Day 387: Loneliness is the result of my passiveness

16022014

A couple of days ago I went into a kind of a hyperactive state, where I became extremely social and where I was really cheerful and on a good mood. This lasted until today where after a day of socializing and kilometers of walking (which did me good, I haven't been exercising lately) I crashed back home and was tired to the point where I had to recharge for several hours before having the energy to do something (the writing I'm doing at the moment).

This is an interesting point to look at, because I went through some points regarding socializing before my hyper-state began. My partner left a few days ago to his home country and at first I was not OK with living alone again. I felt disconnected, dead, stagnant and joyless, which I saw to be because there was nothing in my apartment that lives on the same “level” with me (house plants and even pets don't really compare to another human being), thus making my environment lacking in external incentives for self-reflection: in other words, I no longer had the mirror that I had grown to enjoy.

When I reflected upon this point I came across thoughts regarding my friends, mainly consisting of hoping that they would reach out to me – which is when I asked myself: why should they come to me? How would they even know I would like company? Why am I not going to them?

And so while pondering upon all this on Valentine's day – I day I have had a heavily charged relationship towards, with all the expectations of romantic gestures being flung towards me while I sit on my ass – I worked my way through certain levels of discomfort and took myself outside to where some of my friends were, as I realized that if there is something I need, I am responsible for somehow delivering it. I continued this trajectory also yesterday, enjoying my work shift at the bar to the fullest, and today as I met a lot of people and really embraced their company for the first time in what seems like months. I kinda realized something new about the importance and function of friends as mirrors, and also discovered that I, somehow surprisingly, have quite a lot of them. If I catch myself thinking “I have no friends”, I'll now know it's a delusion I create out of passiveness.

So in a way having my partner live with me was the easy way to socialize, because he would always be available at home. When living with others the basic need for socializing is fulfilled within my easy-to-access zone that doesn't require extra effort for me – but the downside of this is that every social connection that does require effort starts to feel like “too much” in comparison, not to mention the stagnation that comes from only socializing with a limited number of people.

So: the hyper-social state caused by some new realizations and the following practical application, combined with a lack of sleep and plenty of exercise and fresh air, caused me to become tired for a few hours. Doesn't sound unreasonable when I put it like that, lol.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect myself to have a social life without myself doing anything to construct, support, uphold and develop it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect others to approach me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that if others approach me it is a sign that I have friends, and that if others do not approach me it is a sign that I do not have friends – not realizing that a balanced and sustainable relationship of any sorts cannot come out of a situation where one is constantly passive and the others are constantly active.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to my need to socialize – the moment where I notice I am alone and would rather be with someone – by looking for signs of someone approaching me (checking facebook, email, phone, physical surroundings) and feeling satisfied/fulfilled when someone is approaching me or disappointed when I am not being approached.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to not being approached by blaming myself (for not being good enough) and by blaming the world (for not giving me a good life).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the world owes me a “good life”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to turn my back to the world (the people) when it hasn't (they haven't) given me a “good life” in terms of the social dimension, thinking that “if they don't approach me, I don't have to approach them” - not realizing that I am in fact acting out of FEAR as I am afraid of being rejected if I take the “risk” of approaching another and thus revealing the fact that I (gasp!) like the person – as if it was a fucking secret! - and that the other person might be just as much in the need of company and just as afraid of reaching out to others to get it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the unfairness of always expecting others to approach me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect that friendships are created, upheld and developed while I passively sit on my ass and make no effort whatsoever.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the answer to “why should I if others don't” in this case is that if I don't, the others never will.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize it is my responsibility to ensure myself a fulfilling social life.

I commit myself to further explore and investigate the social dimension of life. (So far so good!)

I commit myself to enjoy the people around me, whoever they may be according to circumstance, by seeking how we could mutually both give and receive.

I commit myself to teach myself to approach others when I am in need of company.

Days 345-346: "Doing nothing" and heaviness - SF on day 344

3110-02112013

This post is a continuation to my previous post.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abdicate my responsibility to direct myself in each and every breath of my living by escaping the feeling of heaviness I have created through self-judgement into activities that amount to nothing in this reality that is shared by all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when these moments of curling up into a comfortable, solitary spot to do something with no substance or relevance occur, I am not directing myself within and as the principle of “what is best for all” but that I am instead directed by the desires I have created within and as self-interest.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that self-interest doesn't actually bring about what is best for me because it doesn't consider what is best for all, which is directly tied to what is best for me as an individual.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the word “self-interest” means self-care, not realizing that when my focus (interest) is solely on myself I am not considering myself as a part of a whole but rather perceiving myself to BE the whole, and that when I do not consider myself as the particle of reality that I really am, I am not taking care of myself in the best possible way but neglecting some (possibly important) perspectives on how to care for my well-being by considering the entire reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire for a release from the experience of heaviness - I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to “do nothing” to compensate for “doing everything”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create myself the feeling of “doing everything” (being burdened) by judging myself to be “not good enough” - doing too little too slowly and too poorly – never doing “enough” and feeling like I'd have to do “everything” to be “good enough”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I cannot do everything because it is physically impossible, and that my standard of reaching all of my goals is unrealistic and thus not supportive at all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to set myself goals that are unsupportive.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not utilize planning and setting goals as a structure to motivate me and support me to finish difficult long-term tasks, but that I have instead used planning and goals as a measurement of my own worth, mainly to tell myself how “little” I am now and how “much” I could be in the future, not realizing that even though the purpose of this method has also been to motivate me to act, the source of motivation in this method is fear (“what I am now is bad – I must become something better to avoid consequences”) instead of motivation coming from the realization of who and what I am and what it is I am capable of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use self-judgement to motivate myself to become “better”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that self-judgement is necessary for me to learn from my mistakes – that I must show some kind of “regret” for my mistakes and diminish myself in order to make it clear that I understand that I made a mistake and that I will not do the same mistake again.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that expressing remorse through self-diminishment is necessary so that others would not get angry at me.

• The memory of me around 4-5 years old dropping eggshells into batter and my mother reacting with sharp and loud words that told me I had made a mistake – mom exerting her emotions on me - I was frightened by her attack on me – felt horrible emotionally, started crying and ran away.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become overwhelmed by my responsibilities and thus make it feel as if I am “doing everything”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that it is impossible for me to do “more” than what I am capable of, and that whatever I do I am in fact able to do – meaning that when I do things that make me feel heavy I am not in fact doing “too much” but acting through resistance and making possible tasks feel impossible.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist my responsibilities because I have made them feel “heavy” through self-judgement: I perceive myself to be a failure already so I don't even want to try.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think, believe and perceive that when something feels heavy and difficult, “I can't do it”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that when a task feels big and heavy, I am small and unable in comparison and “incapable” of getting the task done – not realizing that starting, working on and completing a task is a matter of breath-to-breath movements, which I am capable of assisting and supporting myself to carry out when and as I am standing within and as breath grounded in the physical.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that writing my blog is “too much”, not realizing that in all simplicity all it requires is that I arrange a comfortable environment for writing, open a blank text file and start putting down words one letter at a time about what I am experiencing at the very moment.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sabotage my writing by setting myself a standard according to which just writing about my current experience is “not good enough” but that I would need to come to fundamental realization about myself every single day – not realizing that sometimes I get so “stuck” that it is required for me to write through the daily grind before seeing the “big picture” of what is going on with me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that reading my school books is “too much”, not realizing that studying these books, no matter how many, is simply a matter of arranging myself a comfortable reading spot, having the book and pen and paper with me, getting the basic outlines of the book through the introduction and the index, and then simply reading one word at a time, one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, and making notes as I go.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sabotage my studying by setting myself a standard according to which I'd need to read a lot of pages at once and get the task done as soon as possible because of the amount of reading I need to do, thus not even trying when I'd only have a little time to read or when I believe and perceive myself to be “too tired” to absorb the information.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that taking care of housework is “too much”, not realizing that all these tasks are really simple (washing the dishes, watering the plants, taking the trash, cleaning the floors) and only require me to move myself one inch at a time, no matter how slowly and gradually.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sabotage myself taking care of my household work by believing and perceiving that “I'm too tired to get on my feet”, thus never even trying to stand up, breathe myself into stability and move myself one inch at a time to gradually get the chores done.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself to have “failed” in the discussion from the previous day, carrying this self-judgement with me unaddressed until the next day and thus accumulating the experience of being a “failure”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like the discussion was a “failure” because some points were left unresolved, not realizing that because there is/was a chance of still resolving those points and thus correcting my behavior, no such thing as “failure” has (yet) happened and can still be fully avoided.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that not all points can be fully resolved within a single discussion and that processing a point may take time and several discussions before a conclusion is reached.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to carry full responsibility for a discussion that happened between two participants and feel guilty for “not making it work”, not realizing that I am not responsible for how the other person behaved within the situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear disappointing my employers by making a mistake and thus appearing “unworthy” of their trust and appreciation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about “failing” at work every time I do something that I know to include a chance of “something going wrong” - not realizing that basically any action I commit at my work place (even just walking from point A to point B!) includes the possibility of some damage happening to my work place (I could carelessly tip over a chair which could break when hitting the floor) – and that because the possibility of something getting damaged is always present whenever I am at my work place it is not relevant to be mindful of the “dangers” because my employers have taken a conscious risk there by opening a business that includes other people using your property unsupervised.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that some of the risks of “things going wrong” are such that I could easily prevent, for example by taking the cash register key with me when I go get stuff from the storage.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about not being nice enough to the customers and causing them to not want to come to the bar again, not realizing that in order to make people feel actually welcome I need to be myself unsuppressed with any and all customers instead of wearing a polite “nice persona” out of fear of myself not being “good enough”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by suppressing myself at work I build the bar into a place of self-suppression, making customers feel tense and unwelcome, whereas by not suppressing myself and by expressing myself unlimited I build the bar into a place of self-integrity, self-honesty and real human interaction, which might alienate some but work in everyone's favour in the long run.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel obligated to wear a “nice personality” at work because of how I have experienced the feedback of one of my employers, not realizing that I don't need to wear a mask to be kind, considerate and friendly.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself for making mistakes at work, not realizing that self-judgement (“I am so stupid”) works as a defense mechanism to not take in the feedback and actually consider how I could improve in my job, because here I use self-judgement to distance myself from who I was when making the mistake (myself) by creating a character out of who I was when making the mistake (“stupid”).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that making mistakes is unavoidable, and that when and as I make mistakes I will best “redeem” myself by stopping to consider who I was when making the mistake, forgiving myself for the mistake and reconstructing myself so that I will not repeat the same mistake again (but instead make new kinds of mistakes, lol).

When and as I receive feedback at work about something I could improve on, I commit myself to stop, breathe and consider who I was when making the mistake. I consider the reasons for why I should change my behavior and make sure I see why it is necessary I change. I then forgive myself for the mistake and, if necessary, build a mind pattern that will remind me to change my behavioral patterns when and as the action is at hand.

I commit myself to investigate the characters, personalities and masks I carry with me at work and to release them in writing, self-forgiveness and breathing.

When and as I think I have made a “mistake” or “failed”, I commit myself to look at how the situation could be corrected instead of reveling in self-judgement as I see, realize and understand that self-judgement doesn't contribute to finding a solution in any way whatsoever.

When and as I feel like “doing nothing” - I stop, I breathe and I ask myself why I feel like “doing nothing” and what it is I should be doing but resist instead. I check myself for the feeling of heaviness / being burdened, and if the experience of heaviness is here, I realize that have accumulated it through some kind of self-abuse. I check my recent past (last 48 hours) for self-judgement or other kinds of self-abuse and self-neglect. Instead of “doing nothing” and escaping the heaviness I have created, I deal with the origin of the heaviness in whatever ways I can – breathing, resting, speaking, writing, discussing – and release the points I come across in self-forgiveness.

When and as a task feels like it's “too much” - I stop, I breathe and I realize that by making something seem “too much” I make myself appear “too little” in comparison. I realize that this is not in fact true and that through practice, patience and consistency any task is possible for me to undertake: any task is one with and equal to me. I breathe and I stabilize myself, and I look at the task at hand to map out the steps that lead to its completion. I evaluate the amount of time and work required for each step and according to this self-honest assessment of reality I make a plan on how to get the task done. I then proceed onto the “first step” and give it my full focus without worrying about the next stages of the task.

Day 344: Self-judgement curling me up

30102013

These days I often get this feeling that I don't want to do anything at all but to sit down and entertain myself. I started to wonder how exactly I accumulate this experience, and I realized that HEY, this state of being is a symptom of something I accept and allow in myself. People don't “just become” unable to function out of physical tiredness: when one is physically tired after a long day, it can be slept off, but this “I don't want to do shit” -experience appears even when I am NOT physically tired and would have plenty of energy to do other stuff.

I noticed this just now when I had gotten myself onto my couch to scribble some nonograms and I realized that I had physically drawn myself into a very withdrawn position with my knees against my chest, head down, toes curled and breathing shallow. I looked at myself and thought: “what am I hiding from?”, and I remembered a moment of self-judgement just half an hour before and realized it had added on top of my weariness and become the catalyst for me withdrawing.

What else has happened during my day to make me want to hide and withdraw?

For the entire day I have been bothered by a discussion I had yesterday which I think did not go as well as it should have. I went through the topic of the discussion in writing, found certainty in my point of view and made a decision to return to the topic with the person involved, but I didn't realize that the reason I was bothered by this discussion was because I judged myself to have “failed” in the discussion because we did not end up in a clear solution / consensus. So this point of self-judgement has followed me and weighed me down all day.

I went to work in the morning and throughout my shift I noticed these small moments of self-judgement coming up. My morning shift includes cleaning up the bar, and unless I start early enough and work overtime, I might not finish the task before it's time to open up the bar – and when I “fail” this task, I judge myself, and it shows in how I treat the customers, because on some passive-aggressive level I take it out on them. Today that moment of self-evaluation was there, but because I had started work half an hour early and finished cleaning on time, my self-evaluation was positive and I tipped over to the other polarity where I was overly cheerful with all the customers.

However, there were other moments where I noticed stress coming up (I feel it instantly as tension in my shoulders) when I feared that I might “fail” a task. During morning shifts these moments usually come up when I have to leave the cash register unguarded to pick up some stuff from the storage, because I fear someone will come and rob the bar the very minute I turn my back, which would make my employers disappointed and angry with me and perhaps result in some legal consequences. So because there was a lot of stuff I had to pick up from the storage, these moments kept adding up to the feeling of “failure” that had already been gnawing me since last night. On top of that, right after I left work my employer gave me feedback about a mistake I had made with the register last week, and I thought of myself as “stupid” for being so careless.

It appears I really fear disappointing my employers (authorities). This links directly to my experiences with school: trying to do well to please the teachers and my parents.

In the evening I read a comment in the internet with which I judged myself as “stupid”. With this moment of self-judgement I instantly withdrew from the internet, curled up on the couch, watched a little TV and curled up even more to scribble because just sitting up straight felt too heavy. Interesting in retrospect to look at what I did, because it all happened without me having direct control over my doings – I was not directing myself at all, but moving as if on autopilot. It's as if the negative feeling within me (self-judgement, heaviness, smallness) was pulling me into this tense little ball, like a hedgehog defending itself from the world.

Fascinating. Tomorrow, self-forgiveness.

Day 312: Hiding self-judgement under a positive mantra

11092013

Lately I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like I have “failed” or “not done well enough” on some things. On a conscious level I've been thinking “I'm doing alright”, “that wasn't too bad”, “it doesn't matter that I [made a mistake]” - but in my secret mind on an unconscious level my experience has been “I'm not good enough.”

Today I saw how all these tiny little moments have accumulated up to a state of being where I'm physically in pain and do not want to even try doing anything of relevance and rather just keep myself entertained with useless stuff. I am living within and as the statement: “I won't succeed anyway.” I realized that I have created this state of being out of small moments of hidden self-judgement.

I can see how easy it would be to get stuck into this kind of a state of being, and that to me explains a great deal about people who become passivated. Why get off the couch if making an effort is never enough? Here I miss the fact that I am the one setting the measure of “enough” – which means that I can in fact change it.

I know that I've been doing reasonably well in my tasks lately, and not least because I'm allowing myself decent rest for the first time in at least a year. But the guilt is there. I'm not saying that guilt is entirely a bad thing – if nothing else, it serves as a reminder of things I would actually need to be doing sooner or later – but combined with self-judgement it's quite deadly.

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Here I did specific self-forgiveness and commitments on each one of the points where I had been judging myself, and I will keep it private for now. Writing out the commitments I mapped out all of the points that have been "bubbling under" for the past couple of weeks, and in the posts to come I will be opening them up in more detail. A general SF statement from today sums it up:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to cover up my self-judgement with a mantra that says “I'm OK”/”it's OK”, thinking this thought over and over again, not realizing that I am suppressing my actual experience of not being OK with myself by trying to override it with “positive thinking” and thus ignoring the actual issue.

It's quite interesting to see this because I have thought that I am "the kind of a person" who DOESN'T do this kind of positive thinking -mantra. When I laid out the multitude of situations from the past few weeks in front of me, the evidence was pretty hard to deny, lol. So it will be interesting to walk through this point.

Day 311: Leadership - passing the power

09092013

I was at a theatre camp for the weekend and while there I temporarily took the position of the “leader”. I want to look at how this switch in position happened and who I was as a “leader”.

In our theatre hierarchy I am unofficially the “second in command” after our chairman. This meant that when she was not around, I would take the lead. I saw this happening through expectations I had towards myself and through expectations others had towards me as well. When she was gone and there was a situation that required direction, I felt everyone's eyes on me, I felt attention drawn towards me even though I did nothing to get it, I felt like it was my moment to do something, as if it was my responsibility to direct. (I am not sure how much of this I imagined and how much was real, and to know the exact facts is not even relevant.) It was a moment where I realized that I had a choice to either accept all the authority offered to me – or, as this would not be a choice that supports the best of all, to try and use that moment of attention in a different way.

I was careful to not run the whole “show” by myself, meaning that I would try to get people to carry responsibility themselves – that I would NOT make it too “easy” for them and do every bit of thinking and moving for them just to feel “important” and “needed” myself. What I did was give these slight pushes and pulls towards the right direction, and this worked out quite well: most of the people were actually doing their share of work, which was more than I had hoped for. I didn't need to stress about things getting done and watch over every bit of action because I trusted these people to take care of things and showed them that I did. So by expecting no less from them than the best they can be I supported them to live up to their potential.

What interests me is the moment of “passing the power”. Hierarchy is a man-made conceptual structure to ensure that power remains in “deserving” and “capable” hands – in other words, in the hands of those who agree on the principles and direction of that which is governed, which may or may not be a good thing. But power does not exist if it is not given by those who are ruled over. Why does this theatre group accept and allow me to have power and what can I do to support them to become self-governed? Why and how do I find my position of power justified?

The moment of “passing the power” (accepting and allowing one to direct others) is a moment of collective helplessness. What do we do now? Who knows? Where do we go? It is the helplessness of a child. If there is someone there with apparent “knowledge” - the defining factor of an “adult” - that's where the faces turn. You tell us what to do! You know where to go! And people refuse to think, to move, to use their own capacity to search for an answer. This is OK if people actually do not know what to do and have no way of figuring it out (or if the process of figuring it out would take impractically long), but I see that at least within this particular group there is a passivity, a laziness, a limpness where an authority would rather be followed than self be set in motion.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that my position in our theatre hierarchy as “second in command” is something I have “deserved”, something I “ought to” have, something that is “rightfully” mine as I have believed and perceived that I have “proven myself worthy” by being talented, hard-working and loyal – here defining myself (my ego) according to this high position in a hierarchy, seeing myself as something “more” than the ones “below” me in the hierarchy – not realizing that a hierarchy is a construct that only exists in the subjective conceptual realities of each individual – in our minds – and that if I define myself according to something that only exists in the mind I will end up believing I am that mind-image, when in fact I am a physical being in a physical reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I define myself according to imaginary power structures (statuses and titles) I will limit myself from fully realizing myself as a physical being and from living in this physical reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the only dimension of power structures that actually matters are their consequences in the matter – the “fruit” that they bear in the physical reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the only reason participating in a power structure might be justified is its practical consequences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in power structures to feed my ego as I have not stopped to consider the practical consequences of my participation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give my permission for others to be “leaders”, passing them the power, without stopping to realize that their position is given by those who follow, myself included.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blindly believe that some people are “meant to” be leaders while others are not, not realizing that the reason we have leaders at all is because most of the people do not know how to be self-directed and thus “require” someone to “show them the way”, and that the people who end up being leaders are those who are lucky enough to be (or at least appear to be) self-directed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question my “leaders” by asking myself if they're actually showing a good example and if I should be following them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not “defy” my “leaders” by seeing and treating them as equals (= without fear).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear disagreeing with my “leaders” because that would have required me to direct myself from within myself for myself – in other words, without an example I could passively follow.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question my “leaders” out of fear of losing that authority I could passively follow, not realizing that when I rise up to question my “leader” I no longer need a “leader” as I have become that which I am looking for in an authority figure: an active participant and creator of life.

I'll continue with this in posts to come.

Day 286: SF on reluctance

05082013

Imma just lay down here instead, OK?

See previous post for context.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent going back home because I have responsibilities waiting for me which I am uncertain of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel uncertain about my responsibilities because I do not know what exact form they will take as they are new to me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will fail because I do not know what exactly is going to happen.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to hold onto what I already know because I find security in patterns that repeat in a familiar manner because within them I am less likely to “fail” - not realizing that in order to grow, develop and create something new I need to tackle that which is unknown and uncertain through trial and error.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define:

• failure = all mistakes

when in fact:

• failure = not learning form one's mistakes
• mistake = an opportunity for growth

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear embracing learning through trial and error because I have found it unacceptable to err.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try and succeed perfectly without failure – or to at least appear that I do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that a mistake is born out of not having had enough practice, not out of me being “not good enough”, and that mistakes and accomplishments are thus not a measurement of my worth but an indicator of what I have practiced and what I have not practiced.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear making mistakes with a task I perceive to be “heavy” or “important” because I am responsible for the consequences if I experiment (trial) and then fail (error).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that the only place to learn is to engage with the world and practice, practice, practice, and that all the world is practicing with me because none of us are truly “ready” - and that thus there is basically nothing but practice, nothing but trial and error, and that failing in a task is thus not “deadly serious” because we're all just practicing how to live.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear authorities who (from my point of view) claim themselves to be “ready” as I fear they will judge my differing approach.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe these authorities to be “ready” in some god-like manner and that they in fact know better than me, here undermining and underestimating my own perspective completely by myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I do not stand within and as my point of view/approach, no one will.

[All of the above mainly concerns a specific task / position of responsibility I have written about before.]

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become passive when there is someone “dominant” around to be active for me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not pay attention to that moment when I define another as “dominant” and allow myself to fall out of breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to adopt a pattern where:

• masculine qualities = dominant
• feminine qualities = submissive

and that I have thus positioned myself to people according to how our masculine and feminine qualities balance out and become either a passive follower or an active leader.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that in reality there are no “leaders” or “followers”, only people of equal value and capability, and that whenever I assume a position of a “leader” or a “follower” I distance myself from the reality where we are all equals.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that whenever I assume the position of a “follower” I accept and allow myself to be less than I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that whenever I assume the position of a “leader” I accept and allow myself to see others as less than they are.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to approach other people from a defensive stance where I try to read “who they are” so that I could then determine “who I am” according to the others – not realizing that I am doing this out of fear and that I could just breathe, return my focus into myself and be who I am regardless of who the other one is or appears to be.

I commit myself to slow myself down by returning my focus back into my breathing whenever I remember to, because this process of slowing myself down and re-grounding myself will assist and support me to notice how it is that I assume different roles with different people and what triggers it in the moment.

I commit myself to investigate the dominant/submissive roles I take in interaction with other people and how this “power switch” actually happens in the flesh and the mind.

I commit myself to investigate how this “power switch” or assumption of roles takes place already before the interaction begins through expectations.

When and as I see myself having acquired a submissive or a dominant position with another person, I stop, I breathe and I realize that I am defining myself according to who the other one appears to be, and that the roles we take are not in fact real but what we assume we are supposed to be. I realize that by living out these power structures I support the existence of inequality. I look at how these power positions are visible in actions, in movement and in the flesh: What do I do to manifest submissiveness/dominance? Standing within and as breath I dissolve my submissive/dominant stance from within the actions, movement and flesh by breathing, grounding myself and, if necessary, doing the exact action/movement I was avoiding within my power position. (For example, if I've been submissive I will take initiative; if I've been dominant I give the other one space.)

I commit myself to write and investigate further in depth separately about the submissive and dominant roles I take, as I see and realize that what I have written here is general in nature and may not be specific enough to fully support and assist me.

Day 285: Travel summary - moving and not moving

04-05082013

For the past few days I have been going through very personal challenges which I cannot (yet) share much about publicly because they concern other people and matters that are yet unresolved. This private process has consisted of finding structure and getting to know myself through written and spoken introspection. I am currently going through past events from my childhood which are related to the events in my life right now. One specific theme has been present in all the points I've been processing, though, and because it's a bit more general I would like to open it up.

I am writing the following as much to bring clarity to myself to what has been going on in my life as much as I'm writing it to share it with others. Recently I have had trouble “getting a grip” of myself and this is helping me get back on track.

I have now been traveling for three months in countries and cultures previously mostly unknown to me. I left home after a massive workload of 8 months had just barely been finished and lifted off my shoulders, and I looked forward to this trip as a reward and also as a chance to rethink my life which, as had become obvious during that extremely stressful and demanding 8 months, was not the kind of life I wanted to live.

During the very first week of traveling I was ecstatic. I felt free and unburdened, I was full of energy, I was enthusiastic about the places I visited, the people I met and the things I learned. After the first two weeks I changed my location from one country to another, and I remember looking at my travel plan and thinking: “I have so much left of this journey. What will I do with all this time?” It felt like looking at a gaping void. I may have survived the first two weeks on nothing but the energetic release of the relief of finally being free of my duties, but I still had many more to come – many more weeks when there would be no one with me, no one to guide me, no one to hold me, no one to go to – no one but myself. This made me anxious.

Little by little my enthusiasm declined. I went through a phase of travel stress where I tried to move myself because of self-judgement: I felt like I “had to” travel around and achieve all these cool experiences just because I had the extraordinary chance to, but meanwhile I started to crave for stability in a “normal” life, a life with structure and balance and a level of certainty, where I wouldn't have to worry about my shoes getting wet, food running out or electricity being cut. I started to withdraw from sightseeing and focused more on enjoying slow-paced everyday stuff such as cooking and walking around, of which I learned a lot. (One doesn't have to go see impressive monuments to learn of a culture, when it is in fact enough to just turn the door-handle and walk down the streets.) Interestingly though, soon enough I was in a country where all I had a chance to do was this everyday stuff, and I didn't even try to go out of my way to do something extraordinary, which with plenty of effort might have been possible. I felt too worn out to even try.

But, within that period of forcibly sitting on my ass I did rekindle something in me that required me to get incredibly bored in the right company. I got excited about returning home because I started to see all the possibilities in the framework of the life I had “left behind”, and my view on how I could change my life for the better got clearer. I grew less and less afraid of returning home.

After returning to “civilization” - to a first-world country – I have been regaining energy to be active, but not in a hyper-mode as I first started off. I have learned that because my life at the moment lacks the stability one would have in a permanent environment I need to give myself stability through enough rest. I have learned a bit more about listening to my body as an indicator of the state of my wellbeing. What I have picked up, though, is that when I am alone all of this works fine, but when I am with others – whoever they may be – I easily give up all initiative and just follow around with little to no input unless I am in an obvious alpha-position. I have been paying attention to this phenomenon and working with it recently.

One thing I use to justify this limpness with others is the fact that I'm on a holiday: “I don't have to do anything.” And to an extent this is true. I have very few responsibilities to attend to at the moment, and most of them are small arrangements concerning my return to Finland. Apart from that there is nothing I “should” be doing. But I could be doing a lot. When I am alone I am more inclined to make the most out of my situation by investigating the places I am in and the possibilities they offer, because there is no one else here to make my life an enjoyable, interesting and “worthwhile” experience for me. When I am with others I give this up because, in all truth, I find it tiring. Whether this is laziness or a sign of stress, I am not sure.

This tiredness has made my return look more fearsome than it did before. I look at the responsibilities and challenges awaiting me and I think: “Ugh, do I have to?” Which is insane as I was just a few weeks ago very excited about the very same things! I see that there is an inevitable polarity pattern here, going from one extreme to the other, and I take this as a sign of a need to balance myself. How I relate myself to my tasks and responsibilities is somehow fucked up – I'm guessing I see the tasks as something “bigger” than me, something “out of my league”. But I will return to this in self-forgiveness.

This journey has been an adventure into myself. This perspective into activeness/passiveness, motivation, living, experience and work is just one of the many, and I will probably continue with the other aspects of what I have learned in the posts to come. I will next continue with the self-forgiveness on the points I mentioned here.

Days 281-283: Succumbing to circumstances

27, 30-31072013

I hate feeling stuck. Because of a many factors in my circumstances I have been falling into a passive state of standing still, lying limp as a carcass, waiting, waiting, waiting around for things to change around me because, apparently, things around me are required to change before anything can happen, before anything can change, before I can move. I hate this state of being because it reminds me of death – it is death – a portrayal of death in flesh, a mockery of the life running through my veins.

On a smaller scale I got stuck today while the company I was in did not offer any possible activities for me to take part in. On a bit of a larger scale I've been stuck ever since arriving to Australia because it is impossible to see the country without a car. On a slightly larger scale I was stuck most of my stay in Vanuatu. On a large scale I have been stuck for all of this trip as I have simply been waiting for my schooling to begin once the trip is over – it's like I'm here just to kill time. All these precious moments of LIFE slipping through my fingers and running to a drain like mercury, because I believe that life is waiting for me somewhere in the future, and that life will take me along with it – not realizing that life is HERE all along and that it is something I have to create, I have to mold with my own hands, because nobody is going to breathe for me, nobody is going to move for me, nobody is going to grow for me – I am the creator of my own life. I may not be the one who gave me life, but it is now placed in my hands, as is the responsibility and freedom to have my way with it.

Note: This SF first goes through a specific event and then moves onto a larger scale.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get frustrated when the people in my company were focusing on their own activities and did not make effort to include me in them, feeling neglected and ignored and thinking that now that I am here it is a “special occasion” which these people ought to “respect” by doing stuff with me and not without me – not realizing that I was reacting to the expectations I had built around the situation by getting disappointed and then blaming my disappointment on others when in fact I was responsible for the scenario I had created in my mind and for its consequences in my emotional state.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect others to create an enjoyable experience for me because of unvoiced expectations of how things “should be” done when people host guests, not realizing that I was abdicating my responsibility to create my own experience and instead passively waiting around for others to make my experience enjoyable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get frustrated when my company did not include me in their activities because when I looked at my situation through my disappointment I saw myself powerless to direct the situation so that I would have an enjoyable time regardless of my unexpected circumstances.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that despite my company not including me in their activities I had many options on what to do - I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make myself blind to seeing all the opportunities available to me by judging all possibilities as “not good enough” as compared to what I had expected the situation to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to my expectation of what the situation “ought to” have been and compare all other possibilities to this original scenario where things would have been “perfect”, thus making all other available options appear as less enjoyable/worthwhile as they would have actually been.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel dissatisfied with the activities I chose to do because I was still holding on to my original ideal scenario and hoped that some of it would maybe happen if the people in my company suddenly magically realized that it was a special occasion, gave up on their activities and instead decided to do something that included me as well – not realizing that as I did not in any way communicate my wish to socialize with these people there is no way they could have known for certain what I would like to do, and that thus I did not carry my responsibility of the situation as I expected others to guess what I was experiencing without any of my own input.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hesitate expressing my point of view of this being a situation that presents opportunities that will not be present any time soon again because I feared being judged, attacked, ridiculed and/or ignored – I feared confirmation of what I was already guessing the others to think of me (“I am irrelevant”).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the others focusing on their own activities was an expression of their disinterest towards me – not realizing that it might just as well have been unsuppressed self-expression or passion (or a myriad of other things) and thus nothing personal towards me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take it personally when others in my company chose to do things I was not involved in and had no possibility of being involved in, not realizing that this was nothing personal towards me but an expression of who the others were in that moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold onto my expectation of how things “should have” been through the idea of “unfairness” as I judged the choice that the others made in not including me in their activities to be a “bad choice” as it was a choice I would not have made and did not find agreeable or justifiable – not realizing that by judging the others I refused to see and sympathize with (see in myself) the real reasons behind their choices and thus disabled myself from finding a real solution to the situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not address the ideal scenario I had created in my mind about the situation before I was there in order to prevent all of this disappointment, frustration, dissatisfaction and spite as I did not question the ideal scenario on any level.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see it justifiable to expect for a fun, sociable, loud and playful gathering full of laughter and talk without taking into consideration who is going to be there, not realizing that a social situation consists of the combined self-expression of those that are present and thus will not be the same with every different compilation of people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek for a night of fun to compensate for the dull, boring, repetitive, stagnant and meaningless experiences I have had recently.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect for a sociable event to be enjoyable in a specific way, not realizing that there are as many ways for a sociable situation to be enjoyable as there are different combinations of people – which is an innumerable amount.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see it justifiable to seek for an escape from my recent stagnation through other people and thus not question my expectations for this particular event I saw to be my “savior”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the solution to my stagnation is not in escapism and entertainment but in me “taking the wheel” of my own life – directing myself out of activities that bear no fruit and into those that do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to let my limiting circumstances bring me down and give up because getting myself up and active has felt like too much of an effort.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that I am helpless at the face of my limiting circumstances and to thus justify becoming passive and doing nothing of relevance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use my limiting circumstances as an excuse not to do shit.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the circumstances I am in are always in one way or another limiting as all the things in the existence are not available in each and every moment of time and space, and that the challenge is to make the very best out of each and every moment as it truly is – and that using the “limitations” of my circumstances as an excuse not to do things is just utter bullshit when and as I am motivated by laziness and thus am not making a clear assessment of the situation and the possibilities at hand.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not investigate and assess my circumstances “with eyes unclouded” - with the purpose of finding the solution that is the best for all - and that I have instead filtered my view on reality through the purpose of remaining safe and sound within my comfort zone unstirred, still, soulless and dead.

I commit myself to assess my actions, activities and choices throughout the remainder of my trip by asking myself: “what is the point of this?” or “what is the fruit?” - and, after a thorough and self-honest investigation, I commit myself to direct my actions, activities and choices according to that which is the best for all.

I commit myself to live out the commitment above with the intention of carrying it on to my “normal life” after the trip.

When and as I see myself using my circumstances as an excuse to do or to not do something – in other words, using the external reality as a reason instead of looking at myself – I stop, I breathe and I realize I am using my interpretation of the reality as an excuse not to get uncomfortable. I realize that I am “clouding my vision” from seeing the real possibilities of a situation because I have a hidden agenda to stay within my comfort zone – I have already made up my mind. I face myself in self-honesty and investigate why I truly do not want to leave my comfort zone. I utilize self-forgiveness to release the point. I then re-assess my situation with absolute diligence, accepting and allowing no uncertainty considering each and every possibility/opportunity in the current moment. I make a choice based on self-honest self-expression.

When and as I see myself thinking “I can't, because...” / “Emmä voi, ku...” I stop, I breathe and I ask myself whether this is actually true. I ask myself: “what do I fear/desire?” and I look at my motives within and as self-honesty. I re-assess my situation and, if I see it to be necessary, I do the exact thing that I was previously trying to avoid within and as the realization that growth only happens outside my comfort zone.

Days 265-266: Adaptation - letting go of "culture shock"

28-29062013

When I arrived to New Zealand I wrote about my difficulties with adjusting to the new culture I had stepped into. I shortly realized that I was following a pattern: every time so far during this trip when I have moved from one country to another I have gone into some form of a culture shock, which has affected the way I view the new environment – in other words, I have distorted the reality by looking at it through negative expectations. This has become more and more clear to me now that I have returned to Auckland, the same city where I first landed on in New Zealand, and have experienced the city in a whole new way as my culture shock has faded. I will now write about this experience in order to support myself when I change my environment again in a couple of days – I will no longer accept and allow myself to be directed by my culture shock.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define a place according to my negative experience of it without asking myself where my experience came from and how it was created.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive the new environment I have arrived to to be a “bad place” (in whatever terms have applied to each individual case) based on my experience of discomfort, shock and resistance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist adjusting to a new environment by reacting to everything that is different from what I am used to and refusing to let go of my reaction, believing my initial reaction to things changing to be the one and only truth.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to mistake my first impression of things with the reality of things, not realizing that they are in fact not the same thing at all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to the temperature of my environment changing from comfortable to less comfortable and to through that reaction define the less comfortable temperature as “worse” than the more comfortable one, thus resisting every bit of my environment where the temperature was less comfortable – which was everywhere – and so making my own living unbearable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to the cleanliness of my environment changing from relatively clean to not so clean, moving my focus into noticing all the dirt in my environment and ignoring all the clean spots, through this behavior thus defining my environment as “dirty” and resisting every bit of my environment that I perceived to be dirty – which was almost everywhere – and through this making myself feel thoroughly uncomfortable no matter where I went.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to the people in my environment changing in terms of ethnicity, behavior, openness, friendliness and helpfulness, going into helplessness and isolating myself from people as I did not allow myself to cope with this change and instead defined this new environment to be “wrong” and the old one to be “right”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to wish for my environment to stay the way it has been so that I wouldn't have to step outside my comfort zone and actually make myself comfortable in the new environment – not realizing that it takes actual effort and movement to live the circumstances I am in into such that I enjoy living in – and thus getting disappointed as my wish was not fulfilled when my environment did change.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that adapting to new circumstances does not happen all by itself but requires me to pull myself out of passiveness and make the adaptation happen.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I am required to move myself in order for adaptation to happen.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist moving myself because I have expected adaptation to happen all by itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that adapting to new circumstances is an active process throughout which I need to breathe, be aware of myself and my surroundings, find the problems and propose and initiate the solutions myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist committing myself to the active process of adaptation because I have wanted to stay within my comfort zone where things were effortless, not realizing that the comfort zone is in the past because it was tied to circumstances that are no longer here, and that I am thus holding onto my memory of what used to be instead of facing what is actually now HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify demanding my new circumstances to be like my old circumstances with the belief that what I find comfortable must be “the right way” of doing things.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame my new circumstances for not being like my old circumstances because I have believed my demand to be justified.

When and as I move onto a new environment – such as tomorrow when I fly to another country – I commit myself to remind myself that I cannot take anything for granted, and that I am going to have to reassess and reorganize every bit of my every day living. I commit myself to reserve myself time for this process in order to make sure my basic needs are fulfilled. I commit myself to support and assist myself in this process of adaptation by focusing on keeping my breath deep, slow and relaxed. I commit myself to move through all moments of resistance with the assistance of breath as I see, realize and understand that most of my resistance is not due to my circumstances being actually unbearable but because of me facing the borders of my comfort zone. I commit myself to utilize the help of other people when necessary. I commit myself to embrace and explore the new environment within and as the realization that other people live and survive in these circumstances as well, and that they are thus not going to kill me or endanger my immediate well-being.

Day 258: Passion is not magic

17062013

Recently I have been thinking about passion. I have been accepted to university to study a subject I am not passionate about in the same way I have been passionate about other things so far, and this lack of “fire in my soul” makes me question the whole concept of motivation and what has been driving me forward so far.

In the past few years as I have been mainly working and having arts as a hobby, trying to get into art schools but never succeeding. I have met a lot of people in my working environments that have either told me or shown me they have a passion for nothing, and many of them have told me (with a tone I have interpreted to be sadness, bitterness and/or powerlessness) that I am lucky to be passionate about something. I have usually been unable to reply to such words, because all I have seen are people who are unwilling to find their passion. Recently I have come to realize that these people alone cannot be blamed for their lack of motivation for anything but survival and escapism, because the society itself determinedly passivates people from the moment of birth onwards and offers no assistance to overcome this.

Yet I have to question the whole concept of passion. When I am doing something that I have “a passion” for, I usually work with intense focus, I learn fast and I forget all else – I exist for that moment of action, whatever it may be, and I forget to eat, drink, rest – and I usually do not even have a need for any of this. I have experienced this with drawing, painting, making music, dance, stagework with other people, contact improvisation (including sex), baking, hiking, walking around, reading, studying, exploring my surroundings, having a conversation – a lot of things. I could basically have a passion for anything, even breathing, or eating, or drinking. I mean, if I can have a passion for moving my body aimlessly simply because I enjoy the movement, why not for anything at all?

So maybe “passion” is something to be found when you're at the core of an action, when you have a “reason” for it – which is to live, to realize your existence in this moment, in this reality. When I apply this to my motivation to study, I can see that I study because I realize my possibilities in this web of relationships we call “society” or “the world” or “the system”. I enjoy studying things that I see to have relevance. I enjoy applying the information that I absorb. I do not know how I will apply the information I am going to absorb in the future as my studies progress, because how I will apply it is dependent on what the information is – lol – so I cannot plan it, I'm going to have to create my future as I go. And that's alright.

So, yeah. In studying I am living according to my passion for learning, and I have some idea of how to specify my studies based on the fields that interest me. But this pathway didn't offer itself to me. I had to dig it up and choose it among a mass of options, all appearing just as uncertain to me. Somehow I think that the people who lack passion for things believe that this magical feeling of knowing what to do and why will just be gifted “from the above”, like enlightenment of some sorts. But this is not the case. If you have never seen a book, how would you know that you have a passion for reading? If you have never sat on a bike, how would you know you have a passion for riding a bike? How would you ever figure any of this out if you didn't explore the world, everything that there is in it, given that you have the opportunity for it?

As a child grows it integrates fast into whatever the world is shown to be, and if not given the mental tools to question this, if what one has experienced during one's childhood and adolescence is not fulfilling one might end up believing that the world is unfulfilling – when in fact it is one's experience of one's life so far that is unfulfilling and not the world itself. So people get stuck with the environments they have been born and raised in, with the activities they are familiar with, because they have not been taught to seek passion, to work for it. I was lucky enough to be gifted with a lot of opportunities to explore different activities as a child, and for this I am grateful to my family – but a lot of things I have discovered on my own as an adult, simply by grasping a point of slight interest and expanding on it through independent exploration. And these points of interest have grown into passion the more and more I have learned about them and invested myself into them.

So what I'm saying is that the belief that one ought to have a passionate feeling about something in order to act at all is a fallacy. If I'd keep on expecting a “holy spirit” to take over and direct me for myself, I would get nowhere, I would be standing still and waiting around for the rest of my life. Passion is not a heavenly wind that will magically make your life better – it is you moving yourself towards/within something you are drawn to. Passion is self-motivated action.

Day 246: Doing nothing

30052013

One challenge I set for myself when I set off to travel was to break away from my usual routine of working throughout my waking hours and to teach myself to just be and do nothing. I realize that stress is a big problem for me because I do not know where to draw the line in-between recreation and escapism, and so I feel guilty for every bit of non-work and push myself to work more from the starting point of fear.

So at first I noticed a tendency to think that now that I am here on the other side of the globe I should not “waste” a single day. I pushed myself to go sightseeing and stuff and tried to make “each day count”, so that within every day I would get an experience that would make the day feel meaningful. Many times I did, and even really small and seemingly insignificant things would give me that experience that “all right, today I lived”. For example, one day the most awesome thing that happened was that I ran into a dog in a forest and hung out with the dog for a while. Not much else happened during the day, but it still felt like I had actually learned something.

Now in Tokyo there have been days where I have felt like nothing has been happening. I have staid at one place for an entire week, not moving around every two days like before, and I have given myself time to just do nothing at all. I have done small everyday things like gone to the supermarket and walked around a park and sat in a library and sung karaoke. I have sat down with other people here at the hostel eating and drinking and talked. And at the end of the day I have felt guilty about it: Today I did nothing. Did I learn anything? Did I grow at all? Who was I today? Has it been four days already? What the fuck did I even do yesterday? Was it really five days ago? And so forth.

It has been really good to stop because I have thus been able to see more clearly what it is that moves me in my “normal life” (a term/concept I have come to question lately). But I am not sure if what I'm doing is entirely a good thing. Tokyo as a tourist environment is not very enabling if one doesn't have the money to shop and dine in restaurants, so I have perhaps been passivated by my environment which is “lacking” in possibilities for activities. But here I forget that I am able to come up with some ways to utilize whatever happens to be here – I just have to actively get up and do it.

So enough of this bullshit. If it seems that my environment is not “offering” me enough stuff to do, then I've got to get up and do something and make it worthwhile. I am not here to live on a hyperdrive for three months, sucking in the culture of other countries as if it was the last thing I'll ever do – I am here to live as myself within and as breath within the possibilities of the environment I am in, not to compromise myself and feed off on experiences and energy kicks. So just live as I would live in a familiar environment, moved by necessity and opportunity; allow myself the time I need to get my shit together. It's not about achievements but about who I live as within all this.

SF up next.

Days 222-223: Fear of committing myself to working with children

02-03052013

My decision to study education sciences and a recent commitment to a project/task concerning directing a group of children made me realize today that I am actually committing myself to work with children “for real” - that as I continue on this “path” I will be working closely with children and concerning children in long-term. I realized I am frightened by this. There is something in how I relate myself to children that needs to be sorted out.

Firstly, I know myself to be afraid of children. I have defined children as “those who see through the lies” and have become wary in their presence, wanting to please them and have their approval and of course not getting it because my fear has been obvious. As I have been working through my insecurity and the roles/characters I have used to “survive” interaction with children I have been able to actually make contact with children, which has been awesome, although I still have ways to go.

Another thing is that I perceive working with children to be a “tiresome” and “effortful” “burden” because activeness, openness and energeticness hasn't been a “natural” state of being for me – I have been more used to solitude and passiveness. The position of being the one to get others moving or to direct the movement of others has seemed like an awful lot of work. Every time I have been doing directing work – even though I have volunteered for it – I have faced a huge resistance to face the group and activate myself and others. I have often required a year in between directing projects to “recover”.

And one more aspect, although I recognize this to be an excuse, is that I am afraid of the responsibility of directing children, of being a person who intimately influences a somewhat helpless being. What I actually fear here is that the children will revolt and “not respect my authority”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that it is not in “my nature” to be active, open and in motion because I have been more comfortable alone, closed and passive, not realizing that my current state of being is simply the result of how I have lived my life so far and what I've gotten used to, and that this is in no way permanent or inherent.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to stay within my solitary, introverted and passive state of being because it has been comfortable for me, not realizing that if I do not move beyond my comfort zone I will never expand nor change.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe it is “my nature” to be solitary, introverted and passive because it has felt comfortable, not realizing that it only feels comfortable because it is a “safe zone” I am used to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive comfort to mean that things are “how they should be”, never looking beyond my self-interest to see that my comfort results in the discomfort of many.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that things are “how they should be” when I feel comfortable, never mind the rest of the living beings in this reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive working with children to be “burdensome”, “tiresome”, “effortful” and “a lot of work” because it has required me to step out of my comfort zone, not realizing that walking myself out of old habits is not going to be a comfortable process as this expansion requires me to do things I am not used to and which feel new and strange to me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the discomfort of doing new things I am not used to as this has required active presence, adapting and learning and thus meant stepping out of my comfort zone of passiveness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist walking myself out of my old habits because that would mean I would no longer “get to” be within my comfort zone, not realizing that expanding myself means that my comfort zone will get wider and that what is now uncomfortable will no longer be uncomfortable in the future.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear letting go of what I am used to because I have feared changing into something that would no longer “have permission” to be passive – not realizing that as I change for myself the “old me” that wants to be passive will not be there in the future, and that I thus fear change because I believe my “future self” to want the same things as my “current/past self” - or rather use this as an excuse.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear committing myself to something “for real” because I feel like I would then be “tied” to doing something – not realizing that in order to get something done thoroughly, properly and carefully it is necessary to devote one's time and effort to one's task, because if not fully committed one is not giving one's fullest effort and is thus “half-assing” the task – and that this “tie” is not something one is forced to act upon but one that is willingly chosen.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being “tied” to working with children because I am not sure whether it's the right profession for me – not realizing that my doubts mainly occur from the discomfort I am hesitant to walk myself out of and the fact that I do not know what exactly I'm “throwing myself into”, not realizing that nor does anyone who has not yet lived their future (no-one!).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear making choices and living in the moment because I have feared that my choice will end up being a mistake, thus never making choices nor committing to anything, not realizing that by being afraid of possible future scenarios I stop myself from moving, and that the only way forward is through the uncertainty of not knowing – by living as certainty within and as breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear choosing the “wrong” profession, not realizing that if this would prove to be the case even after self-honestly looking at the problems/conflict I face within the profession – I could simply choose again and re-direct myself to do something else.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that there are no “right” or “wrong” professions – only choices of direction, re-habitualizing oneself and getting oneself familiar with the subject and the conduct of its field.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define children to be “those who see through dishonesty” and thus become afraid of them as I have known myself to be dishonest.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself through my definition to see children as “more than” me as I have “given them power” to define me through their acceptance/rejection (defined myself according to my self-judgement as projected through others).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to please children by being something they'd “like” and “appreciate” because I have been afraid of their judgement.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to appear as something that I believe children will “like” and “appreciate”, thus living as a character instead of being myself, not realizing that I am wearing a mask to hide myself as I believe myself to not be “enough” to be liked.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that for people to actually see me and like me for who I am I need to show myself for who I actually am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want the acceptance of children because of the position I have placed them in, not realizing that this position is completely imaginary and within my mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame children for being “scary” when in fact the position from which children “judge others” is completely imagined by me and that experiencing children as “scary” is thus wholly my responsibility.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive the self-honesty of others to be judgement towards me as I have seen myself reflected from others, felt ashamed of myself and, rather than facing myself, blamed my uncomfortable experience on others, believing others to be the cause of my experience.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a fear of children and avoid their presence because of the discomfort I experience in their presence – not seeing the discomfort as an opportunity to look into myself with self-honesty but rather seeing it as a threat to my current state of being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself to be “bad with children” when I have failed to win their approval by appearing “likable”, not realizing that getting another's approval through appearances will not last even if it were to momentarily succeed and that this is not a constructive way of approaching children (or anyone).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself to be “bad with children”, believing myself to be inherently “incapable” of connecting with children, not realizing I am basing this belief on my dishonest approach to children the natural outflow of which is that my interaction with children is dysfunctional.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by interacting through appearances I create dysfunctional interaction as I do not stand as one with and equal to who I actually am in matter in the physical reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when and as I stand separate from who I actually am in matter I will conflict with each end every being I face unless they are aligned with my dishonesty.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear children because they are not aligned with my dishonesty and thus conflict with my dishonest state of being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a worst-case scenario where children will “not respect my authority”, act against my direction and create chaos, seeing myself as a “failure” in the midst of this.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to have authority with children as I have been trying to “win back” the “high position” I have assigned to children in my mind, trying to be “more than” children so that their perceived judgement would not touch me – not realizing this inequality of power to be completely imaginary and that I am trying to beat my fear with actions of fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to “save” myself from the judgement of children by claiming authority over them, not realizing I am actually just avoiding facing my insecurity and doing myself a disservice.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exert power on children because I have been afraid of them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abuse my authority position over children because I have been afraid of them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to control children because I have been afraid of them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to claim superiority over children because I have feared that if I didn't they would assume power to themselves.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe interaction with children to be a power struggle which I have to win and am entitled to win “just because” I happen to have been born before them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to assume my perception of the “authority” of children to be true and never question this perception, thus positioning myself to children as if there was a battle to be fought instead of seeing children as my equals and interacting with them as my equals.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear treating children as my equals because I have perceived and believed there to be a risk that children would abuse this “moment of weakness” where I am not exerting my power to “keep them in check”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that there is a difference between abusing power and utilizing power.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive being stern in my consistent direction of children to be “too rough” on children and that they will end up disliking me, thus “softening” my approach to be “likable”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that giving into the desires of others is not the same as doing what's best for them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to compromise myself in my search for the approval of children.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to be capable of directing and teaching children in a respectful yet steadfast manner – in a way that would not abuse children but also be effective.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to avoid chances to learn to become a better director/teacher through trial and error as I have feared making mistakes, not realizing that mistakes are a part of all learning processes and that they are thus “OK”.

I commit myself to do my best in the directing project I will begin with children in September and to embrace this opportunity to learn new skills, work on myself and interact with different people.

When interacting with children, I commit myself to breathe and release myself of desires, fears and survival mechanisms and to lay myself bare within and as the realization that a child will see me for who I am whether I show it or not, and that it is thus useless to even try to hide.

I commit myself to stop “trying too hard” in the presence of children by stopping, breathing and becoming aware of the insecurity that drives me.

I commit myself to support and assist myself to move myself out of my old habits of passiveness and introvertedness when and as I direct a group (be it children, youth or adults) by resting myself upon my breath, allowing all tension to melt away from my muscles and engaging in eye contact with all participants.

I commit myself to look for myself in all the children I meet in order to realize we are as much human and as much alive and that in this we are absolute equals.