Adolescence and All Beings

[Mada_]

 

Hi, my name is Tommy, I am 18 years old and I live in Australia. I have been doing self-actualisation work for coming on two years now, and I am creating this journal to keep a general track record of my daily practice throughout the week, the struggles that I am facing and how I plan to get through them, articulating my vision so that I can understand it better. It is time for me to take responsibility for my compulsions and inadequacies, and make the most of not only my youth, but of my whole life. Being young, I have precious free time to set the foundations for an incredible life. I have realised throughout my life that life itself is a messy, messy thing. Sometimes it feels like it is as simple as pointing a hose towards my plants and watching them grow, other times it is as though I have dropped the hose, full pressure, and the fucker is spraying all over the place. This journal is a place that I am to catch my hose, and direct my energy to what I think is important.
 

This journal as a means of holding myself accountable

I will be keeping track of the consistency of these practices, by starting my posts with a tally of whether these practices have been fulfilled on a weekly basis, and if the practice is not completed on a daily basis (e.g. The work of Byron Katie, due the often extended duration of the practice), I will set a date and location to complete such a practice and report when I have completed the practice in a future post. 

My practices include:

-  Yogasanas (Classical Hata Yoga)

-  Reading, taking notes (learning)

- Healthy eating

- Contemplation using a journal

- Journalling (often Leo's Life-Purpose course work)

- Exercise

- The Work of Byron Katie

 

This journal as a means of logging my progress of facing my challenges, and articulating the larger vision that I am moving towards

The issues I have been struggling with lately is binge eating. I have a habit of lashing out and eating whatever will bring me immediate pleasure, followed by watching hours and hours of Netflix television series. 

In the initial stages of this journal, I want to focus on my binge eating issue, by pledging to not unnecessarily indulge in processed food, nor consume and wheat, dairy or added sugar (apart from honey if that counts). I also want to continue to log my progress towards finding my life purpose, because when these binge eating and Netflix episodes take place, it is often at the expense of completing work from Leo's course. 

 

Thank you for reading and I look forward to connecting with you all in the future.

[Angelite]

Eighteen is a good age. One of my Highest High is on my 18th. Be with good(re:amazing) people. Presevere. Explore. 

Goodluck♣⏳

 

 

It is a transitioning age.

[Mada_]

It has been a while, but after a long spout of laziness, playing victim etc. I feel I have my spark back.

what has changed since my last post:

I am no longer practicing yogasanas (traditional hatha yoga); the practice would tend to take up to 4 hours at times due to my own incompetence; I think a lacking of cognitive ability would result in the visualization aspect of the practice (50% of what is supposed to be a 50 minute practice) to become significantly slower than what is ideal, and therefore greatly extend the practice.

I was jeopardizing sleep and meals a lot of the time, and due to this hassle I would often chose to miss days of practice.

At one point I got really frustrated at the whole process, and decided to just go on an eating, youtube and netflix heavy indulgence spree. This indulgence lasted for weeks. But fortunately, as of recent, I am starting to lose interest in such lazy behavior.

what is going well:

Healthy eating (initially intended habit):

I am eating consistently healthy, have been doing quite well for about a week. I am feeling really great and am practicing self control.

Relationships:

I met a girl. She is absolutely beautiful, she is quite profoundly intelligent, constantly surprising me with what she says. I met her last year at a camp put on for my school, and I thought that she wouldn't go for me because I thought I came off quite open amd feminine in our initial interactions; but the last time I saw her I mustered up the courage to tell her that I thought she was beautiful, half an hour later we were making out. We were laying in this park quite late at night, she was in my arms; I felt the encounter had this element of spontaneity that was missing from my life. My life is all about finding time to do very specific things: "okay I need to read everyday", "I need to start a mindfulness practice because it will benefit my life", "I am going to do more psychedellics in my 20s", "when am I going to be able to be strategic enough to implement all of these tasks into my life, carefully enough to not backslide" I ruminate. But having this girl, another human, in my arms did not feel like a task, there was no procedure I had confined myself to that I could get wrong. I felt like this enlivened me and inspired me to break free from my rut, now taking a more contemplative, investigative approach to my life, whilst anticipating when it is wise to slow down.

Reading/learning:

My reading habit has improved as I have taken a more relaxed approach. I have often struggled with neurosis when reading non-fiction books; attempting to force every little bit of information into my head by trying to recreate the premise of my book on my pahe of notes. I've also been confused about whether it is okay to read more than one book at a time, would that be a lack of discipline/focus? (I thought). But lately I've been reading three books at once: one on nutrition, the way of the superior man and the big leap; just reading as much as I feel like and doing my best to assess the value of the information, genuinely contemplate it.

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what is just going, but not well enough to point out how well it is going:

Yoga:

I am currently completing another Isha traditional Hatha yoga program, this time I am learning a practice called Angarmardhana, which has fitness based intentions as opposed to the purely spiritual intentions of yogasanas. I've been telling myself that the reason for temporarily replacing my yogasanas practice (on account of the duration complications) that I can strengthen my body and then maybe as a result do the yogasanas practice more effectively. But I think it also has a lot to do with practice being more fast paced and for a shorter duration with supposedly faster results, perhaps such results will be motivating. I am not proud of this thought process, but it has contributed to where I am. I plan to face this practice with much more discipline than I did yogasanas, finishing the mandala period and adapting through any and all discomforts. After this program I want to adjust my sleeping schedule to wake up at 4:30am, this way I can complete my practice at the ideal time recommended my sadghuru (however I don't know if this applies Angarmardhana, I know it does to yogasanas) and also consistantly experience the serenity of the morning. I am also feeling confident about commitment to this practice as it will replace some of my exercise habits, adding more motivation as I enjoy having an exercised body.

Exercise: 

Quite inconsistent. Yet not non-existent.

Contemplation:

Yesterday I sat for one hour and just inquired. I want do be more constant with this. Today I had an opportunity to sit for an hour before a bus arrived, but I came up with excuses not to on account of reducing stress for an upcoming transportation related situation. However when I got home at the end of the day, the promise window of time that I would return to would result in the loss of some valuable sleep on account of very early transportation commitments related to my yoga program. I learned that even a window of time is precious, and I think inquiry into reality and what life is about is a precious way to fill it. I will avoid such cop-outs in the future.

Emotional work:

I haven't implemented any of 'the Work' of Byron Katie yet. I haven't scheduled a large block of time to do so but I will do so soon. When I contenplate I experience emotional relief, which is allowing me to relatively effextively manage my emotions.

Life purpose course:

I am not doing the course everyday, i have been stuck on this one exercise that is supposed to only take 15 minutes, for a total of like 6 hours (accross different spurts of 15 minute sessions). But I do make progress with each session, even if it is taking longer than it a should. And I feel like with my latest developments with health and personal reflection, that I will be much more effective when I return to the exercises this week after my yoga program is over.

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Insights/developments:

- I am beginning to see that I have ludicrous existential biases, and if I don't live a contemplative life, then such biases will be maintained my whole life. 

Thought can disguise itself as being separate from reality. Which is an example of a strange bias.

- upon reflecting on my inherent "gifts", as David Deida in his book "The Way of the Superior Man" discusses a man "giving his gift" - "Most men's reason for doing anything has to do with discovering their deepest truth, enjoying total freedom and love, and giving their fullest gift". I was wondering what gift I may have, as I always imagined a gift to be some inherent talent burried somewhere inside me that would make me lots of money if I found it and bring me happiness, kind of like Bruce Lee discovering his love for martial arts.

But as I dug deeper it dawned on me is experience is all I could find. And in this sense my experience would be more of an active, creative process, rather than a search to find a specific thing. And perhaps all I need to do is be as real as I can be.

Apart of me wants to choose inquiry into life / reflection and contemplation as "the one thing" that I choose as my thing to intensely orient my life towards. But I think my intentions aren't necessarily to find the nature of what things are, although I love to do so, but moreso to find what the point of human existence is. Now that I think of it I do love to contemplate, and I love having paradigm fucking insights, so perhaps this is all I need to know.

 

Thanks for reading any of this at all. I hope you're doing okay in your corner.