Lynnel's serious and not fun adventures

[Lynnel]

I am so orange it's insane

Yeah, first I had to find a fancy title for this journal. It's ironic because it's supposed to underline the fact that I'm extremely orange.  My ego is very serious and I generaly lack fun. As @Charlotte told me once I look like the internet police lol. Well I'm gonna be blatantly transparent here. If you are triggered by orange good fucking luck buddy, you're gonna need it. You're also gonna get a huge amount of egoic rants, of course.

First, I was blazey about this whole spiral dynamics thing. Seriously, so impractical, why would I need this ? Everyone mentally masturbating all over the forum, with the whole green orange pickup, spiral dynamics this, that. Then I finally decided to listen to Leo's episode about blue and then orange, and then it hit me. I am so orange and sometimes excessive orange it's just incredible. So very quickly I went from yeah shitty spiral dynamics who needs this to oh my god I am so underdevelopped this is absurd. Everyone must think I'm a fucking kid and here I thought I was like all amazing and doing great. Lord.

So how am I orange ? And how does my excessive orange manifest ?

1. Leo understood his audience well. I don't care pretty much about enlightenement or high consciousness, yeah it sounds nice, it's like very abstract, but I want like concrete results first. I'm doing everything in a very pragmatic way. I care about it only when suffering too much. That's pretty much it.
2. I have a huge huge problem with emotions. People fuck with your feelings until you have no more feelings. Totaly me. I got heartbroken, rejected a lot, and I got very bitter. Which doesn't mix nicely with orange. I believe I have a divine right to fuck over everything to achieve whatever I want as compensation. (Remember I'm ranting here so it's not exactly true - or actually maybe it's my ego trying to look again)
3. I always try to look good : clever, nice, charming, excellent, having a great image, projecting a great image, having a nice instagram.
4. I have a huge problem with emotions again : I'm unable to cry to release any tensions. I grew up in a very Blue culture (Russia) and while my family is very orange (Professors and high level scientists) I'm still a bit blue I guess ? Sexuality is repressed, crying is repressed, being angry is repressed, all emotions are bad and forbidden and I'm not a fucking hippie, like I you know guy's dont cry and that type of shit. Only I see the limits of that as I am unable to feel, live, experience and process feelings. Everything feels well like almost nothing because everything is very shallow. I'm very closed on my emotions and I really wanna be able to feel but it's locked. Too much pain to process I guess.
5. I am very transactionnal based, I build my relationships in a WIN WIN scenario, where I have to offer value because well people only care about survival, people don't care about your feeling, girls are gonna just leave you if you're not good enough, they don't give a shit about how you feel, etc. Same for people. And I also consider people in a transactionnal manner, such as well what can he do for me ? Where is the value ? Will he help me achieve my goals ? does he have any skills or nice professions, etc ? Is he or she dragging me down ? My relationships and ability to make friends is thus also limited because I have this very criticism based lens.
6. I am quite shallow honestly. I don't feel exactly manly. I don't feel confident, nor interesting and I do have some self esteem issue so I'm very pragmatic and very based on achievement. I just wanna do and achieve more and more to compensate.
7. I have a very materialistic paradigm I don't exactly wanna break because I feel like it's gonna make me too uncomfortable.
8. I don't realize what higher stages look like and that there is a possibility to have more/feel more to life.
9. I'm a bit stuck up and unable to have fun. I mean fun doesn't help getting better, so why have it ?
10. I love efficiency, excellence, progress.
11. I lack creativity and I lost most of my creativity and feeling things after people have fucked with my feelings too much - just kidding - after well I got older. I feel I was more deeply connected to that when I was a bit blue.
12. I am very egoic, egocentric and I mostly care only about my interest and I rarely consider the interests of others.

What is there that is maybe a bit green ?

1. I don't exactly believe in chakra but I am to some extent spiritual and I believe altough I'm a bit sceptical in chakras. I'm doing kriya yoga, meditation, hatha yoga and it's something I like a lot.
2. I don't view women as sex objects altough sometimes I do when they are very beautiful. I've worked trough some issues there.
3. I am not entirely closed off emotionnaly and I can feel very a huge depth of feeling and I would say I was very very sensitive when I was a kid
4. I am able to be honest and loving in my loving relationships
5. I have enough perspective to look at myself at least a bit honestly and takes notes about what's wrong (but in the name of progress so still orange most likely)
6. I am excited by psychedelics and the options they will uncover.

So, I wanna get to green and then get to yellow. That's gonna be the goal because too much orange will simply allow me to waste my life. Any tips are welcome

Edited July 29, 2018 by Lynnel

[tsuki]

@Lynnel Given the background you presented, my advice is simple: start meditating.

You are saying that you have no emotions. That's not true.
The only way to experience the world without them is to simply not notice them.
That happens because the paradigm of practicality you inhabit judges them as impractical.
Meditation will help you see them, and contemplation about the use of emotions will stop you from rejecting them.
Think of emotions as effortless thoughts that arise in response to transgression of your value system.
The problem with them arises if your conscious values are constructed without the regard for your unconscious ones. 
You are supposed to construct your worldview to incorporate your unconscious value system.
Here is another post I wrote about this topic:

 

[Lynnel]

@tsuki FYI, maybe I should have said it, but I've been doing 30 minutes of daily SDS meditation for 2 years by now, 5 month of kriya yoga + some more classic yoga, lots of shamanic breathing and some psychedelics.

Thanks I'll check this out. Of course I do have emotions, I simply do not have very intense emotions. My ability to feel feels very limited (lol).

[Lynnel]

Spiral dynamics and Green is hands down the best thing that ever happened to me.

I never ever felt so good in my life. Transitioning to green aside from meditation/yoga and other spiritual practices is the most worthwhile thing I've ever done.  And it's simply incredible. As I'm working up towards green I'm striving to :

Learn the following qualities and skills :

• Openness
• Surrender
• Acceptance
• Tolerance
• Non violent communication
• Deeper emotionnal connection
• Deeper EQ
• Feeling feeling feeling more emotions and enjoying it
• Opening of the heart in relationship and everything (and boy does it feel good)
• letting go

I'm also trying to free myself and work trough :

• Guilt/shame
• Hurt/pain
• Anxiety/tension
• Bitterness
• Unworthiness
• Anger/rage
• Feeling deficient/bad/not good enough
• lack of belonging
• Neurotic doing
• Compensating behaviours

 

One of the best books I'm currently reading for handling all of this, on top of contemplation and SDS, is Tara's Brach Radical Acceptance. The book is amazing.

The core problem with orange is that everyone to some extent feels deficient, unworthy (trance of unworthiness as Tara calls it), not good enough, fucked up, w/e, disconnected etc. Because orange cannot handle all those feelings and it tend to try to achieve to forget about the pain. Basically it's easy :

Someone hurt you ? I'm gonna be more succesfull to feel better and then fuck them over ! I feel lost ? Work more. this or that or w/e hurts ? work even more ! Achieve more !

The key concept that made it click is listening to Leo : orange is just a another mind virus with secular values. Which instead of handling your feelings and going deep inside insist on you working more and more, achieving and it being exactly the only way ! To stop feeling deficient and the pain of being deficient all you have to do is achieve more ! But as Tara puts it it's only fucking up you more. You achieve and then you feel more disconnected, lost, lonely, anxious, etc.

Also the idea that success doesn't make us happy finally clicked to some extent after listening to Leo's episode for the tenth time : like recognizing that success won't make us happy is a huge step forward and it's kinda a struggle because we are so programmed to feel like it is # mindvirus. There is currently a consistent tension about this in me and it will take time to process it.

The core orange shenanigan is feeling very deficient and denying it and trying to achieve to get away from painful feelings. It doesn't work.

On a funny note this is exactly what happened to RSD Julien : his whole scandal forced him to transit from orange to green because it fucked him over completely. And now he is teaching to some extent the whole stop being neurotic orange stuff to become green and do out of inspiration. The issue is is that if you haven't studied spiral dynamics and have no meta perspective you're not seeing how orange works and is actually a sort of mind virus and it won't really hit you, you really need to surrender to accept the limitations of orange and thrive to green.

This also means accomplishement for the sake accomplishement - you need to let that shit go. It's not gonna make you happy by itself. Success does nothing for you on a emotionnal plan and as Tara puts it nicely you can have the best things in the world and you won't be able to  enjoy them ! It's not happening ! It's a different dimension !

In short if you feel deficient no amout of achieveing will solve it.

So I'm also trying to process feeling of hatred and pain related to being bullied, my exe's, women hurting me, etc.

As Tara teaches us we can discover what our shadow issues are by asking two questions :

• What do I want other to see me as ?
• What do I not want other to see me as ?

More precisely it comes down to several other questions I'm asking myself :

• Why do I wanna be cool ? Be seen as cool ? Feel cool ? Not being associated with uncool ? Feel like I'm in a movie ? Always putting up some sort of performance ? Why do I need to feel cool ? Why do I feel deficient when looking at cooler people ?
• Why am I always trying to be more clever than everyone ? Why am I always trying to get into the clever teacher position ? Why do I need to always feel superior to everyone ? More clever ? Why am I not showing how vulnerable I feel sometimes  or how hurt I am or why I am trying to hide how imperfect I am ?
• WHy am I trying to always be the best ? To be great or to be amazing or to do better than anyone ? Why am I even trying to transcend orange ? Why do I always want to achieve and achieve even more ?

In short because of feeling deficient and not wanting to feel the pain of being imperfect, deficient, and the pain related to all the other negative feelings.

So trying to be cool, look cool, clever, superior, outperforming, achieving for the sake of it, competition, being better, you have to let that shit go.

This goes meta because you also have to wonder why am I trying SO HARD to better myself ? Why am I doing self-actualization ?

You have to go deep into the neurotic doing and understand what you're trying to avoid and let it go entirely. This means for instance not working on your life purpose if it's not aligned with your heart - for me it often writing was to write about all the pain and how everyone who hurt me was a bitch and having the whole nation read me and tell me yes your ex or this person was a bitch to you and feel nationwide pity. Fuck me I have issues. Then comes the part when I imagine people throwing flowers at me on the streets because I'm amazing.

But more key questions are along the lines of : why do I wanna fuck so much girls and always wanted to fuck so much girls like a industrial grade consumption fucker ? WHy did I always want to better myself on a industrial grade level and achieve and overthrow everything and everyone and feel on the top of every pyramid imaginable with the impossible being possible and every sky having no limit. If I never went green you could have given me a life time and I would have tried to achieve infinity.

So yeah those questions are very important to ponder and I'm seeing more and more of my own neurotic behaviour. Why do I wanna get accross to green is also a very good question because there is always a process of not being good enough as I am and wanting to achieve be it in the spiritual world, by meditating MORE and I see the same tendency : more questions, more meditation, more reading about spiral dynamics more eating healthy, more of this and that. This is a very well known danger.

The key is to notice it and surrender which is difficult because it's met with a lot of resistance : no I don't wanna stop working ! First time RSD Julien told something along the line you have to let to shit go I was like FUCK YOU I'm gonna go on working ! Hell no I'm not stoping my rat race. And it's still a struggle that's pretty much going on.

The very very desire to achieve and to DO something needs to be contemplated very deeply, whatever the doing is ! Because if it's done for the "wrong " reasons it's not worth it. And it's very hard because it fucks up everything entirely and you realize you've been doing it wrong your whole life and there is a red alert in your head about "NO don't stop achieving ! keep the rat race on ! You must go on ! Don't stop ! Never stop !" . I wanna really deeply understand what will happen if I stop.

Finally a funny remark : money, status etc isn't what get girls, it plays almost no role whatsoever, it's just that orange cannot see things such as charm, radiance, humour nor emotions and doesn't appreciate them fully. There are no parameters aside from looks and money in orange thus it becomes what sets the bar while it totaly false and doesn't make a relationship. Feelings make a relationship.

Edited August 27, 2018 by Lynnel

[Lynnel]

Surrender and contemplation

I've been in a sort of thug of war : very often when something I do not like happens there appears some thoughts along the lines of : let's work to change this ! You should not allow this or that ! Do ! Every time I undo the undoing fantasy and surrender to the do nothing - and the feelings the doing is trying to avoid.

Also of course orange conditionning kicks back in with a sort of you cannot just do nothing mentality. The desire to get better, to progress is still there. That's why I started to contemplate : why am I even doing self-development ? What do I want out of this ? Do I want to be happy ? It's quite incredible whatever neurotic doing arises to notice it. We put so so much pressure on yourselves to perform. Like if you're relaxing you always start to think well I should be doing more !

I read a thread on there on the forum about someone who was like no watching movies are all distractions ! But isn't that neurotic orange doing ? Why would you even DO anything ? Why do we feel the desire to do ? On a very deeper level I'm questionning the purpose leo talking about in his meaning video. What is even the purpose of doing ? Or of all this "planned" doing at least. You might think I'm going too far but that would be orange again. But there is a deeper motivational problem.

Notice how orange motivation is all about the rewards. Stop doing stupid shit. Drop this or that. Drop your friends because who needs them you only need to achieve more ! It's just crude mindless working. Like excess orange is discarding everything not productive and it becomes unproductive because you're not driven. Achievement nor cheese doesn't satifsty you. You don't enjoy your work. You don't find it even important. You only want some rewards. If the work is worth doing it should be done for itself and not the rewards it brings.

In writing there is a saying about inspiration not being reliable and chasing it with a club. What's that gonna do for you ? Nothing ! You're gonna produce garbage ! If you don't feel like producing beautiful art nor you find it beautiful then it's simply gonna be garbage. You're not feeling inspired because you feel too forced and too obliged to do something ! You have too much pressure and too many stakes and expecting too many rewards. I wished sometimes I could skip working all together and just chill under the sun. That's not gonna fly. Perspiration not inspiration, just do it, etc are simply extremely orange saying which do not help you at all. Do you struggle with procrastination ? That's simply too much orange. Did you ever notice discipline was suffering ? Like this very hardcore pressure discipline like I have to do or I shall suffer or I must do because I want those rewards ? Well it's the same.

And of course I feel great resistance to discarding discipline all together because that's extreme and also extremely orange. But inspiration wins every time. It must be organic and come from inside. Healthy doing comes from inspiration and note internal struggle where you have to force yourself to do.

Of course, if you're orange you're extremely afraid of surrender and letting go. Wait are you telling me to do nothing and become undisciplined ? That sounds horrendous to an orange person. How will I ever get my sport cars and hot girls then !? Well you have to let it fully go and it will come back arround full circle : if you can surrender doing fully and discilpine fully and purpose fully your organism will become so bored with distractions it will find something more worthwhile to do organically. But you gotta let the neurotic doing go. You gotta let it go.

[Lynnel]

Neurotic doing

Along the lines of the previous post.

Would you be totaly fine if nothing ever changed ? If you never meditated ? Never did anything ? If you never ever changed who you are ! If you stayed exactly the same as you are right now. Would you be fine with that ?

I'm sure as hell I would not ! And this is a deep lack of acceptance. To really change you need to accept everything fully. This is so hard because basically all of my motivation at least comes from a knee jerking reaction : I see something which makes me feel less than "capable, clever, etc." and then I invent some clever plan inspired to get better. I strive to be advanced, clever, number one, which is fully neurotic. I mean of course I get better but that doesn't solve the deeper issue. In reality you want exactly the opposite : to be fine with whatever is. To be truly fine. To truly surrender to it. To let go of the desire to change and do.

I fear this is gonna take cycles : I will do a LOT exhaust myself, realize it's pointless and then come back to the same realization to fully integrate. Or maybe I had my fair share of neurotic doing and now I'm gonna be able to surrender it almost entirely. Who knows.

Everytime my neurotic doing/motivation is triggered I immediately try to surrender it. To let that shit go.

[Lynnel]

There is nothing wrong with me - nothing wrong with you and nothing wrong with anyone.

Still embracing my getting up to green : I've been doing a lot of shadow work recently. Sudently I came to a very amazing realization while reading Alice Barry. She was telling how she was using criticizm as a way to feel connected to her father and because she loved him a lot. Something which made perfect sense : there was no evil in it, none at all. So if your shadow aspects are totaly fine, I mean you wouldn't understand someone doing that  while being little ? There is nothing wrong with your shadow. There is thus also nothing wrong with the "better" aspects of yourself. So there is nothing wrong nor with you, nor with the world nor with anyone.

All suffering is ignorance and unconsciousness. That's the devil here. And still there is nothing wrong with it. There is nothing wrong. There is no wrong at all. Wrong is not wrong and wrong is totaly right. Wrong is totaly fine as fine as being fine. Everything is perfectly fine as it is. I'm so glad I managed to integrate a bit of Tara Brach into my life but yes, there is nothing wrong with me nor my coping patterns, addictions, health issues, hatred, "bad" emotions, anything and everything, you reading here, I just wanna shout : THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUUUU. NO CARDINAL SINS NOTHING. You're totaly okay and perfect as you presently are.

Then you may change as you will to be more in alignement with your higher values. There is no more struggle and huge resistance to change because you're doing it out of resisting being bad.

There is of course nothing wrong with the shadow and calling something part of you the shadow was a bad move by itself ! There is nothing bad or wrong with the shadow.

The gold is in the dark.

Guys, for those of you who are stuck in orange. You have no idea how good this feels. I'm gonna grind spirituality even more seriously than before and life will become really sweet. Once you start feeling a lot of beauty and love and there being nothing fucking wrong you're gonna be so extatic. Flowers everywhere ! <3  Enjoy the journey guys.

[Lynnel]

Augustus Masters - to be a man

I cannot recommend this book enough. David deida was a bit too out there for me and this book seems to be more yellow which I completely love.

Also I realized I had huge issues with repressed anger and repressed hatred.

Also I should rename this journal to breaking reality because I'm gonna study meditation very seriously and study siddhis, law of attraction and maybe even astral projection. All those juicy green topics. Okay not sure about the astral thing but for suuure I'm gonna do more LOA. I feel like it's a very important component of green. Also, some positive thinking because fuck I'm negative sometimes. I mean look at the title of my journal for god's sake.

Another big issue that needs to be solved from orange to green is self-worth and self-esteem. It seems like a very abstract concept which isn't doing much for you at orange but you chase it and a LOT of external things you desire is because of a flawed self-esteem. But it hurts too much to admit it and to look inside. You may hear that you have self-esteem issues but that doesn't register. You mind doesn't consider it. You just need the next achievement.

Living in the future

This really hit home. About her saying life happens now. Leo wasn't right : orange isn't a glutton or a hedonist : orange lives for the purpose of future achievement. We live in the past which was better or in the future which will be better. It's like blue for the afterlife, but the timeline is different.

After watching the video I said fuck at least a 100 times looking at the screen. That hit home. Living in the future is not a way of living folks. There is no future.

It's like at the bar, the "free beer tomorrow " : well it never comes.

 

[Lynnel]

Truly letting go.

I can't stress enough how getting to green is amazing and important, if you're mostly orange. You really need to purge all of yoru inner garbage and the holding on to the past.

The past runs you. Your whole life is a huge psychodrama. Like I finally understood shakespear when he said we're all actors. We're all playing out our conditionning, our wounds, hurt, past pain, patterns, everything - we're just a predictably moving machine. Without awareness that is.

To truly let go is amazing. You can't live for the past - nor should you live for the future because there is no future right now. You don't need the past - you need to process it, to metabolize, to let go of it. It doesn't serve you.

No matter where you're at, go ahead. Ahead and right now is the only way.

Some friendships are very nice and they hurt you at the same time - let go of them. Let go of attachement, let go of it. It will hurt but you will more free. Don't avoid pain. You need to learn to process pain and suffering and truly embrace it if you wanna reach the highest level of self-development work.

Fuck, Leo and the spiral dynamics things just saved my whole life. Really. My whole life would've been running arround trying to solve my inner issues with pointless achievement while suffering. Fuck orange is horrible. And self-development and growth is so amazing. If you're depressed or anything just go straight ahead - it will feel so amazing.

Being truly free of the past is something. Really something.

[Lynnel]

Deep work and the dangers of technology.

One of the things Cal Newport mentions in deep work is that the drawbacks of using social media such as facebook are huge :

Technology is extremely dangerous.

Social media is extremely dangerous.

Addiction to internet and to distraction is actually as real as ever and it's horrible.

Try to not use your phone and your computer for several day's straight. Or simply not using the internet until 8pm.

If you even manage to do it, you're gonna feel a dopamine high. Internet addiction and technology addiction are not subtle. Those are extremely real.

The danger comes from distractions (anything useless relative to deep work which requires focus) which are seen as so common they are not something you do but just something that happens to you.

Don't let the internet happen to you. Don't let facebook or any social media happen to you. Eliminate it if you don't need it.

Right now as a general rule I'm not using the internet until 8 pm on my working days. I'll upgrade this further by using facebook only on sunday or something and destroying every useless app on my phone.

Watch out and also deep work deserves 10/10. It actually changed my entire life.

[Lynnel]

Psychedelics are a godsend.

Honestly mushrooms are one of the best things that even happened in my life. Honestly It's been only a week after my second serious trip and the benefits have been so freaking amazing I am just mindblown by the possibilities. It's worth for sure thousands hours of meditation and therapy and even then it hits you from completely unexpected angles, it's simply so amazing !

If you're self-actualizing without any psychedelics you really need to rethink your life because those are excellent, simply magnificient tools. They help so so so so so so much ! If they stack on top of existing practices they can take you to the next level.

PS: I've been thinking about it and psychedelics actually allow your consciousness to quantum jump. Of course god would have provided a tool to that if needed. Of course. If you watch the very first leo retreat video you'll understand what I mean

We need more success and not less success.

I feel like Leo is bitching about success and money not making you happy too much. He needs to understand that if most people are wage slaves usually it means that there is too little success and even though success is addictive TOO MUCH success is a FAR better issue than TOO little success. Too little ressources is a bigger problem than too much ressources.

Also, happy new year folks and don't forget to watch the new Emerald video on that topic

 

Edited January 2, 2019 by Lynnel