Tag Archives: malcontents

Move Beyond Your Dissatisfaction with Life

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Dissatisfaction

Like a Dark King, Dissatisfaction looks upon your life with disdain, each imperfection adding to his pain.

There is a part of one’s self who is dissatisfied with life not being completely blissful and peaceful all the time. Whenever you’re happy, it’s that little voice that pops up and says, “Yeah, but…”

Imagine this dissatisfied side of you as a distinct individual. What are they like? Having this individual in your head can be why it’s so hard to be thankful for anything, because this side of one’s self speaks up and adds in why we shouldn’t be thankful. To Dissatisfaction, nothing is ever good enough, except the goal.

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My Interview with Worry

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Worry, one of the Malcontents

Yes, starting this, I am worried if I’ll say this right. Ah well, I’ll just write it.

Today I learned some more about another one of the Malcontents, “Worry”. This guy is always worrying about everything. Right now he’s worrying if that last sentence was phrased correctly. Or if this writing style I’m writing in right now will be good enough to present to people, or if it will be rejected.

The most important thing I found out about him was that he disliked uncertainty. Actually, I’m worried that my discoveries about him wouldn’t be as well received in this form, so let me do a numbered list (of the things I learned about worry):

  1. He dislikes uncertainty. He knows what it’s like to feel certain about something only to have it instantly crumble to bits. He’s worried about that kind of stuff.
  2. His role in the Malcontents is to alert the others to things they need to pay attention to. If Worry is getting so worked up about something, there might be something to it. Suspicion takes a keen interest in Worry’s worries.
  3. He wants to make sure others within me don’t get too certain about stuff ever, because then they might not pay attention to something that might fall apart at any moment. So he invites the very thing he doesn’t like.

I have begun to see a pattern. All of the malcontents seem to dislike something that’s a part of life, and through their dislike seek to avoid it. Stubborn Pride dislikes tragedy; Paranoia, death; Suspicion, immorality. Haven’t talked to Depression yet, but I have my suspicions on what I’ll find.

What makes me sad about this is that even though it’s obvious that the way these parts of myself work can be destructive, negative, over the top and fearful, I can’t help but agree with them – I don’t want tragedy, death, immorality, or uncertainty (at least not constant uncertainty) either. I feel as though I could try to give this side of me hell, to fight them with all of my being, but… it would just sneak back into me. After all, if I fight them fearing what they will do, that’s also a dislike for something. So, the “Inner explorer” in me, which is what I’m writing from now, will do nothing but gather more information, for now.

Is this the right thing? Will I look bad for posting such a conclusion? Perhaps. (There’s the worry talking.) But I feel like for now I will balance out that fearful side of myself with all of the strong, adventurous, fun-loving, courageous sides of me. And if any side of me harms any other side, I can respond, and if I can see it, I always will. That much I can do.

But, sorry, I’m talking too much about my own thoughts and conclusions. What’s something practical in this experience? I don’t know. I would recommend everyone get a sense of how this side of themselves operates. Why does your “worry” does what it does? What about the other malcontent, dissatisfied parts of you? Get a sense of what they’re doing too, so that when they do something damaging, you can stop them, question them, and force them back. Fear and practicality is not all there is to life, after all, no matter how good those ideas are at getting things done. Maybe some things aren’t worth being done.

Meeting Paranoia

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Paranoia, one of the Malcontents

Had a talk with another one of my malcontents today, who I call “paranoia”. Found out several things about this guy:

  1. His whole job, as he defines it, is to avoid death.
  2. Since there is no room for error in this job, he can get pretty stressed out.
  3. Also because of no room for error, he often extrapolates suspicions about what might possibly lead to death, and tries to make sure those paths are avoided. This can get pretty extreme, for example something like, “we’ve got to make sure we keep up good appearances to others so that we don’t get stigmatized and thus are more likely to fall into poverty and thus die early.”
  4. Ultimately, his purpose for starting this in the first place was to preserve life. By doing his job right, he can preserve the lives of those who enjoy life.
  5. By consequence, he is afraid of letting down those who enjoy life, for if they are ever endangered, he’s often the one to get the blame.

I finally got him to calm down a bit when I told him that if any of those he’s trying to protect ever did blame him, or ever did die – whatever might have happened is part of life – and he can rest in knowing that he did everything he knew to do possible. Anyone who still has a problem with this is being unfair to him. Maybe it’s a small change, but at least I got through to him. He was extremely paranoid, after all. And even if it’s a small voice within one’s self, that paranoia can make life pretty chaotic.

The Malcontents

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Tonight was the second time I’ve come across a group within my consciousness that I can only describe as “the malcontents”. These parts of you are involved in high-level decision making processes and try to make sure the world stays in balance, even if their methods aren’t always fair. Some of this group I identified: stubborn pride, worry and doubt, suspicion, depression, paranoia, and annoyance. All of these guys constantly look for things that might cause bad things to happen within your consciousness, and direct an effort to keep things on the right track, according to them.

Trouble is, as much as they might want a happy, joyful, fulfilled inner world, they are not happy joyful or fulfilled themselves. In fact, they’d rather be doing something else! But nothing else within the consciousness seems to have the patience to constantly watch for threats (like egotism, hatred, “evil”, etc.), so they do it out of a sense of obligation. They simply do not know of anything else that would want to do this task, and who could do it well. Not to mention their suspiciousness stops others from trying to take over their job also.
However, it’s important to know that this setup can piss some other things in you off – these malcontents don’t always take the fair and just approach. After all, they’re doing this whole thing out of fear, basically – love is much too random, non-practical, and unknown – as much as they’d LIKE to use it.

Somehow I feel this powerful position needs to be given to someone who WANTS it, and whose primary motivation isn’t fear, but love instead. But, we shall see.

The Rage of Emotion Restricted by Fear

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Restricting emotions and denying your feelings fills a very powerful spirit in you with rage. Ignored, this spirit will start creating nasty thoughts in your head to get your attention – look for the source of those thoughts to find this guy. If, when talking to him, you judge or condemn him because he’s so full of rage, then it will close up to you and stay hostile. If you are fair and look for WHY he’s acting like he is, you’ll see it’s because of injustice within yourself, and that this injustice has been going unchallenged and unrecognized – this probably has to do with why he was repressed and denied in the first place – it’s basically unjust imprisonment.

For me, mine was mad at some of the decision-makers, or rule-makers within my consciousness – they had chosen to imprison him out of fear that his power was not good for the kind of world these cowardly leaders wanted (within myself). He also noted that he relates best, in terms of fictional characters I’ve seen, to the Nine Tailed Fox in Naruto, although he wasn’t that either and didn’t like being described away like that – his spirit was too big and wild for that.

copyright Masashi Kishimoto

The Nine-tailed Fox, from Naruto

But anyway, as a precaution, I made sure to decide that I would not let any rageful thoughts of his direct my actions, but I would investigate what injustice and fearful restriction resided in me, so hopefully I could make my inner world a much more free, joyful place.