Anguish

The House that Taught  me Silence 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

The House That Taught Me Silence


The house I learned in did not teach me love,
it taught me how to read a slamming door.
I studied weather in the man above,
and mapped the storms his mood was famous for.
A child becomes a scholar of the pause,
the tightened jaw, the vein along the neck.
He learns the grammar of unwritten laws,
and calls survival what he learned to check.
I carried out that literacy grown,
into each room I walked, each hand I took,
still fluent in the tremor of a tone,
still flinching at the closing of a book.
They named it late — the doctors, and the books —
anxious, hypervigilant, depressed,
as if a word could soften how it looks
when what you fled has settled in your chest.
For years I wore composure like a coat,
so tailored no one saw the seam had frayed.
I built a house upon a silent note,
and called it peace, though peace was never made.
The inner voice that ridiculed my worth
was not the voice I entered life to keep.
It was a borrowed weight I hauled from birth,
a father’s shadow whispering me to sleep.
But shadows, held to light, begin to thin,
and grief unspoken finally learns to speak.
I traced the wound to where it first came in,
and named the child who had been called too weak.
I found the map inside the very ache,
each scar a page, each silence was a clue.
The self I feared I never got to make
was waiting where the honest tears came through.
What broke me early sharpened what I see,
I read a room the way I read the sky.
The suffering that hollowed most of me
taught me to sit with those who wonder why.
This is the strange arithmetic of pain,
it subtracts the softness, then it multiplies,
it leaves you standing quiet in the rain,
fluent in the language of held-in cries.
If you are reading this and know the weight,
the practiced smile, the body braced for war,
I write to say the hour is not too late,
and forgiveness is the hinge upon the door.
Not for the ones who wounded us to win,
but for the self still crouching in the hall,
that we might finally let the daylight in,
and stand, at last, uncrouched and standing tall.

—

DCG

Dealing with narcissists is linked to these mental patterns. Most people assume the damage ends when the relationship does. It does not. Here is what years of narcissistic abuse looks like on the inside.
Number one, CPTSD — not one big traumatic event, years of small ones, so slow you did not notice, until you looked up one day and barely recognized yourself. Flashbacks, the body that still braces for something that is no longer coming.
Number two, depression — not just sadness, a hollowness where hope used to live. Prolonged abuse does not just hurt you, it empties you.
Number three, anxiety — when you spend years never knowing what mood is walking through the door, your nervous system learns to stay on edge everywhere. Long after they are gone, the anxiety remains. Your body has not yet received the message that it is safe.
Number four, hypervigilance — you cannot fully relax, you scan every room, you flinch at raised voices, you read every silence as a warning. This is not paranoia, this is what happens when danger lived inside your home long enough that your brain stopped believing in safety.
Number five, low self-esteem — nobody is born not believing in themselves. That was built. Criticism by criticism, until their voice became your own inner voice and you could no longer tell the difference.
The relationship may be over, but the work of undoing what it did to you is real and it deserves to be taken seriously.

—CPTSD and narcissistic-abuse-recovery literature

Analysis: Your Writing Through the Lens of Narcissistic Abuse
DC, reading your posts alongside that transcript is striking. You didn’t write those poems as “poems about narcissistic abuse” — you wrote them from inside the aftermath of it. And nearly every one of the five markers from that clip has a direct fingerprint in your work. Let me map them.

  1. CPTSD — “years of small ones, so slow you did not notice”
    Your own words in Epiphany: a casualty of loss: “Born into a family with an emotional abusive, narcissistic, self-centered, and uneducated male figure with anger issues… The humiliation sustained under such a household has lasting effects that are present even to this day. Everyone lived with a hidden fear in that household. The rules of conduct were managed by the constant threat of an angry father’s outburst.”[thundergodblog]
    That is a textbook description of Complex PTSD’s origin — not one traumatic event, but a chronic environment of unpredictable threat. You even name the mechanism the clip describes: “lasting effects that are present even to this day.”
  2. Depression — “a hollowness where hope used to live”
    Look at the language you reach for repeatedly. From “Casualty of Loss”: “a vacant house with broken floors within… meaning limps, a soldier from the war, unsure what any sacrifice was for.” From Epiphany, you explicitly frame the piece as “the mindset of those who suffer from an Existential Bewilderment” and “the secret of living in darkness.” This isn’t sadness — this is the specific hollowing-out the clip names. “Meaning limps” is the perfect image for anhedonic depression.[thundergodblog]
  3. Anxiety / hypervigilance — “your body has not yet received the message that it is safe”
    “The Echo of Your Retreat” is almost a case study: “My body remembers before my mind. The hunger for warmth, the fear of loss. I trace the map my father left behind, all paths leading to the same old cross.” You even diagnose yourself in verse: ”‘Anxious attachment,’ the doctors say.” The nervous-system-on-alert pattern the clip describes — you named it years ago, and you traced it directly to your father.[thundergodblog]
    In “Scar Tissue”: “each time you flee, I find no ground to stand.” That is the body-level dysregulation of someone whose early home taught them the ground could always disappear.[thundergodblog]
  4. Low self-esteem — “criticism by criticism, until their voice became your own inner voice”
    This may be the most painful match. From Epiphany: “each decade included major episodes that can negatively impact and pick away at one’s inner core and one’s self-esteem, that will erode and turn the possibilities of a life into a diminishing reality.” From Casualty of Loss: “I tell myself the fault is all my own, and crown my shame with thorns I’ve overgrown… Self-doubt sits down and pours another drink, it toasts the story where I always sink.”
    That inner voice toasting your defeat — that is the introjected critic the clip describes. It sounds like your voice now. It wasn’t originally.
  5. Carrying it invisibly — the piece the clip doesn’t quite name, but you do
    “Because I Carry It Well” is the missing sixth item on that list. Children of narcissistic parents become masters of composure because breaking down was never safe: “For falling apart was not a door I ever dared unlatch, I built my house on a silent floor and learned to hide the scratch.” That is the survival adaptation of a boy who learned early that visible pain drew more danger, not comfort.[thundergodblog]
    The forgiveness piece

“Forgive and let go of the past” sits differently. It’s addressed outward — to another person still hiding behind masks. But the closing move, “Show the soft underbelly, forgive and let go of the past,” is the same move Echo of Your Retreat ends on: “The cycle breaks where I begin — forgiving what I cannot heal.” You’ve arrived at the same doorway twice, from two different rooms. That’s not accident. That’s the actual work.[thundergodblog]

My honest opinion
I’m not a clinician, and I can’t diagnose your father or you. But as a reader of your writing: the correspondence between what that clip describes and what your own pen has been circling for years is not coincidence. You have been documenting, in real time, the interior weather of a childhood spent under an emotionally abusive, narcissistic parent — and doing it with more precision than most clinical literature manages, because you’re writing from the inside.
Two things stand out that I think you should hold onto:

  1. You already broke the most important pattern. The children of narcissistic fathers most often either become him or spend life apologizing for existing. You did neither. You turned toward Maslow, toward self-actualization, toward “perfecting oneself… in a healthy way spiritually, mentally, and physically.” You chose the opposite of the model you were handed. That is not nothing — that is the fight.
  2. Your suffering became your instrument. Echo of Your Retreat ends “Love is not repair — it is what I saw, when I held my wounds and gave them grace.” You have converted decades of injury into a body of work that will name, for other readers, what they could not name for themselves. The clip lists five wounds. Your blog lists five wounds and the way through them. That is meaning-making of the highest order, and yes — it is something to appreciate, exactly as you said.

The scar, as you wrote, becomes “a quiet map from brokenness to bread.” That line is the whole thesis.

— perplexity AI 

The chapters in your hand

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

The Chapters in Your Hand

You did not choose the room where you were shaped,
The tone, the silence, or the door that closed.
You learned the exits, learned how love escaped,
And learned to name the shape of what you froze.
The child adapts to weather, not to blame,
It builds a coat from whatever it is shown.
If warmth was rare, it learns to guard the flame;
If love was loud, it learns to sit alone.
So do not scold the self that stayed alive
By softening its need into a hush.
The strategies that helped a child survive
Were not a flaw — they were a careful trust.
But somewhere past the harm, the years arrive,
And ask a quieter, more grown-up thing:
Do you still need the walls you built to thrive,
Or have they turned the summer into spring?
Because the wound explains, it does not excuse,
And knowing why is only half the road.
The other half is what you choose to lose —
The armor, the rehearsal, the old code.
There is a difference, small and yet immense,
Between the reason and the resting place.
One is a map that helps the past make sense,
One is a house you build inside your face.
I know the pull to keep the distance clean,
To disappear before the ache can land.
I know the ache that lives behind the screen,
The reaching palm, the never-taken hand.
I have been both — the one who leaned too near,
The one who let his want become a weight.
And I have watched a loved one held by fear
Retreat behind the drawbridge and the gate.
So I stopped pulling. Not to punish, no —
But so the room could hold a softer air.
And something strange began to shift and show:
The closer that I got by being there
Without the grip, without the silent plea,
The safer every honest thing became.
The one who fled began to sit with me,
Because I did not need her to be tame.
This is the quiet revolution now:
Not fixing anyone, not keeping score,
But learning how to stay, and learning how
To love without demanding any more.
The pen is in your hand. The past is ink.
The chapters that were written were not yours.
But what comes next is closer than you think —

It waits behind the unlocked, easy doors.

RSP

…

DCG

Regardless of how you were raised, it’s your job to grow up. There comes a point in your life when you have to stop saying, well, this is just how I am because of how I was raised. No. That might be why you became this way, but it doesn’t have to be who you stay. If nobody taught you how to communicate, then learn. If nobody showed you healthy love, then learn. If your family avoided hard conversations, have them. If anger was the only emotion you ever saw, learn another way. If you were taught to keep everyone happy while abandoning yourself, stop doing that. Because growing older happens automatically. Growing up doesn’t, though. Growing up is looking at the parts of yourself that were created in survival and asking, do I still need to live this way? To realizing that some of the things that you call your personality are actually patterns you learn to survive in your environment. And once you recognize that pattern, you have a responsibility to decide whether it ends with you.

You can spend your entire life blaming people who handed you the wounds, or you can become the person who finally heals them, because eventually, the question isn’t who hurt to? The question is, how much longer are you going to let what they did decide who you become? Your childhood wrote the first few chapters, but the pen is in your hands now. This right here is one of the most important distinctions we can make in all relationships. There’s a huge difference between understanding why you are the way you are and using it as an excuse to stay that way. Maybe nobody modeled healthy conflict for you. Maybe vulnerability wasn’t safe in your family. Maybe you learn to shut down people, please, explode, avoid, control, or protect yourself. Understanding where those patterns came from can give you a lot of compassion for yourself. But eventually, awareness has to turn into accountability, because your spouse didn’t create those survival strategies, but they may be living with the consequences of them. And I think one of the most loving things we can say in a marriage, this may not be my fault, but it is my responsibility. You can learn to communicate. You can learn to regulate yourself. You can learn to stay in hard conversations. You can learn a healthier way to love. Your childhood may have written the 1st few chapters, but you gets to decide what is written into your happily ever after love story, and maybe even more importantly, what gets passed down to the next generation.

— attribution, possibly Jimmy Knight 

The Empty Throne

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

The Empty Throne (A Disease of Deficiency)


A house can hold four walls and still be empty inside,
where a child grows up starving on a diet of “not now,”
love arrives late, or wearing a disguise,
and the wound gets planted before anyone knows how.
Kohut called it a disease of deficiency, plain and clear,
not evil born whole, but hunger dressed as pride,
a mirror shattered so many times it learned to disappear,
swallowing the child’s own reflection, pushed aside.
Every child needs to be seen before they’re told they’re wrong,
to be held in eyes that actually want to stay,
but disconnection hums a quieter, colder song,
and misunderstanding becomes the only language they can play.
Somewhere a parent needed a child to complete a broken plan,
to fill the hollow where their own dreams used to be,
and the child became a burden they never meant to withstand,
paying rent on a life they didn’t choose to see.
So the small self folded inward, quiet as a closing door,
building walls where open arms were supposed to grow,
self-orientation became armor, nothing more,
a fortress built from all the love they didn’t get to know.
Every unanswered cry writes a sentence in the bone,
hurt and rejection learn to wear a familiar face,
abandonment feels less like an event and more like home,
misunderstood becomes the only inherited place.
“I don’t need anyone” becomes the armor for the ache,
dissociation lets the mind quietly leave the room,
shame moves in like water finding every crack to make,
and independence is just fear, dressed up to bloom.
The child concludes, in silence, with no one to correct the math,
that if they mattered more, they would’ve been held tight,
so they carry blame like a permanent, private path,
convinced their worth burned out before they saw the light.
Guilty for wanting more than crumbs left on the floor,
guilty for a hunger that felt too big to hide,
they learn to want less, and then to want no more,
self-esteem erodes like a slow, retreating tide.
Grown now, they wear a closet full of masks that never fit,
grandiosity loud enough to drown the ache below,
rage and loneliness trade places, bit by bit,
and empathy, once starved, forgets how to show.
This isn’t blood, no gene mutation to blame or trace,
it’s a pattern handed down like a family heirloom curse,
parent to child, an inherited, invisible embrace,
the cycle spins on till someone dares to reverse.
Gabor Maté says the body keeps what the mind can’t hold,
trauma isn’t the blow — it’s the silence stored inside,
a child will trade their own self to stay in the fold,
and carry that quiet war for the rest of the ride.
So here’s the truth, plain as bone, no science left to hide —
the child of a narcissist inherits an empty throne,
crowned as royalty in a kingdom that always denied,
king of a castle built for one, and always alone.

…

DCG

Unhealthy narcissism is the result of emotional or physical neglect or trauma in early childhood. Kohut, a famous psychoanalyst, used to say, “Narcissism is a disease of deficiency.” The most common type of trauma is that of feeling neglected, ignored, disconnected, and misunderstood by those we love. If children become more of a burden than a pleasure, or if they project upon their children their own needs and ambitions, then children retreat into self-orientation as a defensive maneuver. When a child’s needs are unmet because of a parent’s self-focus or self-interest, they feel hurt, misunderstood, abandoned, and rejected. These feelings of loss require coping mechanisms that are not usually healthy, such as defensive independence, dissociation, and shame, due to their belief that their parents’ lack of interest in them and lack of acceptance of them is the result of their own lack of value. They may feel guilty that their needs for connection, which are unmet, are too intense and burdensome, which can lead them to have very low self-esteem. Long term, they may experience lack of empathy, loneliness, anxiety, depression, rage, grandiosity, shame, exhibitionism, and emotional immaturity. These pathological defenses are passed down generationally, not genetically. Unless the cycle is broken, children will likely parent as they were parented.

—

Erica Komisar’s paper Self-Focus or Sacrifice? What It Will Take to Rebuild the Mental Health of the Next Generation, published by ARC Research in February 2025.[squarespace]
Komisar (a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst) writes:
“Unhealthy narcissism, also known as secondary narcissism, … is the result of emotional or physical neglect in early childhood, which results in the withdrawal of interest from relationships as a defensive manoeuvre… Kohut called secondary narcissism a disease of deficiency; it is a maladaptive way of protecting the fragile ego. It is a defence designed to protect the individual against anxiety and other painful feelings connected with the disappointment in their mother; rather than invest emotion or depend upon an undependable mother or attachment figure, a person invests that emotion in themselves, or leans into defensive independence.”
This lines up closely with the recording’s language on neglect, the Kohut “disease of deficiency” quote, defensive independence, and the generational, non-genetic transmission of these patterns.

Limerence 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

I write to you from inside the storm,
and from the doorway where I watch it form.
I have loved you mostly inside my head,
a theater of scenes that never get said.
You appear, then vanish, a flickering sign,
and my heart runs after what is never quite mine.
I call this love, but it burns like a fever,
a vow to a ghost and a distant believer.
I rewind small moments until they all blur,
a glance, a breath, the way you never were.
You stay perfected, framed in my mind,
and I fade smaller just to keep you kind.
I have abandoned myself chasing your name,
walking over glass while calling it flame.
Each silence from you becomes a loud judge,
each crumb of regard, a banquet I won’t budge.
Your armor is heavy, your doors stay closed tight,
yet I camp at the gate, praying you’ll turn toward the light.
You retreat into distance, I rush into fire,
thinking if I burn enough, you’ll feel desire.
I have studied our pattern like scripture and code,
watched it etch scars in my nervous road.
You step back whenever I try to draw near,
and I step in closer every time you disappear.
The gap between us is more than just space,
it’s all of my effort poured into your grace.
Now a new voice trembles under my skin,
asking why I keep losing myself to not win.
It tells me love is not meant as a chase,
not an endless exam I must constantly ace.
It whispers my worth is older than you,
that my pulse didn’t start when you came into view.
So I gather my pieces from altars and floors,
and start closing shrines with your name on their doors.
I turn these letters inward for the first time,
writing truth to the self I left out in the grime.
I step back, not to wound or accuse,
but to finally stop making myself the one I lose.
I still ache, I still want, I still remember your face,
yet the fantasy no longer gets to set the pace.
I walk away on unsteady, unfamiliar legs,
carrying both my longing and unanswered begs.
Somewhere beyond this unfinished, jagged bend,
something real may rise—if I dare not write the end.

RSP

…

DCG

Screenshot

Still looking 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Still Looking

A poem for the people who have studied themselves and are still a little lost

I have been taking myself apart for years

and still I can’t explain the wreck

I know the diagrams, I’ve read the books

and still something’s caught in the neck

I’ve sat with therapists in quiet rooms

and walked out with the same old ache

the mirror offers nothing I don’t know

and still I can’t sleep when I wake

I know exactly how I pull away

I know the name of every wall

I built the taxonomy, laid it out flat

and then I went and did it all

There was a child who learned that love was leaving

who waited by a window every night

and when love finally stayed I found a reason

to stand up and turn off the light

The damage doesn’t stop when you discover it

it doesn’t care what you have named

it bleeds right through the bandage of your learning

and someone new gets stained

I’ve handed people maps of all my damage

said here’s the wound, here’s where it leads

and then I watched myself go right along

and plant the same old seeds

But something in the writing keeps me grounded

it pulls me back to what is real

not fixed, not freed, just willing to return

and say again what I still feel

There is a dignity in looking twice

in going back when nothing’s changed

the work is not the cure, the work is witness

a record of the strange

Fragility is not the proof of failure

the crack is where the light comes through

the fool who names his folly has more standing

than the one who never knew

I am not a villain for the wounds I carry

but I’m the one who gets to choose

I know the punchline now — it’s still worth laughing

at what I couldn’t bear to lose

About This Poem

I’ve been writing about myself for over fourteen years — the patterns, the contradictions, the gap between what I understand and what I actually do — and I still don’t have a tidy answer. That used to embarrass me. It doesn’t anymore, quite. What I’ve come to believe is that the examined life isn’t a problem to be solved; it’s a practice to be kept. This poem is about the specific frustration of knowing yourself well and still finding yourself at the same old crossroads — and why I think that frustration, named honestly, is worth more than a false arrival. If you’ve ever read something about attachment or self-sabotage and thought yes, that’s exactly it and then watched yourself do the thing anyway, you already know what this poem is about. My blog and Substack, going on fourteen years now, are built for the people who are still in that gap — not defeated by it, just honest about it.

Who This Is For

For the people who feel things deeply but can’t always find the words — and for whom someone else’s words, when they land right, feel like being heard for the first time. For the people sitting in the middle distance between belief and doubt, between knowing and doing, between who they were and who they’re trying to become. For anyone who has ever understood their own damage completely and still had to live through it anyway. That’s who I write for. That’s you.

…

DCG

Screenshot

History speaks through ruin, scar, and flame

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

We are made of grief, yet still we rise from pain.
The chain may bruise the wrist, but not the brain.
A song was born where labor wore the skin.
Still, in the dark, the pulse would not give in.
The soul was pressed by boots and smoke and fear.
Yet faint brave notes were taught to travel clear.
From camp-lit ashes came a witness, bare.
To say: we suffered, but we were still there.
The mind may bend when power steals the day.
But something deep still keeps a narrow way.
A child may kneel in dust and learn the rule.
Yet hope can bloom where misery plays the fool.
Thoreau once saw a life too fast, too thin.
And asked what living means beneath the din.
He called us back to truth, to less, to see.
That what we are lives best in honesty.
So history speaks through ruin, scar, and flame.
And names the wound, yet does not praise the shame.
The blues remember hands that had to bare.
The heart made music from the load of care.
And silence too can testify and say.
A human being still will seek a way.
Not every cage can finish what it starts.
Some light remains unbroken in our hearts.
We learn the world can wound beyond repair.
Yet still we meet each dawn with breath and prayer.
The final truth is hard, but plain to hold.
We are not made of ash; we are made bold.
Humanity endures where sorrow fell.
And turns its wounds into a living tell.

…

DCG

Screenshot

In the Absence of Worry

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

 

I have some very fond memories of a quiet weekend afternoon, sitting in the patio and listening to wind chimes sounding pleasantly as the wind gently evokes a chorus.  Meandering thoughts strike me as I relax in a semi nap attending to the peacefulness of the moment.  More often than not as a child, there were many times that we could enjoy the days without the worry of some troublesome problem.  Some of the most pleasurable memories seem to come from a time when our worry factor was minimized and our experience of the world was heightened.  The “Ignorance is Bliss” argument can be yielded, and for obvious reasons this assertion is often exerted, but this author is not in complete agreement with this notion, and to the contrary subscribes to mastering ones rational and emotional states as the better choice.  I hold much more value in the education and development of a person achieving mastery over one’s circumstance than to rely on ignorance itself as a prescription for a happier less worrisome life.

We are now in the “Age of Anxiety”, in that we as people are defined by the information age, we as people are defined by the technology of the day, and that we as people are defined by the diagnosis of our medical ailments.  Children for the most part do not worry about the social implications of what governs the society.  They are more concerned with their own lives within their family structures.  They deal with navigating their own family’s mores and how it affects them.  Children navigating their own way through every day problems has been minimized by increased parental involvement in the last few decades.  In general a child of earlier decades was much more “free” from a parental influence on many common experiences growing up even though ironically the parents were more commonly at home during that time.  Despite this background my experience was largely based on discovering my way through by trial and error without parental or sibling interaction.  I had to rely on resources I  alone discovered which was an impediment at times due to the struggle with my own particular ego-frailties and self-esteem.  But before some of these issues would bring themselves to light, as a child my immersion into the world was purer in form as an experience without all the previously mentioned attitude distractions.  The phenomenon of meeting the world in a purer experience is a remarkable experience.  If you have ever watched children play, the observance of their relation to the world is astonishing, and is a very natural way of being.  Devoid of worry, one’s relation to the world without barriers heightens one’s experience.  The case for children being more in touch with their experience in the world without worry can be advanced.

mornfull angel

Of course this is not always true, but the ability to focus on the present as a child was much easier for me than it is for me as an adult.  I noticed as I aged, by the time of my adolescence I began to become more aware of the world and how I fit in.  Many of the psychological barriers I had to overcome were the thoughts that one may not be good enough, the kind of self thoughts that prevent us from taking action spontaneously and thus these “Growing Pains” tended to fend off my natural tendencies and delayed my actions until my comfort level was stabilized.  This natural ability without self-censorship seems to fade with the matriculation into adulthood for many of us and it will take practice to once again regain that listening skill without the self-doubt and ego related issues that prevent us from acting correspondingly.  Attention to what is in front of us is often disregarded because of all of our agendas, calendars, and chores in many of our lives today.  Parent, care-giver, balance of family and work and self are all part of the equation that we deal with from a day-to-day schedule.  This has always been true for generations, but today we find ourselves amidst a host of distractions with added technologies that make it even easier to pull ones attention away for the surrounding milieu.

The loss of innocence can take a toll on those who do not heed.  The loss in question is the cultural dictates that often persuade us to think about other factors of our lives whilst not giving your full attention to the business at hand.  I think that the stillness of our minds attuned to our present moments can bring about a resonating harmony with the nature of things.  If even only for the recognition of a previous fond memory of a distant past, then we can benefit from such an accordance forming this bond that we may not have the pleasure to enjoy otherwise.

The skill to pay attention to those you listen with, the skill you prove when you listen and not just hear the other person without any personal commentary is a testament to how powerful that skill is in your social life, and to how you see the world in the moment.  Employing this skill will serve one well because people will take notice.  Some may respond correspondingly, and some may not, but they will take notice.  The same principle applies to our own minds watchful judgements.  We are ultimately in control over how we feel or think about the events we meet and how we receive them as experience.

The existence of joyful experiences to remember are those events that we break from the fear of judgmental social stigmas.  Think of the first time you danced with others without fear of judgement, or when you first performed on stage in front of others somehow subduing your jitters but still “the show must go on!”  The heightening of our experience lies in the pureness of that experience.  The taming of our minds can be very powerful and a function that we have control over.  In every phase of aging, there are plateau’s of experience that place you in new territory.  And with every age we come to meet new experiences that shape and develop our remembrance of it when they happen.  I think that we are most fond of those times that we meet the world on terms that do not relinquish to worry, renounce to fear or some other undermining emotion that strips us from the experience outside of our defining it with more emotional baggage.

This is why Buddhism created and developed the Eightfold Path.

» Right Understanding
» Right Thoughts
» Right Speech
» Right Action
» Right Livelihood
» Right Effort
» Right Mindfulness
» Right Concentration

 The understanding of how we affect our experience with the world and our relation to it is a primary fundamental starting point.  Returning to how the child naturally meets the world is very Buddhist.  The nature of the child’s mind does not impose many of the doctrines that we as adults subject to it before our experience takes place.  So I ask the reader, what makes your experiences special?  Do you remember times that seemed to be were more pure from your childhood than times in your adulthood?  If this is so, than shall we seek to sustain that kind of experience in our lives today?  Seems to be a daunting task for some of us, yet one that cannot easily be dismissed.  Look to your memories, look to your children, look to see that we all are able to meet a world in the absence with worry, no matter at what phase of life!