Making yourself too small

A thought is a wave between two points.

You start with nothing (point 1).

Then there is a sound wave (the thought).

Then there is nothing again (point 2).

People who grow up in an unsafe environment often make themselves smaller in their own bodies. Therefore, the distance between points 1 and 2 becomes smaller. So the waves have to go faster, and the tides become higher and more extreme.

This is also the reason why a lot of people who are psychotic can't focus on normal reality anymore. They have made themselves so small that the distance between those points is almost zero, meaning there is no room for thoughts. Also, it's why ADHD is diagnosed more often in people who grow up in unstable environments. But it's a chicken-and-egg situation, of course.

How do I know this? Because I went through this myself. When I thought the helicopters were chasing me and the whole world could see my thoughts, there was no room to process reality anymore. So that became my reality. I couldn't distance myself from my thoughts.

What helped me most was religious habits, like taking moments of silence (which gave me breathing room; they collapsed my thoughts in a way), learning to fight (becoming more self-confident and 'bigger' in myself), and communicating with others about what I was thinking, which lowered my tides tremendously. I also got rid of a lot of sexual extremes that came with this.

Flattening the Wave – Why Moments of Silence Are More Efficient Than Meditation

Think of your brain as a black box (with a left axle and a right axle) with sounds in the middle.

You start with silence.

Then there is a sound wave (a thought).

Then there is silence again.

So a thought is what happens between two silences.

Buddhists have very complex ways of explaining this, with analogies like ‘from that nothing, the thought arises and fades into nothingness’ or ‘before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water’, not realizing that you can actually create your own thoughts via sound waves.

When I was seven years old, I started generating thoughts via sounds. So you start with a specific sound, and then that becomes a visual fantasy.

This is also why moments of silence are a very good idea, because you collapse all the thoughts in between. You flatten the wave.

People with ADD are people with a small distance between two thoughts. Their waves go faster, so to speak. But when they like doing something, they do it at a higher voltage than ‘normal’ people (they ride all the waves).

Now, the actual fix.
First, surrender yourself to that feeling one hundred percent.
Try to imagine what it feels like to be as scared as possible. Try to feel scared.
It's possible that you have unlearned how to feel fear.

How a Universe Begins

You have received a birth announcement card. You put it on the table.

A few weeks later, you walk past the table. You think: what is the right moment to throw the card away?

At that moment.

The moment you think that, everything comes together at the perfect moment, at the right time. That moment is exactly the right moment. Or you let it simmer for a little longer. You wait and think, "Is this the right moment?" Maybe I'll wait a few more weeks until I really can't put it off any longer. That's possible, too. That's also a valid strategy.

But it begins with that first moment of awareness.

Indeed, you can also turn it around and say, "No, the reason is that if the timing hadn't been perfect on all those occasions, we wouldn't have been here, or we wouldn't have been here in this form." That's true, too. But I prefer to look at what something is now, at the perfection of what exists, rather than at everything it could have been but isn't, or everything it is that we simply don't know about.

Why? Because then you are more inclined to see the beauty in what actually is.

This is also precisely what bothers me about evolutionary theory. It is undoubtedly correct. But you're essentially saying: everything that has a better chance of surviving will survive more often. That's true, too. But in doing so, you lose sight of the beauty of choices, individual decisions, and the people and animals who have paved the way for others.

It could also have happened that nobody had bothered to master fire. In that case, perhaps we wouldn't have developed large brains by now. Would that also be evolution? Certain choices, individual responsibility, and, above all, some truly extraordinary people (and, once again, animals) make just as much of a difference as evolution itself.

Evolution is a bit like saying: most things that had no chance of surviving didn't make it in the long run. Well, duh. Do you really think people in the past never looked at each other and thought, "Hmm, we actually look quite a lot like apes?"

I have a guy at work whom you could put straight into a zoo, and nobody would notice the difference.

Yesterday, I heard a theoretical physicist say, "Yes, with children who have severe disabilities, you can really see that there is less consciousness present."

Statements like that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

He is undoubtedly a good guy. But a complete psychopath.

Pressing Energy Back into Your Body

We now know how a universe begins: with awareness.

Since you also started with awareness, it's important that you understand that you can actually fix your mental and physical health through awareness.

Why? Because you have taught yourself a lot of things. Walking. Reading. Thinking. Processing emotions. In all these billions of things you have learned, it's likely that you have taught yourself some things you want to unlearn later in life.

Suppressing your emotions, for instance. Suppressing your voice. Or suppressing your sexuality.

Here, awareness comes in very handy.

Let's say you grew up in an unsafe environment. Your parents told you to shut up from a young age. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you wanted to speak out 30 times a day (this estimation is a modest one). In a year, that's 10,950 times of not speaking out. Over twenty years, that's around 219,000 times of not speaking out.

So this 'little thing' of wanting to speak out but not doing so has created extra tension in your body 219,000 times.

Wanting to speak out takes energy. If you suppress that energy at the last second, you create tension in your body, especially around your jaw. You press that energy back into your body. Now, it starts to zing around. You don't know what to do with it, so you start mumbling on the street. Because you need to get rid of that extra tension.

The problem is that without awareness, you wouldn't know you were doing this. Awareness is how life talks to you and explains to you what you are doing.

It's like having an eating disorder and not being aware that you are suppressing your own emotions, and therefore you push away the awareness of your body's natural hunger signals.

Again: in all these billions of things we humans have to learn, you are going to make mistakes. But take the time to reflect on and fix those mistakes. Don't be ashamed of them. As weird as it sounds, developing an eating disorder is, in many circumstances, a very 'normal' decision from the perspective of a young person.

This is also the reason I can't stand labels like ADHD. If there are people with a lot of energy who have to suppress that energy in the classroom, then whose fault is that exactly? They become like ticking time bombs. It's very unnatural.

Time Works in Large and Small Bites

I see time more as something that is in motion. Something you are not constantly aware of, but something that sometimes really hits you at certain moments, like on a Sunday morning. It is that moment when you see how much you have changed and how differently you do things than you used to, but also that you have remained the same.

Time is therefore not something that is always visible. It is there from time to time. And of course, if we look at the molecular level, we will undoubtedly see that our cells change every second, but that is not the point. The bigger picture is more important. If you only look at the small things, it can be paralyzing. If you only see the small things, you can no longer see the rest.

That is why time works more in large and small bites. Or in big steps and small steps. At the level of detail, or in broad strokes.

I can now see in myself that, broadly speaking, I have changed for the better. I can see this in small details, such as how I take care of myself and my home. A few years ago, things were very different. Back then, I took poor care of myself and my surroundings.

Time also has a lot of emotional depth. When you develop from a child into an adult, it is as if Mother Nature has already taken into account the fact that you are going to develop emotionally. In whichever direction that may be. You are heading somewhere that you do not yet understand. This process is called consciousness: it is a little as if nature is guiding you towards the adult you want to become. I always wanted to become someone who had truly been someone, and I succeeded. I went from being happy and dreamy to being gloomy, depressed, and psychotic. That was good. I have seen the other side. I wanted to play the game of life with the highest stakes, and I did. It cost me a great deal, but it also gave me a much deeper understanding of other people.

The difficult thing about emotional depth is that it is hard to explain to people who are at a different point in their lives. I have met many women in my life who put me on the right track, but at the time, I did not realize that I did not understand things myself. It was not that I thought I knew everything, either. I only understood afterwards what I had failed to understand, and that it was something they had understood all along. That is why I am grateful to have had, and to still have, many strong women in my life. People who taught me something I would otherwise never have understood.

I come from a fairly traditional environment, where nobody is religious, but everyone still gathered with their family on Sundays, so secretly, everyone was religious. Traditional gender roles applied there. Everyone was happy with that. But sometimes I think the purpose of religion was actually more about showing that women understand more about life than men do. Even back then, I felt that women came across as much wiser than men, who often looked at the world in an extremely narrow-minded way.

In the past, if I had read this text, I would have thought, "The writer is just a bit of a wimp." That is not the case. That is emotional depth. You are still at the point where I once was, and where you still are now. If you are still in the manosphere, you are at a point where I was, too, but I know better now.

It is a bit like thinking you look rich with a Gucci cap and an expensive car, while driving down a street where everyone owns an €800k house. Just as there are endless levels of people who are much further ahead than I am, too. That is how life works. That is learning, but be careful not to stay on the same level for too long.

Back to consciousness. The important keys to deciphering the universe lie in consciousness, because the moment you become aware of something is precisely the moment you can begin to explore it. And that is why the universe began with consciousness. At that very moment.

Emotional depth is looking at each other and both understanding it. My mother would say: without words.

Awareness is the thing in your body that goes round. It's the circle that moves.

It stops at a thought.

It stops at a feeling.

So bring your awareness to that thing first. That's how you learn what is there.

What Buddhists do is constantly move their awareness back to the breath. I literally have no idea why you would do that. It's actually flat-out dangerous, since you have to bring your awareness to your thoughts first. Especially for people who naturally move their attention away from certain thoughts and feelings, Buddhism is simply the most dangerous thing you can do — and I am not joking.