Author: Bodhi 心

Bodhi 心 is a recovering vagabond in training to become a Zen Buddhist monk, a long-time student of psychology and an avid improver of the human condition from the inside out, alive in the marketplace, recovering from codependency and substance abuse, formerly a mental-health peer-support worker and currently a full-time healee using meditation, dharma and neuroscience and counselling to recover nervous-system balance after 40+ years of trauma. Also reading • writing • psychospiritual • health • adventure • alternative living • (motor)cycle maintenance • esoterica • miscellany • literature https://linktr.ee/bodhikokoro yuggera and turrbal country

satisfaction + career = sustainability

career = satisfaction ≠ sustainability

Tuesday 7 November 2023

I am starting with Neami at Safe Space tomorrow and have some time today to relax a bit, make some space for it. I’ll be working as a Peer Support Worker, responding to people presenting at the service in varying degrees of psychological distress. It’s not counselling or even directly therapeutic ~ peer support roles are explicitly non-clinical. I will be sitting with people as a person with lived experience of recovery from acute and chronic mental-health challenges, to give them hope for recovery and support them as they see fit.

Thankfully, I am ahead with TAFE assignments and would like to get ahead with some course reading but that doesn’t feel like a priority compared to preparing for tomorrow, which includes looking at some of the documents and research I have found and would like to study.

I’m starting a folder for these documents because: 1.) I am interested and curious and taking this seriously and I consider it an investment because I’d like to work in this area as a lifelong career; and 2.) it is a peer worker’s role to be aware of these documents and current research, to support the purpose of advocating for systemic change in the mental-health system. No small bikkies round here eh!

The gist of the following reflection if it’s a bit TL;DR is that I have a deeply satisfying spiritual practice now, which I didn’t have during my first career, in publishing. The Zen practice I have now is the central and only source of true satisfaction, and on this foundation of extant satisfaction I can build a successful career in a helping profession and not be dependent upon that success for satisfaction. I will not be dependent upon thanks and accolades to feel satisfaction or success, and therefore will be less susceptible to burnout when sufficient thanks are inevitably not forthcoming. It will be inherently unsustainable to work in this profession being dependent on thanks to keep going, so I feel very grateful that I have found the Zen practice because it makes it more likely I can ‘stay the distance’ in what is bound to be a career that is as exponentially rewarding as it is challenging.

1. careerism + contentment

Josh Korda from Dharma Punx says in his book Unsubscribe that the dharma can liberate us from addictions like consumerism and what he calls ‘careerism’, and I’ve been thinking about this today.

I understand that addictions tend to be the result of habitual tendencies to escape from reality or modify our consciousness so that reality seems more bearable. And since I came back from retreat recently I have been considerably more aware of the contents of the monkey mind and I’m grateful for that because the sooner I notice I have wandered away from the present (imagining the future or recalling the past), which is a habitual escapist tendency we all share, the sooner I can come back to reality. The more time I spend in reality (in touch with the present moment), the better I am able to learn how to cope with reality.

Without frequent contact with reality, how can we learn to cope with and adapt to it?

And I noticed during the retreat that unless something immediately stressful was going on that needs attention (which there wasn’t, for seven days, it being a retreat), the present is the best place to be. I noticed that I would feel anxiety or discomfort or dissatisfaction immediately upon wandering into monkey mind and then when I caught myself and came back to MU in the present (in the tradition I practise in, the mantra MU is our object of meditation ~ similar to the breath in other traditions), the anxiety would dissipate because I had gone back to the reality of the moment, from where I could do nothing and didn’t need to do anything about the situation I had remembered or imagined. The situation was both geographically and temporarily distant and therefore beyond the range of my influence and therefore not worth my time and energy, compared with what was happening right there in that moment.

It doesn’t mean I don’t plan for the future or learn from the past. It just means I can do these things more consciously and intentionally, rather than habitually and compulsively as a maladaptive tendency that formed as a way of escaping the boring/painful present.

Another way to say it is that MU is a refuge from anxiety or worry and regret or nostalgia. This is a ‘negative image’ of the same idea that I would feel anxiety or discomfort or dissatisfaction immediately upon wandering into monkey mind. In MU there is no anxiety ~ it is a totally neutral object of meditation.

Since the retreat I notice more frequently that I have drifted from the present into story and can bring myself back sooner. The result is a deeper and more-frequent sense of contentment because I am just present without adding commentary to a reality that doesn’t need anything added or subtracted.

Folks have asked me what I got from the retreat and I haven’t been able to answer easily because the benefits are subtle and metaphysical or psychological, hard to describe. Our landlord asked me today and it came to mind that the benefit is a deeper and more-consistent sense of contentment (not to be confused with complacency) and even a sense of acceptant satisfaction in the sense of dukkha, the OG of Buddhism translated as either ‘suffering’ or ‘dissatisfaction’. Not quite liberation from samsara, but a growing sense of equanimity about being here whether I like it or not.

***

I say all this 👆🏼 because it was appreciated timing to go on the retreat almost immediately before starting this new job. I feel renewed and refreshed in a mundane sense. At a deeper more-spiritual level, I have realised or remembered this morning that the contentment resulting from dedicated practice is worth more than any job satisfaction or career kudos I might get from working in the mental-health space.

I didn’t have contact with the source of this satisfaction when I was working on my former career in publishing, and as a result I sought abiding satisfaction in work, where abiding satisfaction does not reside (outside the self).

I’m glad to have this practice now because it is the central and only source of true satisfaction, and on this foundation of extant satisfaction I can build a successful career in a helping profession and not be dependent upon that success for satisfaction, without falling into the trap of seeking satisfaction where it does not exist (in external things and activities like work or even relationships)

***

I didn’t know I would end up journalling about this today, but I’m glad I did. To say my practice and study of Zen meditation is a resource that will keep me grounded and resourced as I embark on the journey of professionally helping those in psychological distress is a bit too glib (consider Zen is a genuine transpersonal practice and not just a means for reducing stress), but it’s also true: getting my satisfaction from the self (through meditation) will mean I don’t expect satisfaction (or thanks or accolades) from my work, clients or colleagues, and will mean my work as a peer practitioner will be more sustainable. I will be more likely to ‘stay the distance’, making an impact through meaningful work without a high risk of burnout and dissatisfaction.

So that’s what I came to write about today.

I am starting in peer work tomorrow because for many years I have been wanting to learn about and help others learn about how to be happy and healthy in our challenging modern world. Truth is I have been doing peer work for most of my life and tomorrow is just a start on the journey to ‘professionalise a lifestyle’, as I put it to a colleague recently.

There are few things truly worth doing with our time here, and cultivating genuine happiness (sukkha in the Buddhist parlance) is certainly among those few things, if not the only thing. We need to do other things while we are here, such as accommodate the inescapable reality of our current conditions (read: pay the bills, etc.) and I am grateful I might be able to ‘pay the bills’ doing something as meaningful as supporting others’ genuine subjective wellbeing.

2. research + advocacy

One of the documents I mentioned above is the Charter of Peer Support published by The Centre of Excellence in Peer Support (CEPS) in Victoria, Australia. It describes in detail what peer work actually is, and an understanding of this document (combined with work experience) will help me refine an elevator pitch I can use on the typical look confusion I encounter in others when I say I’m a peer worker. Even in some areas of the mental-health space it is still not quite understood what a peer worker brings to the table, but that’s a post for another time.

Some research I want to look at is about “dual diagnosis” of mental illness with addiction. This is interesting to me, because a first report from the Senate Select Committee on Mental Health has shown that dual diagnoses are “The expectation not the exception”, which seems like a no-brainer for me (with lived experience) but may not be for others (perhaps those without lived experience of either, which surely is the exception not the rule, these days). It’s going to be interesting, as I start working in this sector, to see what sort of no-brainers from the lived experience perspective need to be explicitly supported by research for the service commissioners to take them seriously.

starting casual work as a Peer Support Worker

I am stoked to announce that I’ve been offered a casual position as a Peer Support Worker at Safe Space, a program of Neami National. I will be using my lived experience to support others experiencing acute psychological distress …

… which when I say it out loud is actually kind of daunting if I’m honest, I don’t think it really dawned on me yet that I’ll be working with some of the most distressed and dysregulated members of our community. Sharing my story, helping others to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I love this image: a person who has travelled some way “further” down the path, turns around and sees a fellow behind, turns around, and brings their lantern to illuminate the way forward through this confounding and confronting world. That’s peer work … ancient AF.

The peer support worker is a non-clinical, advocacy-based role, where I’ll be supporting health-seekers to pursue recovery from mental illness on their terms, helping them to navigate the mental-health system and “carrying the lantern” a bit.

I’m very excited about it, because I have been gravitating toward this work as a volunteer in the last couple of years anyway, and this will be a great chance to get direct experience of working with individuals and learn how to help.

Thank you to everyone who has graced my path on this journey.

recovery is a process …

trigger warning suicidality

… not a product or a destination

I am very grateful to have had a call with my Peer Support Worker from Neami National today. I cancelled a number of appointments to clear my desk for three days of downtime during the TAFE holidays, but wanted to have this check-in, and I’m very glad I did.

She reminded me that recovery is not a thing we get to and then is over, finished, mission accomplished. It is a process, a journey, and it is important that I don’t become complacent when I am doing well. I need to remain vigilant, within reason ~ the cost-benefit scales are going to tip if I spend all the time I feel well just anticipating the next trigger and stumble.

She also helped me find some direction in navigating my path of trauma recovery, specifically. I am going to ask a Family Constellations practitioner if I can see them under Medicare on a Mental Health Care Plan. Circle of Security might also be an option, and Neami themselves ran a program of this ~ Nikki participated, and I understand there is a lot to be learned about how we can work with the attachment styles that resulted from attachment trauma, which is certainly a big factor in the constellation of things that trigger me.

When I am triggered, sometimes I get derailed from the wellness train for days at a time, and if things are going especially unwell, I can stay derailed for weeks, heavily dysregulated. It’s not okay. I can do my sadhana all I like and it does work, I am making slow but sure progress toward more-consistent wellbeing by applying myself to the modularity sadhana. But my sadhana is for the long-game and I need something more direct or immediate that’s going to help with the trauma so I don’t get so easily triggered.

After a wake-up call recently, wherein I spent a whole night feeling triggered and acutely suicidal, I am taking the process of trauma transformation seriously again ~ for one thing, I am seeing a friend who does Root Cause Therapy (RCT) at Creative Roots Breath Therapy. I never gave up the process altogether, though I have not done much Somatic Experiencing with Tracey lately. It’s definitely time to take deeper dive.

But yes, it was good to check in with my Peer Support Worker again. They provide a great (if little-known) service to the community, and if you’re curious about that, let me know. Or check out Neami here.

political ideology + trauma

I just realised that being politically conservative might actually be a prolonged trauma response, and maybe that being politically progressive is too. A person’s whole political worldview might be determined in the period of our childhood prior to the emergence of conscious awareness, and during other traumatic experiences later in life. Just like any other coping mechanism that may or may not be maladaptive.

Therefore, helping people recover from trauma becomes political activism by helping people become less extremist on the dualist political spectrum.

the construction of happiness

Happiness does not come automatically. It is not a gift that good fortune bestows upon us and a reversal of fortune takes back. It depends on us alone. One does not become happy overnight, but with patient labour, day after day. Happiness is constructed, and that requires effort and time. In order to become happy, we have to learn how to change ourselves.
Luca and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza

achievement + self-worth

There is a balance to be struck between achieving to gain a sense of self-worth and achieving from a place of already existing self-worth: our worth is inherent because we have buddha-nature and is therefore not dependent upon achievement, but we also need to achieve to put our worth to good use.

The same as we practise radical acceptance of things at the same time as exerting influence to make change as long as we are not attached to outcomes, so we can make effort to accomplish achievements and try to remain mindful that our happiness doesn’t become attached to the outcome (the achievement).

But if we rely on achievement to be happy we will always want more achievement even after we have achieved: it is not a source of lasting satisfaction. Contact with our sense of inner worth is the only lasting source of genuine satisfaction.

holistic mindset approach

To change our mindset we need to do more than just cognitive affirmations. We need to work on the subconscious level as well, and on an embodied level, if only because neural pathways are a physical part of our body that’s as relevant as the cognitive parts of our mind.

equanimity + anger & emotional fluidity + self-compassion for flight response

I generally think of how equanimity will help me be graceful among suffering or misfortune that is not my fault ~ a sort of forbearance that’s easy to imagine compared to equanimity among suffering I perceive to be caused by my own mistakes and inadequacies, if I think I’ve done something wrong or fallen short, such as feeling insecure as a parent. But these are the times we need equanimity the most, when we are the most hard on ourselves.

I wish I had a healthier relationship with anger. I wish we all did and our culture wasn’t so anger-averse. It is on the one hand celebrated (in movies and the aggrandisment of war) and on the other hand repressed (in our children). That’s a mixed message!

I lost my temper recently, yelled at my stepson for abusing his mother while she was trying to help him, threw a tube of hydrolytes across the room, slammed a few doors.

Nothing major ~ and it’s normal, you might say: teenagers are impossible and their moods and bullshit are acutely triggering. Maybe so, but is it normal for a situation like this to cause such an acute sense of shame and self-loathing and a powerful flight response in the form of suicidal ideation!? I guess nervous-system dysregulation is the new normal.

I need this to change. Nervous system balance and emotional fluidity needs to be the new black. Trauma-informed, transpersonal and holistic self-recovery from the damage we’ve done to ourselves and others with our moralistic view of the human-emotion spectrum: anger is bad; joy is good; surprise is neutral until cognitions force our reaction into duality.

Emotions evolved to keep us safe by motivating us to act without needing to rationalise. The social disgust that became anger this morning has a healthy evolutionary and social function if we can just let it be without casting judgement upon it.

To that end, a good place to learn about such emotional fluidity is Filipe Rocha’s Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) training and for nervous system mastery, see Jonny Miller.

I was talking to Nikki about the acute cognitive distortions I experience when I’m triggered about my capacity to be a good dad, which I wrote about recently. My wounded parts tell me I can’t participate in the family anymore because I need to keep my distance for the sake of harm-minimisation. If I lose my temper, I might cause trauma.

Between my own trauma and the toxic culture pitted against parents, I don’t feel I can do any good (certainly not with the perfectionism my personality subconsciously demands) and the result is that I just want to opt out or tap out. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m not being a good dad anyway. I have so little to do with Zane, am I being a dad at all?

I did manage to call myself out on that language, remembering that I am being the only dad I know how to be, and that has to be good enough because I didn’t have a good model to start with.

And there would be some neuroscientific understanding about what my upbringing did to the development of my brain that has left me deficient in chemical pathways or something. Here I am trying to live values such as kindness and compassion

when perhaps my brain doesn’t actually know the pathway or the pathway may never have been laid down. I’m talking about how certain experiences in childhood leave a person with the right brain-plumbing. I may be fighting to cognitively apply values my brain physiology literally does not recognise.

When I was still triggered, Nikki tried to suggest a way things could be done differently next time and pointed out connection before correction. I could not entertain a way I would do things differently next time,

and the suggestion is predicated on the assumption I am capable of making connection in the first place. If I am not capable of maintaining that connection, I also lose capacity to assert boundaries and this leads to major anger-spectrum stuff.

I don’t know how to do connection safely in the context of the trauma I live with ~ I am afraid of rejection, so I don’t take the risk. And I find so many things triggering about Zane, I guess because of repressed shadow and disconnection from self.

My desire to flee from the family and no longer participate as a father may be a flee response and/or it may be a reasonable and logical conclusion of me being neither fit nor willing. It’s hard to tell among whirling thoughts.

I never wanted to have kids and there was a reason for that. Now I’m a stepdad and it simply may not be a good idea. I don’t believe in nuclear families anyway. The pressure between trauma and a toxic culture makes it extremely difficult to parent well. I have other things I could do well if I weren’t trying to live up to an illusory idea and paly roles I may not want to play and which don’t meet the other’s needs anyway.

I catch myself again, and remember we are progressive adults and can imagine new dynamics ~ we don’t need to play by the rules of a culture that has fucked us up, and in fact doing so would be cruel insanity.

The only way to respond to these kinds of cognitive distortions is by prioritising self-compassion. The same approach I was moving toward anyway: privacy, solitude, time alone to make connection with self; cultivating the heart qualities and dropping the identification with roles like ‘parent’ and ‘husband’; authenticity though it jeopardises attachment.

I would rather have the authenticity from connection with self than any attachment relationship that requires the sacrifice of authenticity.

September dharma circle

We enjoyed another beautiful dharma circle on Saturday, our second. I am so grateful for Mónica and Natalie who arranged the whole thing using the running order / model we are beginning to co-create for a decentralised, non-hierarchical spiritual-practice group that operates in community. So exciting!

I’ve been so stretched this month and could not have pulled this together on my own. Mónica’s guided journey was deeply restorative for me and it was great to see some circlers from last month, plus a new circler Lo, welcome. And thank you Nat for holding the circle.

I feel very inspired about October and would like to cohost with someone at Brisbane Theosophical Society in Spring Hill (if we can arrange access in time). Does anyone want to share some thoughts and/or guide a journey with me for us? I can hold the container while someone takes the whole session, or share a mixture of short practices together.

There is a beautiful collaborative vibe around the place and I’m very happy to be a part of this.

If you are interested and happen to be in Brisbane, get in touch to chat about the circle and see if you’d like to get involved.

Brisvedas Dharma Circle

A disparate and spiritually secular sangha meeting locally around Brisbane to discuss the dharma and practice meditation together.

Not just a Buddhist group, but a group of anyone who seeks the truth through experiential means and is interested in being guided by an understanding of the ancient spiritual literatures.

We are hoping that anyone from any spiritual tradition will feel welcome to participate, events are co-facilitated by anyone who feels comfortable doing so.

concentration depends on a healthy ego

After a meditation recently where I was very easily distracted, unable to concentrate for long, I started wondering about the defilements and/or the Five Hindrances, and ethics (vinaya or virtue, in Buddhism). The Five Hindrances are a traditional categorisation of obstacles to concentration ~ ultimately, obstacles to self-mastery:

desire
aversion
sloth and torpor
restlessness
doubt

Honestly, I think itchiness should be the Sixth Hindrance!

While the Hindrances are obstacles to concentration, we practise virtue to protect and support our concentration. The timeless example is that it’s hard to have a clear mind in the afternoon when we’ve committed murder in the morning. And we practise concentration on the present to allow insight to penetrate illusion …

👆🏽 in this sense, concentration meditation is a transpersonal practice, and therefore everything that supports concentration is a therapeutic practice ~ this might seem like an arbitrary distinction (and isn’t duality precisely what we are trying to escape!?) but it’s a helpful dichotomy for me at the moment.

During that very-distracted meditation, I thought, The mental content doesn’t seem to be about any obvious breach of ethics, so why is it that I am especially disturbed today?

Maybe it’s just that I wasn’t aware of how my conduct compromises one of the less-obvious ethical precepts, such as ‘do not extol self over others’ or the one about not harbouring ill-will.

Maybe a distracted mind is just something a student needs to accept ~ radical acceptance of that fourth Hindrance, restlessness.

It certainly seems that access to consistently strong concentration is dependent on factors outside my control, but also I’m not sure about that.

There must be things we can do that support concentration.

I don’t know ~ I’m trying to understand what to do with distraction in meditation, with what has been called kapicitta since Buddha’s time. Monkey mind! It’s old school.

In the concentration basket of the Eightfold Path, with right mindfulness (samma sati) we notice our mind has wandered, and with right effort (samma vayama) we bring the mind back to right concentration (samma samadhi). Over and over again, and gradually we become more content among suffering.

I had to look up ‘defilements’ again, and read about the kleshas ~ rooted in the Three Poisons of ignorance, attachment and aversion, the defilements or afflictions are the 108 mental states that disturb the mind and result in unwholesome actions.

So yeah, I was right in my wondering, even if I was supposed to be concentrating at the time and allowing thoughts to come, dwell and fall away 👈🏼 that is the practice, the whole practice and nothing but the practice.

And yet, I was compelled to scrounge around for a pen and scribble on the nearest piece of paper (my precepts sheet), “I am enough”, because I felt I had arrived at some insight that would continue to bug me until I made a note and allowed myself to forget the idea while I continued concentrating.

As I currently understand it, the whole practice in Zen is to concentrate on an object of meditation that keeps us from indulging the monkey mind (kapicitta), and we concentrate some more until some kind of non-cognitive insight penetrates illusion.

Yes but there are other things, such as ethics, which support the practice of concentration. Concentration is but one aspect of the Eightfold Path ~ surely the other aspects of the Path are complementary to concentration (samadhi).

Let’s see if I can remember the others, and see if what I’m thinking about here fits among any of those:

right concentration
right mindfulness
right effort
right speech
right action
right livelihood
right view
right resolve

Maybe it falls within right view (samya dristi), but I’m guessing here ~ wondering whether our perception of self is an aspect of right view. If I have an unhealthy view of self, will that compromise concentration? I think so, yes.

Because it seemed a lot of the mental content (kleshas or afflictions) were about how I could be better: more loving, more organised, more efficient, more available, less distracted all the time, more able to concentrate, and I thought, We may need to complement our (transpersonal) concentration practice with the (therapeutic) practice of treating the health of our ego.

If we cultivate healthy ego, our ego is not always going to be popping up and saying, “Do this!” or “Do that!” when we’re already damn-well trying to do exactly what we’re supposed to be doing, which is concentrating!

This is not a new insight for me ~ it’s been percolating for a while and keeps coming up in my reflections. Reflecting on it has been helpful if only because it colours in the details of my own practice.

And these reflections may also illuminate beyond the lines of what I feel like calling “the original Buddhism” ~ I mean, we might need to elucidate other Hindrances or nuances of the kleshas to accommodate the mental state of humans in the twenty-first century, compared with the mental state of humans when the Buddha was alive and teaching.

As I draft this today, I have been tinkering with the various documents where I am trying to track the development and expression of these ideas in a more coherent way that I can share with others, but for now this meandering post will have to do.

I love a good meandering post.

I am distractedly curious and passionate about understanding and applying these ideas, and helping others to do so. As I move into the mental-health sector as a peer-support worker I hope to find opportunities to do so.

Meanwhile, I have updated the Heartwards website where I am starting to publish ideas from a transpersonal perspective about mental-health peer work. And I have opened but not worked on a hypertext project I think of more often again lately, called Whatness. I would like to add something about the Hindrances there, because processing such ideas enough to be able to express them without reference to some other source means I have integrated them enough to apply them on the fly.

Meanwhile, if you’re reflecting on things that support concentration in meditation, I’d love to hear about in the comments.

Legend 🤙🏼

Monday 4 September 23

58% 6.36pm

oxy

I’ve been suss for a while now about the connection between oxytocin and OxyContin, and raved about that here.

reprieve

I spoke with the teacher at TAFE today and feel now there is room among the demands of studying alongside the needs of our family. In the last few weeks we’ve had a trauma flare up or a karmic shitstorm, I’m not sure which I prefer. TAFE has been extra stress and now that has lifted, by communicating that I need some space to get the work down around the needs of my family.

The reality is we are living with chronic and acute mental and physical health issues, including a constellation of complex trauma. I need the space to take a breath, collect myself, reacquaint myself with my values, priorities and the sadhana that keeps me connected with self and healthy and happy enough to meet life and be present for others even though it’s stressful AF all the time, pretty much.

I am learning to regulate on the fly though, inoculating myself to the effects of stress, and things are coming good.

I have the next three days or so where I don’t have to go to class and can be more available here to do my sadhana and be at home and spend some time with Nikki and Zane if that’s practical. Three days to do some training-in-balance, taking good care of myself so I can balance TAFE and home.

efforting

I keep a physical list of reflections and insights that I’d like to remember, familiarise myself with so they are close to the fore when I need them. One I will add:

We live with delicate/volatile health needs and it’s important to remain vigilant, and remain committed to the efforting that means I’ll be naturally more resilient and compassionate throughout stress.

connection with Self

Here is the LP of an earlier post about re-connecting with Self to avoid being an existential suckhole.

LP re-connecting with Self to avoid being an existential suckhole

This is the LP version of this idea that if we don’t have connection with self (which is the definition and consequence of trauma), there is a tendency to seek that connection with other, either other people or other stuff, things external to the self, and wind up sucking the other dry.

TL;DR how to reconnect with Self

An insight is emerging out of some tension that has been plaguing the family for the last week or so, and a very valuable lesson:

when we don’t have connection with Self (which is the definition and consequence of trauma) there is a tendency to seek that connection with other, either other people or other stuff, things external to the self;

and this pursuit is doomed to fail and cause suffering in the same way trying to lace your shoes with an apple will always fail ~ the other is not a substitute for the self, and our repeated attempts to make something other than it is (to meet our need for connection to self by attaching to other) is delusional and therefore a recipe for suffering

when suffering is getting what we don’t want or not getting what we do want, and delusion is mistaking illusion for reality (that other can meet the needs of self is an illusion, sometimes very convincing).

Suffering is not such a big deal if we’re wanting cake and get a banana instead, but is kind of a big deal when we want to connect with self and we keep missing the mark because we are mistaking the other for a suitable substitute.

This is the ultimate form of Buddhist ignorance.

Thinking cake will meet our needs and therefore being disappointed when we get banana instead 👈🏼 that’s one level of relatively mundane ignorance, but mistaking other for self is a whole other level. You’d think it would be obvious that the self is not other, but if it were obvious why would we be trying to complete ourselves by finding Mr or Ms Right or by getting the right car, job, holiday, biscuit.

I’m sure there’s literature around this and I am interested in seeing that documentation but for now the insight feels real enough to not need validation.

On that note, when we have connection with self we don’t need external validation to know our worth. (Of course, to some extent we know ourselves in reflection from other, but this operates on the more-mundane level of personality, whereas the connection to self I’m talking about here is more about the sacred level of transpersonality. When we are connected with our transpersonal self, we don’t need others’ favourable opinions of us to be favourable for self-worth to be known.)

So how do we have connection with self? How do we restore the connection with self that was severed as a response to adverse experiences?

We reconnect with self by recovering from or releasing trauma, integrating our exiled parts, and through contemplative transpersonal practices (because by ‘self’ I actually mean ‘the part of us that transcends personal identification’).

My need for solitude, privacy and timespace must be met for me to feel connection to self, but once I feel that connection I am more able to spend time completely with other and not be distracted by my needs.

That connection with self meets all my psychological needs and once this connection is fulfilled I am able to show up in the world with service and giving that does not syphon from others. When I give/serve without that connection, I syphon from others because I am trying to get from them something I cannot get from them ~ namely, connection to self.

It sounds paradoxical, but I think this is true: when we try to give or to serve others (without connection with self), we often end up doing the opposite of giving, which is sucking, taking, draining … that’s why the image of a syphon feels appropriate, especially because once momentum has been created in a syphon, it is hard to halt the flow without causing a huge mess.

We end up sucking from others when we are trying to give, if we aren’t anchored in Self, because of a metaphysical void or vacuum where our connection with self once was ~ we become a psychological blackhole, syphoning from others what we can only truly get from connection with self.

The formal term for this is “being an existential suckhole”.

This means that all expressions of love ~ if they are coming from a place of disconnection from self ~ are manipulative, because they are trying to meet self-needs through other. We all adapt ways of relating with other to ensure our attachment needs are met, at the expense of our authenticity but also at the expense of other, which we exploit to meet a need it is impossible for them to meet.

This is presumably unconscious ~ I can’t imagine anyone doing this deliberately, but I believe everyone is doing it unconsciously to some extent because everyone has a degree of trauma in our culture (Maté & Maté, 2022).

How do we release trauma and integrate the parts of ourselves that we exiled during events we found traumatising? I cannot articulate that right now but it’s a central aspect of the Heartwards modularity.

And for now it’s something to think about:

OxyContin 👉🏽 oxytocin

OxyContin is just the 👉🏽 pointing at the 🌙 of oxytocin

I’ve been suss for a while now about the connection between oxytocin (the love and bonding hormone) and OxyContin, the trade name for oxycodone, an extraordinarily potent narcotic and opiate prescribed for chronic pain such as terminal-cancer patients suffer.

Is it or is it not a bit suss that OxyContin (a powerful and highly profitable painkiller contributing to the prescription-opioid addiction epidemic) is a very-near anagram of oxytocin!? OxyConti … an nth of difference.

OxyCunti … I mean, could they be a bit more transparent with their marketing manipulation!?

Did they not think for a moment, “Hang on wait, people are going to clue on pretty quick that we’re literally pulling their subliminal heart strings and call us out for heinously exploitating pain for profit!”

Opiates can soothe emotional and psychological pain as well as physical pain because they replicate our endogenous opiates ~ endorphins, and oxytocin!

OxyContin replicates oxytocin 👈🏼 it’s something you can’t unsee 🤦🏼‍♂️

Please reach out if this resonates with you or if you’re concerned about yourself or a loved one’s relationship with addiction, because helping others transform this is where I’m heading with Heartwards and the peer work training I’m doing.