Days 259-260: Falling from the present

18-19062013

Head full of thoughts. (a graffiti in Seoul)

I have been unable to sleep for a few nights and I am seeing its effect on my health, because I have been catching a cold and not getting sleep is making it worse. The reason I have not been sleeping is because I have had too many thoughts running through my mind. At the moment I have a lot of new things to process, and they hold many insecurity factors that make it impossible for me to lay them aside when there is nothing I can do about them but wait. I have today been writing them out in order to see what's going on and to thus stop them from running around rampantly.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be distracted from the reality around me with thoughts concerning the past and the future.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to lose my grip on what is here right now at hand by giving permission to my thoughts to direct me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to value my thoughts about the past and the future more than what is here right now in actual reality as I have not realized that the past and the future are both created in this very moment of breath, and that by clinging onto moments that are not here (yet/anymore) I ignore, misuse and degrade the one and only present-moment that I have got.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that every time I lose myself into thoughts I also fall out of breath and thus lock my entire body into a state of tension, rigidness and stagnation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand the extent of the physical damage I do onto myself when and as I accept and allow myself to be directed by my thoughts into a physical state of tension.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I have been lost in my thoughts and ignoring the present moment, to not be aware of the possibilities each and every present moment offers me in terms of activities, socializing and physical location.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be so concerned/exited/agitated about the life I have lived so far and the life that I am going to live in the future that I have forgotten that what actually matters is how I live my present moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent the company of people when and as I have been preoccupied by thoughts of the past and the future and to justify this by thinking “I don't always have to be social” - not realizing that my resentment of company is a way for me to escape the present moment / physical reality into imagined mind-realities of the past and present.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape my physical reality into my imagination in the form of past memories and future scenarios.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that me pulling away from social interaction - which is normally an effortless and enjoyable activity - is a sign of a malfunction which should be addressed for the sake of my own well-being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify ignoring the signs of my malfunction by thinking “I don't always have to be social”, not realizing that I here give directive power and value to fickle feelings that do not have any clear reason other than “just because I feel like it”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be directed by a feeling, not realizing that feelings are always temporary and fade eventually and that thus they cannot be a valid building block in myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that every action and inaction builds who I am, and that every time I accept and allow a feeling to direct me into action/inaction I build myself to live out moodiness and unreliability and direct myself further away from stability – and that the results of this process of building will take double the time to take apart and reconstruct.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to lose myself in escapism and to thus lose my power to direct myself, my actions and my life.

I am starting to see what may have happened while I've been traveling and why I for example had trouble writing at one point – I saw it then already but wouldn't admit it. I will open up the point further in private and share what I find later on.

I commit myself to continue practicing my breathing in order to bring myself back to balance and stability within and as the realization that once I have fallen from self-aware breathing it will require conscious efforts and pushing to bring me back to that state of physical presence.

I commit myself to write down into my notebook the thoughts running around in my mind in order to pin them down, open them up in writing and to direct them instead of having them direct me – putting myself back “in the wheel”.

I commit myself to write down a clear plan on what I can do to prepare for things in my future and to get those things done as soon as possible – and I commit myself to set aside all the things I have no influence over at the moment within and as the realization that worrying about them is a waste of time and an act of abuse on this one and only now-moment.

Day 158: Backchat through loss of focus

26022013

In the morning while I was walking to work I decided to apply self-forgiveness out loud on every point I faced as I was walking. This was a good little exercise and showed me just how much stuff I accept and allow to go unnoticed, as I found myself forgiving myself every five steps or so, lol. But I realized something new: a lot of the things I faced and forgave during that ten-minute walk were backchat - me having a thought and then replying to the thought as I believe the thought to be true.

I noticed this throughout my day. Every time I went spinning into my mind and went off-balance it was the consequence of me believing the initial thought and validating it with a reply. This often leads to arguments within my mind, where I bicker about irrelevant stuff with myself. Insane!

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create backchat in my mind by believing a thought and replying to it as a thought of spoken words within my mind and/or as an experiential thought I feel within my physical being as resonance/energy.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the reason I believe the initial thought in the first place is because I am not HERE stable within and as myself directing every breath, as the thought occurs in a moment where I am not aware of myself and respond in auto-pilot as the patterns I have used all of my life thus far by replying to the thought and often arguing with it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to argue with myself about whatever I was thinking of, here creating unnecessary inner conflict and consuming energy in vain when I could instead stop, breathe and face the initial thought and solve the actual cause of the problem.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize how this pattern of automatically arguing with oneself is also seen in how people create and handle conflict in interaction between each other – that we face each other on auto-pilot, communicate on auto-pilot, create conflict because we are on auto-pilot, deepen the conflict on auto-pilot – believing our initial thoughts as first impressions, assumptions and guesses, never bothering to actually stand as one's own directive principle and face what is actually going on within the interaction.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to interact with others on auto-pilot as I have lost my focus from myself as breath and body, thus creating conflict and misunderstandings.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I validate my initial thought by responding to it and creating backchat, I am abdicating my responsibility to direct myself and giving my directive power to the thought, which will then lead me for as long as it takes for me to snap out of it – which may vary from seconds to years.

I commit myself to practice breathing to make it a fundamental part of my being – to re-program myself to be automated in deep breathing and awareness of self as body and mind – as I see, realize and understand that in order to let no point slip my full focus is required HERE.

I commit myself, when and as I respond to my thoughts and create backchat, to stop, breathe and realize I am not my thoughts and that to respond to one with more thoughts is to validate the thought and allow it to be a part of me.