11/01/11 - date of birth

Hi all,

Well, the date of birth is 11/01/1973 ..wasn't born this year : )

I wasn't sure how to describe this in one line / subject line.

Wow, there's so much I could say it's unbelievable, so much I could write, but I'm very tried of writing. To put it incredibly briefly, it's been a not nice past - I've grown so much I'm sure because of this and the discoveries in terms of changing my attitude and my thinking and in turn changing my life, discovering the true nature of cause and effect - cause within, effect without, not the other way around, has been staggering.

My own growth has been very slow I think, possibly because of a lack of trust in the process from past rejections and disappointments etc, I'm not sure.

The awareness is there and it's as if the cup has filled to the brim, it's now just a matter of really running with it and living it, but on the other side, the feelings of terror and absolute desperation are overwhelming.

This is something I was writing to my housemate, who's birthday is also on a double figure, 22 August. I really don't hold too strongly to numbers, astrology, etc etc, but I do find them interesting. My mom hung herself ... which is why I write about her below as well:

That master number stuff there - the 22 August, your rough past and what I see in you, you've DEFINITELY chosen a more difficult and more meaningful path. If there's anything I'm sure of it's that. It's balancing the negative and the positive sides, that's it - the fact that I find that "difficult" to do I think for me may have something to do with a lack of trust in this process, maybe because of past disappointment, that somewhere inside myself I've "given up" and don't feel that things can change, and again that's not hanging onto the past, it's just there ..it's deep seated stuff that takes many years to work through. It's the rawness of life that I feel, just like my mom did - like I'm moving through life without a skin, feeling every single thing, every situation, every thought and feeling, penetrating me so deeply, just waking up in the morning and noticing that I'm here, another day, the hardness and responsibility in that, some days worse than others, this sheer feeling of absolute terror, like I'm outside of my body and all I can feel is this deep image of my arms wide open, this gut wrenching feeling of absolute surrender to it all. The monotony and then the absolute boredom of the routine in every day. And often the feelings are so intense it's like this uncomfortableness is seething under my skin, a feeling of wanting to shake it the off and get out of it so desperately. I see the daylight, the walls around me, my thoughts, my body, all of it and think 'what is this!??' - what an obscure, strange and weird trip this is! And one might think 'Yes but you've got some fundamental base, something that holds you there'. No! The only thing is hope and trust on a very thin thread, and what I've seen and come to know, my own growth in the last 15 yrs or so. Pema Chodron was saying that people have this idea of a spiritual path as finding serenity and bliss, that it's anything but that, the movement it TOWARDS that and to thrive ON that day to day, but the path is anything but peaceful. You come up against lessons and trials that push you to your absolute limit. And it's responding (not reacting) to that which I think is the thing.

But those feelings of terror and panic to it's absolute limit are far far too overwhelming and push me straight into feelings of suicide, almost like an emotionally reaching from inside myself, always this strange feeling of heaviness at the very front of my head, my chest/heart has this feeling of urgency all the time, and all I can do is just balance with this as much as I can, I do even find it difficult to focus on not engaging in it. But no, I try not to tear at the seams and externalize it. It's almost like a waiting game I'm playing, feeling that this is all I can really give.

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be a negative post, I'm generally quite light hearted, I think these feelings have become second nature to me, but they're still incredibly difficult.

Dean, 38, Cape Town, South Africa