Hello I’m Mike

02 12 2010 
Introduction to the forum

I was born on November 21 in 1968. As a child I got pretty much fucked in the 70’s and 80’s and got totally lost in the 90’s. The world has always been a place I couldn’t crasp. I grew up in the east of Holland in a very liberal (katholic) dutch family structure. Everything was easy for me as a child and I could do what I wanted to do. Few rules where set for me. No worries just play. Discipline was for the military and they where not popular in the seventies. Later on this lack off discipline resulted in problems. SchooI, learning, social structures, work and money. I see discipline as a great virtue but I have very little of it. I went to art school when I was about 19 years old. That’s when I really started questioning the world around me but there was no internet and I was all over the place (dutch weed culture). I spent most of my time as a child in nature and the thing that intrigued me the most was this contrast between nature and men. Couldn’t understand this huge cap. Perfection and chaos on the same planet? Didn’t make sense to me. So I started investigating. Twenty years later after a ‘career’ (lol) in advertising lot’s of sadness, relationships, Sanskrit, yoga, purifications, secret doctrine and childbirth, I got stuck and crashed really, really hard. No answers. Vague concepts about the afterlife, enlightenment etc. But no certainty, not knowing and no logic (common sense). I had the worst depression ever and to be honest, it felt like dying. Happy didn’t exist and ‘I hated’ this world and everything in it. Now at this time I’m as lonely as I whas ever going to be so I decided to get a Facebook page and I meet this old friend online. She decides to pay me a visit and after talking (a lot) I here the word “Desteni” for the first time. So I start reading and one by one all the questions that where never answered got an answer that same evening. I was shocked. It all made sense but was NOT what I expected. I’m sure there is more of you that where as shocked as I am. But... There is no way back. Back doesn’t exist. What remains is the definition of me in this world. That definition is fear.

I feel fear. I feel it a lot. It’s with me everyday. Sometimes I ignore it. Sometimes I laugh about it. But the most scary thing I do is to deny, hide or run from it. People that know me may find this very strange. They think because I always was a thrill seeker that took risks, I somehow have no problem with fear. Well here is the trick. The fears I look up are not really fears. Be it in BMX or in the mountains or whatever, they are challenges. Little battles with myself that I want to win. The fears that haunt me are the ones I disguise. I don’t confront myself with them and I don’t dissolve them and I don’t share them out of shame and ego. A big mindfuck. My fears, define me. I don’t talk about them because they are ever present and they always trigger a flight response. These fears are around every corner. I could be making coffee and this single thought or image instantly triggers a physical reaction. I kind of cramp up. It’s like being attacked with static energy. I can feel it in my stomach. A thought that defined some kind of fear and immediately the fear is manifested. Creating fear is simple, just think about it.

What is my biggest fear? Money. The illusion off money. The way it has determined my whole life and me accepting and allowing this to happen. From the first job to the last relationship. Money has determined the way I programmed myself. The end of the month steadily grew into my biggest fear. Got to have money! Everybody knows. This macho thrill seeker finds himself confronted with the fact he is not the big personality he thinks he is. Has to play a game way out off his comfort zone. A game of hide and seek in a corporate world where nothing = equal and everything is based on eliminating threat. I’m just there to collect the money on my part. I can only do this if I play the game according to the rules. This depresses me. It makes me hate the things I do so I’m actually hating myself. And off coarse it has to be fun. All that seriousness, it has to be fun right? Work and life has to be fun? That’s hammered into me since I can remember.

Who said that work had to be fun? I work because of the bills and the bills frighten me. So there you have it, fear and frustration. Isn’t that a nice state of mind. It makes you want to crawl in a corner and die. It made me blind and it lamed me. I want to avoid fear and frustration. It’s depressing and you don’t see great groups off people hanging around a depressed person (unless they get paid to do so). So to the outside world I try or have to present or act out this character that isn’t me and is a fake. This off coarse triggers even more frustration, aggression and depression because I’m never self honest.

So here I am. I failed. No big bungalow, no career in advertising, the bank owns the house and on paper it’s mine, genius. If the current money system rules the world does money rule me? Yes it does. Not only does it rule me, it determined everything I was and have become. I speak the language of the world, I live and speak the language of money and fear.

I used to love work. Doing stuff, learning stuff, seeing stuff. I don’t have that anymore. There is no urge to be ‘successful’. Since I started writing my fears have intensified. Looking back is shocking looking into the future frightens me even more. So it’s here and now. Stopping in every moment realising that there is another moment after another etc. The list doesn’t seem to end. This goes up to a point where It’s too much, too depressing, can’t do it and eventually ‘I’ give up. So I give up. If I’m incapable I’m not accountable. So maybe god can forgive me or some guru can take on my ‘karma’ I don’t want the responsibility. There it is, my biggest confrontation with fear is being confronted with what I have accepted and allowed to become me and not wanting to deal with my own responsibility for it.

Now in order to resolve me, I will have to address every single point that created this entity. But the sheer size of this project is so intimidating. I mean, I can hardly get my head around it. It scares me! So there is my loop from fear to fear. This loop will sustain itself until I’m able to break the spin. This is my first step of that process.

Thanks,

Mike