Answered Prayers
My muse as always, is Aphrodite. ~ Shakespeare in Love
my goddess of love, sorceress, divine spirit,
you were there when I needed you most,
when I was lonely, miserable and lost,
drifting aimlessly from pillar to post,
you visited in dreams as a ghost,
and as a goddess lifted me up,
for that I shall you worship,
forever, no matter what,
you live in my heart.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Aphrodite, Goddess of Grace and lascivious love of Ares ~ eternally unrequited
Social Media Vampires
Social media is a double-edged sword ~ you can cut yourself.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve spent 45 hours or so listening to and watching a whole bunch of lessons given through the Hay House World Summit. Some of the speakers were excellent, and as you’d expect, a few talked utter crap.
One of the most useful things I heard was from a guy called Brendan Birchard, who said that for the first hour of every day, don’t even look at your social media. All you are doing by looking at something like Twitter first thing in the morning is checking on everyone else’s agenda, and letting them take control of your life.
Social media is an advertisement for the superficial extroverted self. ~ Hozier
A lady called Carrie Green also said that if you’re going to use social media, then use it well, have a purpose behind your use of Facebook, Twitter, whatever, and stay focused. Don’t just throw away the hours by blindly following some jerk you’ve come across on the internet.
It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time. ~ Alexis Ohanian
Do not blindly believe everything you are told on social media. One only has to read what the current President of the United States writes on Twitter to know that false truths abound on social media. Most of the supposed ‘facts’ I’ve read on Facebook are utter dross ~ for example ‘Flat Earthers‘ expound their idiotic views on Facebook sites, as do the deluded proponents of ‘Alien Visitation and Abduction‘. Social media is the easiest place to go to find something utterly untrue.
The dark side of social media is that, within seconds, anything can be blown out of proportion and taken out of context. And it’s very difficult not to get swept up in it all. ~ Nicola Formichetti
Very negative views proliferate on social media, and personal attacks abound. One only has to write something a little ‘controversial’ to find yourself subject to vitriolic personal attacks. And, whatever you write, you are certain to find some wazzock who disagrees with you ~ vehemently. Do not put your own self-worth in the hands of another by reading their crap. The only stuff I read are posts on this WordPress blog site, and I have a rule that I immediately ‘unfollow’ anyone who attacks me or uses inappropriate bad language. If you have to use a word like ‘cunt’ in your posts then you obviously have the IQ of a retarded gnat.
Anyhow, if you swear or post anything inappropriate on social media it could cost you your job and land you in trouble with the law.
One in five employers says they have rejected a candidate after looking at what they’ve been getting up to online. ~ Joe Myers, Huffington Post
And, as we all now know, the social media sites will steal and misuse your personal information in a myriad of utterly heinous ways. Nothing you have ever posted on social media is private.
Some say that too much of what you see on social media will create negative attitudes, negative feelings, and negative thoughts within you. And, that negative thoughts are like vampires because they can take over your mind. All I know is that you will find nothing of real value by looking for it on Facebook.
Your ‘friends’ on social media are not real friends.
Social media is not real life.
But then, sitting at the end of the bar sucking down beers isn’t real life either.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
every form of addiction is bad, whether it be alcohol, cocaine, dope, idealism, or the internet
Be Cool With The Past
You can never get away from where you’ve been.
We cannot change the past, we can only change the ways feel think and feel about the past. Most people have brutal, painful, and regrettable memories of their past. Events from the past have created who we are today, and events from the past will affect us today, tomorrow, next week, next year, and maybe until the day we die and beyond…..
Some of us may say that we are OK with the past, that things that happened in our childhood and adolescence do not haunt us at all. But beware, even if you are not aware of it, everything that you have experienced in the past; good, bad, terrible, traumatic, joyful, boring….. is affecting your sub-conscious today.
Nobody, up to and including you and me, is completely at peace with their past. We cannot, and should not, forget the past. Our past creates in us feelings of anxiety, bitterness, disappointment, doubt, guilt, fear, frustration, hurt, regret, rejection, sadness….. and most of us recall and remember the negatives from our past more than we focus on the positives.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ Chuck Palahniuk
Some of us try to run away from our past; changing where we live, drifting from one relationship to another, changing jobs, drinking too much, taking drugs, attempting suicide, and metaphorically running away to join the circus. But none of that running away ever works, for wherever we go we take the past with us. (Even if a suicide attempt fails it will most likely do irreparable damage to the body, mind, and spirit.)
For some of us it’s even worse, because we are also affected by the past of someone who is very close to us, and emotions created by someone else’s past are incredibly difficult to deal with. This is doubly so if our ‘friend’ hasn’t themselves fully come to terms with their own past.
To be cool with the past we must first be motivated to deal with the past. We need to understand what really happened in the past, not just some biased half-memories that we use to fuel our negative emotions today. Try to find out what really happened in the past. Be willing to talk about and fully explore issues from the past. Stop pretending that everything from the past is fine, when most likely it isn’t. Acknowledge your true feelings, whether they be loss, hurt, shame, anger…..
You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. ~ Iyanla Vazant.
Depending how deeply the past affects us, we may need help to come to terms with what happened, how it affected us, and who we are today because of the past. Speaking to family and friends may help, you may need to see your doctor or a therapist, you may talk with your priest or spiritual adviser, you may need something like hypnosis, or you may just need to really meditate, read inspirational books, listen to motivational lectures, or just go for a long walk in the sunshine.
With any luck we may find out that the past is better than we feared. But, no matter if the past is better or worse than we think we remember, we cannot move on from something we don’t understand and we refuse to accept.
That’s the past for you. Not only does it come back at the most unexpected and inconvenient times, but it’s set in stone. ~ Jeffery Deaver.
There may well be things from the past that need resolution. This might be very difficult, but the longest journey starts with the first baby-step. Be honest. Be self-aware. Be kind with yourself. Seek to understand yourself. Be kind and understanding towards others. And, give yourself time to heal.
A ship does not sail with yesterday’s wind. ~ Louis L’Amour
Some say that we can become cool with the past by keeping a positive outlook and a strong determination to succeed in finding joy instead of negative emotions. And, that the past only exists in our memories and imagination. All I know is that the past isn’t actually here.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
If what you’re doing isn’t working,
then do something else instead.
Naming My Fears
Paranoia; an extreme feeling that people are lying to me.
There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment. ~ Hunter S. Thompson.
We are all conditioned by our past. We have all been conditioned by society. We have all learned to be afraid. Our parents, our carers, our siblings, and all of society taught us to be afraid.
We learned negative thought, and we learned character defects like; anxiety, cowardice, denial, distrust, evasiveness, frustration, guilt, hatred, immorality, insecurity, pessimism, possessiveness, promiscuity, self-pity, and worry. All of these character defects are manifestations of fear.
It has been a massive shock to me to realise and accept just how afraid I have been for most of my life.
My greatest fear ~ fear of abandonment. I was a small, premature baby, placed in an incubator immediately after birth. Before I was five years old my maternal grandmother, my principal carer, left me. She had passed away.
My second greatest fear ~ that people are lying to me. My parents didn’t tell me that my nan had died, I thought she had abandoned me. My parents’ lying by omission, and telling me half-truths, destroyed my capacity to trust anyone.
Half a truth is often a great lie. ~ Benjamin Franklin
My third greatest fear ~ that I am not good enough, that I do everything wrong, that I am useless. I thought my nan had left me because I had been a bad boy, that I just wasn’t good enough for her anymore. Since then I have always felt second-best.
Because of that trauma in my formative years I have always been afraid of getting things wrong, and of being mocked for making mistakes. I have been morbidly afraid of rejection, which has resulted in all of my relationships with women becoming utterly dysfunctional. I am deeply afraid of developing a close relationship with an attractive and sexual woman.
Good girls go to heaven, Bad girls go everywhere. ~ Mae West
Because of my childhood trauma, I believe that every women I have had a close relationship with has lied to me, and I am afraid that negative belief also means that I cannot even know truth from falsehoods. In my own life I attempt to be dedicated to the truth, but to be a truthful man in a world of liars is to live in a very scary place. And, as we all know, everybody lies all the time.
Keeping secrets from someone is no different from lying to them. It’s still dishonest. And I am deeply afraid of dishonesty.
Perhaps due to the traumas I experienced before I was 5 years old, for most of my life I have suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder, which is a serious mental illness that brings with it it’s very own set of fears. Happily, I am mostly in recovery from BPD.
Some say that we are all afraid of change because we fear the unknown. And that our fears are there to protect us from really bad things happening to us. All I know is that if I keep on doing what I’ve always done, then I’ll get what I always got.
I don’t believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of fear, paranoia, and abandonment. ~ Henry Rollins.
To recover from paranoia and fear I am working on healing the causes of my problems, rather than the symptoms.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
no matter how much you deceive yourself,
you have to know that she has always lied to you.
The Dark Night of the Soul
Only out of suffering emerges the strongest souls.
inner torment
jealousy and doubt
the demon soul eaters
visit in the blackest night
darkness lonely frightfulness
another run around nightmares
of lying half-truths dishonest deceit
she was a dark witch circling the firelight
she made it so very easy, and my soul was lost
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
not all women are witches
but all witches are enchanted women
never accept a kiss from a witch at midnight
The Noble Art of Not Giving a Fuck
Achieve your dream life by rejecting pressure entirely.
Fear is mostly learned.
Low self-esteem is learned.
The experience of sin is learned.
Fear, expectations, obligations, shame, negativity, the notion of sin, anxiety, nervousness, shyness, cynicism…, plague most of us, and none of these are real, these are just emotions, these are things that we have allowed others to teach us.
A lot of our negative character traits are things we have learned through life; arrogance, addictions, alcoholism, brutality, complacency, criminality, dependency, envy, greed, intolerance, jealousy, lying, paranoia, promiscuity, timidity, vindictiveness….. We are not born with these character defects, we had to learn them, and they are not real, even though they feel very real.
Life is too short to spend in negativity. So I have made a conscious effort not to be where I don’t want to be. ~ Hugh Dillon.
Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, feel incredibly real. My own thoughts, feelings, and emotions were very real to me, and they ruled my life.
I could become very paranoid, jealous, and angry about my partner’s past ~ and that is insane. The past cannot hurt me, and there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.
We should not be a product of our negative thinking. We are not our thoughts, feelings, emotions, preconceptions, and assumptions. If we wish it we have free will.
Other things bothered me a lot; cyclists, bad drivers, charities, environmentalists, the medical profession, people in uniform, politicians, the stupid and the lazy people in this world….. I spent a lot of my time being annoyed, frustrated, and bad-tempered.
What I needed was a new way of looking at the world, a new way of dealing with all the bad stuff that was ruling and ruining my life.
What I decided was that, deep down, I didn’t actually care about any of this stuff, in exactly the same way that I don’t care one jot for the idea of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change, (man-made global warming). What I decided was all this stuff that had been bothering me, all the people and organisations that had been bothering me, could just Fuck Off.
I no longer give all this pernicious negativity permission to affect my life.
Now I can tell the World to; ‘Fuck Off and Have a Nice Day. Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out, and Please Don’t Keep In Touch.’
It’s a very empowering attitude. Obviously I don’t often actually say that out aloud, but just thinking it generates a very liberating feeling.
Try it. If something or someone upsets you, mentally tell yourself that you don’t give a fuck. If negative thoughts, feelings, emotions are plaguing you, then mentally tell yourself that you don’t give a fuck.
If some insane attitude or weird preconceptions of your own are ruining your life, just tell yourself that you don’t give a fuck, that you don’t even want to know.
Some say that we should be caring and compassionate, that we should give until it hurts. And, that we should accept the pain of the world and everyone in it. All I know is that I don’t give a fuck.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
don’t let other people control your life
Feeling Weird
the angst of solitude, where you’re alone with the cosmos.
I have just been through the Dark Night of the Soul.
Last evening I felt very strange ~ for no readily apparent reason.
Mentally I was quite depressed and melancholy, with a feeling of deep angst thrown in.
My thoughts were wandering into dark places I didn’t want to go ~ places that in the past would certainly have driven me towards strong drink as a way of escape from my own tortured mind.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. ~ George Bernard Shaw.
Physically I felt weak, my arms and legs were as heavy as lead, and I had severe peripheral neuropathy in my hands and forearms.
It is said that our feelings are kept in our body, and that if we don’t deal with those feelings they will surface as physical symptoms ~ particularly if those feelings are causing undue stress.
Overall, this was extremely painful and mentally uncomfortable ~ I had to reach out to a close friend for support.
I believe that what is going on with me, both mentally and physically, is due to all the introspection I’ve experienced through diligently working through the Hay House World Summit programme. And let me tell you, twenty hours of this in a week is a lot of work.
This is all to the good. It means that I’m not wasting my time with all these audio lessons and films. It means that deep down in my subconscious I’m turning over the dead earth of my past traumas, character defects, and negativity. It means that I am creating a new and better view of myself, my relationships, the world, and the cosmos.
It may be that I am truly walking the warrior’s path.
At least I sincerely hope and believe that’s what is happening to me.
Spiritually, mentally, and physically I still feel like crap today. However, sometimes there has to be a little pain along the way before we get to those sunlit meadows of inner peace.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
I am not my emotions
From time to time the darkness would overwhelm me.
It turns out that I am an emotional being, which is an unwanted paradigm shift for a taciturn and repressed English guy like me. And yet, for much of my recent life I have been completely defined and driven by powerful emotions.
From time to time my psyche would spiral down a dark hole into a place where I became angry, jealous, manipulative, paranoid, resentful, unreasonable… filled with negative thoughts and feelings.
These emotions would hit me out of nowhere, coming from deep within my subconscious mind, usually when my conscious guard was down ~ because I was tired, stressed, had been drinking, or someone close had lied to me, or perhaps just because something had gone slightly wrong in my life.
And these intense, darkly negative emotions could often drive a complete change in my personality, turning me from a rational and sociable man into an irrational and dangerous Mr. Hyde.
One thing you can’t hide ~ is when you’re crippled inside. ~ John Lennon.
The reality is that intensely negative and darkly dangerous emotions are driven by fear, and in my case probably a paranoid fear of abandonment created by the Borderline Personality Disorder I have suffered from for most of my life.
Fear is powerful, deep, affecting the most primeval part of our psyche, what Freud calls the id. And fear generates the equally powerful fight or flight reflex. At my darkest I would fight by attacking people verbally and in writing, and run away into a bottle of booze. Neither of these reflex actions was in the least useful to me.
What I needed was a strategy which allowed me to accept my negative emotions without allowing their destructive power to ruin my relationships and my life ~ wanting to find a suitable way to check out of life is not good.
What I needed was to be more emotionally stable and resilient.
It turns out that emotionally resilient people have some important things in common. Emotionally stable and resilient people;
- Are Realists. Grounded. Optimists are soon disappointed and easily lose hope. Realists make the best they can of the ‘Now’.
- Have Faith. Believe in something greater than themselves, something greater than whatever bad situation they may find themselves in.
- Are extremely and radically creative.
- Have a support network of close friends, doctors, counsellors, 12-step groups…
- Have a great, but usually weird and warped, sense of humour.
These are all things that I could invent for myself. I can grow and develop these character traits that actually exist in all of us. Each day I have been able to further manifest these character traits within myself. Every hour I have become more emotionally stable and resilient.
One ought to hold onto one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche.
Life goes on, and I do not have to allow my emotions to control me.
Although my emotions are an important part of me, I AM NOT MY EMOTIONS.
Some say that negative emotions have an important role to play in a happy life. And that negative emotions are telling you that you need to change and transform yourself. All I know is that you can turn things around and control how your emotions affect you.
Life does not have to be perfect to be good.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
How To Be Lucky
Luck is great, but most of Life is hard work.
The hard truth is that we make our own luck. If you want to be lucky enough to witness a brilliant sunrise, then you have to get yourself out of bed before dawn. If you want to be lucky enough live your life’s dreams you must first know what you want and then do something to get it. If you want to really live Life, then show up.
I want a better life, I need to be a better man, I want to live my dreams. A few short weeks ago I was in the depths of Hell. Walking the hard road up from yet another rock bottom, these are a Magnificent Seven Truths I have been shown. These things have helped me find my luck, perhaps they may help you too.
- Self-Awareness. Know yourself. Be congruent and grounded in your own truth. Know that you are unique and that you have unique skills and abilities. Understand your own power.
- Know where you want to go. Chart your course. Dream your dreams. Discover what you really need, want, and desire. Create a vision board, or mind map, or just make a list. If you don’t know what you want, then Be Brave. Stop asking others what you should do, and don’t do anything that others may want you to do if it doesn’t match your own truth. Change I should to I want.
- Do Something. Take some action. Get off your ass and do something to realise your wants, needs, desires, and dreams, even if it’s just making a plan, or writing a daily journal. ~ just don’t do things that you don’t need to do. Change should to could. If you can get others to do things for you then use their unique skills and talents. Let the Cosmos work for you too.
- Leverage the Magic. Use your dreams, thoughts, words, and deeds. Have the best attitude you possibly can. Nobody likes an impatient, driven, aggressive, competitive, egotistical, unforgiving and manipulative jerk.
- Believe in yourself. Be more congruent. Make certain that your inner beliefs match your needs, wants, desires, and dreams. If you don’t believe then you can’t achieve. If you don’t believe then you certainly will have no luck at all.
- Engage the Magic. Make a start on living your dreams. Do something positive, even if it’s just a very small thing. The greatest journey starts with that first baby step.
- Be adaptable. After you have taken some action, look at what happened. If what you did didn’t get you what you want, then do something else instead. If you do what you always did, then you will get what you always got. A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Scientifically, and mathematically there is no such thing as luck. So, if you want to be lucky in life, if you want to take advantage of random chances, if you want the good things to come to you, then work at living your dreams.
The harder I practice, the luckier I get. ~ Gary Player
Here’s the thing, should I want to, I can win money playing cards. That isn’t because I’m lucky, it’s because I’ve studied Hoyle, probability theory, and statistics, I can work out odds in my head, and I’m a natural card-counter. Some say that’s cheating, it certainly isn’t luck.
Try to stay focused. Keep your eyes on the prize. Don’t get drawn into fighting the alligators when you really want to be draining the swamp.
Some say that life’s hard and nothing ever goes right for them. And, that they never have any luck, their whole life is a train wreck. All I know is that the harder and smarter I try, the luckier I get.
The road goes anywhere and everywhere you want, but you have to get out there and be prepared to enjoy the journey.
Create your own luck, and then ride it hard.
~
jack collier
email: jackcollier7@talktalk.net
the long dark midnight of the spirit
Time is an illusion; Happy Hour doubly so.
There was once a time when I was very good at altering the Cosmos I lived in to match up with the way I wished it to be, rather than the way it truly was. For most of the time I could pretend that things were much better for me than they really were, but no illusion can last forever. Ergo, every once in a while stark reality crashed through the violet light of my fantasy, and each time that happened was more painful than the one before. It got so that the only ways I could find to escape the pain of reality were even more destructive than suffering the pain.
My life was mostly getting worse.
I did have good times, and the good times could last for hours, days, weeks… But even my good times were falsehoods, illusions. I would shape reality to match my own attitudes, perceptions, and preconceptions.
Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. ~ Albert Einstein
Maybe that’s OK for some, but not for me, not with all my psychological problems. I was shaping my reality to cope with my own defects of character, and that isn’t living, that is just a different kind of escape into just another nightmare. And every nightmare was worse than the one before, until eventually I was suffering the long dark midnight of my spirit. And midnight is not the darkest hour.
The darkest hour is just before the dawn. ~ Thomas Fuller
No matter how far I had fallen, there was still much farther I could fall, unless I chose another way.
A little while ago, and with a little help from a close friend, it became plain that I needed to find new ways of thinking, doing, and being. I had to stop running away and trying to join the circus:~ wherever I went, whatever I did, I always took myself with me.
I had to stop being Mr Know It All, and I had to find a way to stop myself from becoming Mr. Hyde.
Perhaps I have found something, a new way of being. Perhaps I have found a way to make meaningful and lasting changes in my life. It’s not going to be a one-time thing, and my future is not going to be easy, but then most of my past was fucking terrible. So, my choices are simple; freedom from pain and suffering for myself and all those around me, or walk the dark path down into hell again?
Some say that a good friend will help you to move. And, that a very good friend will help you to move a dead body. All I know is that I don’t want that body to be mine ~ not for a good while yet.
If, as Einstein says, the Cosmos is really an illusion, then it follows that happiness is a choice ~ that most people can be just as happy as they choose to be.
Today and tomorrow I choose happiness over misery.
I choose sunlight over the dark moon at midnight.
~
jack collier jackcollier7@talktalk.net
