My meditation journal

[Thittato]

The 21th rollerblading session today. Me and my skateboard-friend were back at the halfpipe we usually go to. This is the 3rd time this week we are skating. Some progress for both of us, but we both were also tired. I'm probably going to take a few days rest now. Today I'm tired and a little vulnerable, probably from the intense forest walk yesterday combined with ayahuasca. But it was nice to squeeze out a few hours of rollerblading. Tomorrow I will take a full relaxation day just to integrate everything that has been happening lately. Something also feels really good today. It is nice to just live as intensely as I have been doing lately, and then just to feel like fully expressed and just needing to relax and restitute without having to chase new experiences. This has been a really awesome week.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today. Still going some rounds regarding purpose and direction in life. Seems like I have some more balance and honesty in my mind which helps me keep these questions in mind without freaking out. There has probably been a lot of denial and chaos around this for a long time.

[Thittato]

Hmmmm..... yeah, direction in life keeps nagging me. Everything seemed so fine before this pandemic hit. Seemed like a good plan to continue in my job and to grow in that role. Now I'm wallowing in chaos and nothing feels right. Is this some vulnerability and process that has opened up because I have been tripping on psychedelics lately? Is it triggered by the pandemic? Or both? Or would I not have been satisfied with my direction in life deep down as it is right now and it is just good to have it triggered so I can have a closer look?

One thing is for sure and that is when I'm wallowing in chaos like this it is difficult to enjoy the possibilties in my current situation. I'm focusing on the limitations and not the possibilities.

I could just view it as a state of mind, and then use my meditation to work on this mind-state, and then at the same time establish some strategy for how to get the most out of my current situation. If this is the answer I should probably have a much more defined strategy.

Right now I'm a leaf being blown around by the wind. Not a good feeling.

I'm also wondering if the rollerblading has been part of triggering this. It seems like such a waste to invest so much mental energy into something that is not going to be useful for anything else outside of itself. In general I'm spending way too much energy on my "fun things" and way too little on my core values. That is what makes me think there is some sort of escapism involved. The same with Chess. It would probably have been ok to spend much time on my hobbies if my more important things were settled, but when they are not I have some work to do to get my priorities into balance.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation this morning. Very nice, chill and centered meditation. The Ayahuasca is still working in me. I had a very intricate and deep dream this morning, which I remember nothing from except the ending, but I was totally amazed when I woke up (when the memory of the dream was still fresh) how intricate the story had been and how strong and lucid it all had felt. The dream ended with me drowning inside some medieval ship that was getting filled up with water, probably from sinking, and when I realized I wouldn't be able to escape drowning, I decided it was probably best to just surrender to it, and at that point I was filled with peace and woke up.

[Thittato]

Peyote-trip

Peyote-trip yesterday. Feels superfluous to say much about it. It was simply perfect. As always. But even as perfect as it was, the most interesting observation I had was that I simply have no preference for being on a trip compared to not being on a trip. Life is life.

But it felt very complemantery to the ayahuasca trip I just had. Ayahuasca has a very distinct feminine quality. Peyote is very masculine. They complement each other perfectly. I went for a long forest walk this time. 6-7 hours. Nature is so damn awesome. If there is one thing that I'm going to be grateful for because of this pandemic - it is that I have discovered nature on a much deeper level.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today. Some resistance and grief that I had to go into. It helped a little bit. Been quite social these last days as society opens more up again. As I'm spending this day alone I'm noticing these feelings of feeling stuck in life are still here. But the choice is simple: Either change something, or see if it is possible to go beyond this need for change and just continue with life as it is right now and try to penetrate through these feelings with my meditation technique.

[Thittato]

So after this pandemic and lockdown started I have done 3 psychedelics trips (lsd, ayahuasca and peyote) and smoked weed 4 times. Usually my drug of choice is alcohol, and only occasionally do I do these other things. Now I think I will have to establish a boundary again and tell myself I won't do these other things again until I have thoroughly processed all these new experiences. I like to always have a good overview over my life, and if I trip too much I can easily loose that overview so I need to spend some time to really digest it.

The most important process going on right now is this crisis regarding my career choice. Seems like I will have to go some rounds on this one. It is really strange how it can alternate back and forth so strongly between feeling so right and feeling so wrong. Today it felt really wrong again, and then I allowed myself to feel all those perspectives as fully as I could, and then suddenly it felt really right again. I think my career choice was made in so much chaos, that I just found something "decent enough" to cling onto in the midst of 10.000 existential crises going on in all directions. Of course it very often felt wrong, but sometimes it seemed like the best that I could find, and I think I was trying to cling onto some "positive thinking" in this process not really being honest about myself how it really felt, and also clinging on to some notion that it would somehow work out one way or another. So behind this "false self" (which I didn't really manage to establish at all because hahha the storm has always been way too heavy, but still I tried to deny this storm and just cling onto this notion that it would somehow work out), yes behind this "false self" there is a lot of suppressed feelings and perspectives that I will have to feel fully in order to clean up this mental chaos. I feel there is hope in the fact that whenever I allow myself to fully feel whatever is there it seems like I land even some more where I am right now, and I get more mental access to the actual possibilites in this situation, instead of just focusing on the limitations and trying to suppress this painful feeling that I'm in the wrong place.

If this is actually the right place that I'm in, I think this process is leading to a more steady course that can handle some turbulence. And in fact, being a social worker, I think I will totally have to do a lot of continous inner work in order to be a steady empathic presence for those that I work with. It is like really working with the darkest and most chaotic aspects of humanity, and not really in a situation where someone is commited to deep inner work - very often that motivation is totally lacking.

I was getting very interested in soccer this last year, and especially I became a fan of Manchester United again as I was for a brief period when I was a kid. It was very interesting to see the process of how the manager was trying to establish a stable team, and how for a long time they seemed quite bi-polar as they would suddenly win some really impressive matches, and then they would suddenly loose to the lowest ranking teams. Like they were all over that place. I like to compare that process to my own mind. How I am trying to make my mind into a stable team for myself that can handle some blows. I imagine this stability only comes from experience. I've seen a lot of people try this type of job for only a year or two. In such a short amount of time you can make a good job by will, but suddenly you will get caught up by some huge process that will take some much deeper work to process enough to go back into the field with re-newed empathy and belief in humanity.

For a long time I couldn't really handle being social outside of my job, because the job was so emotionally draining, but now it seems I actually have a very good capacity and sense of joy in being social without getting emotionally drained neither from my relationships at work nor outside of work.

So I think I'm actually on the brink of really nailing this. I think there is a deep-rooted pattern in me that when I actually start to land somewhere then I get into panic mode and try to switch things up again in order to embark on a totally new project. My chaotic childhood was like that so it is a well-known dynamic that people with such a background continues to re-create their chaos over and over. Lack of chaos apparantly triggers all the alarm-systems that starts to signal that something is very wrong because lack of chaos is so unusual. This whole thing must be a very common PTSD pattern. People with PTSD lives in a chronic pattern of chaos where the pattern of old chaos contributes to even more new and fresh situations of chaos, and it all just feeds on itself in a vicious positive feedback-loop.

And even if something totally else should actually end up being the answer at some point, I totally want to milk this process for as much learning as I can totally get out of it. It is a very interesting parallell process going on between my own psychic struggeles, and the psychic struggles that I see in the patients that I work with. Fortunately I have good tools and good support-systems to deal with my own stuff, because if I hadn't, hahaha, then I would probably had been someone who needed psychiatric hospitalization myself, but I hope that this parallell process can help with giving the people I work with a sense of being understood and validated for how they feel - hopefully much more so than for someone who has only studied these things from a textbook and who unconsciously keeps an energetic distance towards actually feeling these things deeply within their own body. In gestalttherapy they used to say that if you haven't worked through your own story, then you will unconscisously reject your client in an energetic way. Another thing that pops to my mind is that I have never really considered myself mentally ill, allthough I do think there is some mild combination of bi-polarism, BPD and PTSD going on in my own life, but not overwhelmingly so, and in general I seem to have much energy and a positive outlook in life - but I also think there is that phenomena of the spiritual process in my own life called The Dark Night of the Soul, which many has described, and that is simply that all this trauma we all have stored in our bodies gets actived when the meditation process takes you down into the body instead of just living in your head disconnected from your body as apparantly most people do if we are to belive what the meditation teachers says. So embodyment takes a lot of work. There is also another saying that says that the psychotic drowns in the same water that the mystic swims in - so there are some interesting parallells here between mental illness and the spiritual process where it is not so clear-cut to sort out exactly what is what.

[Thittato]

Great day at work. Glad I decided it was time to have a pause from my brief intensification of my psychedelic studies. My psychedelic periods is like a thirst that suddenly arises and then after a few trips the thirst has been quenched and then it is time to just return to normal focus and integrate these experiences. Feels like my psychedelic thirst has been solidly quenched for some time now. Perhaps most important at all was this experience on Peyote that my preference for the psychedelic state over the normal state is not really there. I could just as well just be in a normal state. Nice with some variation every now and then, but not really such a big deal. I think before I was much more addicted to altered states of consciousness. It is the same when I go deep into samadhic states when I meditate - nice while it lasts - but not really something that I give much priority (although I might at some point because some of my teachers has really mastered those states and strongly recommends doing so, and for me they are only accessible occasionally when the mind naturally inclines itself towards stillness). Maybe my ideal these days is the ordinary mind of Zen. Nothing Special.

[Thittato]

Just very glad this brief little psychedelic period is over for now haha.... Feels like my focus is back on daily life again. I needed a little adventure here in this lockdown-period. This rollerblading-period is also over. Not like completely over, I will certainly go rollerblading again soon, but it has been almost two weeks since last time, so that sort of intensity about it is over. I've been really appreciating going for long walks in nature lately. Seems like having various forms of exercise works well for me so that I can alternate back and forth between them and have some nice variation. The forms of exercise I enjoy and alternate between are: jogging, yoga, rollerblading, walking and sometimes a little bit of weight-lifting or body-weight exercises as well. I like that I'm pretty low-key about it but that I'm also pretty serious about my exercise. I think variation and fun really helps keeping it going. I think I've been doing some serious processing and reflection regarding my job as well. And yesterday I matched with a really interesting girl on Tinder as well. I've been thinking lately that I would actually be very interested in a relationship again, but also I'm really scared of going into anything, but I got the vibe from her that she would be someone who would really appreciate me for who I naturally am, so I'm not going to try to put any effort into being someone I'm not, just going to see what kind of energy that is there naturally between us. In general something seems to be going on again between me and women. I feel much closer to them all again, and also much more naturally interested and relaxed around them. With this woman on Tinder I feel that I have already shared a lot of my authentic positive and open energy with her, and I don't feel so invested in actually getting something from her, it is more just a natural chill interest without expectations. Maybe this is some of the side-effects of the psychedelics lately. I needed to rock things up a bit in order to not take myself so seriously - to loosen up again and get a bit humbled as well. Even though this journaling probably seems a bit obsessive and intense at times, I really feel that it helps my growth a lot. My connection with my co-workers has improved lately.

[Thittato]

10 min meditation yesterday as part of a sharing-group on video-chat that I have going with 4 friends. We are a group of 5 really close friends, 3 men and two women around the same age that has known each other for quite some years. Something has been going on in this group lately. Something has been coming between us. So some of us has pulled away from each other. Not sure exactly what has been going on, because there hasn't been any real conflict or anything, but we just haven't been on the same wave-length lately. We usually meet once a month, but it was probably two months since last time. But finally we addressed that something has been coming between us, and that seemed to bring in some closeness again. So I'm really glad this process of addressing this has started - it seemed like the group would just gradually dismantle, but now I think there is hope to bring it back to the same level of emotional closeness that we have shared so many times.

I'm also still really glad that this psychedelic period is over for this time, and that also the rollerblading period has calmed down. Haha..... Seems like this pandemic has now made me calm down a lot. And things are slowly opening up again. It was like the whole spring-mania was flattened. This pandemic was like flattening the curve of the spring-mania. Like we were just easing into summer in a contemplative way. Of course I had a lot of reactions to it. Pretty strong ones too. And of course, maybe a second wave will hit. We don't know yet. But we are probably better prepared if it does, like at least mentally. Most of us have now accepted what is going on.

Not much formal practice lately, but a lot of spontanous meditation this weekend as I have been working night-shift the whole weekend.

In general I feel very settled in myself again. I'm really glad this psychedelic period stirred up so much process again, and it was really engaging to write so much about it here.

[Thittato]

Started the day with a hot shower that ended with a cold shower. My stamina for cold showers has really been going down even though the weather is warmer. Maybe I cannot cruise on beginner-enthusiasm anymore. But anyways, I usually end my showers with a cold shower, even if it has been getting shorter, because it feels terrible going out from a hot shower getting into my clothes sweat and warm etc, so it is much better to end it with a cold shower. Today I was rollerblading to my job and back home again. That was really fun. I'll probably continue to sometimes use rollerblading as transport for getting to my job. The distance is 2,5 km and it only takes a little bit more than 10 minutes.

Yesterday one of the 5 members of our sharing group needed an extra meeting to discuss what was going on with our group. She told what she has been feeling lately, and the other female member, who has often been the social glue between us, was pretty honest about the fact that right now she don't want to be part of any group - so we got our suspisions confirmed that she has been pulling away. It sort of seems like out of the blue, because we were all so close just a few months ago, and there has been no serious conflict between us. We are 3 people that want the group to continue, and 2 who seems to be pulling away. I was quite upset today about this, but now I'm starting to land feeling that it might be quite liberating to just let it go. Something new will always come. The two that are pulling away are much more in the "light and love only" camp than the three of us who wants to continue, and it often feels like if they don't like the energy of someone they will just pull away. There is little willingness to stay with anything that isn't instantely gratifying. From my perspective they are projecting their inner resistance out onto the group. But these things might just be my own projections. But I think that deep down we are not really compatible with each other as a sharing group. We've been cruising on a honeymoon for a very long time, but basically we have just been pleasing each other. There has been little room for the difficult confrontations and I think that has been putting limits on the growth in the group. Actually I don't know anyone as picky as these two people about the energies they want to have around themselves. Personally I'm very convinced that if people are unwilling to do shadow-work then growth is hindered. So yeah, the more I think about it the more I realize it is probably the right moment to let this group go. We will all still be friends, but this formal sharing-meeting once per month will most likely dissolve. I'm going to do my very best to not fall for the temption about confronting them with my view-points. It will for certain be met with resistance and anger and it will only push them further away from me with no good coming out of that. It is better to just allow them to pull away for now and focus on my own purpose and path and at one point, probably sooner than later, we will catch up again.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation this morning. Feels very good. Feels like I unite with the core of my essence. I'm wondering if I should get back to a more structured practice again. I guess the suffering in life has been reduced to such a level that I'm not clinging to my spiritual practice the same way I've done when there was more suffering, but still this could be a really potent place to keep my practice going, and in my experience suffering always comes back one way or another, so keeping my meditation going is probably the best way to be well-prepared.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today.

Processing the date I was on yesterday. Doesn't feel that it went very well at all. Strange to date when we have to keep 1 meter distance as part of the corona restrictions. On top of that she had some kind of birthmark on one of her eyes that she had recently learned that she would have to protect against sunlight in order not to get cancer on her eye, so she was wearing sun-glasses for the whole date. Haha. Sunglasses and 1 meter distance. We went for a walk, and had a nice conversation for 2 hours, but I couldn't really spot many sign of attractions from her, except for one deep long glance she suddenly gave me when our conversation was very deep. Except for that she didn't seem open to me. She was like keeping her shield up. It felt like I couldn't access her emotions, I could only access her intellect. We had like a mental connection, but something was blocking our emotional and bodily connection. I'm pissed at myself for continuing to talk when she gave me that glance. That would have been a moment to take our connection deeper by remaining silent. When we left she said it was nice to hang out with me. I mean, our conversation was very stimulating intellectually, but everything else seemed to be lacking. We've chatted on Tinder for almost 2 weeks, and in chat we had really good chemistry. Before we met she said she wanted to process our meeting together both before and after, so I have one opening to ask her how she felt it went. I guess there is nothing to loose by just asking her, but I'm almost certain I know the answer. I really liked her, but something tells me even if I had successfully managed to pursue her it would be a disaster for both of us. She didn't laugh much - it was hard to get her to laugh. She didn't have much positive charisma. We talked a lot about our therapeutic processes, and she is in the midst of her own therapeutic process - maybe she has really just started it.

Only thing talking in my favour is that maybe she has a more cold type of intellectual personality. And she has been isolated with her dad and her stepmom for this whole pandemic, and they are pretty strict about the restrictions because her dad is vulnerable to this disease. She is also from an academic familiy, and she specifically said she had been damaged by how bad her family was at dealing with emotions. So maybe it was natural she was very reserved when she was social again after all this isolation.

I didn't feel attractive at all in her presence. I felt more like a fool. The whole day before I met her I felt at my most attractive and I was at a very good vibe.

My pattern is to get hooked on a person like this. Like how can I crack the code to get her to open up.

How could I like someone like this? There was something almost boring about her. But she seemed really honest and consistent. And also really genuine in her search for answers.

I'm pretty sure that if I'm going to reach out to her again, and if I actually do want something to happen between us, I will have to find a very authentic and honest way to express how I felt about our meeting. If I indirectly ask her to reject me, she will not think twice before doing so.

The primary feeling I'm facing right now is basically that I feel rejected. In my experience all women will reject you several times in order to test how you react to it. How you handle rejection is a sure sign of your level of mental health. The people I work with in the psychiatric hospital will beat you up if they feel rejected. A "nice guy" will crumble by the very first inkling of a rejection and never ever dare to make a move again.

All women I genuinly care about trigger me like this. That might be the most precise thing I can say about this. To be continued.

[Thittato]

And did a cold shower just now, by the way. I'm going out to meet a buddy. I'm spending more time under the cold water again - not just a quick flush, but staying there until the shock calms down. I lost my resiliance towards the cold water for a while, but that was probably just because somehow I lost my patience to stay there until the shock calmed down.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today. Going into boredom and then boredom turned into juiceness.

[Thittato]

This is a good description of my meditation this morning :-)

[Thittato]

Stairways to an open heart

30 min meditation today. After that I have been helping a friend doing some carpentry work building outdoor stairs from his balcony down to his garden. It was extremly rewarding. I'm considering doing more carpentry-work again. I have a licence as a carpenter, so maybe I could combine some small carpentry-projects together with social work. Besides that I was totally rejected by my Tinder-date, so that chapter is totally over. Interesting how I could totally invest myself in our almost 2 weeks long chat and get a pretty serious crush on her, and when we actually met the energy between us was, well, uh, pretty flat, but I was already heavily invested in the crush I had been building up, but she wasn't, so I'm feeling some grief from this. Not sure how I can be so naive, but it almost felt like I had a girlfriend again - until we actually met. Not exactly sure what kind of lesson I can derive from this, but I always feel that a crush is somehow like a psychedelic trip, and when I'm out on the other side of it it is like I have been changed from the process of getting so into that person - it is like doing a very serious and deep study on someones personality. And I think, because I was so fascinated by her, or at least by the image I was having of her, that I will have to regard everything that I was so fascinated by her as an aspect of myself - so that in the deepest sense of it I have explored a side of myself very deeply in a short amount of time. And even though it fucking hurts right now, I fucking love the process, and I'm always going to be open to falling in love as long as I'm still single. I resolve to never close my heart or become afraid of getting hurt again. It is intensely beautiful everytime it happens, no matter whether it is reciprocated or not.

Here are todays stairs. I only helped him establish the basic structure so he could finish the work himself. To me they gain some kind of symbolic value for me today. I'll consider them stairways to an open heart - both because my meditation was going really well today, because it was really nice to help out a good friend who is always there for me (I'm usually pretty reluctant about helping out), because I have re-connected with my love for carpentry, and because of the symbolic value this work turns into in the midst of this intense but strange little Tinder-experience I suddenly had. I was feeling bitter today, but now my heart is open again - and that is the only thing that matters.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Thittato

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today. Very boring meditation and my mind was drifting a lot. It was difficult to sit through the whole thing, and I was glad when it was over. But for the rest of the day I've felt that I've gained some clearity from it. I've concluded once again that my interests are just all over the place. For instance yesterday I was doing that little carpentry-project, and today I was part of a drum-circle and had a huge kick on that. I'm still leaning into just surrendering totally into just doing whatever I feel like doing whenever and not trying to set up some kind of fixed idea about where my life is supposed to go. But I'm still thinking like, maybe I do need one discipline that I stick with every day. And that always seem to lead back to meditation. Maybe I would feel much better about being this "happy go lucky" kind of dude, if I returned to my meditation discipline. So I will explore that question for some time now. Another possiblity is that I'm even ready to let go of any fixed idea about my meditation and just do it whenever I feel inclinded to do so. And that is kind of what I have been doing lately, and that seems to work as well. Right now I'm feeling a greater pull towards meditation as an actual discipline, but I will just continue to explore these questions for some time.

This one was nice:

Edited June 3, 2020 by Thittato

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today. 30 min meditation before work, and 15 when I came home. Great flow at work today, which I attribute to the meditation.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today. Feels like I’m about to go into deeper meditative states again. I watched one of the saddest romantic movies I know about yesterday to cry out as much pain from this crush as I could, and today in my meditation I focused on enjoying the positive elements of this crush in my body - like really bake it into my body. Feels like an empowering way to work with this phenomena. As far as I can remember I haven’t been in love since last summer, and that didn’t work out well either, but I remember that felt much more like a huge shock to my system, but now the feeling has been much more fluid, so I think perhaps a lot of that brutal suffering I associate with these feelings is getting much softer. Perhaps these crushes could be just fun when I’m finished working through the pain of rejection I associate with them. I so easily fall in love, and it has kind of been traumatic to me so often loosing myself in someone else over and over again, but I think perhaps my nature is to have easy access to these feelings, and perhaps through meditation I can transform them into not being directed towards anyone in particular, but maybe towards all woman, or all of life. It is really amazing, when for instance a cute woman at the store smiles at me and I walk around feeling like I can fly for a couple of hours after that.