People get upset when you can't meet their needs.

Regardless of whether you even could meet those needs. Or want to. Or offered to. Or tried to.

People whose needs are unmet and who receive a "no" when asking for what they need feel betrayed by the world.

People who have allowed their needs to go unmet for a long time, and who receive a "no" when asking for what they need, feel betrayed by the world.

People for whom it takes tremendous effort and courage to ask for even one little thing...

can lose hope, faith, self-control...

when denied by another.

Because... they have already denied themselves.

Thus: the sensation and expression of the betrayal-feeling is exaggerated to the exact degree it is exaggerated in, and is a shadow of, how one habitually behaves toward oneself.

***

I have been on all sides of this predicament recently. Upside, downside, eight ways to Sunday. I've been afflicted with this. I've been targeted with this. It is ugly. It is humbling. It is sad. And boy is it necessary for awakening.

The gift of having both sides of a situation affect you in a short time period? An increased chance of wisdom.

The situation I describe above is tragic for how it reveals. The self-extraction, self-marginalization, self-denial, self-suppression... that is utterly normal in this society.

What is there to do?

To look in the mirror of it.

We find a broken relationship with self. ➡️ Reflecting society's broken contracts with us. ➡️ Reflecting a culture of domination that condemns reciprocity.

Resulting in a situaton where no one's needs are guaranteed to be met, not even by their kin.

We were born and raised in a network of wrong concepts and wrong relationship. Resulting in wrong treatment, which is both internalized and externalized. ...Resulting in an overall degraded situation for all and each.

How couldn't we absorb the conditions we found ourselves in? Especially when at our most vulnerable (as developing children)? We are beings, dependent upon and subject to our environments, which are principally comprised of other beings. We absorb.

Neglect is normal, so self-neglect becomes normal.

Exploiting me is normal, so self-exploitation prevails.

Other people are dangerous, so isolating myself must be safe.

🌀

We are patterned. (We are actually must more ordered than most people readily perceive.) And possibly all patterns can be understood in reality.

Understanding breeds right relationship.

RIGHT RELATIONSHIP is fractal.

We tend to think of this as meaning: appropriate relationship with other beings external to us—in our communities, societies, ecosystems. However, in Fractal Praxis, we also apply this concept to the relationship between our internal parts, feelings, and thoughts.

Constructs—mental association/activation networks in the nervous system—are also subject to right relationship. Constructs are a storying of the kind of feedback one can expect from the real world. When those stories are inaccurate, wrong relationship (see also: karma) is spread in the world.

I am passionate about helping people unbind themselves from their faulty mental maps through skillfully leveraging real experience ("feedback"). I am passionate about the liberation that ensues when we stop abiding our past conditioning uncritically, and instead examine our ongoing conditioning—inner and outer—that nurtures the shape of our lives. I am passionate about ancient techniques like trance states (induced in meditation, prayer, and ritual) that allow for the beneficial settling and spontaneous reorganization of our minds.

After all, one's inner map becomes the nature of one's interactions which become the conditions rippling through the outer world. A being must survive the requirements of the outer world—but, beyond this, a being can create conditions that it wants to live by and thrive by in the future.

The need to know and make sense of one's environment—this belongs not only to the domain of a hypervigilant child. It is life. Life strives to integrate ever more information—usually experiential—and thus thrive. All forms of life are doing this at all times, across time... they are doing it because they must.

This is the hope that keeps us growing no matter what. Changing toward the light, moving toward health and healing.

A trauma response is a maladaptive attempt at adaptation. What could possibly be more poignant than that?

Going beyond a reptile-brain response requires higher mind. A mind capable of wholeness. A mind capable of integrating fragmented bits. A mind capable of spaciousness. Call upon this higher (or bigger) mind in you. Deploy it.

Know, trust, that no matter what is going on in your life and in society, you can LEARN from it. In the dark night of the soul, this sentiment may provide scant comfort. Compared to an all-engulfing loving embrace, or the magical erasure of our wound. But it is the way through the wound, not around it, that leads to self-actualization and enlightenment.

Our wounds shape us. But remember, trauma is not the event. It is how our body responds to the event. Our body-mind is endlessly adaptable.

If you apply yourself to this path, you may improve—comprehensively—the way you respond to events.

Thus you make your life itself your home—and all its hardships and all its beauty. Because of all of this, you know you are home, you know you belong, to a community of life far surpassing and yet embracing you. Far older, far wiser, full of ingenuity and creativity, full of wonder. All kin, all home, all belonging, all integrated. The more you know of life, the more home you are.

If you would like support for adapting your inner maps, with guidance and with peer witnessing, soon I will be announcing Fractal Praxis courses and circle offerings for 2023. If you feel called to this content, please stay tuned at FractalPraxis.com for more.

Your friend in liberation,

C.