Learning from Oneself

Source: from Google Images

I was talking to a friend of mine during the Sabbath of Samhain of our experiences and how do we relate to our them. This particular sabbath - as it fell on Mercury Retrograde, thus making it ideal for introspection - gave us the perfect frame for taking the time to analyze what dwells in our hearts.

One of the topics that caught my interest in that moment is that of the expectations we have of ourselves, and how we feel when we act, react or behave in a way that goes against those expectations or fail to fulfill them. My friend was telling me how this fail at fulfilling their expectations with themselves make them feel guilty or particularly frustrated, even angry, and working out of these vicious cycles is hard.

As my friend was talking about healing and forgiving oneself to move over, I kept thinking about the unique chance to be able to pin down the emotion, the feelings, the thoughts that roam around one's head when one is consumed by them, and try to get to the root of them. If you feel guilty or frustrated, why is that? And why is so important to fulfill that expectation? And how that expectation came to you in the first place? Why do you believe you must be this or that?

Oftentimes people choose to take a pattern or an idea for themselves that has been made by others. Like putting on a dress, they take something external and try to convince themselves that this manufactured thing is who they aree, or who they should be. My question would be: why are you looking for your self outside of yourself? Same with these quests for themselves, all of which happen around and outside themselves and seek to reflect the desired aspects into themselves, instead of looking in.

I kept on wondering about these matters and came to the idea (conspiracy?), that often some of these expectations are imposed, and our failures to fulfill them are designed to give outlet to accumulated frustration from other sources. What do I mean? What if we are bombarded with ideas like the expectation that we have to be successful in a way that is socially trendy, and so when we fail (because not everybody can be famous, not everybody can be rich, and you can't force people to like you on social media), you will be consumed with that, you will blame yourself, and at the same time you will ignore the fact that corrupt Government agents are diverting the money of your taxes for their personal gain.

Of course, probably this is not how it works, though neuromarketing and manipulation are tools that have been in the arsenal of many politics and social leaders for ages and ages, but it did got me thinking about it.

However, back to you, have you tried that? I suggest you to give it a try, though you need to work fast. For some reason, anger towards oneself and depression tend to disappear the moment you are trying to understand it. :-)