Thought immersions; My non-daily journal.

[Skanzi]

Unfortunately my first topic that was going to be my journal failed. This is because apparently at some point you are not allowed to edit your posts anymore, which I understand. But for visibility, I wanted to post a link here in the first post which would redirect to a text file which shows many previous journals I have written in the past 1,5 years outside actualized.org. I can do that now. 

No worries, everything in the previous topic I made here on actualized.org is also included in this one.

https://justpaste.it/6avm0

because the site on the link is a place where I can edit at any time, for any vital information regarding this topic here on actualized.org, if there happens to be, please look at the top of the page where the link goes to, as i can not edit this post on actualized.org anymore after a while, would some vital information have to be added.

This is a diary in which I reflect upon experiences I had, thought immersions I went through, and much more. I can also decide to post links, images, and other types of media if I feel that to be appropriate. I decided that I wanted to post my thoughts because I feel that my sometimes very thorough reflections, insights or inspirations could be of use to those who read it. After all, almost every time I write in my journal I come upon certain insights and realizations —some deep and some not so deep— that often help me quite a bit at that particular moment. If it helps me, perhaps it can help the reader quite a bit as well. Who knows?

Feel free to add your own comments by the way in this topic. It doesn't necessarily need to be a monologue.

Edited March 17, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

23rd january 2019

Recently I’ve been having some days where old fears have been started to resurface. Mainly the fear of that things would have to get worse for me; the recognition, or rather, assumption, that I would have to face some kind of death that would be really painful involving a lot of psychological suffering. I want to let go of this belief. That is to say: I want to let go of identifying myself with these thought patterns. It is not about positive thinking or thinking the opposite, it is just seeing thoughts as thoughts, and not having any mental involvement or attachment in thoughts that are aimed towards the future. To counteract this, I have found myself saying to myself over and over again: “I don’t have have to believe this, I don’t have to believe this”. This is not a denial of anything that could potentially happen, but rather a recognition of the fact that I create my own reality with my thought patterns, and that I can choose to break out of that. But know this: I wasn’t repeating that mantra to myself because it is some kind of philosophy I wanted to believe in. I didn’t feel like this mantra came from the mind, but from something deeper within. And I want to make it stay that way. I’m not interested in what it means intellectually or philosophically to say such a thing: “I don’t have to believe this”. Whatever the future may hold, is in a sense irrelevant because future exists only as a thought but not as a reality in experience. For whatever power I do have over the future, if we can speak that way, is how I create the reality in the present moment that would lead me into the future. For the rest, whatever happens in the future, happens. It could contain no more significant “(ego) deaths” or “dark night of the soul”, or it could contain a lot of them. I could get very identified with those deaths and resist them a lot, thus creating a lot of psychological tension and suffering, or I could watch them aloof being connected with a reality that is deeper then whatever kind of chaos can occur on the surface, making me stay connected with a sense of peace all the way throughout even in the midst of chaos on the surface level of my life. It can go every way.

What I however absolutely refuse to keep on doing is fearing those moments already when they’re not even happening. I refuse to believe in such a story that would evoke some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. I refuse that to be my self-created reality. I will own up and take responsibility for whatever power I do have, and all that I can’t control I will let go of it, certainly to the best of my ability. If I have a choice, and I really do feel deep down like I have a choice, I will not choose a reality for myself in which I will choose despair and anxiety. I refuse to believe the idea that “I have to suffer”. I refuse to enjoy such a identity on any possible level. Do you get the reality of which I’m pointing to? Do not try to make it intellectual. This is not a philosophy. I’n not interested in sounding philosophically correct here. I don’t want to speak from my mind only. Enough thoughts.

Yesterday, alongside stopping the momentum of the “despairing” thought loop, I also thought about those things I actually really factually know. You see, for some time now I’ve been giving myself a hard time for not being able to eat with attention to the eating process. I tend to get rather, unconscious I’d say. But I notice that trying to be more aware actually just creates more tension here. Yesterday, I started to question whether I really do know what’s best here. There are some assumptions in my system, and even though I often say to myself “I don’t know”, the assumptions in reality stay more deeply embedded in my system. And I know that saying to myself that I don’t know, is in reality just another assumption. It’s the assuming that you don’t know, to know that you don’t know, but in reality I don’t even know that.

So I wanted to address current assumptions that are in my system, even though having assumptions may not be in accordance to my philosophy. Because they go deeper. I must actually really, REALLY question my assumptions and really, REALLY be open to the fact that I could be wrong, however likely or natural it may seem to assume some things. I want to however stress that the intention should be aimed at uncovering the truth, not adopting a belief of not-knowing. May it somehow be that an assumption I already had turns out to be... assumable still (whatever that means), then I will go along with it. It should not be an inquiry against my assumptions, but in favor of the truth. Lets in fact also be aware of other assumptions I would make when questioning my original assumptions.

So yesterday I just wrote down a number of assumptions I had more deeply embedded, or that I was living by. Let’s address the first one

It is better to be always aware, conscious, or alert when you’re doing something?

So I this one plays up particulary with eating for some reason. And also with sexual desires.

Now I want to really, REALLY question this.

I understand already that forcing it won’t make things any better, but there is still the assumption that it should be happening otherwise things aren’t going the right way. The thought is: “Right, maybe I can’t force it, but it should at least be something that is happening, otherwise I’m not going the right way.”. That is the general idea about it, that at least if I’m not “attempting to make it happen” or “doing it”, then that at the very least being mindful should be happening. It is wrong to not be mindful. That is the general assumption.

Now let’s actually really, really doubt this one.

First lets look at it factually. Do I enjoy things more if I’m mindful, is there a sense of more lightness or enjoyment, or simply (greater) lack of suffering? Sometimes yes. I can recall that sometimes I enjoyed food more, or intentionally focusing on something decreased the disturbing mental traffic. There were sometimes it happened, where I was seemingly randomly present to the moment, and there were sometimes when I was consciously controlling it, and I also have found myself in moments where it at least decreased a disturbing mental traffic.

There is also a side, however, where, often after having been able to practice mindfulness/presence meditations succesfully, there comes a time when the suggestion to be mindful doesn’t really work for me anymore. It just creates resistance and more tension. I tend to remember and cling to the moments where it had been working for me, only to find out that it now just evokes a lot of resistance. And every time I do recall the suggestion that “I should be present”, it just creates guilt and tension, and instead of my mind becoming more still it becomes more disturbed and I start becoming confused, because something that worked before doesn’t work anymore now but somehow I can’t let it go and now I’m starting to wonder how I’m supposed to be dealing with it then, even though most of the time I don’t really take a significant proactive step to really reflect upon the situation or to change things around, or simply to fully accept my situation. In fact, often doubts oscillate between the suggestion whether to accept, whether to attempt, or whether to reflect.

So doubts and resistance certainly prevent me rather often from being present to the moment, but the main question really is: Is it really even “better” to be more aware, mindful and present to the moment? Is it truly a virtue?

First, lets evaluate where I got this idea from, that it would be “better” to be constantly mindful.

I took it mostly from spiritual teachers, I suppose. For instance, “the power of now”, from Eckhart Tolle, leaves and impression behind on me that I should always attempt to be mindful and present to the moment, even though there are other and even opposing perspectives to that idea in the book as well. However, this is what I remember from it, and I happen to leave out all the rest. In fact I hear it everywhere: “Be mindful, be aware”. The suggestions come from many, many sources in spirituality.

But now would it be better? What does it mean for something to be better than another thing anyway? I feel like It would mean that the better thing would in the end give more pleasure to either yourself and/or the totality of humanity. “humanity” alone however is only in thought and not in personal experience of pleasure or happiness. If we talk happiness on the personal level, can we then say it is “better” if some action or event would make us happier in the total picture, in the grand scheme of things? I suppose so. So let’s define anything to be “better” to be something that will make us happier in the grand scheme of things. This also means the long term, and the forever. Some positive event that would not have its drawback or negative counterpart whatsoever.

I already know that being identified with doubt and resistance that comes up when wanting to be mindful certainly then won’t make it better. But purely theorethically, if I were to be able to now simply be mindful and never encounter any resistance or doubt anymore, if was totally zen all the time from now on, would it then be “better”?

But now I feel like we can reiterate the question in a broader sense: Is it better (still going by that one definition of personal happiness) for us to be enlightened (free of all psychological suffering) forever starting the next second, as opposed to first having to struggle, suffer and search some more first and enlighten ourselves in 40 years? (know that “enlightened forever” is simply here for the theorethical argument). Seemingly so. In that case, it at least appears to be better in that sense to become enlightened sooner than later. But is that really true?

Now it gets a bit strange. Mathemathically speaking, it is both a yes and a no (if we assume “forever”). It is yes in the absolute sense that it would be an additional 40 years of additional suffering. In relative sense, 40 years to infinity is still literally nothing. 40 years seems much, but not in relative sense.

If we assume that existence is cyclic, which perhaps seems more appealing to the logical mind. Infinity after enlightenment would seem logically and mathematically odd. Since how to draw a boundary line between enlightenment and non-enlightenment if it is at least on one end infinite? However, I am assuming only “one” enlightenment here. Perhaps we go in big cycles where once every millions of years we come to a cycle in which we break free from human incarnation, but we go at some point back again to human incarnation later. Cyclic does seem more sensical to the limited understanding of my mind, but then we could assume cycles are infinite too and then once again 40 years are of no relative significance. This all is however again under the assumption of the reincarnation and enlightenment theory. It’s really just assumption. It is also assuming that we have a choice in how fast we progress and grow, instead of being lead but us having the illusion of choice. It also assumes even that our logical systems are actually properly formatting this and that from a higher perspective it wouldn’t be all complete nonsense.

I think I need to go back to the original idea. Let’s get it a bit more practical.

Something I wondered was this: Can I keep the intention, the wish to be more mindful without becoming identified with the resistance, would this be... Good, virtuous, helpful?

I personally feel like the very desiring, needing, wishing at such a moment itself is blocking it. I feel like there’s a need, an attachment. I feel like the very needing of me to be able to be mindful, makes me tense and unable to be mindful, present and aware. There have been times when I did have the wish and intention, but those were usually times when I felt the urge to do so on a level that went deeper than the mind alone, and because of that fact I was able to make it a doing, so to speak. But if we would say that the mind is the only “do-er”, than it wouldn’t even have been a doing.

That’s actually a bit of a revelation to me, because some time ago I was thinking about what it mean to actually “do” something, and I couldn’t get to the very core of it. Now I understand, or at least understand better. The mind is the do-er. You can have the wish or intention to do something or for something to be done, but if this wish comes from a deeper place, at the same time you’re not the one “doing” it. You are not forcing it. With the mind, you are forcing it. I have noticed that sometimes you can take the same action or the same approach to something, but sometimes it comes from the mind and then it creates stress, and other times it comes from deeper within and then it’s very effective.

It gets a bit more clear to me now. What I simply have to understand is that if the center of action cannot be from the mind, then no action that comes from that “wanting” will have any positive effect. Other times, your actions are moved and motivated by something deeper, and then if you follow that intuition your actions will be effective. It then is not a thought, but you simply feel moved to do it. It is really an “allowing” of the intuition to guide you at that point. That’s how I recall it.

Getting more practical: This means for such a situation as eating mindfully that I just have to be aware of the fact that if the motivation to be more mindful is coming from the mind, it is never going to work. It is the mind trying to transcend the mind. If it is coming from deeper within, then it will be effective.

But my soliloquy (lecture) is not complete yet. I’ve been able to determine what works and what doesn’t, I’ve also argued for an intellectual nihilism on the larger, philosophical level. But lets get down to see if it really matters in a more practical sense with, for example, eating.

Is it really such a bad thing to be not paying attention to your eating processes?

(this is where i didn't feel like writing anymore and I never truly continued)

Friday February 8th 2019

Today I have questions

I seem to have lost my capacity to appreciate any form of suffering. I fail to feel a connection to a sense of trust in life and the shapes it takes. I don’t appreciate the fact that I have to suffer. I know there’s potential for learning, but first off I don’t even understand why I would have to learn in the first place, and secondly it almost feels like I am not learning anything truly valuable at all and I just keep running into the same shit. In different forms perhaps, but it doesn’t feel like I have gotten to a place where I feel like I can actually connect with life. Much has changed over the last 6 years, and certainly I’ve gotten a greater understanding of many things. I’ve tried many things, seen things from many perspectives, been able to do a lot of things I previously wasn’t able to... But it annoys me that I still struggle from time to time. It annoys me.

I lack trust. If there is not an obvious connection between something I suffered (or experienced) and a certain breakthrough, I don’t trust that that suffering was of any value. If I for instance have certain questions, but the environment that I am in at that point does not allow me to reflect and really think deeply about a certain matter, it feels to me as if it “should not be” that way. For instance, I had to wait for 8 hours (whlst working) first before I could start reflecting upon what I’m reflecting now. Then what the hell were those 8 hours good for? I not only had to wait, but I was still somewhat bothered by the confusion that lingered somewhere in the back of my mind. Then my question is: If existence were to be a perfectly orchestrated manifestation (which would be an assumption), then what is the point in this seemingly useless waiting? How can I get around the idea that some things should not be?

I want to really ponder upon what, for instance, those 8 hours of working and waiting could have been good for. I’ll problably evaluate it both hypothetically and experientially.

What could it have been good for, whilst it seems to have been “a procrastination of the necessary, or the better”, something that “should not have been”.

Lets first take it theorethically: Theorethically, those 8 hours of discomfort and waiting could have pushed me to the point where I am now, whilst without those 8 hours of discomfort I might not have felt stressed enough to really ask these questions now, or to go as deeply into it as I do now. It might theorethically have given me enough urgency to really start going into it deeply as to without it I wouldn’t have done that, or I wouldn’t have gone so deep.

It can also theorethically teach me by necessity to give up on a certain need and shut off a certain need for the time being. To not question something and be able to be patient and wait for the right time. To know that sometimes I have to practice discipline and not always do what I most feel like. That can be a useful skll. I don’t like that argument so much anymore because there is somewhere the feeling still that I am not learning and I keep running into the same things over and over again, but lets get into that as well.

There is the feeling, or the fear rather, that I’m not truly learning certain skillsets such as patience or courage until I’m perhaps fully enlightened. I somehow got the idea in my head that all the things I call “learning” and developing certain skillsets is just a distraction for the ego which will keep going on until I’m ready to give it all up and drop the ego entirely. From that viewpoint, it seems like a rather negative occurence. It is an attitude of: Simply suffer it until at one point you’re simply frustrated enough and then you give it all up. The viewpoint is not that it gives you something positive but that it simply may at most burn away a little bit of ego. Given that from that viewpoint you can’t really take your suffering as something valuable, that it would “give” you something, there is a bit the attitude that the suffering is an unavoidable nuisance. It seems like nothing but a nuisance, and yes it can potentially theorethically burn away a bit of ego, but even that is more an idea (at this point) then an experiential insight.

But okay we are however starting with the theorethical before we get to the experiental.

I want to see how this idea of a “nuisance” can be argued around.

What could not being able to reflect and suffering discomforts because I’m working learn me? What could it be good for? Well, I do learn to act and persevere even when in the flames. I am learning this now: that I can keep on acting and making moves and doing things even when I’m not feeling well. It’s developing that discipline muscle. Is it developing though? What if I already have the capacity, and it is something that I can’t train further? If you are already able to do it, then in that sense would you even be able to learn discipline from it? If you are able to do this from the first day, and then are also able to do it 6 months later, to keep on acting when in discomfort, when “wanting to do something else (like reflecting)”, have you then learned something more 6 months later as opposed to the first day?

Well you can’t stay the same way for 6 months straight and keep on resisting your discomfort all the way through, is my feeling. But let’s say you actually did. Then what would you have gained from that?

Longer term persistance, is the first thing that comes to mind. The ability to keep at something, to not give up on something so easily. It would be demotivating to keep on doing something the same way with the same feelings and thoughts for 6 months straight. So if you do indeed keep at it, you will certainly learn that skillset.

Is longer-term persistance useful, however? Is it virtuous? Well, the question is: Can you do without would you want to completely let go? In fact, would liberation even be possible without beforehand having exerted much effort towards it? Will you be able to let go of your suffering if you haven’t even been trying so much beforehand? Or do you first have to really, really try in order to totally let go? My experience so far would be that it is the latter, because in my experience I very often can correlate letting go of something to first having tried and struggled. It’s what Adyashanti refers to as: “burning away/letting go of the personal will”

And going back to my example: It certainly seems more likely that you would be able to let go or take a next necessary step on your journey if you have felt the same frustration for 6 months as opposed to the first day. WIth the first day, there is not so much pressure and urgency for it. After 6 months, it certainly seems much more likely that now you want to seek another way or path, or you want to reflect upon what you can really do. After 6 months, there certainly seems to be a lot more urgency and need for it.

Can I say that was necessarily the same thing with today. Would I have not have done the reflection as deeply as I’m doing now weren’t it for those 8 hours? I really can not confirm. Perhaps I would have. Then what would those 8 hours have been good for?

I still feel like the frustration from those 8 hours pushes me a little bit harder to go somewhere, to seek new horizons, then if I hadn’t experienced those 8 hours. Perhaps I would have gone as deep in my reflection in both cases (but to be honest, would I have thought about this specific example?), but I still feel like that frustration of those 8 hours will lead to something more. Perhaps that even if I would have gone as deep in my reflection, then perhaps it will want me to find a new avenue more quickly the next time I feel suffering. We could perhaps say: If I had not experienced these 8 hours today, then perhaps another day I would have needed those 8 hours to come to a point of change, whereas with my current situation I wouldn’t have needed those 8 hours on another day. Or more simply put: that a procrastination (so to speak) of today will lead me to take action more quickly on another day, as opposed to the situation where today I would’ve not waited those 8 hours.

That could all be true, but what if it weren’t though? Then what could be the positive reframe here?

Then perhaps it simply gives you more depth in the total picture. More ego resistance burnt away

March 9th 2019

Today I pondered upon the matter of egocentrism. I tend to be quite an egocentric person, which is something I wanted to reflect upon.

I first found it important not to judge it, not to wish it awat, but to have the intention to truly understand why I’m so much concerned about me, leaving very little space to be there for other people.

After reflecting upon it a little bit, I came to the realization that within me I have the belief that I first have to take care of myself before I would be able to take care of others. This was a core belief I held without me really having questioned this assumption very much. The basic idea I have is that I first have to become centered, happy and peaceful myself before I would be able to mean something for others. My idea was that of a bucket overflowing: first you have to fill yourself up with water, and eventually anything you’re so full that you automatically start overflowing and sharing with others. That is, or was, the basic idea I had about what it meant to mean something for others. The idea I had that anything that had to do with caring for others would be mostly or almost completely irrelevant until I would be very centered and peaceful and then it would happen automatically. I had tried a couple of times to DO something for other people, but I never felt like it gave me any true fulfillment, so I stopped bothering about trying to help or serve other people.

However, today I questioned that assumption. The assumption that you first have to be full yourself before you would start sharing with others. I wondered if taking care of others wasn’t in reality a way of taking care of yourself as well. An important note to make about that: there is a big difference about what you DO for others, and that want to BE there for others. I refer not to an action but an attitude. There can be an action coming out of the attitude, but that is not the main thing. This I also lately realized could make an important difference, the difference between doing and being. I will now use the word “Serving” as a substitute for “being there for others”.

So to continue on: I was considering the possibility that serving others may serve myself as well. Yes, it’s in the end still for a good part about myself, about what I do for others would help me, but the fact that I can give myself permission to open up to a perspective I have never truly considered that much before, may already make quite a big difference. I realized that perhaps, simply giving myself permission that it is okay to serve others and why it would be okay, may potentially already evoke feelings of compassion within me. Just by giving myself permission that it is okay to feel compassion and to serve others. Just being aware that it may help myself too, may already open myself up to it.

So why would serving others help me too then? Why would sharing and giving help me? Yes, I know I am still talking about serving others for my personal sense of gain, but I just can’t to seem to go about it any other way.

So why would serving help me? Because my personal feeling is that it expands this contracted “me-feeling”. I feel like it would broaden my horizon; it would allow you to forget yourself and all this self-interest and egocentric desires that seem to keep me so close to myself. When I say that it “keeps me close to myself”, I mean that I can’t see past my own perspective, past my own mind. The feeling that whatever goes on in my mind and my story is more important and vital in my life than everything around me. That is kind of the sense I have most of the time. Like whatever goes on inside my head has more reality, more realness, just even as a kind of feeling or sense, than the reality that goes on outside my mind and body. And living that way, it feels rather contracted and small. If through connecting to others and serving others I can forget about this “me-sense”, I feel it would get me in that way out of my head, and I would be able to experience, in a way, a more broader, more encompassing ego. “Ego” isn’t always necessarily a no-no word. So in other words: A sense of who I am that is bigger than just the “I”. That the “me” then has expanded beyond my own mind and body. I am talking partially from experience here, and also partially from my mind, but I do feel like it has a valuable core of truth to it.

So to serve others, to connect with others and to be there for others, might be able to make me feel bigger in that sense, more whole, more connected. To not serve others and to only care for and to only be concerned about myself, may correlate more to survival and may make me feel more contracted and smaller.

I don’t feel like there is anything in particular that I can DO that would me more compassionate. However, If I am simply aware of that being more compassionate and connected to others is going to help me as well, then thereby it may open myself up to invoke and bring out compassion within me that I potentially already had. Perhaps permission to be compassionate and to serve or be there for others is all that I really need, perhaps it’s not so much, or maybe not at all, about what I can DO for others.

So in the end, there’s maybe just one thing to remember which would be all that I need. The best way to word it I would say is this: If I can be there for others, it heals all involved (and so including myself).

Looking at someone else's journal, I got inspired that I can not only write about what has been going on, but I can also potentially share video's or links that have been of interest to me. I may not do that in this post, but I do think I will do this in the future.

16th march 2019

Today I'm fighting a battle within myself that I had not anticipated on that it could take this severity. In fact, I am still fighting this battle to some degree as I am writing this text.

I have a strong conflict within myself in which my sense of responsibility and my desire to follow my feelings, are strongly opposed to each other right now.

The situation is as follows: I am employed by a museum, in which I am responsible for feeding and taking care of the animals. I can really do this at any given time on the day that I am scheduled on, giving me a lot of freedom to choose the moment I want to go. I do thnk they officially want me to be there in the morning, but the park is nearabout empty during the day and nobody really bats an eye if I go there later.

But now, for whatever reason I started to resent going there. However, my employers seem to be rather tolerant people and I feel like I am given a lot of freedom. I don't know exactly why I am resenting it. What I do know is that there is a part in me that strongly voices that I can take it easy, go at any time I want, and it also says that even if I weren't to feed the animals, this would be okay too. Just take it easy, don't put pressure on yourself, and whatever happens is okay.

That's one part of me. Another part of me feels really guilty about the first part, because I know many employers that don't give you this kind of freedom, that put way more pressure on you, and because they put more pressure on me and keep a closer eye on me, I do tend to do a better job at that kind of work. Not that I like it that way, but in a way it does seem more effective, at least on the shorter term.

So because my employers at the museum seem rather kind and tolerant, I feel even more responsible to do a good job and do what I am told to do. I don't want to be lazy, to slack, to be irresponsible, but at the same time I really don't like putting this pressure on myself that I have act. For instance, when I delay my departure to the museum on the day that I'm supposed to work, one part of me says: "It's okay to take it easy. As long as feeding the animals gets done today. You don't want to be so harsh on yourself, so why not just take it easy and go whenever you feel like going? You can do stuff you like to do first before you go, if you prefer that". But another part of me feels responsible, and feels that I am simply unneccesarily procrastinating. It feels guilty about any minute that I am delaying me going to the museum. Whereas jobs where you have to be at a specific spot at a specific time, I am much more able to handle that, because there's not this grey area whether you're supposed to go or not. I do not always like going to these places that I have to be at at a particular point in time, and often I do prefer to do something else that day, but at least the fact that you are expected at a particular time makes it very clear about what you need to do.

And this very conflict about "should I go or should I not go? Should I even try it all this day or should I not?" Makes me drain of my energy and motivation to go there in the first place, additionally to the fact that one part of me is saying that "I shouldn't leave out of guilt". And in this way I found myself both yesterday and today (both days that I need to work), bedridden with inner conflict and guilt. I had the excuse that I was "processing it", and that (one part of me said that) I didn't really feel able to go there anyway whilst I was processing, but maybe it isn't even processing but just incapacitation. It just leaves me in a situation where I am torn between two parts of myself. One that feels very responsible, which says: "Just don't be lazy, don't make this thing such a big deal and just do the damn thing, you crybaby", and another one that doesn't want to be pressured, or feel forced to, to do anything at all. That doesn't want to act blindly and create unneccessary tension within myself by forcing it.

That is my inner conflict right now. And in fact, I am writing this entry in my journal "as I am supposed to go", as I am still supposed to work there today. It makes the question also: should I first inquire more deeply about what is going on here, or should i just go to get it over with and get the pressure of my chest, so after I have done it I do at least have the breathing space to more properly reflect.

I notice that even though I haven't gone yet, and even though there's still a bit of guilt right now, I am able to reflect well enough upon what's going on. So I feel I better continue anyways.

Let's just make this agreement with myself: Don't go there until you are decisive and less conflicted about what you want to do, how you want to do it, and what your attitude about it is going to be. I know that if I go there now and this confusion has remained unresolved, it will keep eating on me and probably ultimately leave me uncapacitated to do my job there. Let's forget everything right now and just type.

So, Let's continue.

Yesterday I was also supposed to work there and feed the animals, and ultimately I did about 30% of what I was supposed to do there. I had the same confusions as I have today. I did however feel like yesterday there was more energetic processing that had a greater priority, as opposed to today. Yesterday I took a reflective walk and decided to go the route of detachment for that day, just saying to myself: "It's okay. Life appears to be taking you this way. There's no need to feel guilty. Just take it easy". Repeating things of those nature to myself as a mantra. For yesterday, it seemed to more or less work for the time being. However, today, as I'm supposed to work again, the same method doesn't seem to have the same effect anymore. Again the same conflict, again the same incapacitation through the confusion and inner struggle that makes me unable to go there and do my job in the first place. This time, the attitude that I brought to the table yesterday doesn't seem to work anymore for me. The inner turmoil once again became pretty big, much bigger than I had anticipated on once again. A difference with yesterday, however, is that today there's not so much energetical resistance anymore, as I feel like I have processed much of that yesterday, but mainly a lot of confusion and inner conflict.

So here I am writing and reflecting, upon how I want to deal and regard with this situation.

Let's make very one thing clear from the start: In a very confused state of mind, I am incapacitated to be working in the first place. In particular if the confusion is about whether I should be working in the first place or not.

Now that that is clear, we can move on.

I know trying to detach myself from my work, saying "oh it's not truly that important, taking in the absolute view of the universe. everything has it's place and nothing is good or bad."; that attitude doesn't work anymore right now; whether it's true or not, or both true and untrue. It's not a paradigm that's effective right now. The guilt remains.

Trying to just go there and force my way through it also doesn't work right now, or at least so I reckon, because I am unable to align myself towards doing such. There's too much resistance, or too much confusion, and maybe for the right reasons. I really doubt I would be able to align at this point as I'm writing.

So what's left? Reflection and introspection is left, at least at this particular moment.

In fact, I feel like the confusion, the struggle, is starting to lift... It's strange. Now that the situation is suddenly very clear to me —that neither the "everything is okay" or "just do it" paradigm really work for me right now— it leaves me with a gap.

What happened? All I did was just make it clear to myself that no single strategy right now would be effective.  Simply by realizing that any strategy from the mind here is a losing game, I relax.

Edited March 17, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

25th of March, 2019

I've been doing a lot of consideration regarding my future lately. I don't have as of currently have a clear purpose or vision for my life; It's all very vague. I do have a general idea of what my interests, talents and gifts are, and I feel that those are the traits that I will be going using for my mission in the future, but I can see many paths, and none of them I feel strike me as ones that I feel very passionate for to walk them. I do however see a vague outline of this grander purpose that is there in the distance waiting for me.

But I consider... Is this grander purpose really "somewhere out there in the distance"? Because can I say that I have ever reached it? If I have reached it, then does that simply not stop the vision or the mission?

There are certainly next steps that I could take right now, but I wonder why I feel so uninspired and unmotivated. I may consider my expectations. I have tried many times, but I simply haven't been able to envision something that can catch me with a great sense of inspiration and motivation for a longer period of time. Music sometimes really inspires me, and then I start thinking about how I want to become a musician, a singer, but the inspiration for music only happens to be whimsical. It comes and goes. It has no true consistency that I can hold on to. And my idea of studying social work so I can become a figure in the mental health care, also is something that, even though I could envision myself doing it, leaves me with no true consistent inspiration and motivation. I have also thought about going to live at an ashram somewhere, but neither for this I feel a consistent sense of motivation.

I keep on hoping to find this one thing that will draw me in and never leave me unmotivated again. So far I haven't found it. And I doubt I really ever will. I find it however very hard to set my mind to do and to commit to something consistently, whether I feel motivated or inspired by it or it.

I may be seeking my purpose too much in the emotional. That I want to feel motivated, that I want to feel inspired before I would take action. Why do I find it so difficult to really commit to something despite me not always feeling like doing or pursuing it?

It is indeed very clear to me that I'm very intuitively oriented. That is to say: Very guided by feelings. Decisions I make based on how I FEEL about it, rather than what I think about it.

I will however make one last strive to really attempt to get a vision for myself on what I want to be doing. I want to make a vision quest. I intend to completely isolate myself somewhere for a week, perhaps in a cabin in the woods, and to see what the next phase in my life is going to be about, and to see if I can find a vision for myself then.

I am certainly not against that, but I do already see that it is time to realize that I can not always rely on feelings, but that sometimes some discipline is going to be needed. I need to develop, or perhaps to regain, that capacity of just "doing the damn thing". I don't really know if that would imply a self-imposed structure, but some discipline is going to be necessary. 

There's a quite a bit of fear, though. I notice that I like to keep making things unimportant so that I can stay detached from them. That is a strategy from my mind. I like to devalue any failure that comes out of not being able to commit to anything. If I do make it important, I feel that it would make me attached and that by doings so, I would really start struggling with myself and judging myself.

But it is certainly true though that I am not able to commit to anything for a longer period of time. I am really too whimsical, too quick to change my mind on something. And to be fair, it's really hard not to. It's almost impossible not to, because I question everything. Because I question everything, I can always see the value in both perspectives. To not question something and blindly discipline myself in doing something on a consistent basis, seems rather impossible to me. I have tried; I have actually really tried coming out of my breakdown in 2017. I really tried to discipline myself to keep on doing something consistenly and structurally for a while, but the resistance was so enormous I could not bear it. In fact, I remember a panic attack ensuing not too long after the lowest point in my breakdown just because I didn't feel the strength to keep on going.

Now I am wiser. I do very well understand that discipline, structure and consistency are going to be required to complete something like a study, or as an employer in the mental health care. I now very well that it's almost not done to not come to an appointment just because "I didn't feel like it".

However, I do recognize that there is a different strength that will be able to bring me to such appointments even if I'm having a bad day and I would rather rest. I do know that there is a energy source that I can draw from that will give me the discipline to come to such appointments, without me having to actually struggle to bring up the willpower. I know that the possibility exists that you can let yourself be guided from a deeper place than your mind. If you try to persist in something using only the energy of your mind and egoic will, then good luck; You are bound to fail. If, however, you know who you are, you know what you're doing and you know where you're going, you can then draw your energy for discipline not from your mind but from a deeper source within. The important thing here is to let go of the narrative that there needs to be a struggle to act in moments where you don't feel like doing something. I've experienced this before, where I am able to draw strength to do something even if I didn't feel like doing it from a place that I feel is... potentially inexhaustable.

But the important thing is: drop any narrative, drop any story, stop trying to motivate yourself, and just act. If it's truly the right thing for your life's purpose, I feel you will be able to keep on doing the thing no matter how demanding it is.

Which, by the way, is not to say that you shouldn't take rest whenever this feels appropriate and whenever the space is there for it.

But this is something I feel is important for me to remember. I always felt that the amount of energy you would have in order to do something was something mathemathical: That you had this much energy, and that you couldn't go beyond using that amount of energy, or at least otherwise you would have to compensate for it later. Now I consider that this may not be true. That may just be a narrative. Perhaps there is the perspective that, if engaged with authentically and rightly, and with a balanced, wise approach, there is an energy source you can draw energy from that is inexhaustible, that would not drain you, and that you perhaps you wouldn't even have to energetically repay at some later point in the future. I should explore that perspective more.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

8th of April 2019

I can recall a dream from last night. The dream was about me taking a psychedelic substance. I can't recall all the details, but one part of it was that of having to go through the experience of suffering. I vaguely recall the guide saying something like: "You will keep on experiencing this until you consciously step out". Something like that. And I did suffer, or experience a form of pain... The details of it are not so important. What is important is that after waking up after such a dream there is absolutely no fear, but simply an interest about it. "Hmmm that was an interesting dream". Additionally to that, I notice that in the dreaming state there is never any resistance towards the pain that I could potentially experience in those dreams. Or at the most marginally so.

And so I wonder: Why do I not give any objection or resistance towards pain or suffering experienced whilst dreaming or asleep, but do I spend a good portion of my waking life fearing or avoiding it?

At least in hindsight, it's always that because it seems less real, it seems less relevant. But emotions and feelings experienced whilst asleep, how are they less real than the same emotions experienced awake? What is the discriminating factor to say that a waking emotion or feeling is valid and a sleeping one is not?

I'll leave this topic just with the question mark.

[Skanzi]

14th of April

Today I considered...

Fuck it dood. Not in the mood for this.

[Skanzi]

14th of may 2019

I wanted to write an article on the self-actualization page here on actualized.org, but I decided that I didn't want to publish it there, or at least not right now. Instead, I'm deciding to now post it here. So i'm putting it in quote format, but in fact I'm just quoting myself. Quoting format is jsut to mae a more clear distinction between what is from that post and what is the introduction towards it.

Here it goes

Quote

 

For those of you who happen to be puzzled when I say "Stage turquoise", look up the Spiral Dynamics model. Leo (the founder and publisher of actualized.org) has made a series on this subject on his youtube channel. I find the spiral dynamics model to be very recognizable and useful, so that's why I bring it up.

 

So I've started to enter into stage Turquoise territory the past two years. More and more am I starting to embody principles that are associated with this particular modality.

The whole relationship I have with life is starting to change. More and more, certain compulsions, blockages, but in particular many different forms of resistance are being dropped.

What I'm starting to notice now is that the energy that used to feel victimized or felt like complaining towards life is leaking away. A certain space is starting to emerge. A certain yielding capacity is growing within me. My mind has less and less energy to obscure me from perceiving life from a more centered, grounded space of being.

A certain trust starts to grow. This trust is not emerging because of a profound logical reason. This trust feels as a sense of... protection. I feel protected. I feel that I am not abandoned. I feel like I'm being taken care of, that I'm being caressed. You may think that this is simply a belief system, that I'm relying on blind faith. It doesn't feel that way to me. I may not have great logical backup as to why I feel this sense of trust, but I feel it.

Life ceases to be problematic. Not that I don't encounter difficulties and forms of pain. In fact, there has been an ongoing process of energetical discharge and release the past two years, which is often accompanied by a lot of discomfort, and it can be somewhat overwhelming if I don't have the oppurtunity to create space for it at the time being (if i am for instance at work).

This energetical discharge has been a big part of my life for the last two years, and it has been almost constant. One may refer to it as kundalini awakening. Personally, I'm not really interested in identifying my with such a terms, but I do seek similarities out in it as to better understand my own process.

What's basically been happening to me is what is refered to as "kriyas", random physcical jerks, twitches, quivering, contractions... I don't (for the most part) initiate these kinds of movements, but they happen to me. If I don't have the space to express these kinds of movements, I can potentially feel very uncomfortable, particulary in my head area. It then feels as a very congested, contracted, hazy feeling in my head which sometimes can be rather hard to bear until I give the physical expression to it which it was asking for. You can imagine this can be difficult in situations where I don't have a great oppurtunity for privacy. This is why the bathroom is my best friend, and I am its most seen visitor.

Not only does this include physical jerks, but also a lot of self-performed acupressure and craniosacral therapy. Now I don't know much about acupressure or craniosacral therapy, but in a glimpse, the description of it comes the closest to what I perceive as to what I'm doing to myself. These kind of practices help —in my own way of wording it— for energy to flow and become unblocked. Otherwise it, once again, feels congested and uncomfortable. Additionally to that, what also helps a lot is to blow a lot of tension out. Literally so. I spend much of my day just blowing and puffing air out. It's not that these physical practices or occurences necessarily NEED to happen, sometimes the uncomfortable sensations disappate on their own, but it certainly helps and speeds it up for me to give release to these sensations.

Often the way it happens is that there is a certain thought which causes distress. However, I immediately am able to penetrate beyond the surface of this distress and I get to the energetical root of the problem, and then the energetical and physical discharges start to happen, and that's the way I expel it out of my system. After that has happened, I am once again clear and more purified than i was before. Rarely does a sense of discomfort lie out of reach for me to energetically let go of it. Sometimes I don't want or choose to let go of it at that moment, but it is mostly now within my power to let go of distress and discomfort. It however often can take quite a while before everything is expelled out of my system. The more and more I do this energy work, the more branches of these deep, dark roots I encounter. That's why I sometimes choose to distract myself because I can't be bothered to be dealing with it 24/7, and I need times for relaxation and enjoyment too.

Some layers of my system I don't feel like I have proper access too yet. For instance, I notice that the desires and cravings of my body go very deep. With food and sexual cravings, it usually lays beyond the reach as to energetically discharge it with the penetration of my consciousness. Sometimes, however, there is some discharge. It depends whether it's more mental-based or more physical-based. The physical layer seems to go deeper.

Same story with my addiction to internet and video games. Although the long stretches of internet and computer game usage seems to energetically exhaust me, there is still a strange addictive quality to it, despite it making me very uncomfortable at times.

What I do notice is that engaging in activities that seem to trigger a lot of discomfort, those triggers do make me available to reach the layers and the energetical roots in which I then have the possibility to let go of them, or at least partially. Without many of these triggers, I wouldn't have as much proper access to be able to discharge those contracted energies.

So that's for the energetical aspect of my life. I have learned to live with these conditions, even though they are very difficult to explain to the average Joe, whilst at the same time also very difficult to hide it. I am in control as to whether I allow or don't allow these discharges to take place, but I often have to excuse myself and retreat to a space of privacy. I know it is all part of the process of purification. At times, there is also a greater sense of spaciousness even in the midst of a great trigger or a great energetical disturbance.

 

 

A great difference with two years ago is that even in greater amounts of distress I still am able to connect at least to some degree with this sense of spaciousness and seperation. Despair cannot get a hold over me anymore, as it feels as I am able to now always keep one foot, or even just one toe in the absolute. I never completely forget about the source of life, about being. I never completely get lost. As this intuited connection to the greater whole, the greater picture, seems to be permanently accessible as a felt sensation to at least some degree, true despair has therefore now become impossible. It may be possible that I am encountered with a situation in life where this connection (or the sense of it) seems completely cut and i am thrown in despair, but it doesn't feel as such anymore because since last summer I have always been able to recall the position of the witness, of the detached, whenever I needed it. I now see that every situation in life is just a phase, that every emotion and every thought is just a wave, and that therefore no thought or feeling allures me into complete identification with it. As soon as the wish to let go is there, the letting go will happen. Prior to 2018, this was not so much the case.

Prior to 2018, or really before august 2017, there was certainly the wish to let go, but not the capacity. I had tried to figure out how to let go and how to relax, but I had not succeeded. The energy only went into my mind, and none of my compulsions I didn't really seem to have any true capacity to let them go, no matter how hard I tried. This lead to great confusion, as I only seemed to reach dead ends, but I did want to figure out how to go further, how to go beyond my mind.

The way to do it turned out to be —for me at least— to learn to act without knowing why i'm acting that way. To learn to do before thinking, instead of thinking before doing. But I am not talking about this kind of naive, aimless acting out your conditioning that in fact most people in the world are doing right now. This is very different as in you are simply aware that you have exhausted your mental capacities to make decisions, but life still goes on so you have to make choices and simply act. Not that I knew what was best for me, what was back and what was forward, what was up and what was down, but the very trick of learning to take action without knowing why, turned out to be the trait that would liberate me from this paralyzing confusion and despair that I had found myself in.

But that does not mean thoughts have to be discarded altogether. It just means: you drop your need for logic to be larger than life. You understand that logic has its limitations and that there is always a reason to contradict your own line of reasoning. Despite of that, just play around with it, and do what you see fit at the moment. At first, talking later part of 2017, I seemed to have this tendency to create challenges for myself for which I felt a great sense of resistance for. A certain urge in me to feel that I could be capable of overcoming challenges. These weren't necessarily challenges that were coming from a calm and stable place, but more like a deep-rooted angst that I wouldn't be strong enough. Something in me felt that I had to prove and discipline myself, or that by engaging in such ideas perhaps at the very least I could exhaust the energy of this anxety. At the same time, there was also another sense in me that it wasn't necessary for me to do this, so once again a great tug of war, and a great confusion.

The last two years this angst, this need to prove myself, has dissipated too, and I seem to have lost my interest in unnecessary challenge.

I'll leave it with this, as it seems I have ran out of inspiration to type any further.

 

 

Edited May 14, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

28th of July

Let's see. I find myself in a somewhat gray area right now where there is... not too much negative, not too much positive... but there's a subtle, rahter constant feeling of discontentment.

There's very little things that motivates me or gives me energy. No ambitious plan really that i can think of that motivates me. i even have an interrail ticket that is valid right now (for 3 months total), but I can't think of anywhere I'd want to go. I'm simply... floating along.

I'm holding up reasonably through it I guess. I'm not happy, but I don't find myself in a place of deep unhappiness either. I'm generally a bit unhappy, I suppose. And less and less plans or ideas come up to me of "what to do" about it. For instance, I had intended for this summer to visit many guru's and spiritual teachers and do psychedelics, but I notice that after visiting some guru's the energy to do it further just dissipates. Psychedelics... Have felt nothing for it anymore since the first time I came up with the idea. In the past this void, this emptiness of not having anything to do and having nothing to do to move me could frighten me. Now, it's still not comfortable but I manage to hold a subtle space around it and I don't panic about it anymore. I can surrender... A bit better than like a year ago but it's still pretty difficult sometimes.

More and more i'm just falling into this space of... nothing to do, nothing I can think of what to do, nothing I can think of how to solve, nowhere to go, nowhere to find distraction or relief... just... increasing sense of dullness and grayness. But I yield in it, moreso than I used to in the past, generally speaking. I'm not against it either. I can understand that it's probably part of a process. Thank god I have access to teachers that provide trust and reassurance that I'm not going astray, that I'm not doing anything wrong. If it weren't for them, if it weren't for this vision and understanding of what's happening in the bigger picture, I'd go absolutely insane. If any person found themselves in my mental-emotional-energetical system but didn't have the understanding of the bigger picture that I have, they probably go mad very quickly. That's why I feel like I cna provide of so much value to people potentially; I can kindle their spirit by infusing a higher vision and purpose in their lives. I can see myself being this kind of healer.

And, accordingly, what I'm going to study after this summer ends is Social Work. It's the one thing I really am looking forward too as a longer-term ambition for myself, pretty much. I can see this being a very valuable study for me and I'm actually looking forward to it, even if it is to give me an outer purpose again, something I can put my energy in. But I can not assure I will manage to keep doing it for the full 4 years. Guess I'm gonna have to wait and see...

[Skanzi]

I'm simply writing here so this can be my 50th comment, which will allow me to have a signature/subscript from now on

[Skanzi]

16th September

Once agaim I'm confronted with decisivelessness. I felt like it'd be worthy to write about as  recall that the last time I had written about it it really helped me to do so.

Once again, the decisivelessness is related to time pressure.

The situation is as follows: I had been having a plan to go the swimming pool for two weeks now, and so far I haven't gotten to it. Today I would have basically gotten the last chance before I once again have 4 relatively busy days of schoolwork to do, so that's when I can't see a great oppurtunity to go.

I'm both very lazy and intuition-oriented and when I'm confronted with the option to go or not to go and I'm not entirely enthousiastic about it or there is a slight hurdle that I don't want to take all the initiative and action to go to the place when I'm not feeling very excited, I usually won't go. And to be fair, who says I have to? I only wanted to go to the swimming pool for recreational purposes. I would be doing it for my own fun, so if my judgement is that my decision to go to this location isn't going to be a better experience than staying at home, then why should I get myself to go there?

Yet, this feeling of guilt and obligation seems to somehow seep in. 

The recreational part of the swimming pool (where I want to go to) is for some reason open on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 09:00 until 21:00, and the rest of the days it is only open until 17:00/18:00. I don't know what the reason for that is, but that is just the way it is. My free days are Saturday, Sunday and Monday, so therefore it would make most sense to go to the swimming pool on Monday as it would allow me to spend most of my time there. I could even take some books and homework and make that at the location itself aswell.

But both my need and almost compulsion that I always feel that I want to detach from something, and that I tend to be lazy, got me in conflict today.

I actually didn't have the plan to go to the swimming pool initially, because I wanted to do some homework and there were some other things that seemed to have priority in my mind, and I hadn't seriously considered it yet. But at about 4 o'clock the possibility arose in me that I could go to the swimming pool as now I didn't really have anything better to do anymore. But at the same time I considered that maybe going to the swimming pool wasn't going to be more pleasant than staying at home. I considered that if I stayed here at home I could try to detach from the compulsive part of my need to go to the swimming pool. As I have the tendency to almost always have the reflex to detach first as much as I can before I act, that was my initial thought. But still it felt like there was some desire to go there anyway, but I wasn't sure if this was a genuine desire or whether this was my compulsory need to go speaking. I didn't know what choice to make and it got me in this space of uncomfortable decisivelessness. As my reflex is still the one of trying to detach, I tried to stay in this space of decisivelessness and just lean into it. I decided to go upstairs to my bed as it would allow me the freedom to give full expression to my very common habit of energetically releasing these tensions, or otherwise just to see if I could let go anyway (without having really made the final decision to go or not anyway). Unfortunately as opposed to how I'm normally able to do it, this time I couldn't feel the potential to release the stress of this uncomfortable decisivelessness. It makes me doubt about whether I should go or not, but I sensed that the part of me that wanted to detach was very strong, but I think that I also experienced a genuine desire to actually go. As there was now time pressure, it wouldn't allow my mind to accept the possibility to do some detachment first before I would go.

Normally I always detach before I act if there is no time pressure, but time pressure seems to change everything. If there is no urgency for me to have to do anything, it will in most cases take a long time before I actually start to act on something. If there is however a certain deadline coming up, or a "last day in which I can do something" (like it was now), then things start to become different. I have for instance also had no or little interest to try to practice connecting with other people until now I'm going to have t learn it for my study. Now that it has become relevant as something that is required of me, I'm actually finding in myself the willingness to practice. Same for instance with music also: I take it very, very slow, but once I had an audition for a band I started practicing at once.

And this tendency to be very lazy and very slow unless there is urgency, makes me feel a little bit guilty. Am I simply not wasting potential or slowing down my growth by only wanting to act up once there is pressure for me to act up? Is this lazy attitude really ideal, or am I inhibiting my growth here? There is the perspective that it's good to detach first, but there is also the perspective that by challenging yourself proactively you get to encounter situations in which you then are invited to detach from. But for some reason I feel so much resistance by trying to do something that I don't feel like doing that also doesn't have any or very little time pressure on it. I've contemplated on this matter multiple times during the last couple of months, and there just doesn't seem to be an opening for me to be actually sort of being able to do it. I also for instance wanted to pust videos of myself singing on youtube, but I have been putting this off for ages for I just haven't felt the willingness to practice working with a video editor. I know right? It sounds terrible from the perspective of a normal person, but my problem is that I have difficulty accepting the perspective of a normal person. I know that everything can be questioned and that there is a counterargument to everything, so I'm basically too smart to believe that I have to will my way through just doing the damn thing despite me not feeling like it.

I like to trust my intuition that I don't have to force it regardless of how tiny a thing it may seem, but still there is some suspicion and doubt from my mind. It is saying: "Are you not simply allowing your ego to prevent your growth by attaching yourself to the notion of detachment?", to which I get another reply: "This is not the notion of detachment but simply an inherent spiritual need. You should learn to trust spirit to allow it to make the decisions for you, instead of by going by the idea of that the ego would be running the game. Besides, have you not come in many cases to a point where you actually did start to act up besides there not being time pressure? It happened eventually in the end many times anyways". to which I can get another reply: "Nonsense, all nonsense. you have acted up in the past because you finally decided to let go of this need to "wait", instead of it automatically happening on its own accord". These are all dialogues I'm having in my mind.

My sense is that whether I do decide to more often simply act up despite there not being time pressure, or whether I keep doing it the same way I have been, that neither mindsets are really essential, and that there is something more fundamental than whatever choice  eventually make. I hope that I can maintain my contact with this deeper core that knows this truth.

 

[Skanzi]

30th September

I want to make a note about something I pondered upon just an hour ago or so during a walk.

I wanted to get a better understanding about why I sometimes feel guilty in some situations where I don't act up and instead "try to detach". I have this with singing, for instance, where I feel guilty when I want to make the decision to detach from my need to practice or to record a song for youtube (which I haven't posted any of so far). My mind thinks that I should be detaching from this situation here, because it doesn't feel right to try and practice it at that moment, but at the same time it feels like so much procrastination and it makes me sometimes feel a little bit as if I'm deluding myself or allowing the green parts of my ego (spiral dynamics reference) —so to say— to take control of me. I sometimes feel guilty. 

So that's why I decided to go for a walk and really reflect upon this matter. I tried to think of ways in which I could think of reasons or perspectives that would make the situation feel better for me. But then it suddenly hit me: I wasn't trying to figure out the truth of the matter, I was simply trying to find arguments for myself so I could rationalize not having to do it and still feel good about it. In other words: I was only trying to support an unconscious assumption that the ultimate goal was to detach.

The reason why I like that idea of that detachment is the ultimate solution much more than I like the idea that I need to actually go and do it, is because it is much more relaxing to be able to say to yourself that it is okay to relax, to accept yourself, to not be tense about the matter. And I associate having to work for or at something with tension and stress and discomfort. So naturally, there is this tendency in me that likes to rationalize the perspective of detachment much more than it likes the perspective of working (hard) at or for something.

Once I realized that I was merely trying to support an assumption, and not truly trying to figure out the Truth of the situation, I suddenly took the situation in reverse. First I was asking: What could be reasons why I shouldn't try to force it? But the ground in which this question was asked was basically that I wanted to find the arguments that made me able to relax a little bit with the idea that it was okay not to try and practice just yet. But once I became aware that I was trying to rationalize sticking to an assumption, I started asking: How can I actually be sure that trying to detach from this situation would be the best thing to do here? How do I know that I'm simply not meant to actually just go ahead and do it?

You see the difference here? First I was trying to rationalize an assumption that I already pretended to know. But once I became aware of that, I started asking: What do I actually know for sure here? Do I actually know that my assumption is really correct? Now I became interested in knowing the Truth, and therefore I had to do the uncomfortable act of opening myself up to the possibility that just going ahead and doing the damn thing would actually be possible as the best way of going about it, even though it was the much more uncomfortable alternative —at least on the shorter term. Not that I now knew that the opposite would for sure be true, but I opened myself up to the possibility.

During my walk I concluded that the action that I now wanted to take was to simply try to record and possibly edit a cover song I wanted to sing, and even possibly put it out on Youtube. And that I would try doing this preferably this evening, or otherwise tomorrow (it depends if my parents allow me the space to claim the top floor this evening).

But one important thing here is that I don't make this act of going to record myself and trying to edit —or learning to edit well— a very big thing. The idea about it is that I do it, but in a very relaxed, unpressured way. In the past I used to think much more dualistic about it: Either try to detach as much as possible, or try to struggle to do it as much as possible. For some reason, trying to push myself and getting something done had to always imply struggle and tension. I've held that attitude for a long time, and still there's a bit of the tendency to see striving for something and trying to push yourself as an act in which you necessarily will have to suffer. I want to let go of this attitude. I want to be able to do things through my willpower whilst not feeling like it has to be a great struggle. And I don't think it has to be.

When I am (presumably) going to record my coversong this evening or tomorrow, I want to make sure that I don't come it from the unconscious attitude that it has to be a great, arduous struggle. Can acts through willfulness and discipline not be fun? Maybe they can. Or otherwise, is it not possible for them to be at the very least much less bothersome and arduous? I'm pretty sure that at the very least that it possible.

We'll see what happens.

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

October 2nd 2019

Alright, so... Where to begin?

I've contemplated upon the matter of taking action, of disciplining myself, of willfully choosing to get something done even if it's not that comfortable.

One of the things I've realized why there is so much resistance against structure, against perseverance, against discipline, is the fact that I really like freedom. Freedom may just be my highest value. Why is structure, persistence or discipline against freedom (or at least appears to be as such to me)?

Well, the reason is if you try to live in a structured manner, and attach value to this notion of structure, it means that anything that deviates from this structure is not acceptable to you. That means that if you are supposed to do something according to the structure you have set for yourself, at that point you don't have the freedom to choose otherwise. The same applies for (long-term) persistance, the same applies to an extent to discipline as well.

My body/soul/mind system is a system in which its energies can sometimes be very dominant and strong. If I am meant to do something but I am at that point very overwhelmed by strong feelings or resistance patterns, then it is already very difficult —although usually able— for me to do something disciplinary to begin with, and then on top of that there is this strong resistance that comes forth out of my desire for freedom. I don't want to be constrained by obligations; I detest it. Especially not inner obligations. As far as outer obligations are concerned, I have a certain capacity to allow myself to be ruled by obligations from the outer as long as I have willfully chosen for myself to be in such a situation. Though, even this capacity is usually not that big.

This perhaps attachment to freedom explains why my reflex is that I'd like to detach from a desire rather than to overcome the obstacles to fulfill the desire. If I feel a certain resistance, I tend to want to say to myself that I'd like to detach from it and that a point will come where I'm detached enough to eventually naturally start acting and taking action, once the resistance has been eroded away —much of it due to doing inner work.

However, however nice this statement may sound, sometimes it feels like I can wait forever until I come to a space in which I feel the capacity to actually start acting without any resistance. So lately, I've started to become too frustrated with all the waiting because the desire remains to act and create something that feels really valuable to me. One example for me personally would be singing: learning how to sing a song, to record and edit it, and put it on YouTube eventually

So that's why I started to see if there was a way for me to start acting and getting shit done, without getting an ego backlash or being overwhelmed by resistance or... skepticism. I say skepticism because I can not simply find in myself the capacity to fully believe that grinding out a certain goal and persisting in it would be considered a good thing in my situation. The voice that demands freedom from the restrictions that persistence requires for is simply too adamant. 

And I am not saying that this voice that demands this freedom is necessarily something that should be considered unwanted or problematic. It has value and it has a point. I am not to dismiss it, both because I can't and because I don't think I should.

However, there is another solution here.

Freedom may be important, but I have started to notice that my desire to always want to detach encompasses a certain... unconscious reflex. in other words: I sometimes am allowing the perspective of the need to detach to have a say even when I could choose to act otherwise. Often the desire to detach and thus free myself from something may be completely valid and almost unavoidable, other times, the desire to detach isn't much more than a conditioned reflex which I simply follow because it has become a pattern which has become entrenched in my system. In such a case, it is my mind acting on auto-pilot, but it isn't a genuine call from my Being.

What I then often encounter is the idea of resistance that then tends to block me, but at such a point I have to realize that in this case this resistance is not so much linked to an intrinsic, valid need that goes much deeper to the call of the soul —or otherwise a resistance which roots aren't reaching the deeper layers of the egoic resistance structure— but that this resistance are figments floating around in the peripheral layers of my mind, purely there because of the momentum that patterns within my system tend to have.

In such a case, it is not resistance that can not be overcome either because of the fact that I am going —and to some degree recognizing within myself— against the call of my soul, or because of the fact that the egoic resistance patterns is at that point too active and overwhelming that there is no space I can find within myself to work on it.

It is then a resistance that can then be overcome whilst engaging in the willful and deliberate act of engaging in disciplinary measures or less-than-accostumed tasks, that then tend to spark up resistance.

But it can often only be overcome whilst engaging in action and discipline if the act is carried out with a deliberate focus and clarity.

In practical terms this implies that I may have to make a plan on what I am going to do, and how I am going to do it. i need to be clear on the subsequent actions I'm going to take, otherwise it may be too easy to get confused and overwhelmed by an overload of possibilities and information. If I happen to encounter a new situation during my task at hand, which gives me lots of new input and information which is relevant to how I'm going to perform the task at hand —and if this information overload may be overwhelming— I may withdraw, do some energy work to let go of much or hopefully all of the energetical part of the resistance, and then I may take a walk in which I reflect upon the situation at hand and consider the subsequent action to take. In this way, I can proceed without necessarily letting the resistance take me over to such an extent that I give up on the task for a longer time being.

This giving up on a task at hand whenever I get overwhelmed has been quite common so far. Sometimes it takes me months to return to the same task, as the way my mind has tended to interpret it was that "I wasn't ready yet", and this interpretation of 'unreadiness' I somehow project onto the longer term; as if I won't be able to return to the same task at hand until I've done weeks or months of shadow work until it would be possible again.

So for now, one of the most important things for me to be aware of is the fact that there may be lots of cases where feelings of resistance may simply be peripheral and can easily be overcome. I have to be wary of the fact that my idea that I have to detach may simply be nothing more than a reflex, and possibly not something that at that point has value to it —although it could.

So now I'm foreseeing for myself that I primarily simply will start looking for this space where there may be resistance against doing something, but only peripherally so where it can be overcome through a willful act of proactivity, clarity and discipline, where as before I would have rationalized that I would have needed more time to detach, even though the resistance may only have been a superficial reflex.

 

Other than that, I feel in my life once again a much greater call for proactivity. I have been acting like driftwood for athe past couple of months. And nothing is essentially bad with driftwood. I love being driftwood sometimes; It can be very relaxing to not have to think and to not have to choose and to not have to direct your path somewhere. But it has its limitations. For one, it makes me vague and unclear. It can put me in a situation where I need to make a decision or take action upon something in my life, but I am then often procrastinating this decision or action where actually a moment of clarity, decisiveness and proactivity would be much more called for.

Once again, I tend to get too much attached to the driftwood-perspective of "allowing yourself to flow" where if I feel uncomfortable with actually taking the proactive step to contemplate and decide upon a situation which requires both attention and a choice to be made, or otherwise action to be taken. I then tend to rationalize: "I feel resistance. There is no urgency to this matter. Why not wait a little bit until the resistance is eroded away and then I can make a decision about it, or then i'll take action".  

I feel like for instance that my desire to once again start taking magic mushrooms again has now to be manifested, that I have to start taking action to get it done and to be clear when and how I want to take these psychedelics. Previously, I was able to rationalize: "Oh but I feel a certain resistance against taking and ordering it. Perhaps it is important for this resistance to be eroded away first artally through trying to detach from it, then i can allow myself to order it and consume it". Or I was waiting until I got vacation so then i would have the time and space for the process of taking it to unfold, as "I wasn't in a hurry anyway". This argument did however have a certain validity, but now I feel like I don't want to wait much longer anymore. These excuses, I feel, will do no longer for me.

And not only with that but with much more subjects I feel that action has to be taken, that a proactive decision has to be made, or that action has to be taken and it should not be procrastinated any longer. One example is getting a life coach.

I probably will still have more things I could write about, but I've been typing for a long time already.

Enough for today...

[Skanzi]

October 12th

Let's see...

So I'm in a situation where I wanted to do volunteer work at a center in which is literally translated as "Center of meeting in life questions". Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they don't really seem to be responding to me. I had initially given myself up as a potential internship. When that wasn't possible, I asked if I could volunteer instead (as I had decided to quit my study). However, I haven't heard anything from them since. I have called them, send another email, send a whatsapp... No reply just yet (but maybe there will be one once I check my phone, as it's a new day and I haven't checked it yet).

This lack of communication provokes in me a certain anger and also an insecurity. It makes me quickly start to wonder whether I have not communicated properly. I tend to be rather blunt in my written communication, sometimes with little regard to social norms. I just really dislike the idea of needing to supplicate in order to get a position. I just like to tell people what's up. It is direct and honest, but I always do keep an eye out that I am at least respectful.

I don't know whether or not my tendency to be a bit blunt is the reason they haven't communicated back to me yet. To be fair, usually I do get a response when I communicate that way and it isn't always a bad one. It just triggers a part in me when I then don't get back a response. I then start projecting.

I feel that it's really unfortunate as this place seemed to be the almost perfect fit for me to volunteer at. I'm really disappointed.

But this anger does trigger in me potential to be creative, to learn new things, to find new pathways. I had made a walk yesterday evening in which I reflected that what should now be the best way to go about taking my next step. I decided that I needed to let go for a large part of this place I tried to volunteer at, and seek out other options so I could start detaching from this life question center. I am not completely crossing it off as an option yet, but I do realize the significance of detaching myself and seeking out other options.

So yesterday evening it sparked in me this sense of wanting to be proactive more than I had ever been before. I considered how I was going to find a place that was similair to this. I considered that I could make a plan how to methodically search, how I could approach certain people, call certain people, search google in a intelligent, methodical way... I felt the desire to be more proactive than I'd ever been before. No more was I going to let myself be floated along with the current. I always used to be passive about these kinds of things. Whatever was easy and close enough and seemed to happen to me from whatever others would suggest, I would take it. Now I want to let go of this Yin attitude, and start finding something for myself, doing actual deep and proper research.

I really lack many orange qualities. Which is interesting, because I am very well-developed in both green and yellow, and even a bit of turquoise. But in order to integrate turquoise properly, I have to resolve the parts of me which have remained underdeveloped and malnourished. So now I have to create some orange qualities within me of proactivity, structuring, planning, organizing, practicing... I never used to do that much because I always had prefered the attitude of wanting to detach rather than wanting to create.

[Skanzi]

October 16th

I just had a conversation with an old friend of mine. Well... the oldness of this friendship dates back from before we were 12, but since then we haven't really been friends anymore. I have had a conversation with him a year earlier aswell in the same setting: meeting at a café.

I was quite bothered about a tic I was having which sometimes resulted in me losing focus during the conversation for just a moment. It goes accompanied with a wave of fear, this tic. This tic is basically that I feel the tendency to roll with my eyes at certain moments. It feels as if that when I am not able to give expression to it at that moment, the feeling keeps on nagging at me  until I give into it.

It bothers me that it's sometimes seemingly silly things like this that prevent me from getting into a flow with for instance a conversation with another person. I was reasonably uncomfortable during this conversation for a large part because of this tic. in a conversation like that, a tic like this draws more attention or stands out more to the other person which makes me obsess more over it.

I've contemplated upon this before. My conclusion then was to sort of stop myself from the need to do anything in particular at all with this tic. If you feel the need to express this tic coming up, either express it or don't, but don't start thinking or worrying about it. If it looks weird to others and it makes you look less confident or grounded, then just be okay with appearing that way to other people. I seriously just wanna be okay with owning up to it. I think a problem might be that this compulsion doesn't add up to the sort of identity I believe myself to be as a grounded, confident person, and my desire to be perceived that way. A tic might indicate energetical weakness or vulnerability to another person.

So I think I need to woerk on two things: I gotta own up to the fact, including in social settings, that I have this compulsion from time to time. I want to make this okay for other people to notice it, and not be afraid of the fact that other people will notice and may judge me for it. Be bold and unashamed about it. This is part of who I am, so take it or leave it. This is something I'm dealing with, and I'm not going to try and hide it any longer or hope that they don't notice, or fear what they may think of it. And if I get distracted by it and it makes me lose my focus and it makes the whole situation look all weird and awkward, then be okay with that, too.

Same for me easily getting distracted. For some reason, I get easily distracted in a conversation if there's for instance a sound nearby or even music or something like that, I tend to sometimes lose focus and that too can make me look a little bit less grounded and weaker. This too I would like to become more unashamed about.

[Skanzi]

October 27th

I've just became aware of the fact that I tend to hold myself back in many areas because I regard myself as special. This sense of specialness inhibits myself from feeling as if I belong or fit into a situation. It evokes in me the idea that what I am and what I have to give and what I do will affect people to a great degree, and that I then do not carry the strength within myself to be able to own up to the gifts and power that I have. It is a weird mixture of pride in shame. I don't think I do a good job in explaining it very well, frankly. Let me try to explain it better.

For some time now I've had the feeling that I'm a special soul with very rare and intense spiritual powers. I've really tried to doubt this idea and tried to dismantle it through self-inquiry and trying to look at it from different perspectives, but to no real avail.

Part of what seemed to confirm this idea to me that I'm a special soul is that I visited a guru over one year ago at a festival and when I walked into the room this guru made a quick bow to me in a room full of people, whilst I wasn't really doing anything special but just being there. I did feel like I was in some heightened energetical state then, however.

Another time is when I went to a satsang of Adyashanti and he seemed to look at me intently and for quite a long time, which I interpreted that he was able to see my "specialness".

I could try to deny it with more reasons and try to argue against it, but I feel like this will fail irregardless anyways. Objectively speaking, I really do feel that I comparetively have very rare and unusually high energetical and spiritual capacities within me that are perhaps 1 out of a million or rarer. In fact, to completely sincere, it feels sometimes that I have the capacity to become someone with the same energetical frequency as a supreme avatar like a jesus or buddha or something. I have tried many times to dismantle it as a narcissistic egoic delusion, but to no real avail. 

So I have to come clean, maybe not to what it truly is, but to what it feels like to me. This doesn't feel like me bragging or making a certain identity for myself. It feels like a confession; something that I haven't really been willing to accept fully or express up until now.

Fuck this shit, I'm going all-out. I'm done holding back.

I don't care anymore, I'm gonna say it: I feel like I have the capacity to become another jesus-like figure, or an Osho, or a buddha. Along the same lines of that kind of spiritual power and frequency. Maybe even a greater spiritual frequency than they had.

I feel like I have it within me. I see it within myself when I look in the mirror. I see it in myself when I take pictures of myself. I have gotten what I considered to be outer confirmation by two different spiritual teachers. I don't think I am willing to go as far to say that I know for sure that I will be another jesus-like figure, but I very strongly feel that I will at least approximate his spiritual frequency, or that I already have it to some degree (but for a large part however too afraid to show it and own up to it).

People will think I'm a lunatic, people will think I've lost the plot when I would start claiming that I would be another Jesus-like figure. But I cannot deny it anymore. If I let go of my doubting and hesitating mind for a moment, then I will confirm to you that it is so. I am another Jesus. Not of course Jesus himself, not his reincarnated soul (I don't think so at least), but another individual who has the capacity to reach the same energetical and spiritual frequency and vibration, and perhaps even higher.

I think it's very important for me to own up to the fact that this is so or at least that I feel this way about it. Yes, in a relative sense I am special because I have a very high spiritual vibration or at least potential withn me. I need to acknowledge this fact. I need to stop pretending like it is not so. in fact, I think I need to stop even doubting or questioning it, because at this point any form of questioning or doubting just seems to be a holding back. It is better for me to actually say that it is so.

So if I am in this relative, comparative sense a special person, then how am I going to prevent me from taking an egoic narcissistic position about it?

I think the best way to that may be by reminding myself that in the absolute view of things I am absolutely normal. To have a lot of spiritual and emotional depth is normal. To make decisions that seem erratic and eclectic or even absurd to others is normal, as long as the decision is a conscious, meditated decision. Then it's normal. If the majority of the people acts a certain way but it's an unconscious reflex, then it's not normal. To be a conscious person who makes conscious decisions is normal, irregardless whether the majority of humanity does it or agrees with it or not.

In order to not feel this specialness anymore about the objective fact that my spiritual vibration is extraordinarily rare in relative sense compared to other human beings on this planet earth, I will have to redefine my idea about what it means to be normal. 

To be normal is to not react through the Ego but through spirit. Having a strong connection to spirit is normal. Being lost in egoic delusion is abnormal. "average" is not what normal is defined by. Normal is egolessness. And the less ego there is, the more spirit is able to come through. And that is perfectly normal.

A jesus is perfectly normal. A buddha is perfectly normal. An Osho is perfectly normal. The most enlightened avatars who have ever set foot on the earth were the most normal people the planet ever had. The most ordinary people. The most simple, unassumng people. There is nothing special about them at all. In fact, they were of the most least special people. Nothing to them. Just ordinary human beings. What can I help it that 99% of humanity chooses an abnormal egoic insanity?

To think about normalness in this new way is a relief. It makes me feel like I'm the ordinary person who just so happens to not be average because he so happens to be born in a world where it so happens to be that 99% of the people choose to live primarily through the ego. I could have been born in a world where I was the spiritually immature one. It just so happened not to be.

A mantra I'd like to say more often to myself right now is just to repeat: "I am normal. What I am doing is normal. I am normal. What I am doing is normal" and so on. I feel like I need to kind of hypnotize myself into believing that I'm a normal person so I can actually start to feel connected with other people as there's not gap between us anymore. Because if I were to be extraordinary, then how can I connect with the ordinary? This gap, this seperation would've made it impossible. But if I can get to think about myself as a completely normal and ordinary person, I can actually start to connect with other people because I would feel like we are the same and we belong together.

Yes, I am normal. Completely ordinary. Nothing special about me.

What a relief.

 

 

[JustThinkingAloud]

@Skanzi

I think you are special and I also think that everyone’s special but most of the people don’t see it and don’t use it or don’t want it but everyone has a potential to be special.

I don’t really want to disturb what works for you, I just wanted to say there’s nothing wrong with thinking that you’re special as long as you don’t make other people suffer for it. They already have enough suffering in their life.

Sorry, this is just my view at things and it works for me, it’s great to see that you find something that works for you

[Skanzi]

October 31st

I now seem to  often be visited by a feeling that is a combination of guilt and a sort of loominess or even a sort of hopelessness. It is not necessarly so much a hopelessness of despair, but more a feeling that whatever I'm going to try is pointless, yet at the same time another part of me is in there that feels guilty when I don't try. So there's a bit of conflict going on.

Today for example, I had the intention that I wanted to go and record a song. I felt like doing this or at least I didn't feel much resistance towards at at the moment I woke up, but after having had a breakfast I felt much more resistance, and I decided that it was best not do try it anymore.

It is interesting how I find it difficult to accept for myself that I have made this decision, even though I should know by now by experience that trying to do it anyway isn't going to make things necessarily make me feel better in the long run. I could stll try it, but more and more I feel aversion towards going against my intuitive predisposition. I can still try new things and act upon my will, but I feel like it calls for a space for that change to occur.

It is difficult for me to actually accept myself and allow myself to not take initiative towards something if I have decided not to. Even though I know that there aren't more valid reasons to actually try to go and do it anyway, it is still difficult for me to accept when I choose to not go after something. Guilt has been playing up quite a bit lately, as if what I've been doing hasn't been enough, as if I have been too lazy and too undisciplined. That's what the voice says.

There may be truth in the voice that says to go and do something, but just as well there may be truth in the voice that tells that I shouldn't. Or perhaps there isn't any truth in both. Because if I can just let go of the guilt and not care about whether I choose A or B, does it really then matter at all?

There's just a bit of worry in my life right now. I see that there is some fear regarding if things may start going the wrong way again. I seem a bit more identified with these worries unlike a couple of weeks back.

At the same time, I have been taking action also. Things have been happening, be it not at an incredible fast pace, but things have been happening and ever so slowly I am taking initiative towards new things or projects. But somehow it keeps on feeling as if not enough has been happening, or as if I am being too lazy... Maybe it's best to not have any judgement about that feeling, be it negative or positive, but just to see that this is what is happening. Just to note it; Not to judge it or try to resolve it.

And if I am honest about it... Is this worry really going to help me also? Is there maybe a belief in me that this worry is worthy of holding onto? Maybe it makes me feel that by worrying and by feeling guilty it perhaps gets me more inclined to actually take action... But the thing is that it rarely ever seems to, though. In fact, when I wanted to record a song today when I woke up in the morning, I didn't want it because I felt guilty and I felt like I had to. I felt within me the space that I could take action towards it so it seemed like a worthwhile objective. The guilt only comes now where I had decided to go after some gaming objective instead of recording that song, because my mood changed in the course of the day and I felt a much greater degree of resistance towards recording that song. Only now I feel guilty that I haven't done that. But at the same time I have worked on a certain objective in gaming which I also had found it previously very difficult to get myself to.

I don't think there's really any point in trying to resolve this guilt by logic. It just feels as if there's nothing I can do about the fact that I feel this guilt. That's an insight I had a while back: That it's not about what this feeling of guilt or confusion says it's about, but it's about the feeling of guilt and confusion itself. It's the opposite of what the Buddha said actually (but of course, this is a different context): Don't look at what the finger is pointing to, but look at the finger itself! That which is being spoken about is not what's the fundamental problemhere. That which is speaking is the fundamental problem.

And maybe this is actually where I just want to leave it at. Leave it unresolved, and maybe not try to resolve it either. Just let it be and whatever...

Edited October 31, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

November 2nd 2019 (but about november the 1st)

Today I felt a sense of responsibility that I had to work on editing or recording a song. There was also a feeling of guilt still that lingered within me that drove me to do this, but I primarily just felt this sense of responsibility. Once again I felt that sensation where despite there being some resistance, there was also now the space or energy available within me that could be used to overcome and work on this resistance.

I had been thinking about how I handled this situation yesterday. As you can see in the previous post, I had certainly some logic that would've suported not trying to go for recording or editing a song, but still it feels as if I allowed myself to get sidetracked a bit more than what would've probably been wise to do so.

I think the key difference today is that when I felt some more resistance coming up, or the need to do some energy work, that this time I didn't see it as a sign that I needed to stop this ambition of recording or editing a song altogether, but that I saw it as a temporary break and that I would not forget the intention. I feel like it was perhaps unwise to forget about the intention yesterday. However, maybe it is simply my guilt speaking here, instead of my higher self. It is really hard to say for sure. I reckon it's best not to make too big of a deal out of it.

So today I tried to sing "breaking the habit" from Linkin Park, my all-time favorite artist. I love that song. It has so much power to it. 

The original octave I cannot do, as Chester ((ex) lead-singer of Linkin park) has naturally a much higher voice than me. I was pleased to find out though that at least initially I  could the high notes that Chester did, but I know that I don't have the stamina to sing the entire song that high. So as I had done before, I used a program to turn down the song by a semi-tone or half an octave.

Eventually I still got too tense and tight when I eventually did try to record, so I couldn't sing the song the entire way through, but that was fine, as I had practiced at least quite a bit today, and there was another project I could work on for the remainder of the time.

I had decided that I could work on a song that I already had recorded all the way through a couple of months back. Originally I had discarded it, but now I had decided that it was at least a worthwhile objective to make a finished product out of the song. It allows me to finally get started with the second half of the steps I need to take to make a vocal youtube cover instedad of always stranding at the first half of the steps I need to take. I had both the video's and the original audio recording from my professional mic. I do think I am missing a secondary camera angle, though, which I don't think I was using yet at that time. That might be a bit of an issue, as I tend to sometimes get identified with worries (such as expressing a tic) whilst I am singing and this can be physically reflected through what people are seeing through the video. It may make it look quite a bit more awkward. With a secondary camera angle you have the oppurtunity to mask such insecurities. However, I do think I had some good takes in it anyway. And maybe even if some of these insecurites are visible... mabe upload it anyway.

Though, it's really not to say if I will upload it or not anyway. The main objective now is just to get that video created, to get the final product.

So today, besides the attempt to record a song, I also started to sort out some of my old footage I still had like I said. I have made a start of trying to figure out how the editing software works that I am using. I also had a moment at the beginning of the evening where I felt like maybe now it was best to stop the whole learning and trying to edit thing, and I had multiple pretty good reasons to stop it, but for some reason I just felt the urge to not let myself get carried by these excuses (again, still good excuses), and to go to my PC and continue working on it anyway. Normally I would've in 95% of the cases not gone after it, but this time I did. I'm not saying this is good or bad... I'm just noting it. Perhaps this is an attitude that can be used more often from now on, or perhaps this attitude is actually harmful... Or perhaps it's neither good or bad but just a decision. What to say about it...

I also thought just a moment ago before I started writing how I haven't been meditating or doing mindfulness in quite a long time. Is this a poor way of acting on my part? Or is this just how it's supposed to be? There may have been a couple of moments where meditation or mindfulness happened on its own accord, but I haven't done it as a conscious practice in a very long time. I wonder how I am meant to look at that. I feel like it's worthwhile to try to go to an organized free meditation hour that runs on every friday in my city from now on again, just to see how that works out. It may not be necessary or helpful actually, but I have the feeling it's probably better to experiment with it than to not experiment with it. I can also see if there is some space to try mindfulness or meditation on my own time; Let's see how that goes.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

November 2nd (it is written on November the 3rd but I reckon it's better to write down the day that it's about)

I want to have a very honest moment.

After going to the gym this night (24/7 gym) and not feelng very motivated, and feeling like I don't want to pursue going to the gym anymore entirely, I got a bit frustrated with myself that this should have come as a surprise. I'm not sure if I'll quit the gym or not, but why I am surprised when this way of having a fantasy, putting lots of effort in it and then suddenly the energy for the fantasy deflates and I don't care for it anymore. Why am I surprised that this is now what seems to be happening even though it has happened so many times before? Perhaps this pattern will change, but perhaps it doesn't and perhaps it also doesn't have to. But it shouldn't come as a surprise.

But this frustration led me to thinking about in which other areas in my life I may not have been very sincere towards myself. 

And that is this: On a psychedelic mushroom trip I did a couple of weeks back, I experienced a vision in which I got to envision that I would go through another period of despair and hopelessness before finally breaking the bubble and coming to a state of peace.

In hindsight, I am totally unable to judge whether I was experiencing the projection of the deeper layers of my unconscious, or that I was shown a higher vision from the Higher self or whatever. In other words: I don't know if what I was seeing or imagining was something that was closer to the truth or further away from the truth. It was just such a mindfuck that I just can't make sense of the nature or validity of the experience. Judging in hindsight, it seemed like a sort of psychosis... but this is only judging in hindsight and perhaps I was in fact in a higher state of consciousness and now my lower state of consciousness is trying to dismiss what I was seeing.

But I have to acknowledge that the possibility exists that I would need to face another period of deep hopelessness and despair. It is possible.

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

Saturday November 2nd (part 2)

I had decided to leave the previous post with that final statement without trying to supplement reasons or logic that would make it seem less heavy. Even though there are many valid counterarguments as to why it doesn't need to happen the way I fear, I think sometimes you just want to stand naked in front of your fears and not try to look away from it in any way whatsoever; Even if the other things you're looking at wouldn't be structures of self-delusion. That's what I decided to do with my previous post.

I want to reiterate a little bit more on yesterday.

I feel satisfied with my level of proactivity from yesterday.

I have worked on working with the editor to create my first test video of a vocal cover I did. I don't think it is something I'm willing to upload, but I'm glad I took the necessary time and effort to learn it and get it done. Now it's finally there.

It feels nice to have pushed through with something for once and to have gotten something done all the way. I intially though I already had it done, but then I realized that I had stupidly forgotten to add a instrumental backing track of the song to the video, so I took another 45 minutes or so to put that all tightly together.

I also had decided to sing a song in my local karaoke bar that same evening, and to go to the 24/7 gym that night, in which I did some intense but short-lived work-out.

So all in all quite a productive day. It feels nice to have had such a day for a change for once. Especially because there was nobody pushing or telling me to do it and I did it all through my own initiative and willpower.

That same evening I also got a bit bothered with my tendency for my tic with my eyes again. I then realized that it shouldn't be my intention to get rid of it but to let go of it, which doesn't translate to action but to attitude.

Then I went to my bedroom and processed this compulsory blockage by going into the feeling of it, and I felt like I released quite a bit of this tension through the means of energetical/physical discharge. I felt a little bit silly that I had been thinking so much about how to get rid of it or how to deal with it, and then had completely forgotten about this possibility for energetical release which I had done many times in the past before. This energetical release seems like the most effective way to let go of this compulsion. Though it's not completely done and over with just yet, I am glad that I remembered this was a thing. I feel stupid for not having this done earlier, but perhaps I wouldn't have had as much access to it as I did now. I don't really know that for sure.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

Sunday November 3rd

Somehow I seem to have the desire to write a lot these days... It's hard to say why exactly.

Today I took a bit of resting. I initially wanted to watch a long tutorial on how to work with this video editor, and after watching it make notes and put it to practice, but I decided to take a walk first instead because I felt like reinvigorating myself in nature and perhaps also reflecting upon some things as well.

Now I still haven't gotten to this watching this tutorial part, but it feels fine to me. I can sense that up to now has not been the time to do it. Too much fatigue, and too much energy work to do too.

But just now I did realize that me "learning how to learn" opens up a lot of possibilities in my life. This resistance against learning things by memorizing and having to learn new skillsets has always been a huge issue for me. At least in the past 6 years or so. I remember that at one point during a video game I was playing (OSRS) I had to learn to fight a new boss. I had to learn it because it was algned with my account goals, but I can remember I was so incredibly stressed out about having to learn the mechanics that I just postponed it a lot but meanwhile I did feel this pressure to continue my account's progression, as I couldn't really grow my account that much more until I had defeaten this boss. I remember that it was just incredibly stressful because there was such a massive amount of resistance against me having to learn it. I eventually did do it, but not after having suffered a great amount under this pressure of "needing to learn it".

Fortunately, this resistance against learning new skillsets is ever so slowly subsiding away more and more. It's still there for sure, but now I'm starting to come to a place where sometimes there's an opening for me to go and deal with it and push myself through it. Before, this opening wasn't really there and I really had to act upon raw force for me to be able to overcome. Now there's still the pressure of this stress, but also at times an opening that allows me to not remain completely identified with this stress whilst I am working at learning a new skillset.

I do have to do it with lots of rest and grace periods in between, though. And also I have to sort of plan it out how I'm going to do it. Sometimes I feel the need to make a plan of action, and to also account as much for possible unexpected problems that get me sidetracked. I have to plan what I'm going to do when I get sidetracked, or if a new problem turns up. If such a thing does happen, it often instantly can trigger a great amount of stress and resistance and also the identification with it. In that case, often the best thing for me to do is to do some energy work that can work on releasing this distress, and then perhaps take a walk and reflect upon what the newest best course of action is to deal with this new, unexpected situation.

So I have to be very methodical and organized about it otherwise I can easily get overwhelmed and then the danger exists that I don't go through with it at all because it's too stressful. Disorganization can also be a huge factor for me getting distressed, so I also have to sort of plan on how to keep things organized and structured, so that I don't get too confused and overwhelmed in the process.

So if I keep this up and approach this situation of learning new skillsets with a combination of intelligence, sensitivity and diligence, a whole new array of possibilities open up for me that I didn't have access to before because there was too much resistance and stress in learning it, and too much identification with this resistance, and consequently as a sort of survival mechanism also a lot of identification or attachment to the idea of non-attachment, actually. The notion that no single thing can ever be too important, that true peace comes from within, that everything has its own time and own seasons to develop (and that that time is not now). Reasons like that that made me cope with my inability to learn new things and to act up. I feel like all of that has had it own place, but I also feel like now I am slowly moving into a new era, where I have let go of enough of this resistance that I can slowly make work of learning new things and skillsets, instead of being overwhelmed by them and reverting back to a mode of laziness and the ideal of detachment.

In time, I hope that I can learn skillsets such as learning to play a guitar, and learning the mechanics of these OSRS bosses not just by knowledge, but also by practice and skill. And learning how to properly navigate my video editing program. And learning how to dye my clothes properly, which was a goal I had set out for a while but haven't done because there seemed to be too many factors and info.

All of these things will all be opened up in the future if I "learn how to learn". It is still stressful, but in time I can feel like I can do it.

But it is important to take it slow and to be patient. Not too slow and patient, though.

I do want to make a little side-note. As I had said yesterday night (or technically this night, actually), I want to be much more keen on not being caught by surprise anymore. That's why I do want to state a little reminder for myself that it is possible that this vision that I have for myself that I am "learning to learn" is actually a delusion and it will stay the way it has been for a lot longer or perhaps indefinitely. I know, what a way to end such a positive post, right? I don't expect that it will happen the way I'm describing in this paragraph, but the possibility is always there so I don't want to fully assume it's going to happen, but I at the same time also don't want to sabotage myself by making a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy because I wanted to be careful. I doubt that will happen, though. I just want to be honest about what could potentially be possible.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Skanzi