Lookstwice

Sometimes, nowadays, I feel like Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse Five." Slipping sidewise in time… Or, maybe more accurately, a skinwalker.

Trying to pin down the truth of what’s goin’ on inside ain’t as easy as I thought it would be. There are tidal forces tugging at a soul daily, and which story does one choose to be in agreement with? It has to do with internal vs external locus of control.

The distractions of culture attempt to lull me back to a sense of complacency. But that isn’t the source of my serenity… It is the escape from - or at least lessening of - cognitive dissonance that has helped me to find some peace & balance. Learning to "walk between the worlds" as the shaman taught me I must. Recognizing that my involvement in the coming traincrash is a "controlled folly" and NOT letting my involvement (my seat on the train?) be the source of my locus of control.

When "life-changing" events occur in your life, (such as being de-programmed by "What a Way to Go"), a stranger will take up residence in your skin. Until you acknowledge the change and sit with the stranger and get to know yourself as you are after the events (read: trauma), you live in cognitive dissonance, in denial, in extreme neuroticisim (where’s the prozac?), addiction (choose yer poison, paisan). Sounds like most of us… if we’re honest. We all usually prefer the shallows to the deep. It’s uncomfortable to face all that truth.

As you awaken to realize that the programming of culture (TV, school, TV, church, TV, etc.), has been keeping a stranger alive inside your skin for all your adult life, and that your locus of control is "out there" somewhere, what do you do? Prop up yer psyche & hope for the best?  Well, there are examples all around of the dominant paradigm failing in peoples lives. Those are the "losers" of this culture. And losers of other cultures. And refusers.  It does help me to try to payback, and pay forward… appeals to my Contrarian nature.

So the question is: in the midst of cultural collapse, how does somebody go from being one person to being another… And what’s the process of becoming another person that you wouldn’t even recognize? For good or ill, transferring the locus of control seems to be pinpointed. For a start… for a frickin’ focus point.