The beauty of simplicity
Discover more from Exactly Where I'm At - DK Brainard
On a lighter note, it snowed!
I grew up in Michigan, and I don’t like being cold, so I’m not a huge snow fan. But once or twice a year. And it’s this beautiful? And my dog LOVES it?
Snow day is go.
This is the reality I want to live in. Where we have the time and the freedom, or as Jean Gebser called it, the time-freedom to be outdoors with the people and the animals and the trees and the birds that I love. When I’m feeling nostalgic, I often think back to times when I was walking in Nature. Or sitting in a garden. Not striving, not worrying, not scheming on how to fill a void or get what I didn’t have yet. Just being animal.
Also, to fill in a blank from the last post, what keeps us from living lives that are more harmonious, more in-tune-with-our-animal-bodies and in-tune-with-creation?
Yes, there’s a system of the world set up to harvest our energy by sucking us into painful physical, mental and emotional states. Yes, the system sells us fake solutions, often in the form of addictions — habitual rituals of self-abandonment that briefly ease the pain but then plunge us back into the feelings of lack, scarcity, not enough.
Not good enough, this relationship isn’t enough, don’t have enough, can’t get enough, not enough time…
But those Matrix programs all depend on one thing — the toxic shame hiding in our unconscious minds.
In our new years podcast and January forecast, Tatiana and I ended up talking a lot about toxic shame as the underlying hook-in the Parasite uses to keep us in states of lack and learned helplessness.
Toxic shame is defined as shame that doesn’t originate from or isn’t commensurate with our actions. It is other people’s shame that is implanted in our psyche and becomes part of our self-image.
Healthy shame arises when we have violated someone’s boundary and we need to make amends.
Healthy shame: "I spent the rest of the money in our savings account to buy a new guitar, even though I knew you wanted to use half of it to buy a new sewing machine.”
Toxic shame: (Instead of saving the $50 Grandpa gave you for Christmas, you spent it all on a big set of markers and glitter pens you’d been pining after.)
“You are so stupid! Didn’t I tell you to save that money for college. You just can’t control yourself, can you? You know artists don’t make any money! I hope you don’t come asking me for money in 20 years when you’re working as a janitor.”
To be clear, some people get slimed with more toxic shame than others in childhood, but it’s the primary mechanism used to domesticate us into society. Meaning: we all have it.
The people el gato was talking about — those who fantasize about putting “the unvaccinated” or the children of Trump voters into prison camps or gloat at the thought of “the unvaccinated” being denied medical care or being barred from participating in society — are the ones who are mired deepest in toxic shame. Like people with borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder, their self-image has been so compromised by the toxic shame that they can’t imagine a healthy, beautiful life for themselves.
We go into a lot more detail about how toxic shame hooks us in to life-destroying programs and how to clear it from your own psyche in the pod and the forecast, so please check those out.
If you’ve cleared all of your addictions (including to prayer, security needs, being right, and judgmental thoughts about self and others) then you’ve probably cleared your share of toxic shame.