Hi,
as you can see, I have an account here for a while - since 2017. It was a time, when I started to search information about meditation and I did find it. I started meditation habit, a bit of mindfulness, fighting my addictions and eating healthier (including a version of Leo's soup ;) ). I did meditation for almost two years, for about 20 to 60 minutes a day. I even had a 3 days solo retreat, which was a failure - I wasn't ready for such isolation and on a day 3 I drove to nearby town just to relax in presence of other people.
By that time I've worked in corporation for several years and was pretty, as I thought, successful. Not to the point of huge wealth, but well beyond average. For a while I had some serious issues in my relationship and it came to an end after 8 years of being togeather. I admit that it took a great toll on me, I stopped meditating and reverted to some addictions.
After some time I got back to normal, as we always do, but I was already different. My partner was very materialistic, always wanting more, now I saw this clearly. I also saw bit of this in myself and it got me into minimalism. I just saw that accumulating more wealth, more goods wasn't satisfying and that always some new target appeared. My new flat Is quite minimalistic, got rid of a lot of stuff, I began to meditate again, eliminate addictions and got back to eating healthy. And this time I began to do yoga, normal western hatha yoga and a bit of pranayama. When I do something of my own will, I usually give 100% of my capabilities and so was with yoga. It helped me to cope after break up, so over the course of 5 months my practice grew to 5-7 times a week, from 1,5 to 4,5 hours of practice a day. I got some individual lessons, practiced a bit of acroyoga and got to know teachers better, spending some time with them after practicing. My diet became vegetarian, not that I pity poor animals, but as far as I now know meat is not so healthy, especially meat found in most stores. When organization like WHO says that meat is carcinogenic (in greater amounts), well I do take heed. Besides I was curious if I'm not addicted to meat, which I'm not, I don't miss eating meat at all.
For about two weeks now I have regressed: I had problems meditating, it was hard to do yoga on my own at home, got back to some addictions (coffee, sweets) and overall I felt down. Recently in search of motivation I got back to actualized.org. I watched episode on ego backlash and it opened my eyes on what's happening to me. After I watched that episode youtube proposed me with spiral dynamics episode and that was... whoaaaaa. By now I have seen whole playlist and it blew my mind.
Now I see that, I was totally orange: atheistic, materialistic, beliving in science, libertarian, loving competition, focused on results. It's hard for me to tell, what pushed me. Was it meditation, that I started to better myself, to get better results in work and life or was it my relationship? Both? Either way I see I have changed a lot, and now that I know about ego backlash, I know I pushed myself too much, too fast in last five months. Now that I know of spiral dynamics, I know at what fields I have a lot work to do. It wasn't enlightenment, but it was enlightening. It's still new to me and strange. If someone few years ago told me I would even consider going vegetarian or not make laugh at ecological ideas in industry... well, I wouldn't believe it.
I just wanted to share this, with you. I think it helps me to overcome my ego backlash and hopefully to return on tracks.
Just now one question poped in my mind: What positive values do you think one can get from stage blue? I see a lot of good qualities in orange. I chuckled a lot when I heard of green stage talking and sharing, not being able to get into action, to get results. I know that type, but I still fail to see qualities in blue. I think I'll watch that episode once agian, meanwhile feel free to tell me what you think.
And just a word, I'm not blind to some things Leo is saying or doing, but I don't want to judge those words and actions. I see and feel how I am changing and I think it's for the better. Right now I do things I wouldn't approve earlier, who knows what will I do in a few years?
