Residual Effects and Self-Sabotage

About 13 years ago, I took a trip to California specifically for an in-person Past Live Regression session. If you aren't sure what that is, it's a simple process, similar to hypnosis, where you're in a trance like state and describe what you see in lives before your current incarnation, which is recorded for you. Yes, I went there...

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It starts with birth and goes backwards. I saw a few different lives, one in which myself, my brother (currently) and both of my parents all lived in an orphanage somewhere in England. I was a young boy of about 10 and my brother currently, was my sister about 6 years old. The two of us fled the orphanage, on my lead (shocker.) I scavenged cleverly for food and resources, but turned most of it over to my little sister to keep her alive. In the memory, I ended up dying of starvation on the streets of England, she was hovered over me trying to wake me up from my deadened state.

Ever since that time, I've noticed many patterns emerge from myself, related or not, explained through this or my imagination, I'll never know. Regardless, there seems to be something in my unconscious that still has issues with food. I truly always feel like I will be starving. Funny enough, my brother and I lived together during college under my parents roof for a spell when they were cabin bound. I would always save part of my food if I went out (BUDGET...) for the next day. Jeff would ALWAYS eat my leftovers and I would ALWAYS get pissed. If only he knew I died of starvation because of him ;)

Hmm

What's my point? I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I'm trying to cut my body fat percentage down and build muscle, all at the same time, which is very hard. I pack myself a lunch and healthy, proportioned snacks every day, but I find that every day I start to panic. Once I log all of my food for the day into MyFitness Pal, I suddenly feel that I won't have enough fuel to get through my workouts. Am I going to be weak? I should maybe get a salad or soup or something to go with this? 

Logically, I know that it's enough. Unconsciously, I do not. On many occasions, I give into the demon and get some hard-boiled eggs, a small salad, soup, etc. (always healthy) but still calories I don't necessarily need. I feel it's sabotaging my fitness goals and makes me wonder how the past impacts the now.

It's something relatively harmless, but what about other things? Are illnesses and addictions a residual effect from the past? Reclusive behaviors? Inclusive behaviors? I guess we'll never really confirm knowledge. 

Anyways, this is not to excuse or explain undesirable behaviors, but rather to bring light onto the darkness of the unconscious and be better able to control the beast.

What do you think? Do you have any relentless complexes you think might be more readily understandable with Past Life knowledge?

That's all I have to say right now.

From what I recall

It's not a huge secret to those I'm close to that my Dad is an alcoholic. That said, I feel the need to write about it...

I remember when I was young, my Mom worked at First Bank. On Friday's, my brother and I were with Dad. He would pick us up from daycare and we'd go to the liquor store on Foley Blvd and McDonald's. I hate ketchup. He would always request a no ketchup/mustard burger for me and we'd pull forward and wait. Inevitably, it would arrive, with ketchup on it. Needless to say, the introduction of the Chicken McNugget was a godsend.

We'd go home, eat our dinner and Dad would sit in his rocking chair in the upstairs of our 4 level split home and I would play records for him. He always drank brandy, and was always jovial.

He was also a hunter, and a fisherman. When deer were had, they would hang them up in our garage and spend hours in the garage cleaning the meat. When they were done, they would cook the tenderloins in an electric fry pan with onions and mushrooms. I recall that they were delicious and Dad was always happy. The same with fishing. He was always happy.

Fast forward to the 2010's. Dad hasn't been so happy. Sometimes I feel that it's my fault, because I am divorced. Dad loved Andy, like a son and I can't help but feel that I destroyed a dynamic that could've been maintained. But still, even during those happy times when we were together, Dad was always drinking.

The 2010's brought a hip replacement surgery, which resulted in a forced sobriety. Which resulted in a rebellion from forced sobriety, which brought on him falling and breaking the leg his new hip was attached to. This brought on a secondary surgery, along with a stay in a retirement home to recover with another forced sobriety.

It starts to sound like a broken record from here. But to those involved, yes, it is a broken record. Yet, it's an important enough of a beat to keep trying to hear the rest of the song. And so you keep up with the hopeful days of sobriety that follow the remorse of drunken fall outs. And you 'encourage' (nag) with the earnest of an inner city school teacher in a crappy Lifetime movie. 

And then the things you remember. Somehow, they nearly all involve a drink in his hand, and yet he was almost always happy, and you look at your own life, and you wonder. And you look at his life, and you wonder ever more, was the happiness because of life or because alcohol made him happy? Did he reach the potential he'd hoped for?

There are so many stories in between that I don't know, and those that I do, yet they do not create a clear picture of this person. This person who was an enormous influence on my life, but was still mostly an absentee mystery.

I remember that Unchained Melody is one of his favorite songs and he wants me to play it on the piano at his funeral. I remember that he LOVED to dance (but he was always drinking when he loved it.) I remember that he was a great cook and he loved to feed people and entertain (but he was always drinking.) And I remember him going to work every day in shirts my Mom would iron while she watched taped episodes of All My Children and how he always sat in a rocking chair. Always. He's broken so many rocking chairs.

I recall my Grandparents, sitting in their rocking chairs too, drunk, smoking cigarettes and doing very little at all. I remember seeing my Grandma in the hospital with liver cancer. She insisted that someone ensure her pounds of makeup were on at all times, but the disgusting brown tubes flowing juices from her organs scared me, as did she, always. She was always late, always bought weird presents, let her dog poop on the floor in the house and had a naked statue garden and peacocks. She was not the cookie making Grandma from the other side of the family. She was the one who showed up unannounced with life-sized gummy rats for Jeff and I, driving a dented old limo and sporting Cruella Deville skunk hair. And she was my Father's Mom. In the objectivity of the recall, I can understand. I can fully get why he dove headlong into denial, all those years, while at the same time claiming he would never become them.

I can recall and understand, but his life doesn't look like theirs. It seems at some point he decided it had to, it must, I have to take that turn and become a puddle of a person who requires assistance to stay alive. The unconscious became a dragon that ate it's own tale to 're' find out what it already knew...

And it's terribly sad.

I hope that he finally wakes up in his 'nth' time in rehab and realizes that he could be truly happy, sober. With adorable Grandchildren who call him PAPA! And a family who admires his ability to be stable and calm. And just an all around great guy, who could help people, just by being him. I guess we'll see...