Days 106-110: The Rules - part 6 - hiding behind manipulation

05-09012013

This post is a continuation to:

Days 92-96: The Rules - part 1

Day 97: The Rules - part 2 - confidence

Days 98-99: The Rules - part 3 - rejection

Days 100-102: The Rules - part 4 - eye contact and talking

Days 103-105: The Rules - part 5 - money and female dominance

Part 6 – Rule 5 – Don't call him and answer his callbacks rarely

& Rule 6 – Always be the first to end phone calls

These rules I have always struggled with. If I really want to call someone, meet them, spend time with them, communicate with them – why should I act against that desire? I have often faced an overpowering desire to contact the people I have been interested in, comfortable with and/or labeled as “special” people. According to the book this desire is normal, but it should not be acted upon, because that's when you make yourself “available” and stop being a challenge – you appear desperate – and that's why it's advisable to be “hard to reach” by appearing as “busy and lively” and answer another's calls rarely and never call him unless he's made a request that you call.

When I tried out this advice it seemed to work, because my ignorance towards these people became a source of insecurity for them, and so I manipulated others through fear into contacting me. So I learned to see initiating contact with others as a “bad” thing because it revealed my true desires and intentions – which would've made me “lose” the game (and the interest/respect/love of another) because my “mysterious independent woman” character would have fallen apart. I have been unable to confess my interest/attraction because it would've exposed who I am – which I wanted to keep hidden from myself.

Within all this I never faced the desire itself: why do I crave to be in contact with these certain kinds of people? The desire to have someone “important” and “special” in your life is never questioned, as it is encouraged by the society, and thus it is missed that I myself could be my “special someone”, and that in fact I am the only one who can ever be my “one and only” in a way that does not involve fear.

When desiring to contact these “special” people I have not realized that I wish to be around them because they represent something that I find myself lacking. Had I realized this the company of these people (and that of others) would have been a great support in my process – and it still can be. Instead of supporting and assisting myself to see myself reflected back to me when I'm with others I have clung on to people, projected myself into them, lived through and as them, completely disregarding and escaping myself. This “imprinting” as I call it has been a major factor in my life and it's going to take a while to walk myself through it.

So it's not the act of calling others itself that makes them feel uncomfortable and “see me as desperate” - it's the actual desperation behind the act of calling. When my motivation to contact another has not been just to move myself but to find an escape/savior, it's no wonder the other picks that up and retreats. The book never questions this desperate desire as it sees it as “normal” and “acceptable”, and so the advice of the book are bullshit and only deal with treating the symptoms instead of the actual dis-ease.

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About the manipulation tactic: I very often engage in an internal struggle where I tell myself I should not call someone because “let them call me first”, as this will eventually make the other call me out of insecurity/longing, and if not, the person was never truly interested. I do this because I fear what the other will think of me if I call them, and I give value and directive power to my guesswork and perception of what another might possibly think of me, how they might see me and what they might not be communicating to me. I've recently been facing this point in practice and simply decided to push through without giving any value to my backchat, instead going with my impulse to call another and deciding to trust the other to simply communicate their discomfort if such a thing occurs. So far it's proven to be working.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to call another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that a desire is a sign of an addiction.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify my desire with the belief that “this is how human relationships function”, that wants/needs/desires are an essential part of relationships without which “they wouldn't feel at all” - without which relationships would be meaningless, because apparently there would be no motivation/reason for the relationship to exist.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to misunderstand a want/need/desire to be necessary for a person to have a reason to be in a relationship to someone, not realizing I am mistaking a mind-motivator to be the only possible choice and disregarding a motivation that comes from self.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe a relationship needs to have a desire element so that it would “feel like something”, not realizing this “something” is energy that is a result of the mind-desire and that both the desire and it's result energy are not real as they are not self-directed but mind-directed.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as the desire comes from the mind I am not directing myself towards another but passively allowing my mind to move me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to meet another to get a regular dose of my drug of choice – the company of someone I can live through / be comfortable with in order to forget myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to call another because I have wanted to be in contact with someone who makes me “whole” - in other words, replaces me in those areas where I cannot stand myself and thus “fulfills me”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to hear the voice of another because I find it comforting.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel comfortable, back in my comfort-zone, when hearing the voice of another, not realizing I have built my personal world (my reality bubble) reliant of the other, and that as I hear their voice it resonates within me and re-creates my personal safe zone for me when I've lost it when the other's not around.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I create my personal safe bubble upon another person I create an addiction towards that person because I make my sense of security and stability reliant on another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I can build a functioning relationship based on addiction and (co-)dependency, not realizing there would only be two beggars begging from each other, and that in this scenario everyone loses and everyone gets disappointed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to label the people I find myself comfortable with as “special” people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to label the people that “make me feel better about myself” / “bring out the best in me” as “special” people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to label the people I find interesting as “special” people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to label the people I am attracted to as “special” people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, as I have labeled these people mentioned above as “special”, to assign them a “high” value that is higher than that of everyone else's – including mine.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make myself “less than” the people I have labeled as “special” as I have assigned them a value that is higher than my own value.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify this self-created position of inequality by believing I “respect” these “special” people, not realizing that as I “respect” them I actually look up to them from the low position I have placed myself in as the beggar, and that this has nothing to do with actual respect.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I get an impulse to call another, to tell myself “nah, let him/her call me first”, with this statement trying to convince myself that the other will show me his/her interest eventually and that I should just “keep on living” and wait around – not realizing that as I first get the impulse to call another, I react with fear that the other might reject me (“what will he/she think of me”), and then retreat to my defense mechanism and hide the fear under superficial “confidence” and arrogance where I convince myself I am “a being like no other” that is bound to attract the attention of those “worthy” eventually – also not realizing that this defense mechanism only works until I face another impulse and again react with fear of rejection and face this insecurity again, and that these moments will accumulate to such a point where I am no longer able to convince myself the other will call me and end up calling the other out of fear, insecurity and desperation.

When and as I get an impulse to contact another and tell myself “nah, let him/her contact me first”, I stop, I breathe and I realize that I am saying this out of the fear of rejection. I then slow myself down with breathing and take note of the points that are present in my fear reaction. When and as I am stable in my breathing and have mapped out my reaction, I return to writing and return to what I was doing before the reaction, and when and as I am certain that my starting point is clear, if necessary, I contact the person I was initially going to contact – here a clear starting point meaning that I am fully aware of my true fears, desires and intentions, carry full responsibility over them and do not accept and allow any of these mind elements to move me.

I commit myself to practice my self-aware breathing in order to slow myself down and to then notice and stop these fear reactions before I begin to backchat.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abuse the fear of others through manipulation as I have intentionally avoided others as I have “known” (guessed) how they would react to my avoidance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to rely on others to act according to how I “knew” (guessed) they would act as I have suppressed myself and limited myself from contacting them justified with the belief that “they will come to me”, thus living as passiveness and abdication of responsibility.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though others are responsible for their own accepted and allowed actions, I am responsible for my intentions behind “playing the game” as inaction, passiveness and calculated behavior.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to plan my actions based on how I wanted another to react, not realizing the limitations I placed on myself as I refused to live in each moment within every breath, not living as an organic living being within the moment but instead becoming a mind-directed statue waiting for the one precise moment where I would receive my gratification as mind-satisfaction when I would “win the game”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that to calculate my behavior in the desire of a certain outcome is to fear all other possible outcomes.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that to fear all the other possible outcomes is to fear to live.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear revealing my true intentions to another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my true intentions only need to be revealed if I have kept them hidden from the beginning.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear facing myself as my true intentions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear myself as a being who desires.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be ashamed of myself having desires.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not want to share my true intentions with other people (with myself) and thus when questioned about my true intentions completely shut down, become paralyzed, unable to speak, think or move.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize this fear-freeze is a sign that I am on the edge of my comfort zone and am facing something unknown – there's nothing dangerous going on - and that I can just breathe and push my way through it.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the unknown and believe it is something dangerous, not realizing that to destroy the old to create something new is not going to harm me even though it might be uncomfortable.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to mistake the evaporation of old patterns, habits and beliefs to “destroy me” because I have attached myself to these old patterns, habits and beliefs that are of the mind – not realizing that these are not me in fact but phenomenon of the mind which I accept and allow.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become helpless in the face of this fear paralysis and believe there's nothing I can do about it but run away from the questions and discomfort.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear to expose myself as my true intentions and rather keep up a “cool” appearance because I have seen desires, feelings, emotions and fears as a weakness – a weak spot that can be attacked if I expose it to another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question the fact that I have avoided facing this point for most of my life and instead justify it with excuses of fear, manipulation and games to escape the fact that I am living a lie.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear opening this point because I saw it to be another weak spot where I could be attacked even by myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear to expose my true intentions and motives because as a child my self-expression was ridiculed through bullying and abusive friendships.

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As I now see, realize and understand that to manipulate others is to abuse all life, I commit myself to no longer manipulate others in any way whatsoever, and I commit myself to do this by living according to absolute self-honesty concerning all my true motives and intentions.

As I now see, realize and understand that in order to create relationships (with myself also) based on that which is honest and real I need to first become self-honest, I commit myself to practice being self-honest in writing, spoken word and actions and to thus through consistency live myself to change into a being that will not live within and as dishonesty – and I commit myself to do this for as long as it's done – even if it takes the rest of my living days.