subject: Making Dreams Come True and Finding Fulfillment Through Finding Yourself [print this page] Making Dreams Come True and Finding Fulfillment Through Finding Yourself
Going bankrupt about 7 years ago was the most terrifying experience, and felt like falling into one of those pit traps set for wild animals in a forest. Making dreams come true, finding fulfillment they were alien to me.
It's often seemed like that trap was a money pit but in my moments of clearer vision I know money was just the symptom of a crisis provoked by a belief of being worthless and a terror of being abandoned with no food and no place to live. The terror was alive within me all my life, biding its time to manifest as something real. Hovering like Harry Potter's Dementors. Beyond that terror, the crisis was about fear of becoming vulnerable and having to ask for help which in itself was about fear of being punished beyond an endurable threshold of emotional pain, and re-experiencing the emotional punishment I was subjected to as a child.
I can see much more clearly now; that is what my bankruptcy was all really about. Money has nothing to do with the really basic problem, which is hard to accept in those times when the Pit of Poverty seems inescapable.
I guess we all do it if only I had money my life would be okay. Fixating on that lets me avoid the pestilential truth that I don't have good boundaries or how to adequately process my emotions. I don't know how the world works, and I don't really believe in myself. I desperately want love but don't how to find the trustworthy people to whom I can open my heart. I let people exploit me. And I cling to my denial that this is the truth.
Much easier to win the lottery than take that baggage on! When you do take it on and face the reality of your self esteem it's execrably painful. It's the existential angst, the abyss out of which you think you will never emerge. It's also point you realize the enemy is not the world out there, it's within, and nobody can overcome it for you. No wonder we run from it. No wonder we've created myths and epic melodramas around this element of coming to terms with the pain that's locked inside us, and with the truth of who and what we are. Of having to sink to the lowest point before we can begin to change. Nobody wants to go there. Nobody does it willingly.
But violently hideous as it is to face, something happens when you do. I guess you're released in some way that defies description. I know that as I've peeled away the layers of denial that I was just fine Jack, I've begun to feel incredibly alive and increasingly connected. For the first time in my life I'm saying to myself I do care what happens to me. I can't let this go on any more. I need a better quality life. The point of no return. A death of sorts. Death of my willingness to be unhappy.
Which gives birth to learning how to live with freedom from persecution and abuse, whether it's on a giant scale or the small, everyday aspects of my life. Freedom of speech, freedom to have a home, warm clothes, nourishing food, education and decent-paying work, back-up and support, a meaningful life, career, relationships. Freedom to love and be loved, to give and take. Freedom to have fun.
It's a Maslow's hierarchy of needs all in one, a Personal Constitution, a Personal Bill of Rights. Succeeding, perseverance, finding yourself, making dreams come true it's all part of the journey to finding fulfillment.
