Category: Josh Feingold Blog

A good friend of mine mentioned that I seem to take responsibility for other people more than I should, which got me to thinking… She’s right, why do I do that?

So here are those attributes of myself that lead me to this current reality:

1) Intuitiveness – I am able to read between the lines with people words, mannerisms, and intonation.

2) Creativity – I am able to fully imagine myself in their shoes.

3) Emotional Intelligence – I have a real grasp of my own emotional responses to certain situations, and use this information to help form an opinion of how the other individual must be feeling.

4) Projection – I assume that the other person feels just as bad as I do about their situation.

5) Empathy – Due to the weak emotional borders, I have a strong sense of empathy for the person.  This means that I take on their emotions as my own. I don’t just intellectually understand what they are saying, but I also feel what they are experiencing.

6) Anxiety – I don’t want to feel bad, so the only way that I can think to fix my situation is to help fix their situation.

The above six steps lead to the end result of me feeling responsible for others.  As I have mentioned in the past, the way to fix this, is through stronger emotional borders.  However, until 1) someone pointed out the issue and 2) I researched and found someone online mention anxiety as the driving force – which I know recognize weakens my borders, I was unable to really see the whole picture and attempt to fix things.

Ironically, my taking of responsibility is not necessarily for their own good, rather for my own.  To prevent my own personal anxiety.  Of course, that it should all come back to myself is not that much of a surprise.  But like always, it is.

I wanted to take a moment to blog about my understanding of the Eastern spiritual models of religion.  Now, I can’t really attribute these thoughts to any one religion, since most of these ideas are coming from a multitude of books, a little of my own thinking, and personal experience.  Most recently I have been reading books by a seemingly unknown seeker, Robert Powell, so I think he would probably have the strongest influence on my current thoughts (specifically the last half of the essay) as they are written below.

Here goes.

When we speak of God, typically most people are referring to a God which is outside of themselves.  However, in truth, God is everything to include ourselves, and comprises everything in the universe.  The distinction ultimately being that God can’t be split into a part that we can point to and say – “There’s God.”  Rather all that exists is God.  By definition.

The reason that we refer to God as being outside of ourselves, is due to the fact that we see ourselves distinct from the rest of the world, which certainly seems to be true at first glance. Stated another way, the model that we use to see the world is that which is taught to us by society, that we are separate from one another, which is certainly how the world appears, without true reflection.

This leads us to look for God outside of ourselves.  To find God in nature.  Or the experiences of others. However, this is a fallacy of epic proportions, since in fact, our existence is really just a very small part of a much larger indivisible whole (which we can experience for ourselves… if we are successful in the next step).

Since the only world that we have true understanding over is our inner world, God (which really means the world and our place therein) is only found by looking inside.  Because only by looking inside can we get past the filter of ourselves, to see the underlying truth that we are connected to a greater whole. (When we look outside, the “we” always is in the way.)  This is what we call the path to enlightenment.

Further, as  separate beings, we get embroiled in wars, and greed, and in self-esteem issues based on our experience as separate beings that then compare one to the other and work towards becoming something. The problem, is that this is entirely untrue, and in fact, we are all interconnected, one body, and there is plenty for all if we would just share.

Additionally, due to our lack of recognition of reality, instead of living in our moment blissfully and just enjoying being, we fill it with actions as we chase the dream of becoming.  But we never arrive and are in a perpetual state of disappointment.

Finally, we fear death, since we see ourselves as distinct from the world.  However, upon realizing that we are in fact part and parcel of the world, and can never be destroyed (physical reality matter can’t be created or destroyed), and further realizing that at the time of ones death there is no consciousness, just as before birth, fear of death is really a figment of our imagination.

Well, that at least, is my current view of how things work.  I look forward to looking back in a few years (or perhaps only a few days), and seeing how my perspectives have changed!

There is never an excuse of no time.

My mom has always told me, and I believe her mother before her, that we make time for what we want to do in this world.

This is an important perspective, and one worth repeating.

Basically, there is no such thing as an excuse that we don’t have time to do something.  Rather, when we say that we “don’t have time” what we really mean is that we don’t want to have time.  For when we really want something, we make time.

I think this is an important thing to remember, vis-à-vis other people, as well as just as we think about what we CHOOSE to make time for (or not).

Vis-a-vis others, this is important to keep in mind, as we figure out where on the other person’s list of priorities we fit.  I find this particularly true in dating.  (Perhaps, I shouldn’t share this secret publicly.  Whatever.)  But it obviously, also applies with regards to business deals, interviews, and access to our managers at work.

Vis-a-vis ourselves, it is important to consider, since it helps us understand what we ourselves value (or don’t).  By determining those things that we don’t make time for, we can better understand that they are not priorities in our life, then ask ourselves, if they perhaps should be.

So there is always enough time for anything we want.  The only question is what do we want.

Having started to spend time with Lucid Dreaming lately, I wanted to take a moment to review the multiple ways I have found to effectively  tap the unconscious mind in order to review our base beliefs about the world.

I will review them from (in general) hardest to easiest, with some comments on each.

Breath Therapy.  Yeah, I did this twice, and it was very cool.  My guess (and it is only a guess, people) is that it is like taking drugs without taking drugs.  While I did ultimately tap my unconscious, it seemed to be more like a movie, and not a productive way to control the process of communicating with the unconscious mind.  I also found it very uncomfortable.

Hypnotherapy, which I tried for about 10 sessions around twenty years ago, then again about ten years ago, seems to allow others to access my subconscious and communicate with the unconscious mind (I use the two interchangeably).  While I did find it somewhat effective, in both cases it was used to plant productive thoughts into the subconscious, but not to allow my subconscious to communicate it’s thoughts. The upshot was that any change to my action was only temporary. I would think that a more effective way to use hypnotherapy would be for the therapist to share with you what they find when they query the unconscious mind, since in a hypnotic state they have access to this information.  Based on my personal experience, it seems that this aspect is not the priority for this technique, but perhaps others focus more on this aspect of things.

Dream analysis, involves a wealth of knowledge of dream symbols and other people’s dreams, to do absolutely correctly.  I have yet to really try dream analysis, since it really needs a therapist to help you with, due to the background information that is needed, but I do  hope to start this over the next few months and see what I uncover about myself.  One thing I will be weary of is that the analyst bias the meanings of my dreams using their own world filters, which may be very different than my own. (Having said the above, I do think that one CAN do their own dream analysis and probably have decent results.  I have certainly done this, and would encourage others to do the same.  However, again this is one way communication from the subconscious to the conscious mind.)

From there, we move into lucid dreaming, which allows the individual to actively communicate with his subconscious mind in the dream-state.  This technique is very powerful, however, takes a lot of work to do correctly.  However, it does allow for two way communication, which is key in my mind for self-therapy.

The next method, Focusing, and relies on noticing a physically sensation of a sense of relief upon correctly accessing the unconscious. I have a full explanation in this post. This is a good tool to use in conjunction with the data gathered via the other methods.

The easiest method that I have found is to use Active Imagination.  I talk about AI here, and is probably the simplest method, and the place I recommend people start due to its simplicity, ubiquitous, and ability for two way communication.

Wow, I had no idea that I have experimented with so many ways to access my unconscious mind over the years, until I sat down to write the post.

One take away that I did notice is that some methods involve another person, and I would think that overall a mix of individual work and work with another person (be it a therapist or even just a friend), allows for the maximum benefit to be derived overall.

There is only one way to live a truly fulfilled life: fearlessly.

You see, while fear is useful, since it keeps us from failure, it also has many downsides.  The overall issue with fear is that in not trying, we end up restricted in our little world surrounded by routine from one sunrise until the next.

However, one that  is confidently to live fearlessly is able to live in different environments and able to visit those areas without risking losing themselves.  They are able to dangle their feet on the threshold of the world as my friend likes to say, and live their life in the unknown world as it is, instead of feigning some false sense of security through some illusion of control.

Having met a number of people lately, myself included, who have learned to live fearlessly, I can’t help to wonder if there is not something that we lose as we found our way from the safety of the stable world, to the instability of the wild west of the fearless world that we float though.

Yes, the risk to those who walk the line is that in living on the edge, one must ask themselves if they were thrust out to the end of the world by society, and really long to be settled, but are fearful of stability due to their personality which tends towards excitement, or if they are true adventurers, who are equally at home stable or in flux.

The ironic upshot is that we much balance our fear from both sides, so that we are comfortable exploring in the ether but equally comfortable finding a place of stability from where to venture out from.