Where Are All the Shoes?

The greatest desire I have is to love and be loved. But I had destroyed that reality by creating a world of lies and deceptions to protect myself from the judgments of others. My very protection had unwittingly imprisoned me in a fashion that negated my very desires. Imprisonment isn’t even an adequate verb to begin to describe the shackles that bound my soul. How did I get here? How do I get out? Where are my shoes because I am just slip sliding around on this concrete floor?

My world had collapsed in around me. I felt helpless and vulnerable, but I knew that I had the for-with-all to somehow find a way to escape the never-ending torture that my everyday life had become. I still don’t know to this day where that strength came from but I give credit to a higher power for bestowing me with that fortitude. I knew that I was the creator of my reality and so I could recreate my life into something new. The hardest and most difficult step was to completely accept this horrible truth that I was responsible. I had to become humble enough to accept all my imperfections and fears in a way that I could acknowledge them and understand how they had led me into this terrible way of being.

As I reviewed my life and evaluated all my actions, I began to see a cycle of behavior that I have come to call the “Cycle of Reactive Unconsciousness.” This is a pattern of behavior that is completely self-minded and self-serving. It is a way of living where one reacts to their environment; no self-control, captive and at the mercy of the actions of others. The more I came to see the complexities of this pattern of behavior, the more I began to see it operating in the lives of people all around me.

Eventually I broke free from years of living in an illusion of freedom to where I came to begin to experience the reality of freedom. Seeing so many still held captive, my heart was pained. But I knew that people would need to come to this freedom on their own accord. My judgments of other’s actions were tempered by the empathy I had gained from the understanding of how completely trapped I had become. The only way I felt I could help others would be to use my own life as an example and write about the amazing truths I had discovered. If my words reach only one soul and give them the insights to free themselves, then I have succeeded.

Being a very visual learner, I began trying to describe the cycle in the form of a chart. I realize now after years of reworking the diagram that what I had discovered wasn’t new at all. I began seeing it in books, in the lyrics of songs, in the titles of speeches, all over the place. I realized that my desire to share what I had discovered was the same desire as so many others. So I add my attempt to understand how to become truly free to the countless others. We all learn in different ways so here is another form of that message.

A true cycle has no beginning or end—so is the same with the “Cycle of Reactive Unconsciousness.” But I will begin at the top of the diagram and work my way clockwise around the cycle. But understand that within this cycle, many smaller versions of the same cycle are operating within each level of the cycle. I would also like to point out that this pattern of behaviors is so illusive and pervasive, that I have come to see it operating in the lives of even the most stable and emotionally conscious of people. It is not to say, or to make a judgment when seeing this in others; it is to come to understand the many levels on which it can operate and remove them from our own lives. The behaviors we most notice in the lives of others are usually the behaviors we most identify within our own lives. That goes for both good and bad ways of behaving.

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I will begin an overview description of the cycle with LONELINESS. Please know that I will devote an entire chapter to each section of the circle diagram to expand its meanings and it’s reactive states of unconsciousness following this introduction. But for now, I would like to introduce the entire cycle to give you an overview.

Each section of the circle in this diagram has a reactive state of unconsciousness—or a predominant behavior that drives the actions one does in each section of the chart. In LONELINESS the action is SHAME. Shame is what I have come to call the “Love Blocker.” Shame is an individual’s belief that they have an inexcusable, inadequate and intrinsic flaw. In many cases this specific flaw is completely unknown to the individual but operates nonetheless to create an unconscious belief that they don’t measure up to others around them. With this belief they set up protective defenses both consciously and unconsciously to block or prohibit their ability to experience all the various forms of intimacy in their life. Without intimacy in our life, we come to suffer feelings of loneliness. And because of these devastating feelings that fill our existence, the next step is to begin negatively self-evaluating to determine why one is experiencing these feelings or what they do to drive others away. The pathetic reality is that they purposefully drove away all the intimacy in their life and created the lonely reality they now experience to protect them from others coming to know their flaws.

With all the feelings of loneliness and negative self-evaluation, the mind relives every mistake that has occurred and brings all the emotions of those memories to the surface. The good times are forgotten because they’re not what’s causing the loneliness--it’s the mistakes and character flaws. Overtime this becomes so painful and pervasive that the individual seeks methods to suppress or repress all the negative feelings. Thus the next section: EMOTIONAL SUPPRESSION.

Addiction is the outward manifestation of emotional suppression. An ADDICTIVE BEHAVIOR is the unconscious reaction to cover up the hordes of painful feelings. And the best way to accomplish this is to leave the heart center and empower the mind. Lust, anger, greed, attachment, and vanity are the passions of the mind that give addictions their relentless fuel. I believe every addiction has its roots in one or more of these passions. And the variety of additions is almost innumerable. Just because one addition might be more harmful to oneself or others doesn’t mean that non-harmful addictions are okay. They are all operating in the same manner to suppress emotions by distracting the mind with sensations and pleasures. This is where many become confused believing that they are emotional but there is a HUGE difference between true feelings and sensations.

But no matter how adept one becomes at repressing their emotional condition, they still have moments of LUCID AWARENESS. These are the times when the heart-center exerts itself and the individual cannot deny their condition and fallen state. But unfortunately the mind snaps the door shut on the heart-center influence by JUSTIFYING all their behaviors. These SELF-DESTRUCTIVE THOUGHTS or thinking errors are the tools used to quiet the consciousness. If one comes to recognize their thinking errors, they can begin to see how they have learned to lie to themselves.

Then comes the process of CONCEALING their real selves so that no one can see their flaws. This behavior of PRETEND NORMAL is their attempt to try to persuade the world around them that they are worthy. But the reality is that they have judged themselves not worthy and deserving of punishment for all their flaws. So they keep everyone at a distance to protect their horrible secrets. And by pushing everyone away and wearing a mask, they sentence themselves to a life without intimacy and loneliness.

Each time the cycle spins, the effects become more ingrained and pronounced. So simple—yet so complex. Do you see this cycle operating in your own life? Remember, I have even seen the cycle in the lives of people I believe are conscious and emotionally aware. The key is to reach enlightenment by purging all the reactive states and become the embodiment of love and understanding. A progressive goal that comes day by day.

I wonder, are the shoes the answer or maybe I should just take off my socks and go barefooted?