If you've followed my blogs before this, you'll know it's still the same author. If not, I will write anonymously. There is a freedom in self-reflective writing while keeping my identity incognito. I do not do this to deceive or disguise my true self while I'm in relationships with real people.
The people who I currently trust and choose to be in closest relationships with know who I am, and they would not be shocked by my disclosures here. I mainly do this to protect the anonymity of others who are not writing my blog, but whom I interact with because I do not live my life in a vacuum, nor do I live my life with people who are all OK with such self-disclosure, and that is what I want to honor. This is about me and my story of reclaiming my authentic self, and not about other people, but at the same time, wanting to value the anonymity of other people. I'm sure many will be able to relate with parts of my story here, and anonymity highlights the dynamics and principles of relationships that humanity knows well without being distracted by the identities of particular people.
My hope is that others will be able to see themselves and parts of their own story within mine, and be touched by me just being honest about my story, about my life because I believe Truth is transcendent. But how do I come to know and see Truth if people will not be transparent enough to let it reveal it's essence and character in their own lives? That is what steers me, the desire to help alleviate the suffering which I have experienced and have contributed to myself and perpetuated to others as well. It's been from a fear-based control that disguised itself well as being "righteous" and "spiritual" but required hiding my own subjective truths so that I could try and claim my possesion of an Ultimate Truth. I am coming to believe that Ultimate Truth, or this Higher Power, is perfectly capable for revealing itself/himself/herself (my Higher Power is not a human being confined to a gender) to those who are open and desiring to see and experience Ultimate Reality and Truth themselves, which requires the dismantling of shame's toxicity, not through ignoring or pretending it away, but through confronting it, stripping it down, and therefore reclaiming the truth and my dignity because that is what remains standing in the rubble - my dignity.
Please make yourself at home here. Your identity will be kept anonymous, and so will mine. People who know me personally will not see a completely different version of the me they interact with. I value being consistent in who I am and how I perceive people, places and things within my own story, while also trying to discern a balance of sharing my story honestly while also honoring others in my life who do not feel comfortable living their lives with such an open-book approach because it is indeed scary and risky.
The risk is worth it to me, and this is evidence of shame's toxicity already being stipped down of its power over me.
Truth is transcendent and I want it to transcend in and through my own life, both in front and behind the 'curtain' of living as a human being. There are two distinctions of truth, the metaphysical Truth of a Higher Power and how I am learning to relate to this Being, and there is, my subjective truth (which is equally as valuable when in a reciprocal relationship with my Higher Power) which is my truth, of which I am the most qualified and credentialed expert on and in which my Higher Power is not intimidated or threatened by when I share it explicitly, but is honored by my disclosure of it.
This blog will continue to serve as an asset for me in my own recovery from toxic shame and all the various forms and patterns it has manifested in my life. As I see it now, my greatest liability isn't that I've become transparent in my living in terms of my own inner world, but rather it is that I deceive myself into believing I can fool others more than I can fool myself by maintaining two different personas with conflicting archetypes of what it is to be markedly human and markedly spiritual.
By living in fear of my asset of living transparently, I am feeding a corpse, an illusion of who I am - which is the false self who I've learned to create in order to survive a life that's been injected with toxic shame. There is no escape from being human and being injected with toxic shame. It isn't a measurement of the worth and dignity of my parents or my personal environment and relationships that impact me, which leads me to conclude that I was injected with toxic shame. It is a conclusion I've come to make from being born outside of 'Eden', outside of Paradise or 'Heaven' which I acknowledge and validate my desire and longing to return to within as good, with the awareness and acceptance that though I cannot force my outside environment or external relationships to long and seek to return to that place or paradise, I can do that for my own self. I can do this internally, and I either support that decision or confound it primarily through the intimate relationships I chose to participate in.
This is a journey that takes up a lifespan. One day at a time.
Peace to all those who visit here.
