The English language is a nurtured language, and as with all our nurtured languages, we most often than not get sidetracked by the same word meaning different things to different people, so here are my meanings with these words and phrases.
Mental health: - The health of our thoughts.
Thoughts: - We make our choices in our environment from them in answer to our innate needs communicated within.
Healthy thoughts: - Thoughts in harmony with our innate needs.
Unhealthy thoughts: Thoughts in conflict with our innate needs, hijacked by false needs, thus hijacking our emotions.
Mind: - The house of our thoughts.
Mentally healthy: - Making choices from healthy thoughts. Oneness of Mind. Peace warrior.
Mentally ill: - Making choices from unhealthy thoughts. Duality of Mind. Pain warrior.
As a species mired in mental illness, the plain to see symptoms of a monumental problem are rooted in our “I” lifestyle that reflects our disconnect from who we are. A lifestyle of choices that are coping with the emotional pain that comes from constantly trying to prove that we’re enough. Chasing our tail for nothing that’s missing. By the time mental illness is acknowledged we are already severely entrenched in our emotionally painful storm with our coping mechanisms exhausted. Desperately seeking relief from the root of our problem, which happens to be the nurtured mindset we were burdened with that estranges us from our emotional foundation of peace. Duality of Mind. That was where I found myself in late 2008.
All of us have a life history and all of it is in our head. For most of us it stays there, but some of us record part of it externally on different mediums of human creativity. Journals, books, paintings, songs, etc. I didn’t fully realize it way back when I started writing songs, but, now as I hear them, I feel and hear the different stages of my mindset. From my nurtured duality of Mind that led to me crashing emotionally right after “Where are you going”, to my battle back to oneness of Mind, where our peace lies, and “Funky Feely Free”. The decades stages of the past in which I sought significant validation from other humans, and now not giving a damn what others think about who we are. Knowing that there is no “I” that’s “special”, “owed”, “deserving”. No separation from it all. As it always is with seeking validation for who we are from others, it affected my creativity, and some of my passion to share my music, but there were two other reasons for the latter. The first was that I wasn’t passionate about seeking validation being my WHY (the magical question) for sharing, thus I had very tepid passion for marketing. Even though I couldn’t articulate the uncomfortable feeling I felt back then due to being estranged from knowledge of self, deep within I knew, as we all do, that seeking validation from our species for our creativity, BEING, conflicts with who we are. “I don’t care what you think” was one of my favorite phrases back then. In reality my mindset made me care, but deep within I knew didn’t want to care. The other reason with my sharing was that as a teenager I heard “One love” by Bob Marley, and, for decades, I had been trying to reconcile the feedback I felt deep within that seeking validation in “One love” was our truth with my duality of mind, without success.
The most unfortunate thing about duality of mind is that it creates an incredibly frustrating lack of clarity of thought...so much confusion...so much emotional pain. All leading to varying levels of zombie like existence...levels of emotional death depending on our level of estrangement from our emotional foundation. Constantly loving who we are conditionally...full of judgment. Healing from our pain is the road less traveled due to either never getting exposed to knowledge that heals, or deciding the road back is too challenging and resigning to our duality of Mind. In either case we get stuck in the never ending cycle to which we’re addicted to as a society of trying to solve our emotional problem with a physical solution. Coping with food, relationships, sex, manipulation, control, drugs, alcohol, etc. The only peaceful solution to our problem is to resolve our conflict by changing our mindset back to being in harmony with our emotional foundation of peace. When we do choose to heal it most often than not comes from us tapping out from our emotional pain, which was my case, thus “surrender” is the most accurate word I can use for my choice to heal. The lack of peace I felt within always let me know that my music was an unfinished personal discography, and, back then, I was stuck, without a clue as to how to finish. It was with that state of mind that I released my album “Where are you going” in early 2008 and found out where later that year when I crashed emotionally due to a breakup. However, the breakup was just the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, leading to my aforementioned surrender, and choosing peace.
Healing is the most challenging thing we’ll ever do because of: -
1. The battles that come with setting boundaries within and without to change our ingrained enslaving mindset, especially setting them against those that shaped our mindset.
2. Needing to set those boundaries over and over again until habit formation by our still mostly not understood brain takes place, and oneness of Mind is back to being the culture in our subconscious, thus conscious Mind.
My surrender was to the intricate process of stripping so many layers...shedding of false emotional and physical identities...facades, to get back to our truth. Back to being a Peace warrior with oneness of Mind...loving our magical gift with no conditions and no judgment...One love. It took over a decade, but I did it! Healed. Phew! What battles! I did it not because I’m special, but because I stayed committed and submitted to battling back to our emotional foundation of peace that’s always been within. It’s our #1 innate need for harmony with who we are that calls to us and will never stop calling until satisfied. It is the most passionate calm energy within we all know, and from which we sustain and celebrate life with a heart of gratitude, no matter the conditions.
Oneness of mind...One Love...Our truth. Next.