2+2=5 if someone who can destroy you says so
Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 8:15 pm
I'm sitting back for a second and attempting to address a particular fallacy that happens in people's thinking, especially for people who are under significant duress in a particular category of their lives.
For instance you can have fundamental universal truth on one hand, then you can have social de facto truth - the two can be horribly out of sync but by the same token the most profound and immediate consequences are those that happen at the social de facto level.
Here's a story from my own life that shows a dynamic I really want to get over, a situation that I really want to never see play itself out again.
At my last job I was in charge of reviewing the check, EFT, and credit card runs as they went out the door. I had to review each individual one and look at the amount, date, invoice #, etc. to make sure everything in the image system matched the printout (ie. the accounting side). I would work through this at the fastest sustainable rate I could (ie. fastest without accruing stress-damage). After about a month my supervisor started asking me if everything was okay, I said yes the first time or two until I realize she was implying that there was a problem. When I did ask her I found out that it's taking me eight hours to get it done, the guy before me only took six. I realized that there was no benchmarking where I was working so the thought of my fastest not being enough and needing to figure out some way or fudging the review really made me uncomfortable. I then the next week worked right up to the self-damage point, still not enough - I gained only half an hour. The next week, in my own mind, I whipped myself, beat myself, yelled "Fastafastafastagogogogogogogogogo!!!", trying to insinuate the most blunt and ignorant force that could possibly try to push me past my breaking point.
At the end of the day I still had a few pages to go. That night I did something I've never done before and never did siince - the whole way home I was saying to myself "You failed. You failed. You failed". Anytime a single charitable or even univerally true reason came to be not to beat myself I crossed out and coldly reiteratted "You failed". I had it firmly in my mind that I was going to go home, sit in front of the mirror, and score my shoulder with a razor-blade to tell my nervous system and body that it wasn't enough, it wasn't good enough, it wasn't fast enough, and that if it needed to be punished to understand that it was failing me that I'd comply in forcing the point. I did do just that and strangely enough the cut did heal, the area of contact with the adhesive from the bandage ripped and made a more significant wound which was worse than the original cut.
The situation got worse when a lady who I was working with, someone with less education, more experience, and notably resentful about that, ended up taking it one day and got most if done in four hours. Again - I saw how much I was being asked to do, she hadn't adhered at all to what the supervisor had asked of me. I drank my dinner that night.
That position had me, at several points, quite ready to commit suicide. As a social idiot I couldn't sell anything, didn't have the multitasking capability to do anything that required that, and on top of that the career path that I graduated highest honors in from college was seeming to prove untennable when I was asked to compete with other people's limits. I could be the sweetest person in the world and it didn't matter - I was weak, my weakness was a greater sin than being a criminal, therefore I needed to be destroyed. I hadn't been in that sort of place since my late 20's where I had a job based on performance metrics but those metrics were literally what they were as I found out later - ie. getting rated on dollars found but considering the audits we were getting it wouldn't matter if you had a complete slug or the best person in the company - you would find $5,000 or $10,000 and there was nothing else to that - that was the other place where I'd leave an audit fantasizing about slitting my own throat. When it was me on a site with no other point of reference I had to assume that I was just the God of all slugs, even at my best.
I know that I won't always find sadistic situations in terms of work demands but I also know that they're always out there, there's plenty of them, and I really am trying find a bit logic, a piece of information that - when the desire to scourge, flail, self-mortify, etc. comes up based on standards or situations that I have no control over, what it is I can do to at least prohibit myself from that class of action.
What really breaks my heart is the thought that my body is almost its own distinct phase of me, it has nothing to do with crazy work conditions, it's my willing work horse, it loves me, and I'm willing to slap it around like an abusive spouse all because someone's abusing me. It's diplorable, disgusting, and morally reprehensible. I know that if I were armed with the right kind of logic I could prop it in that reactive corridor and neutralize this kind of behavior, just that I haven't found that logic yet.
That and I really have to assume that that kind of behavior is spiritually damaging, ie. while I don't think I'm likely to necessarily damage my own soul (no one would be able to evolve at all if that were the case) I do think - at least at the level of being a mystic and magician - it's not only a stumble backward but a stumble backward plus suffering - ie. just plainly stupid suffering rather than the gainful variety. Yes I understand there's such a thing as jnana yoga where people used to cut themselves, when I get to that I'm more apt to use a palm-shocker or something like that; it's a very different application to shock one's self for saying 'and' until they stop doing it rather than to shock, cut, or harm ones self for perception that you've come up short and deserve punishment.
For instance you can have fundamental universal truth on one hand, then you can have social de facto truth - the two can be horribly out of sync but by the same token the most profound and immediate consequences are those that happen at the social de facto level.
Here's a story from my own life that shows a dynamic I really want to get over, a situation that I really want to never see play itself out again.
At my last job I was in charge of reviewing the check, EFT, and credit card runs as they went out the door. I had to review each individual one and look at the amount, date, invoice #, etc. to make sure everything in the image system matched the printout (ie. the accounting side). I would work through this at the fastest sustainable rate I could (ie. fastest without accruing stress-damage). After about a month my supervisor started asking me if everything was okay, I said yes the first time or two until I realize she was implying that there was a problem. When I did ask her I found out that it's taking me eight hours to get it done, the guy before me only took six. I realized that there was no benchmarking where I was working so the thought of my fastest not being enough and needing to figure out some way or fudging the review really made me uncomfortable. I then the next week worked right up to the self-damage point, still not enough - I gained only half an hour. The next week, in my own mind, I whipped myself, beat myself, yelled "Fastafastafastagogogogogogogogogo!!!", trying to insinuate the most blunt and ignorant force that could possibly try to push me past my breaking point.
At the end of the day I still had a few pages to go. That night I did something I've never done before and never did siince - the whole way home I was saying to myself "You failed. You failed. You failed". Anytime a single charitable or even univerally true reason came to be not to beat myself I crossed out and coldly reiteratted "You failed". I had it firmly in my mind that I was going to go home, sit in front of the mirror, and score my shoulder with a razor-blade to tell my nervous system and body that it wasn't enough, it wasn't good enough, it wasn't fast enough, and that if it needed to be punished to understand that it was failing me that I'd comply in forcing the point. I did do just that and strangely enough the cut did heal, the area of contact with the adhesive from the bandage ripped and made a more significant wound which was worse than the original cut.
The situation got worse when a lady who I was working with, someone with less education, more experience, and notably resentful about that, ended up taking it one day and got most if done in four hours. Again - I saw how much I was being asked to do, she hadn't adhered at all to what the supervisor had asked of me. I drank my dinner that night.
That position had me, at several points, quite ready to commit suicide. As a social idiot I couldn't sell anything, didn't have the multitasking capability to do anything that required that, and on top of that the career path that I graduated highest honors in from college was seeming to prove untennable when I was asked to compete with other people's limits. I could be the sweetest person in the world and it didn't matter - I was weak, my weakness was a greater sin than being a criminal, therefore I needed to be destroyed. I hadn't been in that sort of place since my late 20's where I had a job based on performance metrics but those metrics were literally what they were as I found out later - ie. getting rated on dollars found but considering the audits we were getting it wouldn't matter if you had a complete slug or the best person in the company - you would find $5,000 or $10,000 and there was nothing else to that - that was the other place where I'd leave an audit fantasizing about slitting my own throat. When it was me on a site with no other point of reference I had to assume that I was just the God of all slugs, even at my best.
I know that I won't always find sadistic situations in terms of work demands but I also know that they're always out there, there's plenty of them, and I really am trying find a bit logic, a piece of information that - when the desire to scourge, flail, self-mortify, etc. comes up based on standards or situations that I have no control over, what it is I can do to at least prohibit myself from that class of action.
What really breaks my heart is the thought that my body is almost its own distinct phase of me, it has nothing to do with crazy work conditions, it's my willing work horse, it loves me, and I'm willing to slap it around like an abusive spouse all because someone's abusing me. It's diplorable, disgusting, and morally reprehensible. I know that if I were armed with the right kind of logic I could prop it in that reactive corridor and neutralize this kind of behavior, just that I haven't found that logic yet.
That and I really have to assume that that kind of behavior is spiritually damaging, ie. while I don't think I'm likely to necessarily damage my own soul (no one would be able to evolve at all if that were the case) I do think - at least at the level of being a mystic and magician - it's not only a stumble backward but a stumble backward plus suffering - ie. just plainly stupid suffering rather than the gainful variety. Yes I understand there's such a thing as jnana yoga where people used to cut themselves, when I get to that I'm more apt to use a palm-shocker or something like that; it's a very different application to shock one's self for saying 'and' until they stop doing it rather than to shock, cut, or harm ones self for perception that you've come up short and deserve punishment.