relationships
The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself’ - Thales
It’s weird, when you reflect on it, how some people come into your life and go back out of it again. Sometimes this happens fast and sometimes it’s a slow burner, that takes months to happen. I believe there is a very profound lesson to be learned from the harshest relationship breakdowns and breakups. In my opinion, the more you invest your time and energy into someone and they leave your life, or you leave their life, the bigger the lesson learned. Despite all my knowledge of psychology and human relationships, I can’t even begin to fathom all the life forces that go into how and why we are attracted to certain people. I know myself well but even now, to this day, I’m not sure EXACTLY what makes me attracted to someone’s energy and personality. Looks is a different issue. I know what I like looks-wise and I have always known what I’ve liked look-wise. To be definite about what sort of energy and aura you like in someone, takes a good deal of experience, self-reflection and focus of mind. Some people, including me, spent years kind-of flailing around and searching for someone I was compatible with. I entered so many weird & wonderful relationships, only to find out they weren’t the person I thought they were or vice versa, maybe I wasn’t the person they thought I was.
My point is, if you look hard and study yourself, there is a lesson you can learn from everyone that you meet. Some people will give you this lesson outright. They will be a direct and explicit mirror of yourself. Some other people will not be as explicit or direct and as a result, some soul-searching will help you more than you think. I really believe that the universe works in a series of ways that I don’t particularly understand and is very mysterious but if you have the mindset that you want to learn about yourself, the universe will teach you through other people. The universe never gives you direct lessons. All the lessons we learn about the world, life, love and hate all come from other people.
Personally, I have the mindset that I want to know myself and learn from other people, about them and about myself. Through turmoil, sadness and bitterness I have come to learn some things about my life that I never thought I could possibly know. I had mental barriers that I crushed. Let me tell you, these things take time. Very rarely a lesson is learned overnight. For me, learning to be my most authentic self, took years. If I could give you a timescale, it took me about four years of solitude, questioning myself, therapy and focusing on my own thoughts and behaviour patterns.
I look at life as mostly serious. I totally understand many people don’t. For them, life is no more than just existing. For me, life is an intellectual and emotional journey. Before I die, I want to come to a place that most Buddhists call ‘Enlightenment’. I get there, not through meditation, but through acute self-awareness. The art of being very aware of what I’m thinking and my behaviour patterns and constantly reflecting about how I treat people and how I talk to myself. Through the centuries, philosophers have known that what you think, you become. If you fill your mind with sick, diseased and self-defeating thoughts, your whole body and soul will reflect those thoughts.
For me, I never thought I could be happy with being totally single. I mean, totally single. This means no dating, no sex & no relationships with women, outside of friends and family. My psychology has died and been re-born so many times. Psychologists and philosophers call this, ‘Ego death’. It is the letting go of one way of thinking, for another. As I said, this process can take a long time. I haven’t forgotten to live my life in-between all this growth. Now, I am just very aware of my own energy & other peoples energy. I find, fact, that someone’s aura and energy is far more important for attraction than anything.
Something about myself that I have never shared before. This did happen to me, back in 2005/2006. I was sitting beside a guy in Music class. At this stage I would have been fourteen or fifteen. I had always known this guy to be very energetic, positive, smiling and consistently in an upbeat mood. I myself, always acted out in a very pessimistic, selfish and cynical way. As I was sitting next to this guy, one day, I felt very relaxed. Relaxed & sleepy is a more accurate way of feeling. This feeling transcended any thought I had, at the time. The feeling I felt, for the entire duration of the class, was all encompassing. It wasn’t as if I was ready to fall asleep, but I felt fucking heavenly. It was a very focused, centred feeling of being at peace. This only seemed to happen while I was near this guy. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a homosexual thing. I had no feelings for this guy, it went far beyond feelings of attraction and lust.
To this day, I can only explain that as an ‘aura’ or ‘energy’. It has been that exact feeling I have tried to cultivate within myself. For years, there has been a conflict within me. This conflict was between trying to cultivate my own sense of positivity and exude powerful and healing energy and acting out in destructive ways. I’m not saying, at twenty-six, I have become more ‘adult’, ‘sensible’ and less of a risk-taker, I still have a rebellious spirit, but I no longer act in ways that are the opposite to what my thoughts are saying. I had a lot of Hedonism, still do, in direct opposition to a sense of purity, peace and innocence that I also wanted to cultivate. To put in simple terms, my want to be pure, innocent and positive was crashing into a more ego-focused drive to partake in very self-destructive behaviours.
The path of self-destruction, you will never ever win. In my own experience, it has wildly damaged my body and spirit. I can almost never claim back the innocence I once had. I still have a lot of guilt and regret around things I did and words I spoke. That path of self-destruction, where I burned along with anything I cared about, has left me with a lot of regrets. I think only a true psychopath can live with a self-destructive rationale. The sins I have committed against others, will require some self-forgiveness and coming to terms with the fall-out from destructive words and actions.
I have such a destructive nature (born from low self-esteem & not feeling good enough) that I must correct this, in my head, before I make one more commitment to anyone else. I have been in love. I have felt those innocent, pure & beautiful moments, with a couple of women I loved. I burned that to the ground, in favour of an old way of thinking. That resounding thought & feeling of not being good enough must be eradicated or re-framed.
It is truly a time to work on myself. I can never be in a relationship again, until my thoughts, actions and words are all aligned beautifully. Nobody can put up a wall, big enough, to protect themselves from the damage I’ve caused. No amount of healing energy can protect you against the blight in my mind.
I can only hope for a positive future, but a lot of it is down to me. This lesson I’ve learned and ability to self-reflect with great accuracy, came from an ex-girlfriend that broke my heart. That heartache has given birth to something much more profound.
