Thittato

45 min meditation today. It felt like I had an identity crisis before I sat down. Like there is no category or group of people what so ever anymore where I belong. And then I just relaxed into all these feelings, sensations and scenarios, and now after the sit I feel very relieved regarding all this. Some kind of cramp that came wanting me to find an identy to cling to, and now I'm relaxed enough to just rest with things as they are.

30 min meditation today as well. Just sitting. Well, maybe that is exactly what I'm doing these days. Suddenly my interest returned to 'Just sitting.' My practice has always been informed by Just sitting, but I tend to do a little bit more vipassana/investigation. But now I'm surrendering into just sitting. It is much more Zen, and a little bit less Theravada. In Just Sitting one is supposed to already exemplify the awakened state of mind. It has a bit of "fake it 'til you make it" in it. You are just sitting there. Nothing left to do, except just being. Beingness is its own reward. Beingness is meaning enough on its own. Nothing to add, or substract. Reality is as it is. Always here. Forever, always present.

30 min meditation today as well. Really nice to just sit in surrender and breathe deeply and relaxed. I feel like I'm totally letting go of the notion that I'm meditating to get anywhere these days, and instead I'm just doing it for its own sake. The luxury of just sitting there and being with myself, my breath, and my feelings. There has been so much striving to get somewhere. Now it is time to just enjoy it for its own sake. Pretty much the same thing which is happening with my guitar-playing these days.

30 min meditation today as well. So nice to experience what this illness did to me in term of getting more humble and real. It seems like some aggressive/obsessive edge is out of my system for now. I'm more laid-back again. These days, when I meditate, it is really nice to just sit in surrender and make sure I breathe deeply down into my abdomen. So much joy with my guitar these days. Finally it is an integreated part of my daily life, and just something that gives me energy and fun, instead of lots of frustrations.

30 min meditation today. Getting better. Almost back to normal. I'm pretty sure the BPPV episode was triggered by the stress from the skydiving-course. What else? It was a pretty stressful experience, so seems pretty normal it would have some ramifications. But it has been nice with some days of surrender and rest. I totally needed to crash. This whole thing has been like I'm having a manic episode where I get obsessed with something, but then there is a support system where I can live out my mania and get supported through the experience, and also get some purification out of it, and come out on the other side as a more humble and grounded human being. So basically exposure therapy. That is what I tend to view everything as. Something great comes out of everything. These last days I'v been having some really great days with my guitar. It seems like whenever I crash in one area of my life I find a way to develop in another area. In the end I want to connect all these different branches into one unified whole.

30 min meditation today. Totally crushed. But there is something nice about it. Just sitting in total surrender. I listened to a talk yesterday by my old meditation teacher. It is about finding joy in failure. It is pretty awesome. Like it is a good thing to get pushed into a corner with no wiggle room because it forces you to let go of whatever identification you were holding onto and let go into even more freedom. I think my training in meditation helps me a lot when I'm having these periods in my life. Not only am I mentally prepared, so that it doesn't spiral out of control, but I'm also able to find a sense of satisfaction in it all. So much stress involved in trying to maintain whatever ego-configuration I have going for myself. In many ways it feels better to get it crushed and then enjoy surrender. At the very least it is a very helpful way of approaching the inevitable fuck ups in life. There has been a lot of suffering in this process lately. No denying of that. But it is so interesting how meditation can transform that suffering into some kind of spiritual satisfaction. It also seems like whenever I'm "broken down" a new sense of creativity, easy, flow, humbleness, and joy, is arising out of that, once it has been processed well.

Sudden attack of "Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo." So very surprisingly last sunday I had to go home from work because I was suddenly very dizzy and started vomiting. I consulted with my doctor and he thought I had so-called BPPV. I have now received treatment for it and it is starting to get better. Apparently some crystals in the ear are somehow thrown out of their normal position, and end up in a place where they start to irritate your organ for balance, so you have to receive treatment to "shake them" back to where they belong. Apparantly it is not dangerous at all, but the sense of dizziness and nausea was totally all-consuming, so I wasn't able to do anything but to lie in my bed. It was a pretty nasty experience. But I tried my best to use my meditative experience to deal with this situation, and it was interesting that even though my only choice was to lie completely still in bed to get any sense of rest from the symptoms I could get a decent amount of meditative pleasure out of lying there. LIke grooving on the simple sense of existence even when totally ill. They have often said that buddhist practice is a practice for dying, because at some point we are going to lie there on our deathbed totally stripped from everything that gave meaning to our life before in a sick and hurtfull body, and at that point we have nothing, except from the qualites in our heart and mind. So in that sense this BPPV experience was a practice for dying. It felt so bad at times that it felt like I didn't care whether I was going to live or die after this. It was pretty interesting to touch upon this experience of being willing to accept that I might never get my normal life back again. I'm not saying this lightly. I'm pretty humbled by the whole thing. Like oh my gosh how vulnerable life is and how quickly things can turn around. But it was really comforting to see that through my meditative practice I had some training for a situation like this. So if one can be willing to just let go off everything, then it is easier to find the meditative pleasure in a situation of being very ill. It was also very interesting how all my therapeutical issues was coming back in full force again. I still feel disoriented from it. Almost like an ayahuasca journey where everything is dissolved and you're just lying there wallowing in your karma. I meditated for 30 min today when I woke up, and today it feels like the treatment really did work because I'm slowly getting back to my normal sense of self and balance again. The meditative experience today was very calm and blissful, but afterwards I felt very vulnerable. And many of my experiences lately have been pointing me back again and again to how dissatisfied I am with so often loosing touch with my vulnerability when I get obsessed about some project or hobby that makes me think life is really awesome or something like that. I'm really tired of getting fixated like this again and again. There should be a more integrated way to relate to my various interests. I'm also very much questioning what does it mean to live a deep and rich spiritual life, and am I constantly getting pulled back into more superficial activies and groups of people because my commitment to the spiritual path isn't firm enough right now? So yeah, there is totally some escapism going on in my life. I'm not fully getting what I'm searching for. I'm going to go buy a hammock now and just lie in the forest and rest and contemplate upon these questions. Maybe this failed skydiving-course, and this BPPV experience, can help me turn me back towards what my heart really yearns for.

3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing, and a cold shower, today as well. The whole Wim Hof thing is starting to feel very empowering again. Maybe I have processed the whole skydiving experience and so much of what it triggered so that I’m getting back to a sense of stability again. Nothing like exposing myself to heavy trigger-situations when finally my life has been good and stable for a long period. Maybe I’m attracted to situations like these because I’m so used to being in a triggered state? But it totally seems like something very healthy came out it. I feel much more relaxed - like I have confronted some really deep-rooted existential fears when it comes to death, loosing control, and trust.

Hahha ?? It was far more frightening than I had expected - I was very close to bailing. But the fear turned into ecstasy just 2 or 3 seconds after we jumped out of the airplane when I realized being in free-fall was the most awesome thing ever ??

3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing, and a cold shower, today as well. I think the 4 pillars in my life these days are: The Wim Hof method, guitar, rollerblading and skydiving. Too much awesomeness! Glad I have the cold showers to cool myself down when my system gets over-heated because of the intensity of these interests :-)

3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing, and a cold shower, today as well. Very nice. I’m glad that the water is still cold enough to give me the cold shock.

Two sessions today of both Wim Hof breathing and cold shower, and in between a really awesome rollerblading session at the skatepark, and then a really nice session with my guitar back home again. Very nice flow-feeling throughout the whole day. Also did 10 sun salutations today.

No practice yesterday. Cold shower today. Looks like some of my last posts has disappeared.

3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing, and then a cold shower, today as well. So good. I've said it before, but it is like I'm having access to spa every day. I'm starting to really land regarding this whole skydiving course experience, but I will probably write alot more about it. Basically I'm starting to feel really happy it turned out the way it did. I feel very good about how I overcame some really intense fear I didn't know I had, but becoming the guy in class who had "special needs," was also somehow good for me, because I can easily become very high on myself thinking I'm the best in everything etc, so I sometimes I have some narcissistic tendencies, so I feel much more humble now. It hasn't really felt like I have any boundaries at all to what I can do. I mean, I'm the type of guy doing strong doses of ayahuasca alone, for instance. So I often have this feeling that I'm invincible. But in this skydiving course I really reached my limit so intensely. Now I know what it is like having uncontrollable fear. So getting humbled like this, so totally, in front of a whole school, where almost everybody managed to get successfully through this really hardcore initiation ritual of jumping out of an airplane, and becoming the only one who didn't quite manage to do it, but instead needed help to do it in tandem together with an experienced instructor, like, that was putting me more in the category of a child who needed to do it together with my dad. And somehow I WAS getting some kind of deep cosmic help from an archetype of a father figure that helped me to get through something that was very diffifult for me in this experience of the "inner child" in me suddenly becoming so exposed. And asking for this type of help, and actually getting it, was very good for me. So in total I feel both more humble, and more couragous, at the same time. Pretty awesome initiation into the sport of skydiving. At work tonight, again as I have noticed many times lately, I felt very connected with my co-workers. We are starting to become like a family. Maybe I'm not so "in my head" as I wrote in the last post. I can sometimes be. But I often also feel really connected to people. And this deep sense of connection is something I'm really longing for, so that whenever I experience it, everything seems to fall into place exactly as it is. So cool when something that one has conflicting feelings towards starts to get integrated and understood for what it was, and one starts to view the whole thing in a positive light, re-write ones story about it, and extract all the learning experience that was in it!

3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing today, and then a cold shower. Went directly into the cold shower today. Since it is summer it is not so cold anymore, but still cold enough to give me a cold shock, so maybe I just need to skip warm shower first during summer-time.

Finishing the day with 3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing. I'm staying up late to prepare for working night-shift. It is almost 10 days already since I last did the Wim Hof breathing. Interesting. It was good to do them again. I'm going to do a cold shower as well before I go to bed. Even though it is June the water in my shower is still cold enough to give me a cold shock. That is nice because that means I can probably practice the Wim Hof method the whole year. Starting to feel more settled on the skydiving issue I think. I think I will try to do at least 2 more tandem-jumps this summer, and maybe start doing to the jumps to train for becoming a solo skydiver (I can do them one by one). Or maybe I will only do two more tandem-jumps this summer, and do a new full course next summer instead. Then I will be much better prepared. No need to rush this thing. My skydiving career has already started with my first jump. Since skydiving is a sport where you spend such a short amount of time actually in the physical execution of the sport, the sport is much more about the culture around it, and the intellectual and mental and emotional aspects where you think about it, talk about it, reflect about it and exchange ideas and experiences around it. So that process has already started long time ago. If I'm deciding that this is something I'm going to get established in, and that I have only reached a temporarily road-block that I'm determined to find a way through, then I would say that I'm already a commited skydiver. But I haven't decided on this yet. But I might. If that decision is made then my attitude towards this would be "Yeah, I did an AFF course but the amount of fear and panic I experienced when I was about to jump out of the plane really freaked me out, so I had to ride down again and do a tandem instead. I was really exhausted after all this so I didn't complete the course, but now I'm planning on doing a few more tandems just to acclimatize myself to the experience so I won't have to feel such an intense horror again, and then I will do a new course as soon as I'm ready." That would be a very commited attitude towards this process. Okay, enough of this. Time to go into the cold shower. Now I'm just really going to bake the cold deep into my soul. Starting to feel empowered again.

30 min meditation this morning. I feel more vulnerable and at the same time grounded today. I have been feeling torn between whether to continue to pursue skydiving, or just let it go. On the one hand it feels like a huge distraction. Like using the material world to stimulate myself, instead of contemplative practice. But on the other hand it seems like many skydivers are also into mindfulness and yoga. And on top of that we have my well-known tendency to "fall in love" with various cool phenomenas that seems to be some kind of escape from my life right now. Like if I can go around daydreaming about skydiving, especially when bored at work, then I have an escape from my day to day suffering, instead of learning to deal with this suffering. It is like I'm still always distracting myself from my meditation project. I'm like not very present in my relationships. I'm like my dad who is always in his own head and pre-occupied with his own hobbies and who doesn't see the people around him. Not sure exactly what that phenomena is, but I'm pretty sure that if I had a kid right now I would not be very present with him/her. I would try to bring him/her with me to cool activities, and to encourage him/her to be the best version of himself, but there would have been a big element of auto-pilot in this behaviour, and probably a lot of unconscious projection, and not very much genuine presence. So probably it was good no matter what, that this high I've been on for a long time, fueled by my interest in skydiving, encountered the reality of what this actually involves. Had I been able to just push on through and succeed with skydiving, I think it would have fueled my narcissistic tendencies and I would have been even more blind to the vulnerability of the people around me. My dad has a really strong contempt for when people show weakness, and this is something I have inherited as well (even though I'm conscious of it). So this time I was the weak one in the group, and it was impossible to deny it, hide it, or rationalize myself out of it. So that is probably good. Meeting myself at the door. Literally a door 12500 feet above the ground.

45 min meditation today as well. Just going through all the mental images and emotions that appears and tryng to see how they vibrates and fluctuates, and then seeing to what extent I can sense the totally of my whole being vibrate - trying to spread and merge local pockets of vibrations throughout my body, and at the same time just surrendering into it and letting it be as it is - not trying to stress anything - just letting life do its thing and relax into it.

45 min meditation today. Just processing all the various impressions from the skydiving course. Letting all the mental images and emotions dissolve into tingling sensations. Seems like I'm getting at peace with it pretty quickly. But the question is whether I have a choice or not in continuing to pursue this interest. Probably not. It will be difficult to forget all the awesome people I met, and all the awesome experiences we talked about. The tandem-jump was totally one of the most awesome experiences I have ever had. But I will just continue to give it some more time, and eventually I will have to establish a new plan for how to pursue this.

No pratice today. I've been spending the whole weekend together with my Chess-buddies in a Chess "training camp." We call it training camp just for fun, but really it is a lot of drinking and socializing combined with Chess. So fun. Good to get my thoughts on other things than skydiving. I'm starting to get this failure processed. Well. It was only partially a failure because it was a success doing that tandem-jump. I think the road ahead is pretty clear if I want to get into skydiving. I've been spending a lot of time analyzing what went wrong. Or why the whole experience was so overwhelming. I'm usually pretty overwhelmed in new social situations. Even though I'm a very social person who loves to be around people and have a lot of friends I'm also socially awkward, so it takes some time to integrate my awkwardness into a new social system. This skydiving sport was also way more organized than I had imagined, so I was spending a lot of time getting a clear picture of how this whole institution was organized. I was also really stressed out about the corona-situation before we came there, fearing that the course would be cancelled, or that me or my friend would get quaranteended or something. But all of this was nothing compared to the fear of hights I knew very little about that I have. It was easy to explore this phenomena on youtube for so long without knowing how it would actually play out in real life. But all the social and psychological stress that came from adjusting to a new group and a new institution made my fear of hights impossible to deal with. Basically just a lot of stress. So if I still want to become a skydiver then I will just have to process all this stress, and then do a few more tandem-jumps. Next time I do a course like this I will know much more about what I'm signing up for and that will reduce a significant amount of stress. When I came home from the Chess-camp I did some rollerblading. Holy smokes that was fun. What a blessing these interests are. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been if I hadn't been so pre-occupied with dealing with my own suffering for so many years. Seems like many of the people who have fun and meaningful lives have just found out what they like to do in their lives.

Two cold showers today. Pretty nice. Back home again. Spending a lot of time processing all the impressions from the skydiving course. I’m pretty sure I will have to give it a new go soon enough. But it was wrong of me to travel to this course without having done a tandem-jump first. I was too impatient. The whole experience is such a rollercoaster. First the intense fear of jumping out of an air-plane, and then the sensory overload during free-fall. Many people say they are totally overstimulated during their first jump. I’m not going to jump out into the unknown like that, being unfamiliar with my free-fall skills and the gear and how to steer my canopy. I was totally ecstatic from all the beauty I experienced during my tandem-jump. This wild combination of fear and ecstacy combined with all the different technical phases one is going through in such a short period of time - not for me! I need to acclimatize to the landscape by doing more tandem-jumps first. I don’t identify with being bipolar anymore, after sucessfully going through therapy, but I think having had that diagnosis before is a clear indication that my highs and lows goes through a wider spectrum than most people, and this intense emotional rollercoaster that I experienced during this course - well, it didn’t feel safe to just jump into it alone and having to figure it out on my own while in this mixed state of intense feelings pulling me in all sorts of directions. But my attraction towards skydiving is as great as ever. I think it is similar to the one I had to ice bathing. There is a tension there that I’m attracted to that will initially lead to great ecstacy, but then my job is to expose myself to it again and again so that it starts to level out and become more of a normalized experience. The attraction also has to do with fear. I have never experienced fearing something as intensely as this, and then as soon as we were out of the plane there was great joy. I’m very currious about challenging my sense of fear this way.

Cold shower this morning. I’m travelling home from the course now. It was starting to become unbearable being the only one in the group who didn’t follow the normal progression. Everyone else was succeeding with their jumps and gaining a lot of self-esteem and mastery. I’m very sensitive, so this whole group-dynamic, combined with all the natural fears that skydiving brings up, and all the drills and training. It was just too much all of it. But the one tandem-jump that I did was a huge success. So I think I will just go home and process all this, and then do another tandem-jump later this summer. It still feels like this is something I would like to learn, so I will just have to take a bit slower route than the guys I was at this course with. Perhaps a few more tandem-jumps, and then I can do a new course again being more familiar with what I’m going to. When everything is so new to me I start to worry about everything and then both social anxiety and «jumping out of an air plane» anxiety kicks in really hard and I start to spiral downwards. Holy schmokes that was a lot to take in all at once. I’m glad I’ve been talking to a lot of people about this process. Many people has had a lot of fear in the beginning of their skydiving careers. I don’t think this is meant to be some crazy initiation ritual where either you belong to the group or not, but that is what it started to feel like, and I was putting way to much pressure on myself, and everything was just too much. Fortunately it was enjoyable as well. We had many fun evenings drinking beer together, and I spoke with a lot of awesome people who were visiting, and they all have such an awesome passion for skydiving. It was really interesting to observe this group of people from the inside, and even though I started to feel like the kid in class with «special needs,» everybody was very supportive and encouraging. So a lot of my own shit was triggered - like how I can feel like an outsider even though I’m included in the group. Seemed like to a large extent I could just relax in this feeling and still connect with people, but now enough is enough of this crazy pressure I’ve been under during this course. I will just process it all, lower my shoulders again, and probably go at it with fresh motivation again some time later in the future.

Went to the cold forrest river to do a morning bath this morning. So nice. It is so cold that it feels like ice-bathing. Then I went and did 3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing. Love it. Don’t think there will be anymore skydiving for me for this time. One jump was enough. It was perfect to do it together in tandem that person that I did it with. We have spoken alot about it afterwards. I feel saturated now. The tension that was seeking release has been released. If I want a «career» as a skydiver, I will have to go back to the training at a later point. Maybe I will do one more tandem later in the summer, and then I could do the training again next summer if I wanted to, and then I would know much more about what I’m going to. Or maybe it won’t happen at all, and that is also fine. Thank God that at least I was able to get pulled through one skydive hahhhah.....

3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing this morning, and then a cold shower. So nice. I still feel inspired from yesterday. Not as high today, yet, but just calm and satisfied.

Holy fucking fuck how high I've been today! So me and my friend who I'm at this course with went in the evening to cool down in a beautiful creek just near by. It was surprisingly cold, pretty close to ice-bathing, but after the initial shock it felt like we could stay there forever, and holy fucking moses how beautiful the forest became as my mind was quiting down and the sensual experience increased due to the cold water. This was like on top of the insanely fucking awesome skydiving experience that kicked off this day. And the friendship I have with my friend - it is just getting more and more beautiful because of the bonding experience we are sharing on this course. We are sharing the same room - and we never seem to get tired of each other. So now I just had to round off the day with doing 3 more rounds of Wim Hof breathing. Everything is just too fucking awesome right now. I feel so utterly and completely fullfilled.