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I was reading about this supposedly "revolutionary" ointment they’ve been developing over in Mexico—it should be hitting the pharmacy shelves pretty soon. I’m definitely going to keep an eye out and try it once it's available, then I'll let you know how it works. Personally, I deal with psoriasis—it doesn't flare up all the time, but when it does, the symptoms can get pretty rough. Whenever my skin starts acting up, I swear by taking clay; it really helps calm everything down. You should give it a shot—clay is generally good for you anyway, so it shouldn't do any harm.
I honestly can't believe it! I was sitting here this morning thinking about you, John Walker74—just trying to figure out how I'm ever going to catch up on all these posts—when Aikido popped into my head. It actually got me wondering if I might finally pull the trigger and start training this fall.🙂
Is "Mr. X" a specific individual, or is that just your way of summarizing the entire collection of people you watch as they navigate their own paths of quitting, self-destruction, or losing themselves just to find themselves again...?
It seems to me that people are perpetually in a state of searching—always straining toward something, even when it looks like they’re doing the exact opposite. In fact, that’s usually when the impulse is at its strongest. I’m not even sure what "giving up" actually means anymore. I’ve seen plenty of people just let go and drift, but that’s a completely different beast. Maybe "giving up" is just a label we slap onto that specific moment when we either step into a decisive battle or hit rock bottom—you know, like when a medic tells you you're fading and you're left gasping for air (which proves you still want to keep going, you still want more), or maybe it's just when someone pivots the focus back to themselves by adopting some sort of "nihilist" persona—which, let's be honest, is basically just teenage angst... People love to claim they are making a conscious, deliberate choice to take a path that denies or negates everything, if I'm following your logic correctly. But if there's nothing else there, what exactly is being negated? At the end of the day, there is only him—this Mr. X—standing at the center of it all. All he can really choose is whether to negate or affirm his own existence. The real question is whether he’s negating himself simply as a way to finally confirm who he is. In my experience, that’s almost always the case—except it isn't done consciously, and it can be incredibly dangerous. It’s like slamming your head against a wall over and over; you either break and rebuild yourself, or you shatter completely and there's nothing left.
Attack said:Has anyone else ever had a voice in their head tell them something, only for it to actually happen later on???
Take me, for instance—sometimes I’ll just think about my phone, and literally two seconds later, it starts ringing. Or something along those lines. I refuse to believe that’s all just some massive coincidence!!!!!!😕
How exactly did you link that to gut instincts?
illegale said:Love and affection can easily turn into hatred. And vice versa, too. Now, why is that?
I suspect it’s a psychological defense mechanism—basically, when someone opens up in a direction they just can't handle (since being vulnerable is essentially the gateway to love, because it allows you to actually connect with others). Once someone gets burned like that, instead of just accepting the fact that they misjudged the situation and moving on, this stubborn psychological reflex kicks in, perceiving the other person as a threat. I mean, how does someone you loved five minutes ago suddenly become a threat? What kind of "threat" is that even supposed to be? Isn't hatred just one of those mechanisms we should be outgrowing? Or better yet, *should* be able to?
Because at the end of the day, hatred hurts the person harboring it the most.
I wonder, I really do... isn't the mechanism you're describing just that—a mechanism that manifests through various shades of emotion to camouflage the true feeling, which is the hardest thing to reach? Maybe hatred is something else entirely. If I find it hard to talk about love, I find it even harder to talk about hate. We speak of love as if we didn't already know it, just as we wouldn't enjoy the warmth of the Sun if there weren't frost, but... I have felt hatred in others, though it wasn't necessarily directed at me; people mostly just nagged me while they were busy defending themselves from their own internal mechanisms. As for myself, I've never truly felt hatred toward others, as long as I was loving and continue to love. So what is the reality here? Does this negate the possibility that love and hate are two sides of the same Idea? Personally, I don't think so. We are microcosms. Ideas, the Absolute upon which the spiritual—and subsequently the material—world rests (or is it the other way around?), reflect through us. We are the vessels for everything; it is all within us, yet we only manage to live out a tiny (yet massive!) fraction of that enormous burden/blessing. That's why I can sense hatred in others without needing to express it myself. That's why I can love without having to hate. We can be brimming with hatred that we can't stomach, so we mask it with pretty words and fake postures (mechanisms), or we can be overflowing with love that we don't know how to show, so we act out rudely and feel threatened (mechanisms)...