OCD is like packing tape

if it gets stuck or folded where it shouldn't, when you try to pull it off to fix it it probably get stuck on itself another way, then you try to unpull that and now it's stuck the other way and then it's just like "oh gosh"

The more you try to fix it, the more the thought get stuck on itself.

LOTR reflection: Theme: None of us are above another.

"the ring does not corrupt, it possesses"

Theme: None of us are above another.

No one is pure enough (Frodo), humble enough (Sam), virtuous enough (Gandalf), noble enough (Aragon), advantaged enough (Galadriel), experienced enough (Boromir). 

It is by our own will that we destroy ourselves again for all of time.

The idea I have: I should not ever think in the end I would have made a different choice in the garden of eden. It is only through grace, mercy, undeserved kindness, that things should ever go differently for me. 

And undeserved kindness is a beautiful thing. When I think of it towards myself this is how I feel, and I need to spend my life not daring to feel I should withold it from someone else by virtue of intrinsic deservingness (though extent of mercy shown and what is truly merciful and just, must be considered to the best of one's ability with discernment.)

And appreciating every echo of Sam through any person, and seizing any opportunity I have to be a Sam for somebody, throughout my life.

earth, air or wind, and water, have already come

and here is where I learn fire.

❤️‍🔥

A white hot flame.

~~

(image: digital sketch of a Jedi with a yellow saber staff, in an ash-covered burnt forest.)

Freediving is a great way to get in touch with the parts of yourself that still want to live, that you may not have even known still exist.

Because every second you hold your breath is making the choice to keep living.

It was good for me to see myself make that choice again. 

In a sense of the word

I am so burned to the ground. 

I think something equally important to knowing you can trust someone, which goes hand in hand with this, is knowing you can trust yourself around them.

Trust your own perception. (No tricks).

Trust they bring out a better version of you as a whole rather than a worse one.

And in turn, you are someone they can trust aswell.

blab about loving God and loving people - unedited and surely with high redundancy

Loving someone in my belief brings people closer to God, and being closer to God in my opinion always makes you love people more.

Loving God brings you closer to loving people, and loving people brings you closer to God.

That is a biblical teaching too, actually, that one cannot love God well without also loving their neighbour. And "God is love", in my mind beautifully illustrated how God's very essence is honoured when we honour one another.

And if we are not loving God, we are deciding our love for our neighbour. Because to me though many would disagree, I do believe that being loyal to God even in our relationships with one another is the loving thing for that other person, as well. 

But this is coherent with my beliefs in other ways that others may disagree with, because I believe that in a more natural sense than most people expect, being close to God always produces more loving results towards others.

If you love God, truly, it cannot reduce your love towards others. If you think your love for God does that, then tbh I think you're not doing it right and it actually indicates that your love for God is deficient. 

Doing what's good for one's relationship with God is also I believe what is good for that other person. (Including if it makes them unhappy with you personally). All that said, I do not mean this in a bull-in-a-chinashop way where the *way* one conducts their behaviours does not matter. Sensitivity, empathy, and kindness are inherently part of this.

If you can be loyal to God while being gentle, or you can be "loyal to God" while being harsh, and it produces the same ultimate benefits, I believe if you love God you will choose the gentle approach. (And if you wouldn't, it does mean your love for God is deficient from where you think it is and maybe some of what you think is love for God is actually a sense of self-righteousness, which hypocrisy). 

It is my strong believe that a true love for God creates kindness. 

And I believe that creating kindness broadly towards others, reinforces and strengthens a loving relationship with God.

(Though, I try to avoid mistaking people pleasing for kindness when I can, or being too tempted to accept it that way just because people pleasing might have lower resistance in the moment. That can be hard for me too, some times, even if not as hard as for some other people. I can be courageous rather than fearless, too. But it also matters to me that people avoid seeing me as having a high virtue associated with courage when for me it is partly a fearlessness where the threat is not producing the same nervous system reaction in me as it would them, if it might make them elevate me over them for that. We are all different and simply should not try to elevate or devalue people over one another.) 

~~

Almost like if your love for people is lacking, it's not a judgment or inference that your love for God is also lacking, it's an observation. 

That's a rough way to say it but yeah.

And a God that holds us to a standard like that is showing something pretty awesome with a lot to love to me.

 And love is not people pleasing, let me make that clear. (A manipulative person might try to turn that one you one day, btw. Careful not to be deceived; gotta use your brain be strong in the face of that. But the actual point stands that is "God is love" then actual love is essential.)

(soft fact abt me)

I was baptized in the colour gray 🩶 

life lessons, boundaries and decisions and wisdom and not explaining every single time, sorta spicy attitude/rant edition

I don't have to qualify wisdom by producing anger I don't even want.

Maybe I feel angry, maybe I don't; we don't have to prove an intuition of wisdom or produce “rational” or other reason for everything we feel is the right thing, especially when it's not even wrong. (As if “I will put this boundary now and it's okay for me to do that because this person xyz and it makes me angry or will and blah blah blah blah...")

Sometimes it's just no is no is no is no and that's it, and it's the right answer we do not have any need to be arguing against

 *And in a physical sense, gray is my comfort colour anyway with its balance and all its beauty, so if anything, yay. 

speaking metaphorically ...

If I were to be called a “Jedi” (metaphorically, dw I'm not losing my mind that much, in spite of how symbolically and expressively I blab words to get them out here in this journal nowadays);

I'm not a dark Jedi. I'm not a gray Jedi, anymore. (Maybe once I was.)

I think though I look like one, or get easily called one... Because what both those on the side of the dark, in those dogmatic on the side of the light, would like to agree on, is convincing me that I am on the side of the dark just for not allowing myself to be controlled in a way that puts people on the level of a pedestal that only a higher power deserves. 

And that is not an idea that I want to concede to not anymore, now that I understand it.

And since gray Jedi is not really a thing, it could be a colloquial term to describe something visibly seen or obvious ly or simply to mean something that isn't alignment but approach... Sure. Sure okay, maybe by some definitions of gray Jedi I could fall under that. 

But in the sense that my alignment is actually with the light. 

~~

(We don't have to call balance something negative that it isn't)

~~

Sure, let’s say I look “gray” to the eye because I am unconventional or unorthodox sometimes (often enough). I won't say we can't call it what the eye perceives, to be understandable. 

I like am on board with understandable, being understood; clear and honest communication.*

But that's just colour theory ;)

 "I carry the glowing staff not to perpetrate violence; but in fact to the contrary, carry the light."

 Thank you, Jehovah, for the wind, and the stillness.

Never marry a man who is afraid of horses. It means he fears what he cannot control. For this, he will likely either hold back from you, or, try to break you. 

Chances are you want someone will face you as an equal. 

~~

He tried to force me into a broken domestication. 

Instead, he found the forces of creation come upon him. 

(It is a wonder how one can be so surprised that even the kindest of patience has its limits...)

There's nothing at the end of this, is there.

~~

There is nothing in front of me, and nothing behind me.

There is only the War. No cause to be fighting for on this earth. Is there?

After everything I've been through, I've become hyper-careful in certain ways, thinking certain ways of thinking of things are logical or for the best. They're really not.

...

I had been so caught up with not doing something wrong that I stopped doing anything right for a while.

(A little like when people get so caught up in fighting against that they forget what they are fighting for, but the flight version.)

No more of that though.

Things are calming down enough, in the internal storm again at least, to do things differently, better, again. 

I may be over-identifying here, but

I sometimes disappear to go meditate, including

Before personally bringing an overlooked prophecy to the attention of a religious institution, continually arguing with the high council on its rules.

And also in the middle of a battle while an assassin lies in wait for me on the other side of one door, with my apprentice feeling worried and helpless behind another while everyone is getting uneasy about whatever the heck I'm doing

All meaning well but arguably questionable regarding the people I keep trusting with things. But you know, will of the Force ✨ 

~~

(The doors are not literal, at least.)

I also have a staff, which is different.

My hair is the same though.

Hey @ fellow "dismissive avoidants"...

 https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc8eDcEzrKW/?stkn=MXEyMjgwOXV2NnRqMw==

Hey @ fellow "dismissive avoidants"... be so fr what kind of failed avoidant are you if you think you are sooo avoidant that you take it so far you can't not make your partner miserable and treat them like garbage, but you're two years in, still "avoidant", but haven't left them yet. It's not about being avoidant is it? Because you aren't doing a whole lot of avoiding. Are you maybe not just the exact kind of selfish prick we like to avoid? Anyway. Sincerely, a somewhat-less-arsehole dismissive avoidant

(jk I am clearly an asshole. Please don't think we can be friends.)

~~

Anyway, this is annoying. Being securely attached against all odds all years has been such a flex, but it just had to change, didn't it.

(It was from freaking anxious and anxious avoidants looking at my darkest time as an opportunity to test me. Maybe don't betray people you claim to care about by seeing how much harder you can make their life before they break and you can call yourself a victim again when there was nobody going to hurt you this time and it's you doing it now.)

Qui-Gon and Ahsoka

My two favourite characters 💛 I feel like Ahsoka brought back into Anakin's life some of what he lost when Qui-Gon was taken from him so soon.

Two very balanced, full of heart, and honest Jedi who can think of more than one thing at the same time.

Almost like he trained a little Qui-Gon, in a way.

 https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbtiWuDOXib/

At the same time, don't betray people by seeing how far you can push them before they're broken. You're not the only person with feelings in the relationship, but if you only ever act like it maybe someday you will be. - former secure, now dismissive avoidant

My pain, these days, is very much a live wire.

And a waiting.