Yet another post that I forgot to publish. It had been hanging out in my drafts folder feeling all lonely and neglected. 

Me: What’s the reason or purpose or what’s the lesson to be learned from the epidemic of self-pity but also this sense of entitlement. I’m not sure if that’s related to self-pity or not like, “I feel sorry for myself so I’m owed.” But anyway, what about the epidemic of both of these today? So, let’s see: the reason and the lesson.

Erik: Damn. So what’s the reason for the epidemic of self-pity?

Me: Is there a lesson for us, blah, blah, blah.

(Long pause)

Jamie: He can take it in so many directions. I told him to take it in the big direction.

Me: Yeah, just the main one.

Erik: Big picture: Self-pity removes you from the concept that there is unity. Self-pity helps your play an independent victim role rather than a unity, connected role.

Me: So, it’s a form of separation.

Erik: Yeah. So it feeds the lesson on coming in, being really independent and finding your way to reach the whole. So a lot of people will come—a lot of spirits will come from Heaven to Earth to have this feeling of being separated so they can remember what it’s like to be a part of the whole. Well, the reason is that people are signing up for the concept of separation, the illusion of separation.

Me: Hmm!

Erik: It’s like you focus on the fact that you are an individual, and you’re not part of the whole. It’s a kind of self-punishment that you signed up for, that you agreed to, that you decided to believe in and manifest for yourself—that you’re separate. And the self-punishment part is, “I’ve done something good, so I deserve that reward” or “I’ve done something bad, so I should deny myself something.” It’s that whole judgment system.

Me: Ah, okay.

Erik: When you feel like you’re separate, you take on judgment. When you feel like you’re part of the whole, there’s no fucking need for judgment WHATSOEVER.

Jamie (chuckling): He just got kind of rowdy!

Me: So, what does a person do about that, or how can you help somebody who feels this way—this self-pity and sense of entitlement?

(Pause)

Jamie (to Erik): Not funny. Not a funny joke. That’s bad humor off the cliff. (To me) He said, “What, we just fucking let them die?”

Me (with a smidge of sarcasm): Oh, yeah. That is hilarious. Ha, ha, ha. You better keep your day job, Erik.

Jamie: Phew. Yeah.

Erik: What do you do about it? Most of the time, they don’t even think that they need help. They don’t want your help, right? But the ones who do, now that’s a different question. If they’re going to have this separation, and they know that it’s not right for them—that they’re stuck into a soup of self-pity—then they start looking for options, and through that motivation and that shift in their own energy, they can start seeing the whole picture. And really I say it all the time, but I would start teaching them how to communicate. I would send them to communication classes, not fucking therapy. We don’t need to analyze what’s wrong with them, and why they think that way and mend it and put a fucking Band-Aid on everything. You know what, people? If you’re reading this or listening—

Jamie laughs at what she’s about to translate.

Jamie (to Erik): Erik!

Erik: Wounds fucking heal without Band-Aids.

Me: Ah! I like that.

Erik: Get some dry air into that shit, and let it heal on its own. So, we don’t necessarily need the therapy to do it for us. We need to learn how to fucking communicate.

Me: And they need to learn to communicate with themselves. I think that’s one of the most important things. How would communicating with other people help?

Erik: Just like I mentioned before. I mentioned how people tend to learn more from other people’s mistakes. So if we learn to talk to somebody else, we can see where their weaknesses are and what they’re choosing to communicate and focus on and hold onto and lie about, then in return, our self-assessment starts to sharpen. We’ll look at ourselves and say, “What the fuck? That guy was doing this! What was I doing? All right. Well, now I can see what I was putting forward. Do I want that? Nah.” You become your own counselor. I think a lot of people have surrendered their counselor voice, that inner voice, and have adopted the asshole voice.

Me: Yeah. They use external beacons instead of internal ones to guide themselves. People rarely scan their own inner landscape. Well, people don’t realize that when they’re entitled to something they have to take away from somebody else, you know? Or do they?

Jamie: When they feel entitled?

Me: Then if you take something, you have to remove it from another person or plant or whatever.

Erik: Isn’t that funny? Because a lot of times entitlement, need and grief pacifiers are all the same fucking thing.

Me: Mm hm.

Pretending like I understand here. Right.

Erik: With entitlement, you have a sense of confidence, direction, a bigger voice, you know like, “Hey, that’s mine!”

Me: Yes.

Erik: When you need something, you feel like you need it whether it’s a truth or not. You have this sense that you’re lacking it so you’re going to fight to get it. You may not come with the confidence, though. And then with the grief pacifier, you’re just trying to use an external beacon, Mom, to put onto the body, and you think that you have to have it to be happy.

Me: Mm hm.

Erik: Like you’re putting all the focus and all the answers outside of you, and you’re going to fight to collect it and bring it home.

Me: Can you give me some examples of all these things? Let’s start with the grief pacifier. Is it from any loss, losing your job, a loved one…?

Erik: Totally. Totally. Yeah, grief, it doesn’t mean the death of a person necessarily. You grieve over a lost relationship.

Me: Yeah.

Erik: All right. Let’s take two people who were madly in love, but now they fell out of love, and they’re getting a divorce. In the divorce process, one is being very mean about it, and the other one is just sobbing, because they’re just so devastated that the relationship’s fallen apart. But that one who’s sobbing has decided that there’s no way that she can have the life that she wanted without him, so she needs all the money.

Me: Oh, okay.

Erik: And so that’s the external thing. She starts focusing on the divorce, but just about the money. “I don’t care about anything else. I just need the money so that I can live the life that I need,” which is total fucking bullshit. It’s an external concept that they created for themselves and signed up for that said, “That’s going to be a Band-Aid for my breaking heart, and if I get it, I will win, and I will feel great.” But there’s really no fucking truth in it whatsoever. They created it themselves.

Me: I bet it’s often a lesson in empowerment maybe from past lives when they didn’t have power.

Erik: True that.

Me: And the other two examples? I can’t even remember what they were!

Erik: Entitlement.

Me: Oh yeah.

Erik: Entitlement. That usually comes with a cockiness or confidence.

Me: Mm hm.

Erik: You know, where they come into, say—

Me: Like anger?

Erik: Yeah. It’s driven by something a little raw. It lacks compassion. It really does. They’re not able to see a third perspective or even a second perspective. They can only look through their own eyes. Then they see that they want that job position over there, because they’ve done all of the required steps, therefore it belongs to them. Then they come in with a pitch saying, “You don’t need to hire an outside source. That belongs to me. I deserve that.” And they force themselves. They force themselves. “That’s mine. I’m doing this. I have the know-how.” Or, they could use, “I was the victim. I was the one who was injured, so I deserve that.”

Me: Okay. Interesting.

Erik: That’s entitlement. The other one that we talked about was being needy. That can be wrapped around in so many different ways. Like, let’s take a person who always feels like they see the world full of hope. “Everything’s going to be rosy. Everything’s going to be great.” But no matter how hopeful they see their surroundings, they’re still, you know, stuck in shit. Everything seems to go wrong. So, they’ll find someone—a friend, a lover, someone in their life who can feed them what they need and they can still stay stuck and still tell a brave story.,

Me: Ah!

Erik: They’ll fight to find that person to keep them stuck because it’s part of their need.,

Me: Interesting. Anything else on self-pity and entitlement?

Erik: No, but I really wish there was a fairy that could just come to Earth with a tiny ass wand and just bop people on the head—

Jamie (to Erik, laughing): Oh, Erik!

Erik: —and just get them to let go of their shit.

Me: Well, you might need a cattle prod instead. An electric one.

Jamie bursts out in laughter.

Jamie: He likes that idea better!

Me: Get ‘em back in line!

Of course we’re all teasing, because we know that we’re guided only from within, and never from an external force like a fairy or a cowboy.

Erik: I just can’t understand why people want to make things difficult. I don’t know why they want to fight so much.

Me: I know.

Of course he was there once. How little we forget.

Erik: Even most of the therapy—and forgive me if I’m, you know, hurting your feelings, but most of the therapy out there instigates and internal fight. There are some great therapists out there, though.

Me: Well, give me an example of an internal fight that’s caused by a therapist.

Erik: Oh, you know, we’re speaking in general, because not every psychotherapist or psychologist is this way.

Me: Oh yeah. Of course.

Erik: Everybody has their own personalities, but the ones that sit down and ask you the questions and then give you the labels. “Oh, I see that you are dut, dut, dut, and this is how we handle that. So we’re going to look now at how your father treated you, and these are the reasons why you feel the way you feel. It’s all because of what your father did.”

Me: Ah, I see.

Erik: It’s like giving validation when validation’s not even needed, putting Band-Aids on things that don’t even need fucking Band-Aid at all!

(Long Pause)

Me: Is that it?

Erik: Yeah. Ding.

Me: Ding!