The process I used to explore this word can be found here: https://forum.desteni.org/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=3241#p18230
Self-Allocation
For me, I can remember developing a certain sense of apathy in my childhood in relation to my younger brother. He would go to extreme ends in attempting to gain my attention and eventually I learned to ‘block him out,’ so to speak. This sense of carelessness became a bit of an energetic fix of more-thanness whenever he would be acting sporadically and I would sit there, calm, grounded, having already decided I was going to ignore him. The more he thrashed, the better I felt, as I knew my lack of reaction was only winding him up more. Another memory I have related to the word apathy is when I received a compliment in high school from a popular girl who implied I just didn’t seem to care about things. I agreed with her assessment and felt a positive energy when she said I didn’t care. Thus, I have come over time to charge this word, apathy, with positive energy.
Dictionary Definition
1. lack of feeling or emotion : IMPASSIVENESS
// drug abuse leading to apathy and depression
2. lack of interest or concern: INDIFFERENCE
// political apathy
Sounding of the Word
A-path-I-see
Investigating the word
I have developed a positive polarity in association with the word apathy as I learned to express indifference to my little brother and my mother’s erratic behavior growing up. This continued into my school days as I often got in trouble for showing indifference to my teacher’s and my mother’s expectations of me. Once I started using drugs, I enjoyed the apathetic feeling I experienced while under their influence, as if the world and it’s problems didn’t matter. Eventually, I came to lack total interest or concern with anything except for drugs, as I saw the world as a hopeless place and had little interest in politics. This apathetic feeling I kept reaching for made me feel separate from the world around me, in a way that made me feel superior. Instead of learning to work with the system, I just rejected it, justifying my apathy with self-righteousness.
It’s interesting that the dictionary definition gave an example of drug abuse leading to apathy and depression, as that’s exactly what happened to me. I chased that feeling of apathy as separation and more-thanness in relation to the world around me, a feeling that drugs helped me to achieve. However, the combination of the drug abuse and re-charging the emotional experience of apathy over and over again led to depression, which to me is basically the experience of inescapable apathy. While getting high and feeling separate from the world and my own problems was originally a choice I made, once I became depressed, I was basically at the throes of my own negative emotions. Apathy came to me without choice, even when I wanted to do things that I enjoyed. Thus, by positively valuing apathy, I eventually created like this giant inescapable experience of apathy towards everyone and everything in this world. And I really got very deep into it! I ended up homeless, completely cut off from everyone in my past life, even my parents, just experiencing pain and indifference over and over again without even understanding how I had created this experience for myself nor how deeply embedded within it I truly was.
Within the word ‘apathy’, I see the sounds ‘A path i see’. Even still, to this day, I tend to react to my problems or difficult experiences within apathy, where I even have caught myself at times saying ‘I just don’t care’ when faced with an uncomfortable experience. What I have really thought / decided within myself even previous to this statement, however, is “I can’t do this.” Within the sounds I see in the word, what if, instead of thinking ‘I can’t do this’, and then justifying/trying to soothe myself within the maelstrom of negative emotions/the actual, real problem still existing in my world within the statement as energetic experience of “I don’t care”, I stopped, took a breath, slowed my world/reality down for a moment, and said “A path I see”.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think “I can’t do this” when confronted with a difficult situation/problem
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to then justify my reaction of “I can’t do this” with/within the energetic experience of “I don’t care about this”
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to then go into the experience of blame for experiencing the difficult situation in the first place
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the positive experience of apathy is the other side of the coin of the negative experience of blame/jealousy that other’s are not apparently forced to experience the same plight to which I have been subject, and that these two energetic experiences compliment/balance out each other to create and maintain the entire energetic personality activation when a difficult situation causes me to have the thought “I can’t do this”. Further, I forgive myself that I have not allowed myself to not realize that this personality experience as the oscillation between positive feeling and negative emotional energy is designed to keep me trapped in energy / distract me from the actual issue at hand that I am not moving myself to effectively find solutions for.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize, and understand that the entire energetic personality system is already activated as soon as I have the thought “I can’t do this” and by the time I notice that I am in positive feelings of apathy/negative feelings of blame/self-pity/comparison/blame = it is already too late.
When and as I see myself reacting within energy to a problem/situation within the positive feeling of apathy, I stop and I breathe. I see, realize and understand that apathy is the outflow of giving up, where I instead seek positive energetic fixes through distracting myself from the triggering issue/event that “I don’t care about”. I am not apathy, I am not an energy that keeps me distracted and limited in my reaction to a problem in my reality.
When and as I see myself reacting within energy to a problem/situation within the negative emotion of blame, I stop and I breathe. I see, realize, and understand that blame is used to justify my apathy so that I can keep going back and forth between positive and negative energetic experiences in my mind, not seeking solutions and acting in reality to create solutions. I am not blame. I created the problems that caused this Particular Mind Construct to activate, I am response-ABLE to fix them.
When and as I see myself react to a problem within the thought “I can’t do this,” I stop and I breathe. I see, realize, and understand that such a thought indicate I am in my Mind, experiencing energy resourced from the physical, essentially Self-Abuse. I am not the Mind. I can create and implement solutions to a problem as it is presented to me. I am not Self-Abuse.
I commit myself to create and implement solutions that are Best for All.
Did that title make you anxious?
