Just Imagine

[mandyjw]

I sadly do not have time for journaling myself into rabbit holes today but am becoming aware that the things I've been doing lately have been all about self worth. In fact limitation consciousness (that isn't the right term) is weighing on me now, important orders need to be shipped, house needs to be cleaned, laundry started, kids dropped off, important meeting attended, and really the only part of work I'm excited about it photographing the purple caterpillar project I made yesterday. Who am I to sit and write my thoughts down? How frivolous. As frivolous as purple caterpillars. My joy and my entire livelihood is frivolous. I am frivolous. 

frivolous- diminutive of *frivos "broken, crumbled," from friare "break, rub away, crumble"

Of course frivolity is an integral part of the whole. 

I've been buying a lot of clothes lately. A lot of my clothes were purchased 10 years ago. Buying clothes puts the fear of God in me. Last night I realized why. It basically hits all the lower chakra issues, (that red one). When I look nice, I often feel awful...ly self conscious. When you grow up in a rural poor area, people who look nice stand out and attract various and certain uncomfortable reactions. There are lots of safety reasons that as a woman you don't want to attract attention to yourself. That message is seriously anti-feminist but oh dear God, is it ever ingrained in my psyche. 

Money. If I spend money my kids could starve or something and if my kids starve and it's because of my frivolity, oh my God I'll never forgive myself. 

Basically I am not safe. I am not ok. After I purchase something I worry about it when i go to sleep or wake up in the night. Last night I dreamed that my uncle decided to sell the family property I'm hoping to buy from them to someone else without even telling us. 

Fear of being feminine, mostly in my experience women spend the most time, money and attention on their clothes and it's more safe for me to judge this as silly and stupid than to admit I really enjoy it too. 

 But what a problem I've created for myself? My business, talents and passion is in what I judge the frivolous, the visual art. Do I judge my customers for valuing my own work enough to buy it?  Yes. In fact I really do. You can imagine how that feels. How frivolous, how cutting of oneself off to do that, to not see the exchange as one celebration of beauty, art and exchange of energy and inspired joy. 

I bought this book, which is soooo crazily counter everything I've ever embraced and imagined myself to be. https://www.amazon.com/Your-Beauty-Mark-Ultimate-Eccentric/dp/0060722711/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=your+beauty+mark&qid=1598959022&sr=8-1 I'm learning oh so many things, some of them practical, some accidental or purposefully spiritual or existential connections. 

I've been avoiding self care of all kinds and forms, thinking I could bypass it. I have a plantar wart of my foot that has been hurting a lot lately, and I remembered when it first showed up. We had done the house renovation and mortgaged it again to do it. I had to finish all the painting myself and it was grueling, having a one year old, and living in the kitchen and dining room with the entire family for the whole winter. It was the time in my life that I was the least taken care of, the most stressed and yet, completely going for what I wanted. 

I realized that my biggest problem with my husband is that he doesn't pay attention to appearance or take good care of himself. Then I realized that I never tried to google or address the painful spot on my foot that formed at that time, likely from the over stress toxin load of painting. For 4 years I never bought anything, looked up anything or put anything on it to take care of it, I just suffered through the pain while running on it the whole time. 

Could life really be for joy, love, appreciation and creative expression? How frivolous. 

Edited September 1, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

Mirror, mirror on actualized.org, tell me who is the... ehmm... 

Nevermind. Question is flawed. 

Goddamn mirror has a zit on it. I put some acne cream on it but the zit keeps moving. I'll get it eventually though, even if I have to cover the whole goddamn mirror in it. 

Edited September 1, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

"Anyone that says there's no price to this whole enlightenment thing, just joy and bliss, don't be quick to buy that."

BUY, Adyashanti, don't buy the thing with no price? Did someone sneeze on the free cheese samples or something? I love the variety of spiritual teachings one can say to you and not be wrong, as you navigate these tantalizingly deceptive mystic mists of the psyche. When I was a kid, my parents took me to this cave park and I got lost in a cave and I figured no one knew I was lost or cared, so it never occurred to me that the guide speaking overhead was a park guide who was actually giving me instructions on how to get out. Had to find the way on my own. 

Huh, this post got too journaly and personal so I decided not to reply to the thread and post here. Then I accidentally posted there. What evs I guess, everyone here knows I'm crazy anyway. 

 

[mandyjw]

The direct path is the one of least resistance, so fun, whimsy, love, entertainment and frivolity suddenly become indispensable to enlightenment. 

in dispensable. ha. ha ha. HA. 

 

[mandyjw]

It's getting colder, and I caught myself feeling really sad that I couldn't swim anymore. The swimming makes me feel amazing and I'm in the best shape I've ever been in. I decided to make myself go swimming anyway today and the idea of it felt so good. Then I wanted to balk. I intellected (yep, it's a word, cause I say so) myself through it. I took a sweater and a thermos of hot tea. I didn't really get that cold after anyway. I wonder how long I can continue.

How quickly we assume our limitations and feel sad about them as if they are out of our control long before they really are. 

I crossed the river and raided an apple tree up on a hill. Filled a bath towel full of them and put them in fridge. Sounds crazy but I think the human microbiome was made to (intelligently) eat wild things that have some insect damage. 

I run in the woods with my dog every single day, and walk part of it. My dad cut out a whole new woods road, so we have two trails that loop. I think part of my stomach/back problems with running was the higher mileage on pavement. The trail running challenges all kinds of other muscles as well as being much less low impact. I wouldn't trade some of those crazy long runs for the world though. Someday soon I might just go out for one again. 

Eating a lot of protein, celery juice every morning, and lots of veggies and for the first time ever a ton of fruit without problems. My stomach problem is mostly, entirely healed, but I know it's connected with some back and hip issues from the running as well as my stomach (an honestly, everything else including emotions). I was on the low FODMAPS diet for over a year. I still can't eat too many beans or pea protein, no eggs, no bananas. I saw a chiropractor and that was way too violent and ineffective for my tastes. Butt massage then, SNAP, SNAP. No thanks. I can see how it would work for some though. I'm going to see a massage therapist someday, soon. 

Life is just so magically, fucking perfect in the summer. It's so easy to get everything right. I seem to need a lot of outdoor time to stay in the vortex or whatever language you want to to use. Seems my psychological shit hits the fan and then is let go of and seen through stuff seems to be triggered by long winters though. Embracing seasons and embracing cycles of life and death, growth and die back, and who knows what tomorrow will look like, but whatever it is, it's all happening for you, to you and by you, cause you're the author of it, who doesn't exist.

The author and the character are one, the author knows the character, but the character can never know the author. They are at the same time integrally one, and yet they also never, ever merge. 

Kind of like the sun and the moon. One seems to cycle, but it doesn't really, it cyclically reflects the other that never changes. 

Edited September 2, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

 

[mandyjw]

I'm going through a whole lot of worthiness stuff right now, feeling some feelings bubble up. I have a video in the making, and I don't know what it will evolve into, but it turned into an attempt to teach and then the shock of realizing I'm the one being taught. Usually when that happens so rudely and abruptly, I don't post the video, but I think maybe I want to show the process. I've realized that this journal and a lot of my videos are a kind of psychological stripping. It's like I have such low self esteem, that instead of trying raise it and present myself as someone worthy or respect, I'm trying to find rock bottom through authenticity and transparency and instead realizing it's a strange loop. Anything else just feels horrible to me. You have to throw your self protective feelings away and delve deep into vulnerability to do such a thing. And when you start to, they bubble up. You're inviting them in to be faced. 

The truth is I deeply love people, I deeply hate them and they deeply terrify me. I avoid them for the most part, and because of this I'm able to entertain some pretty fantastical imaginations about humanity and avoid the trouble implicit in imagining myself and how I relate to it. 

I deeply wanted to disappear, but that felt awful. Who am I to show up and be seen? If I cannot disappear I should blend in with my surroundings and not get attention. I should always please everyone, I cannot ever cause them pain or inconvenience. A surgeon heals and saves lives by cutting people's flesh. What a monster. I seek to do this to people psychologically, what a monster. 

My own facade showed through the process of trying to make the video, to the point where I was laughing at thought of the very topic it was about itself. Yet what I wanted to accomplish was seen in such clarity, it seems a shame to throw away such magic to scratch it to purposefully create a more polished facade for the next. 

I have spent a huge amount of time this week working on improving my videos. Who am I to do such a thing? I figured out the video-making function of the camera I use to photograph my work, and figured out a lens that my husband bought me as a gift a few years ago, a way too expensive gift I never used, after I complained that he was buying his coworker an expensive gift and never bought me anything. That's because I tried to control the gifts and told him not to buy me them. He should have known that meant he can't buy other people gifts either. I have felt bad for years that he wasted money on this expensive unused camera lens, and I should have sold it or somehow figured out a use for it. I felt he bought it only because I complained. This is the event that caused me to search "how to deal with anger and discover Leo's videos in the end of 2014. 

Anyway this lens is the only one that works to film video, something I couldn't quite figure out before Friday... I didn't think it was worth the time to figure out. You must learn how to accept a gift in order to give one. 

I want the video making to be effortless. Not that I don't actually, physically, put lots of work into it, but emotionally effortless. It's the psychological self that makes it an effort. I think maybe I was a bit confused as to what effort is, and what I try to avoid and praise when it comes to effort. 

It feels like everything, everything, in my way is out here staring at me in the face. Like my very reflection in a mirror. 

Edited September 6, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

I like men who act like assholes because I want to stop making myself act so fucking nice all the time. 

You're not actually that nice. 

STFU, the title of this journal is "Just Imagine", and you're just an imaginary italicized voice. 

And what are you?

An imaginary standard font voice. 

[mandyjw]

Jesus really did die and redeem the world. Is everything, really everything, redeemed then? 

When I was a kid, my mom was deeply disturbed by Marilyn Manson who was super popular at the time. For my sister's graduation they chose the colors of black, white and red. Mom thought these had horrible inspiration roots, probly cause Marilyn Manson. I remember thinking red and white were deeply symbolic of the blood and purity of Christ. I left out the black though. 

Did you want to get enlightened Mandy, or finally earn to really appreciate art? 

Like I said, above about the fonts, the difference is just cosmetic. 
 

[zeroISinfinity]

Unleash the beast madam Marilyn is right. ?❤️?

 

 

[mandyjw]

HOLY FUCK! He is brilliant. How did I miss this! 

The rabbit's just a monkey in disguise. 

 

Fuck. 

 

[zeroISinfinity]

Who? ?

[mandyjw]

@zeroISinfinity  Yeah. 

[mandyjw]

"As a child, Warner attended his mother's Episcopal church, though his father was a Roman Catholic.[10][11] He attended Heritage Christian School from first to 10th grade. In that school, his instructors tried to show children what music they were not supposed to listen to; Warner then fell in love with what he "wasn't supposed to do".[12] Warner later transferred to GlenOak High School and graduated from there in 1987. After relocating with his parents, he became a student at Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1990. He was working towards a degree in journalism, gaining experience in the field by writing articles for the music magazine 25th Parallel.[13]" 

 

Manson was a friend of Anton LaVey,[123][124] who even inducted him as a minister in the Church of Satan, although Manson downplayed this. When questioned whether he was a minister in the Church of Satan by Bill O'Reilly, Manson responded with "No, not necessarily. That was something earlier. It was a friend of mine who's now dead, who was a philosopher that I thought I learned a lot from. And that was a title I was given, so a lot of people made a lot out of it. But it's not a real job, I didn't get paid for it."[125]

As a result, he has been described as "the highest profile Satanist ever" with strong anti-Christian views and social Darwinist leanings.[126] However, Manson himself denies this, and stated the following:

"I'm not a misanthrope. I'm not a nihilist. I'm not an atheist. I believe in spirituality, but it really has to come from somewhere else. I learned a long time ago, you can't try to change the world, you can just try to make something in it. I think that's my spirituality, it's putting something into the world. If you take all the basic principles of any religion, it's usually about creation. There's also destruction, but creation essentially. I was raised Christian. I went to a Christian school, because my parents wanted me to get a better education. But when I got kicked out I was sent to public school, and got beat up more by the public school kids. But then I'd go to my friend's Passover and have fun."

— Marilyn Manson[127]

Manson is also familiar with the writings of Aleister Crowley and Friedrich Nietzsche. He quotes Crowley throughout his autobiography, including Thelema's principal dictum, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."[128] Crowley's esoteric subject matter forms an important leitmotif in much of Manson's early work.[129]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Manson

[mandyjw]

 

[mandyjw]

Oh.

My.

God.

This is too rich. 

I am gone. 

[mandyjw]

Floor has gone out from underneath me. Marilyn Manson's androgyny reminded me of this person who I saw years ago on TV in a "Freak Show" thing or something. I remember being completely stunned by this strange attraction that just arose, when everything I imagined myself to be would not be attracted by rather completely repulsed by this person and his art. 

And look at the youtube videos he is making now.

 

[mandyjw]

Last night I read a chapter, "Ramona the Nuisance" in "Ramona Age 8" to my son, and started crying by the end.

The development of the empathy and felt responsibility for all other's feelings in Ramona so mirrored what has come up lately for myself. 

nuisance (n.)

c. 1400, "injury, hurt, harm," from Anglo-French nusaunce, Old French nuisance "harm, wrong, damage," from past-participle stem of nuire "to harm," from Latin nocere "to hurt" (from PIE root *nek- (1) "death"). Sense has softened over time, to "anything obnoxious to a community" (bad smells, pests, eyesores)

 

 

[mandyjw]

My youtube suggestions after all the searches this morning be like... "what the fuck you expect from me, girl"? 

Edited September 7, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

Touche' youtube suggestions, I should never have doubted you. Synchronicity. Damn. 

You know, maybe now I could love any face on the planet, maybe, except I still don't want to face my own and edit that youtube video.