zambize

Could be something you think about yourself, or some feelings you have about yourself that are emotionally difficult to accept. It could be something along the lines of admitting you don't know half as much as you think you do, admitting you aren't happy, admitting you hurt people you claim to love etc

While I believe from my experience that meditation works for anxiety and depression, the path towards healing from meditation would he done by literally everyone if it wasnt difficult at times. You will often feel worse because you have to confront a lot of stuff about yourself and that just isnt comfortable sometimes. So if you can confront hard truths about yourself and are willing to feel uncomfortable at times, I think meditation can work, but if you cant do that because maybe its just emotionally too intense, I would seek profession help/therapy for mental disorders

I've done once every two weeks which felt great at the time, but I haven't done them in over a month and feel fine with that. It's one of those things that I let my intuition decide

It's great your trying to work through this, hopefully you are being open and honest about this with your partner, seems like she really matters to you, enough to make you want to reflect on yourself and be vulnerable enough to admit you might have done issues. I think my biggest problem isn't usually me being angry or sad or anxious, it's usually about me being anxious about being anxious, or angry about being angry, or sad about being sad, those are the kind of loops that bother me the most so my recommendation would just to try not to have negative reactions to your anger as it pops up. It will make it so much harder to process. The way past anger is through it, like many problems we face so I think from my experience it would be best for you to feel the anger you need to feel without judging yourself for it

Well there were other times where resources were more scarce and our survival was more depending on dominating other people and creating an image of someone who is to be respected. I'm sure it was a survival advantage to exaggerate how strong you are in order to protect yourself. We see it all over in the animal kingdom, some animals have found really beautiful ways to make themselves seem one up on anyone who might want to cause them harm. Now times have changed and we dont need to act like that anymore to survive, but we still need society to be concious enough to realize that there are some things like this that can be let go of. I think we are heading there

You could find a creative outlet, draw a picture, write a story, make your own song. Getting your deepest desires out on to paper, how you feel about the world etc can lead to a lot of growth

Good I actually saw her yesterday to go shoe shopping, my work gives us 175 dollars to spend on shoes so I got to see her to help pick out some stuff

Put me on the list for if you ever become god

I think if you're a people person, backpacking would give a good opportunity to meet a lot of different people across a really large area and I could see that being really valuable

Goals day 39+40+41/66 First week of work went really well, person training me told the boss of the company I was the quickest learner he's ever had, which was nice of him and now I'm in super good standings at work. Uhhh last night I was meditating and I got like jumped a bit cause I hallucinated a girl kind of like waving at me through a window. Some of visions when I close my eyes are become a lot more vivid and realistic and it kind of caught me off guard. Definitely stepping into some new territory. Still could be eating healthier, but I did go out shopping and got some stuff that's a bit better so I'm happy enough with how I'm eating. Monday I get trained on a forklift, I'm going to have to really avoid the temptation of messing around on the forklift. I'm definitely going to want to go too fast and do donuts and whatnot, showoff how good of a forklift driver I am..... I'll try not to do that, I could definitely get in trouble with that thing if I don't watch myself. I'd say we are on track, could maybe remember to not multi-task quite so much, could help relax even more, otherwise most stuff is going pretty well

My thoughts on Music//Dance as a Spiritual Tool I'll start with music. I feel like music has personally been used as both a tool to help me process my emotions, and a defense mechanism. Some of the ways I use music in an unhealthy way include switching songs as a means to avoid a strong emotion. For example, when I'm walking down the street and I think of how cringe of a message I sent someone, instead of really feeling that embarrassment, I'll look at my, scroll through the songs, and pick a new song. The mind often uses distractions as a defense mechanism against having to process our emotions and face reality, which I appreciate in causes of trauma, but when I really want to address everything I'm feeling in my life to help me move forward from it, it's a bit obnoxious. I think I've noticed that I also use certain types of music to cover up emotional wounds. Like if one night I'm feeling particularly lonely, I pump up the music a bit louder, I listen to a bit more energetic songs. I want more of my reality to be music so less of it can be hurt. However, then those emotions never get processed so it's important for me to be aware of this. I think the happiest times in my life are when I've been really content with listening to lofi-hip hopisk music. Nujabes is another artist I'm particularly fond of. In sum I think two of the major issues with music I see are using changing songs and looking for songs as a constant distraction source from emotions that pop up throughout the day, as well as listening to incredibly hype music as more of a means to drown out our emotional body with audio. There are however many benefits to listening to music. First of all, just like we can use super loud music to drown out our emotional body, I think lighter music can be used as a pseudo meditation. One of the hardest things facing kids today is constant stimulation. I believe you're in a good position to address your emotions if you're less stimulated at the time of processing these emotions, than you are on average throughout the day. Basically, I think it's important to have an attention surplus, to feel too energetic for the situation at hand. That way you build up energy and antsiness, but you hold strong through the temptations to get up. I would largely correlate how effective my meditations feel with how many times I redirect my ego to the present moment, and that energy excess caused by light music/no music meditation sessions cultivates the perfect environment to say "no ego, yes being". I think there is more to be said about music in terms of just it's something so core to how many people connect with the world and express themselves, but that's for another day. Dancing is low-key underrated. I think first of all, it forces you to address a lot of tension in your body. It's much easier to see what parts of your body you are failing to loosen up when you're dancing. This is important because a relaxed body is important for a relaxed mind, there is a reason why many meditation sessions begin with a body scan. Dancing also forces you to be present with the song. When I'm not dancing, and I'm listening to music, too often I'll open up reddit or some forums, and this is often used as a defense mechanism from me feeling some emotion that may have popped up during the song. However, when I'm dancing, I'm much more forced to be in the moment and feeling the song. So it's a good way to say, this time is about music and dancing, this time is about relating with the music and feeling my own emotions and channeling that into a dance. This moment isn't about me checking Reddit every five minutes. Dancing keeps me honest to that. I think there's also something to be said about dancing in regards to perfectionists like myself. It's a good opportunity to not take yourself or your work so seriously. If you can't dance like a toddler while looking at yourself in the mirror, maybe you take yourself too seriously. Dancing gives me a chance to just confront my lack of perfection with my toddlerisk dance moves, I can kind of fight through my own inner-judgement and cringe and this helps me with my confidence in every day life.

Goals day 37+38/66 Well work is going really well, my boss said "even with high expectations you are exceeding them" or something like that. Gimme a raise then bitch. Hes actually a really nice guy. Getting kind of lazy with the journal, but not with the goals. And the goal of the journal was one way I could motivate myself and keep track of my goals so as long as I'm doing well in my life, I dont really care if I slack on a couple of things. I do need to make myself healthier food. Yesterdays dinner was oreos and a couple of peanut butter sandwiches. Really setting the bar low in terms of healthier food so we probably gunna do well with that goal. Atleast I'm not getting fat, I dont eat enough shit food to do that, despite sometimes me only eating unhealthy stuff in a day.

Goals Day 35+36/66 Today was my first day at work, and it went quite well. A bunch of people fucked up and I caught their fuck ups and the dude training me was like "can you just go talk to him and deal with this" so I was my first day on the job kind of telling this dude who I just met that he needed to fix his mistakes. The guy took it really well, but I think I'd rather not be put in that position, I don't want people thinking I'm trying to be some boss :(((((( I got along with everyone well, and yeah that's probably going to continue going well. As far as enlightenment work goes, I don't got much to say, we are somewhere on the path with our machete chopping away. I would say my meditation session have gotten a lot better, I barely got lost in thought in my last two hour meditation session. Kind of been eating like shit though, but that's not that hard to fix

Parenting just seems like applying personal development to your own child , plus maybe a couple other things like cleaning shit off of assholes that aren't your own. If you know how to raise a child, you should know how to raise yourself because we are all children in many ways

Legalize eating babies

Goals Day 34/66 Yesterday I went to a comedy club with the family. Which actually went pretty well. My mom still does some shit that drives me crazy in public. I don't really like small talk, and I don't really care to talk about stupid shit with strangers. We shared a table with some other people and she's always gotta like introduce everyone and talk about where they live and work and just kind of talk to talk. The woman running this comedy club did such a good job despite it being such a small venue, I was really impressed. She said she was 53 and married with kids. I don't think I've ever wanted to fuck a 53 year old woman with kids but I would've taken her home with me no shame. I was walking by the lake today and saw people rowing and was like "that's weird it's a holiday", which is kind of comedically narcissistic that somehow the rowing team cares about my favorite holiday 420. But it's important to me, so everyone else must care haha. I'm probably 100x more excited for 420 today and hanging out with friends than Easter tomorrow, sorry Jesus, your holiday kinda fucking sucks. Who the fuck picked ham anyways, it's probably the least liked special dinner out there..... Things are going good though for the most part, couple of hard times where I really have to sit down, quiet down, and process, but I enjoy it for the most part

Have you thought about meal prepping a couple of healthy meals, or maybe that's what you tried? That consistency could maybe help with blood sugar, but I'm not sure

I really like that quote, especially since I was at a comedy show yesterday haha

I'm grateful that I want to be happy I'm grateful I didn't die when I was younger and almost OD'ed I'm grateful that my roommate is a really nice boy sometimes I'm grateful you're on this forums because I like you and think you're super helpful to other people I'm grateful that it's finally spring cause winter in Wisconsin fucking sucks That's it!

I would say a 40 minute session is probably better than two 20 minutes because I do think it can take a little bit of start up time to get into the zone and quiet the mind well enough to notice some of the subtle ways we are suffering and resisting reality. That being said, I wouldnt say it has seemed that important from my experience, but you'll have to get a feel for it yourself. I wouldnt stress it too much and just do whichever of the two comes more naturally and focus more on how you can be practicing throughout your everyday life

Me: Well I don't take it seriously but I quite often have those narcissistic thoughts that the world revolves around me much more than it does. Soooooo I was feeling a bit tired and kind of done doing anything productive, and my roommate came home and had seen that I had done like 3/4 of the cleaning, and he goes and does the other 1/4 and gives me a cupcake. That definitely helped turn around my night. Sometimes he pisses me the fuck off, but he can really be a sweetheart. I think at the beginning of my goals on working on femininity,I felt bad that I spent so much time on enlightenment work vs. femininity. But that's just cause I didn't realize fully the role of femininity in enlightenment work. Right now I largely consider enlightenment work a practice of femininity, much more so than masculinity. Surrender, kindness, compassion etc. are all things I heavily associate with the work. Surrender is pretty obvious, the goal for me is to surrender completely to reality, that's pretty close to what I think my definition of enlightenment would be saved for. Absolutely zero resistance to what is in your direct experience. Now kindness and compassion are also important, but it's kind of harder to explain. But it makes the surrendering go so much faster, it kind of affects the rate at which you let go. When you know you are kind and compassionate with yourself, you're willing to be more honest with yourself. You care enough to address the things that are nagging you in your direct experience because you are important to you to take the time to do that and suffer through it so in the future you can feel better and be happier. It's an act of kindness and compassion at its heart. On that note, enlightenment work is going really well and I've felt like I've kind of "leveled up" a couple of times recently which is nice, I love living a vivid life Grade: A, it was too productive of a day to be otherwise Still in the indie vibe although I feel myself kind of going back to throwback songs

Goals Day 32/66 Did a 2 hour "do nothing" meditation, and only got distracted for a couple of minutes twice. So that was really good. I also worked out, did some grocery shopping, cleaned the whole house, got some laundry done. It was a productive day. Probably a bit of ego backlash in there because I'm pretty tilted right now over the downstairs neighbor not paying WiFi. At least more than I usually would. I have a wet dream of kicking them all off the Wifi and just letting them try and complete the rest of college w/o it. I'm going to do that actually if I get any more of a hard time. Other than that, pretty productive day.

Goals Day 30+31/66 Having some new sensations and getting pretty good at dissolving into reality, I'll probably spend some time the next two days trying to really explore a bit more internally. See if doing a meditation closer to like two hours brings anything new or not. Maybe I'll journal about that tomorrow. Not much else to say, I'm doing pretty well so I'm happy enough

Tea #2 made me smile, I'm glad you're getting your tea time

That sounds like good advice!