My meditation journal

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today. Good flow. Some grief coming up later in the day. Seems like I fight it less and less. Just stay with it, allow it to be there, again and again. There are many different levels to resistance, sometimes it is gross, sometimes it is subtle, but the lesson is always the same - surrender. I spend more time under the cold water at the end of my hot shower as well, at least until the shock has calmed down. My tolerance for cold water was suddenly gone, and I got impatient with it, but now it is back again. Used my rollerblades to get to work again. Really nice to use them for transportation as well. Not just for skateparks. It makes me into a more well-rounded rollerblader.

[Thittato]

Been working night-shift tonight, and I had some opportunities to meditate tonight. For the first time ever I saw some inklings of getting some kind of resolve to my situation in life. When I ended that education I was doing in gestalttherapy (and my own individual therapy at the same time) I was still stuck in an unresolved impasse. The impasse is sort of a therapeutic gridlock in your life where you feel stuck all over and there is no clear way out of it. I think I'm still in a fight to find a way out. Seems like everything I do has an element of fighting in it. Like really trying hard to get somewhere, but I fail over and over, because my projects are short-lived, and then I get occupied with a new temporary project, and nothing really seems to resolve the underlying stuckness that dominates my life. But tonight I saw the inklings of a total surrender and acceptence regarding my total situation in life. I kind of felt that I'm just totally screwed and there is nothing I can do about it and I might as well just accept that my life ended up this way as sort of a failure. I'm working in a madhouse, and I cannot get a full job there because I'm a social worker and they only give full employment to nurses. And I have all these hobbies in all directions, and there is no clear direction to any of it, and with women it is the same over and over again, some kind of temporary crush, and usually if they have a crush on me, by the time I catch up with it they have moved on, or figured I'm some sort of lost soul or something like that that they don't really want to get involved with when they get to know me for what is under the surface. And all that stuff. And I'm living in a rented appartment, and most people my age has bought their own home. In gestalttherapy they have what they call the paradoxical law of change, meaning you can only experience deep transformation when you fully become what you are, and not when you try to become something you are not. I've experienced this principle many times on individual issues, but never fully on my life as a total, hence I'm still fighting to become something else than what I currently am, but tonight it really dawned on me that this situation that I'm in in life requires a total surrender to my situation just as it is. That is probably the only way I can get out of this impasse and reach a full and complete process in my therapeutic process. So this is very exciting.

I think this started to become much more clear because when I was recently starting building up to a daily meditation practice again, I was feeling everything else in my life doesn't really go anywhere, and I might as well just surrender into simply being a meditator - like got to have something, at least, and that might as well be meditation. One of my meditation teachers used to say that meditation is the one thing that is going to see you through. So meditation is forcing this stuckness into the foreground, and perhaps now I have a great chance of really penetrating it deeply.

Interestingly enought the whole thing doesn't seem as damn frightening as it used to do. Something inside of me has just wanted to give up, resignate, because I've been fighting so hard for such a long time - and this tension between resignation and fighting is not good, but I can see the inklings of this psychic struggle finding some resolve.

Feels like I've almost had a daily meditation practice again so far this June because it started building up again in the end of last month, so I make it into a resolve to meditate for 45 min every day for the rest of June, and then when this month is over I'll do an evaluation.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today. The momentum is building up again at the same time as this experience of stuckness is in the foreground. Some absurd combination of feeling fire and power from the meditation and at the same time lots of frustrations.

[Thittato]

Had the opportunity to meditate for one hour at work just now working night-shift. My mind was racing everywhere before I meditated, and when I meditated I went pretty deep into the various bodily sensations of boredom, stuckness, dryness, tension, contraction, fear and doubt, and now I feel refreshed again. This is clearly the path - to go into the various forms of contractions the way they manifest in the body. After a solid dose of that my mind stopped racing, and I feel way more appriciative of my life right now. This clearly needs to be done in a much more disciplined manner again, and I’m very glad I commited to a daily practice of at least 45 min per day throughout this month.

[Jai]

On 6/3/2020 at 2:27 PM, Thittato said:

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:

 

I like this quote. Sometimes I have fear about the future and about the spiritual path. Mostly that I won't be provided for and that I'd be better off if I chased success, or a career, etc. But it all dissolves when I have a strong God connection... the idea is to deepen my relationship with God and expand that feeling until it is normal and the fear is only an infrequent visitor

[Thittato]

17 hours ago, Jai said:

 

I like this quote. Sometimes I have fear about the future and about the spiritual path. Mostly that I won't be provided for and that I'd be better off if I chased success, or a career, etc. But it all dissolves when I have a strong God connection... the idea is to deepen my relationship with God and expand that feeling until it is normal and the fear is only an infrequent visitor

Yes, totally! Seems like what I have been swept up in lately hahha..... I find it strange how fluid my priorities are. When I have a "strong God connection" all my values seems to be build around that, but when that connection is not so strong I seem to be swept up in materialistic values again. It probably just means I need to continue to re-establish my daily meditation practice so that the God connection is nurtured every day. The forces pulling me away again and again are pretty strong.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation as I woke up just now. Been sleeping all day since I worked night-shift for three nights in a row this weekend. I feel fantastic right now. I was feeling fantastic as I walked home from work this morning as well. I felt so free. Damn, I'm glad I'm back to this more structured meditation practice. I must have been swept up in some confusing layers of mind lately. Now it is time to steady my mind in presence again. I always feel a much stronger sense of purpose when I focus on my meditation practice. This is time for a deeper listening inwards. No need to try to figure out these confusing layers of mind I've been wallowing in lately. I need to go down under them into my essence.

[Thittato]

45 min walking meditation today. It was rough turning back my sleeping-rhytm from working night-shift, so I only managed to sleep for 2 hours before I went to work evening-shift tonight. When I came home I had to do walking meditation instead of sitting because that would have been impossible. First I walked for 25 min, and then I went and took a hot shower ended with a good solid cold shower before I went back to my walking path and did my remaining 20 min of meditation. Even though I'm dead-tired I still got a lot of presence out of it, and a sense of power, direction and dedication. Work was great today, even if I only slept for two hours. I was having a buzz and a spacious free flowing feeling because of too little sleep and that somehow increased my social flow.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation this morning. Feels amazing. Only thing I'm disappointed about is that the meditation could have gone much deeper, but I was a bit side-tracked by all the positive energy that it was building up, like I was starting to groove on all the inspiring thoughts that came up at the same time as I was focusing on the energetic sensations. In order to go deeper I have to be willing to let go of the inspiring thoughts and only stay with things on an energetic level. But this is the most power I've been able to generate so far this time, so tomorrow I will do deeper if the same momentum is here. Whenever I'm getting side-tracked by positive sensations, the thing that will take me deeper is always to find whatever level of suffering is there in the positive sensations - when that is clearly comprehended then I will naturally let go off it and go into a deeper state of peace.

[Thittato]

Worked called and asked if I could work for two night-shifts, which I'm glad to do since I'm in the groove with my job now. Spent a few hours sleeping in order to prepare for that, and when I woke up just now I first did 20 min of vinyasa flow yoga, and then I did 20 more min of meditation for today. Haven't done yoga in a long time, and it was really nice to do a session of that again. And in the meditation I was, as I was expecting, finally going beyond "positive enthusiastic energy" into what I call "beautiful silence." I didn't go so deep into beautiful silence, but I was finally really landing in it, and if my alarm hadn't gone off the momentum was so that I could have gotten much deeper into it. 45 min of meditation is my base, and then I can add on top of that when I feel inspired.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today as well. First 25 min of walking meditation and then 20 min of sitting. Walking-meditation is a really nice way to get the momentum going if I’m tired, as I was today, before I sit down to do the sitting part. Everything feels perfect in my life again. So funny. I guess this is the psychology of samsara in action. When I’m not present I start to dream about how my life should rather have been and focus on everything that is wrong, but as soon as presence is re-established life is perfect just the way it is. I have a feeling right now of being really alligned with where I am supposed to be. It is like being synchronized with the way things are.

I’m pretty sure it will feel exactly the opposite soon enough, haha, but at least for now I can enjoy a very welcome relief from this chaos I’ve been in lately.

Rollerblading totally rocks again as well. Using my rollerblades as transportation to get somewhere has really opened my eyes to another side of rollerblading - the recreational side, which is also a very important side, just cruising around enjoying the simplicity and the sense of flow. I was mainly focused on aggressive inline skating when I started - doing tricks in halfpipes and stuff like that. Now it feels like these two different aspects will complement each other very well.

Doing a session of yoga yesterday was also really awesome. My body felt sooooo much better when I went rollerblading today because of it. Just so much more less fragile in a way.

Perhaps the nicest thing about rollerblading to work today was seeing how I feel way less clumsy. I love that sense of feeling that ones confidence is growing when adjusting to a new skill. In the beginning one is sort of in a constant state of fear and awkwardness, mixed with inspiration and joy of course, but also with some elements of strong discouragement sometimes, but then one starts to really land in the new thing, and the whole interest becomes like a much more stable and dynamic thing.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today as well. Fucking awesome. I just dive totally into all the different forms of micro-suffering presenting themselves and just totally dive into feeling it through to the very end, again, and again, and again, and again.

Walking through town after a good meditation is more psychedelic than the best psychedelics under the most perfect conditions.

Psychedelics are SHIT compared to meditation, and, don't get me wrong, they are still good.

If you're reading this journal and don't have a daily practice - just fucking do it!

Even 5 minutes of meditation is a trillion more, at least, than no meditation at all.

[LarryW]

On 13/06/2020 at 1:40 AM, Thittato said:

If you're reading this journal and don't have a daily practice - just do it!

Even 5 minutes of meditation is a trillion more, at least, than no meditation at all.

Thanks that's really inspiring ? I'm trying to reboot my meditation practice and don't do any pharmas.

[Thittato]

On 14.6.2020 at 11:35 AM, LarryW said:

Thanks that's really inspiring ? I'm trying to reboot my meditation practice and don't do any pharmas.

I’m glad to hear ??

[Thittato]

Unfortunately I didn’t do my 45 min of meditation on saturday, but to compensate for that I did two 45 min sessions on sunday. And today I sat for 45 min as well. There was quite some resistance to sitting down today, but as soon as I sat down I was getting into a good groove. I’m glad to be able to keep up this daily practice of 45 min for the whole of this month. Almost felt like I fell out of it because of saturday, but felt good to compensate for that on sunday.

[Thittato]

On 16.6.2020 at 3:12 AM, modmyth said:

I think I didn't manage to actually execute this mindset until my late 20s. It's hard when you tend to be all-or-nothing.

Hehe yes. I know all about having an all-or-nothing approach :-)

[Thittato]

45 min sitting meditation yesterday before working evening-shift, and 45 min walking meditation this evening right now before bed. Everybody that I tell about my meditation project are very encouraging. It seems to resontate with them. Basically meditation is my only project for the whole of June - everything else is spontanity and improvisation. Nothing of that going to learn this or learn that stuff. I'm really starting to see the benefits of it now. It gives me a lot of peace of mind. It is really time to go beyond that chronic obsession I've had with "getting somewhere" based on various ever-changing projects.

And this evening, holy schmokes, I really saw to fruits of my skills when it comes to improvisation. 2 weeks ago I was suddenly part of a jamming-group and we had a really nice jam together. And today we met again, and it was even better than last time. Damn, it was so good. I brought my didgeridoo, and I also borrowed a drum, and I was just totally on fire and so free. This must have been the best jam I've ever been part of. Me and a buddy started dancing as well. So awesome to dance again. The whole thing turned into like a small little psy-trance party at the end. One of the guys in this group is a DJ, and he brought a little loudspeaker with him, and his computer, and damn how much cool stuff he was contributing with while the rest of us were drumming, playing guitar, didgeridoo, singing, and etc. After the 4 hour long jam was over, we went for a nice swim in the ocean, and that was such a perfect way to cool down again after such an intense and long climax. It felt like my dancing, my drumming and my didgeridooing all reached some new levels of creativity tonight and that has a lot to do with me letting go of trying to control my creative energy.

Today I also totally accepted that I'm totally rejected by my crush, and there is no way that she will ever go out on a date with me again. I'm so relieved I've given up any ambition to try to win her over again. This whole thing was just some old tendencies kicking in again. Holy schmokes I'm glad they were short-lived this time. My life was really awesome before I met this woman, and of course I was getting obsessed again, so then I was not so happy again. She was very beautiful, and had a very interesting personality, and a lot of cool interests, so of course when we were getting a connection I was just totally ready to have her as my girlfriend if she had wanted, but I'm pretty glad I didn't succeed. This woman was really struggling with her life, and her energy was very low and I think that perhaps she was depressed. And somehow my old ugly tendency is try to get into a relationship with a woman like this in order to save them. I've had two girlfriends where this pattern was very strong. But now, after having successfully been in therapy, I'm actually turning into a pretty happy and satisfied person, and I think I'm ready for breaking this cycle of co-dependency and actually meet a woman who is also happy about her life. I sometimes write about my frustrations in this journal, but they are nothing compared to the shit I was dealing with when I was going in therapy.

So with that thing being closed, I'm free again to enjoy my meditation, my creativity, my friends, and my job, again. Hurra! :-) And I'm looking forward to the next woman coming my way. Hopefully we are a much better match. But I'm in no hurry. I just want to enjoy life and be happy.

[Thittato]

45 min meditation today as well. First 25 min walking meditation, and then 20 min sitting. I had a lot of resistance before this session, but as soon as I began the momentum was strong and I immediately got into the groove.

[Thittato]

Felt like doing one more session today of 45 min of meditation. First 25 min walking, and then 20 min sitting. It is interesting to see how walking and sitting meditation complement each other. Especially with my interest in physical exercise. Walking meditation is almost like exercise in it self. A soft form of exercise. It certainly builds some endurance. Especially when it is combinded with the meditative focus. And it gives me a lot of time to explore my posture - like really embody my walking-posture. And with sitting meditation - that is totally an experience of really going deep into ones posture. This session the momentum was really strong, and I started to feel like a king sitting on my throne. And when that energy was finished running through me, I suddenly felt sweet and kind as a leaf being blow around carefully by a sweet breeze on a warm summer day, but still with the same erect posture, but my body was no longer the object of my focus, but I was more absorbed into the feeling of sweetness and kindness. Pretty nice.

[Thittato]

45 min sitting meditation yesterday, and the same today. Yesterday was pretty much only resistance, but today it was a really good flow. The resistance before I sat down was pretty intense, though. Once again I was feeling very strongly that I have no purpose and my life is just chaos. So I tried to identify how these feelings felt in my body, and then things quickly started opening up into a very good flow.