Why does someone stay in an abusive relationship? Why are we stuck with life that we know makes us feel bad? Why do we feel even more pain when we try to get rid of the pain? Why does it hurt so much to try to change, even when we know that change is the best possible option?
Spiritual metamorphosis is not a nice thing.
When I talk about Chrysalis, referring to an individual’s change, I’m not talking about any neat little lifestyle change. Chrysalis is about preparing the Chrysalis magician for the awakening. It could be described as part of a longer-term initiation phase of one’s life.
Chrysalis is not just about physical acts. It’s not just about losing a lot of weight or getting a house. It is about mental reconstruction. Physical deeds should be the consequences of these mental deeds, or alternatively, the concrete acts should be able to trigger some mental processes that will serve the change. In order to have a completely different life, a lot of things need to fundamentally change. Above all, yourself.
The words change, transformation, and metamorphosis have different meanings. Change is a loose term that refers to something becoming something else. Transformation has a bit more precise nuance, as it means that something or someone changes holistically – especially externally – and usually in a better direction. Metamorphosis, in turn, refers to a series of events that result in a partial or complete deformation. When the egg turns to a caterpillar, the caterpillar becomes a chrysalis, and the chrysalis transforms into a butterfly, this whole cycle is called metamorphosis.
The phenomenon experienced in the Temple of Chrysalis is a spiritual and mental metamorphosis. Things that happen externally, such as changing the appearance, often are symbols of what is going on inside us. In Temple of Chrysalis’s metamorphosis, one does not seek just a more comfortable life, but a total reconstruction of your ways of thinking. In the kind of way that allows man to operate on many different levels, in different realities. So that the birch branch ceases to be just a birch branch. It becomes a magical formation of fractals where you can outline what the birch branch is concretely, what it is at the cellular level, what it is symbolically, what it is magically, and what the birch branch’s reality is.
“When you are in the throes of pain wondering if this makes any sense: yes. It does. If not, change the way you carry out your metamorphosis.”
For a person to begin to operate holistically, he or she must dismantle, in his or her opinion, various blocks that prevent the expansion of understanding. When the real Chrysalis begins, relationships fall, jobs are being left, landscapes change, bridges burn, and handkerchiefs wear out. That is the nature of Chrysalis.
It’s pretty damn stressful. You need to kill something from your past. You need to change your opinions and meet the mistakes that you have made. You will admit to yourself how wrong you were about so many things. You may need to realize that unpleasant things must be done if you want to feel good. You might even realize that what you have been taught to believe is right… is only “right” because someone told you so.
No wonder our systems get so overheated. It’s destroying and rebuilding of ego to go through Chrysalis. That stuff doesn’t really feel like some nice spa holiday. That is why at first you must fix your base and make sure that the basics of life are in order. First, you learn to sleep, eat, exercise, and put that phone away. Because if you can’t control yourself to put your phone away and go to bed on time, how can you do anything more challenging? There isn’t much room for spiritual transformation, if you haven’t developed willpower. Metamorphosis requires strength, energy, stress tolerance, and willpower. The Chrysalid should reach for the state where he/she is capable of rising on top of the trivial challenges.
“Because after you have been mistreated for so long, even the smallest gesture of love suddenly feels ecstatic. If you have to eat only potatoes every day, it feels incredible when you get a full meal. You feel grateful. The joy and relief are so big that we forget that usually, people should get a full meal every day.”
People don’t make progress because they are so focused on everything that doesn’t work instead of what is it that they want. Whining is the easy solution, because it feels as if we are doing something. When we actually aren’t. Don’t get me wrong. It is a different thing to go through emotions. Every now and then you need to be able to say “Shitfuckdick I am so angry today!” But when we are constantly looking for validation to stay where we are, it becomes an obstacle. It’s like seeking for the justification for the thought “There is nothing I can do.”
But that’s a lie. There is almost always something you can do. Now someone comes and says “But I can’t just do X! It is way too much work. You can’t just assume that someone can do it. You can’t have that high expectations.”
Aaaand that kind of thinking is what separates successful people from the not so successful.
The vital thing to know is that mental suffering is normal. It’s like chemotherapy, where harmful cancer cells are killed. When you are in the throes of pain, wondering if this makes any sense: yes. It does. If not, change the way you carry out your metamorphosis.
What if it starts to feel that every time we try to escape the misery of life, we somehow always end up back to square one? If the current life is so harmful, why does it hurt to let go?
Because misery is the narcissistic companion who you are addicted to. And this abusive companion pushes all the chemical buttons to make you stay.
Why are we addicted to misery?
We have an unfortunate way of clinging to the walls of our minds. We become attached to things that are hurtful to us. Sometimes the factors that hold us back or prevent us from living our dream life are those from which we also get joy or security. Such as a relationship, job, or emotional eating. Yeah, we are a bit twisted like that. But to quote my Chrysalid Tiseyo: “Isssoookeeei”. Because when we understand that this is happening, we can do something about it.
Then why? Why do we stay in that troubled relationship, even though mostly we feel numb, average, dissatisfied, or even violated and abused? The keyword is “mostly.” Do you know why narcissists are so addictive? Because after you have been mistreated for so long, even the smallest gesture of love suddenly feels ecstatic. If you have to eat only potatoes every day, it feels incredible when you get a full meal. You feel grateful. The joy and relief are so big that we forget that usually, people should get a full meal every day.
If we get this rewarding joy at least occasionally, we may experience so-called intermittent reinforcement. Intermittent reinforcement is a conditioning schedule in which a reward (well, it can also be punishment) is not administered every time the desired response is performed. So you don’t know if you get rewarded, even if you did the right thing. But you always know that you might! This kind of irregular rewarding is particularly effective, for example, in causing addiction.
It’s not only manipulative relationships that make you addicted with intermittent reinforcement. And overall, many ways of reinforcement happen in several areas in our life, constantly. (So no need to get all neurotic about whether your spouse is using intermittent reinforcement, when only now and then bringing flowers, and always a different bush. That’s not the purpose here.) A straightforward example of how this works is one of the most known addictions out there.
Gambling.
Alleydog.com: Psychology student's best friend"There is an increased likelihood the desired behavior will continue with intermittent reinforcement conditioning and the behavior lasts longer than continuous reinforcement. Gambling is an example of intermittent reinforcement. You don't win every time or win the same amount when using a slot machine- this wouldn't be exciting or fun. The reinforcement is intermittent and causes a positive and euphoric response in the brain that in some circumstances can lead to gambling addiction."
This addiction behavior, in turn, is due to dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is very familiar to me as a community manager. Part of my job is to know how to get your dopamines to flow. If you are at our Discord server, do you ever get the feeling that you need to return, check the channels and say at least something? There is nothing wrong with you. It is me doing my job. And me knowing how to do my job means that it is elementary for me to see how these addictions can also be created outside the Internet.
Despite the misconceptions, dopamine does not hit you after being rewarded. But dopamine makes us repeat the kind of behavior which may lead to a reward. Dopamine is meant to teach you to do things that make life easier. However, this system is quite flawed because the human went to piss on his own ankle by inventing social media, among other things. Dopamine seeks the best way to learn, and it usually means the fastest way. And guess what happens to your potential addiction, when just one push of a button is enough to give a quick, noticeable reward? Yup. That’s right. The simplicity and easy solutions are where dopamine really starts to go awry.
What does this have to do with your misery?
An unhappy life is like a Facebook feed. You scroll and scroll it down because you remember seeing someone posting something nice a while ago. Maybe soon you’ll find another nice post again! You may not realize that this “hunt of the next nice post” is happening, but your brain does. You keep scrolling all the rubbish that you don’t even care about. Just when you start to think that hey, there’s no point in scrolling, and maybe you should do something else, your feed rewards you with a cute cat video. “Awww!”
The video feeds your rewarding system for a minute so wonderfully that after that, you continue to scroll. You just had a reward, so maybe there is another reward to be found soon. You just don’t know if you find it in 5 minutes or 30 minutes.
And scrolling is effortless. Easier than studying at least. Just like staying in misery is easier than doing something to stop the suffering. Stationary is safe. No need to do anything. No need to face everything. You can just be. No risk of conflict or anything nasty like that. One can just safely scroll through life.
This kind of thinking is happening in the background when your friend tells you that maybe you should quit your long-term job where you constantly get exhausted and are not happy, and you say, “Yeah, but I do have fun sometimes…”. Or, when your friends worry about your controlling companion when you two are getting back together after the fifth serious break-up attempt – and you defend: “Yeaaah, but he/she does allow me to do my own things every now and then… it is just about compromises. This time it will work!”
Yup. Just keep scrolling.
Maybe there is a new cat video coming at some point.
What does the addiction to misery have in common with Stockholm Syndrome?
“But Luminary, it is not so easy!” Nope, it is not. I know, love. There are always things that affect to our situation. For more than six years I was in an abusive relationship. Even though I realized that life might have something better to offer, I didn’t really believe it because I had no experience with it. Because of the controlling relationship, I was also unable to form many friendships. This isolation left very few options for my human need to cling and focus on something. So all my love was pushed into one direction. The same that killed my confidence, slaughtered my identity, made me neurotic and also hurt me physically.
The constant pain of one’s current state of misery is a bit like Stockholm Syndrome. The state you’ve become accustomed to is like your capturer of whom you have, in a twisted way, become fond of.
One of the psychological reasons for the emergence of Stockholm Syndrome is the isolated state of the captured. Only the input of your kidnapper is available. The same could be thought about the pain you are stuck with. If your mind is isolated from other realities, you will not be as able to perceive what other possibilities you have. You may subconsciously even imagine you deserve your low status. Your mind feeds you with vicious propaganda that your misery is better and that you would not be able to change anyway. That is why the Temple of Chrysalis relies so much on different realities as well as exercising the flexibility of the mind. We do it to break these labels and chains.
“Yup. Just keep scrolling. Maybe there’s a new cat video coming soon.”
You may get stuck in an unfavorable situation because your reward system has gotten skewed. In the relationship that I mentioned, I learned that the greatest feelings of love always followed a violent or aggressive episode. This, of course, was because my suddenly apologetic partner bombarded me with love whenever he was about to lose me. When a person lives in an unfavorable state and experiences a lot of evil, the surprising expression of love feels immensely rewarding. It’s like a jackpot.
What this caused in me was the entanglement of love …with the feeling of fear. I was very young when this happened. In critical age. I grew up to it.
Even today, I can’t properly fall in love before I’m scared.
But I’m fighting it.
What can be done about this, then?
The most important thing is just to become completely conscious and aware of yourself and your ways of operating. You can start practicing your awareness by becoming aware of your own social media behavior or smartphone addiction. From that, you can proceed to observe also other patterns that you tend to repeat.
Whenever you are about to get drained back to your old life, recall all the situations where the old life has hurt you. And visualize all your dreams and how amazing it will feel when you have your wonderful, new life and freedom. Remember that nobody else can truly make you happy. Only you, yourself. Surely, a person can be your tool. But that’s when you are just an emotional vampire, sucking your needs from the other person. If your happiness is based on expectations given to someone else to fulfill, you will easily become a prisoner. And you might get fucked up really bad.
Even today when someone asks me why did I stay in the abusive relationship, I feel the weirdest flow inside me. It is hard to describe. Like something triggered some kind of a hypnosis that makes me say: “But I was really annoying and pathetic so I guess I deserved it all…”
“Pathetic”. One of his favorite words to use about me when he was angry. If a young girl came to me and told me she deserved to be hit because she was pathetic, I might be a bit enraged.
You see. I am not kicking your butt because I would think it’s somehow easy. I am kicking your butt because I AM that girl who used to think she deserved the abuse and violence. And I know now I did not deserve it. And YOU don’t deserve it. You deserve everything that you desire and are ready to work for.
Tempted to give up
At this point in writing this article, I get a call from the Finnish ELY Center. I have applied for corona-related support money for my company – the same that hosts this site – because the corona situation has absorbed a large part of my income. I have waited for the decision for a month and my application was praised by professionals. Everyone was sure it would go through.
It did not.
And not even because I had done something wrong. But because the center has been communicating inadequately: the application said the support would be given to a company of 1-5 people. I am the only worker of my limited company. The funds were meant, for example, to help to hire someone. “Yeah, but it kind of means an employee. In addition to the entrepreneur. So in a way, it’s 2-6 and not 1-5. Unfortunately, you are not eligible for this support. ”
This means a loss of EUR 86 000. And it gives a bitch slap to my face that my company is, frankly, screwed.
“It is completely fine to give up on harmful things. But when it comes to building your new life, giving up means that you, completely yourself, with your own actions, destroy all the remaining possibilities that you might have had. ”
My mind feels blurry when the center representative spends 6 minutes on her monologue, trying to give mostly to herself a justification of why the application cannot be accepted. I start feeling sick. All the effort. All the wait. I did everything I could. The call ends and the carpet is pulled from underneath.
I want to throw my laptop to the wall. I want to end this here. I want to stop writing this article and curl up crying in the corner of the couch. Except I don’t have even a couch. My nose, swollen from crying, drains all the way to my chin. I even feel tempted to succumb to my old self-destruction and pull my wrists open.
This is how much the old life and old thinking patterns attract us.
Like a martyr, I am tempted to seek justification to return to easy misery, where I can go on autopilot like a ruminating cow, grinding grass. Fortunately, I recognize this behavior. Does identification make it easier? Of course not yet. I would like to show the middle finger to this counseling version of myself and throw a tantrum. Fuck you, Ida.
But I also recognize this. It’s part of the thing. During the earlier similar situations I’ve already learned that even if it does not ease the pain now, it will facilitate progression. The point is to allow yourself to feel how you feel, without slipping back. To rise above the unnecessarily harsh emotional reaction that succumbs from the old you. Awareness helps you take just two steps back, instead of ten.
It is worth giving up only when opportunities no longer exist or when they are no longer worth achieving. It is completely fine to give up on harmful things. But when it comes to building your new life, giving up means that you, completely yourself, with your own actions, destroy all the remaining possibilities that you might have had.
What are the benefits of pain
I am a firm believer in focusing on the future. Every time I forget this and drown back to my negative thinking, things tend to explode. Yeah, I’m a pretty strong reality shaper like that. So whenever the spiritual people are talking about positive thinking (–even though sometimes you feel that they must be drugged to be that docile–) they do have a point. And it’s not even only the law of attraction – it is the basic rule of magic. However, I also believe that it’s way more complicated than that. Negative emotions are there for a reason. When I say focus on your dreams and act as if they were true, I don’t mean that you are supposed to suppress you feelings or ignore them. I mean that you need to shift your “giving shits” to a new direction.
Then why? Why do I think pain and misery can also be a good thing?
Pain can activate you if you don’t freeze.
Pain helps you to form your own boundaries. You will learn to identify your boundaries and you can decide whether to expand them or erect walls.
Pain breaks. But something new is being built from the breakup.
Pain protects. It is the defense mechanism of your body and mind. It warns you, sometimes a little too much. It is sometimes like a hypersensitive fire alarm. You just need to learn to tune it to the right level.
Pain inspires. Great art is born of great pain. Some of the most touching songs are made of pain.
When harnessed right, pain also brings change. And this the biggest benefit of pain. There is a lot of power in it. It drives us away from itself. The challenge comes from the fact that before you can overcome pain, overcoming itself is usually painful. A bit like a hill that you try to climb over. The closer you get to the high escalation point, the bigger the demanded effort and the sharper the pain. When you reach the top of the hill, the most painful point of your change, you have two directions: either give up and fall backward – or survive over the escalation point, suddenly noticing that you are sliding forward with the rapid speed of progress.
Or, if you enjoy video games, just think about the last levels. The difficulty increases, your frustration grows, and more monsters are appearing. It is an indicator that you are going in the right direction. There might even be the ultimate boss battle. This battle you must now win.
Change your tears into a passionate battle cry. And when you are ready to let go of the pain, do it.
How to cope with the pain of metamorphosis in Chrysalis?
- Be aware that pain is part of the process.
- Get inspired by the pain: write and draw it on paper. Make a song. Or do something crazy. This cult was born from pain!
- Recognize whether your pain is an indicator of direction – or is it the old habits trying to make you stay in your bittersweet addiction of misery.
- Enjoy breaking up and let Actias support you towards spirituality. Getting broken eventually means reconstruction. But you have got to work for it.
- Sit down and talk to Trogonoptera. Why am I suffering? What does suffering serve? Why is this pain happening right now? Is my pain commensurate with the situation?
- Ask yourself: how do you see the situation? How do you feel and think? What do you believe needs to happen next?
- Record you talking to yourself. Using your stream of consciousness, speak out loud everything that comes to your mind. Don’t censor. Bring it on. No one will hear what you say. Who knows. Maybe you will find something new.
- The very moment when you have strength to focus on your future and good things instead of all the bad, do that. Stop wasting resources on suffering (unless you are a masochist). Use them for the future.
- Do rituals. Such as Tears of Trogonoptera (Members)
“This pain is often a withdrawal symptom. And the withdrawal symptom means that you are starting to cure.”
Pain is necessary on your path towards Imago. An unhappy and dissatisfied person must undergo a real mental and possibly physical change in order to turn their lives into something new. Only after getting rid of what has been a nuisance to you, weaving the traps of malice to keep you trapped, will you be able to be reborn. If you get attracted by a few tiny dewdrops on a spider web, you’ll fly into the web over and over again. One day, the spider might no longer let you go.
When you feel pain, you always know that something is happening. If you are trying to leave behind something toxic in your life, and it hurts, try to breathe and relax and keep in mind that this is your addiction talking. This pain is often a withdrawal symptom. And the withdrawal symptom means that you are starting to cure.
One might wonder, why don’t I go to individuals and tell these same things to them. Why don’t I just go there and advice them personally to leave their old life, unless it’s requested?
Because I believe that the true empowering experience happens when you do these discoveries yourself. I can give a general kick to the butt to make people question their life. But it is you, yourself, who makes the decisions. That is the first step towards higher levels life.
“Stars are only visible in darkness
Fear is ever-changing and evolving
And I, I can poison the skies
And I, I feel so alive
King is crown, it’s do or die
Nobody can save you now
The only sound
It’s the battle cry”
2 Comments
The pain of change-post is one of the best descriptions about addictive codependent/narcissist relationship and healing from it that I have ever read. Reinventing yourself is possible when you are willing to listen what your pain has to say. Stop abandoning yourself.
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