The Slow Death of Michael Herald

[Guest]

I'm Mike, I'm a farther of 3 awesome kids, a future husband (hopefully), only child, entrepreneur(kind of), dog owner, hard worker and a "good" person. So i thought.

I'm REALLY into enlightenment. I find it be the "real deal" when it comes to personal development. And by development i mean negation. I was obsessed with personal development after me and my future wife (hopefully) had VERY serious relationship problems (i've since learned ALL my problems have been with relationships , and that still continues, kinda) . 

 I have, however, given up on my goal of "self destruction" because, well, its just a goal of the self that i am still am (just a weird one). I've been working on my interactions with others and learning to separate and accept the fact that there's an unseen "ME vs NOT-ME" war going on. Thats fine, It's not why im here and i let that go on with-out taking it personally anymore.

Just a quick side note because i feel i need to share my core traits that i've assumed to be valuable and self validating. There's much more to it then this but im simply trying to get them out there to help me feel better.

• Hard work: this is something very ingrained in me from young age. 
• Surface loyalty: I dont need to BE loyal just need people to think i am
• Reflective of my inner Ideal: I have what i think is the ideal for everything, and everyone needs to know it
• I need to be desired: This is the biggie. I've traced back almost everything i believe and assume to this core belief and to the assumption of being desired means I am real.

My need to feel wanted and desired stems from my belief that I need others to validate me. This has its fingers in everything from my work habits, the friends I've chosen through out my life, my girlfriends, how I interact with my dog, to how I raise my kids, how I treat my family and my reactions to emotions.

This Validation/Non-Validation war that has permeated my mind my whole life is the main story for Me, It's the "plot" so-to-speak. I am where I am because of it. Finding it has changed my life in a way comparable to living in room, and finally realizing that i'm living in a room. The work of getting out is far from over, but the work cant begin until the work has begun. The Book of Not-Knowing made that possible, and is my bible until further notice.

I intend to keep this journal active with my insights and realizations as they come. It can get weird as i don't filter myself as I contemplate, (I usually write on paper but I feel a pull to share so I'm going to) BUT given the context of this site/forum, i'm sure no one will mind

cheers.

-mike

 

[Leo Gura]

Awesome! I'm excited to see serious truth-seekers here

[Guest]

The wall, i'm at the wall. at least a "kinda" wall. I see everyone around me living their lives and being things, but i cant relate very much. i suffer to care about the crap between people, it doesnt make sense to me. BUT i know that my not-caring is of the world as the drama itself, and in fact creates more drama.... like one wave not liking the other wave. they may look different but ultimately they are of the same. (i like ocean references), and clash when they hit the shore line.

I dont know what to do. Where to go. There's nothing i can think of to give me solace, except faith. not religious faith, but faith in., well, in my questioning. I have faith that if i keep questioning ill find an answer. BUT it's also intuited that i may never find an answer. BUT maybe thats my answer. i dont fucking know. 

When i cut out my distractions and slow down and think, i realize I DONT FUCKING KNOW ANYTHING. I'm guessing and having faith at this point. and if my faith is misplaced, shit, I dont know.... i guess it isnt different then guessing. 

Its everything. EVERYTHING that comes into my world. My kid has a nose bleed or the mayor get a blow job, to me its the same thing (EDIT*- mentioning my kid and a blow job in the same sentence weirds me out but i wont change it due to... well thats the thought i had) I question even my questioning. "what the fuck mike, cut the crap" i hear it all the time. should say "i say it all the time"

BUT!!!!

One thing i can say. Sense I've done this questioning. My life has changed.

I WAS

• workaholic
• alcoholic
• needed to provide
• head of the house
• had respect
• top of my company 
• obsessed with my looks (physical and mental)
• car nut ( had the coolest *brum brum*)
• facebook nazi (subjective term)

I was in general neurotic. 

 AND NOW

• quit working
• lady is main provider
• still drink but dont get drunk. ( i tell myself)
• stay at home dad and work for self part time
• barely shower or get hair cuts ( i have 3 little kids parents will understand)
• no social media (except this forum)
• still a car nut... but different. cant explain it.

To summarize. I "get it" intellectually....i guess, just more faith. but I in fact dont know what anyone here is talking about, and when i think i do, im pretending i do. and it sucks to admit that.

cheers

[I.Am.Listening]

Yo dude

I've read your posts here in the journal.
It sounds like you've woken up to something.

When I look at the mental image I created of you,
it seems to me (and I could be wrong of course) - 

That you kinda know what are the FEELINGS you want to feel,
kinda know what are the FEELINGS you DON'T want to feel,
but don't know for certain how to advance on this, at all times.

If you resonate with what I've wrote - 
I just want to tell you -
That is good.
That is a really really good place to be,
because you're begining to REALLY listen inwards.

You're becoming more aware of what it is YOU truly want.
This is a tricky thing to "get",
because we've learned not to trust ourselves as we grew up,
so now, our internal-compass is kind of wacky sometimes

Re-establishing your connection with your self,
that is the first step in anything you wish to accomplish,
at any given time.
Including - getting more of the feelings you want, and less of those you do not want.

The book of not knowing looks incredible,
I've read the first few pages and now I'm gonna buy it in my kindle
Thanks for that.

Good luck on your journey
Feel free to contact me if you feel like it,
- I Am Listening

[Guest]

I think i understand what you're saying. I would say its more accurate to say i dont know where my feelings come for sure, The best i can say is that my mind is programmed by growing up and creating a loop of action re-action behaviors to achieve an outcome of what-hell-ever. I've spent a lot (if not most) of my time contemplating who i am at this point and trying to trace it back. The Book of Not Knowing makes you do this many times through out the book. 

Long story short. I'm not seeking feelings. i've accepted the good with the bad knowing they both are in place to achieve the same goal. OR both come from the same source. I flat out just dont trust my feelings, either good or bad because they are a reflection of something else and inherently false because of their nature. 

this is where i am stuck

[WickedIrish]

Interesting self observation

[Guest]

to stay on track. Are feelings and emotions cut from the same cloth? Emotions seem more...  present and forthcoming, but feelings seem to be, well, deeper. 

it almost seems like emotions are more relatable  and feelings are more, subconscious. Like there is a "force" creating the feelings. 

I think its all crap. i think they're one in the same. tandem components of a similar machine . I dont trust my emotions, I dont trust my feelings. and anything that comes along with them, I.E. thoughts, urges, plan, goals, ideals, desires, loathing, irritability, ANYTHING. 

I have an agenda, whether i realize it or not. I have a CONSTANT agenda. I can't deny it, I see it in everything I do (AND THINK). Everything i do has a relation to me. I can't be the center of this universe. Just flat out doesnt make sense. IF i'm NOT the center of this universe, then why does EVERYTHING I do revolve around me?.....

If you follow logic then I am a lie, a fabrication. I set out to revolve around me so i can have a universe in delusion, as king.

KING OF DELUSION ! i might name my next band that.

NOW, i'm not psychotic,(so i think) so i can intuit that maybe theres something else going on here.

I've been living this life-o-mine for 31 years now. clock time. I'm perceiving.  I have sensory perceptions constantly. OK good. that means there's something going on. I have notion after notion and theory after theory about whats going on..... k cool..... NONE of them are my experience. my experience is that i perceive "things". i've never met jesus or buddah, or god, or krishna, or tolle, or a sadhguru or leo . FUCK i've never met anyone in my life to shake hands with, that was "awake" not even enlightened or truth realized, or anything. NO first-hand anything of anytype from anyone. ever. So what the fuck is true? ANYONE that believes what they read on the internet is well. you know....

To feel on my own is an understatement. ( this forum is moot, despite all self images, you are all just letters and a small picture on a computer screen to me)

I dont trust anything that arises out of myself, therefore i cant trust anything that arises out of yourself. just saying, trying to stay consistent. had a bunch of questions but i dont see the point. Egoic questions beget egoic answers. and im done with mentally masturbating. It's old, and warn out its welcome. literally. 

I'm still at the point of not knowing what the fuck im doing but i know that most of what i do is a fools errand. Cheese chasing as Mr. Ralston puts it. I know things to NOT be true, simple honesty and reasoning can shine light on some of the most obvious things in life as taken for granted, or flat out made up. Family Love and Goals are about .0001% of the shit we make up to create our life. 

What i want to know. What creates that life? What records the life story? what draws in my raw perceptions and adds all the bull shit to it, catalogs it? How is it that i can "think" about moving my arm and it doesnt move, but when "i" move it, it moves?

 

 

[JKG]

When I ask myself these questions my mind comes up with these 'logical' answers like: Life is just there. Something in the brain is recording this life story. It is the memory. And the raw perceptions are also just there. And the voice in the mind is creating concepts.

Very tricky from the mind to create these answers to stop the curious part of me asking questions. But these answers have no real sollution in themselves. They bring up more and more questions.

The mind brings up answers but I want experiences.

[Guest]

When it comes to the brain. It doesn't make sense to me. all logic thats presented in any form says "theres this gushy blood soaked blob in your head that is responsible for everything you ever experience EVER! ( i paraphrase of course :))" 

I'm starting to get the sense that might actually have some truth to it.

is it possible that, getting down to it. breaking down everything that happens to us physiologically, can be traced back further and further, to an inanimate "object"?

or to go the other way is there NOTHING in this world that IS inanimate. is EVERYTHING animated? How can I, sit here at this computer, being the sum of all these parts ALL of which broken as far they can go, or NO different then a rock on the side of the road. the plant next to me? or the fucking computer screen im looking at? How is any of different? HOW can I be the one with the ability to ever come up with this concept?

If I can come up with all these crazy things ( i think they are crazy btw dont wrong )  whats the thing i'm missing? Is it because I'm just a gushy computer thats complex enough to be able to do  these things? Swing my double edged sword of conceptualization around just hacking away at reality, of life, my own being to just... I dont know, have fun? Or "just cause I can bro"?

I'm not getting something. 

All of this isnt it, everything on this site, everything everyone has ever talked about, comuunicated, "realized" all that istn't it. i feel that in my bones. I'm not "missing" anything, there's nothing to "gain". a journey isn't going to get me there. 

Jed's right. "sit down and shut up."

because the "me" that has to sit down and shut up, cant do it, cant "realize" it I cant "go" anywhere to "do" anything thats going to be real and honest. 

Leo is also right. I lie cheat and manipulate every aspect of my perceptions 

I dont what my being is, i have no perception of it. My "being" is buried under rocks in the deepest depths of the ocean. and my perceptions are all of the waves of the surface.

[Ayla]

The eyes cannot see themselves, but God is SO LOVING, that it puts the right mirrors in front of them

 

[Guest]

It funny that you say that. I'm at a very different place today. all this questioning seems so absurd to me right now, not because I know everything to be true for me but because its obviously false, although i like Jed's description better, "un-truth " "false" seems to give a negative connotation to it. and theres nothing negative about any of it. just not-trueness

thank you for your words. everyone

[Guest]

" Being does not "perceive" itself. The perceiver perceived becomes the perception. Self as we knowit is a fancy paint job on the invisible man. It's a balloonskin  of concepts"

"there is no "graspable" or accurately representable "real-self"

-Peter Ralston, The Book of Not Knowing 

 

I've read those statements MANY times, even heard them even more. i got it intellectually

Today i experienced it. 

on my third reading of the book and halfway through my outline of it, (should see the poor book its a mess) along with other help, and the most intense self inquiry i've ever done. there was finally a moment of clarity. I'm sure it'll pass as its already fading, but i've never had a day like this in my life. everything came across me is if it was new. i could feel all the pulls and pushes that would dictate my actions and thoughts but felt no connection to them and had no struggle shoo-ing them away.

I even had fun with my kids by wrestling, which i do all the time but, with them kicking me for a while, while i experimented with physical pain ( kinda nuts) 

I love the ocean, and this feels like waves coming from the tide coming in, The Wave stretches out much further then the main Body, recedes back into itself but with the Body closer, ever so slightly to the shore, then it was before the wave. 

[Guest]

It's aaallllllllllllll mind baby.

everything from perception, identification, a thought, a thought about your thoughts. being aware of thinking about your thoughts, being aware of ANYTHING is a perception, and the very act of being aware of your thoughts, is hell, a perception and a thought. in a sense 

so, where does that leave me?

I want to keep looking, to keep searching, keep asking questions keep reading and watching videos, but.... to what end? 

I remember a line leo said

"it's all in the matrix"

as nice as this is. its all in the mind. and not the truth. thats why no one can talk about it. Because everything that is even capable of being expressed is in it. and anything outside of it cant be expressed in it. 

so i guess the dynamic has changed. 

hhmmmmmmm

 

[Ayla]

@mike_herald

Yes, Ego loves hard work. Searching. Striving, creating problems and question so that it can afterwards solve them...

Something is watching all this. 

[Guest]

So the key is to let go of the wheel, stop all control. Or stop pretending there's a wheel, and stop pretending there's control, it all clicks when you see it for what it is. Free-will, searching, identity, personality (kinda the same as identify) my whole life has been build in a dream. Feels so cliché, but I don't know how else to say it.

Its a bittersweet realization, in being both sad and relieving. I guess what's really left to do is to burn everything, I wanted truth, that's how you get it. Get rid of the you, and truth is what's left's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ayla]

Hummmm, interesting dissertation but not quite correct

There's nothing to stop. It will never ever stop. To stop something, you need a reference point, and a moving/traction/push or pull. 

Everything is part of IT and everything is STILL. The movement, the stopping, the passing realizations, are still part of it, are it, are the play of it... 

Confused yet?

You're on the right track 

[Guest]

"you're free to do what you want"

[Ayla]

3 hours ago, mike_herald said:

"you're free to do what you want"

Want?