Days 355-356: Escaping physical strain

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In regards to what I wrote about alcohol/socializing being a way to relax for me, I've been paying attention to how and why I make my moment-to-moment living uncomfortable / unenjoyable so that I need the release from “leisure” to balance myself from the exhaustion I have created. So far I have come across some points.

• Physical strain: either my backpack is too heavy or the wrong size for me, or my posture is not OK for sustainably carrying a heavy backpack while walking long distances. Also, my physical reading positions are rarely such where I would not end up in pain: I always eventually jam up my back and/or shoulders. As I write my shoulder muscles are currently in a very painful state.
• Partly because of the physical discomfort I tend to escape my breath-to-breath living into my mind. I usually think about a) past events, b) future events or c) imaginary events – stuff that doesn't exist anymore / yet / at all – and I do this over and over again without achieving any new insights with any of the recurring thoughts.
• A point I noticed while walking long distances was impatience. When there is some reason for me to feel impatient to “be there already” (e.g. be home already because I am hungry and I have food waiting for me) I escape my moment-to-moment living into the mind as described above, as if to distract myself from the discomfort that is here (such as hunger) to get me “faster” to my goal/destination. Even though this method makes it seem as if “time goes faster” because I momentarily become unaware of myself and the discomfort my physical body is experiencing, I actually sabotage myself because when and as I distract my attention from my body's actual needs I lock myself into a state of tension. For example, when I am walking outside and it is cold, if I distract myself to not be aware of the coldness and instead ”float around” in a mind bubble, my body will still experience the coldness and be in a state of tension as I am not giving my body any attention. Instead I could be aware of the experience of coldness, keep myself in deep and slow breathing and relax my body with each breath, through this assisting and supporting my body to survive the cold. I have noticed through experimenting that when I relax myself within an uncomfortable experience, it actually becomes less uncomfortable (e.g. cold feels less cold) – I'm guessing it has something to do with how blood flows in muscles (tense vs. relaxed).

Alright. I will now walk these points and see what comes of it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to forget to breathe so that I have not noticed the physical pain in my body caused by a bad posture before the pain gets bad enough.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore my body telling me that the posture I am in is damaging to me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that I “need to” study at the expense of my physical body because there are “no better options”, not realizing that I am causing myself extensive damage and making my studying more difficult in the long run, and that there is sure to be some option that I just haven't figured out yet.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up on trying to find a physically painless way to study and instead settle for positions that are not good for my health.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that pushing myself to study through pain is self-sabotage, as the pain will eventually render me unable to study.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape my discomfort into the mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to my experience being uncomfortable with fear and thus create a desire to no longer be there, thus fulfilling this desire by escaping my experience into a mind illusion.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to discomfort with the fear of not being able to handle it, believing and perceiving that physical discomfort is something “overwhelming”, not realizing that physical discomfort can in fact be dealt with simply by breathing, locating the problem and taking necessary actions to solve the problem.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to no realize that when in discomfort, the simple act of breathing and bringing my awareness to the pain is to gift myself with the attention that I actually require, and that escaping the discomfort by not breathing and distracting myself with thoughts/images is to neglect myself and ignore the needs of my physical body.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape my uncomfortable experience of the physical reality into the mind as thoughts and imaginations of the past and future, thus losing myself into what is not actually HERE and neglecting that which is actually HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that a thought/image is “more enjoyable” than my experience of the actual reality and that this enjoyability is a valid reason to escape the reality, not realizing that the enjoyment in the mind is temporary and fades and that every moment spent away from HERE brings consequences: if I shut my eyes while driving a car, every moment spent driving with my eyes closed might take me off the road.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the enjoyment within/of the mind / the conceptual reality always fades, whereas enjoyment within/of this physical reality is sustainable.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become impatient with the cause of my physical discomfort (cold, rain, hunger, tiredness) and to escape the discomfort by thinking of the moment when I will get rid of it (by getting home, getting to a shelter, getting food, getting to rest etc.), and thus “mend” my impatience by imagining I'm “there already” or by telling myself I'm “almost there”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that my physical needs need to be “soothed” with imagination or otherwise they will overpower me, not realizing that if I am not actually dying my physical needs cannot in fact overpower me by themselves, and that my experiences and memories of a physical need becoming “overwhelming” are such where I have made it “overwhelming” through the mind with enhancing thoughts such as “I am so hungry/cold”, “I am in so much pain”, “this sucks”, “I hate this”, “I'm so far away from home”, “why can't I be there already”, “this feels awful” et cetera, where I have eventually been overpowered by my own helplessness and not the problem itself.

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I commit myself to keep myself in breath before, during and after I study (read text from a book / computer screen OR write on a notepad / computer) to keep my awareness in my physical body and to thus ensure that no painful point – message from my body, the living organism – goes unnoticed.

• Before I study, I commit myself to find myself a comfortable position to study in.
• During studying, I commit myself to take note of any pain I might feel and to adjust my posture/position accordingly, making sure that I get up and move around every 15 minutes.
• After studying, I commit myself to pay attention to the remaining effects of the physical act of studying in my body.

I commit myself to show myself that I am capable of surviving non-lethal physical discomfort, such as hunger, tiredness and changes in temperature, by returning myself to breath whenever I escape the physical reality into my mind and by keeping myself stable and relaxed in breath until the problem can be solved.

When and as I create dramatic thoughts about my state of discomfort – such as “I am so hungry/tired/cold” - I stop, I breathe and I realize that with these thoughts I give in to helplessness, believing and perceiving that I am powerless to direct the situation to the best possible outcome. I realize that the reality is not in fact dramatic as everything moves according to simple causality (if I do not eat, I will eventually get hungry) and that within a reality of causality there is always also some kind of a course of action available that will work as a solution to undesired circumstances (when I go home, I will eat food). I stabilize myself in breath, search for an actual solution to the problem, and I keep myself stable until the problem is resolved.

I commit myself to explore how to find comfort in discomfort through breathing, relaxing and taking care of my basic physical needs.

Alright, I'll continue with more related points tomorrow.

Day 324: Attraction, part 2

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This post is a continuation to:

Day 323: Attraction, part 1



Today I focused on writing privately about specific people and interesting stuff emerged. I was losing concentration on studying because these people kept on popping up in my thoughts. I will share some of the SF with names censored.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe it is justifiable to have a “goal” in mind when interacting with another person, not realizing that my justification is “because it would feel nice”, which is my desire talking: the desire would be fulfilled (I would “feel nice”) when the goal would be reached.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place X into a “special” position where he is allowed to occupy my mind on an obsessive level – not realizing it's not even X himself in my mind but my image presentation of X, the paper doll I play around with in my scenarios – and that the real X here in the 3D I cannot predict because he is his own individual being who makes his own choices – which is why our interaction is created in the flesh and not within my thoughts.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive it is justifiable to be mentally occupied by thinking of another person because there is an attraction and it is “natural” to be obsessed – not realizing that this mind-wankery amounts to nothing at all as the real interaction with this person is not created in the mind but in the physical when and as it is here and not a moment before.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be impatient to explore my relationship to X because he is not here right now, and to thus resort to playing around with the mind-puppets by replaying past moments in my head again and again – not asking myself where this impatience comes from.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be impatient to interact with a person I feel attracted towards, not realizing that impatience is wanting to be “there” already – to be in a future moment – not realizing that when I want to be in the future I neglect the present moment, which is all there actually is, the only thing that verifiably exists.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape my present moment into the future because in the future there is something “exciting” which makes my present moment seem “less” in comparison – not realizing that the “more” in the future is actually excitement energy and nothing that would concretely make that moment more full of opportunities or such – and that the present moment is actually just “as good” as the future moment, but that they're just different in the opportunities they provide.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the future I am impatient to live within is “better” than the present moment I live within right now because the future moment contains energy whereas the present moment doesn't.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that a moment that contains high amounts of energy is just that – a moment with energy – and that measured in breath that moment is equal to all the other moments of my life.

When and as I get impatient to be in a future moment already, I stop, I breathe and I realize that I am disregarding the present moment by longing for the future. I breathe and I remind myself that measured in breath each and every moment of my life is equal, and that the future I crave for is equal to the present moment I am breathing in. I ask myself what makes the future moment appear “better” and I utilize self-forgiveness to release the energy in question. I then look at my present moment from within and as breath and I move myself according to what is here now, and I release the future to be lived when and as it is actually HERE.

All of the above also applies to wanting to return to a past moment and replaying the past moment in the mind to re-live the energy one experienced. It's always away from HERE, be it in the past or the future.

I'll continue again tomorrow.