Day 391: Winter depression

05032014

Audio transcripts from today:

“Today I cried out of joy when I stepped out into the sun. Apparently it's been a very dark winter. It is very difficult to find life from within yourself when everything around you is dead. But then again, it shouldn't be about the polarity of life and death, now shouldn't it? Like going from one extreme to the other.”

“But everything is not dead. It's just... Darkness is not dead. Frost is not dead. The plants are not dead, they're just sleeping. The animals are not dead, they're just absent, they're just hiding. Winter in fact is not dead. Why do I label darkness as death? Or loneliness as death? Or coldness as death or discomfort as death? I've grown reliant on stimuli from outside of myself to make me feel alive. How do I learn to sustain myself?”

Some background:

I have recently surfaced from a couple-month long winter depression. It is a common phenomenon around the polar areas for people to become depressed during the winter, and this is usually explained by the lack of sunlight and the following lack of vitamin D, but also with the lack of exercise and other side effects of the environment turning unpleasant for humans. This, however, is the first time I have ever experienced this phenomenon myself.

It has been a very strange experience, and I cannot pinpoint exactly when it started. All I know is that some time around November I started gaining weight and that by January I started lagging behind on my schoolwork having lost all motivation. I reached a low point of sorts and haven't been able to pull myself out of it properly until I've literally had to in order to pass my courses. To pull myself “back to life” I have made reviews of my living habits – exercise, sleeping rhythm, nutrition, socializing, recreation – and these slight changes with the increase in daylight and temperature have brought me back to a state of vitality.

As a side note, I watched this really cool TED talk today about depression and found the key statement about the opposite of depression being vitality instead of happiness being quite accurate in my case. I remember feeling really alive before my downfall began, and I am finally starting to feel alive again – not happy per se, but energetic and motivated. God, I've been super cranky for these past couple of months now that I think of it.

Anyway, back to the transcripts. When I stepped out today and bathed in the sunlight for the first time in months, I cried out of joy because suddenly the world around me felt alive again – as if I was “connected” to life itself for the first time since winter began. However, this concept is inaccurate. Life itself hasn't been “switched off” during winter: I just haven't been able to see it. There is life in darkness, coldness, silence and hibernation, but it is just a different kind of life from the other end of the spectrum: of the noisy, bright, colourful and sweaty summers. So to think of winter as “death” and summer as “life” does not follow the reality.

What I am saying here is that I have somehow accepted and allowed myself to be affected by the environment I am in. Of course the circumstances the human being – an organic creature – is in affect its state, because different circumstances support different things: different possibilities are available and so forth. I do not suggest that the human being should somehow be separate of its environment, because that is simply not possible. However, one can believe oneself to be a victim of one's circumstances, thus giving oneself the permission or the excuse to do something, to for example “slack off”.

I have accepted and allowed myself to be taken by moods, going from one extreme to the other. I see that following these moods could possibly result in me being extremely happy during summers and extremely down during winters (which is the reason why so many people living here in the north escape the winter to warmer countries). I see that this is not a sustainable state, to resent one manifestation of life (winter) and to celebrate another (summer).

What I think happened in my case is that I used my prevailing circumstances (winter) to give in to my deep-rooted loneliness. My life is mostly quite nice and I can honestly say that I enjoy many aspects of my life, but the social dimension of my life has been unsatisfying for years now – actually, we might be talking about more than a decade of feeling completely alone, since I started getting depressed at around the age of 10 because of bullying and other malfunctions in my social network.

So what did I do when the winter came? I focused on my work, stopped exercising, started binge eating, forgot to rest and give myself space to be creative (with music, movement, theatre, writing, arts, etc). And then I wondered why nothing felt like anything, why I was so tired all the time, feeling restrained and secluded and brought down by my thoughts of self-diminishment. I was doing it all to myself.

I'm writing this now to support myself to remain stable and functioning no matter my surroundings. I might have to live through many winters, and I do not want that time to be lost into being stuck with myself. I might even face completely new circumstances, like staggering heat or humidity or drought, and even then I need to find the practical solutions for physically surviving AND the mental solutions for not throwing myself out of balance because I believe myself to have a plausible excuse to do so.

I'll continue from here with self-forgiveness and corrective statements.

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 263: Travel stress

24062013

Go see all the cool things! Through a camera lens!

In the past couple of days I have been dealing with a new kind of a stress factor. I have been staying in the house of a man who is a really active traveller himself, and him giving me all these travel tips triggered some kind of a travel stress in me. There are thoughts telling me I should be doing a lot of things, I should be moving all the time, I should be making sure I squeeze out all the experiences I can from the time that I've got – and at first I moved according to this. Then when it was no longer possible for me to be tirelessly active all the time and I stopped doing so, I started having pains. The thoughts were still there, now with blame, telling me I SHOULD be doing things, really, I SHOULD! And my neck and shoulders have been reacting in similar ways as within work stress, getting unusually jammed and tense and causing me massive headaches – and I have been resistant to give myself rest because it has felt like “a waste of time”. Now that the owner of the house is back and there is another couchsurfer here with me I notice them causing me more stress, because now that I am no longer alone I have someone to “report to” - as if they were watching me, assessing my way of traveling, judging me if I'm not as active as they would be. Essentially I am judging myself as I have set myself an ideal of an “active traveler” and constantly resent myself when I'm not living up to it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a “traveler ideal” for myself based on what I have seen others do, not realizing that I am basing a goal for living, a principle, on what others appear to be with no knowledge of what their inner experience is – in other words, what their motivation to be “active travelers” is and how they actually fuel their actions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel stressed about not reaching up to the level of those around me, fearing that I will be seen as a “lousy traveler” - as less than others – and that I will be judged according to what others see of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “active traveling” to be “the right way” of traveling – that which I “should be” doing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “inactive traveling” to be “the wrong way” of traveling – that which I “should not be” doing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “the right way of traveling” to consist of being in movement from morning until evening, reaching for new experiences, going to exciting places, exploring all possible activities, socializing with all the people you meet, sleeping as little as possible to maximize your waking hours – not realizing that this ideal is simply not possible to live according to as the physical capacity of a human being is limited.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to set myself an ideal that is impossible to live up to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty for not living up to my traveling ideal, not realizing that it is such that no one could do without self-compromise.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “the wrong way of traveling” to consist of not utilizing the possibilities of your travel environment as effectively as possible by taking time to rest, relax, not be in a hurry and focus on one thing at a time, and not planning your next move constantly to make sure you don't waste any time – not realizing that I have demonized all the things necessary for a human being to function properly and to actually take in one's environment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about my day not going “according to plan”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear of failure whenever I consider resting, not doing anything “special” or stopping to enjoy something, and whenever I find myself in a situation where I have not planned what to do – not realizing that I limit myself from actually living the moment that I have.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think of resting as “failure”, not realizing that if my body is in need of rest it is advisable to do so for the sake of my own well-being, my well-being actually being a kind of “success” in itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think of stopping to enjoy something as “failure”, not realizing that stopping is necessary for me to actually experience and explore the moment I am living, and that without stopping I am never really HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think of not running after new exciting experiences as “failure” with the reasoning that I am thus “wasting” the opportunities of my traveling - not realizing that even though I am currently traveling and spending a lot of resources on doing so I am still the same kind of a physical being in a physical environment as I was back home, and that no matter where I am on Earth I will always be living within this one single NOW-moment of breath, and that this moment will always contain varying opportunities and possibilities, and that I need to choose which possibilities to seize according to what is best for ALL, this including my own well-being – and that thus there is no such thing as “failure”, there are simply different kinds of choices that serve different kinds of purposes and bring out different outcomes.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive traveling to be about “special experiences”, not realizing that all experiences are of the same value when experienced within and as the physical instead of enhancing and diminishing them through the mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify traveling being about “special experiences” because I am spending a lot of money on traveling, thinking that I have to get my money's worth out of this trip – not realizing that I am motivated by fear because money is something that is scarce and valuable and because I worked a lot for a long period of time to have enough money to do this trip, and that I am now afraid that all that effort will have been in vain if my experience is not “big enough”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress because of money.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that money at the moment being the “unavoidable evil” I have got to learn how to live with it, which means that I cannot continue to see myself as “less powerful” than money because money is a man-made agreement which I, as a part of the human race, can in fact influence.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about spending money on traveling because I have been afraid of my own survival before, during and after the trip.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear every time I spend money as I fear that I am making “the wrong choice” and digging my own grave. *[An interesting point to elaborate on – the moment of giving away money and the reactions within it.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all the while I travel I am not in a different reality where life would be about chasing after “special experiences”, as this is not the case in my “normal life” either. *[The term “normal life” needs more investigation, “normal” here being stagnation as opposed to “traveling” which is movement.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about making the most out of my life because I fear that when I die it will not have been the “best it could have been”, not realizing that there are no such things as “the best life” or “the worst life” - there are just different kinds of lives, all with equal value, and a myriad of factors that contribute to what the “life story” and the lived life experience become.

I commit myself to support myself to live each moment from the starting point of breath by returning myself to breath and thus to myself whenever I notice myself not breathing.

When and as I see myself thinking “I should be [doing something]” OR experiencing it in my flesh as tension around my neck and shoulder area - I stop, I breathe and I realize that the use of this word and/or the according experience in flesh is/are a sign that I am pushing myself towards an impossible ideal. I ask myself what it is that I fear and what it is I am trying to be/become. As I reveal my hidden fears and desires to myself I release them in breath within and as the realization that there is nothing I “should be” doing, ever, and that there are simply possibilities and choices between them. I commit myself to reconsider the activities at hand from within myself and as myself while taking my entire physical existence into consideration.

I commit myself to take care of myself by giving myself enough rest, thus showing myself mercy instead of cruelty.

When and as I see myself planning my trip (or my life) ahead by any amount of time, hours, days, weeks or months – I stop, I breathe and I realize that by doing this I am escaping and abusing the present moment. I ask myself whether it is actually necessary to plan what I was planning, and if not, I ask myself why I was planning what I was planning. I ask myself what I fear and what I desire and how these plans would serve them – how would I avoid what I fear with this plan? How would I reach what I desire with this plan? As I bring these hidden motives to surface I release them in breath. I commit myself to give myself the time I need to bring myself back to stability and back to breath before I continue with what I was doing.

Day 256: Inability to adjust to changes in environment

15062013

Seoul

I have arrived to Auckland, New Zealand this morning and I am extremely uncomfortable here. The hostel feels too big and very dirty, the town seems messy, filthy and very unsafe. I will now write about my experience to figure out how much of this is my self-induced paranoia and how much is actual concern.

I have been warned about NZ and Australia all the while I have been traveling South-Korea and Japan, which are exceptionally safe countries on a global scale. I have been told that in NZ and AUS everyone will try to rob me and take advantage of me, and that people are unfriendly and malicious. On some unconscious level I have believed everything I have been told unquestioned, without placing these claims into proper context, and thus created huge prejudice resulting in fear and suspicion.

When I arrived here this morning I noticed that my attitude towards strangers had changed from what it was in Japan. I was fearful of everyone around me. I was very watchful of my belongings. I didn't want to take any unnecessary risks and leave my bag for even two seconds. This got challenged at the hostel I am staying at, because when I asked for a locker for my valuable belongings, they told me that they only had ones that cost extra and that this hostel is so safe that I would most likely not even need one. So I chose not to get a locker even though I don't really trust this environment.

Another thing here that I reacted to is the filthiness. Japan and Finland are very clean countries by many standards, and so coming here feels like I've stepped into a ghetto – something I did not expect at all from the country's largest city. It is difficult for me to feel comfortable in a place where the streets are not clean and where the floors are so dirty I have to wear shoes even indoors, like I was constantly protecting myself from something. I am used to things being clean, and now that they are not and I have to go through extra effort to maintain my basic hygiene I feel like I can't relax anywhere. My discomfort cannot be blamed on my environment, though: it is what it is and I can do my part to make it a better environment, but it is not going to become any different just because I dislike it. This is what the physical circumstances are and here's what I can do about it.

I have also refrained from taking too much contact to other travelers in this hostel, although I have noticed than when I have done so my discomfort has dissolved a bit. By recognizing the existence of these fluctuating particles in my environment I make them less uncomfortable, less alien, less distant – even if it was through just a small moment of contact.

The thing is, this place is probably just about as dangerous as my hometown: there's always something suspicious going on and if you happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time you might get dragged in, especially as a woman. But that's no reason to lock oneself indoors, because the “bad guys” out on the streets are people as well, and people can be dealt with unless the circumstances are so extreme that the other is so possessed that (s)he's “out of hands”. I will not go and beg for trouble, but I will not accept and allow myself to live limited by fear either. If I need something from the convenience store down the street, I have to be able to go and get it (because other people here seem to have no trouble doing so despite the dodginess).

So this is an issue of lack of self-trust and of a distorted view on my fellow human beings. Also stuff to do with my comfort zone.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the claims and generalizations others have made about certain nationalities without question because I have wanted to put down one culture to elevate the one I have been within to make it feel better, not realizing that this mindset will bear its consequences when I will eventually have to walk among the nationalities/countries that I have been putting down before.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the people living in New Zealand and Australia are unfriendly, malicious and abusive and to expect such behavior from them, thus living within and as a state of constant fear and anticipation when/as I apply myself as if the others were already exhibiting unfriendliness – which in reality they are not.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see people according to how I believe and perceive them to be instead of looking at who the people actually are, how they are actually living and what they are actually doing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate these specific nationalities from me by generalizing them into a sub-category of the human species, not realizing that by doing this I stop seeing them as beings one with and equal to me, as adult human beings built of the same physical matter, and instead perceive them to be something “more than” me because they hold the power to exert their maliciousness onto me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even if another was to exert their ill will onto me, this is the other's expression of who they are and nothing personal towards me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not place myself in the shoes of another in order to see, realize and understand that what drives another into maliciousness happens as a consequence of the same mind functions that drive each and every being with a mind, and that from this point of sympathy/understanding it is possible to actually support and assist another with whatever is driving them into maliciousness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that another's maliciousness is my fault by taking it personally, not realizing that I am not responsible for another living out their fuck-ups as I am not the one moving the other.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being in contact with other people who I have defined as “potentially malicious” and to protect myself from getting hurt by avoiding all contact with these people by i.e. focusing on my own tasks and adopting a “cool personality” within which I appear to “not need” the company of others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become reluctant to engage in any contact with the people I have met here because I have wanted to protect myself from getting hurt.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that it is enough for me to recognize the presence of these people through eye contact, smalltalk and physical acceptance and that I do not have to take part in their activities (i.e. excessive drinking) in order to make our co-existence more bearable – and that it is OK that I do my own stuff just as long as I carry responsibility for the fact that we all live together and need to get along as equal, honest, communicative beings.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel isolated from these people because I do not see a connection point – something we could relate to in each other – not realizing that the fact that we are human beings and all here right now is enough of a similarity for us to recognize each other's value.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that others will think I am “weird” because I attempt to be considerate, friendly and honest with everyone, unlike many of the people I have seen and interacted with here – and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel isolated from others because I believe that others see my behavior in a “weird” light simply because it's different from theirs.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I cannot influence how others choose to perceive my actions, and that this perception that others form is thus not the equivalent of my actions and not a valid evaluation of them either.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see people as people but as stereotypes.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see people as people but as representations of my fears.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see people as people but as the definition of them I have created based on my fears.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to project my fears on people and thus blind myself from seeing who they actually are.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek for comfort in my environment, and when not finding it, instead of returning to self-awareness and finding comfort from within my own body, blaming my environment for not giving me the experience of comfort and creating a repulsion towards my physical environment because I defined it as “discomfort”, the opposite of the experience I was seeking.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though within this environment it takes me more time and effort to ensure myself proper hygiene, I am perfectly able to secure myself within these circumstances – it is simply not as straightforward as what I am used to, and I am used to the best circumstances this world has to offer, which means that wherever I go I will experience a downgrade.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect the best possible circumstances everywhere I go in terms of cleanliness and hygiene, not realizing that most of the world has never had the resources to develop such a well-functioning system as what I have lived within.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define my comfort zone as that which everyone should have.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe my comfort zone to be the one and only true way of doing things.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that most of my discomfort within these circumstances comes from my tension and unwillingness to relax and not so much from any actual issues in the environment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become dependent on the things within my comfort zone to always be available so that I could experience constant comfort and stability, thus inevitably crashing as the experience of comfort and stability has not been built within me but on external factors which will always eventually fade, erode, crumble and/or disappear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to rely my constant experience of comfort on the cleanness of my environment. (This extends to other areas as well – this is why I have issues i.e. getting my entire body dirty when roaming in the nature. I can't deal with dirty/moist clothing either. Interesting. Gotta dig into this more.)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my negative experience of a dirty environment is not going to change the fact that the environment needs to be cleaned up.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to filter all sensory information about my environment based on the negative experience I have had towards its dirty spots, not realizing that not all of the areas of my environment are actually dirty – I just make them feel as if they were.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to assume everything around me is dirty instead of checking whether or not this is actually true.

I commit myself to face the people in my environment as beings made of the exact same substance than myself and thus of the exact same value as myself, with the same fears, desires and insecurities behind each and every pair of eyes, opening myself up to others instead of defending myself from imaginary threats.

I commit myself to become aware of the expectations I have of others, to let go of them in breath and to accept and allow others to show themselves to me as they will.

When and as another expresses maliciousness either towards me or another, I stop, I breathe and I remind myself this is nothing personal towards me but another expressing him/herself. I place myself in the shoes of another in order to understand why the other has a need to express him/herself through maliciousness: what are they defending themselves from? I direct myself to live out support and assistance to the other according to what I see and what the situation requires.

When and as I resist being in contact with the people around me either through eye contact, conversation or physical recognition/acceptance – I stop, I breathe and I realize I am escaping others because I fear getting hurt through their judgement – which is in fact just self-judgement through me adopting the judgement of another. I realize that we are all one and equal in our fears and insecurities, and that the people around me are just as fucked up as me. I breathe and I move myself out of the resistance by lifting my eyes to meet the eyes of others and allowing myself to move onwards from that point of contact.

I commit myself within all this to take care of myself by not accepting and allowing myself to be abused by others – by taking care of my personal space and recognizing my own value.

I commit myself to breathe through my experience of disgust, revulsion and discomfort concerning my physical environment and to make it habitable and comfortable for myself movement by movement, breath by breath.

Days 253-254: I don't want to go home

10-11062013

A friend told me she is returning to Finland to continue studying the same subject I have applied to study myself. I reacted to this information with relief and joy, which is because recently as I have been traveling I have become more and more uncertain about what to do with my life and have created a reluctance to return to Finland at all. I found comfort in the fact that she would be there with me because then I would feel less lonely, less alone, less of a “lonely warrior” when my life takes on a new direction – or when I am supposed to take a new direction – when I am to change my life into something it has not been before.

See, I have created a reluctance to return to my home town and region not because of the place itself – the town is nice to live, work and study in – but because of the life I have lived within it. I fear that as soon as I return my “old life” will suck me back in because of all the habits and tendencies that I associate with the physical location and everything that I have lived through within it in the past. I fear that I will regress. I fear that my environment will not support me in my process of change. I fear that my environment will make change more difficult than it already is. But here I make changing like a big demon that I have to battle, I make it more than it is. There is bound to be friction because when there is a harmonious flow of particles and one particle suddenly decides to change its course it will conflict with the other particles – but that is just what it is, movement and inevitabilities, and it should not be interpreted to be anything else. If I change, I change, and it will require being certain of who I am as I change, what I am changing and who I become as I change. Not by enforcing a mantra of ideals but by knowing myself and living according to who I choose to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear change because I fear standing utterly alone with my decisions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist returning to an environment which I believe, perceive and assume to not support me in any way in my process of change.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that my environment will resist and suffocate my attempt to change the direction of my life and that I will be helpless in front of this resistance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive myself to be unable to stand within and as my decisions in the face of external pressure or resistance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that when/as/if I get into conflict with my environment – when there is friction in between how I have decided to direct my life and how my environment responds to it – I will be left without support and will thus crumble like a cookie.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that if my environment does not support me I cannot stand, not realizing that with this belief I demand that my environment gives me support and make my own standing dependent on how my environment sees me.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stand within and as my decisions only when certain conditions are met (when my environment shows me enough support), not realizing that by doing so I live as less than I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that my fundamental support – myself – is not going anywhere and will always “be there for me” even if I received no external support i.e. from other people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, within my fear of failure, to create a worst-case scenario where I give into peer pressure and screw up my life completely, making all of my process so far meaningless as I regress through my self-limitation to who I was in the past – not realizing that by creating and upholding such a scenario in the first place I believe myself to be just as “weak” as the scenario implies and will support myself to live out this exact “weak personality”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive myself to be “weak” (unable to direct myself / easily directed by others) because I have lived like this in the past.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify living as this “weak personality” by blaming my inability to change the direction of my life on my environment, accusing my environment of suppressing me and not giving me permission to live my life how I choose to - not realizing that no matter the amount of external pressure I am always the one to accept and allow my inner experience to be influenced and my movement to be directed by external factors, and that the responsibility for my self-compromise thus cannot be pushed on anyone else but is in fact mine to carry.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear going back home because I fear it will be difficult and that I will fail to change.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that hardship is an inevitable part of the process of change and that it is not required to be feared – it will be there whether I fear it or not.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent, avoid and fear hardship as I have not wanted to recognize it to be a part of life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear hardship because it contains the possibility of failure.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that just as every breath I take requires my muscles to move and go through effort, so does living one's life require consistent effort, pushing and active movement – otherwise one will end up standing still.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear adversity because I fear that I will fail to overcome it, not realizing that there is no way to perfectly “win” the battle with the challenges I face but simply different ways to deal with them, each with their own results.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to find a way to deal with the challenges I face – one that would not compromise me or anyone and which would take into consideration the consequences of my actions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust my ability to figure out what choice of action would consider the best of all (myself included).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I do not trust myself to make good decisions I require others to validate my decisions for me to make up for my lack of self-trust and thus make it easier for myself to crumble and not live according to my decisions when others do not give me the validation I believe myself to need.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sabotage my life by not trusting myself to be able to make well-informed, considerate and responsible decisions.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a mind-scenario where change is a big, dramatic battle with opposing forces that try to destroy me with all their might, believing and perceiving myself to be doing the “right thing” and the opposers to be promoting the “wrong thing” - not realizing that change is only dramatic if I compare it to the passiveness that precedes and surrounds it, and that without the act of comparison change is just movement among movement, life among life, breath among breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that change is not about big, movie-like storylines but about individual moments of breath where change is created through stopping, re-assessing, re-directing and setting off to motion again.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore the change that happens HERE in the moment of breath by only focusing on the dramatic scenario of “big changes”, not realizing that the drama exists only in my mind and not in the actual reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that change is “big” when in fact it is actually “small” - not a series of movie-like events but single moments of breath in self-awareness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear change as I have believed and perceived it to be something “big” where one can also fail in a grand scale – not realizing that change is not something bigger than me or beyond me but that change IS me as in every moment I inhale and exhale I have a new chance, a new beginning, a new option, a chance to clear the table and choose again.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that change is nothing to be afraid of because even if I'd fail I can always try again or choose another direction.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear severing ties to people, groups and activities which I no longer wish to keep a part of my life because I fear that if my choice to do so proves to have been a bad choice I would not have the chance to go back – not realizing that my wish to keep that back gate open, that path to what used to be familiar and comfortable, is born out of the fear of failing and ending up alone.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to assume that when I choose to leave these people, groups and activities behind me, it will be seen as a hostile act which would then awake negative reactions in others which would then be exerted onto me – not realizing that this is NOT an accurate forecast of what the future will be but is actually the worst-case scenario I have created in my mind based on my fears through guesswork – and that this worst-case scenario can be avoided through how I apply myself within the process of severing these ties.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear re-arranging my priorities and the practical changes they would introduce to my life because I fear the society I live in will not support me in this choice of lifestyle. [These are mainly practical issues that for now I have to wait to solve – I'll get back to this when the issue is here.]

I commit myself to face the response of the environment I change myself in, be it familiar or not, within and as the realization that I do not know in advance what the response of my environment will be and that this is in no way relevant to my decision and standing.

I commit myself to remind myself in the case of conflict that the reactions of my environment are not caused by me and not my responsibility; In situations of conflict I commit myself to take care of and carry responsibility for my own reactions, the experience that I create, uphold and believe in.

I commit myself to focus on the change that happens HERE in the moment of breath within and as the realization that these moments are the ones that accumulate to the “big” changes that I aim for in my life – and I commit myself to support and assist myself with this by practicing self-aware breathing whenever I remember to.

Day 252: Spirituality, bitterness and spite

09062013

I have been visiting a lot of buddhist temples and shinto shrines while I have been in Japan, and I have made a habit out of doing the traditional prayer ritual at some of the places I visit. I have used this ritualized way of slowing oneself down to bring myself back to breath and to “map out” who I am and where I'm at during the moment of prayer, and I have made small commitments and realignments while doing so. So instead of wishing for all the good things from a god above I have made assessments on how to actually work my way through my challenges.

During my visits I have also come to re-address spirituality. On some of the temples/shrines I have had experiences where I have sensed the “energy” of the place – something I did a lot when I was more into spirituality and which I'm still not sure to be a genuine sensation of something present or a paranoia created in my mind. What I have noticed to be growing out of this, though, is a bitterness towards habitualized spirituality, religion and prayer.

In Japan the main religions, buddhism and shinto, are practiced mostly out of habit, and people who are actually “into” the religion are considered a little bit odd or old-fashioned, just like in the culture I grew up in. Regardless of this it is common to visit the temples/shrines at least during the big holidays to wish for a long, healthy and prosperous life – to get the blessing of the gods, you know, just in case.

I have noticed myself starting to resent the places that are really big and popular among locals and tourists, marking them as “having lost their spirit”, something that I sense to still be present in the smaller and more remote locations. I have been growing spite towards the people who walk through the temple areas snapping pictures, buying amulets, praying for their fantasies to come true – and I have not realized that I do not know what all these hundreds and thousands of people actually experience within themselves – that I have been creating and believing an unfair generalization with which I have separated myself from others in order to feel “special” because “I know” and “they don't”. I have also made “them” different from myself by not considering how the desire to ask for assistance from gods and spirits is created out of reasons that are fully comprehendible to me because I am a human being just like the others; the others are just like me in an earlier stage of time, but I would rather resent them than sympathize with them because I have not come to terms with my own fears and uncertainties.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with anger and sadness to the loss of purpose I have seen in places that have been dedicated to spirituality, which to me represents contemplation, humility, presence, meditation, gratefulness and self-awareness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with anger and sadness when a place that used to be dedicated to spirituality in the sense I understand it has become a place to buy yourself a ticket to heaven and salvation – not realizing that religion itself is founded on fear and the attempt to save oneself and that these temples/shrines I have visited have most likely never been dedicated to spirituality in the sense I understand it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to uphold an idealized image of what the spiritualized places have been in the past so that I could blame their current state on the people that I find in them today, not realizing that these places have already been founded and built on fear and greed and that the ideal I believe in may have not ever existed – and that the responsibility for their usage and status cannot be shoved onto anyone but all of us who accept and allow it to continue existing that way.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I have reacted with anger to what I have seen at the temples and shrines, to channel my anger and frustration onto the people who are present and filter my perception of them through my reaction of anger, thus creating a mind-map generalization titled [people at holy places] which contains the attributes [ignorant / lazy / self-centered], through which I have then seen everyone to be contained in this generalization and separated their actions and motivations from myself, not seeing, realizing and understanding that the reasons for their actions are such that I myself have lived according to and would still be fully capable of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to people “defiling” the places I have defined as “holy” when I have perceived and believed their motivations to be “unpure” - not realizing that I am looking at the other through my reaction of anger and thus only seeing what I want to see (separation).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe my definition of “holy places” unquestioned.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that a location anywhere in the physical reality is just a location – a place in time, space and matter – and that all other meanings, purposes and values for the place are created in the conceptual reality which is not actually concretely here in any other way than through the actions we accept and allow ourselves to commit.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that “holy places” are holy to me only because I have decided to believe so.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that while it is alright to have these “holy places” as a symbol or a reminder of the qualities I wish to develop in myself, it is self-deception to believe my interpretation and usage of these physical locations to be “the one and only truth” according to which everyone should live.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by being angry at people who utilize the “holy places” in their own ways I am demanding the world to live “my way” instead of looking at what is actually being done and whether or not it is best for all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the people at “holy places” by making myself blind to what moves them to act the way they do and to be there in the first place.

I commit myself to no longer judge the people at the “holy places” I visit - be it temples, shrines, churches or mosques – and to instead place myself in their shoes to see, realize and understand why it is they are here and what it is that moves them – and I commit myself to do this within and as the realization that these people are no different from me and are motivated by the same fear that drives me.

I commit myself to study religious and spiritual practices from within the realization that my perception of their origin has been idealized and that I do not actually know how these practices have been established.

I commit myself to carry responsibility for the consequences of the practice of religion and spirituality by not participating in practices that I see to have harmful consequences and by becoming aware of the consequences of the practices that I do attend to.