confidential boosting

These realizations about my mental fluxuations - and the consequent philosophies I develop from them - are evidence of human nature and the natural process. That is my declaration, and I make it against misconceptions that depression and itrospection are counterproductive and a negative indicator. I also make this declaration against my own inability to accept my "personal journaey"... and I blame this inability on society.

Our society still recognizes "coming of age", but it hardly supports spiritual journies. The journies seen in Native American culture where a young man purges himself with pain and deprivation. The journies where self-flagelation is not medicated but instead respected.

The original fault of society, though, is that it dose not prepare a young person to anticipate their need for spiritual discovery. And I'm not talking about God.

I know GOD... but it's as though in an attempt to irradicate anything pertaining to "god" society has in many ways irradicated people's sense of an individual spirit which deserves discovery and development... regardless of God.

I am talking about the resentment I felt towards my body... the hours of walking with no food... the gnawing of flesh from inside my mouth... the pilgrimages.

Society has cultivated no sanctity for this pilgrimage, but has instead polished the concept into a concise movie-length bout with self-doubt which is resolved neatly with a surge of confidence and a loss of virginity.

This is a story we all manage to relate to, so that we then expect even less (or not at all) a more desperate search for our purpose in life.

But society clings to its story and it rejects people's individual journey. They hospitalize and medicate instead of honoring and supporting.

This journey is not uncommon in cloistered environments, though. Monasteries and militaries and universities. But this corporate "hazing" is not what I specifically speak of. I believe that in all three of the above environments a "personal journey" is supported in the event that journey is restricted to developing a character respective to the community (e.g. piety in the monastery).

But for the individual - separate from the entire world - this journey is viewed as extinct, and this is a shame.

But in my life I am learning to honor my Journey. To respect my Search. To stop wondering if I'm a freak or if I need a doctor. Evidence shows how "functioning" I am...

But I know that changes began taking place two years ago and that I am on a journey right now and at the end I will understand my purpose (not to be read "career" or even "calling"; I know that... I mean the purpose of my Michaela-ness within that calling).