I ran into this video at almost 5am, after the second sleepless night in a row, but I watched it all.
"My dear son, you'll be fine."
This is good for a child to hear. It is good your father was able to get you the surgical help you needed, and loved you enough to make it happen. It is good.
It is very difficult to become honestly confident if you are spoiled. It has been very challenging for you to become confident in your real abilities, because you must first become fully aware of your inabilities, and this was obfuscated in your youth by being spoiled. You have confidence, not conceit. You have looked clearly, and seen plainly, your true self. It has been brutal for the reversal of the affection you have known to confront you, to dispel your conceit. Enough to clear your vision.
The strength you gained from your practice allowed your compassion to flower, not a threat and a weakness, but an expansion of your strength because you are not weak and fearful. Kindness must come from strength to not be a weakness. From strength came kindness. From kindness came self-respect, and from self-respect comes honor. Most cannot even conceive of honor, as you have observed. They do not have the foundation of humility upon which all else rests. When everything we have is taken, everything we are is all we have, and if we are not humble all we have is pretense.
Love is the most dangerous weapon life attacks us with. I too was betrayed by everyone I loved, losing everything and everyone. I could only be betrayed from within the defenses I guarded with my life - by those I was guarding. I have purposed to remain free by having only the good I do. What I am cannot be taken from me. What I give freely needs no defense and cannot be betrayed because there are no defenses to be within.
Jin is not weakness. It is indefensible, and invincible. We will forget every kindness we do, but they cannot forget us. Jin cannot be severed from us, cannot fade like our memories, even as we ourselves fade away. It spreads like a ripple on a pond continually expanding it's affect upon all that affects us.
Thanks!
Hey @valued-customer sorry for being MIA for a couple days. Stepping into a new context for my life and just revelling in the transformative experience.
Now i understand completely the wisdom behind "forgive yourself first". I cannot believe i had been carrying this BULLSHIT trauma in my life all this time. The Buddha was right that we hold the keys to all the doors; we bind ourselves, we liberate ourselves. By owning up to the trauma and giving it the existence it craves, it can be identified and then you can kick it hard in the nuts.
These past couple days has been the most free and liberating i've felt in a long while. The pain still there, but it's a phantom pain. Setting a new context for my life was very much needed.
I know i can always count on you to give wise counsel.
Thank you for this reminder. I understand why you live and act on goodwill now. It's a duty to oneself to live this way, because compassion is the answer and always will be. I may not be able to fully be comfortably kind or loving to those who did me in, i'm still human after all, but at least i can eliminate the negativity and even destroy it by focusing on compassionate energy applied in action.
Toby (the childhood years), The Vagabond Showman (my pre-20 years), Jin The Sojourner (my entire 20s), The Quiet Knife (my mid 20s right up until my early 30s) and now Brave-Smoke (sounds like a Chieftan's name lol)....i see the entire journey and where it has taken me. These are all chapters of my life and they reveal to me the force that has pushed me forward all these years....the innate quest to clear all that is in my life away from any obfuscation...the truth of life.
I will upload another video reporting on this transformative experience and where my life-context is now in a couple of days. But just to say my life, my spirit, my intention and vision and my duties in life as a performer, a sojourner, a freedom fighter and a man upon this Earth have become clear to me. Everything in my life is streamlined right now.
My daily building blocks ("Fist of the Singing Spring" (Wing Chun), Buddhism, Pipe Smoking, Extricating the System endeavours and Prestidigitation) have come into full effect and for the first time in life, i feel like i can accept myself.
Thank you once again VC. One day, i will shake your hand and say, lets smoke a spear of death together until we hear Chinese people singing in the background!
PS - i know you said no before, but please reconsider joining me on element.io