My meditation journal

[Thittato]

Holy schmokes. I'm a wreck again and my place is a mess. Guess I'm "de-charged" from all that has been happening lately - especially all the nerves from that concert and the preparations and all that stuff when I was already a bit exhausted from how intense my job has been lately. Ok, I need to clean up my place now, and do some yoga, although I resist it really badly. This weekend the last examination on this gestalttherapist-education is going to be - and that is really now problem at all - I'm just going to sit in front of my class and tell about my process this year while our teacher/therapist is going to guide me through a process on it - so it is not really something I have any nerves because of. It is going to be "easy," well perhaps it will bring up some challenging processes, especially since I'm quitting after this, but I'm mostly just longing to finish it off, so sooner than later. The difficult part was writing the rapport that is the pre-work before this session, but that is already done long time ago. So being in this "de-charged" mode today is a good opportunity to just stay home and do some self-care and clean up my place. So I'm really passive now, but I know I will feel like I'm on top of things once this place is back into tip top shape. So no more pro-crastination. My summer-job is rigged, and everything else is taken care of and soon I can celebrate that I'm done with these two challenging years of therapeutic self-process. Ok, no more pro-crastination, lets get to work here, and then I can relax afterwards. Perhaps I'll skip the yoga, but the cleaning starts right now.

[Thittato]

Update: Haha. I started with the cleaning. Feels good. Haha....... The resistance in only 10 % of what it was, and now I'll continue.

[Thittato]

Hurrah! I did it. My place is now clean again, and I also did a 20-min yoga-program. Gosh, it has been more difficult to keep up my yoga-pratice lately. Whenever I make a decision that I want to focus with more dedication on something it usually comes out of a sense of suffering and that I need something to cling on to in this difficult life, but then after a while of having been dedicated to something it brings good results and I feel better and then the need to focus on it doesn't feel so pressing anymore, so it becomes harder to maintain my discipline. That has happened with my yoga-practice now. I feel much better in my body, and my mood seems more stable as well. But no need to get complacent now. If I want to continue getting these results this is certainly the time to keep going. I just got to be aware of all the different ways that this resistance I sometimes feel will manifest itself. In fact I should expect this resistance to come up a lot - that is what I'm working with. We all have this resistance in us I believe. But those who choose to do a spiritual practice will go through a beautiful transformation if they continue to work with this resistance. Even though I've been practicing both yoga and meditation for a long time I still only feel "half baked."

[Thittato]

20 min yoga-program yesterday. 50 min today.

[Thittato]

Namaste

Hurrah! I'm finished with this 2nd year of this therapist-education. It was concluded perfectly. 2 years left, but I'm most likely not going to continue and I've said good-bye to the class. These two years has been some serious trauma treatment. Today I did yoga 5 times. I started with a 20 min program as I woke up, and in the pauses between the examinations I managed to "sneak away" 4 times and do some essential poses, especially all the three peak poses I'm working on, for 10-15 min. As I said goodbye to our main-therapist I greated her with my hands in namaste-position, and she greated me back the same way and smiled, laughed and said "Namaste." A perfect ending of our relationship. And I see as some kind of spiritual blessing/sign to continue my yoga-practice. She has been so extremly helpful to me, and showered me with so much love, so it is sad to say goodbye, but somehow my direction in life takes another course now which is not quite clear quite yet.  Tomorrow will be two months since my yoga-practice was re-ignited with that microdosing session on Peyote, and I can feel that this foundation that I've been building for these two month is starting to get really solid. Now I'm looking forward to how my life will feel now that this very demanding study is no longer weighing down on me. Perhaps I will get an art studio, or perhaps I will travel the world, or something else. I'm called to some kind of new adventure that I don't know quite yet what is, but I feel this is a new start for something I'm very curious about. Also I've decided to remove all my Chess-goals. I don't need them. I figured I will probably play Chess for the rest of my life, and the whole thing feels much more integrated and less obsessive and it doesn't feel like my main-pursuit anymore, but just a nice integrated hobby that I can chill with every now and then, so those goal that I established that I'm now removing - I'm certain I will reach them no matter what in their own time just by continuing playing every now and then like I already do. But those yoga-goals - they are certainly still valid - and they are goals that are much more useful to me. Right now my life feels perfectly integrated, which of course is only a temporary feeling, but certainly a really awesome feeling.

[Thittato]

Did this program tonight for the first time:

Was really awesome.

Now I have 4 youtube yoga-program videos that I do frequently.

Didn't know when I started this that my yoga practice was going to be based so much on youtube, but it works really well. It is like getting the best teachers straight into my living room. Of course they are not going to give me adjustments this way, so perhaps I'll start going to a studio as well at some point.

I was surprised the hour went by much quicker than what I expected and I think I will start exploring more longer programs.

[Thittato]

Did same program today as yesterday. Interesting to explore these longer programs. Times flies by much quicker than expected. Didn't really think I could have these full yoga-classes by myself, but really nice to see I could.

[Thittato]

Awesome morning. Was lying in bed doing some gestalttherapy self-therapy-exercises releasing some emotions. My job now will be to land after 3,5 years in therapy is over and that I'm not continuing this therapist-education that I've been doing two years of. It was awesome for my own process, but no more of it. I'm so glad I'm done with all those people and all those therapeutic group-processes that was simply too much to deal with in combination with my job as a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. I felt trapped in a prison of madness in a paradoxical role of both a prison guard and an inmate at the same time, and the total sum of it just consumed all of my time and all of my social and emotional resources.

[Thittato]

I had a lot of time to meditate this night-shift at work and gosh I had forgotten a little bit about how awesome my energy and my simple sense of beingness can feel after meditation. Of course yoga touch upon this, but perhaps not so directly that meditation does. I mean yoga is more on the physical plane, making my body feel awesome, and of course gives support to make my mind feel better, but meditation really works directly on my sense of beingness that yoga doesn't do so directly, so I'm thinking of bringing in more meditation again, but still continuing to pursue yoga. I guess it is as they say that yoga is meant as a preparation for meditation by removing the more coarse levels of tensions before moving on to work on the more subtle tensions in the awareness/mind directly through meditation. I guess in the buddhist tradition that I've been following for so long that they in a way that is a bit brutal that just side-step this whole physical side of it by making a very disciplined focus on meditation to take care of all this all alone, so perhaps that is what I missed - to work more directly on the more coarse tensions still in my body - before going back to meditation again. But as I'm getting older I also need to take care of my body, so yoga is perfect in this regard. Eventually I hope to find the perfect balance between yoga and meditation :-)

[Thittato]

3 days of meditating for 30 min per day, and today after the meditation-session I did a 20 min yoga-program. The momentum is back in my meditation-practice, and my sitting posture feels really good after all this yoga. I want to continue doing both, but perhaps now I'm going to change my main-focus back to meditation again - having a daily meditation practice as my main-goal and then to supplement with also a dedicated yoga-practice (but not necessarily daily).

[Thittato]

30 min of meditation this evening. Ok, I'm fully back to having a daily meditation-practice. The momentum is back again when I'm sitting. It was really good for me to do yoga intensely for a while, but now meditation has become really enjoyable again. I will continue to do yoga to supplement my meditation practice, but it will no longer be my main-focus. If there is one thing that yoga doesn't give, at least not as intensely as sitting meditation does, it is deep states of samadhi that I can sometimes access. Yoga makes the body feel amazing, and sure it gives a lot of feelings of devotion and gratitude as well, but those intense states of mental and emotional stilness and rest, that is something that I only get from sitting meditation. But when there is too much restlessness or whatever for a period, switching to yoga for a while is a really good thing. I like the analogy of switching gears - doing whatever the body and mind needs at that particular period.

I was initially only a meditator when I started out on this spiritual quest, but after I embarked on this 3,5 year long therapeutic adventure, meeting with my therapists become maybe my most important source for getting my mental, emotional and spiritual needs met. But now, after this therapeutic adventure is over, I'm going back to relying primarily on my meditation practice to get these needs met (of course also getting them met from living a normal healthy life). So a daily meditation practice is hereby a very important thing in my life again as I'm no longer involved in this therapist-school. I love this simplification. Meditation is really meant to take care of A LOT of our needs, but sometimes meditation is not enough and one has to seek out professional psycho-therapeutic treatment to straighten out some aspects of ones personality structure that perhaps is not possibly to do alone only through meditation. But I think perhaps I've gotten to the roots of the things that I needed to deal with through psychotherapy now, or at least I'm done for this time, and I will rely primarily on meditation to continue to work on myself.

In one sense perhaps my life can finally start now. I have a career as a social worker that I have a love / hate relationship towards, but I guess that is normal, and at least there is a lot of love portions to it as well, and I have some really awesome hobbies, some really awesome friends, some awesome nature around me, along with living in the urban area of a small town (100.000 people approximately) that has a pretty awesome cultural life if I just care to invest and use the opportunities that are here. So now that this extremely demanding therapist education that I took part in and that sucked all the juice out of me and was just simply waaaaay too much, especially in combination with my already waaaaay too demanding social worker job, now I think I can finally get the balance just right, and perhaps I've dealt with enough of my own trauma and insecurities so that I can finally land in a role as a social worker that I'm confident about. Part of the reason that it has been so demanding working with all these messed up people is because I've been so messed up myself, so the distinction between what is my own crazy shit and what are my patients or colleagues (!) crazy shit hasn't exactly been very clear.

[Thittato]

45 min of meditation yesterday, and 45 min today. Feels like this is the most awesome way to boost my positive energy. Great flow at work today.

[Thittato]

30 min of meditation on Thursday, 1,5 hour on Friday, and 30 min so far today. Good flow, but now I have to start being careful again that I can continue to bring this energy that is building up back into concentration and not into fuel for elaborate mind-wanderings.

[Thittato]

Morning Pages for 2 weeks

So in order to figure out which direction to take my life in, ie. purpose and all that, I will start to write so-called Morning Pages, starting tomorrow. It will be 3 pages of stream of consciousness stuff written by hand every morning for 2 weeks (to begin with). After the two weeks are done I will write here how it worked out.

This exercise is inspired by the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.

[Thittato]

Had to abandon that plan.

Haha.....

Woke up this morning and felt close to burn-out again. Been working much lately. So I went to my "emergency gear" - meditation.

It is just really amazing how refreshed I can feel when I hit those deep meditative states.

This day has just been an ongoing sense of flow and well-being.

From feeling like trash to this. Pretty amazing.

So I figure meditation is a much better investment of my time, but it was really interesting to do some stream of conciousness writing for a few days - but I'll rather have it as a tool I can use when I feel that I need to, and not something I do as a daily discipline.

 

 

 

[Thittato]

30 min meditation this morning before going to work. Feels really good. Funny how much I change all the time, but if there is one consistent in my life it is meditation. Except for sometimes the "dry patches," it feels like everything in my life becomes much more magical when I meditate. I'm still a bit burned out from this 3,5 year long therapeutic process I was in, but I feel really grateful that now I can just focus all my spiritual aspirations back on my meditation-practice. Everything becomes much more simple that way. Just me and my breath in silence.

Edited July 3, 2019 by Thittato

[Thittato]

45 min meditation yesterday, 30 min so far today. I’m om to bus to visit another city 5 hours away from my home, and just did my meditation. Funny how I often get whirled up into something before meditation makes me land again. This dynamic seems chronic. And what also seems chronic is this forgetfulness about the necessity of meditation. But perhaps this is just the human condition? It is probably why the Buddha established a whole institution around his teachings to help support counteract this chronic forgetfulness. Samsara is a chronic condition that can easily flare up again if we don’t bring our minds to the present moment systematically on a daily basis. Like psychiatric patients who prematurely believes they can stop using their medicines ending up getting hospitalized again and again because of lack of understanding of their own disease, it is the same way with me and my «spiritual disease.» My own «disease» might not actually be so far away from someone ending up getting hospitalized in a psychiatric insitution. I think the only difference is that I’ve been able to find good enough support in my relationships and in my various tools for releasing my trauma so it has never escalated into psychosis, but I can easily understand how it can go that far if one doesn’t find a good way to take care of oneself. I see a lot of people who self-medicate several times a day with cannabis without getting good support also from other sources who gradually seem to carve themselves deeper and deeper into those viscious circles. 

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today. So my «samsaric condition» of chashing around outside of myself for something is still strong. I just have to acknowlegde that. So my theme for todays meditation was just to let the pain in. All of it. Even if I probably have taken out the strongest charge through therapy I think there is still a lot of resistance going on and I have to continue to de-condition myself. So it feels really great when there is sort of a momentum going about facing the resistance. Feels like things get processed really fast, it is like getting into a groove of just going into whatever needs to be accepted and that is a really good feeling.

[Thittato]

30 min of meditation on the bus back home to my home-town. Really nice. Feels like grooving on the simple sense of beingness. When beingness can become its own nutrition, there is certainly a state of peace and collectedness. Gathering all my energies into one single field of awareness. Hope I can get under all the fluctuations of the mind on a little bit more of a permanent basis this time. Really helps to write about this process. Makes it much more fun.

Edited July 7, 2019 by Thittato

[Thittato]

30 min today. Feels like the groove is really good.