Not sure what it'll take to finally walk away from the Middle East

[thedoorsareopen]

I was born in California and raised by a white lady. I believe in American values even if they're an illusion. I was beaten and brainwashed by Muslims as a kid and have spent my entire life unraveling that experience.

First I tried to go to college, get a job, etc. But every day I lived in a dark hole of loneliness because everyone in my world told me I was Arab. I'm half Egyptian genetically, but I grew up with American friends. I visited relatives in Egypt a couple times, but they were basically like full burka foreign Trump voters, it was very alienating.

Okay, well, all my worldly plans blew up as I got older and the loneliness and self-alienation engulfed me.

By the time I was 30, I was drinking 30 beers a day or a handle of vodka a day, but still I couldn't even die.

So then I got into nonduality and learned virtually everything I could about comparative religion and spiritual practice. I can induce a nondual state at will now.

And still, I am constantly inundated with inexplicable references to the Middle East wherever I go. I left the Muslim school I attended in 1996, and spent the next couple years being beaten and abused by my Egyptian dad. It got bad enough that I was put in foster care and my parents divorced.

So he wasn't in the house anymore, which was a relief. But then 9/11 happened. So then Muslim violence was the topic of the news for the next 15 years.

My dad remarried an Egyptian woman and had another family. But I was still kind of in contact because my full brother still lived there. He's pretty American, but plays into a lot of narc abuse dynamics with my dad, so I finally just cut them all off. Then Oct 7 happened.

I just went to Burning Man, which should have been the height of free American hedonism, and instead it was plastered in tributes to the poor Palestinians. By the middle of the week, a Muslim guy camped right next to me.

I fully believe reality is an illusion.

The thing I don't get though, is like, if Muslims have God on their side, if this transcendent force of creation is rubbing these people in my face for a reason, why are Muslims generally stupider than Americans? Like, when I was a kid I was still brainwashed by the school I went to, which told me that Americans were evil, decadent and stupid. So I spent many years wondering if that could be true, and contemplating different value systems trying to determine look, is America really evil?

It's no more evil than anywhere else in this human world, in the end. But Americans are generally smarter, savvier, and FOR SURE more in touch with their humanity.

I feel that way, sometimes. When the constant references to the Middle East in my life aren't flaring up my alienation.

I could go talk to any stranger on a bus and experience more genuine connection than I felt with my estranged Egyptian relatives. And man, those people did nothing but disrespect, abuse and marginalize me when I was still around them.

I've been trying to move on, but if this is how reality is, I'm not sure how that would be possible. I live on the western edge of a continent on the other side of the earth from these people. By any rational accounting of things, there should just not be this much presence of that energy in my life. I never liked their culture, even when I was a little kid I thought of Islam like IngSoc from 1984. I thought I was doing the right thing fighting authority. But somehow I live in this middle place where Middle Easterners think I'm an asshole for rejecting their culture, and Americans think I'm racist for criticizing that culture.

I feel completely alone in the universe. I thought nonduality, meditation, samadhi, forgiveness, fucking SOMETHING, would end this, but I forgive and forgive and it doesn't really change.

I wouldn't feel so upset if they would just get the fuck off my nuts for a while. They were always trying to brainwash me, bind me, abuse me, demean me, degrade me, capture me, intimidate me. Like if they were just chill, it would be chill. I fucking WISH that heritage was worth a damn. But they're so miserable.

I'm at the end of anything that could be termed a spiritual search. There's no more new information. I've read everything, practiced everything, experienced all the insights and awakenings. This fundamental karmic balance never seems to change.

[Leo Gura]

I'm sorry your family abused you.

It's due to that abuse and the trauma which still lingers that you have this fixation/aversion to Arab culture. Arabs are not inherently worse, they are just less developed, as Spiral Dynamics shows us.

But of course you will have an aversion to it, because it's related in your mind to your family abusing you.

If you work to heal your family abuse trauma, that should clear up your fixations on this topic.

Therapy could be really good for you, to talk out all your abuse, hurt, and anger.

Or look into other forms of trauma healing.

Here's an important lesson for you: Awakening and nonduality is not trauma healing. These are distinct things.

Edited October 5 by Leo Gura

[Buck Edwards]

I came from an abusive family as well. Gosh I can't imagine what you went through, I'm so sorry for that. Sends you a hug. 

Please take care of yourself. 

What helped me the most is spirituality. I'm still in therapy and therapy works wonders. I'm given worksheets to deal with the emotions that came from the trauma. 

I'm so sorry for your experience. But there's always a rainbow. I focus on positivity now. I laugh everyday. Spirituality has been a great boon to me. It heals me. 

Keep discovering spirituality more and more. It has tools for karmic healing. I listen to Satsang everyday on YouTube everyday and it calms my spirit and I see a fundamental shift in my consciousness. Pure magic. 

I would recommend Sadhguru and others. Lots of spiritual teachers on YouTube. Since learning about non duality, I have been feeling amazing and wonderful. I see things with different eyes. 

I will encourage you to continue your spirituality. You'll discover a lot about yourself and the world. 

[Buck Edwards]

21 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Here's an important lesson for you: Awakening and nonduality is not trauma healing. These are distinct things.

They are not trauma healing Leo. But they help people who are hurt. Please consider that. 

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Buck Edwards said:

They are not trauma healing Leo. But they help people who are hurt. Please consider that. 

Maybe they help. Maybe.

[thedoorsareopen]

Thanks for the kind words, I'm actually surprised.

I am such good friends with the splinters of my inner child. I learned a lot from getting to know them. But again, I am at the end of that. ACT, EFT, DBT, CBT, Inner Child Work, IFS, schema therapy, body scan meditation, somatic experiencing, yoga... I have fully mapped out my mind and body and the traumas in it. I'm like Charlie from It's Always Sunny talking about Pepe Silvia over here with this shit. 

I did a lot of healing work and learned some amazing things about the nature of humanity. But I just want to stop resonating with those people and be the fucking Californian I have always been.

Maybe I'll go back to trying to manifest a Cadillac.

Edited October 5 by thedoorsareopen

[mydiamondsandpearls]

Hi! I can totally relate to how you feel. I also come from a very specific conservative ethnic group and, although I live somewhere else and can enjoy all the freedom and independence, I often feel the weight of that part of my identity on my shoulders (it's a strange mixture of insecurity/isolation/feeling like there's no community I belong to). I spent years trying to figure out how to lift that weight: through complete denial (it helps that I look like any other white girl) to researching the history of my family and the ethnic group I belong to (very gloomy history of repressions, ethnic cleansing, wars and discrimination). It didn't help at all. 

I eventually found the cure: if you do something with passion and it becomes your career, it fills up the biggest part of your identity. If you spend 40+ hours/week doing something, your ethnic background looses that power over who you think you are. Because you are what you do. Artist, journalist, programmer, lawyer, doctor, etc. Eventually, you find a community of people who do or like the same things. And people recognize you as someone who does that thing (when you become really good at it).

Idk if this method helps you, but it helped me. Pick something and become really good at it. 

[PurpleTree]

4 hours ago, thedoorsareopen said:

The thing I don't get though, is like, if Muslims have God on their side

Well they don’t. That’s just another dumb idea.

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, thedoorsareopen said:

I did a lot of healing work and learned some amazing things

But clearly you still have a fixation.

Learning about healing is different from actually healing yourself. The problem with trauma is that it's not rational. It's not enough to intellectually know about it. You gotta deal with it on a cellular level.

Contemplate why you have that fixation and what sources it.

Edited October 5 by Leo Gura

[PenguinPablo]

@Leo Gura You mean I can't just become God and bypass all the "personal" healing?

edit: what do You mean by cellular?

How does one go about that...

Edited October 5 by PenguinPablo

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, PenguinPablo said:

what do You mean by cellular?

I was speaking metaphorically.

[Breakingthewall]

@thedoorsareopen the only way is removing totally all the identifications of you until absolutely nothing remains. I thought that was impossible, the environment in my family was twisted and rotten in a level very difficult to understand. You have to do a real change, as Leo said, you have to change your genes with your will.

In short, the only way for you is the real liberation. Imagine that your energetic structure is a knot of energetic beams tangled over each other. They must be liberated, open to the limitless. This is not a simple work, but from what appears from your text, you are qualified for it.

Edited October 5 by Breakingthewall

[thedoorsareopen]

Quote

In short, the only way for you is the real liberation. Imagine that your energetic structure is a knot of energetic beams tangled over each other.

Yeah. It's not about the story. I've untangled so much trauma, but it seems what is distressing me now is the earliest of it. Pre-verbal, and when that gets triggered, I have had no success finding equanimity because it's just, completely irrational. It's emotional and primal.

I like the advice to get busy with something passionate. I guess from where I'm at I feel hopeless that worldly appearances could ever really occupy me anymore, but that's probably just incel vibes filtered thru what I think I know about awakening.

I guess I need to stop engaging with the mind story and just up my morning meditation. Do the work.

I recently did a Vipassana retreat and left early when I started hearing Arabic words. I never spoke Arabic. It's distressing to feel like my mind and body are totally porous to this thing I hate so much. After all this time, all the struggle, and it's just coming in from inside my mind. Must I really reckon with this? Is there no escape?

[Buck Edwards]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

@thedoorsareopen the only way is removing totally all the identifications of you until absolutely nothing remains. I thought that was impossible, the environment in my family was twisted and rotten in a level very difficult to understand. You have to do a real change, as Leo said, you have to change your genes with your will.

In short, the only way for you is the real liberation. Imagine that your energetic structure is a knot of energetic beams tangled over each other. They must be liberated, open to the limitless. This is not a simple work, but from what appears from your text, you are qualified for it.

I liked this explanation. 

[enchanted]

3 hours ago, PenguinPablo said:

@Leo Gurawhat do You mean by cellular?

If you watch yourself you will see all your trauma happens the body (and cells). When getting upset our body morphs, tenses, fidgets,  emotes, and the heart rate goes up or down. 

Thoughts are only part of the body and relatively easier to deal with. 

[gettoefl]

Do you have any like-minded friends or any supportive community?

You need to be around people who are fellow pilgrims in making something good of their lives.

If I was still on the west coast, we could definitely hang out and make things happen.

You sound a talented individual; you should throw yourself into your creative passion / life purpose and this will bring you the means for freedom since it seems you have done as much of the spiritual work as is necessary for now.

Sending you my love and blessing