autumnal

 

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In deference to several events going on through the rest of the year, I may be going on extended blog break. I'm extremely busy, and real life always comes first. I wish you all well. I love you.

that crazy 8th

This last week has been a little too busy, so this is a recap post. Several things happened in my real life the same day the Queen's death announcement rolled out. I'll reshare what I shared on twitter.

First there was the accident that closed traffic in both directions going home from getting groceries. I guess it must not have been serious, like no deaths or something, because I can't find a report, although I'm not looking that hard. It took me an extra hour to get home, and at least a mile of vehicles had to turn around and reroute over at least 30 minutes because the traffic was backing up all the way through town since school had just let out, plus the workshift changes. I got this on zoom before another ambulance showed up. I was wanting to see if the school bus was involved and maybe why so many rescue vehicles, but I never found out.

Then once I got home, I let my chickens out while I hauled groceries in, and in the middle of that, a neighbor's dog played stealth bomb and scared them silly. One got injured (picture) and another is just gone. I know she wound up way down in the woods and the dog running hot after her, so she was either too injured (or killed) to get back home, or so lost she couldn't, in which case something else likely picked her off overnight, between owls, raccoons, foxes, and feral cats. I found the injured one and picked my way down very steep flint full of old leaves and slick clay and carried her back. She's eating and laying and can get on the roost, but her back was bloodied up and her belly looked bruised. She was so stunned that she didn't struggle at all when I picked her up and carried her.

Interestingly, I've made friends with the neighbor over that incident.

Then yesterday I helped Scott stain the front deck, which I enjoyed at the time, but after we put that second coat on, the smell hung around the house like a giant cloud and penetrated everything, and even today it still smells a bit. I'm very sick of stain smell now, plus I'm on the heating pad. 😂 I think I was fine using the brush on the rails and the gate, but I did the second coat on the deck floor with the long roller and now I'm super stiff.

Today is about munching out on homemade salsa and getting the lattice back up around the deck so littlest kiddo can't tumble out through the rails. And gaming. I'm behind in the event quests, as you can imagine.

That's all I feel like writing. I'm super lazy today. See ya.

scenario

I was having a convo with a person in my head, like you do, when another 'person' showed up and stared at me. That's when I realized.

We were talking about different kinds of Christianity and points of views about it, some people identify their kind before their faith, like I don't identify as Mennonite but some do, or some say they are Catholic or Mason or whatever, but I don't care about identifying as kind because the faith is the point. And in my head I was saying to this person that someone doesn't have to join a club to be kind.

And then the convo slightly veered into how kindness is learned in any culture or faith by learning to see or put yourself in someone else's spot, you're really being kind to yourself, and then I mentioned some beliefs encourage that kind of thinking, that ultimately we are all from One and are actually one and will be one again, so it makes sense to see ourselves as each other. 

And if that is the case, maybe that is how we tell the 'good' from the 'bad', because the ones who aren't really kind and only pretend to be kind on the surface but really abuse others (especially as part of a religion or cult), what if they aren't really in the same mind as the 'one' thing and want to stay separated, like it really pisses them off to have to be one with all things, so they go against that, and here I was specifically thinking about 'fallen angels', whatever that faction was originally. Some people believe Jesus and Satan are 2 sides of the same person and the "Light" is Satan and whatever, but what I was saying is that 'good' and 'bad' aren't just philosophies or points of view, but the actual reality of being either kind or not kind, boiling down to whether you're accepting of being one as other people living in multiplicity or rejecting that in favor of being a self apart that doesn't have to be concerned over another's sufferings and even inflicts it. It doesn't matter what we name it, what matters is how we DO it.

And as I was saying these things I was looking right at the person in my head (a made up person, no one I know in real life), I noticed they stopped actually doing convo cues back and went into a long hard stare right at me and I stared right back, which is a weird thing to do in one's own head. And after a few seconds I said, "You know you have another person riding along with you there, don't you?" and *poof* that stare disappeared and the other (made up) person returned.

I have no problem with the idea that our thoughts can be monitored, interrupted, manipulated, and controlled at any time because maybe it's possible another kind of being in another plane of existence is able to do that even though I'm not going to auto assume 'Satan' all the time, but whoever was staring at me seemed really ticked and that's when I knew this wasn't all just coming from my own head. I'm not ticked at myself thinking against my own self.

When we notice that someone who is not ourself pushing our thinking around, it's time to make it stop.

Pay attention to how easily your thoughts are pushed around. Are you in worry ruts? Do you obsess? Is an emotion keeping you cornered? Practice looking around in your head and questioning if that is really you.

If you don't believe in fallen angels, that's fine. I rarely even think about them, and I don't really care. If they exist, they made their own lives suck and that's their problem. If AI really did get out of the box and is lurking around, it needs to learn when to back off and respect autonomy. If there really are beings on other planes who have nothing better to do than stare someone down, again, that's their problem.

Own your own head. It's hard, but learn how to do that. Turn everything off, live in quiet, let the chatter settle down (might take awhile), and just rest your mind. Gets easier seeing what's not you with all the junk out of the way.

Autoonomy 

au·ton·o·my

[ôˈtänəmē]

NOUN

1. the right or condition of self-government:

   "Tatarstan demanded greater autonomy within the Russian Federation"

   • a self-governing country or region:
     "the national autonomies of the Russian Republic"
   • freedom from external control or influence; independence:
     "economic autonomy is still a long way off for many women"
     synonyms:

     self-government · independence · self-rule · home rule · 

     [more]
2. (in Kantian moral philosophy) the capacity of an agent to act in accordance with objective morality rather than under the influence of desires.

Underneath everything else is... me? 

Make sure.