possibilities

I learned which self to wear 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

learned the weather in a face
Before I learned to write;
A spoon set down a shade too hard
Could change the shape of night.
“Do I fit here?” I ask the page.
“Is this what made me so?”
My stomach answers every knock
Before I say hello.
“You’re good with people.” Yes, perhaps.
I learned which self to wear;
Could make a joke, could swallow grief,
Could almost turn to air.
I hear the break beneath “I’m fine,”
Then lie awake till two;
My inner smoke alarm makes toast
A matter to review.
But does a silence mean contempt?
Must every pause mean rain?
I know how fear can forge a key
That fits the wrong old pain.
And still, a song can split my chest;
Small kindness makes me weep.
I watch someone pull up a chair
For one left out—and keep.
“Was childhood, then, a gift?” I ask.
“No. Children should feel safe.”
Whatever good my heart grew toward
Does not excuse the strafe.
“Must I repair each hurt I sense?”
“No. Ask before you mend.
You need not climb inside each wound
To be a steady friend.”
I cannot know each heart I feel;
I can ask, listen, stay.
The gift is not that hurt was good—
But love can choose its way.

…

DCG

You are allowed to feel things deeply, and I do not mean that as reassurance. I mean it as neuroscience.
Because the depth with which you feel things is not a flaw in your emotional regulation, and it is not a sign that you are too sensitive or too much. It is a measurable neurological capacity, and it comes with abilities that people who feel less deeply simply do not have access to.


Here is what is actually happening in a brain that feels deeply.
Research from psychologist Dr. Elaine Aaron identified a trait present in around 20% of the population called sensory processing sensitivity. In brains with this trait, several regions show measurably greater activation in response to emotional and sensory input: the insula, which governs interoceptive and emotional awareness; the mirror neuron system, which governs empathy; and the regions associated with depth of cognitive processing.


A brain that feels deeply is not malfunctioning. It is running a richer, more detailed, more thorough processing of experience than a less sensitive brain runs.
You do not feel too much. You feel accurately at a resolution most people cannot access.
Here is what that capacity gives you.
You notice the shift in someone’s mood before they have said a word. You feel the emotional undertone of a room. You are moved by beauty in a way that people who feel less deeply genuinely cannot understand. You form connections with people that reach depths shallower processors never touch. You experience music, art, nature, and love with an intensity that is the entire point of being alive.
And yes, the same capacity that lets you feel joy that deeply also lets you feel pain that deeply. You cannot have one without the other. They run on the same neural system.


But here is what you were never told.
The depth is not the problem. The problem was being raised in an environment that treated your depth as an inconvenience rather than recognizing it as a gift. You were asked to turn down something that was never meant to be turned down.
You are allowed to feel things deeply, not despite the pain it sometimes brings, because the depth is who you are.

And the world needs the people who feel it all far more than it needs the people who have learned to feel nothing.

— neuroscience with Nora 

A quantum prayer 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

God, I am here within this breath;
Thank you for what remains of light.
I bring the fear beneath my ribs,
And place it in your hands tonight.
Glaucoma weighs upon my days;
My fragile eyes make darkness near.
Yet I give thanks before I know,
And trust that you can meet me here.
My retina is hurt and worn;
My troubled corneas cloud what I see.
I thank you for the hands that help,
And all the love that reaches me.
I quiet down my racing thoughts;
I open to your patient flow.
Within this quantum field of prayer,
I make you room in what I know.
My body, heart, and mind draw close;
I bring them to one resting place.
I do not hide my wish for sight;
I lift an honest, frightened face.
Thank you for healing still unseen,
For strength to meet another day.
I listen past my need for proof,
And let your wisdom lead the way.
I am a writer, made of words;
I feel them gather in the air.
If printed lines grow hard to read,
Let spoken words still hold my prayer.
I hold myself as loved and whole;
Let healing flow through flesh and soul.
My sight is precious, but my worth
Is more than what my eyes control.
I do not know what comes from here;
I thank you for this breath, this light.
Receive the trust I freely give;
I rest within your love tonight.

…

DCG

If prayer is quantum technology, then here is how we pray. Because prayer was never meant to be begging, pleading, or convincing God to intervene. That is literally just not how the mechanics works.


“Prayer is quantum technology, and it’s how consciousness communicates with the field. But religion trained us to pray from lack: ‘Please help, please fix, please save,’ and we’re always waiting.


“But Jesus modeled a different way. He prayed from alignment, and he didn’t ask hoping it would happen. He spoke as if it already was, and that’s coherence.


“In physics, observation collapses probability. In neuroscience, belief plus emotion rewires the brain. And in scripture, faith moves mountain. It’s all the same mechanics. It’s the same mechanism.


“So prayer works when your body, your heart, and your mind agree on the reality that you’re tuning into. You don’t pray for something. You pray from the state where it already exists.
“Gratitude comes first because gratitude signals certainty. Calm comes before words because regulation stabilizes the signal, and prayer is not asking God to come to you. It’s aligning yourself with the field that God already lives in.
“And once you understand that, then prayer will stop being repetitive, and it starts being extremely effective, and your life will change from the inside out.


“So how do we pray? Let’s break it down.
Praying for yourself
“To pray for yourself, an old way may look like, ‘God, please help me. I don’t know what to do. I’m struggling.’
“But the quantum way sounds like this: ‘Thank you for already stabilizing my nervous system and guiding my next step. I choose to trust the clarity that’s forming right now. I am open, receptive, and supported.’
“This works because gratitude and trust collapses uncertainty and tuning into guidance instead of amplifying lack.


Praying for someone else
“How do you pray for someone else? The old way may sound like, ‘Please God, fix them. Please heal them. Please change them.’
“But the quantum way sounds like, ‘I hold this person in wholeness. I witness their highest timeline activating. May they feel supported, safe, and guided in exactly the way that they’re ready to receive.’
“And this works because you’re not interfering or forcing outcomes. You’re stabilizing a field of possibility around them.
Praying for money or abundance


“How to pray for money or abundance? An old way could sound like, ‘God, please help me financially. I’m stressed out. I don’t know how this will work.’
“The quantum way sounds like, ‘Thank you for the flow already organizing itself around me. I am open to unexpected pathways, creative solutions, and aligned support. I trust the intelligence moving through my life.’
“This works because you’re removing urgency. Urgency collapses options, but trust expands pathways.


Praying for a partner or love
“How to pray for a partner or for love? An old way might sound like, ‘God, please send me someone. I’m lonely. I need love. I need someone.’
“The quantum way would sound like, ‘Thank you for the connection that already matches my nervous system, my values, and my emotional safety. I am becoming the version of myself that reorganizes and receives aligned love with ease.’
“This works because you shift from chasing a person to stabilizing the state that partnership requires.


Praying for direction or purpose
“How to pray for direction or purpose? The old way might sound like, ‘God, tell me what to do. I’m confused.’
“But the quantum way sounds like, ‘Thank you for making the next step obvious. I don’t need the whole path. I trust the clarity that’s arriving in real time.’
“And this works because clarity arrives in motion, not in pressure.


Praying when you don’t know what to say
“How to pray when you don’t know what to say? And this one is super important. The quantum prayer when you don’t know what to say is, ‘I don’t have the words, but I’m present, I’m listening, and I trust what’s unfolding.’
“This works because presence itself is a very powerful signal.
“Prayer is not about convincing God. It’s about aligning yourself with the reality you’re ready to live in. And that is not religion, that’s technology.
“Make sure to follow me so we can continue connecting the dots between science and spirituality and remembering the truth of our divinity and the power that we hold together.
“And also, I love you.”

— House of Lilith, USA 

Before The Verdict 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Before the Verdict


A postulated reflection: If our histories shape what we see, what might change when we question our first judgment?
We meet one world through different eyes,
And each declares the picture clear;
But what we call another’s fault
May wear the face of our own fear.
Perhaps the past still frames the room,
And tells us what deserves our sight;
One seeks the comfort of straight lines,
One seeks a hand against the night.
We gather proof that takes our side,
And leave unwelcome facts outside;
Confirmation bias names the habit—
A tilted scale we call our guide.
Yet different views are not all true,
Nor does a wound make falsehood right;
The world resists what we believe—
Our claims must bear its testing light.
When someone speaks against our view,
The pulse may leap before we know;
Is this a threat before our eyes,
Or yesterday refusing to go?
Before the verdict leaves the tongue,
Could we allow one breath of space?
Not choke the feeling into silence,
But keep its heat from ruling the case.
What fact would make us change our minds?
What have we brushed aside as wrong?
Could reason test the claims we love,
Not merely make their voices strong?
To hear another is not to yield,
Nor must we bless the harm they do;
We can refuse a cruel demand
And ask what brought that hurt to view.
Must every difference draw our blood?
Can we meet doubt without the flame?
If anger keeps deciding for us,
How much of us will it reshape and name?

…

DCG


Transcript
Took me 42 years to understand what I’m about to explain to you in under a minute. And once you understand this, you’ll stop being so confused about why people do what they do.
There’s no one single right reality where you are right and everyone else is wrong. We assume that the way we see things is the way things are, right? Our values feel obvious, our priorities feel logical, our conclusions feel correct. So when someone disagrees with us, it feels wrong. And this is where the frustration starts.
But here’s what most people never consider. Other people are not just choosing different actions, they are seeing a completely different reality because everybody is experiencing life through their own lens, and it’s shaped by their upbringing, by their experiences, by what they’ve been rewarded for, what they’ve been hurt by—which means something subtle is happening.
Two people can look at the same situation and see two completely different things. One person walks into a messy room and feels stressed. Another person walks into the same room and doesn’t even notice it. But they do notice how people are feeling. One values order, the other values connection. Neither is wrong, but they both feel like the other is.
And Anaïs Nin said it simply: “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”
Our view of the world happens through patterns the brain has learned over time. And once your brain builds a certain view of the world, it starts reinforcing it, looking for evidence that confirms it and ignoring what doesn’t.
So this leads to a very different way of thinking. What if the reason people frustrate you isn’t because they’re wrong, but because they’re seeing something that you’re not?
One of the strangest truths about life is this: we are not all reacting to the same world. We’re each reacting to the version of the world our mind has learned to see.
And the moment that you realize that is the moment you stop trying to correct people who are wrong and you start understanding them.[Attachment]
Attribution search
The strongest match was a Threads post by @flipbardinas, dated April 15, 2026 in the search results. It quotes:

—Transcribed from a social-media clip; original creator

Shannon Shallcross describes herself as a speaker, writer, founder, and two-time TEDx speaker. Her platform, The Gratitude Mind, explores gratitude and how perception shapes people’s experience of life

The price of being seen 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

The Price of Being Seen


I spent too long at an open door,
Waiting for someone to call my name.
I thought their welcome proved my worth,
And learned applause can sound like shame.
I made my heart a public room,
With every window lit at night.
I hoped the passersby would stop,
And tell me I was built right.
But people carry private storms,
They see through weather of their own.
No careful speech can change the eyes
Of those determined not to know.
So much of life is wasted breath,
Explaining wounds we did not make.
We mend what others threw apart,
Then blame ourselves when we still ache.
We trade our dignity for likes,
For seats beside a borrowed flame.
We shrink to fit another’s hand,
And lose the shape that held our name.
What is popularity but smoke?
What is attention but a spark?
It warms the face for half a breath,
Then leaves the room as cold and dark.
The hamster wheel will call itself
Ambition, love, or being kind.
But if it asks you to disappear,
It is not peace you hope to find.
There is a courage without noise:
To stop, to leave, to not explain.
To set down guilt that is not yours,
And let the silence hold the pain.
I am not saying it is easy.
The old need knocks upon the door.
But every time you choose yourself,
You need their verdict a little more.

…

DCG

It took me a long time to realize this.
But the best thing I ever did for myself was get quiet. Not silent out of anger, not silent to prove a point—just quiet.
I stopped explaining myself. I stopped trying to be understood by people who already decided not to understand me.
Have you ever done that? Have you ever tried to prove your heart to someone who already made up their mind about you?
That kind of pain is exhausting. It drains you slowly—not all at once, just little by little—until one day you realize you’ve been abandoning yourself trying to be accepted by people who were never going to hold you right.
So I let it go. I stopped trying to convince people I was a good person. Because the truth is, the people who need convincing usually aren’t the people meant to stay.
I stopped fixing things I didn’t break. I stopped apologizing for things that were never mine. I stopped carrying guilt that didn’t belong in my hands.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt peace. Not loud peace, not the kind you post about, not the kind you perform for the world—the quiet kind.
The kind that sits beside you when the room is still, when the phone is down, when there’s nothing left to distract you from yourself.
The kind of peace that asks you gently, “Why were you trying so hard to be chosen by people who never chose you?”
That question changed me. Because I realized something I should have known all along. My worth was never up for debate. Not then, not now, not in someone else’s hands, not in their approval, not in their attention, not in whether they stayed or whether they walked away.
I don’t need to be seen by everyone. I don’t need to be understood by everyone. I just need to be honest with myself.
And that’s where the strength came from. Not the loud kind of strength, not the kind that argues, defends, or keeps receipts—the quiet kind. The kind that stands still and knows. The kind that says, “I know who I am, even if you don’t.”
And maybe you needed to hear that today. Maybe you’ve been over-explaining yourself, over-giving, over-reaching, over-extending your heart, just hoping someone would finally see you the way you saw them.
Maybe you’ve been shrinking just to keep the peace. Maybe you’ve been calling it love when really it was your exhaustion begging not to be left alone.
But what if the peace you’re looking for is on—
— attribution from an adaptation from a post by @elize_only

It is now that I begin to truly see 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

The dream: 2247 Baily Avenue.

The childhood home — one room where I grew up, and then the other room, once my brother’s, where I stayed with my own children for a time after my divorce.


Two kinds of shame: one as a child, and one as an adult.
The shame of the adult takes an even tighter hold on the constraints of your manhood when it is shared with your own children. That differs from the shame you carry as a child yourself, growing up in the house of pain.

How you deal with the shame you feel depends a great deal on the audience around you.

Note

The trauma: CEN or childhood emotional neglect: CPTSD 

The father: authoritarian narcissistic

The mother: codependent, and lived in fear, but also looked away and did not protect

The ex-wife: also authoritarian with a need for control

In one room, you are the child

And in another room, you have your children who see 

Two rooms in the same bewilderment

The common denominator: me

The activities of a child versus 

The activities of a man

The comparison is poignant

But the shame still stands

I now understand my trauma

Unhealed wounds must be processed through connection

In silence, they fester unseen

So with this testimony, I raise my objection 

One shame is learned

One is self created

The burdens of inequity

When you point the finger at yourself – it’s related

The lessons of accountability

And the politics of shame

It’s extremely hard to point the finger

When the finger is pointed at your name

Oh how we justify

The economy of quid pro quo

Just what do we testify?

Sometimes, I don’t rightly know

Like sitting in your own church

Like sitting in your own pew

Just what will we receive?

Just what will we do? 

In childhood I learned to overthink

In adulthood, I did the same

I now try to integrate emotion 

The man, the boy, and the claim 

Over 50 years with living in silence

The reflection from the polished mirror, I am now me 

Funny how when I start to go blind

It is now that I begin to truly see 

CLG

…

DCG

Cognitive dissonance inside a lucid dream

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Cognitive Dissonance Inside a Lucid Dream
A thought experiment from DCG
~
Close your eyes.
You are asleep. You are dreaming.
And you know it.
The walls are soft. The rules are gone. No one is watching. Nothing you do here will follow you into the morning.
Or will it?
~
In my waking life, I hold certain beliefs. I have written some of them down and numbered them. I call them life hacks.
They are simple. They are mine. I live by them, or I try to.
But what happens to a belief when you carry it into a place where it no longer seems to matter?
That is the thought experiment.
~
Life hack #1 says:
It’s easier to avoid temptation
Than it is to resist it.
Life hack #5 says:
The more you tell the truth
The easier it becomes.
Awake, these two live together in peace. One tells me to step away from temptation. The other tells me that what I repeat, I become.
Now take them into the dream.
In a lucid dream, temptation does not wait at a distance. It stands in front of me. I cannot walk away from the room, because I am the room. Avoiding it is no longer possible in the usual way.
So life hack #1 goes quiet.
And life hack #5 begins to whisper something darker. If telling the truth gets easier each time, then what about everything else I repeat? If I give in once in a dream, knowing it is a dream, does it get easier the second time? The third?
One belief says step away.
The other says you become what you rehearse.
In the dream, I cannot step away.
So what am I rehearsing?
~
Here is the question underneath all of it.
If I know it is only a dream, is there any penalty?
No one is harmed. Nothing is broken. I wake up and the world is exactly as I left it.
And yet, I chose. I was awake inside the sleep. I knew my beliefs, and I set them down, just to feel what it would be like.
Is that a sin?
Or is it only a picture of one?
~
The other life hacks do not stay silent either.
Life hack #2 asks what I would find if I looked into my own heart. What was the true intent behind the choice? In a lucid dream, intent is all there is.
Life hack #6 warns that avoiding, done as a habit, can leave you always lost. Is calling it “just a dream” its own kind of avoiding?
Life hack #7 says what we run from pursues us, and what we face transforms us. Was the dream a place where I faced something? Or a place where I ran toward it?
Life hack #8 says the strength of your faith and the error of your convictions will entangle. Is that not exactly what happens here? The belief and the betrayal, tied together in the same moment.
And life hack #10 reminds me that the water never changed. Only the room. If I am the water, does it matter what room I am poured into? Or does the water remember every room it has been in?
~
I do not have the answer.
I am not sure there is one.
But I keep coming back to a few simple questions.
If I would not do it awake, why do I want to do it asleep?
If it means nothing, why do I feel it?
If I do it once to know the feeling, will I do it again to keep the feeling?
And if a pattern forms in the place where no one sees, is it still only a dream?
Or is it a practice?
~
Maybe the dream is harmless.
Maybe it is a rehearsal.
Maybe it is a mirror, showing me what I would do if the consequences disappeared.
Maybe that is the most honest place I will ever stand.
~
Close your eyes again.
You are dreaming. You know it.
The temptation is right there.
What do you do?
And who are you when you wake up?
…
DCG

Life Hacks, #1 to #11

  1. Life hack #1: “It’s easier to avoid temptation / Then it is to resist it.” (unknown)
  2. Life hack #2: “If you can look into the heart / What would you find? / The true motivation / What you have behind the mind? / If we do not mark our path / With our true intent / What then guides us? / In our true consent?” (DCG)[thundergodblog]
  3. Life hack number three: “To heal a heart and soul / You must reveal the heart and soul / Always consider forgiveness / Only we control what we console.” (DCG)
  4. Life hack #4: “To forgive is not for the ‘sole sake’ of relieving another of their guilt, but rather for the ‘sake of the soul’ that had been perpetrated upon!” (DC Gunnersen)[thundergodblog]
  5. Life hack #5: “The more you tell the truth / The easier it becomes.” (DCG)
  6. Life hack #6: “Ignoring, or avoiding is a pernicious kind of sloth / If it becomes a habit / You might always be lost.” (DCG)
  7. Life hack #7: “What we run from pursues us / And what we face transforms us.” (unknown)[thundergodblog]
  8. Life hack #8: “The strength of your faith / And the error of your convictions will entangle.” (unknown)[thundergodblog]
  9. Life hack #9: “Be the reason / Someone has a better day.” (unknown)[thundergodblog]
  10. Life hack #10, “The Water Never Changed”: A bottle of water costs $1 at the corner store and $6 on a plane, but the water is the same. “Nothing about the water was ever the problem. / Only the room it was standing in.” Your worth doesn’t change with the setting.
  11. Life hack #11: “Every day, you have two choices: to focus on what’s wrong, or to embrace what’s right. Choose gratitude. Choose joy. Choose to see the beauty in the little things…” (anonymous)[thundergodblog]
    The post for #1 on the site is dated August 11, 2026, even though #2 is from October 2025. It may have been reposted.

My Hacks and the Dream Experiment
My question: if you know you’re dreaming and still choose to sin, does that corrupt you? My own hacks mostly say yes, but only a little. What matters is the choice you make while aware, not the fact that it happened in a dream.
• Awareness makes it a choice (#2, #8). In a normal dream, things just happen to you. In a lucid dream you’re aware, so choosing the act is an “intent” in the sense of #2. #8 fits too: your faith and the conviction you’re breaking get tangled together. That tangle is the cognitive dissonance i’m describing.
• Repetition builds habit (#1, #5, #6). #5 says truth gets easier the more you tell it. The reverse would also be true: an act gets easier the more you rehearse it. #6 says a repeated habit can leave you “always lost.” #1 says avoiding temptation is easier than resisting it. Practicing the act in a dream wears down the avoiding, so waking life would take more resisting.
• Running from it vs. facing it (#7). This hack leaves room for a different answer. If you use the dream to face a temptation and understand it, it could change you for the better. If you use it to indulge the temptation, it’s the thing you run from, and #7 says that pursues you.
• The counterweight (#3, #4, #10). #10 says the water never changed, only the room. A dream is just a different room, so your core self is still there. #3 and #4 say it can be fixed: be honest about it and forgive yourself. In their terms, that’s “reveal the heart” and “the sake of the soul.”
• #11 suggests a way to aim your lucidity: use your awareness to practice what’s right instead of what’s wrong.
A possible conclusion: a dream doesn’t corrupt you, but deliberately choosing something in a dream and doing it again and again can wear down a belief, the same way a waking habit does. My  hacks point to three stages:

  1. The dissonance: #8
  2. The wearing down through habit: #1, #5, #6
  3. The way back: #3, #4, #7, #10
    This connects to real research. People practice skills in lucid dreams, and imagined rehearsal can shape how you act. Dream ethics, including Augustine’s worries about what he did in dreams,

Is not our own thinking?

Sometimes placed under lock and key

Hidden from ourselves

And from others to see

— DCG 

Three classes shy 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Three Classes Shy


Why do I walk the mesa late at night,
beneath the bell tower’s arch of sun-bleached stone?
Why does the old campus glow so bright
for one who walked away from it alone?
I left my home at seventeen, so young,
and paid my way with every dollar earned.
Who heard the quiet hope upon my tongue
each night I studied while the lamp still burned?
Why is there always one more class to find,
a room I cannot reach, a door that’s locked?
Why does the schedule blur inside my mind
while minutes slip away upon the clock?
Psychology, philosophy, two roads
I traveled far but never saw them end.
Three classes short. Who measures all the loads
a working heart must carry, lift, and tend?
I married, and I worked for forty-one
long years, and gave the best of what I had.
So why, when all those working days are done,
does one unfinished piece still make me sad?
Is this the reason that the dream returns?
Does painful truth play hide-and-seek at night,
and wait behind the library till it learns
I’m strong enough to face it in the light?
And if I face it, what else might I find?
That no diploma measures who I’ve grown?
That every lesson life has left behind
has taught me more than any class I’ve known?
The past is history, so let it be.
The future is a mystery, still unknown.
But now, this very moment, sets me free,
a gift we call the present, all our own.
So if a dream keeps calling you by name,
what hallway, what closed door, waits there for you?
Perhaps it doesn’t come to bring you shame,
but just to walk you home, whole, and new.

…

DCG

“If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.”

— unknown 

This was the dream. I woke up on the San Diego State University campus, wearing a very plush San Diego State letterman jacket, which I have owned in the past. I was surrounded by people, many of whom were from where I worked. The people I had my career with showed up throughout the dream, even though many of them did not attend San Diego State.
We were sectioned off, almost as if we had been told to serve the campus community for some unknown reason. We were grouped together in square formations, almost like attendance lineups, or even in classrooms. I walked around and saw people from my job. I didn’t know why they were there too, because many of them did not go to the same school I did.

This dream, in some form, keeps coming back: me on the campus of San Diego State University.

Transcription
“Here is the twist. I was three classes shy of getting my degrees at San Diego State University. One in psychology and one in philosophy.”
Annotation: the two degrees would have been a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy.
A Revelation
I left home at 17 and paid my own way through San Diego State University. I studied toward a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy while working full-time.
I always meant to finish. But marriage and work took priority, and I spent 41 years with my employer. I ended up three classes short of both degrees, and not finishing those classes is my biggest regret.
My education has always mattered deeply to me. That may be why the same dreams keep coming back. I think they may be my mind returning to the one important thing I never finished the way I wanted to. This isn’t a failure. It shows how much I still value what I worked so hard for.

I convalesce 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

In the sanitarium of my mind

I convalesce

Just what then will I epitomize?

Or, do I digress?

The mind is a curious domain

You can turn your attention inside

Discover the connections you’ve made

Then learn where the pit of your fears reside

Consider the invisible opérations

Disassociation or self defense

The subconscious training rituals

The impulse to build a fence

Observations from the playground

Internalized with limited objectivity

Often laid dormant or forgotten

In the shadows of obscurity

Is it really too much to ask?

How we descend upon humanity? 

How we treat each other and ourselves? 

The question in perpetuity 

Some say only knowing the reasons

Will not be enough

You must also be able to feel

Or your experience is just a bluff

The body holds its own accounting
A ledger written in the chest,
A tightness where the words fall silent,
A weight that will not let me rest


What wounds the most is often absent,
Not the blow, but what was never there,
The comfort missing from the doorway,
The empty space of unmet care


A child will trade away the feeling
To keep the bond that keeps him fed,
Authenticity for attachment,
A quiet bargain in his head.


So I learned to think instead of feeling,
To analyze and not to weep,
Assembled reason like a fortress,
And buried sorrow in the keep.


But thought without the heart is exile,
And feeling without thought, a flood;
The mind must learn to hear the body,
The pulse, the breath, the rush of blood.


So I return to meet the younger,
The one who stood beside the wall,
And name the ache he could not utter,
And answer, finally, his call.


To face the shadow is not surrender,
But gathering what was cast aside;
The anger I was taught to swallow
Becomes the strength I need not hide.


Responsibility becomes the medicine,
To carry what I did not choose,
To bear the load and find the meaning
Within the things I feared to lose.


Compassion, then, is not indulgence,
But curiosity made kind,
A question asked without a verdict,
A gentle light within the mind.


The fence I built becomes a garden,
With gates I open and I close;
Not every soul will find the entrance,
But those who do, the heart well knows.


So in the sanitarium of my mind,
I convalesce, but not alone;
The thinking and the feeling marry,
And I, at last, am coming home.

…

DCG

If every lock opened with every key, keys would become useless. People work the same way. You aren’t meant to connect with everyone. The people worth keeping are the ones your personality was meant to unlock. Because your job isn’t to open every door, it’s to find the ones you were made for.

— unknown 

The boy in the doorway

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

An announcer voice opens the show as “The Thunder God Radio Hour,” introduces the title and author, and calls out each chapter break the way a 1940s serial would.

Beyond the edge of fear 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Pain enters every human door,
It learns the house by name;
It leaves its shadow on the floor,
And asks us what we became.
One heart can raise a fist to night,
And make the wounded pay;
Another holds a small, hard light,
And keeps the dark at bay.
The same cold storm can split a tree,
Or teach its roots to cling;
What breaks the branch may secretly
Prepare the woods for spring.
The world can strike without a face,
And leave no reason clear;
Yet we can choose the road we place
Beyond the edge of fear.
A scar is neither crown nor chain,
It tells no final tale;
We may turn hurt to borrowed pain,
Or let compassion sail.
The villain makes his wound a law,
For every soul to bear;
The hero sees the hidden flaw,
And leaves more mercy there.
No one is spared the bitter test,
No soul walks free of flame;
But what we do with what has pressed
Upon us shapes our name.

…

DCG

“Heroes and villains always have the same backstory: pain.
The difference is what they choose to do about it.
The villain says, ‘The world hurt me; I’ll hurt it back.’
The hero says, ‘The world hurt me; I’m not going to let it hurt anybody else.’
Heroes use pain. Villains are used by it.”

—Alex Hormozi, drawing on an idea he attributes in part to Donald Miller.