“re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul”
walt whitman
here’s a feeling i was struggling with this week.. i felt bullied by a woman…
bullied by a woman… bullied by a woman….(echo echo echo)
not a new feeling for me, not unfamiliar
this woman was in a position to mentor or guide or at least tolerate me … i won’t go into details… let’s just say that i wanted her love and guidance and what i got was control and condescension
women SOMETIMES treat each other this way when they’re on a team or in a group. women in a position to help other women, to mentor them, bring them into a fold… in my experience these women SOMETIMES compete instead of nurture, backbite instead of mentor, and bolster their self esteem by holding a teammate’s head under water
i perceived that this was happening to me this week and it bummed me out
i recognize that “bummed out” is not a scientific-sounding, sophisticated label for a feeling
obviously the feeling is more complex than that
what’s the right word for the feeling?… doesn’t matter…. that’s not the point… the point is….
think about it..
feelings are DOMINANT over mankind.
do emotions control us or do we control them? they are also UNIVERSAL.
they hover around in the human body, in every human body. they are forces as relevant as gravitation and thermodynamics and they are also evolving
back to this feeling i had toward the woman in my study group
it was HISTORICAL
in the sense that i have been dealing with this feeling my whole life
literally, it started with my older sister in the damn crib, intensified with Julie in first grade, blossomed with Sally in fourth grade, transmogrified into physical violence in 6th and 7th grade with Laura, flared huge in eighth grade when I was bullied mercilessly by ALL MY BEST FRIENDS… i could really go on and on. It’s not like good things haven’t happened to me. It’s not like women have NEVER mentored me or helped me grow and succeed. But… I was married to a well-liked male professional for many years. I know what it looks like when men bring other men onto a team and they all rise together to success within a chain of command. That has not been my experience working with women.
a note on this… I subscribe to a “spiritual belief system” that suggests the following:
–if I keep running into this situation with women, then I am bringing it into my life with my own energy and subconscious programming
–if i am continually attracting controlling, beautiful perfectionists who smile to themselves when I talk, and who often have a beautiful lackie, then i am attracting these people by-accident-on-purpose
OR i am attracted to them so i go find them and pull them in
i am definitely, at the very least, letting these women “get to me”
WHY? because there must be some kind of PAY OFF in it for me
ah there it is again…
the payoff!
i am talking about the flip side of the “law of attraction,”
this isn’t the part where you attract a million dollars, this is the part where you accidentally attract the opposite of a million dollars… this is when you want something so much you somehow raise the demon energy of what you don’t want
every time, darling
in fact, i was thinking about it, and even with all the lockdown and isolation i can name four different examples of this exact dynamic going on in my life RIGHT NOW. a pair of beautiful or at least good-looking women bullying me (in my opinion) in a group setting. so, obviously i am creating it. it can’t be a coincidence.
so this feeling, what is it exactly…
women are bitches
that’s not a feeling, try again
women are stone-cold bitches
that’s not a feeling try again
umm..
i am scared of women.
is it fear?
women have betrayed me.
i feel betrayed. i am scared of more betrayal. i hate betrayal.
yeah that’s it i am scared so i get angry
scared that a woman is going to stop me from getting the thing that i want
*cue caveman music
HISTORICAL feelings connected to BETRAYAL by women.
What the hell? Isn’t it suspicious that feelings stay constant and return again and again to the same consciousness (in this case, mine). And is it the same for all of us? The feeling of betrayal. I think it must be because we all know what I am talking about right now. Or we think we do.
Et tu Brute, etc etc
“I wish to discuss the formula for gravitational energy near the surface of the Earth. And I wish to derive this formula in a way which has nothing to do with history but is simply a line of reasoning invented for this particular lecture to give you an illustration of the remarkable fact that a great deal about nature can be extracted from a few facts and close reasoning. It is an illustration of the kind of work theoretical physicists become involved in.”
Richard P. Feynman, Six Easy Pieces, Ch. 4, p. 72
I am a theoretical physicist. G’day mum.
