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
