Day 399: Of existence and will

29042014

http://salamanderking.deviantart.com/art/Ghost-170997222

Today a chain of events, triggers and reactions led to me realizing that despite the fact that I tell myself that I am of the same value and worth as every other bit and piece of life, I do not actually believe it. I kind of entered a new level of self-honesty, where I finally admitted to myself that my mantras do not work: despite the knowledge of how things are, I do not live out or live as that knowledge.

I asked myself why I crave for appreciation, acceptance and affection from others, as the perceived lack of them triggered a reaction in me. I realized how it all – again – comes down to the phrase “I'm not (good) enough”, the one thing I keep on returning to in every moment of crisis. I realize that the issue is not that others take me for granted or don't appreciate me, but the fact that I allow the thoughts, actions and feelings/emotions of others to define myself, my value and my worth. On a rational level I know that my value is unchangeable, stable, in precise unity with everything else – but I don't feel it. I don't believe it. I am not living as these words. How can I be of value when I don't live as if I did? What is worthwhile living and am I doing any of it at all? Would I find value in myself through actions? If so, what kind of actions would those be? How do I need to live to live as if I mattered? And yet, how do I live so that I am of value despite my actions, so that I don't act just for the sake of salvation?

Apart from this existential crisis, which raised some really valid questions, I also came across one of my old behavioral patterns. I have lived a life of seclusion because whenever I have wanted myself to not be seen, I have pushed people away from me. I realize my wish to hide is to cover myself from my own eyes, so that I wouldn't be exposed to myself, and thus I have refused the approaches of others as I have not been willing to embrace myself as I am. I had an inner dialogue with myself and an imagined person in my mind, where I was explaining this to the other and they responded:

“You're pretty fucked up, aren't you?”

“We're all fucked up to some extent, that's nothing special. But I am tired of being broken. I want to be whole. I choose to want to be whole. I know I can be. I could choose otherwise, but my will is to mend myself. I choose to not stay broken.”

I see how this behavioral pattern of pushing people away and escaping them is still a part of me, and today I felt pity towards myself for it, as I saw how I cause all of my own misfortune by following the same routes over and over again. But I also realized that pity will only give me an excuse to not change as I define myself through it. “Poor pitiful me, this is who I am.” NO. I have a choice, and I have it right here. The past cannot be changed, but most of its effects can be mended, and so I choose to do. I refuse to be a victim of myself.

What I need to learn is to let people see me – to embrace the exposure as it is a gift and a lesson. Self-forgiveness will help me work my way there, and I will continue with it from here.

Day 398: Learning to embrace experiences

07042014

I had an interesting experience today concerning music. I have been practicing this big-scale choir piece with the choir I'm in for a few months now, and the past four weeks or so have been especially intense: not just with the rehearsals, but in emotional terms as well. Somehow this piece of music has become woven into my experience with other things in life, and I find fragments of it echoing in my mind daily, sometimes constantly. I can see how this happens as the result of me linking all of my individual experiences in my mind into this one big storyline experience – the story I tell of my life to myself with pictures and words – and how the music kinda serves as current background music to the movie that is my life experience.

Today I was sitting in the bus and spacing out, wondering around in my mind and not really being here in breath, when I suddenly realized that I was not responding to the weather conditions (gray, rainy and cold) at all with the usual gloominess and weariness. I felt as if I was “glowing from within” - because the music was again playing in my mind, speaking words of light and divinity, reminding me of my experiences of joyful living – and that the feeling of light and warmth I got from the music/experience/feelings was kinda acting as a barrier between me and my surroundings. I found this experience positive, because from within it I was able to face other people with clarity and balance, not responding to their apparent low moods. I did not feel like complaining about the weather, because I had not really even noticed it was “bad” weather – to me it was just weather, how it is every now and then; logically rainy of this time of year, lol.

Upon writing this I noticed waves of self-judgement, as if I was “not supposed to” be feeling anything at all and that standing within an energetic experience like this is not appropriate. This shows how I have misunderstood some parts of this process. Rather than denying my experiences and thus suppressing them, be they positive or negative, I could try to walk, live and breathe through the experiences to fully know them and harness them, whatever that means in whichever context. In this case, for example, I am fully aware of the role of this particular music piece in the workings of my mind. I have seen where and how I have given myself permission to embed the music with my experiences. I am not yet sure if this serves any purpose at all, other than crafting myself nice memories, bonding with others and thus structuring my social networks, or just learning to know myself through relieved self-expression. Through this process of “giving in” to music I have for instance rediscovered the experience and state of being inspired (excited, motivated, seeing possibilities where there were none before – and then acting upon it!), and that alone tells me that I have managed to remove a block that has been in place for years, more or less.

What concerns me is the fact that this wave of positive stuff comes straight after a very low phase of depression and being stuck. I fear that this is “just” another “up” and that I will eventually come crashing down. I am working on this at the moment by stabilizing myself with breath whenever I see myself getting carried away by an experience, or rather by channeling the energy of the experience and living through it, after which I stabilize. I know that I don't have to crash down once (if?) this stuff gets exhausted, but I do realize that whenever I go up, the return to stability will always feel like a dip in comparison. I guess a part of it is also to learn how to deal with the state of “coming down”, which I guess I know a bit better than dealing with “going up”.

It might also be that some of what I am experiencing in my life at the moment is not in fact an energetic “up”, but simply a relieved state of balanced being, which just feels “lighter” in comparison to the constraint I've been under.

I'll continue with this topic later. The jumble of stuff from the past few weeks is kinda big and requires more digging.

Day 397: Compiling secret spite

01042014

A couple of days ago I faced harsh and direct judgement to which I reacted to quite strongly. I took the message personally and felt really bothered by it with an awful feeling in my gut. The message I received pointed out a mistake I had made, but it did so with a tone that I responded to with a negative reaction, and so I missed out on receiving the valid feedback and only focused on the element of judgement.

Now, a couple days later, the situation came to a culmination point. Because of my reaction of taking the judgmental tone of another personally, I had made decisions to act upon my self-judgement and in a way punished myself for being judged – not for the mistake itself, but for the fact that somebody wasn't pleased with me! So in a way I was trying to redeem for my mistakes, but not the ones I had actually made. I perceived my fault to have been the fact that I was so “bad” that another had judged me, and again ignored what I could have originally done better.

So these actions of mine were noticed and responded to with common sense, which is when I realized I had been wrong all along. I was acting just like my father has in similar situations: compiling secret spite under actions of self-punishment. And with the same people, even! I realized that in this situation I was the spitting image of my father, with every tone, posture, gesture and word, and having seen the consequences of my father's actions on himself I will not accept and allow myself to follow in these footsteps.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to X's tone of voice and choice of words as I have learned to fear aggression as a child.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that aggression directed towards me is valid and always my fault.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to submit to aggression without questioning the validity of the aggression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore the message under the aggression as my focus has been on the way the message has been delivered.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see past my fear reaction to aggression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to aggression by shrinking and withdrawing instead of standing up and breathing myself open.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to forget to breathe when facing aggression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear X as an authority.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear receiving feedback from X – be it delivered with any tone, aggression or not – as I have known her feedback to be (mostly) valid and direct and thus feared facing conflict within myself, forgetting that conflict is an opportunity to change and develop myself for the better.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to measure my worth according to how much/little feedback I receive from X, wanting to be “ready” so that she would have nothing to criticize.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my relationship to X has been created on a basis of imbalanced power relations – when I was a child and she was my mentor – and that for this relationship to work now that we're both adults equal in power I need to change my stance towards her from fearful to fearless.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that these complications in my relationship to X are not surprising at all, as we have started off in an unequal relationship, and that now that I can see the cause of the complications the dynamics of this relationship can in fact be changed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to refuse to see the feedback behind X's aggressive message as I have not wanted to admit to having done something “wrong” (not as well as possible).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deny myself the opportunity to learn from the feedback by not looking at what was said and instead secretly blaming X for being “inconsiderate”, “irrational” and “hysteric”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try and appear as if I was redeeming for my mistakes by acting upon self-punishment, not realizing that I was doing this just to appear submissive while I was secretly compiling spite towards X.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that I “shouldn't” be making mistakes now that I am no longer a child within my relationship to X, not realizing that people of all ages make mistakes as mistakes are an inevitable part of learning.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to refuse to see and embrace the mistakes I make around X.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear making mistakes around X.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that my father reacts and responds to X in the exact same way as I do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by mirroring my relationship with X to my fathers relationship with X I can easily see what mistakes I have made.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live as the spitting image of my father, not realizing that as I do so I also repeat the same mistakes he has made and end up suffering the same consequences.

I commit myself to focus on moving from fearfulness to fearlessness in practical application within my relationship to X.

I commit myself to accept and allow myself to make mistakes around X and to receive feedback for them.

I commit myself to support and assist myself with breathing when and as I react to aggression with fear.