My meditation journal

[Thittato]

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."

[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.

Edited March 1, 2019 by Thittato

[Thittato]

Insights in the bath-house

Today when I went to the bath-house and swimming hall nearby where I live I started to think about what are the primary or essential skills in some of the things I'm interested in.

- In the vipassana meditation that I do it is to penetrate the objects of awareness so that stuckness turns into flow. The way that I "penetrate" the objects is that I start to look for whatever I can find of some vibratory quality to the object. Even the most solid objects of awareness has some vibratory quality to it if I just look closely enough.

- In social work it is to make the people that I work with feel seen, heard, understood and validated for who they are.

- In Chess it is "pattern recognition" and there is a very structured way to develop this type of pattern recognition and that is probably the quickest way to get good at the game.

- In social relationships and in dating it is probably to add value to the interaction, although that can be specified a lot.

When I was at this bath-house I also started to notice that my level of consciousness using this place has become much greater. I've found a really good balance between swimming, sauna, using the "ice bath" being inspired by the Wim Hoff method, using underwater high-pressure currents to massage my lower-back, and the different warm-baths. Before I used to boiled myself too long in the sauna, really exaggerating how much time I spent there so I became so tired I didn't see any use of it, but now there was just a new level of refinement and balance to the whole thing, which was really awesome. It just adds to the whole energy of this forum of how to create an awesome life I think. Even something as simple as going to the bathhouse can be done with a lot of skill and refinement when done consciously. I really aspire to bring this level of consciousness into all areas of my life.

The whole bath-house experience really has a meditative/contemplative quality to it as well. Feels like just soaking into the experience of presence while being there. It is very re-rejuvenating when done the right way.

[Thittato]

Was out in the forest today making a fire together with some friends. We smoked weed and I got pretty stoned. Smoked weed with another friend yesterday, and I don't smoke much these days, but suddenly I had the opportunity to do it two days in a row. Can't really say that it does me much good. In fact I rather feel pretty miserable when I do it, like very insecure and philosophical in an unpleasant way. So this is the state I've been walking around in this evening, although it is pretty mild and manageable compared to how it used to be when I smoked before. But anyways, in the context of meditation and self-actualization, I will see this weed-smoking as some kind of exposure therapy. Getting some uncomfortable feelings triggered and breathing my way through them. There never seems to be any end to the sort of self-loathing and shame that I am able to feel, but as they say in gestalttherapy: The way out is through.

I'm mildly in a panic-mode right now. Perhaps panic is too strong a word, but my mind is racing - searching for something - some kind of solution to this unpleasant state that I'm in. My whole life is viewed through a lens of misery and meaninglessness. 

This is an exaggeration - it is not only unpleasant - there is something pleasant as well about this state - but it is that whole ambivalence thing - like being stone is some kind of slow motion suffering. Hard to describe. Looking forward to wake up tomorrow again. Didn't meditate today, but it will be the first thing that I do when I wake up tomorrow.

Besides this this whole weekend has been nice and social.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation this morning, and now 20 min this evening. Still pretty uncomfortable because of this weed I smoked two days in a row. I was at the local chess club today as well, and I played really bad and it feels like weed is really messing up my cognitive abilities. I know it is only temporary, tomorrow I'm probably feeling like normal again, and perhaps I'm exaggerating, or that there is some parallel psychological process that also feeds into this, but as far as I can remember from my previous periods of smoking weed it doesn't really do me any good. I've never been a stoner, but all my friends were, and I probably would have been one too if my experience with weed had been better, but this is the same old story of almost always feeling like crap when I do it. Well, there was a little honey moon period when I first started doing it, where there was a lot of laughter and interesting philosophical thoughts, but that quickly turned into something unpleasant, and often even the first part of the evening was fun, usually it turned into something unpleasant as the high turned into some kind of slow, unpleasant philosophical stupor. So yeah, same old story. I know what this stuff is. This is not my ally, nor has it ever been.

Edited March 5, 2019 by Thittato

[Thittato]

Identifying which parts of my body are affected by difficult feelings (and some more about Chess...)

Today I've meditated 30 min in the morning and 30 min in the evening. Been experiencing some kind of grief this whole day. It was interesting how it felt like it was sitting in my eyes, and also it was connected with my chest feeling a bit sunk in. Like there was some weight pressing down my chest. It felt like one big connected area these unpleasant body sensations that were going from my eyes/face to my chest. I was resisting this experience the whole day, but when I could identify which parts of my body this experience was dominating the most then it felt like I had some kind of map or handle on this thing - like it made it therapeutically interesting to deal with these feelings. I've often felt that I've had some unresolved grief pressing behind my eyes, but I haven't felt that it has been connected to my chest this way before, so now it is like I have a larger area to work with when these feelings come back again.

Besides that I've reached my highest rating ever in Chess today - 993 points in Blitz-games at Chess.com - which isn't really very high at all - but I started at around 700 in the beginning of November, so an improvement of almost 300 rating points in 4 months is pretty good. My first goal is to reach 1000, and that might only be one match away, or I might fall down again and it might take several months before I return to this point, which is unlikely, but previous experience has shown that chess-progress comes in ebbs and flows. Anyways, it feels like this thing is getting much more integrated, and it feels like a lot of my other interests are returning now. Who knows how much I want to play after I reach my goal? Seems to me it is most obsessive in the beginning when I'm struck by this beginning enthusiasm, but then after that settles down I realize I just have accept my position in the hierarchy and gradually work my way up step by step. Perhaps this will be an integrated interest that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, or perhaps now that I have gotten a foot in the door and have gotten my curiosity satisfied about this game and the sort of people it attracts that now I'm ready to move on to other things again. Perhaps the most important thing for me was to see the progress of refining ones blunders. At first when one begins in chess one makes a lot of really gross blunders, and then the process seems to basically just be about tightening up the game, but the blunders are never removed once and for all - no, they go through a long process of getting finer and finer. So each step up will just bring me up to a level where the blunders are a little bit more refined than they were on the previous level. So no I can literally see this has already happened - and I can see where I'm headed if I continue this process. Probably that was the most satisfying part of this study - understanding and seeing with my own eyes chess progress happening right before me. I always hate when it feels like I stumble around in the dark - but getting a handle on the learning-process - that is something that I really like. So now this is not so mysterious anymore.

The biggest parallels between Chess and meditation that I make these days is the process of landing in my meditation practice and with the physical aspects of actually being part of a local chess-club being my parallel to that. Just continuing to show up. I wanted to quit Chess at some point when it felt too obsessive - but instead I managed to ride it out and now I feel that I have landed and accepted my place in the hierarchy - it might only be a temporary endeavor - but at least I managed to stay with the process all the way and overcome my bi-polar tendencies to either become narcissistic or self-loathing about this.

I was also getting a lot of tips from more advanced player on how to improve, and now I have sorted that all out and found out which things I like to practice on to improve.

Same with meditation - you got to listen to the more experienced yogi's, but then you got to put all together and make it into something that works for you.

In Leo's 65 Core Principles of Living the Good Life, I really liked his principle of self-experimentation - basically that we just got to continue to experiment and experiment until we find what works for us.

Also I go to this bath-house mentioned before regularly now, and I'm getting better and better at going into the "ice bath." I'm experimenting with sinking myself slowly and in a controlled way into the water. To begin with it was much more a sense of forcing myself into a shocking experience and getting out of it as quickly as possible - but now I try to ease myself both into and out of it. It is somehow a bit of a traumatic experience - probably at least when done in this "panic mode" kind of way - but when done mindfully and with ease then I think it is a really good thing to get used to.

So lots of good things going on.

And of course journaling about them makes me more grateful and the chaos settles down and makes my experiments much more into something that is part of a larger and more meaningful whole.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Thittato

[Thittato]

Chess-goal reached, going back to working full-time

Hurrah! 1000 in rating reached at Chess.com.... Haha......

Chess must have been my full-time job for the past 4 months, and to "celebrate" I'm going to go back to my normal job again. I got burned out around Christmas because it was too much with all those therapeutic processes I was in as part of my therapist-education, but now I feel fine again. I have 30 % of a permanent shift at my job, which I have been working during this period, but normally I tell my job I'm available for working extra, so they can just call me if they need me, and usually that amounts to me working 100 %. So that is what I will go back to now. I've been delaying it for a while because I've saved up some money and I've been getting used to the comfort of only working 30 %, so 18th of March (which is the first monday after the next weekend seminar in my therapy-education) will be the day that I'm fully available again to my job. If I don't set a date like that I'll just continue to indulge in this freedom until I run out of money.

Feels cool to celebrate this chess-milestone this way.

Something about this whole process has made me more realistic I think.

I'm a very daydreaming kind of type.

So for now it will be a normal job, and daily meditation practice.

Sat for 1 hour this morning. I felt like a very ordinary dude who was satisfied with having a steady meditation practice.

[Thittato]

So today I had a study-group together with three people from this gestalttherapist-education, and even though I've been whining alot about this education, I'm starting to get a little bit more optimistic about the whole thing. I really went from idealizing the whole thing intensely, to really hating it so badly, but now I'm getting back to a bit of a tempered optimism about it, while still also, of course, there is some remaining negativity about it. I'm probably quitting after this 2nd year is completed even though the education is 4 years, but at least I completed this 2nd year. But I've fallen quite out on the theory-part this year, so yesterday I ordered two books that seems pretty cool:

Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy by Joseph Zinker

and

Body Process: A Gestalt Approach to Working with the Body in Psychotherapy by James I. Kepner

 

The other books on the book-list has been pretty dry, but these two looks really interesting.

 

Didn't meditate today, except for the 5 minutes I was guiding my study-group, and they really liked the meditation I gave them, so that was nice.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Thittato

[Zigzag Idiot]

 

Spirituality and Psychoanalysis documents an all-day conference exploring the meeting ground between these two disciplines. A. H. Almaas was a featured guest who shared the podium with Zen Priest Dianne Musho Hamilton and Peter Carnochan, Charles Dithrich, and Karen Peoples of the psychoanalytic community. In his presentation that opens the day, Almaas has the opportunity to articulate the way he sees the Diamond Approach to spirituality drawing on the understandings of psychoanalysis, as well as going beyond them. Later, there is discussion between members of the panel and then questions from audience members to the panel. This is an unusual and fascinating context to experience Almaas in dialog with psychoanalytic practitioners—something he has been interested in since he wrote The Pearl Beyond Price and The Point of Existence. (Run time: 3 hours, 40 minutes)

https://shop.diamondapproach.org/collections/video/products/spirituality-and-psychoanalysis-dvd

This 2 DVD set is just $10.00. I've had this for 6 or 7 years and have watched it several times. I actually enjoyed what Psychotherapist Charles Dithrich had to say more than Almaas. Diane Musho Hamilton was representing Ken Wilber's Integral Community. It's quite a varied group. There is some problem with the sound a little bit during the question and answer period but this set is a good buy at $10.00. 

 

Congradulations on busting 1000 in Chess!

[Thittato]

On 3/8/2019 at 5:03 AM, Zigzag Idiot said:

Spirituality and Psychoanalysis documents an all-day conference exploring the meeting ground between these two disciplines. A. H. Almaas was a featured guest who shared the podium with Zen Priest Dianne Musho Hamilton and Peter Carnochan, Charles Dithrich, and Karen Peoples of the psychoanalytic community. In his presentation that opens the day, Almaas has the opportunity to articulate the way he sees the Diamond Approach to spirituality drawing on the understandings of psychoanalysis, as well as going beyond them. Later, there is discussion between members of the panel and then questions from audience members to the panel. This is an unusual and fascinating context to experience Almaas in dialog with psychoanalytic practitioners—something he has been interested in since he wrote The Pearl Beyond Price and The Point of Existence. (Run time: 3 hours, 40 minutes)

https://shop.diamondapproach.org/collections/video/products/spirituality-and-psychoanalysis-dvd

This 2 DVD set is just $10.00. I've had this for 6 or 7 years and have watched it several times. I actually enjoyed what Psychotherapist Charles Dithrich had to say more than Almaas. Diane Musho Hamilton was representing Ken Wilber's Integral Community. It's quite a varied group. There is some problem with the sound a little bit during the question and answer period but this set is a good buy at $10.00. 

 

Congradulations on busting 1000 in Chess!

 

Thank you! Looks really interesting!! I will take a closer look :-) It is exactly the spiritual aspect which is lacking in my education I feel. People in my class don't get that vitality and life-force shining out of their eyes that people who meditate regularly get, even though the psychotherapeutic method is good in itself, but it would have been much better combined with more focus on meditation-practice.

[Thittato]

Keep on keeping on

So sat for 30 min today. There is still a lot of grief sitting around my eyes in particular and in general there is some kind of mask on my whole face. Something that is weighing down on me.

I have this strong feeling lately of being a failure and lonely and without purpose. It always comes back to this. Unfortunately I'm a bit bi-polar, so I never stay long enough in these feelings to get them processed fully. It feel like I dip myself a little bit into them, and then I get some kind of relief, and I get very high and feel that I'm done with all therapeutic processes. I'm amazed at my own ability to fall for the conviction that I'm "done" over and over.

But of course, even though this grief is not fully present all the time, I think I can still be able to keep a steady focus going working with this.

I was working night-shift tonight, and had a lot of time to meditate, and these feelings where extremely strong, even to the point of feeling that even meditation wasn't working anymore, but at some point I surrendered myself to the experience and it felt that things began to transform. Today the same pressure is still here, but it is much milder.

So I will just keep at it. Keep on keeping on, as one of my teachers used to say.

[ZenDancer]

Love your journal Thittato! I've been very sporadic and inconsistent in my meditation practice lately, and I need to get back to being regular with it... in the past, when I've had a really solid practice, it became clear to me that the value comes not in meditating 'well' or following one form of meditation or another, but in just damn doing it every day... consistency is the key... keep on keeping on, as you say... I mostly meditate Zazen, though I have to admit the Therevadan philosophical teachings are more appealing to me than the often-abstract Zen mindset... I was delighted to see a photo of Ajahn Chah in your journal! keep it up... i'm glad this forum lets me share in your journey...

Lucas

[Thittato]

12 hours ago, ZenDancer said:

Love your journal Thittato! I've been very sporadic and inconsistent in my meditation practice lately, and I need to get back to being regular with it... in the past, when I've had a really solid practice, it became clear to me that the value comes not in meditating 'well' or following one form of meditation or another, but in just damn doing it every day... consistency is the key... keep on keeping on, as you say... I mostly meditate Zazen, though I have to admit the Therevadan philosophical teachings are more appealing to me than the often-abstract Zen mindset... I was delighted to see a photo of Ajahn Chah in your journal! keep it up... i'm glad this forum lets me share in your journey...

Lucas

Hey Lucas :-) Thank you so much! That is very heart-warming to hear!!

It is so easy to slip out of the meditation-routine. I still do frequently even though I have been meditating for a long time. I see you have a journal here as well. Journaling in combination with meditation has been so helpful to me. I love Leo's principle about self-experimentation. We just got to keep on experimenting until we find those things that work for us :-)

I do some combination of zazen and vipassana. Depends what my practice need in the balance between effort and letting go.

Ajahn Chah is awesome!

[Thittato]

Some sudden and unexpected success with my new therapist

So now it is getting interesting.

My new therapist has been helping me looking closer at how I avoid eye-contact. Or I don't really avoid eye-contact, but I find it more uncomfortable to look people directly into the eyes than probably most people, so my eye-contact probably reveals a lot of my insecurities.

I didn't see how this was related to my feelings of grief held as this pressure in my eyes and some feeling of something weighing me down in my whole face, but actually I think she was getting at some energetic blockage that is in my whole face, and tonight when I meditated during night-shift it suddenly felt like my whole face opened up like if it was a chakra that had been blocked but now the energy was flowing freely through it.

She was trying to get me to acknowledge and embrace that I felt like a failure (I don't only feel like failure, much of the time I also feel that my life is a really exciting adventure, but for the sake of therapy we try to really root out all these unconscious painful feelings that dominate us more than we usually like to admit), but every time she was hitting close to this feeling I would break eye-contact so she said that I was probably avoiding something here because of that, and yeah, even though this new therapist is a bit more confrontational than I find comfortable, she was really hitting home here.

No wonder these feelings, and that energetic blockage in my eyes/face has been really triggered these days.

So when I walked home from work this morning it felt like my energy field around my head was really open again and that my vision was much broader, and that I was way more in contact with my surroundings and much less stuck in my own head. I'm pretty sure if I had met someone I knew they would have noticed that my eye-contact would have been much more comfortable.

I'm not going to celebrate this as some kind of "finally I'm free!" because my experience is that these kind of openings comes and goes. Most likely it will close and open several times, but right now my face is really open and comfortable. Didn't see how all this was related, but feels like I'm now connecting the dots.

What was also cool about they way she worked was that she had me tell her all the reasons why I found it uncomfortable looking at her. For instance I was afraid that she would judge me because I thought she looked a bit strict, and I was also afraid that our relationship would end in a conflict, and lots of other reasons.

My previous therapist didn't use himself in this way. He wouldn't put himself out there as a target for all my projections, and that's why I think the tension in our relationship started to build up since there was no way for me to let out my thoughts and feelings about him. He was only helping me with external matters, but energetically refused to make use of our relationship directly as a tool for therapy.

[Thittato]

Zen and the Art of Chess

Chess as a Zen-koan. Reading deeply philosophical discussions on Chess.com where people discuss whether Chess is a waste of time or not hehehe.....

Still thinking about quitting Chess, especially now that I've reached my goal. Wondered if I should set a new goal of reaching 1200, but even to stabilize around 1000 is hard enough, and then what if I reach 1200, then I would probably only want to reach 1400, and on and on, and what is the point of that?

I think I understand this game now, and how one gets addicted to improvement. Even though it is a fascinating game, it is still just a game, and when I look at the streamers on youtube and stuff like that, I think the whole scene has a lot of similarities with the video-game scene, especially when playing it online.

I've always thought being a gamer was a very ridiculous thing to be, because why wouldn't one want to spend ones time improving in socializing, guitar-playing, meditation and art-making, instead, for instance? Pouring so much time into a game just seems like waste. But somehow I got seduced into becoming a gamer by finding a game I thought was somehow more sophisticated than typical video-games.

On the chess.com forum there is a lot of people discussing chess being a waste of time and highly addictive, so I'm not alone in my experience.

Found this quote:

“[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time. ”
George Bernard Shaw, 

Haha......

Chess really gives that feeling of being engaged in something very clever.

Ok, I won't just quit over night, and I will probably alternate a bit back and forth with both enthusiasm and skepticism, but at least it seems like this beginner-enthusiasm is starting to wear off.

I guess I've seen the process now of refining my game from being an absolute beginner to becoming a serious intermediate beginner kind of, and I'm starting to understand what it takes to maximize my potential, and continuing to pour energy into this the way I've been for the past 4 months in order to reach my highest potential, year after year? Seems like that is what people who get really hooked on this are doing, and totally doesn't seem like what  want to spend my time doing.

So I guess there will be a gradual fading out. Like now my beginner enthusiasm has already peaked, and striving to become even better totally doesn't seem worth it.

But is was fun. I was really curious and fascinated by this whole thing. The game in itself, the people it attracts, etc.

I guess with video-games, and similar stuff, one can't just trust the feeling of passion. Just because I feel inclined to do it doesn't necessarily mean that it is a good thing.

Had I been hooked to this level on my guitar, or with my drawings, oh man, that would have been some results.

But yeah, I will give it some time, this whole thing, to just breathe and sort itself out. No rush to figure anything out. Suddenly I was deeply into this, and it has been an interesting experience so far, so no rush to get out of it.

When people get so engaged in an activity like chess, and at the same time people ponder upon the deeper philosophical meaning of actually being engaged in this thing (like I do), the whole thing in many ways become like a Zen-koan, and that's how I will tie this in to meditation this time :-)

Zen and the Art of Chess, hehe :-)

 

Edited March 11, 2019 by Thittato

[catharticcreation]

Really enjoying reading your journal. Relating a lot!

[Thittato]

16 hours ago, Marc Schinkel said:

I would highly recommend this book to you. 

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin

 

"Josh Waitzkin knows what it means to be at the top of his game. A public figure since winning his first National Chess Championship at the age of nine, Waitzkin was catapulted into a media whirlwind as a teenager when his father's book "Searching for Bobby Fischer" was made into a major motion picture. After dominating the scholastic chess world for ten years, Waitzkin expanded his horizons, taking on the martial art Tai Chi Chuan and ultimately earning the title of World Champion. How was he able to reach the pinnacle of two disciplines that on the surface seem so different? "I've come to realize that what I am best at is not Tai Chi, and it is not chess," he says. "What I am best at is the art of learning."In his riveting new book, "The Art of Learning," Waitzkin tells his remarkable story of personal achievement and shares the principles of learning and performance that have propelled him to the top -- twice."

 

Wow! Thank you! Sounds like a really awesome book :-)

Edited March 12, 2019 by Thittato

[Thittato]

1 hour ago, catharticcreation said:

Really enjoying reading your journal. Relating a lot!

Thank you! I'm glad to hear! Pretty cool that there is actually a few people reading this stuff!! :-D

[Thittato]

Curiosity about my next "psychological rebirth"

Holy smokes. So I was at the local chess club this evening, and I was so beaten to pieces, hahhah.......

And I'm down at 920 in rating at Chess.com again.

It was a bit sad being there. We were only 3 people this time, and a 4th one that came much later. Usually there is about 10, at least, and lots of other people dropping by. An old guy, who is really cool, and who is sort of my local representation of the archetype of a sensai in Chess, started this pub-chess group right after New Years Eve. Felt like something that was really going to grow - so it was a bit strange that now that my energy is running out of this - that the group had sort of also lost its momentum, at least for this time.

But yeah I totally suck at something that I've gotten totally addicted to. Hahha........

I mean I was getting some ego out of beating all my friends.

But playing Chess casually a few times per year compared to pursuing it academically are two completely different things.

To be fair towards myself I probably could have gotten reasonably good at this. I'm sure most people who have the interest can. But I think it will require much more than I'm willing to give.

After we where done with the matches I had a beer with one of the guys, and I introduced him to this concept of chess-addiction that I've been researching a bit lately, and he didn't see any problem with that - saying that playing Chess is probably much better than what most people do - spending their evenings watching TV. And from his point of view I can totally see that that makes totally sense. He is probably going to go on and become a teacher in mathematics and enjoy chess as a hobby for the rest of his life.

Where as me - a restless spiritual seeker - capable of getting some sort of manic infatuation with pretty much anything - I think I will just have to consider this part of my personal social anthropological studies of all the various types of human cultures that exists.

I very much like the buddhist teachings of rebirth when viewed as how we psychologically are born into one world after the other. So this time I had a psychological rebirth into the world of Chess.

Wonder which place I will be born into next :-)

[Thittato]

Checkmate by Life

Had a really great session with my new therapist today. I don't think I've ever felt as strongly as a failure before as I do these days, and we figured out it is because I've used up all my tricks that have prevented me from getting fully in touch with these feelings before. Like my escape-strategies has been used up. I'm corned by life. I'm check-mate. Nothing really dramatic has happened. Well, perhaps a few things. But nothing out of the ordinary.

Was so funny yesterday. Oh my god how miserable I felt. Becoming check-mate is really the worst feeling. No wonder most people so quickly give up on chess. And there I'm sitting, along with the best players in this town, and I'm totally feeling that I absolutely suck at this stupid game that I'm ironically also addicted to and that is my last escape-strategy. Haha.

Perhaps that was the most beautiful illustration that this game has been able to bring to my meditative/therapeutic process so far.

I think all meditative/therapeutic processes wants to get you to a point where you feel absolutely cornered and there is no escape-route anymore but to fully acknowledge your situation in life.

Might sound like I'm utterly miserable, but regarding my therapeutic process I'm very satisfied after today's session.

We are going to have a weekend-seminar this weekend with this education, and now that I've done 5 sessions with my new therapist I feel back on track again regarding these group-processes that we do as part of this education.

Also I got my new books today. That "Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy" book looks totally awesome, so now I'm soon taking the bus for 5 hours to go visit a friend in another city for a couple of days and I'm looking forward to some change of scenery and to enjoy this book on the ride.