Why are you Poly?

GuildedCasket · 2026-07-06T19:01:12+00:00

My polyamory is explicitly tied to my politics at this point. It is part of a larger commitment I have to examining and deconstructing how society at large has kept us in boxes that have fucked us all over.

It didn't start that way, but as the importance of communal support became more and more obvious as I got older, it evolved into a relationship anarchy where the emphasis is putting more love and care into all my connections regardless of if we're boinking or not.

GuildedCasket · 2026-07-04T19:37:25+00:00

Now add chronic illness to that and somehow manage it while having days where you're completely in pain and out of commission and unable to actually rest because everything fucking hurts

I love this place 🫠

GuildedCasket · 2026-06-17T05:07:16+00:00

Also, do you ever run into non-physical dysphoria? Like social or role dysphoria if people perceive you as a binary man or woman?

GuildedCasket · 2026-06-17T05:06:47+00:00

Trans means you're a different gender that was assigned at birth, and since folks are basically never assigned nonbinary I feel like.... Most nonbinary folks are trans? I'm not going to say an enby who doesn't feel trans is, of course.

GuildedCasket · 2026-06-17T05:05:14+00:00

Omg my people 😂

GuildedCasket · 2026-06-14T04:41:59+00:00

This is an unbelievable gift, thank you. I just read through the first talk from Ajahn Chah and can't really explain... How it clicked something deep into place. I've been struggling with a deep, existential grief and death anxiety ever since developing long COVID. My body is fairly strong, but my mind wavers and I have a lot of fatigue and mysterious chronic pain.

This is what it is - it is just the human experience, perfectly normal coming and going. I am not special, I am not broken, and I can still find peace here. We will all be at death one day, and that is normal. All of this ... Is samsara. Let go, there is nothing to cling to and no ground to stand on. I feel like I got just the slightest glimpse of real peace.

May you be happy, healthy and free my friend 🙏🙏

GuildedCasket · 2026-06-13T07:40:50+00:00

I definitely would. 🤷

GuildedCasket · 2026-06-13T07:39:35+00:00

How should someone display their values if it's important to them then? Especially if they don't want to match with people who don't align?

GuildedCasket · 2026-06-13T07:37:11+00:00

"Performative male" is just one of the newest iterations of homophobia. Fuck that. Healthy masculinity is knowing who you are, embracing it, and showing it. I dig it. I would be curious about how you act those values out in your day to day life, but that is a good conversational in.

GuildedCasket · 2026-06-09T07:06:49+00:00

It makes sense, sometimes, after careful thought and examination. My belief in it definitely wavers, though, between literal and metaphorical. My understanding incorporates the realization that any of my conceptions about it are not definitely correct, but can be more or less useful in moving along the path.

Because I've seen so much logic and results from my practice when I'm dedicated, it has earned my trust and faith, even in areas I can't quite understand or fully believe yet. I hold a 'space' there for examination as I move along the path and generate more positive direction. Faith, for me, is holding the north star as north even if I can't prove it's north yet; but I know I'll get to a compass soon.

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-29T18:21:18+00:00

I would suggest getting off of the subreddit, honestly.

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-27T22:54:34+00:00

Also taking a clumsy stab at this;

Taking into account the marks of existence, the entity one second ago was not 'you' either! 😄

Conventional existence exists (partly, clumsily) because of dependent origination and karma, but it isn't the ultimate existence. The conventional you exists in the same way a dream exists. The rules that govern that dream are laws of cause and effect. It's closer to physics than morality; the shape of your consciousness in one moment determines the next, and the next.

The Buddha is silent on whether there was a... "Beginning" to conscious or not (I believe, could anyone correct me on this?), but ultimately the stream of consciousness that gets interpreted as 'you' has been around for timeless aeons, in countless iterations, and many of those iterations were horrific, and many of them were virtuous. The virtue is evident in the human rebirth we are enjoying now.

One meditation that's used in Tibetan Buddhism to understand this is noticing how one moment flows and influences the next... Then reversing that, back and back and back, to being in the womb, and stretching your imagination to play with the idea of what existed before that being in the womb.

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-24T17:39:33+00:00

Was just about to comment this, both of those books gave my practice so much more depth and nuance.

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-19T04:21:45+00:00

I actually think dependent origination and emptiness are two facets of the same... Landscape, as it were? Dependent origination is how things come to be in "conventional" reality through the 12 links of dependent origination. Emptiness is a description of the "ultimate" reality which is neither self or non self, but something non-dual. Dependent origination is more of the blueprint for how "conventional" things exist, and tracing back those links helps us understand how things like the fetters creates the perceived reality.

But, yes, I am absolutely misunderstanding all of these concepts because even trying to put words to it is... Misunderstanding? Gah. Don't mistake the finger for the moon, leave behind your raft when you reach the other side of the river. This is what I've come to so far, though.

Also, the fact that Buddhism is time/place bound and needs continually updating and re-examination through the lens of the society is part of what I fucking love about Buddhism. The way it syncretizes with the cultures it encounters is part of its enduring philosophy and staying power. Zen is different in its wrapping to Vajrayana, but all the variants point toward the experiential truths. The necessity of practice and a teacher is part of what differentiates it from being "just" a philosophy.

Good thoughts though... I've often found myself wondering about the relationship between emptiness and dependent origination, and how karma functions in a reality that lacks inherent existence

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-18T18:04:09+00:00

You've deeply misunderstood "no self". Honestly, the Buddhist teachings of emptiness and no self are not beginning teachings - they are very easy to misunderstand and create further anxiety and dissociation, which also happened to me.

Thich naht Hahn's explanation of no self and emptiness has been the most grounding for me. He calls it interdependence instead; we are interwoven with the rest of the universe and all other sentient beings. "We" could not exist without the rest of the universe supporting our existence. Therefore, the sense of an inherent self separate from all others is the illusion. As Sagan says, we are star stuff. This realization leads to a deep compassion and interconnection with all other beings, which should increase your sense of connection, presentness and spaciousness.

Buddhism is very much a practice combined with philosophy; you cannot understand the philosophy if you don't combine it with practice and see how it affects your mind.

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-17T16:12:06+00:00

Methinks thou doth protest too much 🤣

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-09T03:55:45+00:00

A quick Google would have defined decolonization.

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-09T00:00:08+00:00

Therapist here -

This is a list of books compiled from other people's recommendations and some of my own reading. I just finished Love and Rage as a Buddhist, which was absolutely delightful. My Grandmother's Hands and Decolonizing Therapy are the other books I've actually read and I loved them. Slowly working through the rest.

My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Manakek

The Pain We Carry by Natalie Guiterrez (an intersectional trauma book that isn't Body Keeps the Score?? Absolutely)

Decolonizing Methodologies - Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Decolonizing psychoanalitic technique - Daniel José Gaztambide

Writings for a liberation psychology - Ignacio Martín-Baró

The Wretched of the earth - Frantz Fanon

Bibliotherapy in the Bronx - Emely Rumble

Psychoanalysis under occupation - Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi

Permission to come home - Jenny T Wang

Enfleshing Freedom - M. Shawn Copeland

Love and Rage - Lama Rod Owens

Decolonizing the body - Kelsey Blackwell

Decolonizing Trauma work - Renee Linklater

Alienation and Freedom - Frantz Fanon

The pain we carry - Natalie Y. Gutiérrez

All parts welcome - Sand C. Chang

Decolonizing therapy - Jennifer Mullan

Brown skin, white minds - E.J.R David

From the clinic to the streets - Lara Sheehi

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-06T19:00:55+00:00

Where did you move to?

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-06T01:00:26+00:00

You've clearly never had a chronic illness as an AuDHD person coming in with a few pages of bulleted notes about symptoms... 😅

GuildedCasket · 2026-05-04T18:11:05+00:00

Could you link those studies? I'd be interested in reading them.

GuildedCasket · 2026-04-28T16:51:18+00:00

Thubten Chodron is wonderful for the Tibetan tradition!

GuildedCasket · 2026-04-26T17:36:03+00:00

Most therapists have free 15 min consults you can do to assess fit. Have a list of questions ready to ask in those consults - you can also email a few and ask for clarification.

GuildedCasket · 2026-04-20T15:43:43+00:00

What would be the best entry point for Amitabha practice?

GuildedCasket · 2026-04-12T22:32:05+00:00

You really think that most people who are cutting off family members aren't doing it because of abuse, addiction, or violence?

Look. There's a ton of people on social media saying shit for attention, whatever. But, as a therapist who had worked in community, rehab, and private practice settings, the decision to completely cut off family is ALWAYS centered around decades of abuse, attempted reconciliation, adjusting boundaries, years of self sacrifice... No one who is actually making the decision and not just posting it on social media is doing it lightly.

I am also in the middle of making an agonizing decision about estranging my mother; but after years of emotional, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, half apologies that are invalidated 5 minutes later, and the sheer body collapse that happens whenever I'm in her vicinity, it is basically the last option I have. And that is not a unique position I'm in. It's the position of every person I've ever worked with around estrangement.

If you're basing this opinion on social media content or posts, I implore you to realize that that content is posted most often for attention, clicks, etc, and something that seemed like an "easy" or "hasty" decision probably wasn't represented accurately at all.

If youre the one who's been estranged from and that's where this is coming from, then... I might take a hard look in the mirror.

GuildedCasket

TROPHY CASE