Curiously Grounded

By Arjen Broens

This book handles a controversial subject: family.

The rituals, the pleasure and pressure a family can bring to you as a member of that specific family, the bonding and bondage, the unwritten rules of older over younger, boy over girl, parent over child.

Your sovereign authority as a human being, getting raised in a team of one, two or more to start off with, will change the power structure in the team, between team members and you as a child in that team.

The struggle begins when the consideration of becoming a parent has not been thought through: the psychological change in role and position, the responsibilities, the devotion to a child that will go through the same growing up sequences as yourself, as a parent.

If you, as a parent, have not dealt with the tension, insecurities and questions within yourself and also between you and your partner, you inadvertently will pass this tension on to the next generation to deal with in their life, as you’ve got them from your own generations before you.

You, as a child, did not consent to the choice of parents, where they are in their process of dealing with an unexplored self, a range of personalities in and between them.

You did not consent to the name that you were given either but have to drag this name with you.

You deal with all these unexpected irregularities to your authority as a human being and that dealing with gets an extra dimension in pressure when parents force their authority upon you as soon as you become comfortable within yourself as a person, an identity with experiences at the age of 3 and beyond.

The encouragement phase turns quite quickly into the correcting phase where you are told what not to do but not what you can do.

If parents have not gone through the mental stage of being able to play the role model without their inner tension and thought affecting the role, unprocessed tension can really burst into a mentally manipulative role and authority abusive force to a child without even being discussed or corrected by anyone else. Physical force, yes, psychological force is not dealt with so you have to later on in life.

This is your gift from being born into a world that not really sees you, you are not there, not regarded as full when people project: a growing individual that can really do with the help of individuals that have gone through their own mental process of understanding thought and the effects thought has on our behaviour, if they have gone there themselves.

Unfortunately, we all started with the unsolicited impact on being born into a relationship between two people with, considered or not, you as the next in that balanced, slightly balanced or unbalanced team.

With a crowd, there is an audience, with group dynamics and their forces, the change of personality kicks in when three is a crowd and you are the added part, planned or not.

Not pointing fingers here but explaining where your tension in yourself might come from.

It only stops when you stop it.

Enjoy this one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arjen Broens
• Release date: Feb 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215584583

Arjen Broens

Born in The Netherlands, moved to The Highlands in Scotland on the evening of 11-11-2008, didn't look back. From Edinburgh to Inverness, living in the middle of no where, deer and nature all around.Started to look within to find what was under the false personality which, as a child, I felt, was there to cope with the world of grown ups around me from a very young age.When the 1st 3 years of my life were full on encouragement to laugh, walk, talk, pursue to experience when it all changed into correction, telling me what not to do without telling what I could do from 5 years onwards.I started to see that we all are caught in this merry-go-round, this appearance we hold up and started to write books where, in the past I had my diaries to get me through.Aikido came into my life after a few lessons Jiu-Jitsu to gain confidence where I firmly decided not to want any killing reflexes in this body I left Jiu-Jitsu for Aikido and Iaido which changed my life entirely in a very good way.Books were coming to me at the right time: NLP got me into the right mind set and bumped into it in a second hand book store during a holiday in Ireland for just under a Euro.I chose to invest 30 min each day from then on to change me into who I am: confident, unattached, competent and self assured with life, nature and animals. Pure self and learned from there to listen to my heart with my mind as a worthy advisor to what's going on out there. Thoughts are just options.Started to publish my books in 2013 after both my parents passed away on a very respectable age.Sharing my thoughts and later, my experiences without thought infecting my being, understanding thought and how it is hijacked out there from a very young age and to keep you away from your core inside: the real you you are.Enjoy my experiences in this life, written down for whoever has support by them or fall into your lap as books fell to me without a search, life just happens.Discovered that the real reality is the life support system out there: no books, no gods, no symbols, no religions, no past, no future, just nature as it is is enough, always perfectly on time although our egoic state of mind will disapprove...What Is is now and moving fast into a new now, no time to think as thinking is way to slow to get the real and exact signals, impulses into our senses.Loving what I do, doing what I love: working in construction in the heart of the Highlands, meeting great people on sites and elsewhere.Enjoy life.

Book preview

Curiously Grounded

Arjen Broens

Smashwords Excalibur Edition

Copyright 2023 Arjen Broens

License Notes

Thank you for downloading this eBook.

This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

If you enjoyed this book, please encourage others to download their own copy from their favourite authorized retailer or get in touch with the author.

Thank you for your support

My curiosity arises at times why some people, who are in a stimulus or goal driven focussed state, are not open to listen to other options or pointers. What is that in them to simply ignore the alternatives?

They are caught in and driven by either stimuli or goals and therefore really missing out on other, valuable options like fresh, new directions that would really put them in a far more relaxed state to be able to notice everything outside their goal to reach it.

In their fixed state of blindly following stimuli or gluing themselves to a goal, they do not query or criticise that fixed focus anymore and they become that rigid fixed state based on repetition, wanting more of the same, consistently.

Is it because they have given their full, unconditional focus, consent or attention to following either or? It seems very much like that in my experiences: they simply go along with it as the easy way out of confusion, it grows into a habit and is totally accepted as their life.

Lets delve into this a bit deeper: is a goal driven focus so much different from a stimulus driven one?

Not in my view as following a goal requires the same dedication as following a stimulus. Both are dedicated to the drive, locked onto the hidden force or habit to adhere to which we have initiated ourselves to begin with. A stimulus is just another appearance of the same drive as a goal is: it is still locked focussing in the end, not criticizing or evaluating anymore. We just go along with this habitual wanting.

A want in the shape of a must, a wolf in sheep’s clothing in ourselves, just outside our peripheral vision but noticeable though because you know about it, in the back of your mind but decide to not to give that sense any attention. You know it is happening but chose not to act on it and get all defensive if someone highlights this.

Once the habit is firmly in place, we have given our full consent to the direction, a green light for our mind to come up with more of the same, unfiltered, not checked anymore, switched on automatic.

It is not easy to reclaim your consent and to strongly state that you are not giving it consent anymore but that’s basically what you need to do: change the direction actively, change course of your vessel, your state, actively this time. Unwind the spring and then wind it in another direction or leave it unwind and enjoy life as it comes.

Will it, focus on it, our mind will follow, it is following your attention although it appears to lead, be strong in willing that new direction and your mind will support you in the end, it has simply no other option. It is for you to realise this to wake up the decision maker in you, it has been asleep for a while when you chose to follow others.

That is what is needed to change a habit: lock consciously onto nothing else than changing the habit consistently to catch every thought arising different from changing the habit and let go of it, not easy because we all are raised in an exterior goal or stimulus driven environment and are continuously impregnated and influenced by the outside to aim for one of those two.

Change the goal in a goal driven state of attention, use the characteristics of a habit to change it: fighting it only hardens and reinforces the habit, comprehend its characteristics, copy its sequence and then change the process, not the cue or the prize: the cue => process => trophy => feedback loop.

This is a full on internal fight between your old habits in your hidden vaults and your new intention, right at the front of your focus: to create a new habit you have to get rid of the old one which lies outside your daily conscious view, constantly sabotaging your new intention to keep its old psychological life in us which we have installed ourselves.

We gave a habit so much intention, attention and psychological charge that it is running perfectly fine on automatic. To reverse that, we need to apply the exact same psychological charge, attention and certainly intention to be able to dismantle our old habit. Please, check this within yourself.

The longer we kept a habit in place, the more momentum it has gained in us, the less we question its sell-by-date: is it still valid to have this habit in place? Is this old me, this personality, still valid to run in the current situation? Is it adding to the current situation or is it sabotaging your new intentions.

There is no thing actively sabotaging with an intent to do so, no genie in a bottle, no homunculus, just the hidden force of putting a ritual on automatic with its thoughts associated to it, associating anything that comes in with the spinning round of the old habit to feed its spinning force in us.

It won’t stop until you stop it, actively, consciously and with the same dedication, understanding and devotion. Use your attention to hone in on not wanting the old habit anymore: action is what is needed, active action, a consistent, active telling an old habit off, take away its charge and energy, every single time in ourselves.

Not easy, bloody hard work too especially because no one has told or taught you how to deal with thoughts, habits and their devastating effects, positive and negative, in us. No manual, no direction, just you and the habit in this thought arena.

The alternative is of course not to go there and suffer your old habits, feeding them with regrets, if’s, but’s and the glorious want-to-change but not doing anything about it.

This state of prolonged confusion costs a lot of mental energy and is not getting you anywhere but right here, in the same place you’ve been for so long, our comfort zone with this change of your world you want so badly but not doing anything about it: no action, no change.

The change will occur by doing, not thinking of doing. The doing is sabotaged, not the thinking of doing. It sits in your autonomy of a plain, clear cut taking action but we look too much at the outside for help and consequences, it sits inside you, this numbness, this blockage, thought keeps it in place with more thoughts of the same. Thought is the culprit here, so, time to investigate it, be curious.

And you cannot expect something else if you keep doing the same all the time: doing the same can only give you more of the same. Proper change your actions to shift your mental state into to achieve something else. It is a thought away and therefore so close, so right in front of us but not if you are looking outside yourself for the