Day 395: Mapping out the experience of "falling in love"

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Type "falling in love" into google image search, and you'll see just the other side of this coin.

I have recently been walking through the energetic experience many call “falling in love”. This has been interesting, because even though I have gone through this experience many times before, I have never before had awareness of how the experience is created, and thus I have always been “swept away” by it more or less.

First off, I am frightened about this experience, because I fear it will warp my relationship to the person the energy is directed towards. My experience so far has shown that every experience of love eventually turns into an experience of hate. I have ended up resenting every person I have “fallen in love” with – and god dammit, I do not want to resent this person, or anyone at all, I really don't want to create a relationship that is doomed to become charged with underlying negativity and fall apart. To build on the experience of “love” is to bring about the polarity at some point, and it would be irresponsible of me to just ignore it and “go with the flow”.

Secondly, I am a little overwhelmed by the massive energy build-up that I've accumulated through feelings, reactions, thoughts and imaginations. I can see the thoughts and fantasies when they're here, and I have been trying to map them out to see what need it is I am fulfilling in the thought/image. I haven't been writing any of them down, and this has made it more difficult to track what's going on. During my highest energy peaks I've been trying to teach myself to channel and release the energy and direct myself according to common sense, although here lies the risk that I am suppressing myself, which is no good either.

I realize that this energy build-up has already started many years ago when I have first met this person, and that now the circumstances have simply been favourable for acting upon it – I've thought to myself that I am “finally ready” to face this person. In a way this is accurate. I've come to realize that who I've believed the other to be is not in fact who he really is, because the image I've had of him has been shattering when I have changed my positioning within our interaction into one based on self-honesty (occasionally I am still scared shitless and play along with the usual social patterns on auto-pilot). So yes, in a way I have been “ready” to see him as he is. I used to react to him with a mixture of fear and awe, but with the image of him being replaced with knowing him as a human being both the fear and the awe have vanished. This hasn't decreased my affection, quite the opposite, it has simply brought me down to earth.

Having released those reactions, the “love” aspect still remains. I can see that it's an accumulation of energy that has been triggered in reactions I've had within our interaction – many small moments of “oh!” turning into a fucking fanfare. These reactions require precise mapping, because right now they're still a blur to me.

• seeing him (wanting his presence / fear of not having his presence) –> fulfillment / unfulfillment
• touching him (wanting acceptance/attention / fear of rejection) –> gratification / disappointment
• discussing with him (wanting to succeed / fear of failure) – looking for signs of approval –> success / failure

• reacting to opportunities: when the circumstances are right, seeing a storyline that could be fulfilled –> choosing to want/resent the outcome –> creating anticipation –> blocking myself with tension

There are probably many others, but these are the most basic ones I could find based on memory. I need to start paying attention to these reactions when they occur – not to suppress them (note to self) but to know myself and to direct myself according to who I reveal myself to be. Fuck, I still have a big issue with self-suppression, because on some level I still believe that I “shouldn't feel like this” or that I most definitely shouldn't act upon any of this. Some of the guilt aspects I have worked my way through, but some remain.

I don't believe I should be too hesitant, though. I can trust myself to see what I'm doing and if nothing else, to carry responsibility for the consequences of my actions, whatever they may be. I, like many others, fear making mistakes above all, and I haven't yet solidified the fact that as well as on other fields of life one learns through trial and error, so does one learn in relationships as well. I've already done some of the major mistakes and learned a lot, so I don't think I can fuck this up that badly, lol.

Continuing with self-forgiveness and with more mapping.

Day 391: Winter depression

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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.

Day 317: SF on Day 316: Loss of direction

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I'm going through the video log from yesterday.

“my life is going well”

• what is “well”? What is my definition of a life that is “going well”?

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that one's life is “going well” when one has something meaningful and enjoyable to do, here creating a separation between a “good” life and a “bad” life, thinking that the “bad” life without meaningful and enjoyable activities is not life worth living, not realizing that if one's life does become what I have defined as “not good” (“not going well”) it is a challenge one has brought upon oneself and that it is definitely worth living through – not getting stuck into – as this, too, is LIFE as life is in every moment of breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that now that my life is “going well” (I have something meaningful and enjoyable to do) I should also feel happy.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like there's “something missing” from my experience because even though my life is “going well” I don't have that feeling of happiness and euphoria, being uplifted and excited – not realizing that I base this expectation on previous experiences in my life where my life has felt “perfect” for a while as I have both had something enjoyable to do AND I have had that feeling of happiness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the feeling of happiness is required for my life to be fulfilling, not realizing that happiness as a feeling is an outflow of who I have lived as before the happiness, that it is the polarity of the negative feelings I have felt before, and that happiness surfaces to balance out the negative in a cyclic manner when I live within the negative-positive emotional loop – and that therefore when I release that emotional cycle and no longer live within, as and according to it and instead live within and as stability, the positive feelings that I crave for (as opposed to the negative feelings that I resent) will cease to exist.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to long for the feeling of happiness because I have defined it to be an indicator of when my life is “going well” and I don't have to worry about myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that what actually indicates that I am living as LIFE and self-expression, as a being one with and equal to this reality, is stability: not being thrown around by both positive and negative feelings and emotions.*

* Not to confuse this with self-suppression, where one would be denying one's feelings and emotions and refusing to express them: a non-emotional “steel mask”. Feelings and emotions are an indicator of who we are at the moment, and thus when and as they surface they can be channeled in a non-destructive way and then, as they are out in the open for oneself, investigated and forgiven and eventually released. Stability is where emotions and feelings do not direct you, and where you do not lose sight of yourself in the middle of emotional turmoil.

I commit myself to stop to investigate any experiences of dissatisfaction that surface in me by asking myself if there is an expectation that is not being fulfilled.

I commit myself to slow down to enjoy feeling like “nothing” (no emotional experience affecting my state of being) by exploring my world as from this state movement is most effortless – or at least my boundaries are easier to detect – which is a great opportunity to expand myself.

When and as I get dissatisfied with “feeling nothing” - I stop, I breathe and I realize that I have defined a “satisfactory living” to be one where I am living within a positive emotional experience. I realize that the lack of a positive emotional experience is not a “bad thing” and that “feeling nothing” (not having a positive or a negative emotional experience) is an indicator of stability, no matter how momentary. I utilize self-forgiveness to release the dissatisfaction and I embrace the moment as described in the statement above.

--

“During [my travels] I made a lot of decisions to change my daily rhythm, my life style, and I've been living out those decisions, at least some of them. I'm still not working completely well with some of the points --.”

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself after I got home to get comfortable with not exercising as I no longer “had to” keep on moving every single day [when I traveled I carried a heavy rucksack with me and mostly walked around A LOT].

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a resistance towards physical exercise because I “had to” do so much of it during my travels.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I did not “have to” move as there was no outside force that would have actually made it compulsory for me to physically move myself, not wanting to carry responsibility for my decision to move physically (in theory I could have just staid still other than walking in and out of airplanes) as this decision caused me weariness and discomfort.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame “others” for “expecting me to move”, not realizing I was projecting my own demands and expectations for myself onto others so that I could avoid carrying responsibility for this self-expectation that wore me out.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I have created this resistance during my travels by not allowing myself enough rest to compensate for the physical and mental strain that I went through.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get attached to my home because it offers me so much comfort – soft and clean places to sit and lie in, enough entertainment to last me for the rest of my life, fun activities and hobbies, good food that I have chosen to supply myself with – not realizing that by creating a desire to stay home and be as comfortable as possible I limit my life extensively as outside of my walls there is an entire world of people and places to explore.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to narrow my physical comfort zone down to my apartment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist going out for walks without a destination.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist going out to meet people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist exercising (full yoga routine, jogging, dancing).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist practicing violin and piano playing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist singing practice.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist making music.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give in to my resistance and desire for comfort by giving up when I “don't feel like doing it”.

I commit myself to step by step work my way out of my comfort zone by not demanding everything of myself at once but utilizing the moments that I see to start out with something small from which I can expand through consistent practice.

• with yoga: do a little each morning before breakfast and grow the amount weekly
• with meeting friends: meet at least one friend a week other than in school or at work
• with outdoors exercise: have at least one aimless walking trip per one week
• with music: have at least one practice session per week, be it any instrument or form of music
• with singing: sing at least one song a day

I commit myself to have mercy on myself so that I will not demand too much of myself – yet, I commit myself to hold on to the list above as I see, realize and understand that doing at least this small amount per week/day will activate me.

I commit myself to make a timetable for these activities if necessary to support myself to actually push through the resistance and get moving.