Month: April 2022

A Dream of Pandora

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Alone –

I woke up from a dream today, a dream which showed me a vision from the heart and spoke to me of my eternal strife asking me to listen, think, and then do.

This dream consisted of a subject that I am comfortable speaking about but uncomfortable dwelling upon. It feels at times when broaching the subject as if I were to be given pandora’s box with the last bit of evil trapped inside, the antithesis of hope. That opening the box somehow unravels more me and my motivations that I’m scared of whats inside. It scares me because I used this demon trapped to push myself forward and what would happen if I were to cleanse myself of it like all of the other demons of my past. Would I lose that vital piece of trauma that pushed me forward? I don’t know if I was created by this traumatic need or I should prevail all the stronger having faced it. So like Pandora, I will open the box and peer inside, hoping instead that what is left is better than when it was locked away.

In this dream, I was at a reunion of sorts. People who were there were all among the people I when to elementary and middle school with. A strange set of people from a strange time that at this point I have more than double amount of memory and experiences than I did when I knew them.

In this reunion nothing strange or dreamlike occurred, just people talking to each other, catching up about old times, and recounting new ones. But when I began to speak it was this feeling deep down that these people couldn’t see me, they saw this sad and broken version of me from back then. Made to feel so small and insignificant. Made me feel like the person that the teachers and the students paid no mind to and created no lasting impressions of. The one that was seen to not be going anywhere in particular, living a banal and unimpressive life just fading into the background.

This is why its so crazy to me, it still made me feel like I was the same person as I was back then. All it took was a look, and a couple of comments which weren’t even mean and it felt like I had gone through a time machine and that person they believed me to be was still there deep down inside of me. Through a look I had to relive all these feelings and inadequacies that I endured for many years.

In the face of the intolerable cruelty of my past, I realized that trepidations shake across time to create a resonance felt today. I have this feeling and fear that I’m going to disappear. That back then in these early and formative years were a reflection of my ultimate destiny of fading from view. To never be taken seriously or thought to hold value.

I know that these feelings may be in some ways irrational but its the dissection of these feelings which may allow me to understand more fully subsequent motivations. I feel as though I need to be good at everything but can never be the best at any one thing. I have this feeling that I can’t leave anything behind and that by saying “No” an opportunity that may be forgoing the one last piece of the puzzle that would make me whole. It’s this paranoia of not being enough for anyone that makes me fluctuate from feeling like I shouldn’t try at all to throwing myself through hell for work.

It’s this feeling of unease that I have constantly compared to everyone around me and by doing so that I always come up lacking. That as me I can’t ever be enough.
It is as though around me sense this, this desire to be seen and appreciated. I’m sure in some way off-putting. Even when recognized don’t feel that usual happiness of accomplishment but the inescapable and unsatiable hole in myself.

Can I ever really be truly happy bearing on my back this kind of curse. I am irrevocably broken that I have no hope to fill these gaps. I need another solution to fill this hole inside of me because eats away at me and doesn’t direct me where I need to go. Coming to terms with this though is harder said than done.

Perhaps with this dream, I can start on this journey of reformation, to become the person I hope to be without the fear of slipping back into the person I used to be. To run forward not because I am scared of what is behind me but because I am looking forward to something in front of me. It is a journey that won’t be resolved in one night but by opening the box we can then only know where this journey may lead.

Asura Instinct

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You have to forgive me, for I’m using words and phrases for which I only have a tentative understanding of the complexity, history, and significance to describe, most likely poorly, my own experience. To be fully transparent, it’s because of this naive understanding that I can, in any way, describe my feelings sensibly. I’m to co-opting these words and phrases, not to describe these borrowed concepts in any negative light but to illuminate these emotions which I can’t readily discern otherwise.

Begin

You can’t hold a flame in your hands. – Auroradiation

It’s a fury in my chest, a fury that arises from the seething fire of the accumulated stress and pressure of my everyday life. A fury without direction, coursing through my body like boiling water, scorching my veins and arteries and wanting me to turn everything back to black. It strains my muscles, my mind, my flesh with an untempered ferocity that asks to destroy, to upend, to dismantle, and to reduce everything back down to its component parts. It’s a frustration with my circumstances that calls for me to rip and tear apart everything, but most of all destroy some foundation of myself.

These destructive impulses call so loudly for destruction, like being opposed to creation in its purest form. The desire or instinct to bring it all down to nothing – that in my mind have named the Asura instinct. This idea of being opposed to heaven, to creation, to everything that sentient existence convenes upon us. To raze towers and seas. To bring mountains low and us even lower.

This Asura Instinct on the surface appears to be this overwhelming negative impulse, because how could these feelings of wanton destruction bring about anything good? But it’s because of this desire to destroy that I understand the true need, the need for change and control. That my life in some ways is not working. That this pressure begins to build and build until the whole system feels like it’s going to come down. This directionless fire and fury in my veins serve then as the power to change, to dismantle systems and build them anew for myself and my future.

It reminds of the three principal gods of Hinduism and the cycle they foretell through their role and existence, the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer. All three serve an important purpose and each role is seen as essential for the process of life and reincarnation. Destruction and death are all part of this cycle because without destruction we have nothing to create, and without destruction, we have nothing to preserve. It is true then without destruction we cannot fully be.

It’s this fury in my veins that tells me that something has to change, that sadness and frustration are, too, the part of this journey. That all things must end no matter how much I fear the end and how much this fear paralyzes me. I’m scared of the destruction because of what will happen when I can no longer hold onto something in my arms so tightly. That I have to let go and say my goodbyes wholeheartedly. That it’s okay for it to disappate and no longer return. That it’s okay that the permanent state of a thing could be in both its ephemeralness and its finality.

It’s this Asura instinct, the fire within my veins that I know that I need to complete the cycle of change and growth. That the wave has to return to the shore. That projects and problems must see an end, and in their end, they may not be perfect but they may be perfect because they end.

It’s acknowledging this Asura Instinct, my need for destruction, that I know change needs to happen and that I must let it. I must let things end so they can begin anew. I must let go so I have the opportunity to hold. It’s through this destruction that I know that I can truly live at all. It’s through this destruction that I can finally be me.