Day 405: The Desteni of Living - expansions, part 1

31052014

http://youtu.be/OFUjJ3i988U

The video log linked above is a continuation to:

Day 404: The Desteni of Living - my declaration of principle

In this video I expand on point number 1: I commit myself to realising and living my utmost potential.

Day 404: The Desteni of Living - my declaration of principle

31052014

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Spine-325753542

I am here to commit myself to the following statements, on which I will expand in upcoming blogs and vlogs. These statements were put together by the Desteni group, and I have gone through them independently to be able to stand fully behind them as myself.

I thus commit myself to:

1. Realising and living my utmost potential

2. Living by the principle of what is best for all – guiding me in thought, word and deed to always in all ways direct problems to the best possible outcome for all

3. Living by the principle of self honesty – to ensure I am pure in thought, word and deed: that my within and without is equal and one. Who I am within is who I am without and vice-versa

4. Self Purification through Writing, Self Forgiveness and Self Application – the action of realising I am responsible for my own thoughts, words and deeds, to forgive myself for transgressions and change myself to ensure I take responsibility for who, what and how I am and through this know that I can trust myself to always be honest with me and so others

5. Living the principle of Self Responsibility – realising only I am responsible for what I accept and allow inside of me, my relationships and my outside world and so with this responsibility: only I have the power and ability to change that which I see is compromising who I am, what I live and how this affects others

6. Realising that who I am in thought, word and deed affects not only myself – but others as well and so with Self Responsibility in thought, word and deed – I take responsibility for myself and so my relationships to be Self Aware in every moment and live in such a way that is best for me and so others as well

7. Living the Principle of Self Awareness – to be aware, to see, to recognize my own thoughts and Mind, to be self honest to the extent where I can take responsibility for when I see my thoughts / Mind is not what is best for me / others and commit to immediately take responsibility and change for myself and so for others

8. With taking responsibility for myself, becoming aware of myself – take responsibility and become aware of others in my life, to assist and support them as I am assisting and supporting myself – to give as you would like to receive and do the extra bit every day to see where I can contribute to other’s lives and so my own

9. Living the principle of self trust – as I commit myself to remain constant in my living of self honesty, self responsibility and self awareness, I stand as an unbending trust that I always in all ways know who I am no matter what I face and that in this I know, as proven in the constancy of my living that I will always honour and stand by what is best for all and so best for me

10. Making Love Visible – through me not accepting/allowing anything less than my utmost potential, I support those in my life to reach their utmost potential, to love them as I have shown love to myself by gifting to me my utmost potential, the best life/living experience and show others as I have shown myself what it means to LIVE

11. No one can save you, save yourself – the realisation that the tools and principles of Desteni is the guide, but I must walk the path myself. We are here to assist and support each other in this process from Consciousness to Awareness/LIFE and what it means to live – but the process itself, where you are alone with yourself in your own Mind: is walked alone

12. Not waiting for anything or anyone to take responsibility for me and this world – but that I realise I have created who and how I am in this moment, therefore I have the responsibility to change who and how I am and so the realisation that we as a collective created how and what this world is today and so it is the responsibility of the collective to change how and what this world is today

13. Honouring the life in each person, animal – everything from the great to the small of earth, that we expand our awareness and responsibility to creating the best possible life for everyone and everything and so ourselves

14. Relationships as Agreements: individuals coming together using agreements as a platform to one-on-one expand, grow and develop as individuals in life and living to support/assist each other unconditionally to reach their utmost potential where the agreement is a coming together of individuals understanding what it means to stand as equals and to stand as one

15. Sex as Self Expression – where sex is an united expression between individuals in honour, respect, consideration and regard of each other as equals, two physical bodies uniting in equality and oneness – a merging of two equals as one physically.

16. Realising that by the virtue of me being in this world – my responsibility does not only extend to my own Mind / my own Life, but to the minds and lives of everything and everyone of this earth and so my commitment is to extend this awareness to all of humanity to work together and live together to make this world heaven on earth for ourselves and the generations to come

17. I must in my thoughts, words and deeds – but most importantly in my living actions, become a living example for others in my world that is noticeable and visible when it comes to the potential of a person to change themselves and so change their world. So that more people can realise how we can change this world, by standing united in our self change within the principle of what is best for all to bring heaven to earth

18. I am the change I want to see in me and my world – to bring heaven to earth is to bring into being, into living the LIVING PROOF of a PRACTICAL HEAVEN that can be seen and heard in our actions and words. We are the Living Heaven that must come into creation in this living world.

19. Through purifying my thoughts, words and deeds – my inner becomes my outer, so I bring into creation me as heaven into earth, realising it is not enough to ‘see the change / be the change’ – for change to become REAL it must be a constant, consistent living of me through the words I speak and the actions I live visible and noticeable to all in every moment of breath

20. Realising that my physical body is my temple – my physical body is the living flesh through which and in which I will bring into being and create / manifest heaven on earth as me in my thoughts, words and deeds and so I honour, respect and regard – nurture and support my physical body as I would nurture and support me as equals: my body is me

21. We are the change in ourselves and this world we have been waiting for: and so I commit to dedicate myself and my life for each one as all to realise this, as nothing will change if we don’t change in all that we are, within and without

22. The realisation that for me to be able to change myself in thought, word and deed to the most effective living being that I can be and become – I first have to ‘know thyself’ and so commit myself to investigate, introspect and understand how I became who I am today, to prepare the road before me into self creation of a responsible, aware, self honest and trustworthy person for myself and so for all

23. The realisation that for me to be able to contribute to change in this world – I have to get to ‘know thyself’ as this world and so commit myself to research, investigate and introspect the inner and outer workings of this world and align the systems of today to present and give the best possible life for all on Earth

Day 403: Shedding the spikes

29052014

2011 - http://efana.deviantart.com/art/Spikes-30DC-258571057

After three days of accumulating self-judgement through various points, I came to a culmination point where I stopped and started to trace back those three days worth of chain reactions. After walking through each point in detail I realized that I had clenched myself into a state, where because I was afraid of judgement I took upon a defensive stance to protect myself from external judgement.

What I realized today as I was walking through these experiences was that the defensive state that had been triggered is a remnant of the armour I have built around myself throughout my life. Four years ago a person told me I reminded him of a porcupine, because it was as if I was putting up spikes and needles to fend off people. From his words I realized that I was in fact aggressively shutting everyone out and I have been walking through this porcupine identity ever since. Today as I thought of this concept of an armour I realized that in order to protect myself from external judgement and rejection I have tensed myself up, not realizing that the judgement is not in fact coming from outside of me but from within – and that the armour has not been keeping judgement out but rather functioned as a lid to keep it in.

According to current leading theories in development psychology when a child is born he/she doesn't yet have an inner “voice” to direct his/her behavior. This voice is in fact internalized from the voices, commands and guidance of the people who the child has in his/her environment when growing up. This development happens mostly within the first few years of a child's life, but major life events may also affect it later on.

The “inner voice” I have constructed – meaning the thoughts, sounds, images, beliefs and reactions that direct my behavior – has become one of judgement, guilt, shame, demands, perfectionism and cruelty. This has been the result of my family environment (where teaching a child was often done by pointing out what was wrong through one's own reaction of anger, frustration, weariness, irritation and/or aggression), school environment (where teaching was based on validation) and social environment (where kids exerted their mindfucks on each other with no support or interventions from adults).

My back, shoulders and neck have been very tense, stuck and painful for at least the past few years, and lately I have been focusing on figuring out the cause for the remaining areas of tension, which are mainly in the other side of my my upper back and both shoulders. I realized today that those are the last of my porcupine spikes – the armor I have not yet shed. They are held in place by my patterns of self-judgement, all the small points where I jab myself mentally and believe it. The key here to releasing the remnants of my spikes is to stop with each point of self-judgement I come across, to realize it is not valid and to correct my line of thinking – to rewrite the lines of code in my mind. For example, there have been several moments within the past few days where I have judged myself for waking up “too late”. This is where I need to walk through my definitions of “late” and “early” and to realize that my definitions, which I base my judgement on, are quite possibly not valid at all. These definitions, for example, come directly from my family without me really stopping to consider what I find most commonsensical, and the judgements are even spoken in my mind with the voice of my mother/father/sister. Thus, I need to evaluate my life and the reality on my own and redefine what is practical in my living.

Because my spiky defensiveness quite frightened me when I looked at my behavior, I went looking for softness today through swimming and meditation. It was interesting to see how after a tiring workout all of my muscles were really tender and soft, except for these tension areas in my back/shoulders. I realized that once I stop judging myself, the need to defend myself will also vanish. I just need to pick up the lid, set it aside, take the points out one at a time, discuss with them until I release them and repeat until I'm empty of all judgement. The spikes are not only pointing outwards, but also inwards.

Day 402: Back stabbing

19052014

I listened to this speech by Bernard Poolman, and I started thinking if I have accepted and allowed myself to create and maintain relationships that are causing me harm through secret negative thoughts, attitudes and/or emotions. The idea of us “voodooing” each other, jinxing each other with negative backchat, got me to realize that some of my current physical ailments for example may be the result of unraveled baggage in my relationships towards other people, or more precisely, in others wishing me ill. Because I sense these attitudes, whether I allow myself to actually look at them or not, the anticipation and fear itself may be causing me physical tension and pain.

There are specific points in my family relations that I realized I've not handled with these people directly. I'll begin with these close family relations because they're most crucial in how I've been constructed, and thus the source of any other relationship issues I may have.

• father: shame / disagreement / revulsion / disapproval towards me because I have “turned my back on God” - rejection / lack of acceptance
• sister: envy (mutual), competition
• both brothers: dismissing and belittling them, their lives and achievements (for reasons I don't really know yet, I only just realized that I do this)

Concerning my mother I didn't really find anything. Out of my family I have probably had the most open and communicative relationship with my mother, and this may have made way for cleansing whatever tension there has been between us (because there has been some, if not plenty).

The physical ailments I am referring to here are mainly my shoulder/neck tension issues, which have become chronic during the past few years. I am not sure about the origin point of this specific issue, but from some memories I can gather that 2011, when I was made to realize there was an issue in the first place, I had already been stuck for a while, meaning some years probably. I have recently placed my focus on this specific issue and tried if regular exercise would help with it, but so far I've only seen it to alleviate the symptoms for a little while with the problem itself persisting. Occasionally the pain/tension has been “magically” lifted under completely random circumstances I have not found a pattern out of, but it has always returned. I have considered contacting physiotherapists and other kinds of medical assistance for perspective on this issue, but I haven't done so yet due to lack of time and funding.

When listening to Bernard's metaphor about “back stabbing” it kinda got to me, because my issue is specifically in the back – I can literally feel the stabs, lol – and now that I think of it, the word and concept of “back stabbing” is one that I have used a lot to describe my experiences with abandonment and rejection. Whoa, OK, so this might in fact have more to do with the bullying theme I talked about in my last post than with my family relations.

When I was around 10 years old my school friends all turned their backs on me and refused to have anything to do with me. Because I did not understand why they did this, I later on dubbed their actions as “back stabbing”, doing something hurtful unexpected and unexplained. I then went through experiences that were almost identical when I was 12, 15, 18 and 20: a group of friends suddenly expressed their disapproval towards me, either directly or passive-aggressively, and I responded with whatever coping mechanisms I had available, from aggressive dismissal to submissive withdrawal. I remember that each of these times the rejection came unexpected, even though as time went on I learned to distrust people all the more and to expect the worst. For some reason I still never thought or believed that these people I called my friends would do something so cruel. Now that I think of this pattern and how obvious it is in hindsight, I appear to have been totally blind to the reality of those relationships: to who the others have actually been in relation to me, to how and why our relationships have been formed – to the fact that they were bound to fall apart because of how we lived them out.

It is this attention to relationship forming and the effort to see people (including myself) as they really are that I think have changed my relationships the most and actually broken the cycle I used to repeat every few years. At the moment I think I am building relationships based on more solid ground than ever, prioritizing communication, honesty and self-reflection. So why does my back still feel as if I am being stabbed? Am I afraid of it all starting over again?

I have begun the healing and forgiving process to let go of any bitterness or spite left from these past events, but partially because I have not managed to open lines of communication with some of the key people from the past I am not yet done with this. I fear (or know, or sense) that with specific people there are negative thoughts being harbored towards me, and because people never speak them, never express them, always keep them hidden from daylight, it is difficult for me to transcend what happened and “clear the air” all by myself. It's as if some of the old “stab wounds” are still infected and refuse to heal, and this might be a part of the cause of the persisting physical pain.

Especially with the tension my shoulders tend to stiffen as if they were becoming crystallized, if not constantly opened with exercise or massage – which is when they usually just flame with pain before stiffening again - and this crystallization seems to speak of old wounds being locked in and integrated into my being. I do not wish for this to happen, and I think that I still have a chance to sort myself out before I become a living manifestation of spite, resentment, bitterness, anticipation, distrust and fear.

So what I guess I could do is go through the unresolved relationships (as well as those that appear resolved) in specific detail, mapping out what exactly I fear with each one, how I experienced them, what I desired from them, what it is that is still weighing on me. How do I believe them to perceive me? How would I wish to be perceived? Who are/were they to me, and who am/was I to them? What were the relationships based on? Why did we attract each other? What secrets did we have from each other that tore us apart?

Cool, I'll continue with this mapping. It's cool to know what I'll be writing about next, makes the treshold of writing a bit easier to cross.

Day 401: Trust issues

15052014

I have been writing things down again lately, but I haven't yet been able to produce text comprehensive enough for publishing. This is why today I chose to record a video based on what I had processed in writing and application earlier.

Day 400: Fear of being happy

06052014

I realized today that I am afraid of being happy. I was talking to a friend and trying to explain how I have experienced myself and life lately, and when it came down to saying “I have simply been happy” I noticed a resentment towards making a statement like that. To break the moment down: there was an impulse/idea to express myself through the word “happy” - I reacted to the word with resentment – a push to say the words despite the resentment – followed by the fear of having made a mistake – followed by thoughts along the lines of “what does he think of me now”, “did I screw it up”.

When I stopped to think about this experience I realized that because I have grown used to thinking of life in polarities – the good and the bad – I am constantly both afraid of being unhappy (because it is unpleasant) and happy (because it always leads to unhappiness, which is again unpleasant). Because I have seen how the ups and downs of living life in autopilot always lead to each other, I have created an ideal and a desire to find the in-between, the equilibrium – a state of balance that would be neither here nor there. I realized that because of this goal I am afraid of any experience that is NOT bad (unpleasant), because I interpret them to be in the “good” end of the spectrum (red flag - “you're gonna crash!”, “this is not going to last!”), when in fact this might not be the case.

In my experience there are three ways to position oneself towards life and the experience thereof. One can either filter one's experience through the negative (pessimism, cynicism) or through the positive (optimism, hope) – or one can do neither, and simply take the reality in as it is (realism, pragmatism). I do not mean to place these three in any order, and I do not claim that the latter is the “best” way to live life – I have simply found through my own experience that it is usually the most real, genuine or honest way of living, and I do prefer truth over happiness, as focusing on the truth usually leads to solutions whereas focusing on happiness usually leads to compromises.

The dilemma that bothers me here is that what I have defined as the in-between/equilibrium is actually enjoyable – just not in the same way as the positive polarity. I interpret myself enjoying life as “bad” because I believe I should not be enjoying myself, that enjoyment is bad because if I enjoy myself I must be off-balance. This is a misunderstanding I need to correct. There is a clear difference between enjoyment and having my head in the clouds, so to speak – as well as there's a difference in experiencing pain and suffering. The equilibrium does not mean that I should not be experiencing anything at all, but that I simply experience the things I come across without holding onto them, without transforming them into mental scenarios, into rocks that I load onto my back, and instead allowing them to just flow through me as space flows through time. Perhaps to be in balance is to know how to bring myself down from the clouds as well as to pick myself up from the ditch.

I realize that the experience I now labeled as “happiness” has not been just pure enjoyment but that I have slightly gone to the positive end, and what I need to realize is that IT'S ALRIGHT – I don't need to panic, lol - “oh fuck, I'm gonna crash now?!” - lol – no, what I need to do now is simply to land gracefully from the heights. I can trust myself to handle myself well enough to not plummet back down.

And to be honest, I am not entirely sure how much of my happiness experience has been balanced and how much of it has been hype, precisely because of the resentment. I am probably looking at my enjoyable experiences through the resentment filter and seeing “bad” in them even though there would actually be none (or very little).

This dilemma of what kind of enjoyment is OK and what is not calls for an experiment:

• I commit myself to allow myself to enjoy life and self-expression without guilt.
• I commit myself to allow myself to use the word “happy” to express myself (because when I observe myself it is clear that I am living this word at the moment – no point in suppressing myself).
• I commit myself to observe and take note of any and all energetic sensations I experience in order to map out my happiness experience.
• I commit myself to not suppress any of the energetic sensations (feelings) I experience, but to instead live through them within and as breath.