As I work to catalog my various interests—the list is getting close to 800 but why does that number seem so small??—I keep coming to this weird thought.

Some of those interests are more disturbing AND more reliably interesting than others. Interesting in the sense that I keep coming back to them, so they must be “reliably interesting” or I wouldn’t do that.

Disturbing stuff that symbolizes disturbing stuff, is often very interesting to me.

From this I can derive the thought-model that I have got some more work to do on myself.

Just kidding, that sentence was a bit tongue in cheek. And not really such a great thought model.

What I was GOING to say, is: I can derive the thought-model that there are reliable anti-patterns which emerge in my life that are worth giving specific, long-term attention.

Let’s take the Soviet Union, for Example

Yes, let’s take the Soviet Union for example.

I once spent 30 years in a Soviet Prison. I was about to write a book bearing this title.

Both of these statements are true.

The first statement, metaphorically VERY true, in some way I couldn’t penetrate at the time. (If you spend a lot of time tracking your intuition, you know what I mean here)

The second statement, literally also very true. I had it in me to write this book. Rationally it made no sense, but I’m not rational; even Jung would agree and neither one of us would find this by itself to be any kind of big problem.

The more I wrote and pondered about the Soviet Union, the more I realized that yet again, here’s yet another archetype of extremes in which one puts aside one’s personal pleasure to advance the cause of the group in a rather primitive, mechanistic way.

IOW, I wasn’t really putting my own interests first and it was slowly killing me. I put this 2 and 2 together and made 4 by observing the circumstances in which this interest raised itself—the circumstances were always this sort of thing: I’m sacrificing myself for what I subjectively feel is some greater cause, and it’s kind of harmful and bad for me, and not that healthy, and it probably needs to stop.

So the inner picture-painter started to paint SOVIET IMAGERY all over the walls, possibly mocking me.

(Did anyone ever suggest that our subconscious processes would occasionally try to mock us? I think that’s a fun and kind of charming and often accurate little irritation of a thought model)

And one day I realized I had spent 30 years in Soviet prison. Then I realized the doors were open; I could have left at any time.

Why I didn’t leave

I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know that I needed to.

I just. Didn’t. Know.

It’s this weird binary situation—either you know the signals that bubble up from within, or you don’t. It’s stunning now to think about it: What if I had missed that damn boat?

Do you see Jordan Peterson collecting Soviet memorabilia? I see a Ni-dom who has spent their last Ni-dime on self-sacrifice for the greater good. I really admit that I do see that. It’s troubling in a lot of ways. I see a lot of us Ni-doms who get into this issue with boundaries, we give way too much of ourselves away.

Personally, with every day that this symbolism comes up for me, I am running experiments because I am directly concerned that if I don’t, my health is at risk. Based on past experiences.

Each experiment is really stupid and innocent. It starts with this thought—“I don’t know what I would do outside of prison. Maybe let’s head off that way and see what happens.”

I must admit that, connected to this Soviet imagery, connected to this prison, is the core concept of,

I don’t know what I like, or who I am, or what interests me.

I don’t even know that I enjoy the freedom, or what it means to enjoy it.

But so far, I seem healthier, the more I seek it. Moving away from prison is more healthy.

Going back in is VERY interesting and deep as well. But, now more than ever, troublingly so.

It’s much the same with many other interests.

You’d think this winding internal development was pretty jacked up,

Or at least, I would have, in my past-shoes,

but I’ve coached INTJ…millionaires?

“No…keep going up,”

OK—zillionaires, whatever—who are JUST starting to struggle with this question, and they are very, very worried. The economic robot side is frantically searching for some connection with a possibly-withered self. Which we all intuitively understand, rich or poor, at a cultural level we get it—this is some kind of energy source of which we’ve deprived ourselves.

Filed in: Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Energy /120/