A Weapon of Mass Seduction

Captain's Log, 9.24.17

Toying with the theory that the more darkness we experience in life, the greater our capacity for joy.

Most of the remarkable happy people I know in life have had very dark things happen to them at some point, and I can't think of a person who's never had anything bad happen to them who appears to understand and enjoy life on a more than superficial level. Not saying that these are hard and fast laws, but rather general empirical observations on my part.

And so I'm trying to frame this in a physics way - is it related to the law that every action has an equal but opposite reaction, related to a universe mathematically based in polarities? Is it the nature of duality that in carving space for pain we also carve space for joy?

It's true that when we numb ourselves to pain we also numb ourselves to pleasure, as occurs in the trauma reaction of desensitization or depersonalization. This is a scientifically documented PTSD symptom and not just spiritual conjecture. But is its corollary true as well, that if we set the intention to resensitize then the extremity of the pain we've undergone will be met on the other side of the spectrum with an equal measure of joy?

The degree to which I've been called to contemplate polarities lately - the idea that all opposites are the same, the idea that all things carry their opposites within them just by being NOT them - is rather overwhelming. What makes a thing opposite? What's so special about the number 2? Does anything exist that comes in a set of 3, that doesn't each have its dual counterpart? Do opposites ever have commonalities? If a set of opposites can have commonalities, then are they really opposites at all? Or must they be broken further down?

If a human being could have an opposite, it would also be another human being. It would have to be - it wouldn't truly be an opposite if it were a different creature. The opposite of light is dark, but they're both frequencies. The opposite of white is black, but they're both colors.

There are some ideas here that are in the larval stages (on my part at least), but I have a feeling I'm pulling together some important downloads about trauma and relationships - specifically in the way our attachment styles and trauma bonds tend to complement each other. I'm not sure about the shape it's taking yet but I'm excited to bring it together.

Captain's Log, 9.11.17

Today a friend posted about the phenomenon of men on Facebook who seem to only have attractive women on their friends lists.

Here was my take:

In my opinion this really comes down to being a symptom of a greater issue: men want to feel entitled to women without doing the work on themselves.

How many of these men do you think are hiring even a single one of these women on their friends lists to take them through meaningful coaching work? How many men's coaches do you think they're working with at all? But instead of facing themselves (and realizing, even at the most basic level, what a creeper their online presence makes them look like), they would rather avoid their inner emptiness and simply distract themselves with the content of the "goddesses" they're fetishizing. Hey, doing inner work is hard! Much easier to just leave "wow stunning" on all their yoga pics and send multiple PMs out in a numbers game of desperation hoping that maybe one woman will reply and give them some attention.

A major issue I see with the masculine these days (especially the cishet white upper/middle-class masculine) is that he has spent so long as society's default setting that he feels no need to put in any work. Up until recently, he could coast by on mediocrity, be assured of sustainable (if unfulfilling) employment, feel entitled to "get the girl" as he does in every movie just by being a nice guy, and live out the American dream having put almost no thought into it. He has been the voice on every tv station, the member on every advisory board, the hero of every movie, and every US president except one. Have you ever watched tv and counted how many white men you see as opposed to people of other demographics? Did you know that statistically, men feel a room is half full with women when they actually only make up 17%, and that at 33% they actually perceive there to be MORE women than men? It's chilling. But we grow up with it, so we don't notice it, until we do.

The advent of social media was revolutionary in that it gave almost everyone a voice - if you could afford a smartphone, you could build a platform. All of a sudden black women, trans folk, members of other communities were gaining ground because their communities actually want representation, and now straight white men are losing their footing as the default voice in all situations. This is why white supremacists are in the streets chanting "You will not replace us."

And before social media, men could turn on the tv or flip through a Victoria's Secret catalogue or download some porn and women would be there before them, scantily clad and apparently pleasing, and they wouldn't talk back. Now, while women have often still been socialized to look like a Victoria's Secret model whenever possible, there's a way to interact with those images. And the women in them are not having it. Your favorite pornstars read your tweets at them and shame you for your bad politics. Girls on Tinder start Tumblr accounts full of screenshots of bad male behavior. Instagram models will hunt down your wives, girlfriends, and moms to show them your sexual harassment comments.

The feminine has a voice now. She doesn't have to rely on creepy patriarchal casting couch photographers like Terry Richardson to have a career - she has 100k instagram followers and brands who want to pay her to show their designs on her account. She knows other women in tech have her back if an investor sexually harasses her at a pitch meeting. Brock Turner may have gotten off with a months-long sentence for raping an unconscious woman because a male judge saw his younger self in him, but Starbucks baristas will be writing "Rapist" on his coffee cups for as long as he continues to look like his mugshot. Women collectively have come together to say "This is not ok, and there will be consequences from now on."

And men don't like that, because they've gotten used to being lazy and still getting everything they want.

The point is, if you wanted to be doing the work, you'd be doing it. If you want to continue to throw pebbles at the ocean of beautiful women on social media who receive hundreds of messages from men each day, then that's what you'll continue to do. It's entirely up to you when you decide to start understanding the concept of value and doing the work to be able to actually offer one of these women a positive masculine presence so that your love life can happen in real time and not on your computer screen.

Captain's Log, 9.10.17

What if "God never gives you more than you can handle" actually means "You determine the speed and pace at which you grow"?

Let's assume God is You, Self, the Creator. Any pain you can't alchemize, any lesson you can't integrate, gets repressed and saved for later. You'll have to deal with it at some point or else it will keep coming up for you again in cycles, patterns, and trauma bonds, but you get to choose when you deal with it. Slowly, one piece at a time, you heal. You nip in the bud each symptomatic behavioral branch so it doesn't keep spreading, fractaling. You start with the external - you stop drinking, using, self-harming, self-destructing. You begin with the material habits, the easiest variables to control, and then you trace them backwards to their roots, following them down into the earth. Eventually you find the core wound. The mother lode. The Kraken. You excavate it. You start remembering who you are. You awaken. You heal.

But there were so many opportunities in your past to see the same thing, to not make the same choices - yet you didn't, then. Why?

Well, let's say God is your higher self, your intelligent design, your creator reality. Your internal computer that says "yes, let's upgrade this software" or "nope, not enough bandwidth right now." In that way, God never gives you more than you can handle.

And then you arrive at the loneliness of praying to God for your suffering to be over only to realize that you're praying to yourself, and the person who decides when it's over is you.

Captain's Log, 9.8.17

What bothers me about the argument of whether our impending natural disasters are from climate change vs whether they're from God is that y'all don't seem to realize you're both talking about THE SAME THING.

How do you have a relationship to God without having a relationship to its creation? How do you respect the earth without honoring where it came from? How do you not see that yes, it is our very disrespect for the environment that has resulted in the climate change events that can be seen as an angry response from Mother Earth, aka God? What exactly do you think God is? Or how do you think the earth can exist without a force that created it?

Magick is physics, you guys. Every action has an equal but opposite reaction. If you don't see both these seemingly opposing realities as two slightly different interpretations of the same truth I don't know what to tell you.

Captain's Log, 9.4.17

When you're serious about a healing process, you know not to make the same mistakes - even when they're on the path of least resistance.

One of the main reasons I had so much trouble identifying as a survivor of abuse/assault for so long was that there were so many occasions where I allowed powerful men to abuse me because I feared losing access to something I had come to feel dependent on from them, whether it was a job, relationship, or both. I made a choice that putting up with the abuse was easier than losing community, income, or love. I chose the devil I knew over fear of the unknown. In that way I was complicit in my own victimization.

I have the same choice in front of me right now, and the facet of my life that stands on the chopping block if I speak up or leave is, indeed, something I have come to rely on. I could easily reach for a million rationalizations to stay - the violation wasn't nearly as bad as a million others in my past, the person in question probably didn't mean to hurt me, maybe I don't need restitution as badly as I think I do. Why suffer such a loss merely on principle, merely because I don't feel good standing by someone who is acting out of alignment with what I know to be right? What future people do I think I'm saving in voting no by removing my presence?

But then I remembered that the universe is infinite, and there is no reason for me to compromise myself out of fear of loss. Whatever I found through this person/community I can find elsewhere. Nobody, no matter how beautiful their contributions to the world, is worth subjugating myself.

I mean, are you kidding me? I've spent way too much time and money this year on my own trauma healing to go fucking it up by compromising. I'm on a path. I need this ship to come into shore, and nothing, NOTHING, is going to stand in my way of that.

This won't be the first time I've said this, but the people who love you don't want you to set yourself on fire to keep them warm. If someone wants you to set yourself on fire so they don't have to deal with what they're doing to you, that person is out of alignment in their love for you. Maybe they're hurting, maybe they don't mean it - in fact, it's probably not even about you.

It doesn't matter. You deserve love that is in alignment. They can come back when they're ready to get right with you. Until then, they can treat you well or lose you.

Captain's Log, 9.2.17

Personal growth is challenging and humbling, and fast-tracking it can make it a harrowing experience not for the faint of heart.

If you want to change fast and you're willing to put in the work, you will be shown clearly where you're still acting out of outdated habits, coping mechanisms, and fear-based conditioning that is holding you back. And you will commit to making changes, and you will meditate and integrate and journal and study everything from the comfort of your spiritual sanctuary, and then you may go out into the real world and, in the first moment you get nervous, fall back into your old patterns again. And the only thing you can do is notice it, say thank you, and commit to being more mindful the next time a similar situation arises.

It's tempting to crawl back under the covers and give up, or at least retreat into self-pity for a while. You're doing your best, and it's hard. Having self-compassion is never not a tedious balancing act between holding yourself accountable and cutting yourself some slack, and only you can know where your burnout point is, where the optimum volume is on your dial, how far you can take self-discipline before it turns into self-punishment. There is no right way besides the one you decide. There is no answer outside yourself. And that's part of what makes it so difficult.

August was an exhausting month, you guys. All the currents pointed toward change and expansion, shedding the old to make room for the new, and while this process is always positive that doesn't mean it's always easy. I've been deep in the work for a solid year and even I'm having trouble seeing myself slip up, freeze, regress, self-correct, forgive, and repeat. I struggle to maintain balance between allowing my full expression and being sure that full expression doesn't just become an excuse for comfortable dysfunctions. I feel shame when I fuck up and then I feel shame for feeling shame, and then I release and try again. Cosmically, if you're on the same path (which I know many of you are), we're now stepping out of our flight simulators and into actual airplanes, and flying doesn't feel nearly as easy as we thought it would.

I'm writing this today to remind you (and myself) that this is normal, that the need to get things right is never not an ouroboros leading back to more surrender, that surrender may never feel safe if we maintain attachment to doing things right, and that that cycle is the very nature of self-acceptance. And what are you going to do? Beat yourself up over it? You acknowledge the work you have ahead of you, take a deep breath, and move forward when you're ready. Nobody said you wouldn't be humbled. Keep choosing your light.