An answer to a couple of questions I've been reflecting on as part of a program that I'm in.
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It feels like there are billions of people and I happen to be this person. A soul. A sovereign being. The sovereignty itself doesn't feel like anything at all. Instead, it's more like the relaxation that comes from shedding weight. Like a pond so clear you can see every fish and stone beneath it. Like alignment.
In my body, sovereignty is identical to personhood, and to the recognition of sovereignty in all other beings. Each of us has our rightful domain and each of us bears responsibility for what goes on there. Paying attention to my toes and crown creates a bounded space in which to experience and exercise this sovereignty.
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Hmm. I very consciously try to guard myself against most of the energies and systems constituting our toxic society. Over time, some of this conscious guarding has naturally become unconscious to conserve cognitive bandwidth. I also unconsciously avoid situations that increase the likelihood of cluster headache attacks, and these situations are everywhere.
There may be other things that I unconsciously guard against. One that comes up often in social situations is avoidance of vocabulary or stories that are likely to inspire the people with whom I'm interacting to engage in games related to power and status. I often pretend not to know things that I actually do know, decline to share detailed information on subjects I'm familiar with, and generally minimize my presence around others. These are deliberately learned behaviors that serve two purposes.
They significantly reduce the amount of nonsense that I attract. And they give other people the space to talk about their stuff without becoming encumbered by my stuff, which is inherently offensive to the status quo. Oftentimes, I know what others think well enough to know that they wouldn't like what I think.
In theory, I might show myself more compassion in this by just confidently being my natural self around others. Yet this was my habit for many years and it frequently attracted attention from people who made my life worse. So in practice, it seems more compassionate to continue avoiding the unnecessary harm. Where that leaves me, I'm not sure.
Writing several books about extraterrestrials attempting to navigate our insane society helped me explore the compassion I have for my own plight in this lunacy. Studying the psychological mechanics responsible for my alienation deepened this compassion while also reinforcing the importance of protecting myself from those who aren't equipped to understand me. Maybe I could bring more compassion here, but I don't really know what that would look like.
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