(07-05-2024, 03:52 AM)Ninurta Wrote:I admire your self control. It took me till this long to master it. I've decided I needed to learn to master my tongue. To learn to be more silent. I want to learn to master the art of silence. I can keep my mouth shut, except when I get emotional. If I can master my tongue even through these emotions, I will have achieved something pretty significant. The book of James says, the tongue is the hardest muscle to control, and if a man can master his own tongue he can control his whole body.(07-04-2024, 04:43 AM)FlickerOfLight Wrote: ...
Fast forward to today, and I still care, but I throw my hands up finally. I do, finally, agree that it's time to hang that up. Find me a quiet spot. And go coo coo in p3ace.
Nature and solitude are the remedy im needing.
...
When my war was over, I was just... tired. I wasn't sad, I wasn't happy. I pretty much felt nothing at all but just... tired.
Back then, it appeared as if we had "won". We didn't understand yet what a colossal loss it had been. I should have been happy I suppose, but I wasn't. I was just... tired.
I found that spending long periods of time in the woods was healing. I could feel something like the "spirit" of the land, the trees, the plants and critters... the totality of nature. That "spirit", for lack of a better word, would seep into me out there, rejuvenate, revitalize, recalibrate, recharge me. It was "healing" I guess is as close as I can get to explaining it. I reckon it would have calmed me, too, had I needed calming. As far as I can tell, however, I was already way too damned calm. Calmer than I reckon I ought to have been. That kinda spooked me a bit.
I didn't quite know how to handle "peace", such as it was. So I kept putting myself into situations that would result in "not-peace", just to feel alive again, if only for a moment. I eventually took a job for an agency where I could tote a gun for a living, more or less legally, and worked several government contracts (among other security contracts) for them. I did that for around 14 or 15 years before I decided it was time to hang it up and go legit, mainstream... but I never quite made it to mainstream. For me, "mainstream" was just boring and empty. I went through the motions, but I wasn't happy about it.
Even now, I can be in really, really deep shit, and still that unnatural calm is with me. I might just fall all to pieces afterwards, but while the shit is still deep, I'm just calm.
I ended up, as you mention, in solitude surrounded by nature. I've moved into the house my grandparents built, a place that has a lot of happy childhood memories. I can step out onto the deck, and in my minds eye see my grandpa tending the bee gums he used to keep under the shadow of the big white pine tree out there. The bee gums are gone now, and the tree is somewhat bigger, but I can still see the scene.
I have no real contact with anyone other than Grace and our son who stays with us, and one cousin who lives next door, and who can be a mess at times. My yard is a fenced in half acre, and that is completely surrounded by woods. All I have to do is step out onto the deck and breathe, and I can still feel that "spirit" of nature surrounding me, like being wrapped in a security blanket.
The woods around me are like a cathedral that God Itself built, just for me.
It's peaceful, and that's all I ever really wanted, even when I didn't know that's all I wanted. I have arrived. You will, too.
.
The calm you had mentioned. Sorta sounds like shock a little actually. I haven't fought any military war or any kind of real battle with guns and bombs, but I have have some battles in my personal life that after it was done and over I felt absolutely nothing.
As I've mentioned in an OP, I am BPD. I always "feel" something. But there are a handful of times I have nothing.
After my divorce I felt nothing.
In the worst situations, the most pressure, the most dangerous, the absolute scariest situations a human can be in is when I am completely zen. Everything is in slow motion. I am Lazer focused and 100% sure of what I'm doing. This is when my natural leadership skills are at their heights. I am a machine when the shi* is hitting the fan situations. Im in Total control.
But if I can't find my keys I can lose my shi* like a 16 year old kid. The little things is what I have trouble with.
Nature...
Yes. The ocean was always my place of escape. It did not matter how bad things were, or how miserable my life may have been, or it didn't matter what was going on. Once I hit that water..............it was all gone.
As long as I was in that water I did not have a care in the world. Total peace.
I had recently spent time up in the mountains. I was fortunate enough to get pretty remote on the side of a mountain. Completely alone. No one for miles.
I remember this feeling. Like you said, I could just feel the wholeness and oneness of it all. And my connection to it. The silence is heaven to me. Hearing nothing but the leaves blowing in the wind is pure bliss for me. I actually noticed how nice it was to be away from everything. I had never been in this remote of a place completely alone, having no real clue of where I was. It felt like I was beyond lost. Yet, I was at a completely Total peace and calm with this feeling. Best prayer time of my life. Being disconnected like that, from electronics and people and simply just being alone like that high on a mountainside is surreal. I told myself this is what I need. This is what I'm going for. This is my new plan.
I plan on returning to the mountains soon.
They live.
We sleep.
We sleep.