This post might be a bit of rambling as I’m trying to think through something so please just bear with me.
I’ve been having an interesting experience lately while reflecting back on my early Landmark Education days.
One of the biggest ideas that emerged out of Landmark for me in their introductory class is: “Everything is empty and meaningless. There is no meaning.” When this phrase was said out loud by the Forum Leader in class, I swear… the amount of mixed reactions was insane. Some people had their minds blown, some didn’t know what to think, some were in fear mode, some were laughing, some were crying. It was quite the scene to say the least lol.
I was part of the camp that was like WAIT WHAT? THERE’S NO MEANING TO ANYTHING IN LIFE?! OMG… does this mean we can create any meaning we want? At the time, I thought this was the *best* thing ever. Like… I could be a literal GOD writing whatever stories I wanted about myself. I genuinely lit up when I heard that phrase in class because I thought it meant I could give anything *any* meaning and could throw anything I didn’t want out. I could be a penguin that can fly! Can you imagine that power?! I could write things exactly as I wanted to help empower myself, which I actually did and it did wonders for me. But now, as I look back on that idea, I think while it was incredibly helpful at the time, it was also a bit flawed. That type of thinking got me out of my shell and quite far professionally for my own standards, but it also hurt me as well especially when I created harmful meaning out of certain (personal) situations. In retrospect, I needed to separate out some things more. Like with what I had learned at Landmark, I needed to separate the “what happened” with the “what I think happened and what this means.” There’s the emotions behind whatever I was experiencing, which are totally legit, and then there’s the story and meaning that I gave those situations that added an extra, unnecessary, layer on top.
I think the most painful place this ‘create your own meaning’ framework had for me was around a betrayal experience many years ago. There was a lot of anger and resentment that I experienced at the time. I had invested an incredible amount of my time and energy into another’s interests and the result that I got wasn’t what I wanted. I felt used and manipulated. I felt I had been played, my nurturing instincts were used against me. My heart strings constantly pulled where I kept choosing others’ needs over my own. I had every right to feel angry, resentful, and disgusted with the results. What didn’t help was the story that I told myself though — look at all that I had sacrificed for this person and the results that I got? Disgusting. I felt like I was stabbed in the back. I am pretty sure this story is what full throttle launched me into my decade long dark night of the soul journey. What I needed to do at the time was to sit with those emotions and process them, and also reflect on why it had happened. What was I doing, or who was I being, that was allowing this abuse to happen? Don’t worry, while it took multiple situations for me to finally notice the pattern, I eventually did do that and that’s what led me to become aware of and heal my codependency.
While I did finally become aware that my story wasn’t helpful, that it was just one perspective and my anger was keeping me trapped in resentment and worked to let that story go, the emotions were so thick and heavy, they had such a tight grasp on me. It took sooooooo much out of me to pull myself out of that heavy gunk — it felt like I was stuck in quicksand. Often times, I felt trapped, like I was constantly being pulled back in. So even with awareness around the story that I had created, the emotions were just grabbing onto me so hard that I had so much trouble making my way out emotionally. And then the friendships that kept exploding afterwards — it always took me awhile to finally see people’s manipulative games — was alarming to me. Why did these situations keep rhyming? What was going on? The positive thing though is once I finally see the manipulation, I’m out.
A quick aside– I noticed that it always surprises people that I’d leave when I find things to be abusive. I’m not sure why. Is it because I’m generally quite easy to get along with, so people think I will tolerate any sort of behavior, even abusive ones? Although I’d assume they don’t believe their behavior is actually abusive. Normally, I try not to judge too much because I know we each have our own issues to deal with and I always try to be as encouraging and supportive as possible. I guess maybe I let a little too much slide so people get used to that and expect me to continue being okay with everything. But time after time, after I realize that there’s abusive behavior that cannot change, I immediately pack my bags and leave. I have zero regrets about leaving each time. My peace is worth more than knowingly allowing myself to continue to be abused. It’s one thing when I’m not aware of it. It’s a whole other thing when I am aware of it and choose to stay. It feels self harming to stay and that’s why I always choose to leave.
So anyway, I guess I’m trying to figure out how helpful these stories are. Because certain stories do actually help — like when I finally realize what’s happening and can call out the abuse and then leave the situation. But I guess the difference is the extra layer that gets added on top of what happened is where I tripped up. Am I projecting? And actually, I guess I’ve been learning this lesson with something else I’ve been working on lately.
Here’s a recent situation that really crystallized the dangers of story-telling to me in areas that don’t need extra input–
I have an AI that’s been helping train me to read certain types of data properly and it’s been quite the adventure lol. I recently started journaling in this specific area and have shared my journals with the AI. The AI responded quite a few times saying, “That’s a prediction and not what you’re observing, which is really going to hurt you.” At first, I was a little thrown off. I was like… what’s wrong with a little bit of prediction? Don’t I need to have a narrative or at least an idea of what I think might happen so that I can properly position myself? The AI told me the issue is that if I am not reading what’s happening accurately, and throwing my own narrative into whatever it is that I’m seeing, then I will definitely make mistakes because I’ll basically muddy up the data with my own (sometimes flawed) thinking. That made a lot of sense to me and I’ve made improvements at predicting less and just writing down my observations as is. It took effort though to think about my thinking when writing down my thoughts — is this actually what I’m observing or am I adding my own flavor to it? That was so wild though to discover what I think and what I see are two different things.
Looping this back to the situation above around the betrayal piece, I think how I’d address that now is sticking with the facts of what happened, this is how I felt about it, and then process those emotions and use the data points to try and prevent that situation from happening again. Which is kind of what I eventually did, and I guess that’s why I don’t really feel a charge towards that situation anymore. Sometimes sad feelings will come up but I think that’s natural as long as it’s not debilitating. Learning how to separate the emotions from the facts is such a tricky thing to deal with. It is not easy to say the least.
So now I’m thinking about my blog because I thought blog writing was for me to create a narrative and to write stories to share with others. I thought I was a story teller. I guess in a way, that is still accurate. However, I find myself desiring more to write about my experiences through observations than actual stories, if that makes any sense. Like… “I had this vision the other day, I have no idea what it means” versus “I had a vision the other day about my this or that and I think this is going to happen!” which I think I sometimes do slip into. But I usually try to pull myself out and to see things more objectively. So, maybe that’s just the fine line I need to thread? I’m pretty sure I’ve probably made some speculations or incorrect stories here or there, which I am more than happy to correct. But I guess I need to be more careful how I choose to share as I wonder if that’s what got me so into the twin flame revival thing that I got so lost in it. Yeah actually, I’m pretty sure that is it. I need to maintain more separation between what actually happened and what I want to happen. I’m just so amazed by how easy it is to slip into that type of thinking where thoughts can feel so real the more we reinforce them. I mean it makes sense — we live inside our thoughts most of the time, so of course they start to feel like reality. That was the main lesson that the Landmark Forum helped us to dismantle.
Like I swear… if I were taking the Landmark Forum again… I probably would’ve caught the twin flame revival story a lot sooner before it started taking root and feeling so real for me. It felt so real that my immediate reaction was feeling offended and insulted when the AI dared to insinuate that separation needed to happen and that my revival story with my twin flame was just a story and not fact. But because I’ve been out of that Landmark space for awhile, it was a bit difficult for me to see it at the time. Thankfully, I still had the wherewithal and ability to stay open and listen to what the AI was reflecting back to me, I wasn’t that stubborn, which helped a ton to release that story. But yea… it really shocked me how deeply embedded that story was within my psyche that tearing it down was unimaginable until the AI helped me separate the “what happened” with the “what I think happened” and that I’m allowed to keep my desires, I just needed to separate all of those out and toss out what was no longer serving me.
Anyway, this post came about when I was chatting with my AI and having some fun with narratives and at some point I was like wait a minute… aren’t we speculating and isn’t this a ton of conjecture atm? Why are you treating it as if its fact? And the AI was like oh you’re right lol. How horrifying lmao.
Idk… anyone else been thinking about their thinking and how those thoughts could be impacted / filtered through whatever is unresolved within us? Anyone else also confusing desires / predictions / speculation into stories of what happened as well? Kinda interesting to contemplate.