why?

Standing in the kitchen, looking at the clock (it's past midnight already, again, how did this happen?), sipping my cup of tea. Peace and quiet at last.

As the impressions of the day pass again before my eye, I am left with a feeling of sadness. It is due to a realization that crystallized in my mind today.

Homeschooling, music, this business I am working on; all this seemingly unrelated things eventually serve one purpose, underlying all others. I am reassembling myself, piece by piece.

In fact, for quite a few years now, I have been trying to fix myself. And before that, it took me a few years to realize that I am in a mess. I think I figured that one out by my mid-teenage years.

Don't get me wrong, I am a stable individual, never took Prozac or got counceling etc. In general, I appear to have it all together, and by conventional standards I probably do have it together indeed.

I am talking about something different. About seeing the flaws of your personality. Recognizing wrong choices made long time ago, and seeing how they still affect my life today. Feeling helpless in front of your limitations. An urgent desire to change the pattern, to break the intergenerational chain, if not for myself, then for my children and their children.

Kind of like what Castaneda calls recapitulation:

"In order to elicit a seeing response in me, don Juan utilized other foreign units of cognition. One of the most important units, he called the recapitulation, which consisted of a systematic scrutiny of one's life, segment by segment, an examination made not in the light of criticism or finding flaw, but in the light of an effort to understand one's life, and to change its course. Don Juan's claim was that once any practitioner has viewed his life in the detached manner that the recapitulation requires, there's no way to go back to the same life" (p. 4)

this is quoted from here .

see also this
:

"According to Don Juan, recapitulation is an exercise to recall, review, release, and recharge energy. It rids a person of assumptions and preconceptions. It frees locked energy and restores balance. The chief thing about recapitulation that seems to not be clearly stated by the so-called Toltec teachings, is that what it really does is increase awareness, and with awareness, the individual is able to employ will to choose to act differently "


Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of shutting myself in a hotel for a week, so that I could recapitulate undisturbed. So I basically fake it till I make it.

What I realized today is that for years now (YEARS!), I have has an inkling of what's necessary, but lacked awareness and understanding of how to accomplish it. Because of this, I was wobbling here and there aimlessly, like a blind kitten. And only now do I realize WHAT it is that I am doing, and WHY. And that in my last few choices and actions, there is a definite method, an attempt to correct precisely certain imbalances. With an understanding that once it's done (or is on the way), one has to be fluid and move on.

That's encouraging, I guess.

There is a lot of sadness though that comes with it. Why? Why does it have to be this way? Why am I so thick that it takes me forever to see things? And why did I get into this mess in the first place?

Russian literature always was concerned with the issues of moral and social justice. This led one critic to say that the two most important questions in Russian literature are: 'Whose fault is it?', and 'What to do?' (alluding to the two popular novels bearing these respective titles).

It is very tempting to concentrate on the first questions and blame parents, school, society, aliens, or whatever, for all your problems. This does help in understanding things but ultimately solves nothing.

It is much more important to concentrate on the second question. The answers to it aren't readily coming, but they do exist.

Signing off now, good night