DreamBliss

I recently found a book by Eric Robison titled, "Bending God." In it the author speaks of a guy named Eric Peppin. A psychic, with abilities and powers. I want to know if I have finally found someone who can do what is being said of them. I am ashamed to admit I have been looking for a real spiritual teacher. Someone who can easily work at the energetic level and do things I would label as "outside physical abilities." I read these experiences others say they have had all the time. Robert Monroe going out of body. Robert Moss and his shamanic dreaming. The guy whose name I can't spell levitating in Autobiography of a Yogi. Ramtha just taking his physical body with him. I want to witness someone doing these things, directly. No tricks, no BS. I want to hit the core beliefs I have about reality so hard they shatter, just like they did when I renounced my faith and stopped being a Christian. This all assuming these things are even real. Maybe none of it is. But I want to know for sure. I want to experience for myself. I no longer want generationally held hand-me-down beliefs. I want to experience something so powerful that my mind won't be able to excuse it away. I want to be left changed forever by it. Maybe this is a foolish desire to have. But I am at a critical time in my life. I keep finding myself disappointed by the books I have read. It's getting bad enough that I am starting to hate books! I feel that everyone is either outright lying, or exaggerating. How am I to know the actual things that will bring fundamental, meaningful and substantial change right now, in this moment? I do not want enlightenment and could care less about it. I have neither the energy or time to devote to some decades long practice for which the results I have to take on faith. I want to do something, today, period. Is there any sort of practice I can do that is guaranteed to bring results that challenge physical reality? I am open to anything, especially anything that has been used successfully by the one suggesting it. Failing that, are there any real teachers I can contact, who would be able to guide me through some sort of reality challenging experience? I sent an email to Robert Moss. He was very rude. Ram Dass has passed. Eric Peppin seems uncontactable. I'm very tired, on every level. I am weary of my life and the seemingly concrete box of an experience of reality I am locked into. I want to know if the things in this book I am reading are true. I don't know how to ask that in Eric Peppin's Discord. Any advice? I keep thinking that if I could just know for sure there is more to life than this, like everyone seems to be saying, if I could experience that in a fundamental, meaningful and substantial way, maybe, just maybe I could figure out what to do or where to go from that elevated perspective. Or maybe I would suddenly just know what to do next. But the main thing is I would have something powerful and strong enough to fundamentally, meaningfully and substantially change my life. Something real, something I experienced for myself that left no doubt. This is not just what I want. I need this, for reasons I am not allowed to go into here. I really and truly appreciate your help with this! If you could get me a 1on1 with a real teacher experienced in outside physical reality (who isn't gonna throw prices and limited time offers at me) you would be helping me to alter the trajectory of my life. This is something I desperately need right now. Thank you for reading.

So... Many years ago, reading one of Robert Moss books, I performed a, "Dream Re-entry." I have talked about this before. On successfully doing this one time, the only time (to my memory) I recall ever doing it, a fox showed up. The fox was not there in the original dream. Around the time I started doing some sort of Chakra meditation or work, and the fox appeared again and was with me during this. The name that came to me for the fox is Ayhunna. For some reason, I stopped doing these meditations. I stopped doing the visualizations, and I stopped interacting with Ayhunna. I feel bad about that. I don't know what changed in me. But with certain things I am considering, and my mood at the moment, I miss playing "Chase the Fox" with my friend/guide/teacher. I would like to hang out with them again. I've got some Shamanic drumming tracks so I am covered there. But I don't have any ready visualizations or anything to work with. I had the thought that maybe I should find an authentic Native American Shaman on YouTube, if there is such a person, or failing that, find a Native American Shaman author - some sort of teaching that would be used with the Native Americans when working with a spirit animal or guide. I don't really know who or what Ayhunna is. Only that I think of him as a him, I see him as a fox (and I'm not ready to deal with seeing him as anything else) and he first showed up during that dream re-entry where I was using Shamanic Drumming. So I figure the best way to honor him would be with some sort of authentic Native American practice. Please note I am not Native American, except maybe in heart or spirit. I was egoically thinking of myself as a Shaman for a short period of time, but right now I want to keep it real, and it seems more genuine to say I feel connected or drawn to what little I know of the Shamanic path. Hopefully there are some authentic Native American teachers around, and maybe someone here in these forums can point me to them? I will look myself of course. But this is really the only spiritual community I am a part of at the moment, and I thought I would come here and ask for help first. Appreciate your help with this, and thank you! Now you know, those of you familiar with my avatar before, why I chose that particular avatar, and why Nungali enjoyed calling me, "Little Fox" for a time.

Not far from Portland, OR. So if you know of any spiritual teachers hiding in the immediate area, please enlighten me (pun intended!) Best I found so far was a woman channeling Lord St Germain of the Ascended Masters. I only attended one session, but it was interesting.

So I checked the links about Eric Peppin that were provided. Just the usual defamation BS. The formula is always the same: spiritual teacher becomes successful == spiritual teacher is accused of abuse or rape. And as always, the word cult is thrown around with most of the folks tossing it having not the foggiest clue what a cult actually is. Main point is nothing disproved any of what Eric Peppin claimed to do or proved any wrongdoing on his part. So not a worthy resource, though I do appreciate desire and willingness to help. Thank you. You know I believe and claim to be intuitive and sensitive. Every once and a while (though not for some time now) I see strange things. Nothing huge or life shattering. Just weird, and the voice in my head quickly minimizes it. Like the time I was at the theater and saw a beautiful, happy, young couple walking towards me. They were maybe 10 feet away. Then as they passed me I saw they were actually an older, but still very much in love couple. I figure I either caught a glimpse of their spirit or soul. Or maybe how they see each other. But ask me to do that again, and I can't! So just because someone claims psychic powers yet can't read your mind on command doesn't mean they aren't psychic. I do see one avenue of investigation and that is to see if there are any military records for Eric Peppin. It is claimed in the book he helped the military find subs as a kid. Maybe a FOIA request would shake something loose. Not sure I can be bothered though. That first link was also very harsh towards Tony Robbins, Michael Bernard Beckwith and Oprah. Oprah for cryin' out loud! Probably the closest thing to Mother Teresa outside the Catholic faith. What's next... Go after Thich Nhat Hanh or Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev? UGH!

Would that I had the resources to do so! I agree completely.

Thank you for the information. I will verify it with what I already know. Unfortunately there are just as many people out there claiming things that never happened to them, claiming someone (usually someone famous or popular) hurt them in some way, as there are lying spiritual teachers! But these folk are at best lying, or rumor mongering, or at worse on a smear campaign. I see over and over again countless attacks on spirituality and spiritual practices, as well as spiritual teachers. I live not far from where Osho was kicked out. I have been told Carlos Casteneda was a liar and a murderer. I have been told the lady channeling Ramtha in running a cult. I have been told Teal Swan is running a cult. Heck the folks claiming these things would defame the Buddha or Jesus Christ if they could get away with it! I don't like to waste my time and energy on liars and naysayers who serve only one purpose, to preserve the status quo. To keep things locked into physical reality so the great capitalist machine can keep churning. If we could effortlessly experience things "outside physical reality" and the information on how to do it was readily available, society would likely cease to function as it currently does. The whole damn system works because everyone thinks that all there is is getting up, going to work, rinse and repeat. I know there is more to reality than what my senses tell me. I know there must be authentic teachers out there who can do things most can't. But wading through all this BS is exhausting...

More like a jolt to break through the blocks. Mainly because I spent so long working on myself I started to become self-absorbed, and nothing (and I mean nothing) I have ever done, outside of renouncing my former Christian faith, created any fundamental, meaningful and substantial change.

Thank you, everyone, for your replies. Anyone familiar with the book I mentioned, or Eric Peppin?

Some good advice here, thank you! But a little too much dependence on the religion of science (I know that phrase irks some of you, sorry.) Some things can not be measured in a lab - they have to be experienced directly.

I shall look into this and perhaps do it. Thank you.

I too consider these things and love them Nungali. I often look around the world in wonder, and then wonder why nobody else is looking around! But the miracle of watching a seed sprout or an ant lug a huge nut to its nest doesn't in any way leave any sort of fundamental, meaningful or substantial impact on my reality. The physical world is certainly wonderful - full of wonder - but that doesn't help me change the trajectory of my life. I wish it were enough though. Finding wonder in the world is something I can do effortlessly! BTW, love the William Blake!

Well so far all the low-hanging fruit I have found (some of it very delicious BTW) has turned out to not be substantial enough to feed me, like eating a watermelon, or downright rotten! I would be happy with low-hanging fruit if it did indeed, "provide life-changing results before entering the miracle zone", as you said. And did not come with a limited time offer or price tag. I don't need to walk through walls, or in my case it would be flying or teleportation. I assume we are locked into certain rules collectively in this reality. But being able to sense energy as if it were a tangible thing and see things most are not aware of would be good enough for me. That would certainly short-circuit this unwanted inner tendency of mine to believe the physical world is all there which has left me unable to change my life in the big 3 ways: Fundamentally, Meaningfully and Substantially.

I am open to anything, yes. But I won't do literally anything, no. That desperate, literally do anything mindset is very dangerous in my opinion. It may be needed in small doses in certain cases, but what use would be the knowledge I seek at the harmful expense of another? If it would harm another person, I probably wouldn't do it. Hope that answers your question.

Specifically as I understand it the Buddhist belief system is in the Anatman, and this was done intentionally by Buddha to get people to think outside the Hindu/Yogic system where the Higher Self is called the Atman. I guess what I would like to know is does the Buddhist belief system believe in God, and if so, what form is God for them? It seems in the Hindu/Yogic system God is you, me, each of us living sperately physically but all connected to the Source through our Higher Selves. We are all little peices of God and are at the same time God. I think I get what they say. But I would like to know what the Buddhist belief system says. The reason I am asking this is because I come from the Christain belief system, and I am rapidly coming to the point where I will have to figure out where I stand. Is God some man on a throne somewhere? Is God merely the energy that we all have a part of inside that gives us life and is commonly referred to as The Source? Or is God me, or rather am I God? For whatever reason God decided to shoot a part of Himself off into this physical reality to live in my physical body. Or is God perhaps all of these and more, or none of these? I have to make a choice in order to pursue my spiritual development. If I stick with my Christain beliefs then I can go no further. God may or may not be connected to me, I may or may not be connected to others, God may or may not be the source that connects us all and gives us life. This is as far as I can go in the Christain faith. Because if I start saying I am God I am in direct conflict with the Bible and the belief system of the Christian faith. It is, literally for me at this point in my development, hell or high water. Once I start calling myself God, if I am wrong, if the Christian faith is right, then I consign myself to an eternity of suffering in hell for blasphomy among other things. Do you see my predicament? At some point I have to step off the narrow way and risk the jungle that waits beyond. Well in reality I have stepped off, and now it's a matter of turning my back on it and leaving it behind. I can't think of myself as a Center of Consiousness, and move beyond my body, within my former religion. I mean I moved beyond the religion itself but retained some of its beliefs. It is those I have to leave behind. All this is compounded by the fact that I now see the truth about religion in general. It is a control, a leash, a cage, a collar. You can't find freedom in a belief, it is your beliefs that entrap you. Some of that entrapment is good. Your religion tells you that murdering someone is bad, well then you won't be going around killing folks. Your belief to respect life, to not kill, is stronger than any law. But in most other ways these constraints are bad, because they can be used to keep you blind, deaf and dumb to the truth so others can control you. It is apt that the Bible describes people as sheep... Anyhow I think understanding the Buddhist viewpoint here will aid me in figuring out what mine will be. One of the main three, or perhaps a different one entirely. We'll see. I appreciate your help. Also let me be perfectly clear, I'm not posting this to challenge or belittle anyone's views on God. I didn't start this thread to argue. Just to hear a viewpoint. So feel free to share, I for one will welcome and appreciate it. Thank you - - DreamBliss

Just a heads up that the DaoBums Facebook group is not being properly moderated and now contains pornographic spam. Whoever is in charge of the group might want to clean it up. I have left for now.

No tear-jerking or trickery here. Just the facts as I currently understand them. Sometime in June or July, although it may happen before, we (all of us living here) are parting ways, and my parents as well as myself need another place to live. I no longer wish to live with my parents. I wish to stand on my own, have my own space or place. And I wish to do this on my terms - not how society dictates. I know it can be done, but so far I have proven not up to the task. I want to be sure my parents are settled somewhere nice, so I can feel free to worry about myself. Ideally I would get my own little house - just two bedrooms - one for sleeping and one for creating content for YouTube. I like what I am doing for YouTube right now. I know that it is not uncommon, once you get through all the hoops and hurtles, to earn $4,000 a video. It is just one unconventional way to do something you enjoy that others are willing to pay you for, and in that way you are of service. My little house would have a well-drained, not mucky and private backyard with at least one old tree I could sit under and mediate. Room to do Tai-chi and yoga. Either easy access to transportation, funds to pay for a Lyft or something like that, or my own car. A hot tub I could use to heal my achy sore body. Ideally I would have a $5,000 budget to build a new computer and get the gear I need to keep doing what I do. Anything left would pay for a physical trainer and a yoga teacher. That is a brief sketch of my dream. It's a nice looking future, but I can't see any way to it from here. Its like looking at a beautiful painting on the wall, wanting to go there, but of course you are unable to. What my immediate future looks like to me is that either the computer I am currently using (that has parts from when I built it in 2012-2013) will give out, or I will give up on YouTube because I am struggling to get my subscriber count up, through no fault of my own, or simply because I will be homeless, and have no way to keep making content. I have done all I know to do and tried all I know to try. I have been aware of the Universe speaking to me through coincidence, handing me two books that both essentially said the same thing about envisioning your ideal future and allowing the future to pull you towards it, instead of letting the past define your future, which is the default state we are all improperly raised to be in. I worked my arse off these last few months at YouTube and am even trying to get a job in the local school district as a supplemental plan until I am doing better at YouTube, assuming I even manage to do better. And now I am dealing with these compounding health issues. There are darker and deeper aspects of this I might speak of later. But for now, this is what I perceive. Just asking for your help, in whatever way you are willing to provide it. Prayers, sending energy - the usual. Tony Robbins tells how he used to be a janitor, and something like a month later, he flew over the building where he used to work in a private helicopter, headed to one of his events. Other accounts are littered throughout history, and there is just as much information on abundance and manifestation. I am well-versed and studied in these materials, yet I have been unable to achieve success. Mastin Kipp talks about inflexible nervous systems as being one of the reasons people can't change. That is the next tangent I am chasing. But I have learned that looking at myself as if I am broken only creates more brokenness I need to fix. In other words, if I am searching for a problem in myself I will surly find it, and this will never end - the ouroboros eating its own tail. The trap of all self-help. It is still difficult to tell myself that I am perfect as I am. That there is nothing broken, nothing wrong with me. That I just don't fit and there are simply adjustments I need to make. Then I recently realized that I don't need to pull out of this nose-dive that is my life, I just need to jump out of the plane and let it crash. The plane is my past, and by trying to do anything to correct my life based on the past I chain myself to it and all the ruts I have been mired in for years. Better to bail out and start over. But even these recent things I have learned have not been enough to help me take a single step towards any sort of desirable future or life I actually want to live. I am posting this to "come out" as it were, to ask for help and let it be known I need it. To make my desires and needs known. To put them down here in black and white instead of letting them continue to clog up the inside my head while trying to do everything by myself. I am stuck, I need help, I do not know what to do. Thank you for reading, and for your support.

A bit of an update... First thank you Nungali, I needed the smile that reply gave me. So two things have changed: 1. I now have my application into the school district. No jobs at either of the locations I can walk to for which I wish to apply as yet. 2. My mom is dead-set against the idea I broached with here and dad, of offering the landlord $1,000 a month, $1,200 at most to stay here and see what he says. She says she feels intuitively that we need to move. I call bullshit. I don't think she is listening to her gut at all, and have good reason to say this. But it is what it is. When the lease expires, that's it, we're leaving, whether or not we have anywhere to go. That's the hand I have been dealt and must play. I have more to say, but the community here, as good as it may be, is not equipped to handle that, so I'll carry that burden on my own.

Thank you. I truly appreciate that!

OK, so a quick update... Well at least that is the intention... Concerning my TV, I contacted a repair service, and the guy who stopped by decided to try to order a new panel under the warranty. Last I heard this all went through and he should have it today. He will be installing it on the 16th. So my TV will be repaired for little or no money. On that note, my uncle gave everyone something he is calling a stimulus payment. So I do have money set aside if there are any unknown costs for this repair, or if I want to give the guy repairing my TV a little Christmas bonus, or if I need to buy a new TV for any reason. I will be updating my Amazon Wishlist accordingly. If anyone has gotten together and bought me a new TV already, just PM me and let me know what you want me to do. If you tell me to keep the new TV from you, I may just sell my old new TV after it is repaired, and use the new new one instead. If you have ordered nothing for me, and didn't even pay attention to the link I posted, that's OK. Please release any negative feelings you may have around this, if you have any for any reason. I give everyone here the best gift I can, and that is my appreciation and gratitude for you, as well as my desire for the highest and best for you and your loved ones this holiday season! I often think that if in some other reality Santa Claus exists (maybe he is even in this reality - who knows?) that, lacking any serious amounts of money, the best I could do is ask Santa to deliver whatever it is you are desiring, however you are celebrating or not, because this year has been a motherf**cker, and we could all use a little Christmas Spirit. Or any kind of positive, uplifting spirit! Concerning that aspect of myself that, could I get a knife and murder the bastard, I would, I am learning that the bastard only exists as long as I believe he does. In fact, I am learning that this whole quest I have been on to fix myself is a fruitless, worthless quest, because I am already perfect as I am, and I will only be imperfect in any area as long as I believe I am in any way lacking, coming up short, broken or in need to fixing. In other words, trying to fix myself perpetuates finding shit to fix! How's that for a mind bender? It is only your belief in your brokenness that creates, perpetuates and supports your brokenness. Let the belief go, and the rest of it is gone! If I believe I am perfect as I am, it is easy for me to feel confident, to love and accept myself, to feel I fit in, to feel I am worthy, etc, etc. There is nothing to fix, here is your whole Dao system in one handy package... The work is already done. And the work continues, because the real work is learning to embrace and accept your inherent, natural state of perfection, despite everything in the world screaming at you otherwise. Believe it or not I came to these realizations, or I woke up again to them, after reading and listening to Gary John Bishop's books. Here is a link, for those who do not know who this is: (Nungali will like this guy) https://www.amazon.com/Gary-John-Bishop/e/B01M9F5EEN?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_9&qid=1639520180&sr=8-9 Dunno if I will be back here with an update before Christmas, but Happy Holidays everyone!

I have struggled with anger all my life. And I am not talking about "normal" kinds of anger. I am talking about anger stemming from suicidal depression, driving me in one of my worst examples to stand outside my family's house one night, on the gravel road there, holding a machete, ready to use it if anyone was stupid enough to come near. I don't consider myself a violent person. I have never been in a fight or had any physical altercation with anyone except my brother, who had a special knack for lighting my fuse. I put up with a lot. I typically beat myself up and hurt myself. I have scars all over my body and my knees make strange grinding noises whenever I navigate a set of stairs. If I am violent, it is directed at me - I abuse myself. I mention this only because it got to a point, not long after this incident, that I decided to do something about it. So I read some books on anger, and retained (though memory has faded substantially) some of the things I learned. I have to find that one book again and read it... But initially I followed the instructions in this book and that helped a lot. Later I found out about self-hypnosis and wrote a script for myself, that I ran many times, directing the energy of my anger to my creativity. Now I just suffer from the occasional outburst. The problem is, whatever is triggering me remains outside my conscious awareness. I haven't been able to catch it in the act of happening to stop it. And it appears to have mated with, or mutated with, an aspect of myself I am referring to as my inner saboteur. Now maybe it was always this way and I have only recently become aware of it, because I have been focused so much in this area or something. Not sure. It is this inner saboteur I want to kill. I want to destroy it. I want to chop it up into little pieces and burn them to ash! This #$%^&* is responsible for my totaling my Lexus and, more recently, breaking my brand new TV! Soon I am going to bed. I am exhausted. But when I get up I intend to write a blog post synthesizing what I have recently learned from Kyle Cease's, "The Illusion of Money" and "Stop Self-Sabotage" by Judy Ho. But I will attempt to outline a few things here... I am fairly certain that, at some level outside my conscious awareness, I did not feel I deserved such a nice TV. I allowed myself to enjoy it for a month, then I took it away from myself. Never mind that I earned the money for it working hard to sell my parent's RV for them! With the Lexus I think a similar feeling was in place. What I think happened with the TV is a hard drive of mine failing to work was part of a trigger that set off my anger, and this self-sabotaging aspect of myself rode in on the energy of that anger. From outside my conscious awareness it directed everything, including where I threw the hard drive. No accident of coincidence here - I absolutely refuse to believe that! My inner saboteur used this anger to cause me to throw my hard drive in the exact place needed to be sure it would bounce off and hit the screen of my TV. Everything from where I threw it to how hard - all those calculations - took place without my being aware of them. And that is why it must die! My life sucks enough right now. I do not need to have the few nice things I posses to be taken away from me because I am currently unable to feel that I deserve them, that I am worthy of them! This thing infected the one time I manged to get out on my own and rent an apartment. It infected me when I went down to California to try yet again to get out on my own. It caused me either to not do certain necessary things, or ensured I would do things that would hurt me or cause me to fail. I suspect an imbalance as mentioned in Judy Ho's book, towards avoidance and away from pleasure. It is an attempt to preserve some sort of status-quo, a level of "good" in my life I am comfortable with. If I could make all this garbage in me turn physical I would get a knife and cut it out! Sometimes I wish my problems would take physical form so I could derive some pleasure from beating them up. But it doesn't work that way. I am here because I honestly have nowhere else to go. Sorry but that's the truth. I have no other community, or network, or group of friends, or even a single, physically close and readily available friend. I am completely and utterly alone. I am hoping for some insight here, preferably from someone who has gone through something similar and come out of it. I am looking for a book, or a video, or a process, or resources - something, anything that will help me end this pattern of behavior. Just erase it completely. Smooth the groove out of my mind. Pull me out of the rut. Because I am determined to replace my new TV or fix it. Likely I will just replace it. But I am determined to have that replacement no later than Christmas this year. I will get it, whatever it takes. But once I have it I want to keep it. I do not want anything inside me to wake up, take control and cause it to be broken. Starting right now, in this moment, as I type this, I am done with self-sabotage. Never again will I break a possession of mine, give it away or allow it to be taken. Never again will I feel unworthy of nice things. I work like a dog and I deserve my treats! Please help me address this issue, in whatever way you can, even if all you can do is voice your support. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you for the generous offer, and for the link to the Osho meditation video. I always appreciated his teachings, and wished the folks who populate my general area would have accepted him instead of forcing him out. I am not sure I am allowed to post this, so I guess if the link is still here the next time I check it was OK: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3RBL0MIOM3WN3/ That is my birthday/Christmas Amazon wish list, and either of those TVs (just need one of course) would meet my needs. I am basically using my TV as a computer monitor, and the larger screen makes it easier on me. I did my research, and these two are the highest rated to use as a computer monitor. I know the Universe will provide, one way or another. Or at least I will keep telling myself it will until I believe it completely. Anyone read, "The Secret Code of Success" by Noah ST. John? If not, let me recommend you take a look. I am learning a lot from this author, including why affirmations and the usual "success steps" don't work. As far as the subject of this thread, here is what I figured out before I cracked the aforementioned book: https://blisswriter.wordpress.com/2021/11/08/11-8-2021-thoughts-on-self-sabotage/ Since writing that, been reading Noah ST John's book, and am just learning about Afformations. Instead of making a statement you don't believe like, "I Am Wealthy", which may register as false with you (and you know it does if in the back of your mind a little voice says, "Yeah, right!") you would figure out the negative question you always ask, likely, "Why am I always broke?" and turn that into a positive version, "Why am I wealthy?" That's the gist, read the book for more. All I can say is I have been very dispirited for a few weeks now. You know I think ever since I broke my TV. Very discouraged, very unhappy - lots of aches and pains in the body. Hard to move, hard to think, coughing again, so likely on the path to getting sick. But I did the exercise; listed all the negative questions I am always asking myself, then listed the positive versions. Right after that I felt better. Don't know why, I just did. As I said I turned a corner - I sense something inside has changed or is changing. In any case the inner saboteur is just self-sabotage, and that is coming from an imbalance between seeking reward and avoiding threat. Or in the terminology of Noah St John, "My Why-Not-To's" are bigger than my, "Why-For-To's." I have this acceptable level of success, and I think there is more to it than that, but generally when this acceptable level is reached I sabotage myself. The new TV, before I broke it, was energizing me and helping me create my Minecraft videos. Had I continued on that path, I would have certainly had some success at YouTube. Unconsciously I would not allow that to happen. I have, up to this point, seen myself as a failure. Failure or failing is a part of my identity. Part of the story of my life. There is likely also fear, probably of success, at work here. Now I ask myself, "Why Am I Successful?" and "Why Am I Enough?" as I attempt, yet again, to correct this unwanted unconscious programming. These old operating instructions no longer serve me, if they ever did. It is time for them to go. When they do, the fear leading to anger leading to the "Dark Side" of self-sabotage will also end. Or happen a LOT less! I wonder how many pieces of equipment good 'ol Darth Vader broke?

@Nungali What? You sayin' my creative imagery was sub-par up to now? @Daniel You might have something there. @steve Thank you.

Sadhguru is an excellent teacher.

I am not sure. I can not recall any specific instances of what would classically be called abuse. I do recall being spanked by my dad. My mom once, angry at me, tried to jab my leg with a pair of scissors. I moved out of the way and she ended up hurting herself. When I was a child my mom took out a belt and spanked me for not doing the dishes. And in grade school there was some sort of strange physical inspection of the children, girls separate from boys. But outright being beaten or raped or anything like that - as I said, not that I recall. Of course there is always the chance at things being repressed. But I am sure I would have dug it up by now. Now as far as emotional trauma... How much emotional stress would one have to be under before it could be called traumatic? Could being suicidally depressed for half your life be considered emotional trauma? Or being laughed at in the face when you asked a girl to dance? Or being turned down when you offered to have sex with someone, who had made it clear they wanted to have sex, just not with you? How about watching someone you thought you were in love with being driven away, never to see them again? Or having 3 girlfriends when you were in the 2nd and 3rd grade, only to have them move away within a year? Would that be considered traumatic? How much can you be hurt before you can label it as emotional trauma? I am certainly curious... Emotionally I am like the the shot-up carcass of an old car in the desert.. Full of holes, decaying and rusting away to nothingness.

If I could afford such a psychologist (assuming I could even find a good one within 1,000 miles of my location) I could afford to purchase a new TV! Just a little of my old, snarky humor in case you missed it...