Thittato

15 more minutes done. Yeah, those reflections improved my focus a lot! Now I feel like a meditative rockstar again! Haha... That feeling is very addictive, so I can easily understand why one starts to beat oneself up so heavily when one doesn’t get ones meditative kick. Sometimes seems like just a matter of discipline, so one starts to tell oneself «focus, god damn it!» But the mind is tricky. The discipline needs to come with a lot of acceptance, kindness, humbleness, and understanding of all the various cycles that the mind go through.

45 min sit this morning. More distracted today. Even though there is some good energy flow and softness going on, my mind doesn’t quite absorb into it, but continue to search around without landing. Noticing old tendencies to get frustrated with myself when it doesn’t go as planned, but reminding myself to ease into the experience no matter what it is. Feeling faith and confidence because I’m including also this into the training. Feeling inspired because the fake dichotomy between good and bad meditation is getting integrated. Feels like the skills I use to deal with distraction are also useful. Also, I’m going to sit for 15 min more just to see if these reflections has any effect on making my mind land, or if I will just have to accept that this session is one of the distracted ones. Instead of getting caught up in expectations, I will rather approach these 15 mins with curriosity, as a scientist observing the movements of my mind.

45 min sit this morning. Softness and gentleness filling up my whole being. I think this stuff is actually starting to work. Well, it did work before, I was just so damn bipolar about it. Obsessive is probably the right word. Obsessive about results, obsessive about getting somewhere. At some point this time I decided it doesn’t really matter whether I have a good or bad meditation. Interesting how simple and at the same time extremly profound the teachings on letting go are. I think the whole teachings of the Buddha can be summerized as simply learning to let go of clinging.

45 min sit this morning as well. It continues to deepen. I was in such a rush to get somewhere with my meditation before, now it feels like I have all the time in the world.

45 min sit today. My meditation continues to deepen. Some cycles of resistance every now and then, but they are just a natural part of the process. Feels like I’ve really taken on the attitude of following a training now. Even though I’ve meditated for a long time I was still a slave to the good meditations VS. bad meditations mentality. My practice has been very dominated with a «all or nothing» attitude, but I think that is getting more into balance now.

Hurrah! I managed to get up in time to meditate for 45 min before work. Gosh, my meditation has really powered up lately. Lots of powerful positive energy going on. Feels like I penetrate very efficiently many different layers of obstructive karma. It feels like if I just continue with this everything will somehow be taken care of. Lots of trust in this process. This goes way deeper than physical yoga, even though physical yoga can also have some serious elements of spiritual devotion in it.

30 min meditation today early morning before going to work. The best sit ever in a really long time. This day has been simply too awesome. Didn’t help that my job had a christmas party this evening. Fortunately I managed to limit myself to only 5 beers and now I’m back in bed ready to get up early to work day-shift again. Perhaps it is too optimistic to believe I will be able to do my meditation before going to work again tomorrow, but if I manage that will simply be one hell of a victory. Ok, I aim to make that happen. My day will be 5 times better if I manage to shake off tonights party that way. I have 5 hours to sleep and that should be plenty. Namaste ????? And by the way I was in love with at least 4 of my co-workers tonight. Holy schmokes. Maybe I should go back to pick-up so that I will actually have the guts to speak with any of them. I’m so damn sensitive. It could have been so easy, but maybe not when my emotions are as strong as they are. My buddy who has the most impressive skills with women that I know of probably have those skills because he have the guts to stand in those strong feelings when they arrise so that the tension of attraction gets really intense and he shows he is comfortable in that territory. It often feels like the attraction I experience is mutual, but it usually only happens from distance because it is too intense for me to go into it, but if only I could learn to relax with that sort of tension. That would have been something. Well, I guess I would have been married already if that was the case. It is not like I’m looking to get laid a lot. I want to settle down with the right one. And maybe the right one makes me feel safe as well? ? Ok, I better just continue to meditate and I think this will sort itself out by itself somehow ??

45 min sit the day before yesterday, no sitting yesterday, and 45 min sitting today. The territory has felt a bit more murky these days. I still accidentaly stumble into some of the absorption-states that I sometimes have access to, but there is more murkiness mixed into them. There is especially one absorption-state that I have gotten more currious about lately, and that is simply to take the sensation of «space» as the focal-point and absorb into it.

Sat another 45 min today because I couldn’t sleep because my sleep-rythm is messed up from working night-shifts this weekend. Feels good to be back in this focus. I seriously need to bring my meditation-practice deeper again, and the way to do it is to commit to one approach. I’ve brought my meditation deep before, and then I’ve needed other approaches, like psychotherapy and yoga, to balance out where I was at, but now it is time to bring my mind deeper into the meditative territory again.

45 min meditation today. Momentum is getting strong again. This is the deepest I’ve gone into stillness for this period. Deeply needed for my over-active mind ?

45 min meditation today. I feel grounded in a sense of chill and pleasant ordinariness.

45 min meditation today. Had some beautiful stillness going on while at the same time there was a lot of pleasurable energy flow going on in my body. Tried to massage this stillness into my whole being, and had the energy cooled down just a little bit my mind would have landed completely into stillness, but it was bopping around softly just a little bit over this landing-point, but still very comfortable.

45 min sit this morning. Been having the feeling today that everything is over. My friends are all starting to get established, or have been established a long time, and the other people I used to hang with has left town or are really busy with something. Was out meeting a friend yesterday. He has the same feeling. Our scene is gone. I used to think about this as «golden ages.» Some kind of social period where it is all coming together and a lot of like-minded people are attracted towards each other and lots of cool stuff is going on. Now it all seems gone. Probably getting my art-studio was my last attempt to make something like that happen again, but the energy in it wasn’t right. I used to jump back and forth between a big group of art-people and a big group of meditation-people, but now it hardly seems like there is any around anymore. Been wondering if my attempts to instigate periods like this comes from my fear of being alone. I identify very heavily with belonging to a cool group of people, and I sort of panic when it feels like that is gone. So anyways, just trying to surrender into it. It is probably not that black and white, some people are still around, we just don’t see each other as often as we used to. It is probably good for me to face this fear anyways, and maybe it is good for me just spending more time alone, to meditate and to focus on my job. Feels like my job is the only place I belong these days. Like the only way I can get away from my own suffering is by helping other people with their suffering. It is my most happy moments, when I can make someone feel seen and validated. Might sound unhealthy but I don’t think it is. I think there is a lot of a shared sense of love and respect in the relationship between a social worker and the ones he is helping when the relationship is successful.

45 min sit this morning. Good flow.

Totally ❤️

45 min meditation today as well. Holy schmokes. I had all sorts of excuses for not doing it, sleeping late, even listening to a 30 min guided meditation by my meditation teacher while lying in bed. Then suddenly I did it. Got to build down this resistance. This is to be expected. This is totally to be expected. When something is really good for me I find a way to sabotage myself. Fortunately it didn’t happen today, but the procrastionation was still really harsh. I will find a way to overcome this resistance. Anyways, now I feel awesome because I actually did it. But the self-esteem would have been higher if I didn’t resist for 7-8 hours before I managed to sit down.

Very successful day. I’ve been journaling a lot in my private journal about my job. The patient that I’ve been working with the 4 last shifts told me today «Thank you for genuinly caring so much about me.» The journaling really seems to increase my performance in my job. At some point I will make my own model for how I operate as a social worker and what has proven to work again and again. What really seems to work is to share a little bit about my own struggles (but not too much!) just to give my patient a little sense that they are not alone with the types of difficulties they go through. I try to make it a little bit more personal then probably most of my colleagues do. It really does wonders. I’ve seen it over and over. The other guy I was working with before this one told me after a meeting we had with both his psychiatrist, another psychiatrist in training and his psychologist that I was probably the only one in the room that had seen him. It is about building down the distance between professional and patient, but in a safe way where I don’t give my patient too much of my own shit for them to deal with, but just a little bit that has been processed before-hand, just to make them feel they are not alone and that there is actually a human being sitting there with them and not just some professional robot. It is pretty awesome because I already have some stuff that works pretty well, so will be interesting to see what will happen when I can systemize this and turn it into «conscious competance» and not just improvised accidental stuff. Todays meditation really made me turbo-charged with presence the whole day. I feel I’m in the process of really stripping things down to my core and the most simple truths in my life. What are they? Well, I’m a social worker, so I better just do the best that I can in that occupation and find ways to be inspired and up-to-date, and I’m a longterm vipassana meditation practitioner with enlightenment as my primary goal in life.

45 min meditation today. Good flow. Been having this journal for almost a year now. It has been pretty much all over the place. I still have this need to nail this down into a systematic exercise routine for the mind. Like a path and a program. Been fortunate enough that I actually have a meditation technique that I’ve been using for a long time, but I tend to go off on all sorts of tangents. I will explore if I’m able to get back into a more systematic approach towards meditation again. 45 min per day was actually what my teacher recommended me back in the days, and whenever I stick with that amazing things tend to happen.

45 min meditation today.

45 min meditation today. Still thinking I should devote myself entirely to only one technique. Maybe I’ll land back into my meditation technique at some point soon, or maybe I still need to bounce back and forth between yoga and meditation for some more time.

45 min meditation today. Finished moving out of my art-studio today and returned the key, so that chapter is fully over. It will be interesting to think much more about how I can develop my social worker career. Like put all the self-development stuff I know into it and try to translate that stuff into skills in this field that can help other people. Every day I meet people in a very difficult situation. If I can only give them a little bit of human warmth and a feeling of safety I have succeeded. And if I can contribute a little bit with positivity and inspiration to my colleagues I have also succeeded. In many ways it is pretty easy. It only takes presence. One of my mentors once asked me who my favorite teachers were. After a little discussion we both arrived at the conclusion that it was those who had made me felt seen. So easy and yet so difficult. Most people it seems, including me in many periods of my life, doesn’t usually have this capacity to see other people deeply, because we have too much stress in our lives. But this is where meditation and spiritual practice comes in. One gets that extra little sense of warmth and glow that comes from being in touch with oneself. I wrote about this already back in 2012 in my bachelor thesis about how social workers can become more emphatic with the use of mindfulness. Probably what I didn’t know back then was the depth of my own wounds and that I would also need psychotherapy. Seems like it would take me a really long time to actually translate this into action, except for some glimpses here and there, because I’ve always been so desperately searching for «something else.»

75 min Restorative Iyengar yoga class today. Nice way to cool down after an awesome work-week. I often work during weekends, but this weekend I’m off. Had an amazing day at work today as well. Even got praise from my boss. It is pretty obvious this focus will pay off. Been focusing like this on all my hobbies for so long to get into flow-states, but somehow it has been an escapism from where my career because I thought I had the wrong career, but now I’m really starting to surrender into it. I should at least stay here for a couple more years just to really nail this social worker thing before I might move on to something else. My experience has been so spread out on so many things that it is very important to get some depth with something now in order to experience some more sense of mastery regarding my daily life.

10 sun salutations this morning. Bringing home all the stuff from my art-studio today, so now that chapter is over. I’m very inspired to focus more on my job again. In order to improve my performance I’m going to buy a journal-book and write a little summary after every shift, what worked, what didn’t worked, etc. Feeling ready to explore all the opportunities there. Perhaps if I really start to flow in my normal job my boss will notice and some new opportunities will open up. It is a really good field to bring in all the stuff I know about self-development. If I grow into the role I’m sure it will be much easier to translate everything I know into action.

45 min meditation now before work, and then I’m going to do 25 min yin-yoga when I come back home again. I was very inspired by the weight-lifting yesterday. I was lifting weights for one year, which ended approximately half a year before this yoga-kick started. Perhaps I can have a really cool exercise routine going with a combination of yoga and weight-lifting, and then have meditation as my primary daily practice. Weight-lifting really seem to add some fire to my being which I really appriciate.

Amazing day at my job. Came home and meditated for 45 min, then some weight-lifting, and then I did 25 min yin-yoga. I think my primary purpose for some time now will be to really nail this social worker thing. I think I have some gifts when it comes to making people feel safe and accepted for who they are which are especially potent for helping people come back from psychosis. Today, a guy that felt totally misunderstood by the doctors got his warmth and smile back on his face simply by me giving him understanding and support for exactly how he felt. The smile and hand-shake he gave me when I left today was really heart-warming.