Thittato

Landing Meditated for 1 hour and 15 min today. So more and more lately it feels like I have finally landed in my meditation practice. That is a bit ironic after having meditated pretty intensely for 17-18 years, but this whole time there has been a lot of on and off dynamics, and it has mostly been driven out of desperation, and I have tried out so many different practices and guru's and whatnot. This journaling has really helped with this. It is like I'm just some ordinary dude who has for instance joined a martial arts club, and feels fine about going to this club Mondays and Wednesdays, a little bit of homework in between and a few tournaments each year, and no rush to make progress out of the ordinary, but a trust that by simply showing up again and again things will take its natural course.

Sat for 45 min today. Felt really good. It is an interesting feeling when I feel that I get to the core of my being. When suffering doesn't distract me, but I have momentum going and I go directly into the suffering and it quickly dissolves, and every time that happens I land more and more in "the quiet place."

Really glad how much it helps my meditation to write these notes. As I see it this journal has two main-purposes: 1. Improve my meditation technique. 2. Deal with the challenges that distracts me from keeping up a daily practice.

Sat for 45 min this morning. I was getting the feeling that there has been like a race-car competition between my meditation technique and my obsession with chess these days, and that finally in this meditation the momentum was fully with the meditation technique again. Felt like a "transformator" this meditation - transforming stuckness into flow. I will go and sit for 30 more min just to see what more stuckness I can find and work on.

The Sacred Feminine in Chess Another thing I've been thinking a lot about is how the sacred feminine manifests in chess. When I started drinking ayahuasca 8 years ago, it was as if I started developing a relationship with the Queen (the holy mother of unconditional love, the sacred feminine, etc) the way she took the form through the medicine of ayahuasca and that particular flavor. The way I experience her she is sort of violent and compassionate at the same time. Ayahuasca is a pretty brutal medicine, and it feels like getting churned up by the cosmos in a brutal way, but then coming out of the process in bliss. The way I relate this to chess is ironically how the Queen is the strongest piece in that game. They also have a chess goddess or a chess muse which they call Caïssa, and when people become really hooked on chess they describe it as being possessed by Caïssa. The inner landscape of my mind these days is totally filled up with images from the chessboard and all the pieces, but it all has a bit of the same churning fractal geometric quality that I feel when I'm tripping on ayahuasca (and many other psychedelics for that matter), and especially when I apply my meditation technique to this process that I'm in. When I'm winning I feel great, but when I'm loosing I feel like an idiot. But as one of my chess mentors said - this comes from a wrong perspective. Loosing a game is great, because then you get to analyze what you did wrong so that you can improve. So in the deepest sense of it there is no winning or loosing - there is only going deeper in ones understanding and knowledge of this game - which in many ways is symbolic for the game of life. So by trancending the artificial duality between winning and loosing, one gets to a deeper sense of passion, love and wisdom. But loosing is painful - so it takes some purification to get to a point where one is ok with it. And winning feeds the ego - so even here it takes some purification to not get infatuated with it. So I have totally gotten possessed by Caïssa, and I see many similarities between her spirit and the spirit of Queen Ayahuasca. In the deepest sense, all aspects of life points back to the same love and passion that is the juice at the core of this existence that all mystery schools points back to. And I'm starting to believe that all kinds of passions can actually be seen as mystery schools bringing one back to deepest mysteries of this life, an giving one a greater sense of wisdom and mastery of this paradoxical process called life. It is always back to surrender and giving up control, especially when one starts to feel that one has some mastery going on. Life will find a way to pull the rug out from under ones feet again and again no matter how well one feels that one does. So please, dear Caïssa, teach me how to be humble and kind and always willing to learn and improve.

Structure, hobbies and social life getting more integrated So I've been having two female friends living in another city across the country visiting me this weekend. Not romantic, but still great to have some female companionship. We've been partying hard, and done a lot of creative stuff, and already my apartment is tidy and clean again. Love to have this daily To Do list going. Makes it so easy to get an overview over what I need to do for this day. I also managed to squeeze in a lot of Chess even though I was very social this whole weekend, so I was really glad that I could keep my drive going with Chess and at the same time take care of my responsibilities as a host and a friend. Seems like this Chess thing has already gotten much more integrated. And seems like I just have to accept that I have gotten totally hooked. As long as I manage to keep a good structure in my life, I think it is just healthy to have some hobbies that I have a lot of passion for. The problem is if I start to neglect everything else and starts to only sit in front of my computer all day long to play online, but that should be easy to avoid. I mean, my life would totally suck if that started to happen, which I have already gotten a taste of those few days when that happened. It also probably wouldn't help my Chess-playing much at all, because my self-esteem would totally hit rock-bottom. Now, after having cleaned up my my apartment, and written this journal-entry, I will go and do my meditation for 30 min. It is interesting that most of the day my mind is now in "Chess mode," so I will have to get that balanced with bringing my mind to "presence mode." One of my meditation teachers told me about two different modes we can keep our mind in. Narrative mode and experiential mode. Narrative mode is all the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and where we are going and what we are going to do, etc, while experiential mode is what is needed to get enlightened - that is turning away from all the stories and just experience life as a sensory experience going on in the present moment - and with the stories, just experience for instance how they are felt in the body as a sensory experience. So what makes this pretty interesting is that when I just totally allow my mind to roam around as much as it wants in my fascination with Chess, I can still use my meditation technique to strip that experience down to a sensory experience. It is like instead of being totally identified with the state, I instead make the state into an object that I investigate and dissect with my meditation technique. Basically my meditation technique is vipassana - and that is trying to see my sensory experience as something that is vibrating and in a sense of flow and something that is always changing. So basically how this Chess thing supports my meditation is that when I just totally allow myself to indulge fully in this obsession, then it actually becomes easier to dissect that obsession with my vipassana teqnique into a sense of flow on the sensory experience level. As I've written here before, when sensory experience level starts to vibrate, I experience it as that Qi Energy all over my body starts to flow more. Stuck and frozen experience turns into a sense of flow. So basically I just have to allow my Chess-obsession as fully as possible, and then use it as an object to enhance my meditation practice. And since passion and having something to get a sense of drive going in my life really adds to my energy and inspiration, I think I can use this added sense of inspiration and energy as something I can re-invest back into my meditation practice. It is like making my obsession into an ally instead of an enemy. Pretty cool :-)

Ah, great! Thank you!! :-)

Great feedback! That is a very good summary of the whole thing :-)

Getting to a point of rest after an obsession has run through its cycle Did 10 sun salutations today, and then I meditated for 30 min. This whole Chess-thing doesn't feel like any problem today. Today I was more afraid of finding the whole thing too boring and demanding too much work to get anywhere with it, so pretty much the opposite of feeling obsessed with it. Feeling a little depressed today, somehow, don't know why, but seems like whenever an obsession has run through its course, I feel drained and empty on the other side of it - longing to feel driven and occupied with something again. You could say I've taken on the identity as an aspiring Chess-player for a while now, and now I'm searching in a mild depressed panic for something else to take on as a manic identity again. But this is rather the point where I should just lean back, and not try to search for anything, but just surrender to this state I'm in, and see if I can find some rest here instead. Feels like I'm getting better at identifying these cycles. I'm starting to breath deeper as I'm writing this. Like finally this search that has been going on today for something else than what is here right now can get to a point of rest. Anyways, totally feels like I can accept the level I'm at with Chess, and that I don't need any huge and intense project to get better in a rush, but that it is a nice hobby, among my other hobbies, that I can check in with every now and then without it having to take over my whole life at all. I will meditate for 30 more minutes right now just to marinate myself some more in this feeling of surrender and rest I'm falling into now. Gosh, so good to write about all these things. I totally believe that all these things can get into a balance now. I just need to continue to journal about it and meditate. Also I'm working with these obsessions through the therapy-education that I'm participating in. This therapy-education itself was something I was very obsessed and inspired about, but now I just think it is boring, but probably this is a good place to get to. Perhaps boring is what I fear the most - but that is certainly something to become better friends with. This whole thing feels like coming back home again. These are some of my favorite meditation-instructions. A friend sent them to me some years ago. I think they are from the tibetan mahamudra tradition. Here they are: Let go of what has passed Let go of what may come Let go of what is happening now Don’t try to figure anything out Don’t try to make anything happen Relax, right now, and rest

Even more on Chess 2 So this has been a great morning so far. Started off doing some weight-lifting, and then some yoga, and then I meditated for 1 hour and I could sit in full-lotus for the whole hour. It was actually really comfortable, and when by body was warm and flexible because of the exercise I did just before I sat, then I could land much deeper in this position than I've experienced before. Then after that I went for a walk. And my apartment is still tidy and clean. So nice with getting my structure better. I find I can get much more out of the day when I make a list of the things that I want to do during that day. Also this thing about Chess seems to have landed much more. I will probably continue with this sport. I just need to get i better regulated by my structure, so that I don't obsess about it all day long. Also there has been some ego-crushing around this activity that was pretty shocking. When I get obsessive and manic about something I feel really powerful and strong, and I was able to beat all my friends who are just casual players because they almost haven't invested anything into Chess, so I started to build an identity around this interest, but when I actually came to real life club where people had actually made this into a sport in their life, some of them for a whole life-time, well, then my ego was crushed to the ground when I realized what a total and absolute beginner I am. But that is the healthy part of submitting to a discipline where ones own abilities gets feedback from real life standards, otherwise I could just obsess around in my own mind as much as I wanted to, but this reality checking brings me back to ground again, and that is usually painful in the beginning. It is the same thing with all my other hobbies. With the exception that there is not such a clear standard with them regarding if my performance is well or poor. But I obsess about them the same way, and then eventually I have to just shut the door on them because it gets too obsessive and I feel drained and sick of it. But seems like these other things are getting into balance, and I believe my interest in Chess can also be brought into a healthy balance. And why would I even want to build an ego around being someone who beats my friends in Chess? Isn't it much healthier to be an enthusiastic beginner that is just proud of his enthusiasm for a sport and his willingness to learn and which is also much more humble and knows that it is going to be a learning curve for everyone and it is just a matter of being trained or un-trained? It is the same trap I fall into over and over when I put my self-worth into the skills I'm interested in and forget my intrinsic value as a human being - the same value that we all share. So this was a nice way to expose all these unfortunate bad learning-habits that I have, and just settle into the role as an enthusiastic beginner, and not basing my value (or lack of) on this or on anything else for that matter. When I woke up this morning I was so glad about what I wrote here yesterday, because it was such a relief to get it out. So I think this journaling so far has actually brought much more balance in my life. And my self-development is in many ways showing a lot of results, and there is less mental masturbation. I just want to live a fun and balanced life. It is actually pretty simple. But seemingly it takes a lot of work to become simple :-)

Even more on Chess Meditated for 1 hour today. 30 min in the morning, and 30 min in the evening. This is embarrassing, but I totally didn't manage to stay away from Chess. However, I've been rationalizing it this way: This is the first time, since this interest started up again that I've started to view it as something negative. It started this summer as we started playing it at my job, and then for these lasts 4 months its been really intense where I've been playing online daily, and reading several books about it, and seen a lot of youtube-videos. So ever since this interest started I've only seen it as something positive, but now I'm starting to see that I've gotten really hooked. I'm like a World of Warcraft gamer, just with Chess. And in fact, when I joined that real life Chess club that I've been going to 4 times now in a month, I was really curious about those people, and they were really nice, friendly and interesting, so don't get me wrong about that, but they were also in many ways stereotypical gamers, perhaps just a little bit more high-class. I think people who get hooked on Chess - I think for them it becomes their primary purpose in life. Like you have to get really really hooked in order to become good. A girl I know, who also plays Chess, says that she believes those people in the club is probably dreaming about it also, not just obsessing about it all day long, but also continuing that obsession while sleeping. So instead of going cold turkey about quiting. Well, I was just going to quit for a week, but even that didn't work, but what I'm saying is that I will rather spend some time sorting out my relationship towards this activity before I make up my mind about how I will continue to relate to it. It obviously wasn't just a cool thing that I could immerse myself in day in and day out, and now that I've started to see the shadow-sides of it, I will give it some time to just process this thing. Perhaps my fascination with it will just start to fade by itself. I was getting manic and really energized by it, but I see that to get to any decent level of rating, I will have to work really really hard, and that takes much of the joy out of it. I got a lot of other stuff that I want to devote myself to and not just walk around thinking about a game all day long. Perhaps just the fact that it takes so much work will sort of balance out my interest in it. It is easy to get hooked as a beginner, and become really enthusiastic as one has ones small little successes to start with, but then it started to dawn on me what a full-time pursuit this actually is. So yeah, let me just observe myself regarding this for some time now before I figure out what to do about this.

More on my little winter-adventure with Chess and the things about my inner meditative journey that it helped me to get a better understanding of Meditated for 30 min today. So, today, after working three night-shifts this weeking, I woke up to a clean, tidy and organized apartment with clean clothes hanging on the clotheshorse. I think I can take care of this problem pretty quickly. It is only a matter of doing a little bit everyday. Now I just have to continue keeping it this way, and not fall out of it again. The atmosphere here feels much more inspiring when it is like this. Feels like waking up to a very calm and cozy environment. So then I went to the local Chess-club, and it was fun, but still I'm thinking I will probably give up on Chess. It just takes too much work getting good at it, and why would I spend all that time getting good at something like that? Well, surely it is probably the most fascinating game, in my opinion, that has ever been made. But still it is just a game. Anyways, it was fun getting a glimpse into that culture. As I said I think it has some of the same things about it as martial arts and the meditation culture that I'm so fascinated by. Sort of like the old masters and the myths about them, and to these people it is not just a game, but a way of life. There are answers to anything within this group. Or like any group, they have their way of dealing with whatever comes up. Like frustration for loosing. Well, it is not about winning or loosing, it is about passion for the game, and loosing is only an opportunity to analyze your game and find out what you did wrong so that you can improve. Even the best players probably loose almost 50 % of the time, because they are pitched against players at their level. Seems like most beginners are very discouraged by this, but loosing a lot is just part of the game, and they have some pretty good answers to you, when you bring your frustration to them and ask them what to do. Good answers, like they have in any discipline. So I was getting very fascinated by this whole culture, and I've been obsessing about this for 4 months now. Well, a pretty cool thing to look deeper at this winter, as I love social anthropology, and always have to go check out a new group of people doing their thing. But still, am I going to invest all this time in improving at this? Probably not. I've reached the level now where I can actually see what it takes to go from a casual player to a serious player (serious in the sense of a devoted hobby player), and yeah, probably that is not me. And these kick I go on, when I decide that I'm going to get good at something and then start to really obsess about it, I think it is probably driven by some kind of inferiority complex where I think I have to prove myself. I'm going to look more deeper into Spiral Dynamics as I see that Leo is really into that, and it seems like I'm at this typical Stage Orange of being an independent achiever, but I think I'm longing for a more heartfelt experience of life, and this sort of trying to prove myself stuff that is constantly going on, well, it is a struggle that is probably not necessary. So from a meditative point of view, and self-actualizing point of view, which this journal is about, my whole adventure with Chess this fall and winter (it started building up this summer when I started playing it at my job with my patients and with my colleagues before it really took off these last 4 months), well, this whole adventure was probably good in the sense that it further helped me to expose this struggle of proving myself that goes on in so many different areas of my life. Only difference here was that Chess makes it really obvious, because you can't fool Chess. So with my obsessive type of mind, I think it was pretty healthy to find this system of Chess and put it to work on all the resistance I could find there. So if I leave behind this little adventure, I leave it behind with respect for this game, because it is a noble game. Here is one of the drawings that I made during this Chess-period, as a tribute to Chess. It is sort of like a simple and naivistic Chess-inspired Mandala.

@dimitri & @Gladius Thank you guys! That is really heartwarming! :-D

The Spiritual side of Chess (or whatever….) So I got obsessed with Chess almost 4 months ago, and have been playing it daily on Chess.com, but now I will take one week off just to get some perspective again. I've gotten pretty obsessed so to say, so will be nice with a break. Those Blitz games where one plays really fast are pretty addictive, and in general I'm pretty addicted to the internet, so will be nice with a break now. Been indulging in Chess every day, both games, and instructional videos on youtube and discussion forums, so I think giving my brain one week to think about everything else instead will actually be good for my learning-process. Also I think I will be moving over from Blitz-games, to actual classical Chess where one has much longer time-controls. I'm playing with my neighbor now (over Chess.com) and we have at maximum 7 days to make our move. I met at pretty cool guy through the forums on Chess.com, and he is teaching me how to analyze my games, and write notes for each move that I make. If I could have a routine like this going, without it getting so obsessive, I think that would be fun to keep going with. But I have to admit I'm contemplating giving it up altogether. In many ways it seems like a waste of time compared to all the other things I could have been spending my time on. But it has been a study that I've been doing for 4 months, and also I have connected with the local Chess-club, and tomorrow (not including this in my one week break) I will be going to play with them for the 4th time. Perhaps this whole thing was sort of like the social anthropologist in me that was really curious about this group of people. I think it has much of that same mysticism to it as the meditation culture and martial arts has. There are old and wise masters in these groups that have seen deep into the nature of this game, and for them it is not only a game it seems, but more a way of life. I could have said a lot about this, especially to days ago when I was really manic about Chess and thought it was the greatest ever, but now I rather not think so much about it. So sat for 30 min today, and completed a lot of stuff on my To Do list. Probably the reason for this Chess-pause was triggered yesterday when I was spending the day playing online and not doing anything on my To Do list and when I went to work to work night-shift I felt really crappy, and I figured the reason why I felt crappy was because I had fallen out of the structure that I'm trying to build in my life, and the sense of safety and trust that brings up when I feel successful about it. I need to get much better at spending my time wisely, for instance spending more time in nature, so with these To Do lists and my way of planning my day all this seems much more within reach. So this week without Chess will be dedicated to this work on structure that I have just started.

Making my home into a Zen Temple / Ashram / Chamber of Love and Devotion So regarding that lack of structure I mentioned yesterday, I've done some more improvements today getting my home more organized. I have to admit, and this is really embarrassing, but I think this lack of structure is perhaps the number 1. stickingpoint in my dating-life lately. I was on some dates in the beginning of this new year, but I simply don't feel fresh enough for a sexual relationship right now. Don't get me wrong, I'm clean enough for friends, studies, to be presentable and professional at my job, social life etc, but to have a girl entering my intimate zone, well, I'm simply not fresh enough for that right now. Whenever I go on a date, it is always a hassle making making sure I find some clean clothes, that my bed has fresh bedclothes on it, etc. So this is an area of my life that I will totally have to take care of immediately. Getting the inner structures of my home and personal hygiene fresh and always at its best. I used to have some tantric lovers before, and that was really fun, but this area of my life has really been down-prioritized lately. Fortunately, and this is a really good sign, for the first time ever I managed to keep to plants alive here in my home for almost 6 months. I'm really starting to love these plants. They are a sign of vitality and freshness in my home. So I just want my whole home, and all the inner structures of my life, to have this aspect of vitality and freshness, so whenever visitors comes inside my door they are met with a smell of freshness and vitality. This whole thing is really embarrassing and shameful to write about, but probably that just shows how great the benefits will be when I get this taken care of. I'm already on a good way now, and with the structures around my job and my studies being well-established now, I can easily get this other chaos taken care of. I can see that when I feel fresh and on top of things I feel much more attractive and ready to take a lover into my life again. So yeah, this chaos has probably been my number one stickingpoint in my dating-life lately, but time to get it handled now. Unfortunately I didn't get time to meditate today, because now I will have to go sleep for a little bit before I go and work a night-shift, but this organizing of my home, and writing this embarrassing journal-entry was really important. I'm going to become a fresh meditator, not a sloppy one :-) Yeah, damn, I totally deserve to live in a beautiful and fresh home. I've always intended to make my personal space into a beautiful place. I have my altar with my Buddha and Ganesh on, I have my incence, I have my meditaton cushion and my space where I do my yoga practice, I have my guitar and my drum ready to sing devotional mantras anytime, I have candle lights, etc. No need to make this place into an embarrassing mess that I'm shameful about. Jesus Christ how many dates I've been fucking up because of this. Well, from now on I'm going to become a proud and devoted caretaker of this cute little temple that I have here for myself. It is going to become a reservoir of healing, self-development, devotion, fun studies, and creativity. Gosh, this journaling is so good for me. It really helps me becoming much more honest with myself about my sticking-point. Exactly the tool I was looking for.

Structure Sat for 30 min this morning. Now another issue has become apparent, and that is too weak structure in my life. My apartment is a mess, and I rarely have food in the fridge, etc. And this is creating much more chaos in my life than there has to be. But I have a good tool for this which I have been using before. I wrote a long "To Do" list with all the things I can think about that needs to be done, and each evening I plan my next day trying to move as many of the things on the To Do list over to my plan for the next day, and cross each out as each task has been completed. So I'm going to implement this again because my life desperately needs more structure. Also I'm going to implement the rule that each time I leave my house I'm going to live behind a home that is tidy, and when I go to bed I'm also going to make sure it is tidy before I end the day. Also I'm going to be flexible about this so that it doesn't become an "all or nothing" thing that quickly breaks, but I'm going to practice on this to get it implemented more and more until it finally is established just permanently and naturally.

Respectful ending of a therapist/client relationship that was good for a really long time but that became difficult towards the end Gosh, I thought I was going to be angry and hurt for a long time because of this conflict with my old therapist, but we ended our formal relationship in a respectful way and with a heartfelt hug assisted in a meeting where the head-therapist that founded the school held space for us. I also got help from my new therapist to really squeeze out the remaining resentment I had towards him, and now it feels like already I'm ready to move on and I'm feeling inspired again by this education. In the long run this whole process is going to be very educational, and I also learned some important lessons in standing up for myself as I actually sent in a formal complaint against him and the head-therapist assisting our meeting understood my perspectives very well and my old therapist continued counseling (he is doing the education to advance to a teacher-therapist that can teach new therapists the trade) will most likely be informed by the complaints I've raised against him. So both him and I have learned a lot from this process, and the whole relationship ended in a respectful way were we both expressed our hurt feelings and also our love for each other. I'm feeling inspired thinking about the future again and what possibilities are ahead of me. This last bit of resentment after this meeting we had was probably just an after-process of ending it. Like the tail-end of that process got intensified a little bit before it cools off.

The Guru/Disciple relationship in therapy-education Sat for 45 min today. So I met a therapist approximately 3 years ago, and he inspired me to start this gestalttherapy-education that I'm now 1,5 year into. The classical trap of falling into the Guru/Disciple relationship happened in our therapist/client relationship, and now after some conflict we had to end our relationship and I'm changing to another therapist as part of this education. The education is 4 years in total, but I'm thinking that I will probably only complete this 2nd year and then quit, unless my inspiration comes back again. Got very inspired by meeting this new therapist, and she understood exactly what had happened with the relationship with my previous therapist and understood why I thought he had dealt with this situation very unprofessionally. To his excuse he is a very new therapist. In fact I started going to him while he was still a student. So when I was idealizing him it was probably tempting for him to fall into that idealized role I was putting him in. Anyways, this sort of dynamic has happened with me many times before, so it is interesting to get this stuff happening live right in front of me as part of my therapist-education. If I was going to complete this education in sum total I would have probably learned much more from this situation then if my therapist was perfect all the way through. This is like a very classical unhealthy dynamic that develops in these types of relationships, and now I have a very professional way of understanding it. I was very angry for a long time that my therapist didn't have the tools to get us out of this situation. The only thing he would have needed to say to make me feel safe was to admit a little bit of his vulnerability and step out of his professional role and admit that this was a bit of a challenge to deal with but that he believed we would get safely through this. Instead he disappeared into an inauthentic role, got caught up in pride, and tried to pretend he had more experience than he actually had. Anyways, now that I'm getting some distance to this, and especially now that I'm enthusiastic about my new therapist, I'm much more positive about this whole thing and all the stuff I have learned from it. Perhaps my vocation as a psychotherapist will return, or perhaps not and I'm meant to do something else. Either way it is fine. It all makes for some juicy stories in my spiritual adventure. And now that my new therapist could confirm that my experience and my intuition is actually valid, I feel much more sane again. So I feel landed back in both my job-situation and my study-situation, because my life is sort of configurated around some sort of mutual interplay between what I learn in my job as a social worker and how I gather inspiration from the gestalttherapy group-processes to bring back into my job as a social worker, and that's been my identity at my job that I study this gestalt-stuff. When I have so much social stuff going on both in my job and in my study, it is actually really nice to just spend time alone by myself, meditating, going for walks in the forest, or playing Chess online. I feel that I can allow myself alone time with a clear conscience. Probably that's exactly what I need more of - time alone - and feeling that I'm enough as I am just with myself not needing the constant validation of somebody else. Probably I'm getting much more independent in a healthy way now that I broke free from the addiction I had to my previous therapist. I totally admit that it was an addiction that also was created by my own need. I just don't think he dealt very well with it when I wanted to look closer at our dynamic. He was very good at helping me with external issues. But not very good at the interpersonal dynamic between us when our relationship became the object of my insecurities. But my new therapist has confirmed that it is perfectly ok that I bring up whatever I want to bring up regarding the dynamic in the interplay between the two of us. With my old therapist that always felt like a closed door that I was banging my head against.

Dark Night of the Soul Hmmm...... Meditated for 45 min, and then for 30 min a bit later, today. Woke up with a lot of strong feelings of being totally miserable and a failure in life. Lots of shame, worthlessness, and just pretty much everything that is nasty and bad. Managed to clear out many of these feelings with the 2nd meditation, but seems like this "spot" is where it leads back to again and again, and I think there is some deep purification that is needed to process out all these feelings. Not just one meditation and then everything is fine again. Perhaps the most irritating part about this is that I don't stay there long enough. I get some reward from my meditation and then I feel fine again, but then the misery comes back again and again, so I sort of wish I could just stay in the misery until the purification was done. Just land in it. It is always better when I just accept that my life is miserable right now and probably will be for a period of time until this stuff is processed, then when I get my hopes up that life is fun again and having it crushed over and over. But probably I will just have to have the attitude that there is a lot of mediative work needed right now. This is also probably to wear down the escapism I get into when life feels fine again. Getting fed up with being intoxicated by the fun parts of life, forgetting there is spiritual work to do.

Reflections around gestalttherapy group-processes and perhaps getting an art-studio next year or trying to figure out if that is just some daydreaming shit that will just make me more miserable. Mediated for 45 min this morning. Fell out of meditation for three days now. It has to do with having to do much work and a weekend-seminar regarding this gestalttherapist-education that I'm doing. Been going through a lot of shit for these three days. First of all I'm just going to finish this 2nd year of this education and then I'm going to quit. The education is 4 years in total, but I really don't like it anymore. It was good for the 1st year, but this whole 2nd year I've been really uninspired with this type of work. I think this form of psychotherapy lacks a spiritual dimension, and the sort of joy and life-energy you see in groups that practice meditation. This is a low-energy uninspired group that wallows in trauma, so it is pretty bad to be there when I've met so many joyful spiritual practitioners in my life. But anyways, I've signed the contract for this year, so I will just have to try to make the best out of it. Even though I don't want to be there, I will use this group as a mirror for all my projections. Fortunately I still like our main-teacher. She met me in a really nice way this time, as usual. So I'm reliving my school-traumatization where I've been sitting behind my desk for years feeling let down by my parents and the system and just projecting out that everything is shit and escaping into my fantasy, and she helped me understand that and that made me calm down. So I will just have to use the reminder of this year as a "projection screen" to get all this stuff triggered and then use the help of the teachers and my meditation practice to work through this stuff. So perhaps this is related because these last days I've also escaped into my fantasies about becoming an artist again, starting to think next year I will get an art-studio and that I will start to plan for my next exhibition (I've had several before, but this would have been my first solo-exhibition), but when I woke up again today that whole drive is just totally gone and I'm back to presence and meditation as my value-system. This sort of things happens over and over and over for many years, so I don't know what it is, whether I should go for it or whether I should just consider it some fantasy stuff. It is like the fantasy gets more and more real and realistic each time making plans and trying to figure out how I will direct my creative process in a realistic and dedicated way. But still that whole value system around making art seems to fall back on the ground when I mediate and sort of see through the narcissistic stuff in it. Probably doesn't have to be that way, but I guess I will just have to continue to meditate and see which way my life-force will move in based on that. Anyways, to use this gestaltherapy-student group that I don't like as a "projection screen" is probably the best that I can do for the reminder of this school-year, and it sort of makes me more settled to develop some understanding around how I will approach this. I think this gestalttherapy actually is some kind of trigger practice. No one can sit in a group like that listening to all that traumatic stuff without getting really really triggered. I don't think there is anything wrong with my capacity for vulnerability and empathy just because I don't like to sit immersed in a group like that for so long anymore. It was fun and meaningful when I needed that support and to get a sense of our shared sense of vulnerability and support for each other when I felt motivated to work with myself that way, but now it is just not inspiring anymore. I can still have a lot of vulnerability and empathy in my real life situations, for instance my job, when the situation calls for it, but those group-processes are some kind of artificially created groups where all this stuff is triggered up in too large quantities for me. Anyways, all this shit is stuff that I wallow in over and over, so I'm glad to get it out like this in the form of journaling so that I can see it in front of me instead of it just spinning around inside of my head.

Vipassana and samatha In the buddhist meditation that I do there are two components called vipassana and samatha. Vipassana is the aspect of clear seeing or insight and samatha is the aspect of calmness. These two qualities are supposed to be brought into balance. Sometimes my mind is naturally very calm, and it is nice to just let it settle down and get some well-needed rest. Other times my mind is more active and I have to work more in my meditation and that is when I have to emphasize the vipassana aspect more. Today was such a day, and it felt like my vipassana skill has become much sharper, which was really cool.

Meditation states Had a little depression going here again. Interesting how I don't notice that I fight it, and then I start to look in panic for external solutions, until I figure out what is going on and surrender to the feeling. It probably came because yesterday was so social fun, and now I feel left on my own again. I've already sat for 45 min, but I will sit for 45 more min after I'm done writing here. Also yesterday I was getting into a meditation state that was really mellow and nice, and today I didn't quite get there, but the momentum was sort of like there, but the state I was getting to, even though it was pretty present, had more of an edgy quality to it. I'm trying to learn to access these concentrated states of well-being, presence and softness, so I get a bit of a backlash when I'm not able to reproduce it. So I will have to look closer at this disappointment. It is like syncing up with what is here right now, and not trying to reproduce what was here yesterday which will always be a failure when I try, but if the attempt to reproduce is here, then that is something I can embrace. These states are a paradox. If I don't try at all my mind will never get collected enough, but if I try too hard I will squeeze them. And if there is more difficult stuff in my system that I need to process, then I have to work with that instead and usually these states are not available, at least not until the difficulties have been processed. So sit with what is. Sometimes I'm rewarded with states of well-being, sometimes not.

Back in my center Seems like now that I have re-established my meditation-practice again as my nr. 1 priority, that the momentum is really getting strong again, and that I feel much more grounded, present, and landed in myself. Holy moses how far my mind can go in between these glimpses of being landed in myself. So I'm really happy that I discovered this page and this emphasis on journaling and that now it seems I have managed to write myself back to myself again. And so the journey from here on will just be to take this art of presence to the level of mastery, in other words being present all the time. I don't think that that is really all that hard, even though I have to admit that I have meditated for 16-17 years without managing to do that, but there has just been so much suffering and confusion in my life, that again and again I've lost the belief that I can actually bring my mind to the present moment and make it stay there. Like that priority and the will to do it just totally disappears in all the confusion. But now, with the help of both journaling and meditation, I'm going to map out how I can make this come alive in a gradual and systematic way. I really feel that I have suffered enough now, and when my mind goes off again to wallow in some negative thoughts and emotions, I think I just have to tell myself over and over that I don't want to go there in the sense of wallowing in it. I can go there in order to "feel it to heal it" and that takes just being present with whatever is going on, but that wallowing part, I think I can now gain the mental discipline to avoid that bad habit. I've simply seen this suffering going on and on over so many years now, that by now I should really know that no amount of spinning around in my own mind will ever be the solution to anything. Interesting how this journaling-journey started out with me being pretty much everywhere in my various creative projects and all kinds of thoughts about everything, and now I've managed to write myself back to the very core. Like trimming down a bush in the garden that hasn't been taken care of in a long time with wild branches going off in all kinds of directions. Haha, that's actually how I've been feeling.

Full lotus 4 Sat for 1 hour today. 15 min intervals alternating between doing full lotus my normal way and then with the odd leg on top. In between these intervals I did the two yoga-exercises I have that are good for opening up my hips. Felt cool to do a drill like this. Already the odd side feels much less odd. Feels like my body is really opening up now. I will do some more yoga in the coming days as well to enhance this feeling of my body opening up. Feels a lot like my yoga-practice and my meditation-practice is merging into one thing.

Full lotus 3 and gratitude So before I'm going to bed now I wanted to sit for 15 more minutes in full lotus, and so I did 2 yoga-exercises to open up my hips that are really great. So then I sat for 15 min, and when I was done I was so inspired that I wanted to sit for 15 more min with the opposite foot on top, so I repeated the yoga-exercises and did that and that also worked really well even though it felt a little bit odd compared to the usual way I sit. But I just meditated on this odd feeling going into it and embracing it and that was really fun too. Wonder why I haven't thought about this before. I've been meditating for 16-17 years, but I always just sat in half lotus with the same foot on top of my thigh. That is like getting stuck in the same comfortable pattern when I could have been using this time more efficiently getting more physical benefits out of it as well. Anyways now I'm doing that, and it feel like I'm translating some of the things I learned on snowboard over to this. Last time I was snowboarding I was specifically training for learning to ride with the opposite foot in front of what I usually do. I've always sought safe patterns like that to settle down in, but now I get angry at how lazy I've been with not challenging myself with simple things like this. So anyways, learning to do it the odd way is now my friend :-) Feels like just mediating has a lot of health effects, and especially when done in full lotus. It is something about the circulation that it creates in the body that is both vitalizing and strengthening. Feels like my body is just ready to open up much more now. Like untying itself. Funny thing is when I sit in half-lotus I sit on a cushion and than often when I have gotten some momentum in my practice I have felt like a king sitting on my throne. Although that has some healthy aspects to it, I think a sense of pride can be healthy, it also has some narcissistic aspects to it. When I sit in full lotus I sit directly on the floor only on top of a blanked, and I somehow feel smaller in many ways, but small in a humble and cute way. Like this meditation thing is no big deal. I'm just going to sit there for a little bit, re-charge and tune into a more gentle and friendly state while my body is open and relaxed. Perhaps that's what much of it is about. Just getting the tensions out of my body so that I can become just gentle, friendly and humble. I've given too much weight to this sense of feeling powerful and strong. A lot of that is just some ego-stuff wanting to get ahead of everybody else. Feeling so much gratitude right now :-)