I don't know why life is such a complete struggle of pride and that which tries to make my pride fail. Everything I come across is either a provocation of my pride, or it's an irritation to my pride. And so much of my life is dedicated to settling those things that irritate my pride. That's what a lot of my journal entries are subconsciously doing for me. They're equalizing my embarrassment. For me, it's more embarrassing to be wrong and have everybody but me aware of it, than to admit that I made a mistake. So sometimes when I admit, to my journal, that I've done something that irritates my pride, something that does the opposite of provoke my pride's smiles.... as I said, I'm black and white so if it doesn't make my pride feel good, it surely makes my pride feel bad. So when I admit these things to my journal I'm essentially balancing my pain. And thus, restoring my pride. Because I can be proud of the way I handled my mistakes.

For the first year that I had my journal, well, hell, up until the summer and even sometimes now-a-days..... I was really ashamed of my journal entries. As soon as I posted them I felt unbalanced and scared and ashamed, because unless I'm quite sure that I've expressed myself in a way that gives me pride, it must be that I've expressed myself in a way that irritates my pride. In front of others. Publically.

I'm so vain. I think this is what Pride & Prejudice has really opened my eyes to. In a purely moralistic way, I observed what Pride means to me and what part Vanity plays in my life. Because that's Austen's perspective. Specifically Elizabeth and her eldest sister have a way of seeing everything they can under the most moralistic perspective. Sometimes they deceive themselves unconsciously, that's Elizabeth's Prejudice, but their consciousness is always trying to see themselves and their situations with as good a perspective as they can.

And sometimes, I'll admit, I'm a sneaky person. Egos adapt, like Bacteria. You kill off the bacteria with medicine but it evolves into a more resistant bacteria. And that really only pushes it to become more powerful. Your attempts to destroy it have to become more empowered. The playing field has definitely been raised. So the better I get at thwarting my Ego, the better my Ego gets at thwarting my attempts to thwart it.

And because my Ego is ingrained into my throught processes, it tells me to ignore it. It tells me, that even though I know it's there, I shouldn't think about it. I should just let it be. And I listen. Until something wakes me up a little and I can better identify that this isn't what I want. I don't want this pride ingrained in me. I don't want this constant battle. I don't want this satisfaction vs. unsatisfaction based on whether I believe I've come out of the situation with pride, or if I have reason to be ashamed.

Pride, to me, isn't as obvious as it is to some people. You can often tell when someone is prideful. They boast, and a prideful person as a tendency to overestimate itself, even when it's clearly obvious to others that this person sucks in one way or another. This is when Vanity and Pride become this huge entity that play on each other to control consciousness to the point where Positive Pride is the only thing understood. Most of these people need a really rude awakening to believe themselves to be anything but great.

But my Pride is smarter than that. And that's not a prideful statement. Or maybe it is, your guess is as good as mine. It's just that, I've always been aware of truth vs. perspective. Not that there is such a thing as ultimate truth, that I could possibly see - I'll always be within my own perspective... It's not that I have a passion for objective truth, per se, because there isn't such a thing as objective truth. It's more like, I have a passion for understanding perspectives. I have a passion for understanding the truth within perspectives.

For some reason, I'm blocked from further analysis of that particular topic.

So I guess I'll just get back to the point. The point is, my Pride was never able to, in good conscience, ignore the negative. Call it insecurity, if you will. Because it was a very obsessive insecurity. But it was also a sense of humility. I think it was a battle between the most agressive pride and the shock of humility. Humility doesn't have to be insecure, you see, because it is only pride that teaches you to be ashamed. Humility doesn't put value into the better things, thus, it doesn't feel the loss of value in the bad things.

So perhaps Humility isn't the right word. I didn't even have a dose of humility. I don't know how I got that rude awakening. Maybe it was insecurity all in itself. Maybe my pride and my intelligence drove itself to such a state. The intelligence was the point I was trying to make, that I couldn't allow myself to be as close-minded as it would take to live within such a positive prideful state that I could only feel my achievements and be unaware of my faults. I was so intensely aware of my faults. Obsessively aware of my faults. Obsessively aware because these faults gave me such shame, such horrid shame.

Maybe I was just in a hugely prideful situation in a past life.... a queen or a rich man or something, and my pride was never challenged, until this lifetime. And when you are born into a challenging situation, my consciousness, that of Melissa, was formed through a baby's perspective, then a child's perspective. I think that the ego is a baby and then a child. It can't influence you the way an adult can. I can't really explain it, too much thought on my part, my brain refuses.

The point is, my ego was vulnerable when I was young, and maybe I was submitted to such a humble situation - compared to what I may have had in a past life. Even though I can't remember. My Pride has a habit that I can feel, a habit that it has gained from more than this life of Melissa...

So I think the point was that my Pride is not as obvious as some pride is. I've never observed myself, I'm sure it's obnoxiously evident. ,) And I'm sure that those with pride themselves really hate me, because they can sense it and they either feel challenged by it or it brings up the hate they have for their own pride.

In any case, my analysis of every little thing that I experience, all contact I have with the people around me, my teachers, my friends, strangers, through my homework or my pictures on myspace..... in any single way that my image is observed by someone other than my family, I'm aware of it and I'm ready with a black and white analysis, a conclusion that tells me if it brought me pride or shame. How I handled any situation brings me pride or shame.

And I can remember so many faulty situations. To many times that I handled myself so poorly. And to be honest, this is what pushes me to grow. This is what challenges me to survive, because if I'm to survive, within such a mindset, I can only create someone that I can be proud of. I can only force myself to be someone that I can be proud of. And that makes me work on that which I'm not proud of.

Maybe it's my upbringing that's given me such a moral sense of right and wrong. Or maybe I always had it but my upbringing is what's given me such a conscious sense of right and wrong. Because my mom is like BAM.... she has an intense perspective of right and wrong. I was influenced by it from early on, from hearing her perspective on things. So for a long time I had her voice in my head, reminding me. She was my conscience, questioning, every moment of the day, if this that I was doing was right or wrong.

However, I only got rid of that voice last year, when I knew that I no longer wanted her perspective telling me what was right and what was wrong. I no longer wanted her voice dictating my opinions - because it was a battle, since I knew in my heart that I disagreed with my mom on many different things. And it's nothing to be disappointed at. We have too perfectly different perspectives and they suit us each individually. Her perspective kept me in line until I was 16 and I could pull forth my own perspective. I could bring forth my own conscience. I don't think, up until that point, I was ready to listen to my heart. And my ego had too much persuasian, without my mom's voice in my head, keeping me in line, who knows what I would have become by today.

But as soon as I dropped out of school I began to truly fuse together who I was. I had moved past some of the parts of me that couldn't except myself or see the whole of me. Now I feel like I've just reached inside of myself, to the depths, the unknowing darkness, and pulled out what was previously rejected for whateve reason. I feel more whole. I feel like my perspective more truly represents me. I feel like I can understand myself better, because I'm nearer to myself than I was before. I was disconnected before.

And now there isn't a thing my mom could say to make me doubt my own perspective. Her voice doesn't scratch against my better judgement. And I think that's what led us to have a decent relationship. Before that, I just couldn't stand her. I think a part of me could feel my dependency to her and it aggravated me. I wanted to be free from her. I wasn't free from her no matter how much I escaped, and every time I was around her it enforced my dependency, it fueled my dependency. Because I could always hear her perspective and such.

And you know, I think my mom's perspective has grown, though. I find that, the voice that was in my head is not entirely the same as the voice I often hear. Granted, without the agitation she gave me, I can see her in a more unbiased manner. But I think it's more than that. She's grown out of her own mental boxes that I couldn't agree with but I was pretty much forcing myself to agree with. I adopted her perspective for my conscience so my conscience kept telling me, do this or do that or don't do that and I hated having its constant scrutinty and critical eye on everything I did.

I'm not sure I've even created my own conscience. Perhaps a conscience, by abstract definition, is a failsafe. It's a reminder, in case you slip up.

And I no longer need that. I no longer need a reminder. I don't feel like I'm in any danger of being bad. And when I say bad, I mean right and wrong in such a deep and spiritual sense of the word. My mom has obviously taught me the deep and spiritual sense of right and wrong, and I'm grateful to her for that, but I could not adopt HER sense particular terms of right and wrong.

And you know, I'll say this with a small prideful smile.... I think that my mom has actually grown to have a perspective similar to mine in right and wrong. I think that she had a very black and white view of right and wrong and I wanted to break through it so very passionately.... and I think we both did. I did it when I felt myself returning, because this is who I am, this is a part of a belief system that belongs to the very core of my being - as far as I can tell. And then, of course, my mom and my dad have just done tons and tons of spiritual work in the past five years and ironically enough it has led them both (but I think my dad didn't have as far of a journey) to a place where their minds are open.

See, an open mind, in a lower consciousness, can, for example, make you a hippie. That's the first example that comes to mind. But it's a disagreeable state to be under because hippies don't have very much morality. Even though they're for love and peace, they have no controlled ideas of love and peace. They're mellow and free enough to do drugs and they love freely enough to, well, have sex with everybody. To share the love with everybody...

And I like their sense of unconventionalism. I don't think I know enough about them to really back that up, but I get the sense that they have open minds - maybe it's just the love that provokes them to have open minds. Love honestly does do this. Not romantic love but a truer sense of the word - that can be felt within someone for themselves or for any single thing or experience on Earth.

But in any case, I can't salute their unconventionalism because it has no moral foundation.

Structure, as my mom's voice was my conscience, guides lower consciousness. It keeps it from straying while it grows. And once grown, it can expand itself. It can be exposed to so much more without danger. Because it has a strength that - and this is difficult to describe, it simply has a strength that keeps it true.

In an open realm, a realm with no rules or standards, there is still true and false - better known as right and wrong. But wrong is wrong because it's untrue. And there's no better way to explain it, at this point. So we need rules to guide us until we have a strong sense of true.

Interestingly enough, I do listen. Many people say I don't listen to advice. But you see, advice is specific directions. And I refuse to listen to specific directions. I refuse for no other reason than that there is no way that at my highest potential, another person can tell me what's best for me. And since I'm trying to reach my highest potential---

When I hear, I let it sink in to my life. I let it apply to my life. Wisdom is not black and white, it's not concrete, and it's not objectively applied. So when others share their own truth or advice, I let the wisdom come out from the advice and apply itself to my life. I ask myself how this is true for me. And I let it guide me in that way. People outside of me can still bring to my attention wisdom, but not wise things. Wise things are defined, and no one can define my own wisdom. But there is a sense of wisdom that can be passed on from one to another.

My mom never defines things for me anymore. Or at least, I don't listen the way I used to make myself.

I feel. I let the wisdom of her words find its application in my own truth, so that it brings forth my personal truth instead of a defined truth. And in that way, I listen.

Power/Direction, Truth, Love, Wisdom,

The Ego: Chap 1??

I first thought that the Ego was a word created to excuse bad behavior in us. A scapegoat. And I thought, maybe it's a lie. Maybe it doesn't exist. However, something in my explanation failed.