Self growth

 Narcissists are pure ignorance manifested. They can only actualize their egos but at the cost of betraying others trust and manipulating their way into making believe that they are genuine people. Narcissists betray themselves by not wanting to take responsibility for their behaviour and maintaining select narrative that is built for upstaging others while placing themselves on the centerstage by playing the victim card, by dramatizing their past to good effect and blaming others, but couldn't care less as their image preservation for the outside world to see and empathize with is all that they work towards.

Destroying others sense of self comes easily to them as they thrive on sucking the life energies of others and do so covertly, slyly and with an insidious way of being pervasive of others trust, their personal space, others sensitivities and compassion, and in short, whatever they are not capable of within themselves, they just pry their way into others emotions and nurturing and take it as if it's their property and their right by faking their "concern" in return, and just to break others boundaries and others willpower to get what they want.

Narcissists do not die alone but carry others broken feelings and probably not a shred of guilt but while alive gaslight others into feeling guilty, body shame them, distort others sense of reality, and I am not sure if any of these karmas will teach them to learn from their irresponsibility. They are so blinded by being oblivious to what they do when alive to others that I doubt if they would ever realize their truth for who they are after their passing.

Life is a rite of passage from one point to another and all the letting go to make the travel lighter and just be at peace with myself is all I can try and work towards. It's really not worth it to hold on to the damage that narcissists bring about in your lives but very important to release their ill will, their evil, their lies, betrayal, manipulations, dramatizations and so on before departing for one's own higher good. It's only fair to say that if we are here for love, then we truly learn that this is not true love and being aware, sensitive, and kind to yourself and channeling intuition in connection with spiritual energies is a beautiful way to be grateful for this life and for all the experiences that life brings. In short, adapting your life in accordance with a narcissist is time wasted while exploring who you really are, what you like, dislike, are drawn to feel inspired and learn and so on is an interesting way to keep moving on since there is no better gift that you can give yourself than self growth.

Embrace the higher good

Gratitude and tears are all that well up in me for Muruga for creating circumstances in such a way that helps make me stay close to Him. The ultimate win for me is to be washed over by Muruga's grace and which does happen whether I am in the thick of situations or otherwise, it's as if no matter what I get as expected or what I fail at, what I am or who I am is all inconsequential, because all that matters is He is who He is  -  He won't stop at His lessons, His wisdom, His kindness, and His grace and a limitless state of joy and love which is what I believe He is. He is beautiful for encompassing all this supreme energy that manifests in what He wills for each of His follower which is intertwined with one's karma and freewill and also one's clarity of choice to believe that things happen and that there can be a higher good beyond one's expectations.

Why is the higher good such a hard truth to accept? Why is the higher good given to us at the right time when it's needed whether we realize that or not, and our egos come in the way for processing our lessons respectively in the way that's designed for us, and hence becomes our block, our bad luck and so on for lack of better understanding.

We feel so attached to our lives and feel that our lives owe us everything we need and want, but this life is given to us to work on it consistently be it through our desires, our goals, our relationships, our body, our intentions for oneself and for humanity and so on, so that we learn to let go expectations that life has to work in our favour owing to what we might have gone through. 

Let's face it -  we are going to die maybe sooner than later and to take ourselves so seriously whether our breakups, our disappointments, our depression and so on that become a mini world within this huge inexplicable world above us and around us that we live in and don't have a clue about is like trying to absorb everything through our minds and making our problems seem bigger than the grandness of the planet and wanting the huge universe to validate our feelings, our lack of self expression, our limited self beliefs and so on which is totally absurd. The universe is doing its work as much as we need to do ours.

Forgiving ourselves for the lack of knowledge of our emotions, how to process them, how to regulate them, how to be at peace with them, how to takeaway lessons from them are few of the problem gaps that seem to widen with ignorance and time and harden into beliefs which make seeing the good for us harder. Life is not against us and it's for us to make do the best that we can to navigate through the tides of life. 

When we are not with ourselves, then everything seems to fall apart in our world. And for being in coherence with who we are, we need to stop shrinking ourselves or modifying ourselves to who we are not, and detach a bit from all the self absorbedness of our limiting mind.

Mind is just a repository for our repetitive thoughts and beliefs  and a mere reflection of what we have poured our thoughts about ourselves and our influencing environment into. It cannot discern the truth for us so that we can come clear from one situation to another. Unless we stop to introduce some mindful tools that sharpen the clarity and our process of relating and detaching as necessary from situations, and it's only then that these stop gaps will help us appreciate the flow of our lives and to open up to see the reality of a bigger world that we are part of and to be thankful for.

Muruga Perumaan has been the road not taken at times and the only way to go forward as He showed the way in some other times. He is the Master Mind and hence mindfulness personified for me as it's better to be absorbed by thoughts and chants and prayers for Muruga than be obsessively thinking about the past and what better I could have done or how much I haven't, and keep going round and round in circles -  this circle is a dead end for me and an energy draining whirlpool. Spirituality with mindfulness is the balance and not excess of one at the cost of another.

I can't expect Muruga to bring clarity in a self fulfilling prophecy of a mind and pattern that I have gotten habituated to, but undoing such energy draining thinking habits and replacing with truth, self acceptance and healing unresolved emotions to whatever extent possible from the heart, from the soul is is such a peaceful thing to do. Doing that by talking about it with people you can trust or therapists you can go to, or meditation retreats you can opt for, or simply whatever it takes to get yourself together, brokenness, heartaches, regrets, fears, anger, tears and all, is all we have got. And it need not be buried within our chests after our passing -  it's not a treasure but just trauma and drama that needs a way out to set ourselves free.

I choose peace over power. I choose acceptance over criticism. I choose truth over ego. With Muruga Peruman's Grace, these changes have come about in me and I am grateful for that. I don't wish to go to my grave heavy hearted or clouded or regretful that I didn't realize that as long as we are here and alive, it's about letting go gracefully the craving for life and its endless cycles of sufferings and happiness and again hardships and so on. How well you live is learning how well you can let go as this life, this body, this living experience is all fleeting -  we know it all too well deep down but choose to see what we only want to see and expect life to unfold that way.

 

Protect your inner child

The freedom of one's joy to live, to express oneself in whatever way that feels authentic, and to take control in one's hands for the direction in which one's life needs to go are prerequisites for living a life with freewill and authenticity. 

All these are something I am getting used now to as I had lived all along in emotional numbness and constant guilt for not being good enough for people in my environment from back then. The self esteem and self doubt became such day to day limiting beliefs that I had been practicing unconsciously that I didn't know that I was stressed almost always deep down to prove myself right owing to all these self negating conditionings that deeply hurt my sense of self and kept me feeling stuck and sad for having a life but not knowing how to live it even if I be provided with all material things.

And such a living is owing to learning from my environment from early childhood that I should not disappoint my mother and frustrate her or worry her as she is a single parent and she is working on compassionate ground in a government sector at a clerical level, and that she is traveling a considerable distance to go all the way to buy me stuff to keep me comfortable. Specially I need to watch out for whenever I have bouts of migraine headaches which felt like walking on egg shells as I was bound to frustrate my mother and what with her being a widow and having delivered me after my father's passing on top of that playing heavily as a narrative at the back of my mind which kept me frozen in my guilt as the headaches came and went quite regularly as often as my mother's irritable emotional rumination about being all by herself and having to balance her job and a "weak" child -  she framed me in that defined space repeatedly whenever I had health issues and made me second guess on trusting my body and going with the flow of my innate energies that I never tuned in to as the frozenness was so entrenched in me that I became unconscious of how much it's blocking my wanting to move on ahead and work on it. 

I just felt boredom from time to time as the stuck energy was not being released in some form of art or talk or work that feels right for me - it almost felt as if I am just occupying a person's body but not feeling alive enough to manifest my life into reality in whatever ways that I can. Maybe my inner child was forced to accept this as her reality and she was not ready to allow me(adult me) to move on as her core freedom of being innocent, enthusiastic, doing what pleases her, and figuring out what she likes, dislikes etc were just fleeting moments in her life as she felt she "had" to encompass amidst all the confusion and overwhelm in her mind and heart that she needs to "feel" responsible to make her mother feel alright, and for all that the mother voices out that she is doing for her child in frustration, is criticism, is self pitying helplessness whenever the child is falling sick or is not alright- the child has to feel doubly guilty for reminding her mother of her tragic past by being so much like her father as well as being a bother for being a weak child (which is not consciously spoken by the mother but implied).

And so, my inner child is not a third person narrative as I may have put above, but very much embraced and part of my life and it's by empathizing with her that I can truly learn to move on and it's work in progress.. 

So, don't suppress your inner child and don't get stuck with unresolved emotions either is my understanding and realization after having gone through quite an inner conflict, but the truth shall always set us free as it feels freeing now to acknowledge these past hurts and blocks and just letting them go slowly.

Protect your inner child. Keep her voice alive. Because the body and the mind do not always grow together and it's the inner child who helps us grow and also sometimes to fall back on her to keep one simple, silly, and just trusting herself if the feeling of emotional safety and security (more than any other material comfort) that she can instinctively feel connected to is provided in her family environment, and failing which as in my case, I chose to work on being true to myself, connect to my inner child from time to time, journal, meditate, sit in silence or go on walks, observe nature, draw, color, buy uniquely artistic souvenirs that are affordable and appease my aesthetic sense, and just keep away from toxic people and emotionally draining environment, and connecting to my beloved Lord Muruga which is last but not the least. 

The release of fears and deep seated beliefs for the inner child happens when you learn to be kind and loving to yourself and stay true to this process. Because living is a process of learning and unlearning and unless you think simple and cut down on ruminations, over thinking, and cutting down on excessive thoughts and inner conflicts, unless this shift to a new process of becoming doesn't unfold, we are bound to feel stuck and will feel misunderstood. 

You are it Muruga!

 Lord Muruga, His unbounded Grace flows through His Being into the crevices of my heart and stirs me up to awaken from my deep, dark sleep. "Don't sleep on your life. Your life is true and so are you," it seems to say. For long I had blocked this truth from seeping and filling my body, my soul and spirit, and to allow it to the light that casts real understanding about my life. I had and have been the block that doesn't let the true love of Lord Muruga to touch my every pore and had been weighed down by my lower energies that kept me stagnant and stuck in my past life and the habits and patterns that made them stuck as I struggled to get free and still do get stuck but can find my way out better than before. 

Thank you Muruga for making me capable enough to let the old 'adapting to limitations' mindset go slowly and also through your own designed lessons that keep me on my path to realizing and feeling you as tears of plain gratitude and love well up each time your unique ways to test me, to bring to light the patch of darkness that I was stuck to, and to help release it freely without self doubt, without guilt, without looking up to anyone outside of me for validation.

You are all I want and need Muruga, and no fear, no trauma, no trigger is strong enough to keep you away from me as you are truth realized, love to belong to, and peace to embody. You are everything I have wanted and your grace goes beyond my expectations and logic/validation seeking mind. You are the love to be loved and the essence to nourish oneself in and live through. You live through one and all who makes space for truth and surrender to you as their core value. You are the All of all. You are it Muruga!

Truth files

My mother-in-law is a covert narcissist. She tends to play on my husband's generosity and honest love to her advantage. She likes to think that the world revolves around her feelings and can dramatize her past in convenient ways in order to escape from taking responsibility in the present. 

She is a self fulfilling toxic antidote to her twisted self love and can project her narrowed down make believe reality which she assumes people around her will buy. Toxic people become more toxic as they age; there's no antidote to that. And narcissists cannot be fixed, cannot be loved unconditionally, and sometimes cannot be forgiven as they bring upon this on themselves which they are responsible for. 

I don't know what my mother-in-law will be answerable for when she meets the creator after her passing? Will she at least then own up to her truths as they are or will she deny being responsible for the immense hurt, sadness, confusion, anxiety, depression, devaluation that she so effortless creates in her environment and acts like the victim on top of that? 

She can only be self destructive at best and when sensitive, empathetic people like me and my husband are in her vicinity, then we cannot feel inspired (at least I don't feel so) to learn from her past triumphs and to challenge shortcomings which have been quite many but with her self absorbed, highly critical of others attitude, and intentionally self serving but projecting a good Samaritan aspect, and with a fellow narcissist like my father-in-law who still doesn't take responsibility for his acute shortcomings of providing for his family by being in a  steady job which he wasn't in. And it just destabilized my husband and his two younger sisters' lives as well as they were thrust into hunger and poverty (from their early childhood) despite my father-in-law's brothers being in banking jobs and despite their trying to recommend him to apply for banking sector jobs which were relatively easier to get into back then some 5 decades ago. He chose to stick to his private sector work and the company went into a loss shortly and my father-in-law tried locating to another city with his mother, wife and 3 kids which he did but without a proper and set job at hand, he just resorted to self pity and played the victim card that despite being a responsible and care taking son for his mother and other brothers, elder and younger to him, he has had to deal with lack of support from his huge family and just left all alone to fend for himself, which could be partially true, but when having let go work opportunities at the prime of his life due to lack of taking responsibility not just for his life but for putting his wife and 3 young children's life at stake going from pillar to post, he doesn't get the compassion ticket from me at least.

And so here are two toxic parents to my husband, my in laws, who have worked on their public image of being such "caring, self sacrificing, and respectable" people who have unfortunately given up working on themselves truly and have thrived on this public image they created for themselves and have influenced their 3 children to follow and to create guilt traps whenever the children show signs of moving on with their lives -  they can never move on, at least my husband can't, given to such spirit sucking conditioning that needs rehabilitation from the soul level for him and I can do only so much.

It pains me when I see him feel agitated to keep trying to make amends to satisfy their this want or that and that's a thankless job at that. What good are such parents who don't outgrow their toxic behavior and have chosen to live off their blessed lives and that of people in them? 

What kind of love do we preserve by serving such people anyway? When selfless love which my husband HAD to grow to give which was beyond his age and had no ways to release his frustrations except get sucked more and more into one or another's drama, there's little else left for him except his creativity, his singing, and his advertising work which are truly his life saviours, and also me to an extent (I don't mean to brag) as being self aware as I have strived to work at and self improve is an indirect way for him to look upto and continue to keep working on his awareness levels.

Narcissists are one too many in our environment, families, and all possible relationships that we cannot hide, evade, or go no contact with them -  it's not that simple, dealing with narcissists, but working on one's boundaries, channelizing care towards them only when utmost needed, maintaining healthy distance has been my mantra to save my self as well as save my marriage. 

What's worse is even my biological mother is a narcissist and so my husband and I are put in such a relationship with each other not just to do all the typical things that every couple does but work on creating a meaningful and memorable life by just being ourselves in it -  we are not victims coping up with all the emotional and mental battering that we had received and we still do from time to time from our respective parents, and on some level we need to be emotionally self sufficient and mentally resilient and clear which we both try to be.For the parents' impoverished love and insecurities that they have brought upon themselves, irrespective of improved financials and lifestyle, I do feel sorry for them more as time lost in projecting false realities about themselves and all that image addiction and proving they are better is such a restless and resentful and empty space to be in. And being completely unconscious of it is the consequence of all their narcissistic efforts.

Learning from my animal/insect neighbours!

 Lizards, one big and small, run around my house playing hide and seek. They seem to find a way out of their hiding whether garlic is placed in every nook and corner or clove is packed in pouches to block their entry into my house which is through the kitchen mostly. They seem to have gotten omnipresent as they break the barriers of staying shut within the gaps of cupboards or hiding under their safe space, the fridge.

They have become a familiar sight now and as much as my husband even brooms them off in a dusty cloth with the lizard underneath, they seem to find their way back to our home.

I was in one of those days where it feels like a dark cloud is hovering over my head and things seem clueless and distant and I felt sad for myself. Just felt like eating something off the kitchen racks, some snacks, to just numb my sadness for a while and I found the mother one (the other seems to be small and maybe her kid) ready to come running into the hall from the kitchen when it suddenly stopped in its tracks and ran right under the washing machine which is next to the fridge - I wished for a second that I too could tuck in in some place of hiding like a cave of sorts and not come out until the coast is clear. It felt strangely reassuring that I was not as lonely as I thought I was and there's some living being that's quite happy being in her skin, unlike me who feels just mood swinging away to glory and more mind wavering for the time being than all the running and hiding that I see around me.

I also have started to notice the neem tree just outside of my kitchen window which just blows away her leaves swaying from one side to the other without any care in the world -  I guess nature attracts all living beings to want to be like her - carefree, organic, and joyous being herself and the tree is one such symbol of that aspect. The squirrel that rests on the neem tree trunk and quick to sprint to the other neighbouring trees feels like pause and fast forward in action in every single frame. How natural they all seem just being themselves and I sometimes get caught up in what am I supposed to be in order to be who I am...I see a small yellow butterfly too which is almost a daily sight and seeing the small wings soar so high with the sudden bursts of wind is a daily act of courage and joy from this beauty. Just go higher and flow with the breeze is all that the butterfly cares about.

Being a human feels so complicated and difficult at times and these examples of simply living each day that these animals, insects display is a simple and mindful lesson to me to not take one aspect of my emotions too seriously - it's okay to feel sad in the middle of a normal sounding day, it's okay to not be sure if I am feeling at home with all my brokenness and realizations, and it's okay to just simply release the tears and let go the heaviness with some random triggers that sometimes pull me down - Not getting caught up in them is important and learning to be as light and carefree as these beings of different sizes and shapes is a learning for me in a way.

Love is the way

 Being a channel for love is who we all are. It's the lack of knowing how to express love that creates the stagnation in our minds, hearts, and also expressed as pains in our bodies - whether it be lack of self love or reaching out in kindness to others, it's the fixed faith that love finally heals us all, mends our brokenness, and releases us from the miseries that we have brought upon ourselves, and which is our learning even if we have wavering minds that cannot encompass the completeness of love in this lifetime.

Love shows the way because love is the way and since God or the Supreme energy is all about love, we humans continue our journeys from one lifetime to another to understand the essence of this emotion, and failing which we are given yet another opportunity in some form or shape to make up for the delays, but all this without His compassion is not possible.

To love is to forgive, to ask for forgiveness, to set boundaries, to heal oneself, to open one's heart for others, to mend broken bridges, and discovering peace within oneself -  maybe all this and much more is to love, feel and experience this emotion, this energy which releases one's stagnation for good.

God is never done with us; He knows how to find us no matter how invisible to ourselves and devalued and limited we may feel about ourselves, He gives us what we need in times of need and helps rehabilitate our spirit no matter what be the limitations we may have set upon ourselves.

Because love is not of the mind, it cannot be logically contemplated, but is an ever growing feeling to be true to our suffering, pain, and hurt and opening our hearts wide to let them all go. It's a discovery of true love within oneself and also becoming aware that the Higher energy that activates it is a primary source of love. He knows only to love and not to find discretions to hold back His compassion; it's our karma, our behaviour, our taking responsibility for our attitudes about our given life that restrains us from knowing this feeling fully. 

And unless we learn to forgive ourselves, forgive the ills that we hold against others, the blocks and pains that we don't want to let go, unless we release and seek peace from within for all this and learn to stay vulnerable, stay empathetic to oneself first and also to others challenges and problems, until that time we will stay victims to our own lives. We can play as many blame games we want in our mind but no one is going to save us except ourselves and unless we learn to save ourselves, we cannot expect God to save us.

True liberation

 Narcissists love conflicts. They need to make their lives interesting through conflicts and can be the primary instigators of disorientation, chaos, and self doubts in others while they pretend that they are completely out of it. The drama that follows when truth about this instigation enabling is pointed at them, and their lack of taking responsibility would put the stage on shame to begin with. 

To be in the center at the heat of the moment and just projecting that it is the others fault is something they become masters at doing and can miss this terribly when they are neglected when people around them start understanding this and keep away from contact, or maintain only minimal conversations with them no matter what and even if they are family.

The sense of devaluation that they can bring upon the truth knowers and speakers is an act of vengeance which doesn't stop after one episode of their backlash but is a repeated act of no mercy and pure malice in their every word and deed - I have experienced this firsthand from my mother-in-law who is a covert narcissist and having been on the receiving end from my mother, a vulnerable narcissist, it just became some sort of readapting in an all new way but with their same intent of being extremely self absorbed, sympathy seeking, victimhood enabling, and blame shifting centric layers that are common between both.

The concept of self hood is everything related to ego and everything about their ego at the most and they know no other truth other than this - in a sense they are oblivious and they want to be oblivious to anything or anyone's egos or feelings or others sensitivities.

Narcissists are the opposite to being self destructive but those around them, be it their family, friends, coworkers etc can function better if they maintain healthy distance from them and not try to fix them, or be empathetic towards them, or share vulnerably any personal details with them - they seem to be like parasites who can feed off others empathy and sympathy and use anything from others, even their spirit to keep empowering themselves and drain life energies off others.

Knowing this truth about them and working on myself by strengthening my boundaries, my inner resilience, faith in my consciousness and clarity, and above all surrender to spiritual energies have been a learning arc for me, and I am thankful to such mothers for helping me directly or indirectly and by being their narcissistic selves, they have in a way given me an important life lesson and the value of true self hood which is independent of their influences. I don't need to validate my authenticity based on the devaluations that I so believed and thought that I was such a reduced version of who I thought I was, but even this yardstick for self growth is not worth it and that feels truly liberating for me.

Discovering ourselves one layer at a time

 Is there a world outside of one's mind? Is there any truth to it? For ease of comprehension, who we are, where we come from, and what family and cultures we belong to, and how we allow ourselves to be defined by it makes up for our individual worlds. This is a lengthy conditioned narrative that is subjective to one's understanding and how one responds to it. And this narrative may be stretched or condensed according to the rationalizations of one's intellect.

When this narrative is not true to to our feeling of the situation(s), then our perception of people involved in it, their responses, emotions, becomes a harnessing ground for an inner environment which is covered by layers and layers of what we want to be true, what we believe may have happened but instead is this way or that, and our acceptance of derived influences nevertheless are indicators of falling apart with our true feelings. Our lack of self validation for what feelings to feel connected to and what seems to absorb us but disconnects us from our core, are all cumulative snowballing of situations over a period of time which throws us off balance and alignment with oneself.

This lack of alignment with oneself is a major cause for being present in one's life but clueless about how to navigate with one's mind steadily.

I believe that mind is an overstressed tool and is made to be the target recipient to hold all our unresolved, conflicted emotions, and it has to somehow, despite being subjective at how it tries to process through concepts, logic, ego, conditionings, analyzing, comparing, criticizing, judging, researching and so on, but still cannot negate the truth of our emotions for what it is. Whether shadowed by all of these or just simply suppressed for want of freedom and immersed in fear in the environment, the coming out of the suppression is a world of its own. 

Truth is as objective as the shine on gold, and even if all that glitters is not gold, but the light that emerges from the letting go of so many layers that kept us defined to who we should be is more precious and unique. Whether we wear this gift ornamentally or add weight to it by staying humble and hold space for our entire heart(inclusive of our feelings, emotions, faith, forgiveness, intuitions, prayers, love and so on) to emerge from the depths of our shadows is a mindful choice.

There is nothing like being too truthful or too pure, but reflecting on our self made image, profile, status and so on, is just the start of scratch to discovering ourselves one layer at a time.

And what softens our heart, our conscience in other words, which holds our truths no matter how dark, discolored they may be is our love for our creator. Love is an energy and not a form pertaining to sex, color, or race of a person. We want to make it into a form that can be defined within the conditionings and understandings of our mind and our environment that we come from and seek validation for this energy outside of ourselves. That's why we love to love our miseries, our frustrations, our disappointments, anger, sadness and so on when the desired outcome expected out of love is not received. God is often perceived as an object of these unmet desires and unacknowledged emotions and prayed for acknowledging or fulfilling of this lack and which is then compartmentalized in our minds instead of opening our hearts to accept His creations in all forms and shapes and for our lives as is.

Loving God is a complete experience in itself and it cannot be defined within the logical processing of of one's mind - it takes a lot of suffering and endurance to be true to loving God despite the challenges we may face through our bodies, relationships, from work and so on, and that is how it will be -  Loving God in all entirety is an act of surrender of all these factors that make us human and to have faith that our potential for love is much greater than our holding on to our miseries is to reciprocate His faith in us. 

Truth is a gateway to let our fears and blocks out provided we are willing to let it out and also if we are willing to be vulnerable to understand the limitations of the mind and the unconditioned opening of our hearts -  we need them both and if the flow of the heart is hardened by the mechanics of the mind, the heart can dry up and lose its essence, and if the mind is all about the ego, then you cannot see beyond yourself and can lose direction on your way ahead in life. 

Gradual blossoming of self

 I have many bad habits that I need to knock off from my everyday living.. for instance, being habituated to being sad, clueless about my life, passive angry at people in the environment, absorbing environmental emotional vibes, irregularities, highs and lows from environment and so on have been some of my habits that made me who I am..I didn't know back then that they were so self limiting as I just lived them unconsciously so much that any sense of clarity in thinking had to be stressed upon in order to meet the challenges from situations, whatever that be, and after addressing them, it came back to square one.

Like I had the skills to work out of my way to facilitate things for others but when it came to making things happen in my life, I was my own worst enemy and my mind kept coming in the way of manifesting things I desired by being so enmeshed in my habits which were not for my highest good in any form or shape. 

Mind makes the habits and habits control the mind, and when not aligned with self control and understanding one's power of choices and exercising self discipline in becoming proactive and working towards self improvement, then it's a path towards ignorance, stuck thinking, and sick mind and sick body as well, which is apparent in my case. 

I have lived enough in self inflicted misery that to aspire to live a long, healthy, active life seems like a fantasy that I am not realistically attracted to...I feel sad for me that I had let myself go so much that undoing all the damage in this one lifetime could well be my goal for the next remaining years of my life..

Grieving is allowed, some self pity too, but to see this in better light is something I am working on. To straighten myself out as my life unfolds with divine grace and guidance from Lord Muruga by my side, which has been a constant presence no matter how ignorant I might have been to it, but the more I realize my darkness, the more I am walking towards self redemption and staying with the light. And this change in my life has been a huge blessing and a blossoming of self, all thanks to Lord Muruga and to my willingness too!