I want a lot. I know. Heartache is really miserable feeling. The sensitive touch. No tits and ass in the wording. Please let love fill at least one heart. I love you means nothing. Jumped through too many hoops to the top of the sky to win the "competition". Love is not anyone. Selfish to think of my own problems. Need to feel alive. Need to feel accepted. A world of hate. Anger and resentment towards a people to survive. Forgiveness? What is that. Bitterness, hatred, neglect, lack of judgement. Unity as a whole impossible. Bittersweet revenge to those that destroyed the inner souls. Love a stranger. Hug the person that you put in jail. Forgiveness? What is that? Destroy a person's reputation and feel happy that you did that? Try to go out on a date with a beautiful mind full of forgiveness. Make Love to your partner in the privacy of your own home while the world around you is suffering. You are an ugly heart.

So, im still kind of in a rollercoaster of emotions about all of this. Im definitely better than i was at the start because when you hit rock bottom you can only go up (or stay rock bottom i guess, but thats too pesimistic even for me).

But i still feel like when the guilt is partially gone and i feel like what i did wasnt that bad or that uncommon i feel like i might want to go back to reading pedophillic hentai or fanfiction or i might not regret having done it and i start feeling guilty about that too. Though i hear urges arent uncommon with ocd or pocd or whatever, i dont know if id really call it an "urge". Maybe its more of a "but other people are doing it and not feeling bad about it so why should i?" which is a feeling i dont want to have because i want to be better than those people. Any time i came across something similar to guilt when i read that kind of content i thought something like "well, at least im not the person who wrote it". And i really dont want to have that feeling of "im not doing anything bad because theres people doing worse things". If i kept to that mentality technically id never be a bad person because theres always someone worse out there, and i dont want to have to compare myself to awful people to make myself look good.
Also, whenever i feel less guilty about the whole thing and i feel like i technically didnt to anything that bad it makes me feel like i mightve only felt guilty because i worried about what other people would think of me if they found out about it and not because i thought what i did was wrong. Which, of course, was (is) a huge part of my distress but i dont know if id call it the sole reason of it. I already knew people thought if you read fictional stories or comics about fictional anime kids in a sexual setting youre a pedophile. And it really did bother me but at one point i started listenting to them less and less.

To be honest, i have a double standard where i have an extremely hard time seeing women as predatory or disgusting/bad people. Which is a huge reason why i didnt think of my actions as creepy. I think i even used to think men who liked lolis where creepy gross pedophiles but when i found out women did it i thought it was another deal. And then, as not to have double standards, i started thinking it was ok for men to like lolis too. I know im wrong in this, because women can be gross and predatory but i still have a hard time getting rid of that mentality. I remember i even sympathized with this girl who had many tweets saying she liked zoophillic porn and many people said she raped her dog but i guess i either didnt believe she actually did it or something? Though i tend to side with marginalized people because i feel marginalized myself... Though i shouldnt have sided with her because obviously zoophillia is wrong and even if the animal isnt harmed youre still taking advantage of them for your own pleasure and thats disgusting. But like i said, i have a hard time seeing women as creepy or predatory, probably because even if women can be as disgusting and evil as men can, they probably dont act on it that much since we dont see that many female predators or female rapists or whatever. This isnt to say i think women can do no wrong, im aware my thoughts are wrong. But its a hard mentality to get rid of.
Still, i dont think most of the women i followed that also had similar problematic tastes in fiction as i did were bad people. I think it was a harmless way of exploring their sexual interests and they knew that kind of stuff was ok in fiction yet would be awful and unforgivable in every way in real life.

I also think the fact that todays society, particularly in social media is obsessed with labeling everything as pedophilia. Of course we should take awareness of it and not sexualize children in any way but this obsession with labeling everything as creepy or predatory really contributed to my pocd. I really wish they...

[ Continued ]

Sukha/Dukha (Day 120)

Apparently if you are to build a chariot wheel and you get the hole where the spokes join precisely centred, your wheel will work just fine and your ride will be smooth and painless. However if there is one or two of those spokes off centre you are in for a bit of a bumpy rid, a lot more painful in the butt.

In yoga the analogy of having your spokes off centre is referred to as sukha. Here is the list of ways you can suffer according to the seers of old. Birth, death, aging, sickness, not getting what you want and getting what you don’t want. Sukha literally means bad space, it’s opposite duhka, is good space.

Not getting what you want is indeed one of the times in my life when I feel that every spoke in my chariot has been tampered with. I’m the youngest child so it seems quite natural to me that not getting what I want can cause tidal waves of suffering. Not getting what I want feels unfair to me and it can cause me to question the integrity of whatever chariot I happen to be romping in at the time. Not getting what I want makes me scream, life is unfair, why can’t the world be just the way I demand?

When I look back on my life though, the biggest things I didn’t get and the most dramatic underpinnings of my desires turned out to be the biggest blessings in disguise. I remember after auditioning to be a group fitness teacher I was told not only no, but don’t come back. Oh the tears! Oh the wailing. Little did I know the universe was preparing another wheel for my chariot and that was to go out and teach yoga. Steve Jobs puts it nicely when he says, ‘you can’t join the dots looking forward’.

Suffering is a choice. We can see current our situations as vehicle for our own self imposed despair or we can view it as a blessing in disguise, maybe a lesson that we need to learn before we go to the next stage of our evolution.

You don’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you just might find, you get what you need…….

Practice for today: If you look back on your life can you see that when you didn’t get what you wanted was it for the better? Today if you don’t quite get what you want view it as a gift that will be later unwrapped and your ride will be a whole lot smoother. Remember, suffering is optional. Buddha

I am currently reading a book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a righteous gentile who fought against nazism in the second world war and eventually lost his life as a result of his endeavours. Moreover, I have also been researching the evolution vs creation argument quite extensively as a christian myself. Whilst reading about the persecution and eradication of undesirable groups- mentally ill and physically disabled people- I had this disgusting, repugnant and utterly abhorrent thought. It was like it made sense. I had this sickening moment when I thought (and it didn't feel intrusive, it felt so natural) 'if you get rid of genetic diseases, does that mean that future generations would not suffer from them? would it be... beneficial, a bit like natural selection'. Instantly, I felt sick and withdrawn. I prayed in desperation for repentance and begged for forgiveness. The more I prayed, the more the thought came back, it would be beneficial for future generations, it all makes sense. I would never hurt anyone, I feel like a terrible being. I know it is MORALLY wrong, but how could I ever sympathise with nazi ideals. Now, If only I could just accept I didn't agree with it and move on I would feel better, but I keep having the thought, it would be beneficial, in the long run it helps. I reassured myself that of course it is not acceptable because on a morale level it is wrong, wrong, WRONG! the thing is, I suffer from conscious breathing and other troubles, and I personally believe that if I do not sin then God will help me with these troubles, however if I do then he may choose to punish me. (please omit any offensive comments regarding my subjective beliefs) but here lies the problem. Am I worried about having the holocaust thoughts because I fear being punished, or because I know it is immoral? What if i'm just a nazi who is scared of being punished? What if the only thing making me scared is the fear of conscious breathing and not my opposition to the holocaust? Then came more doubts. I had a thought saying 'what if there isn't a God, then how do you explain how the holocaust is wrong?' My stomach dropped, and I thought to myself 'well, I still have morales so even though that isn't the case, if it was I would still know it was wrong. But I thought to myself, if there was no punishment then you would agree with it, there would be no consequences and it would be beneficial.' What is wrong with me? at this point I started- for the first time- to put it down to intrusive thoughts. But the initial thought didn't seem intrusive, it was like I generally saw sense in it. Does that make me evil? Do I sound evil to you? Is punishment the only thing stopping me from becoming a nazi? please can somebody give me some help, I'm going through a lot at the moment. I know my thought wasn't justifiable but there is this sick part of me that wants someone else to almost say they understood that evil thought and where I was coming from. I know the holocaust is NOT justifiable, I vehemently disagree with it, well I thought I did, until that thought. I remember seeing a exhibition on the holocaust and it horrified me as a child. Can you turn evil? Am I just overanalyzing the initial thought. I mean, what makes an evolutionist oppose the holocaust, my mind is trying to saying that if I didn't believe in God- and I'm scared because like many christians I have had periods of doubt- then nothing would stop me from killing or hurting. Please help, Am I just saying this because I fear punishment, or am I generally worried about that initial thought. When I had the thought I was like 'God will never want to heal me' so in my eyes that kind of proves it is a fear of punishment and not of being immoral but how can I tell?

I'm going to attempt to answer why people in abusive relations ignore help from the ones closest to them (family, friends, etc.). Actually this applies to people going through any sort of suffering that ignore help fro their family

This idea came to me after I was thinking about finishing college. My graduation date isnot too far from now. I was deciding what i'd do, and I told myself: I'm not going to invite my parents, or any family members. I said this because of the importance of the event. College graduation is considered one of the biggest moments in a persons life, most parents would never want to miss it. So, why would I not want my parents to come?

Well, I thought of the 3 other graduations i've had. 6th grade, 8th grade, and 12th grade. My parents did not come, nothing was stopping them form coming. Hell, they even ask about any of these, they did not value them. But i'm sure that they would value this one. I said to myself, why do they deserve to come to the most important one, when they whole heartily ignored all the rest. They've never been there for me in these situations, so why would I let them step foot in my life now? I'm used to being the only one who's alone at graduation, in fact, it's because of them that i'm always the odd one out, they created this.

I think this type of reasoning is at the core of people who stay in abusive relationships (or any sort of suffering), and refuse help from their family when they're in trouble.

Lets use the example of a girl in denial of an abusive relationship. It's logical that her family members want to help. But she always refuses their help, she even yells at them not to interfere. Why is this so? Well, maybe because in her mind, they've never been there for her when she was hurt. So they have no right to step in now that its at its breaking point. They'd rather suffer than acknowledge these ppl!

It's an ideology they've created in their minds, antagonizing the people who should have been there for them and refusing their help when they're in trouble even though its the only help they can get. It's a form of resent, no, i'd say even childish stubbornness. In the end they're only harming themselves.