The Gatekeeper

Good evening ladies and gentleman.

Recently, i find myself oddly drawn to the issues revolving around my Palace of Darkness. I find myself looking towards the darker, more confusing areas of the Palace, previously unexplored by the mental limitations i had placed upon myself. Furthermore, i find that these avoided, previously unexplored rooms, barricaded so deep in the darkness of my Palace have a Gatekeeper. What is this gatekeeper? Who is this gatekeeper?

Well- it’s me (sort of.) More a version of me I’m not particularly proud, a version i wish didn’t exist, that i had never created. Is it truly a part of what i would consider…me? I have spent a lot of time trying to reassure myself that this is a face i show and nothing more. This isn’t true, for years I have tried to convince myself I am not the Gatekeeper. With everything i have done in an attempt to convince myself i am not the Gatekeeper- its just made so much more confident i am . It is truly the worst part of me.

The Gatekeeper was created many years ago, in what i  believed was hope to “protect” me from pain, from life throwing the dice with what felt like the inevitable consequence of snake eyes. For years and years i felt like this, deciding being alone, admittedly at times even being lonely, was better than pain’s potential, protected from that part of me by my all seeing Gatekeeper. As time has passed though, in particular since the beginning of Thinking Evolution, i am learning more, about the world, the way people think and perhaps most importantly how i think, recently looking at something my Gatekeeper is supposed to “protect” me from…if you could call it that.

Fear.

Fear is a strange enemy, something i guess could be likened to a shape-shifting demon, showing itself in the form that scares you the most, to “protect” you from life. With the reality being to stop you living your life as purely and brilliantly as you imagine you could, living a life of beauty and brilliance and love like nothing else matters. I like to think is we could live this way, to overcome the fear of whatever scares you, that scares me so much.  Its through overcoming that fear that make us truly alive, for if we are scared, terrified even, we are making a decision, we are doing something, anything. This, I choose to believe, this potentially beautiful, brilliant way of being could be the death of you, at the hand of you-  albeit a more fearful, scared, arguably immature version of you, truly the worst version of you- your Gatekeeper.

I have found myself venturing into  the unknown, much darker areas of the Palace, those areas avoided and unexplored- the Gatekeeper happened to be on a break, so off i sauntered.  This unknown is in the form of my unfamiliar new connection, which still remains a place of strange, emotional questions and logic which i have been successfully ignoring for what has been, well… years now. She is unlike anyone else, but there remains more to her than i could ever have imagined previously, a more complex beautifully wonderfully brilliant person, strong and powerful in nature (even though she doesn’t seem to think so,) yet i have still barely scratched the surface.

Everything i do, everything i say, everything i am with her, in terms of DR venturing out into the world as i talked about last time, is unknown. The Gatekeeper is partly to blame for this, so am I, for so long i have been “protecting” myself from so much its hard to understand what exactly is going on and that is where the issues start to surface. I am not fearful of her, like i said shes quite fabulous to me, I find myself venturing back towards a fear of not knowing. I find myself concerned for i am venturing into not knowing a lot, whereas previously in my “padded, protected” world  i  would arrogantly wander round aware of every possibility, because there were never that many. I don’t know what is going on, all i know is that it’s something i want to be a part of.

Surprises me the lengths my mind will go to in order to regain control, for years i was convinced being in control was the key to life, when much more simply- LIVING is the key to life. There are no Gatekeepers, no darkness, the Palace awash with open windows and sunlight billowing through, pictures of trips taken with people I love doing things i never thought I’d do, experiencing everything life can show you and sharing life with yourself, not limiting yourself to the protected, double sealed box away from a world you’re supposed to be terrified of.

The point I’m trying to make is, you are never going to get away from fear, if you are ever going to live. If you look at life in a goal orientated way, in which i believe we all live, you can see that without making a decision, you will never reach a goal and neither of these things come without fears. Decisions you fear the results of, things that make your heart beat faster, the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, the sort of decisions that could alter your very perspective on life if you were to just give them the chance are the lifeblood of what makes you, you.

They are the sort of moments, as much as i rubbished it earlier, that make you question your understanding of what it means to be perfectly “sane” and needing to be aware of the ramifications and short comings of every decision you will ever make. The alternative often doesn’t bare thinking about, because you imagine its like losing your freaking mind.

Its not losing your mind though, it never was. For as long as I believed this, it was through the filtered vision of the Gatekeeper, a sort of defense for “if i assume its bad, i won’t want any part of it” sort of thing. I was never going to go crazy, you will never lose your mind when making a decision, be it saturated in emotion or with what sandwich to order. Making those strange, oddly wonderful, terrifying decisions to act, in a way that could lead to you never really seeing life that way again is opening your mind, not losing it.

There is fear, so much in life, to the biggest problems of the world to your confusions, my confusions, your fears and mine. I don’t know how this connection works, i am trying the best i can to live in the moment, for that is where the beauty of the connection is founded. I don’t understand, i know that decisions will come, they will be scary, emotionally powerful forces in my life, whether they involve her or throughout other aspects of my life. What i do know though, is these pathways are a key part to living, not simply surviving. So to embrace this fear as my power, to make that decision and to see it through. Just imagine, even only for a second, the heights that could be reached.  Even for this connection, the unknown is powerful, terrifying and has the potential to be near perfect. You’re not supposed to know everything that is going to happen. You just live it as it happens.

I believe we are fearful of being scared and more than anything else, if we can embrace it , then we might get to feel truly alive.

Yours, with love as always.

DR

Being You- Being DR

Good evening ladies and gentleman

So. I have been struggling in how to start this one, to the point where i have been reading through a lot of stuff i wrote much earlier in the development of Thinking Evolution. In particular, the “What I hope we can achieve” page. I was reading this, casually trying to figure out how to formulate and deconstruct the thoughts in my head to make some form of sense and be of some positive use to me beyond the usual result- creating a confused, often irritated mess at the amalgamation of thoughts sensations and feelings i end up seeing in the mirror.

I guess in many ways writing is an expression, my self expression. Is it art? Maybe. Is it just a bunch of words on a page? Also maybe. I suppose, it depends who reads it. The point is, no matter what you do, there is always a difference in seeing and believing, watching and observing, understanding and feeling. You can see a situation and understand that it is bad, good, right or wrong but to feel the nature of the situation, to understand how someone is feeling who may be in that situation in this present moment, or may have been living there for any period of time is a remarkably different sensation to “knowing what is happening.” For without the application of feeling, how much do we really understand?

For a long time, far beyond the existence of Thinking Evolution, i believed understanding the nature of a situation, what the behavior means, how somebody reacts, what someone says, down to the last finite details meant that it could be broken down, deconstructed and understood in a perfectly rational, eas(ier) to digest way. Then it wouldn’t create an emotional reaction in me, so there was no risk of anything unexpected, no problems of “not knowing what to do” in every conceivable situation, because i understood everything, so how could there be a problem?

My understanding of this ideology now is that it was steeped in fear. Fear of the unknown, of not predicting the future, of warping the world to fit my often warped world view and remain so utterly convinced i was right, no matter how much potential for things to change, for me to change, to evolve. It meant that i couldn’t be sure what was going to happen, so i didn’t want to know . I wanted to be right, i felt the only way to be happy was to live a life so filled with predictability and seeing it all coming that in many respects, I haven’t really lived for a very long time, simply existed. Beyond Thinking Evolution, i haven’t really been me. Hence why, even more so now than ever before, DR Is so important.

Simply put, its me. I’ve written for a long time as DR because away from opinions, of supposed “facts” of modern life, of smartphones, loud people shouting their “facts” at you, too scared to process an opinion they don’t agree with, just the way the world often feels like its trying to drag you down, trying to keep you down and out, the creativity, the artistry becoming nothing more than a figment of your imagination. As DR, I am me. As purely and as brilliantly as i possibly can be. I want you to see that you matter, what you think matters, what you feel matters. Its you living your life, nobody else. I want you to smile like nobody’s watching, love like nobody else even thought possible. I want you to live your dreams and be that brilliant person you believed as a child you always would be. Reach that height and then excel even further. The world is obsessed about pushing its thoughts on you, so why not be revolutionary, be evolutionary and do things your way. The world shouldn’t affect us, we should affect it.

Always be ready to learn. You can never know everything, and if you think you do you need to start a new conversation or open another book. Just talk. Be. Who knows what sort of results it could produce.

As much as i say i want you to do this, its what i strive towards too. We are on this journey of development together and that’s the whole point. I want you to find your DR and set them loose on the world. The world hasn’t seen anything yet and the true you is be dam beautiful and create something amazing.

The point I’m  trying to make, is be you. Don’t let the world stop you, being you. If you don’t know who you are go out and find them, they will be there somewhere. Connect with yourself, with other people, try new things, go to new places and forge new connections. Connections you would never expect and be uplifting, be a positive spirit for the world to flow with. Flow forwards, carry yourself purely, spiritually and confidently as you, because the results are more surprising than i was ever able to see coming, no matter how well i tried to predict it.

I found myself forging a connection with someone, that if you asked me a year ago i would have never expected to meet, or not even paid a second glance to, so focused on the future incapable of seeing the potential beauty staring me in the face. The point is, throughout this connection developing i have tried the best i can, to be DR, to be me. Not being someone I’m not, not being who I’m supposed to be, just do as I would do, and be who i imagine myself to be, that person who is as close to the person i want to be, as i can possibly be.

This situation i find myself in is a rare one, because I don’t often find myself being DR, being me, around people I haven’t known that long. People i trust dearly and know everything there is to know is different, but her in comparison to my best friend, i barely know her. Yet somehow, I remain as me when I am with her. For the first time in a long time, I’m not thinking so much, positively obsessing over every minute detail looking for something somewhere that would aid the magic key to unlock…

Funnily enough, I don’t know how to finish that thought. I’ve never known. For years i have been overthinking everything and everyone, looking for a way i could seem to look clever, to avoid surprise, pain and/or shock. Its not me though, living like that. If anyone lives like that, its an injustice i think, to yourself, to the people around you and to the world, for you limiting yourself of the beautifully brilliant creative artistry, that in our own unique way, i choose to believe we are all capable of.

Take this new connection. I am DR when am i with her, to the best extent i can be. I don’t understand a lot of what is going on, I’m not trying to predict what’s happening, be in 5 minutes or 5 weeks in the future. I am purely in the moment, enjoying the snapshot of whatever I am doing, with someone who is doing the same. Living right now, in this moment, simply being happy to be there. I don’t know a lot about this connection, nor can i really explain it. In a rare first, my first port of call isn’t to explain it, just to be in it. All i know is that where understanding was once everything, the way you feel about yourself and how you carry yourself, as you, in the purest sense possible, makes for a remarkably different effect on your life, on my life. So let the cards fall where they may, don’t worry about what’s going to happen, for if it happens you are powerful and capable enough of dealing with it.

Even when not stood behind Thinking Evolution. Because you are you. And I- I am DR.

Yours with love as always,
Me. (or DR)