October 16th, 2020

deserve is broken

• Written to a friend October 16th, 2020, & anonymized:
  • I have often found it helpful, I guess kinda similarly to the "Nothing is Behind" thing although I hadn't made that connection until this moment, to completely hit reset on the entire idea of "deserve", and feel into what it's like to live in a world where nobody deserves anything because "deserving" is a confused concept like phlogiston.
  • Importantly, this viewpoint is compatible with me saying "you didn't deserve the kind of shit you went through in your childhood. nobody deserves that." Which I hereby do say unto you, whoever you are: you didn't deserve the kind of shit you went through in your childhood. nobody deserves that.
  • But then the question of "do I deserve this love I'm receiving?" kind of just dissolves. I think in practice when people think "I don't deserve this" (or wonder about this) they usually mean something more like "I deserve less than this", which affirms the concept of deserving.
  • A caveat you probably don't need for various reasons but which I'll add for my own sense of thoroughness is that trying on this viewpoint can be potent, and without processing & integrating old feelings & experiences that are encoded with "deserve" (eg Bio-Emotive "worthless" core feelings) then it's possible to end up a bit compartmentalized by internalizing "I shouldn't be orienting to worthiness at all".