by Oto | Jun 8, 2011 | Musings, Personal
Unresolved emotions are essentially poison. They lie underneath your cool exterior slowly festering then bubble up to the surface and turn everything murky grey. Exactly two days ago, I was overwhelmed with a sense of pride, satisfaction, joy and hope for the future. I’m in my best position so far financially; I got a few new toys and planning on getting a few more. I got a limited set of very good friends, I’m doing exactly what I want to do, how I want to do it. I’m actively pursuing long standing goals of mine. In short, I am happy, very happy. But yesterday and today I was depressed. I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. I tried meditating a bit, I came to realise a few things, but nothing hit the core of the issue. I did recognize a resentment I had overlooked many times before. I was so busy resolving other issues and emotions that I never saw this specific issue…until now.
The 24 months between June 2009 and June 2011 have been the most intense months of my life thus far. In the space of 2 years, I have turned upside down almost everything that was stable in my immediate experience – school, faith, religion, relationships, friends, behaviours, beliefs, worldviews, etc. I have essentially broken down everything in my life held it up to scrutiny, discarded a lot, rearranged some and pick up a lot more. It has been an incredible journey, one I will write about soon. For most of those 2 years, I’ve felt truly alone. The very people I expected and have trusted my entire life to have the answers I sought could not even comprehend the experience I was in. I’ve watched friends and those dear to me slip out the back doors of my life because they could not understand or handle my journey, my change. I’ve felt alone and misunderstood. Admittedly I went on a self imposed exile and distanced myself from everything that made up my old life.
I recognized resentment against all these people. I’ve gone through my fires and come out much, much stronger, clearer with an understanding and view of things I could not have imagined two years ago. For all the grief and pain and stress and suicidal thoughts that came with the past two years, I’m still grateful for it. But my victory sometimes feels pyrrhic. I feel like a battle hardened warrior and as strong as I am, my scars are real, and they haunt me. So I resent them. All our emotions towards other people are really reflections of our emotions towards ourselves. I guess I really resent myself, or I resent God. I love God, I really do, more than anything or anyone else, I always have. Even when I was hurt and doubted and was mad at Her, I never stopped loving God. And She was there always…But I resent Her. It’s like that coach who puts you through excruciating pain and gruelling physical torture. You appreciate it after the fact, but there are undertones of resentment still. That’s how I feel. And I came to realise all this about two hours ago.
I was talking to my closest friend and she told me to take responsibility for my role, my part. I did play a huge role in how things went and are. I chose the fire, I chose to awaken, I chose to run, I chose to rebel, I chose to hurt people, I chose to hurt myself, I chose to fight, I chose to give up, I chose to not give in, I chose to forge a new path, I chose to leap into the unknown. I chose all that. Most importantly I chose to hold on to pain. And that pain comes up again and again, like the past two days.
So tonight, I chose different. I chose to let go. I chose to forgive myself for my role, I chose to forgive myself for the pain my road gave me. I wouldn’t trade the path, but I let go of the pain. I chose to forgive everyone I expected to understand or have the answers, we are all only human, I can’t demand much. I chose to forgive myself for walking away, for running, and I forgave all those who walked away as well. Tomorrow morning I will wake up and forgive again, and the next day and so on until I’m done. Right now, I feel clear, I feel peace, I feel love, and I can keep walking forward.
by Oto | May 26, 2011 | Creativity, Musings, Personal
I wrote this two days ago in response to a request from The Avante Gardian (Khanyi). She was doing a piece on a few minds that interest her, and I felt like a mini celebrity being a part of that, so thank you Khanyi..or maybe I should call you TAG…lol
I want to be God, actually no wait, I AM God. You just don’t know it, and I forgot it. But I’m desperately trying to remember it. I lay long hours past the stroke of midnight meditating, wracking my mind and soul in restless search of paradise lost. I stretch my hands to the heavens beckoning rain, lightning and thunder in the middle of a perfect sunny day. If that doesn’t work, I return to more humble tasks like trying to materialise food out of thin air (I don’t like to cook).
It’s 9:30am and I am seated at my pc. I was adamant at making today one of those days. I was bringing back the marathon design sessions of ’09. Good times…I would literally wake up, sit at my pc, and design as the sun rise spilt through the blinds of my res room and keep designing until long shadows raced across my walls and ceilings and my room was plunged into deep darkness with only the glowing rectangle in front of me to punctuate it. I missed the passion, the long hours, the disappearing into another world of vectors and bitmaps forgetting to eat or even shower. Design was my compulsion and I was her faithful addict. I missed that…these days I get distracted…
…by Khanyi…bbming me asking me to submit anything I haven’t posted yet on my blog to her. Well, anything I haven’t posted on my blogs, I have deemed too crappy to be posted anywhere. So that’s not going to happen. I’m going to write afresh. But, what in God’s…I mean My name do I write? Anything I want…seriously Khanyi? You are going to slap me with an open ended writing brief when I have so meticulously planned a day of design revelry. Okay cool…so now it’s exactly 12 hours later (9:30pm) and I am trying really hard to write something interesting and fascinating to live up to the label of being a ‘mind that Khanyi enjoys’. But, I really have nothing, except the fact that I’m God…
…and I want to ’reverse-engineering the universe’. I seek to uncover the core truths and inner workings of the universe. Essentially, trying to work out this thing called life. I think all religions are mythologies that refer to actual real truths. For example, we have ancient stories that cast the sun as this character that rides a chariot through the sky from east through west and then to the underworld then back again. We know of uncivilised natives referring to cars as metal horses because they have no prior knowledge of cars. So, I think most of our religions and theologies are mythologies that point at deeper more encompassing truths. I think we can understand metaphysics and spirituality in pseudo-physic terms. Let’s take faith for instance? The assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Heb 11:1). This knowledge that something that ‘is not’ in fact ‘is’, always ‘is’ and always ‘will be’. The knowledge that it is simply not manifested yet. The complete focus on that thing until it ‘becomes’. Remembering that nothing really exists, that when we go break down our material universe to its essential nature, it comes down to sub-atomic particles that exist neither here nor there…the things we touch are more akin to electricity or information than actual tangible matter. Knowing that we can reconfigure information (emotions and thoughts) until it manifests as something ‘tangible’. You know…shit like that. I want to reverse-engineer the universe, then manipulate it or create bootleg versions…like the Chinese J.
My present quest: To reverse-engineer the universe and understand how the process of creation works. I am a creator (we all are creators) In my work and craft, I focus on the static visual aspect (images). I do a lot of graphic design. It is always fascinating how I ‘see’ a design before it happens. It already exists (‘is’), I just help it ‘become’ by putting my hand to the mouse and clicking and manipulating pixels until they take the shape I want. I take this same concept and exercise god-hood everyday by imagining the life I desire and watching it materialise all around me. If you begin to grasp a little about how the universe works and how the same processes repeat themselves from the tiniest of cells to the most enormous galaxies, you understand you can have anything you want. You are then left with a more important question – ‘What will you choose?’ Choice is how we get to know ourselves, choice is how we get to create ourselves and choice is how we know that there is only ONE of us – God, and from himself he has created ALL of us. Ergo I am God, and I created all of you 😛
