My meditation journal

[Thittato]

Sat for 45 min the day before yesterday, but yesterday I skipped my practice, except for the mandatory cold shower. Today I started the day with going for a bath in the ocean. It is still very cold and gives the desired cold exposure effect. Then I came home and meditated for 45 min. I was very restless and distracted for the whole sit, but still I manage to get my Qi-energy flowing. It is kind of interesting this paradox that my Qi-energy can be very stimulated by the attention that I give it, but still my mind can be racing and there can be a lot of resistance. So I try to give myself an inner massage with this energy, trying to let it circulate through-out my whole body, and let it flow into and through these various kinds of disturbances. At the end of the sit it felt like I had almost worked myself through all the way and that my mind started to get ready to land. I was feeling positive again, my mind felt bright, and there was this inner glowing light that usually comes when my body and mind feels light and at ease.

It is interesting how this pandemic has forced me to slow down. I'm a very restless person, and even though I've been meditating for a long time it still feels like I'm acting out on this restlessness. I always run around in the social landscape trying to meet new people and expand my social network and party and have fun and exchange cultural and intellectual impulses. Now it is like all my social hunting grounds has been taken away from me, so I cannot go hunting anymore. So I'm facing a lot of this restless energy that drives this activity. Funny how meditation doesn't always bring me down under this energy, but often it just help me in an unhealthy way to bring up my energy so that I can continue to surf on top of this restlessness.

Interesting how this pandemic for me was first kicked-off with an LSD-trip that I had to spend a lot of time to process and land from. I was feeling very creative during those days, and sort of my high energy was just stimulated a lot, and then this creative energy went into a really heavy rollerblading kick which was also keeping me entertained for quite some time, and now suddenly it feels like everything is gone, and the reality of the matter is very evident - all my social hunting grounds are gone and I cannot keep myself busy, distracted and entertained this way anymore, so with all that gone, I was left with just my breath and my meditation cushion again. This is a little bit of an exaggeration because I have a lot of other hobbies, and I will find a way to have a fun and useful life even during these restrictions, but I liked the picture of how my restless momentum kept running even though everything else around me slowed down, and then eventually, I was forced to finding harmony with the situation, which I haven't quite found yet, but it feels like I'm getting there.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today as well. Felt fantastic. I work through this pressure of different things going on these days, and then I came out centered and grounded.

[Thittato]

Today was my 10th session of rollerblading by the way. I got my new aggressive inline skates in the mail today. Some small improvements every session I do. But it certainly takes some time getting back into this again. But it would have been really interesting continuing with this through the spring and summer, and to see what can of level I have reached at the end of summer / beginning of fall. Today I brought with me both my very skilled rollerblading friend, and another friend who was very good at skateboarding when he was in his teens. They all get the same intense kick out of it when they bring it back up again 20 years later, and it is really awesome the inspiration and challenges they give me with this energy they bring into it. Maybe we can start some kind of Old Boyz Pandemic Skate Club haha. It works practicing social distancing while we skate, so it is one of the few fun things we can actually do at this time.

[Thittato]

Started the day with 45 min meditation before I went to work. Hanged out with two friends spontanously after work, and we did a quick round of bouldering together. It was super-awesome. So many people I know have been into rock-climbing lately, and they talk so much about it, but I haven't quite catched on, but stil, there must be something about it. Anyways, not going to buy a lot of rock-climbing stuff suddenly, but some simple bouldering on low hights was pretty sweet. I want to to more of that. Nice way of hanging out. Almost that same vibe as skating together. When I came home after that I did one hour of yin-yoga, and my body really needed that because of how much it got beaten up during the rollerblading yesterday. Now I'm soon going to drink beer and have an evening of hanging out with friends on video-chat while our activity together is making art, either paint or draw, while a laid-back conversation is going on on the video-chat. I have nothing specific I want to draw, except I just want to drink beer, doodle and de-compress after an intense week. So doodling to de-compress is my take on art for tonight. Amazing how clear things becomes by journaling. I have more I need to journal about soon. Specifically my situation at work and how I can better deal with this "tyranny of normalcy" that I experience among my co-workers. But more on that some other time.

[Thittato]

Didn't meditate saturday nor sunday, but today I sat for an hour. Been having a cold this weekend. Lots of negativity. I actually think this time this cold was caused by emotional stress, and that all the negativity that has been going on this weekend has been feelings that needed to be processed. Anyways, now I'm fine again, and it was good to sit again.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation this morning. First 25 min walking-meditation, and then 20 min sitting. 

[Thittato]

No meditation yesterday, but today I sat for 45 min again. Today has been one of those days where everything has felt wrong. It used to feel like this very often before, but now it is a long time since I've felt this way. Some painful feelings of everything feeling wrong and then some desperate scrambling to make things feel right. Been sleeping the whole day. Guess I was very tired.

When it feels like this the most painful part of it is feeling that I have no direction in life. The sense of mastery I had in my job is totally gone. Before the pandemic I was in a really good flow, but when the pandemic came it was decided that our psychiatric instituation was going to take all the patients in the southern part of our country that was in need of psychiatric hospitalisation and who were also having the corona-virus. So far I think we have only had one patient who actually had the corona-virus, and a few who were suspected of having it, so our instituation is basically empty of patients these days, while usually it is pretty crazy. So now I'm just stuck with hanging out with my co-workers all day long without anything to do, and no feeling of job-mastery, and because they are so fucking mainstream and I would never choose to hang out with them voluntarily if I wasn't forced to through job, it pretty much sucks and I'm getting very weary of walking around all day long trying to strike up conversations with people where there is no natural flow. All the cool people who only work part-time are also gone. So usually I can hide from the these terrible dry conventional people among all the busy work that we have to do, and I'm also getting some cred from them for my ability to deal with the most challenging patients, and it also feels very meaningful when I can help and support someone in a difficult situation and often it feels like I can make a difference. But now all that is gone. Well, I'm pretty sure this is difficult also for my co-workers, and everyone else. This is just my version of it. And then all my social life is also gone, which makes it even worse having to hang out all day long with these people I don't vibe with. There was a much better balance between everything before this shit happened.

So old issues are flaring up again.

Before, when I was into pick-up and social skills and stuff like that I would have seen this as a challenge: How to create social flow with boring mainstream people?

I'm living in a very conservative part of the country. I think people here are especially closed-minded and not very currious about the larger culture. When I worked in almost exactly the same type of institution in our countries capital I used to think I was very lucky who could go to work and spend my time together with so many amazing people. They were interested in me, and I was interested in them. Here it is exactly the opposite: They are not interested in me, and I'm not interested in them. Except for the few ones who are actually a little bit open-minded. And this stuff really flares up really heavily now that we're in this situation.

I'm really not recognizable in this situation. When I'm together with people I feel free together with I'm so free, open and spontanious, but when I'm with people I feel restricted with, I become this really shy and invisible person.

So among other things I'm dreaming about moving back to our countries  capital again.

And it feels like my whole carreer is just totally wrong I'm fantasising about the bohemian life again, and it feels like everything I do is just some loose ends in all kinds of directions with no larger plan behind and everything is just random and accidental and I feel envious for those I know who have managed to establish a career working with art and culture.

Feeling like everything is "blown up" like this and I'm in some sort of panic scrambling to find some kind of direction, that was how it used to feel very often before. Almost like it had finally landed, and then this pandemic came and it flared up again.

I guess it is pretty normal that old patterns of behaving and reacting are triggered in a crisis-situation.

My number one inspiration in this situation is actually our head-doctor who is in charge of our institution. He is far from mainstream and boring, but at the same time he is so social and good with people. He can chat with everybody, and he has such a good sense of humour as well. Feels like he makes everybody feel appreciated and seen as well.

It is interesting with a work enviroment like this. You have those who add energy to the group, and then you have those who takes energy from the group, and then you have those in-between. Ideally speaking I would have wanted to be someone who added energy and who contributed with a feeling that it is safe to be yourself here. I can have that effect on other people, and actually in direct contact with the patients I work with, but in this group I just find it so hard.

If this was gestalt-therapy they would have just seen this energy I'm here describing as something inside of me that I'm projecting on to the group. If I had owned this energy inside of me, then I would not have felt restricted by it.

So yeah, I'm very triggered by something here that it is probably very possibly to come to terms with, but right now I'm reactive about it.

One way to take ownership of ones feelings in gestalttherapy is just to say out loud in a meditative contemplative way exactly what one feels:

"I feel very insecure among my co-workers."

"I feel very restricted among my co-workers."

"I don't feel good enough among my co-workers."

I tried the first one right now. There is obviously a lot of charge here. It felt good just to express this feeling. I'll go on and do a session of just expressing everything I'm feeling about this situation right now. Been a while since I've done a gestalt-self-therapy session, but now there is obviously a lot of stuff that needs to be expressed.

[Thittato]

Oh gosh, just a little session this time, but I'm breathing deeply down into my abdomen again, which is always a sign something has been released. Ok, if this stuff continues to appear, I know gestalt self-therapy exercises can help me release it. Been a long time since I've been triggered like this, but good to know I still have my tools from those times I was more frequently triggered.

[Thittato]

No practice today either, but I had a really nice conversation on the phone with a friend of mine. She is a mindfulness-instructor, who is trying to establish her business with mindfulness-courses, but she needs a second job for some time now, so she has started doing social work with people with autism, and she said she has been very inspired by my take on social work, so now she just had her 3 first shifts in the new place where she is working, and she was in huge shock regarding all the suffering she had had close contact with. It was so nice giving her some support. It became much clearer for me exactly why I'm in this field. First of all my co-workers fucking sucks, and that was something she had quickly felt. Conventional people working in this field goes into the meeting with these groups of people with an energy of rejection and alination. That is something one easily does to protect oneself when in close contact with all this suffering. It happens to me a lot as well. But I'm aware of it, and I have a process take on it - meaning I'm working consciously trying to process all the different energies happening inside of me in reaction to this job. So my friend, as well as myself, had felt intensely this conflict of getting into the energy of rejection herself, while also feeling opposition towards the energy of rejection coming from her coworkers, while also aspiring towards more love and deeper meetings with the group she was working with. Basically a lot of really intense social processes going on. That is how this field is - if one wants to go deep with it. I'm so much triggered in this field, but every time I work through it it feels like I'm doing something very meaningful and intensely satisfying. Very interesting after I felt so like trash as I felt yesterday that today I could give inspiration and support to someone else working in this same field. If I hadn't worked through what I had to work through yesterday I would have probably said something along the lines of "this shit fucking sucks, lets both find something better." But instead I had found new inspiration I could share.

Hopefully at some point I will be able to help with some kind of revolution or reformation regarding this field. I think there is a collective neglect going on regarding how caretakers behave towards their children or their patients or whomever they are supposed to take care of. There is somekind of deep-seated energy of rejection in most of us, because we reject ourselves so heavily, so the whole of society is under this spell in some kind of way. I think it leads to almost all of us not being fully in touch with ourselves, and most of us probably have some degree of posttraumatic stress going on, but most people are functional enough to behave as if they are normal - hence the tyranny of normalcy going on. The only way to work through this stuff is through meditative/spiritual process-work. And my own job is to try to translate this work I have been doing on myself into this field I'm working within, and try to give the clients I work with love and support. Ironically the most difficult obstruction towards this is my own coworkers. Not because they necessarily try to consciously obstruct me. In fact not. Many of them are inspired when they see me having a good connection with a patient. As I am inspired when I see them having a good connection - which they often do - this isn't black or white. But the social field among us is so heavy and slow and restricted. The energy is really dense. And it is really hard to feel free and open in this dense energy.

[Thittato]

20 min running today, then a warm shower ended with a cold shower, and then 25 min of yin yoga. I'm working night-shift this whole weekend, and tonight I felt much better at work again. I felt much more relaxed together with my coworkers and all these strong feelings of alienation had calmed down. Obviously just something that had to be released from my system. Energetically/spiritually speaking I just view this pandemic we are going through as some kind of cleansing that humanity is going through. I don't like conspiracy theories or far out New Age theories, but practically speaking, at least for my own sake, this is what this pandemic is turning into.

After that conversation I had with my friend yesterday, I have found a lot of inspiration in social work again. Finally I have found the book which sort of sums it all up what I believe in. It is an old book I've had a long time that I rediscovered yesterday. It is about secondary trauma, the trauma and burn-out inflicted on the helper who has to deal with so much human suffering, ie. the trauma of others, and that if one doesn't deal probably with this it will lead to bitterness, burn-out and cynicism, but if one learns how to deal with it it will lead to a lot of deep personal growth, and this personal growth can be a huge motivation for going deeper with working with these types of issues.

[Thittato]

Today was my 12th session of rollerblading. It was so awesome. Now things are really starting to loosen up. I'm just glad this intense process I go through when I get a kick on something new has landed. First I become really manic about it, and then when the mania is over I get disgusted with the whole thing. But now it has been over a week since last time I rollerbladed, and I have not thought much about it since, and it was just really nice to be back with it today without turning it into a huge thing in my mind, even though it was still very awesome. Now it is a nice thing I can do whenever I feel like it, without having to make it into something that my whole life is going to be about. I had to squeeze out running while I was getting established in rollerblading again, because that is how my mind works, I pit things against each other in an other / or type of dynamic. But on saturday I was out running again, and it was so nice to run in the sun and with the spring feeling. I'm not going to go on a program to improve my running and strive for new records and stuff like that, and neither am I going to do something like that with rollerblading either - I'm just going to do it whenever I feel like as a nice, chill and pleasant hobbies. Here is one of my friends from today - getting back into skateboarding :-D

Edited April 27, 2020 by Thittato

[Thittato]

20 min vinyasa flow yoga today. My body felt really beaten up after 5 hours of rollerblading yesterday, but that makes the yoga extra nice. As a 36 year old I probably could not have started skating again without the yoga, but yoga keeps me young. Amazing how it opens up the body and makes it strong at the same time. And all the stuff about compensating for not having gotten got enough at rollerblading and snowboarding while I was a teenager is totally gone. Now it is just for fun. No prestige at all. No apparent lack from some previous times that I now have to fix. That was just an energy that needed to exhaust itself. Maybe that is sometimes where my mania comes from? When I have some inferior complex about something, and then suddenly I catch fire and it seems within reach to achieve some kind of superman version of myself and then the mental masturbation goes crazy about how cool my life is? Well, it seems to get into balance by just applying oneself to the discipline of whatever one is doing, then one quickly has to accept ones position in the hierachy - it is like syncronizing with reality through actually grinding up against the physical limitations of whatever one is doing. It was the same when I started playing Chess. I started romantizing about devoting my life to Chess and becoming a Chess-genius. Unfortunately there are already 800 million Chess players in the world, and many of them have been playing for waaaaaay longer than I have. So now it is just a fun and nice hobby where I can challenge myself against other hobby-players at my level.

[Thittato]

On 28.4.2020 at 6:58 PM, modmyth said:

Did you ever use to fantasize about having 'a thing' or maybe a small handful of specific 'things' when you were younger or used to envy those people who did? I mean if you had to pick a thing to specialize in (or a couple of things), what would you pick?

It's interesting reading about you digging into your motives for your behaviour in your last couple posts.

I also have this novelty craving which can be very deflating when it's not being fed, this 'new thing' energy, whatever it happens to be. I have the tendency to not really be fully engaged in anything without being excited enough about something or other.

 

Wow. Thanks. Interesting questions. They provoked a lot of thoughts and feelings. Not sure exactly when this idea that I had to have "a thing" appeared, but it certainly did at some point. I guess I'm chronically searching for "my thing," and it often feels like I find it temporarily and then I'm sort of hooked on the novelty of this "new thing," and then I sort of rotate between all these different things that give me this novelty feeling to groove on. Many of the things are things I return to again and again, but I also try out totally new things all the time.

I alternative between two different points of view. One is that I should really make an effort to actually find my thing and stick with it. The other is to just totally let go and let this process figure itself out - like just indulge in grooving on as much novelty as I could possibly do - trusting that there is some kind of intelligence behind this all that is evolving as it should and if I try to freeze up my experience and lock into some mode then I will not let the flow of life take me to my highest potential.

Is my notion of finding "my thing" just my ego trying to find an identity that it can cling on to which would ultimately lead to stuckness? Or would deciding on finding my thing, or sticking with a thing, create some healthy boundaries for my development so that my development doesn't just wander around haphazardly "all over the place"?

Are these two different programs that mutually exclude each other, or can they be integrated and brought into balance? Is this process of uncovering and questioning all these various layers really "my deepest thing," so that my thing is in fact a meta-thing - like a process where I turn the process back on itself again and again - so that I don't actually ever buy into the content of whatever my mind is producing but I just keep on trying to dig into whatever pain and clinging is there which I could potentially let go of as I uncover deeper and deeper layers of stuckness?

Today "my thing" has been art, so that is what I would choose to specialize in from the point of view of today. My whole world today has been filtered through the lense of someone who likes to make art. Tomorrow, or a few days from now, it might be another lense.

Am I going into some kind of avoidance by philosophizing so much about these questions without landing on something?

Underneath all these questions there is definitively a vulnerability that I'm in touch with right now. It feels like I'm more back into my body when I'm in touch with this vulnerability. My breath is deeper now then when I started writing. I can feel my feet. My fingers dancing over this keyboard. My eyes looking into this screen. This mystery of just sitting here. Vulnerable and safe at the same time. I feel currious about you. I wonder what kind of person you are - what kind of life you have. I wonder how these questions affect your own life and how you navigate through all of this yourself. I feel amazed by this whole journaling process. Mostly I just go on and on by myself, but occasionally a connection appears, and I feel really touched when someone gives me something, or if I'm able to give something to someone else.

Thank you.

[Thittato]

Just came home from a little night-session out rollerblading. So sweet. Only half an hour, but great flow. This is my 14th session. I'm counting them as a way of keeping track of my progress. I've had two really nice days at work now (I left with a good feeling even though I was in a lot of process at the beginning of each shift) and this weekend is off, so I'm just going to watch the semifinals and the finals in Magnus Carlsen's online chess tournament. I'm also working on a new drawing I'm pretty excited about. Right now I feel pretty landed in myself, but I've been in a lot of process these days. I'm suspecting the LSD-session I did 26th of March triggered a lot of stuff, probably in combination with the pandemic, and just life itself. Funny how my mind goes back and forth between total trust in the process of life, and total distrust on the other hand. Today I was obsessing a lot about moving away to another city, but now life feels perfect again just as it is, but I might still consider moving after summer.

Edit: Was checking when I did the first session of rollerblading, and that was 1th of April, so one month of rollerblading now. Pretty cool.

Edited May 2, 2020 by Thittato

[Thittato]

Gosh. What an insane day. First I was watching the semi-finals in the online chess tournament by Magnus Carlsen. He was in the semi-finals against chinese Ding Liren, and it was so damn nerve-racking to watch, but eventually he won, and now he is going to meet Hikara Nakamura tomorrow in the finals. I mean, the whole thing, it was just beyond description. It always is with Magnus Carlsen. It is the same intense drama around him all the time, his victories are rarly easily won, but still he is the guy who always wins the most.

After the intensity of all that, I just had to go rollerblading. I couldn't find someone who could go along, so I just went alone. It is never the same going alone, it doesn't give me the same energy when there is nobody there I can expierence that inspiration together with, but going alone is a nice way to just enjoy some cruising. It went up to the halfpipe I usually go to, and did some simple things back and forth, didn't challenge my self, but it was nice just to stay in touch with what I have alreay learned.

On the way home, however, I met some friends who were hanging out by a park, and we decided to drink some beers together later tonight. Things are getting less strict in my country, and people are starting to meet again in small groups. So we were 4 guys who met home at one of the guys, and they were smoking pot, and I felt tonight was the right night to join, so I smoked together with them (haven't smoked since New Years Eve).

Holy schmokes. That was just so nice. Everything. The music, the conversations, the inspiration.

One of the dudes has challenged our group-chat on messenger to report back to the group how many push-ups we do each week. None of us were really very intrigued, except the guy who started it. But tonight, this challenge really catched fire, hahaha. So in between everything that happened, we were constantly challenging ourselves with push-ups. So funny. My totals reached 105 for this evening. I was pretty happy with that given that this is my first day.

Then after I left them, I just had to go rollerskating again. So I was going for my 16th session, while I was stone. Oh my gosh, that was just beyond. Skating down by the beach. They have made this concrete path that goes just right next to the beach, with street-lights especially for the atmosphere. It was just so crisp and smooth, skating next to the sea on that smooth concrete path while the wind was blowing in my face and the silence of night was just surrounding me. They also have a little skating-park next by the beach. That was so smooth as well. I totally didn't challenge myself, just did some easy crusing, but it was just so magical. Made me see the whole thing just totally from a much more philsophical and mystical point of view. It is really like this old art-form invented a long time ago which is passed on from one generation to the next. And it doesn't take much to take part in this art-form at all. Just trying sincerely to nail a few simple tricks, and one has already paid deep homage to the tradition.

Smoking cannabis is like a psychedelic trip to me. I have to approach it the same way as that. I can only do it on very special occasions, but when I do, and the set and setting is right, it is really just something that I seriously need to check in with on these very special occasions in order to remember a very important part of myself.

[Thittato]

Hmm........ Been feeling stuck again lately in a life that doesn't go anywhere. Feels like the same things I'm talking about in this journal as when I started it. I get this kick on various things, and then they pass and I search for something new to get a kick on. Feels like my sense of purpose is very weak. I'm very confused about my purpose. Been day-dreaming much about living a very different life in another city or country. When I was in therapy I reached a point which they call "the impasse" which is sort of like a gridlock in your life that you can't figure a way to get out from. Feels like this impasse is back.

I did 3,5 years in gestalttherapy, and the last two of those years was done as part of the education to become a gestalttherapist. The education is 4 years, but I decided that I needed a break because I was close to burned out from doing these really demanding group-processes we had in that education combined with a demanding job in a psychiatric hospital. I figured all I wanted was that self-development that we were focusing on in these 2 first years, and it felt like I had gotten what I wanted out of therapy and that now I could go on living a normal and functional life finally. I quit the education beginning of last summer, and it hasn't felt like this impasse-phenomena has been here for that period. At first I had this desire to become an artist come up veryh strongly again, and then I did a studio-collaboration for 2 months with a good friend of mine that lead to an exhibiton, and after that I felt that I had gotten it out of my system for this time, and that I only wanted to focus on my job as a social worker - like stop self-sabotaging with always dreaming about something different than what I currently do and just settle down with my normal job.

But these days, this feeling that nothing is right comes up very strongly again. Of course it is triggered partly because of this pandemic. But on the other hand I think I was escaping from this feeling when it was easier to distract myself with fun social stuff. I basically just wanted to immerse myself in cultural and social stuff when I was finished with all those heavy therapeutic processes. Like those people I had been "forced" together with in this class and had to bond really deeply with through these therapeutic processes was stealing my social capacity and also the time I could use on those I really identified with and wanted to bond with.

Maybe I just needed to immerse myself a lot in social life again as much as I could, and everything else I had to immerse myself in, but now it feels I'm back to this sense of a lack of purpose. Doesn't feel like my life has any direction. I'm just floating around acting on very random impulses - basically just whatever I'm inspired by in the moment. Right now it is skating and rollerblading, and suddenly my social life is about building up a crew that I can skate with. On thurday we are going to a different city where they have this really awesome skate-park. I'm very glad when I'm thinking about this - but still - this is just how I life my life - just some random inspiration popping up leading to some temporary projects that are not meant to last. Right now skating is my new purpose. And my purpose just keeps changing all the time.

Underneath this all there is this impasse-phenomena. Maybe I need to go back to therapy to work through it.

Always when I'm in this situation I start to obsess about my art again.

The only clear things I felt in my life regarding purpose was when I wanted to become a buddhist monk, and after I had been a buddhist monk for 2 years, I wanted to become an artist, and then the artist vocation was activated and I went home and started hanging out in the art-scene, met some really cool artist-friends, made an artist-group and had quite some underground art exhibitons, one of them actually entered into a very recognized art gallery. But I was doing a bachelor degree in social work at the same time, was in two relationships after each other that was pretty challenging, and then I also did a lot of psychedelics, joined a ayahuasca church, and it felt like I was all over the place, and at some point I went back and finished my licence as a carptenter which altogether was 3,5 year in apprentice, and then I started this gestalttherapist education, and yeah I've basically just been all over the place, but this art thing always comes back. Maybe I've never settled down well enough to actually concentrate well on it. Or maybe it is just my go-to escapism-fantasy whenever I felt stuck and when I try to translate the fantasy into reality it actually sucks way more than what it does in my fantasy version.

Part of these phases is that at some point this all seems just crazy and meaningless, and I just need to go deeper with my meditation instead of being lost in all this content. And then, usually, I get a very strong sense of purpose simply from just focusing on my meditation and experiencing the sense of flow that periodically gives me. But then eventually I hit a try spot with my meditation, and my focus usually starts floating again.

I could just say to myself: Just push on through with your meditation.

Or: Just push on through with your art.

Or maybe I should have pushed on through with the therapeutic process in order to become a gestalttherapist.

Or maybe all. Or none.

Or maybe I'm just basically freaking out because I have this pattern of always moving on when I'm finally starting to land somewhere, as I was feeling I was doing in my current job right before this pandemic shit happened. I was really really enjoying my job at that point, and now it feels like it totally sucks. But that is because we don't have any patients. Our department is turned into this stupid corona quarantine shit, where people who need psychiatric hospitalization and quarantine at the same time can come. But there are none, so basically our department is empty and we are just sitting around idle. And those few that come are usually quickly clearified as not infected, and then we send them somewhere else, and even if we had patients we would have to lock them up in their rooms which also totally sucks. So no meaningful therapeutic work being done in this situation. No chance to actually make a difference for anyone. In normal times, when I start to loose touch with why I work with this, usually I'll encounter a patient that I have really good chemistry with and that I can be there for and support them when they go through something difficult and then I remember how meaningful this feels - like deep in my heart - and all that other obsessive stuff going on in my mind is totally cancelled out for a while. I'm probably addicted to being a helper. But it can be extremly meaningful and go very deep when it really opens up and love flows between helper and the one being helped - it flows both ways. It is really amazing when it happens - it is one of the most beautiful things.

I should probably suspect that during a crisis-situation old patterns are triggered again. I'm pretty sure they are.

Yesterday was my 18th session of rollerblading, by the way. I brought with me 2 experienced skaters, and 2 un-experienced who are not really into it. The session was a mix between all the great inspiration I shared with the two who are experienced and how much it actually sucks when the group energy is sabotaged when everybody does not share the same dedicated focus towards the intention that was meaning behind actually meeting. I was pretty angry at one of my buddies. I've been so lately. But I didn't want to be a grumpy dude who told him how to behave, so I just kept it to myself, but damn how much he was talking and bringing people out of skate-mode. He didn't really give any energy to our activity, but he sure as hell brought a lot of energy out of it. I wonder if I have been angry at him lately because he has some kind of dishonesty about him. I don't think he is authentic, he basically just goes around smiling and laughing all day and everything is a joke to him. And then he always have this subtle cynicism towards people who are actually trying to do something authentic. I guess he is a typical "nice guy." I've been triggered a lot by nice guys lately. I was one myself before - but now - whenever I have a nice guy friend I actually become very suspicious. They don't tell what is really on their mind, they go along with anything because they act as if everything is fine to them, and eventually they will stab you in your back when they've been adjusting too much for too long. I've done all of that myself. It is probably a good thing that I don't like it anymore.

Perhaps one of the feelings I'm most strongly in touch with these days is my anger. I seem to be angry at almost everybody. Never been this in touch with anger before. In that sense skating is a good thing. Seems to be a lot of aggressive energy around skate-culture. Perhaps that is the deeper meaning why I'm into it again - some angry masculine energy that needs to work itself through my system.

Everything makes a little bit more sense now. It always helps to journal. Just got to keep on' keeping on. Some way or another this thing will get processed. I just need to be really honest with myself about what is going on in my mind.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation yesterday, 45 min today. Didn't feel like yesterday's meditation had much effect. I've been very clogged up with mental and emotional chaos, but today, when the meditation was over, I felt calm again, and my mind feels much more spacious.

[Thittato]

So I also went rollerblading in a skatepark in another city 1 hour away from here together with a really good friend today. This is the 19th session so far. Two of his friends from this town, it is his home-town where he grew up, also came and joined us. At first it was challenging, adjusting to a new park and a new environment and I didn't really feel good enough for these new challenges, but then it was getting really awesome as we warmed up to the process and were getting to know the park and its possibilities. Things are just still getting better every session. Now I better understand what is going on with me. When the pandemic hit I lost many of my tribes. Both my chess-tribe and my sauna-tribe down at the bath-house. These are both two really interesting groups of people, and even though I have many long-term friends, there is something about that energy to meet really often and go deep with our activity that only happens when one share whatever is ones main-passion at that particular moment. There was always someone I could play chess with, or someone I could talk with in the sauna, that was also part of the larger social picture of our city. So these tribes where a huge part of my networking-strategy for having a fun and interesting life and feeling connected to society. It is not the same going for a walk together for instance. It doesn't stirr up that "Hey, lets do this again as soon as possible -vibe." So anyways, what I'm obviously doing with this new passion for skating is that I'm building a new tribe while this pandemic is going on, which is also somehow related to our culture at large, so it is a new way to connect with people that I'm already connected with, and I can carry this connection with me when society returns to normal, while also improving on a really cool skill. Rollerblading is a really awesome way to explore the city and see it from a new angle, both physically and socially. I'm meeting many people I already know when I'm out rollerblading, and it connects me with society again. Some repetitions over the same theme there, hahha..... So anyways, I don't feel something is wrong with me right now because of this thing, like it is an immature obsession and I'm getting too old for it and I should rather focus on more important things or whatever. It is a fun and useful hobby, and it was the best that I could find to serve many of my needs that was getting neglected because of this pandemic. I've been in a crisis ever since this thing hit us because so much of my life is about living my life out in caffees, pubs, concerts, art-exhibitions, parties, etc, so it was a huge shock when this was all taken away. And in order to cope with that I had to re-invent myself as a skater and start building a skater-tribe. In many ways skating is like hanging out at an art-exhibiton, because there is a lot of really cool graffity all around, and we just hang out in a really chill way while we focus on our activity.

When I came home I did 35 min of yoga. Gosh I have been getting so stiff lately because of all this rollerblading, so it was really about time to do some yoga, and it was sooooooo damn goooood. Gosh, yoga just totally rocks. And it rocks even more when it feels like I have really been using my body a lot since last time I did it. Then it is not just a self-serving bubble doing it for its own sake, but I actually get to use it for something. Like a knife one is sharpening, but one doesn't cut anything with it, so why keep sharpening it? Feels much better to sharpen it when you know you put it to really good use.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Thittato

[Thittato]

Just had to do a little night-session of rollerblading to brush of the mania from the skatepark today, so I cruised through my jogging-route of 4km just now. So that was my 20th session. So nice to go rollerblading next to the ocean and the river in the silence of the night. Damn I'm going to get fit from all this, especially when I combine it with yoga. This is especially a point where I shouldn't really worry about my exercise routine because it certainly already is plentiful.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Thittato

[Thittato]

Amazing day! Started the day with 20 min of vinyasa flow yoga, then I went to meet a friend who I was going to go on a long forest walk with. He had a surprise for me which turned out to be a small bottle of ayahuasca. So we both micro-dosed on ayahuasca for the whole forest walk. We were walking for 7-8 hours altogether, with lots of pauses. So nice. I took a spoonful of ayahuasca each time I microdosed, and I was adjusting it throughout the whole day. But on my way home, I decided to empty the bottle, so I had four spoonfuls, and after an hour, haha, I suddenly went into ceremony-mode. Fortunately I was at home by then, so I was putting on some nice mantra music, and laid down in my bed and went deep into some amazing blend of the music mixed together with all the fractals and geomtric patterns going on inside my head - so much creativity! It was pretty cool to cruise on a microdose for the whole day in beautiful nature, and then at the end of the day to seal off the trip with a good nice journey into the juice of the spiritual fractal jungle. Ayahuasca feels so natural and healthy. It seems like I have a much greater capacity for letting go off control when I do ayahuasca now compared to when I started. There is a genuine sense of trust in the process. But that can probably be challenged if the dose get high enough haha.... Before, to me, ayahuasca was so much chaos, but now when I can let go into it and just let it do its thing, the whole thing is so much more fine-tuned. It feels like fractal patterns of healing and jungle-juice and creativity just working its way through my whole being, just opening up everything in order to pour in vitality and life. Of all the things I have tripped on, ayahusca is probably the substance closest to my heart, because this is the only substance I have been part of a tradition with. I do ayahuasca ceremonies every now and then with a lineage within the Santo Daime church. Now it is 1,5 year since last ceremony. But this was a really nice re-union with the substance. A little bit like coming home again. Maybe I should choose to go deeper with this substance again. Like make my psychedelic adventures a bit more goal-oriented and specific again. Ayahuasca has such a sobering effect on ones life, so I think this can easily be integrated with living a normal life - probably much more easily than jumping back and forth between various substances. The whole vibe it has around it is just spirituality and healing. It is simply not possible to use it as a recreational drug because it almost always brings up some psychological material that one has to work through. I'm wondering if now I'm ready to do a full ceremony-dose all by myself. I will have to think about that for some time, though.

Regarding my job and my purpose I was using quite some time processing all my feelings and thoughts around this. Even though I'm restless for something else, and I'm dreaming about a more exotic life, I think it is the right thing to just continue to stay where I am right now. This has really gotten to a point where I'm just way more safe and robust in my role - and we often have to deal with very violent people - but the more safe I get regarding the boundaries that we have to establish and maintain as an institution, the easier it gets to show some genuine human warmth and compassion within these boundaries. And somehow I just love all the processing I have to do in order to get better at this. So for now, this is a process that I will have to get fully baked in, so that whatever I do next, if at some point I'm going to do something else, then I will leave this job with a sense of "mission accomplished."

Maybe there would be a way where I could do this processing more professionally. I have often thought about getting some kind of coaching on it. Something like that would certainly increase my job-satisfaction. The more engaged I can become in this process, the more I will get into a sense of purpose and flow. I'm noticing there is always a lot of passion being stirred up when I talk about this process.

And maybe ayahuasca is the answer, or part of the answer, regarding how I can make my life more exotic again. Haha. It doesn't get more exotic than that, in many ways. But in more mundane terms in many ways it is as simple as going back to my church again. Going back to my church in order to get more in touch with God again, so that I can bring more love and passion into everything that I do.