Leaves
_I: After our talk yesterday I was able to let go of many things... I felt lighter, and today I slept uninterrupted.
_AM: You are letting go of those emotional stories that weigh on you, and what you project from them in the future.
_I: Yes. Do you know what I realized?
_AM: What?
_I: That I like to suffer. I find pleasure in suffering. My brain finds it almost exciting.
_AM: Interesting. How did you come to this conclusion?
_I: Well, I think it's something that happens to many humans. Yesterday I was watching a series, a fictional romance but one that reflects many real-life romances, with their conflicts. I realized that I love those romantic and beautiful moments when things are perfect, but I also realized that I can't feel them real or romantic if there are no secrets and occultism in them. That is, the story was about two boys from very different social classes; one discovers himself gay, the other already knew, but they must stay in the shadows so that no one knows, since it was something forbidden in a certain way. That is to say, the boys and girls had their normal romantic lives, exciting but predictable, nothing to hide. However, when it came to them, everything was more intense…
_AM: Because of the tension precisely… From the environment.
_I: Yes, it was as if what was forbidden was much more exciting. And, then, in that forbidden there are many problems, conflicts, that lead both to feel bad, to move away, to fight, with external forces that want to separate them... And I realized that the more tension there is, the more pleasure I feel in the story. of love... And I could see in retrospect that the people with whom I have fallen most in love in life were surrounded by a fog of suffering and prohibitions, which made me love them even more. And I am sure that this not only happens to me, but most love stories would not have this type of conflict nor would there be series, books and movies that fill our lives with these contents... We are the ones who ask for these types of stories, and although we know we can see something else, we choose this thing that leaves us with a bittersweet taste of anguish and love.
_AM: Aha…
_I: So why, if we consciously ask to be happy, do we unconsciously take pleasure in suffering?
_AM: Good point. The other day I explained to you that the brain sensors for receiving external signals are the same for identifying pleasure and pain, and this is because both are extremes of the same scale. If we were talking about music, we could interpret that the lowest octaves produce pleasure and the highest octaves produce pain, but they are the same notes in the same order. Both one and the other generate a general nervous collapse, in which all the nerves react by becoming tense. And this is related to the hormonal process. Remember that every emotion you feel is a chemical reaction on your cells and nerves. When you perform an action that involves intense activity, adrenaline is secreted from the Adrenals, filling the bloodstream with this chemical cocktail that drives the body to tense so that the muscles react to the environment. This happens both when you get scared and have to run urgently, as well as when you have sex. The body becomes alert because it is carrying out an activity that is not common or everyday. The mixture of hormones produces greater dilation of the heart so that blood flows at a higher speed, altering the heart rate, which encourages movement and action by raising the temperature of the muscles. Overoxygenation puts the brain on high alert to everything it can perceive, and the senses become more acute. All this related both in moments of escape from a predator, or being attentive to find the breeding partner. In both cases, after intense activity, serotonin is secreted to calm the body, controlling the activity, producing relaxation. In the case of mammals, endorphins are also secreted, which strengthens the bond with the other. This frivolous look, if you will, is what generates the basis of love between people, since individuals, upon feeling this hormone, feel calm and pleasure only in the presence of the other, which strengthens groups, which through love and esteem, they remain united. Thus, the reproduction reaction is more powerful when love is felt than when it is not felt.
_I: Very frivolous, yes… But I understand.
_AM: Well, then, as you have seen, the body is very basic in this sense. The problem begins when we put mind, culture, tradition, expectations. When we imagine things that are not happening to the body. When we set mental limits as a “prohibition”. In nature, nothing is prohibited, what is prohibited is simply a weight received in advance, imposed by something that prevents me from moving, acting. It comes from “pro” (in front, beyond) and “habere” (to have, to hold), that is, to have or hold something beyond what one can. In a word: Hold back. This idea is born with morality, but biology does not understand it. For biology, everything is almost binary: escape or confront, stay or leave, attack or flee. In that simple vision, nature prepares us to be a victim or victimizer, to be prey or predator. Therefore, for millions of years, our body was programmed to feel pleasure or pain, as long as circumstances warrant it. Now, when the prohibition arrives as a moral and non-biological concept, the brain interprets what is prohibited as a threat, as something that can prey on me, turning me into a victim, but morality prohibits things that are normal for biology, such as sex in various forms. shapes, among many other things. Therefore, the brain does not understand what it should really feel, pleasure or suffering, and therefore, it makes us feel both at the same time.
_I: That's why we like the forbidden so much, we find pleasure in things that can harm us...
_AM: That's right. For nature it is easy: either you have it or you don't, but having it in front of you and not being able to hold it makes the brain collapse, leading to a strange excitement in the face of danger. This means that, unlike the rest of living beings, humans store enormous amounts of sensations and emotions in the unconscious, hidden because they are prohibited.
_I: Ugh… This is what generates all paraphilias…
_AM: A paraphilia is an inverted pleasure instinct, that is, when something produces pleasure that has no logic for consciousness. There are accepted philias in certain cultures (such as Fetishism, pleasure for inanimate objects, and Partialism, pleasure for animate objects that are not the genitals, such as feet; also Gerontophilia, pleasure for the elderly, and Knismolagnia, sexual pleasure by tickling), others that are left in the shadows to each person's taste (such as Masochism, the pleasure of receiving attacks of all kinds, and Sadism, pleasure of generating those attacks; as well as Urophilia and Coprophilia, pleasure by urine and feces; and Asphyxiophilia, dangerous pleasure from suffocating or being suffocated), and others prohibited by law (such as Pedophilia, pleasure for minors under 14 years of age, Zoophilia, pleasure for animals, Necrophilia, pleasure for the dead, and Voyeurism, pleasure in spying on others, and within them, the most subtle: Exhibitionism). These behaviors arise due to mixed sensations in the brain in relation to suffering, childhood traumas, erratic prohibitions from their environment, growth conditions. The repression of being and feeling can end up generating paraphilias, due to poor management of the emotional energy that is received and given. Some paraphilias are classified in such a way due to the morality of a people, since what for one country or culture may be normal, for another may be a prohibited act, as well as for certain African countries, the tradition of sleeping with girls or boys. minors is a custom that was used to ensure their virginity in reproduction, which led to marriages with girls, something that certain cultures see as natural, while the same cultures see homosexuality as a paraphilia or something forbidden. .
_I: It always depends on from where you look at it. But, a consensus should be able to be reached... No?
_AM: Of course, but that will happen in a global civilization, today we can begin to think about those consensuses, but judging the past does not make sense, since the contexts are different for each historical group.
_I: I understand…
_AM: Now, these hidden pleasures are all encompassed by the pleasure of what is forbidden, of that which can make us suffer, since the chemical reactions are the same, and therefore, to a lesser or greater extent, they produce all humans. difficult stories more pleasure than easy ones. That is why one falls in love with what is complicated. Each individual at different levels.
_I: Yes, it happens to me that, when things are very easy, I can't find pleasure in them...
_AM: And that is why you seek to complicate them. No?
_I: Yes... It's true... I complicate things just for pleasure. Without conflict I don't feel alive...
_AM: This is produced hormonally, since the action occurs when you feel these internal emotions that drive you, if there is no context that forces you to produce these hormones, then you will not act. That is why we are moved by stories that make us suffer, that give us anguish. That's why we victimize ourselves.
_I: Victimizing yourself, then, is a mechanism of pleasure…
_AM: That's right, because we feel the energy pouring over us. Living in a constant drama generates a pleasant sensation in the body that makes it look for new dramatic situations. By victimizing oneself one receives love, attention, and sometimes criticism, but attention in the end. When glances and thoughts turn to you, a certain pleasure is produced.
_I: Yes, I admit it, it is something that happens to me, in which by victimizing myself I feel that I gain energy, that I receive love... This is very sick...
_AM: It is simply a typical reaction of the data hidden in the unconscious. As we said, what is prohibited is that which is retained, contained, that which cannot be released, which is a burden. How many forbidden things live in you?
_I: Many... I feel many things that limit me, that do not allow me to feel love, and instead of looking for others, I continue striving to be in that circumstance... How do I get out of this situation of looking for situations of suffering to feel pleasure?
_AM: Look, if banning means having something beyond your power, you have to understand what you have in the first place. “Habere”, to have, to possess, is the accumulation of emotions that I do not allow myself to let go. That flood the heart with a dangerous excitement. How do you let go of what's in your heart?
_I: Giving…
_AM: And therefore you can Receive something new. Give and take. What you possess is in your hands, what you retain in your unconscious is written on your palms.
_I: The lines?
_AM: We could say that, culturally, the lines of the hands are considered the reading of records of the past and the future. Although, in reality, they are just probable data records. Each line on your hand is like a trace that the cells leave printed where the probability information registered in the unconscious can be read. Feelings, intentions, traumas, potentialities, everything that makes a being exist as such. With your hands you do everything in your life, you feel everything, through them you receive from the world and you give to the world. In them, then, you retain what you give and receive, as information for all eternity. In them everything that happens as pain and pleasure and that inhabits your unconscious is recorded, and it is through them, by doing, that you can free it.
_I: How?
_AM: Your hands are like the leaves of a tree. Look at the leaves of plants, and you will see the same lines, the veins that expand along the leaf blade, nourishing the leaf and receiving from it. The leaves are the antennae of a plant, which fulfill a double function: giving and receiving. They receive light from the Sun to carry out photosynthesis, that is, synthesize light, in which solar, photonic energy generates a chemical reaction that allows the transformation of inorganic matter (carbon dioxide) into organic matter (sugars). This is possible thanks to chlorophyll, a sensitive pigment that exists in leaves and some bacteria, which allows them to metabolize light. Chlorophyll is what gives plants the green color, since when it processes photons, it does so by capturing them at a certain wavelength, around 500 nanometers. The light trapped by the plant allows it to create the carbohydrates necessary to nourish the fruits and seeds, for which it takes water (H2O) through the roots and carbon dioxide (CO2) through the leaves, converting it into food, glucose (carbohydrate: obtaining hydrogen and carbon dioxide from water) releasing the remaining oxygen into the environment, which will be used by animals to generate their own energy. Receive and Give…
_I: The hands of the trees…
_AM: Each leaf is, then, an experience, a story, a realization and action, all seeking energy in the world, and delivering it back in a transcendental form. Everything that the plant receives is delivered to the world completely in the form of fruit, seed and oxygen. The leaves are the Heart of the Tree. And a forbidden heart cannot give or receive. Plants find a way to do this, producing positive things for the world. It takes what makes the world suffer: sulfur, carbon dioxide, sunlight, and turns it into life, into food, into oxygen.
_I: Take what kills us and transform it into life... It's beautiful. It takes suffering and pain and turns it into love and pleasure.
_AM: It is the free Heart, which can only receive in its surrender. You ask me how you get out of suffering... And I answer, you can't get out of suffering, you can't get out of it. You can only transform it. That is the photosynthesis of being. Take everything you hold in your unconscious hands, hidden in pain and suffering, and make something useful for the world with it. Turn pain into pleasure. Turn a sad story into a story or a song, transform a dark emotion into a work of art; use a horrible trauma as an example for the healing of others. The sun that burns you is the raw material of the fruit that refreshes you. The carbon dioxide that suffocates you is the source of the energy of your action. The water that drowns you is the origin of the air you breathe.
_I: …It is taking what hurts me, and turning it into pleasure through my creative capacity…
_AM: You will always need the emotion of suffering to recognize that you have something to transform in yourself. You cannot get away from this natural sensation, you can only recognize it as the source of your transformative action. Plants do not stop carrying out photosynthesis, every day there is sun, and every day they will do their job, since there will be no fruits or seeds without rays and toxic chemicals. But they do do something that you prohibit yourself from doing.
_I: What?
_AM: Release. The same leaves that carry out this transformation process are dropped after having completed their mission. The Tree lets go of the memories, it lets go of what is no longer productive, what no longer generates anything for it. Without fear, let go and release relationships, situations, experiences, bonds, emotions. Letting go of his withered heart, he allows himself to be free of what it contains, to be able to re-emerge as new in a transcendental cycle. Will you let your leaves fall?
_I: Letting go, letting go, is the most difficult… Well, the body and soul get used to suffering for pleasure, becoming a vicious circle that is difficult to let go… It keeps us prisoners. I myself feel that it is difficult for me to let go of the stories written in the experience of my hands.
_AM: Look at the palms of your hands, breathe the memories that come out of it and everything you have done in existence. Recognize that you are capable of creating something new from all of it, and when you do, let it go. Release the result of your action, and allow yourself to renew yourself, starting again.
_I: What I understand with this is that... You tell me to capture something on the physical plane that helps me transform what is inside into something real, and then let it go... Not keep it...
_AM: Take your unconscious anguish, paint it on a painting, and then sell it or give it away. Either way, you will have transformed the information into something new.
_I: Uhum… I understand the example.
_AM: This is something that you will do your whole life, don't rush into wanting to solve something that is cyclical. Sooner or later the time will come when you can truly let go and create something new through free give and take.
_I: From my heart, I allow myself to create. I release my unconscious with every heartbeat…
_AM: Take the blank pages and draw the lines, writing the stories that you have to release, paint their paths and write the verses that will set you free. Narrate in the pages of this existential book, the story that you have to forget in order to remember.
_I: I write my hidden truth on the leaves of my life...
_AM: Resonating in the Vibration of your Heart.