Towards A More Integrated Whole

Cycle 12 Day 3. April 7th, 01:50 in the night.So we are 9 hours and 10 minutes before the next infusion, the next descent into the underworld—the physical underworld that I will descend into for the twelfth time.You might wonder why I am awake in the middle of the night. Why I am not trying to fall back asleep.And I was wondering the same until a few seconds ago, when I realized that there is a clear pattern here.Ever since I started having to go through these aggressive treatments, my body has been telling me something. There has been this clear trend where my body has pushed me mentally.Actually, ever since fearing that I had contracted this disease, my body has kept telling me to relieve itself of baggage—mental baggage, psychological baggage.And I think it is a holistic way for my body to ask me to relieve myself of energy leakage.Energy Leakage and Psychological BaggageOne of the first such patterns I perceived was in terms of feeling that my energy systems were overburdened.Let’s compare me to a battery.The capacity of my battery was lower than I had been used to, and it was clear that some social interactions demanded energy from me, whereas other social interactions, despite me feeling quite weak, could actually charge me.And layered into that was a theme I have come across ever since my teenage years: to what degree each social interaction was veiled in make-believe, veiled in a facade, veiled in preconceptions about how that interaction should look.It became increasingly clear in this life situation that, for me personally, interactions that were more straightforward, more genuine—even if they sometimes caused discontent or surfaced differences between me and the person I was interacting with—tended to give me more energy than those interactions that were veiled in trying to please, trying to create an ease in the room.This was one of the first realizations. A realization that was not merely intellectual. It was a very deeply embodied realization about energy leakage caused by psychological processes.And throughout this journey, it has become clear that my body is kind of jerking itself into motion, calling on me to shed these psychological skins.I think it is a survival mechanism that my body is throwing at me—throwing at the psychological part of me—in order to sustain itself better, in order to save up as much energy as possible, to remove as much internal contradiction as possible, and in that way better shape my body into the vessel it needs to be in order to sustain itself throughout these very draining episodes of treatment and disease.There have been further iterations of this throughout these 19 months or so.And tonight, upon waking from sleep, I had an awakening mentally to one such aspect.The Trap of “What If”It is an aspect I have been brewing on for more or less my entire adult life.Of course, for long stretches of time it has just been below the surface—not something I have actively ruminated on, but it has been there.And you could summarize this internal friction as the what if.What if this had happened?What if, at a crossroads in the entangled mesh of possible strands of destiny, this had happened instead of what actually happened?The what-if scenario can lead you into a make-believe of what could have been.What could Victor Salander, who is currently speaking, have been if this one thing had happened at this point in time and space way back when, as opposed to the thing that actually happened?And for someone who is intellectually minded and analytical, it is very easy to weave a fantasy about how this alternate reality would have played out.But it is kind of missing the point.It is creating a very artificial reality where your internal wants, hopes, and wishes will be reflected in how you simulate that reality.So you are changing one parameter, and you are probably imagining that the direction of that changed parameter will be very influential on how that scenario plays out.But obviously, when you change one parameter in an alternative universe, everything else will change too.And who is to say that things would have turned out in a way that, post hoc, you would feel were more fortunate for you and your destiny?That might be the case.But no one will ever know.And you simulating that alternate reality will not make it come true, and it will not necessarily make you better understand the actual reality you are facing.Because you are simplifying, and you are allowing yourself to be led by your hope about what could have been.But what you have been facing is the reality here and now.And there has never been any past.There has only ever been the here and now.The Victor in a past here-and-now only had the tools at his disposal to make the choices he made, and to be led by the circumstances in the exact way that that past Victor was moved.So it all leads up to the present moment.And the present moment can only be informed by past moments to the extent that the Victor in the present moment has accumulated the tools at his disposal to act, to express himself, and to influence his reality in the here and now.The Body’s Call Before DescentCircling back to my initial statement about my body jerking me into motion and making me reflect on these things, my body seemingly felt it was imperative for me to wake up and make this recording in order to more fully internalize this realization.To more emphatically put a stamp on this impulse that came to me when I suddenly woke up tonight.And hopefully this will guide me into having my energy systems more attuned going into today’s treatment in around nine hours.This emotional alignment, this holistic alignment of my energy systems—having a more pure direction, having a more grounded outlook on my whole being—it will guide me forward.And it reminds me of how I have related to my life situation through the different elements, the traditional nature-belief division of energies in the world into basic elements.And I am reminded of the element of water.The Water and the OceanWater does not allow itself to be restricted by temporary barriers, by the landscape itself. It keeps flowing despite worldly angst, despite worldly obstacles. The water will find its way to flow down with gravity toward the ocean.And similar to water, I want to have all parts of myself flow past the obstacles they feel are there, to meet up in the ocean—which is me.The undivided self.The uncensored self.The unhindered self.Not unhindered in the sense of lacking worldly challenges, because being a part of the world means having worldly challenges.But in some sense, in terms of my energy systems, I want them to turn into water so that they can all mellow out, all harmonize.If my body is an orchestra, I want it to play the most beautiful symphony.I do not want the different instruments to think they are on some soloist career where they are going to play a solo for the rest of the world to see.No.Enough of that.The water needs to flow down into the ocean.That is where it harbors the most vast potential and the most grounded energy of all.The ocean will fill itself, and that is where the depth lies.That is where I will lie, brewing, tempering myself, making myself whole, getting back to the purity.Because the vastness of the ocean can contain impurities. It can sieve impurities from the earth. It can dilute.And with what I am going through physically, I need to be able to dilute a lot of different influences.The Rebellious Minority WithinFor one, the disease itself, which is living within me as a minority in this empire of my body.A very rebellious minority that thinks itself autonomous, thinks itself disconnected from the whole.But just as with this illusion of what-if-scenarioing that I have been processing here, these rebellious tumor cells are living under the illusion that they are not part of a whole.And this whole needs to reintegrate them.It needs to understand and be able to process this rebellious strain from within, the same way as I need to find a way to process and internalize any other internal contradiction, to harmonize my energy systems.Then we have the treatment, which is also causing aberrations and tainting my systems.It is very much putting a stress into the whole.And I need to be this ocean—not only to withstand, but to alchemize any poison that comes into this whole.I need to be the vast ocean.I need to be a vast expanse of alchemical fluids that can engulf any bad energy and metabolize it.And the way to do this is to find any means necessary to create such vastness inside of myself, including mental, psychological, spiritual, and physical processes that can aid in this.Every Victor Is DifferentHopefully this meditation on energy systems will have caused me to have a more aligned continuation of tonight’s sleep, for me to wake up to the challenges that I am to face tomorrow.Challenges that I have already faced numerous times, but challenges that will always be different each time.Even if I can mentally frame this as the twelfth time around, every time is different, every moment is different, every Victor is different.And that is a good thing.Especially given the insight that I need to keep shedding skins in order to continually have the new version of Victor withstand the new difficulties that are to come.So I vow to myself that I will keep moving in this direction.I will keep moving toward the ocean.Keep purifying myself.Keep searching for being more whole and less diluted in all aspects of life.Which includes a certain type of ruthlessness.A ruthlessness that might need to be intensified in some arenas.But in other arenas, it might require seclusion.Any strategy.Any means necessary.To purify my intent and my trajectory.My trend towards a more integrated whole.Amen.Let this be. 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