638. A Redefined Spirituality

 

 The following is inspired by the writings of a life  colleague –  as I am now deciding to define him – who shared a lengthy letter to me as a response to something that I wrote him in an intent to assist in seeing the blueprint of the points that I consider were veiling him from seeing through the steps to get back into an ownership of his self creation and self awareness,  which he has walked in his very own set of paths of ways – but interestingly enough, we have found each other having the same intent and purpose in our lives which we will be joining in an common project where we can share more of our personal experiences and processes with many more that might find themselves in the same kind of ‘holes’ in our creative processes that we have both acknowledged having been limited by in our creative paths of inner and outer creations.  

To give some context to this self forgiveness, this is a reflection of what I see of myself in his words and speaks to anyone that can identify themselves with being ‘a seeker’ or someone that seeks meaning to one’s own existence, to one’s own creation in many ways and paths and if not getting to live their potential, it becomes a source of emotional and detrimental experiences such as falling generally ‘ill’ in the form of lacking direction and purpose, being stagnant in expression, losing sight of the ‘bigger picture’ in life, being veiled by emotions such as dread, depression, sadness, despair and in a way blaming everyone else that doesn’t seem to care for life and the world as oneself as the source for our own apathy and frustration, not realizing we are ‘it’ ourselves too in living out that character of disempowerment and helplessness and victimization.

 To sum up, it reminded me a lot of the path that I’ve also walked and that it’s still part of me and I have not forgotten it, I just have in a way stepped out of the cocoon and see things quite differently now, but it is as if I am embarking myself in this new project and walking with him in this project in this phase of my life because our will was mightier than the limitations that we many times fell into, and I’m genuinely glad and happy to see him slowly but surely realizing these things and taking on his creative path again, which I recognize that I have to do myself in my own self imposed limitations as well, and it’s great to have someone to walk such path with, someone that understands the seemingly ‘similar’ kind of patterns that some of us ‘creative’ people go through, but many often give up half way and get lost in the midst of ‘the fog’ and don’t persevere enough to see through the illusions to remain ‘with the finger in line’ as he says, living one’s expression and will, despite the nature of everything and everyone around us as it currently exists, but being courageous enough to understand things at a deeper level and hold that little flame alive within us no matter what, and let each other know ‘hey I am here, I understand, I walk with, let’s work together’ which is quite priceless and unique to find seemingly ‘out of nowhere’ and here is to say as well that coincidences don’t exist, only what we determine ourselves to be and do which eventually takes us to where we need to be to fulfill that which we set ourselves to live.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to keep quiet and wait for someone else to make the decisions of what I should be and do and within that, diminishing bit by bit my determination to express and take responsibility for the decisions that I make and what I live in my life, which I realize diminished my ability to live me and bit by bit dried the flow of the abundant river that I have always been aware exists as me, as the life that I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to neglect myself into experiences of despair and arguing for my limitations in neglect cultivating my own confidence and stance that has always been here as myself, it just got clouded by the emotions that became the comfortable way to justify not living the potential of who I really am as life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make of my mind my own obstacle that created shame, anger, despair, uncertainty and sadness which I realize is the way in which I now realize are the ingredients to create resistance,  which my mind creates in greed of energy and in allowing that, I stepped further and further away from actually getting to do what I know and have always been aware of is the truth of my being, what I can and need to direct myself to be, live and express.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a comfort zone in remaining skeptical and not want to intervene in my own life in order to not have to take responsibility for myself, not realizing that this seemingly ‘comfortable zone’ led me to sink deeper in a hole where I alienated myself from my own wholeness, from my own power as the capacity to direct myself, to intervene in my own life, to decide to change if something wasn’t working anymore, to innovate in the way that I can decide to live me and within that acknowledging the work, dedication, consistency and will that it will require to create and live myself as the best that I can be. That’s what self-creation is all about.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be-lie-ve the statement ‘nothing really matters’ as a way to avoid myself in taking action in all the things that I knew I had to take action on in my life to be and become the better version of myself.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have been in great thirst of knowledge and information in an attempt to find a way to change the way that I am and how I see and understand life, not realizing how I only inflated my mind with it, but I wasn’t really learning and applying how to really nurture my soul and being in the daily actions, words and habits that I realize I have to take action on in order to live the best of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deliberately over complicate myself with theories, ideas, beliefs and philosophies which I realize may assist in our paths, but can also create new excuses where we miss out the common sense that always exists within ourselves, we just have to decide to let go of wanting to ‘seek out there’ and instead start getting to ‘what’s inside of me’ and write myself to see who I really am, what I really want to do, defining my purpose, defining my drive and take the first steps to do so in my reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I know many things but not really getting to understand the steps, the process it takes to interiorize, to integrate, to live the awareness of the things I realized in my life. I realize it takes actual change, work and effort to live the words that I get through realizations.

I forgive myself that I had not accepted and allowed myself to realize how ‘realizing’ and understanding something invariably leads to the next step which is to take action on it, to not only be infatuated in an enlightening idea or momentary experience, but to embrace and direct that impetus to create the actual change in space and time and take the necessary steps to do so in order to honor the path that took me to get to realize, see and understand what I now see, realize and understand.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allow myself to define me and allow myself to be dictated by the construct and concept of time, by the illusion of having to remain ‘current’ according to that abstraction which time is – which we have created in means to control ourselves. I realize we create time, we decide how we live time in this reality, but I no longer allow myself to be dictated by it and what I should feel or experience according to the idea I have around it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to isolate myself in a bottle of complexities where I believed no one else cared, no one would understand or listen and in that, miss out the many opportunities to connect , share and get to know others, because of becoming my own living judgment of seeing everything as ‘lost and pointless’ and not seeing that in doing so, I wasn’t getting anywhere else but became more detached from myself, from my own reality and from getting to understand ‘the other’ as myself too.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become lazy and apathetic to continue discovering the wonders of who we are and can be and become, and instead to become sad at the apathy I saw in others, not realizing that in doing so, I became equal to what I was only seeing in them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become the epitome of hope in despair, where I gave myself up in the wait for something or someone else to show me the way, to tell me what to do and not take responsibility to be my own director, my own guide, my own master that is self-created – not following, not taught, but simply learning from others’ experiences and making them my own by testing them out to see if they work or not.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use the idea of lack as an excuse and as a determining factor of my being where I placed myself into a survival mode  that turned me into a selfish and ruthless being, becoming fearful, anxious and angry at myself for knowing that this ‘lack’ is entirely self created and that no one else is doing this to myself, but me.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not give me the gift of Understanding another, because I realize that I can’t hate another if I understand how we all have created this in separation of who we really are as life. I now realize that Understanding is one of the most profound and liberating gifts we can give to ourselves.

I forgive myself as everyone else in our weaknesses and fractured beingness because as big as the weaknesses and fractures are, these cannot override the virtues that we actually are and can develop as the new nature of our being. This is self-creation, it is not born from perfection, but from the decision to overcome the complexities, the falls, the mistakes, the wrongdoings, the self-neglect.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to neglect the dedication it requires to get to understand how we function in our minds and our being, because that in itself reveals our truth and as such, it becomes the most useful thing to do and dedicate our lives to cultivate.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not continue cultivating my own understanding to direct and create my own healing process and within that, cultivate my own self-awareness,  to no longer be defined and limited by survival in this world as a justification to not live the wholeness of myself in  my day to day and in every moment of breath.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to redefine spirituality as a sincere and grounded way to define and create my own being, to create the habits and methods to continue developing my self-awareness in every moment of my existence, to be in contact with my being, my body and to create an awareness of the effect that my thoughts, words and deeds create in my reality. I realize I can do this without the need of crystalized dogmas and instead can be lived by a simple and consistent dedication in developing these supportive habits of being in contact with myself and taking full ownership of my capacity to define, reinvent, innovate and reconstruct myself, because no one else can do this for me, but myself.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live determination and do the hard work that it takes to live this process of creating my own life and self awareness, because I realize it requires courage and determination and I believed myself to be devoid of these. Now I realize we all have what is needed, that we all can live these words and that’s the living faith in which I decide to live in, to be the driving force of my capacity, will and determination to do that which I know and realize are the building blocks to the creation of who I really want to be as the expression of the wholeness that I go creating and expressing in my life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself for having been ashamed in being the one that is not following the same path as everyone else, but instead decided  to swim against the flow, going into the opposite direction while everyone seemed to not care or see where they are being led to.  Now I realize, see and understand that this very will, determination and decision to keep going ‘against all odds’ got me to where I am today, where I now open my eyes to see that there is no shame at all in living my own truth even if no one seemed to care or understand, because it’s not about others but about my own decision to live me, to express that care, that love which is sufficient to live the truth of who I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up many times in the many creative ways that I pursued at some point in my life, not realizing that I can work things, that I can implement changes and innovate in my life to keep that living flame alive even if it only seems to lighten up my own face. I realize that this is what living me and expressing me means, to do it because of myself and for nothing and no one else other than the expression of the potential that is unleashed when one decides to live unconditionally.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to regret the perceived’ wasted time’ when I neglected the essentially creative capacity that I am and that I have. I now realize that such ‘wasted time’ was part of the process and the many roads that have led me to be and become who I am here, that I can start where I am – in every moment, in every new breath – and to realize that in any moment, I can only be the one that drives me or becomes my own worst-enemy and limitation to do this as an expression of myself.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to realize that frustration is a symptom of the incomprehension of my own self movement, and that stagnation is no more than the nature of all sickness that manifests when I don’t allow myself to flow and be the water that flows, that reclaims its natural will to express, to flow, to be, to adapt, to move and embody the realization that its movement never ceases, because I’m not defined by a measure of time – I embrace the creation of the potential that I decide to live and cultivate as the everlasting self that always remains here, just like the water in the world.

I forgive myself for living out my weaknesses and for allowing them to affect others in their own lives. I now decide to work on the changes, the habits, the actions that will turn them into actual strengths.

I realize that I can only get through in my life if I place my own faith back on myself as the recognition of my capacity to change my reality and the outcome of my life through the work that I can dedicate myself to do every day in order to honor the wholeness of my being, to no longer be trapped in the experience of lack and all its unfulfilled concepts that I had allowed myself to believe and be enslaved by.

I now take ownership of my own discipline and self-creation moved by the love that I realize I can express in my work and the enjoyment that I imprint on it and on myself in doing so.  I commit myself to become the author and creator of all of this that celebrates the manifestation of what and who I realize I really am at a fundamental and existential level as life itself.

I understand and realize that time is only a measure of earthly oxidation, however even if I deteriorate, it does not define my stance and who I am as I keep my finger at it, becoming and living the drive that has got me to where I am here today, because no matter what: I remain current.

I decide to trust myself in my decisions, my actions, the paths that I decide to walk, embrace the ups and downs it may entail because I decide to trust myself in being able to learn from it and expand my expression through that, because I realize that that’s what living life is all about.

 

 

 

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620. My perspective about Politics and Self Change

 

There’s been a series of audios that I recommend everyone to listen to if you find yourself focusing too much on the idea of political change and feeling disgraceful about the state of affairs that is unleashing everyday around us – or dare I say – that we decide to become aware of through our media, through learning to really observe the lives of those around us and in doing so deciding to really become aware of their lives, the suffering, the problems, the neglect, the corruption… and the list goes on.

Sure, it’s all of those things that make us cringe but it’s definitely possible to get past the reactive state into a more proactive and self-aware way to interact with the reality around us: our creation. So these EQAFE audios are of great support for this:

Attracting Consequence vs Creating Change – The Future of Awareness – Part 103
Political Fighting versus Political Change – Future of Awareness – Part 104

What is the Use if Change is Impossible – The Future of Awareness – Part 105

How Can We Be the Future if There is no Future? – Future of Awareness – Part 106

Can’t Look Away from the Horrors of Reality – Quantum Mind Self Awareness

For anyone that has followed this blog and my process within the involvement in an intent to create political change, you may know that I became very vocal and passionate about promoting ways and solutions that at the time I saw as the only way through, a viable solution to stop the suffering, to save the world, to kind of say ‘let’s stop the madness right now, we can create a solution!’ But over the past 2 years I’ve become more and more solid in my realization which matches the explanation to the T of what is shared in the Eqafe recordings I listed above – which are an excellent presentation and walk through to confront this same point within yourself – which is about realizing that we need to stop focusing on wanting to impose a change in the current political and social systems, to understand them instead as a consequence that we are facing, while holding on to – and I’d say grounding oneself in – the realization that even if one is living in the ‘worst’ possible scenario, it is still possible to give birth to the life within self, it is definitely necessary to realize that any form of change cannot – and dare I say must not – be waited on and hoped for on the outside without one doing the necessary SELF work for it.

As I write this, I know I have shared my realization about this before and here I refer to that one blog written 2 years ago that I will continue to refer to where I disclose more of my ‘field work’ on this realization, which becomes more and more clear and cemented as a foundation for me to stand on and changing myself, because I was a person with great propensity to be constantly worrying and depressing about the state of affairs in the world. Seriously, most of the times my life would be alright but simply by living in the country I live in, it became obvious that life wasn’t ‘alright’ and that nothing was as good as it seemed at home when I stepped outside of it. This became a sort of emotional burden, a burden in my spirit if you will because I constantly felt sad, disempowered, hopeless, helpless – and yes early on in life as a teenager I would rant and rage against ‘the machine’ – which are all points that I learned to change and understand through walking the Desteni I Process and my relationship to the world system, to this state of affairs that is in a way – as I’ve learned to understand and see it – a necessary ‘ill’ for us to wake up from what we have accepted and allowed without a question for our entire history in existence.  That has assisted me to stop blaming and instead take responsibility for myself. This didn’t change in one go, it’s taken years to repeat this to myself and allow it to sink in in order to actually act differently while continuing to live in the same world.

On the other hand, I was very much within the idea that I had to become politically involved to create a point of change. I’ve already shared how within doing that at a level of research and within getting in contact with people that are involved in associations and institutions or just groups with a similar intent to create changes in the world system, I found that as much as the intent was great and geared to something good, I found there was a lot of blame, finger pointing at ‘elites’ or those believed to be handling the system, a sort of a seemingly ‘beneficent’ vengefulness that would create ‘justice’ in the world. I found that the same human nature that we have not dared to accept that we have to change became the same problem even within organizations geared to this kind of social change. That became a very important learning point for me: the change genuinely has to first be walked through within self – maybe simultaneously if you are already involved in those associations and groups – but it just cannot be neglected, or we will simply recreate the same problems of the past, because it’s us that have created it, not the institutions, the state or ‘the system’ in itself. We are IT.

Now, the recordings I mention relate to a situation where even if one is involved in politics, it all seems too pointless or without a way out and within that becoming somewhat discouraged to keep going. The audio describes the rest of the points to face and walk through quite well but here I want to add something else that has assisted me to keep facing these points, aside from what I’ve already shared in yesterday’s group chat where these points opened up.

Something I’ve learned to let go of is the desire to see ‘change’ in this lifetime, and this I’ve also learned through the Eqafe recordings that I get to hear on a daily basis for the betterment of my understanding about myself, my mind, my life and how I can decide to live and create myself, for the better. So this means that I had to let go of desiring a certain outcome or result from ‘me’ participating in this process of developing and establishing my own awareness and my own direction for the betterment of my own life and consequently of what surrounds me/us. What I could see is that many people are in that position of wanting to just give up because of seeing problems just being ‘too much’ and it all becoming ‘crazier’ by the hour. I now see it as part of the unraveling of the old that needs to go in order for the new to grow. I know it’s not a ride in the park, it is difficult, it is disheartening, it affects us personally, but even that I now see as a necessary ‘pain’ for our very necessary growth.

What works for me is to not focus on the ‘effect’ or ‘reach’ of what I do and having that constant intent to ‘change others’ or ‘change the world’ or ‘save the world’ – which were expressions that I embodied for a long, long time in my life, which left me feeling more helpless and disheartened, because! I could not ‘do it’ by myself, lol. It’s funny how we burden ourselves with ‘the world’ as if it was only US that had to save it… nope, not going to happen like that at all. But I was so infatuated with the idea that I – me- had to take certain position or take charge of something ‘big’ in the world to change and turn the tables that it became this drive to achieve something that I wasn’t realistically going to do in my life at the time. I was following an idea of what I could do that felt good – and sure it wasn’t all bad, learned lots and promoted certain principles as well – but the reality is that in the meantime, I neglected a LOT of things about my personal life that I am currently facing the consequences of, not cool either, but again a very necessary process to see where I ‘took off’ and elevated my feet from the ground, of my life, what I have to do and can do to first of all get myself on my two feet in stability in all aspects within this reality, instead of already wanting to ‘live’ in the ‘perfected and changed world’ in the future.

Well, that’s been the learning process for me and in a way – at times painfully, yes -seeing how I distracted – purposely dare I say – from me, my process, my own introspection and directly seeing what I had to do, change, move on to with myself and my life, my career and projects – because it became in a way easier or more comfortable to be constantly focused, concerned and worried on all things ‘outside’ of myself. Again, not all wasted because I learned lots about the systems, society, the ways in which we’ve shaped our lives – but at the same time I also remained in a state of hoping that such change – especially financially and economic changes – could then benefit me and so I would not have to go through the usual ways to make money in the system… well that is definitely not going to happen and I have to step up in really making sure that I can first be best for myself, take responsibility for myself, instead of hoping for a change out there, which is most likely not going to happen in my lifetime – and that’s OK.

The other vital point here is that I’ve learned to do things by principle, not by the ‘result’ I may see. This is easy to say but it’s harder to remind myself of it because from time to time, this same ‘hopelessness’ rears its head about the belief that what I do in the seemingly ‘trivial’ things in my life have ‘no impact’ whatsoever in bettering anything or anyone. Instead of realizing that this is precisely where I need to focus and work on, to develop that self-respect, integrity, passion, dedication, discipline, care and consideration first for my own person. I can now look back and be honest about the fact that I wasn’t at ‘my best’ when preaching about world change, but it felt good to communicate such principles or turn it into a higher purpose, which without a doubt served a role and a function that got me out of my sunken reality of hopelessness, doom and gloom about reality.  However, such passionate intent wasn’t matching the life that I was living in its totality – nor is it now really, but I am on the way to take care of that as well, as we all are.

So, this means that even if one is deciding to get involved in politics or any other group or association that is geared to create changes in the world system or in your community, the point is to do it as an expression and an extension of what you’ve done first for yourself – or simultaneously doing so, if you find it’s easier to ignite that passion to get yourself moving when it involves doing something for others/something outside of yourself. It doesn’t matter where or how that inner fire is ignited, but what is of primary importance is to not lose sight of oneself, especially of the emotions like discouragement, hopelessness and victimization – or even vengefulness – that may emerge as one decides to get more involved, more aware and participative in any effort to create awareness and so change in the world systems. What has worked for me is to focus on the principle, on the actual matter that I am to create an impact upon myself and express that, externalize that through what I speak, do and share.

For example, this means that even if I decided to take on a position in politics at some point, I would do so if I could guarantee that my life would not be in danger, which at the moment is just not an option in the country I live in – not even being a journalist that reports ‘truth’ is safe, so I rather just not risk myself with that and continue focusing on what I can, what is at my reach here: my own life, my own wellbeing, my relationships, my family, the people I support within this process, the work that I do, the words, the actions, the expressions that any person may come in contact with coming from me: that’s the current impact I have and that’s my current ‘enough’ based on the conditions and situation I live in.  This is another great point that was outlined in that interview, defining what is Enough in self-honesty, what one can honestly do without compromising our own wellbeing, because then we’d stop being ‘the best for ourselves’ and end up just becoming another sort of ‘savior’ that intends to create ‘change’ out there, but within self all is chaotic and problematic and reactive and enacting angry and irresponsible behaviors with a sense of ‘doing good’ – which now I understand are the very reactions that I needed to work on and change within me.

One of the key points then for me was to leave the notion aside of having to do something that is ‘out there’ at ‘the eyes of others’ and to become something ‘relevant’ at the level that I see other people are doing in the system. That’s me – myself – if anyone is at that position, that’s great and I’d say it is also specific that some can do that, but for now I keep track of what goes on in the world, continuing to strengthen my understanding and within that my resolve to focus on myself, my own self-education about how we got to where we are in creating the problems and within that learning to see the solutions that would be possible within a longer period of time with my generation and the many generations to come.

To me it is currently more relevant to ensure I am no longer placing a pressure within myself to want to have ‘some impact’ out there, stressing about world problems and instead learning to do the seemingly ‘insignificant’ things that are actually part of taking care of myself, my health, my relationships and no longer see all of it as mere things to ‘get past’ to get to the ‘meat’ of life such as having an important political position and such to genuinely ‘change the world’ or feel like I finally am ‘making it.’ Nope, now I understand that those seemingly ‘insignificant’ things are the gist of what change means, by continuing to create habits, relationships, ways of being and expression that represent the potential that I see in myself as the life that I am and that I would like to see in the world out there.

This is what is the real challenge for me, to not become overshadowed by being drowned in the sea of consequences, but by staying afloat – and why not, at times walking on water so to speak – when it comes to understanding consequences, realizing them and living the solutions within my life and my context that would sort the ‘major’ problems out there if more would stand up and do the same.

I must say that having this ‘standard’ in life in how I now see it has led me to align with people that see the same and live the same principles, which is somewhat difficult to find but at the same time, I now dare to say ‘that’s not entirely so!’ because I’m seeing a lot of people ‘waking up’ to these principles of self responsibility and first learning to care for ourselves, our lives, our environment instead of being distracted with various ‘social causes’ that may lead to more fighting, confrontations, conflict, division, protests, media frenzies and general divide and conquer tactics that a lot of people have become blind to because of holding to a very narrow view of the world and their role in it.

So, all I can say is that I am slowly but surely regaining the sense of strength of who I am and what I can see my potential is – no matter what I do or where I am – because of understanding that I cannot be affected by what I see around, I cannot be discouraged by seeing the very necessary destruction of dinosaur institutions and old consequential ways of coexisting that are slowly but surely starting to change at the individual level.

Therefore I keep pushing at this level of change: focusing on myself – and realizing this is NOT selfishness, but it is now very obvious and clear that if I am not the best, I cannot dare to actually utter any form of solution or attempt of change ‘for the world’ if I haven’t yet honored myself enough to embody these words as who I am in every aspect of my life. That to me is real respect for life as well, to not only parrot words or feel good about apparently doing something ‘good’ for others – but to genuinely get to live that, embody and substantiate my life with that and therefore do it as an extension of what I have lived and done for myself first.

I focus on the matter, the things that are at hand for now, I ensure I can stand on my own two feet and keep the flame ignited of the life that I know I am able to live and enjoy, so that as I keep walking, I can open up opportunities and ways to continue expanding this process of creation of life, even in the midst of the rubble, because what matters is again who I am in those moments, not the ‘effect’ I can visibly see. This is then my principle, where I don’t allow myself to get discouraged by the news or what I see outside of my house, but use those as reminders of how I definitely need to keep standing and keep being that living best for myself, because that’s what I can do at the moment. And interestingly enough, without being too optimistic, interesting things happen when one starts seeing the world differently, as the potential it can be instead of being ‘sunk’ into this depressed state of ‘all is fucked, there’s no hope’ which was my ‘usual’ state of being before.

This is good enough for me at the moment and to me this is what I have to keep learning to integrate as a reminder of what I want to contribute to this world and how eventually we could all contribute to create if each one lives this best for themselves. This is what sounds very realistic, from generation to generation, to keep planting and growing, as long as it is needed – doesn’t matter – because what matters is who I am in the moment, in every day.

Thanks for reading.

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own self-discovery:

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• Susan Spies – The Physical And I Exploring the Innerverse

• Get Real with Cerise

• Destonians

• Desteni I Process

• Agreement/Redefining Relationship Course

• Desteni Forum : Discuss and share with us

• Desteni Español

• Creation’s Journey to Life

617. To Be A Part Of

 

Sharing about developing empathy and nurturing my life experience in my community.

I had quite a shift during my day yesterday where I consider I finally understood what was missing in my life experience before, wherein I used to be very ‘utilitarian’ in a sense and judge things based on them being useful for something tangible or not and within this, write off a lot of experiences that had to do with what I judged as a waste of time like getting together in a concert to presence live music, or going to the movies, or seeing a play, or attending a conference about some kind of creative process.

I actually considered that the ‘click’ of realizing this emerged yesterday with a series of small moments of contact and connection with people that renewed this understanding that I’ve actually been expanding on throughout this first half of the year for the most part and getting to genuinely enjoy my human experience – at last – lol.

If anyone has a recollection of me, I defined myself as a Grinch, the person that hates family reunions, large crowds, having to ‘deal with people,’ would rather be alone and isolated from everything that didn’t just ‘make sense’ or ‘agreed’ with how I view things or would be zero productive in a utilitarian sense. I stopped watching anything entertaining and only focused on sucking all kinds of information I could and placed myself in a higher ground where I believed that ‘everyone else that seemed to be enjoying their life were fools and disingenuous about reality.’ Well, the joke was on me, because I truly got bitter and lifeless to say the least, and it was only through a decision to challenge this ‘me’ mindset that I’ve been – slowly but surely – cracking open from that hardened shell.

Now, this is something that I would not have been able to do alone at all. Yes, I had to make the decision to – as they say – put myself out there and actually give myself the time to stop moving from ‘task to task’ for a moment and give myself some time to stop and ‘smell the roses’ so to speak. For example, I’m so used to taking a walk everyday for over a decade now, and I had the phases where I’d do something ‘productive’ in it like taking pictures and videos and so forth – then It was just me walking, going to get things somewhere and come back, have the least contact with people throughout that and be quite generally ‘lacking’ something in my life in doing that,  yet being very disciplined about it and believing I was achieving some form of self mastery in doing so.

Well, from the past year I decided to not only do the walk but actually use the time to also get to interact with others and actually establish relationships through that. It all started with opening up to enjoying listening to music in the street and standing there enough time where I’m not in my usual ‘rush’ of having to leave the place or having this race against time, but genuinely set myself to enjoy observing ‘life passing by’ which is something I had avoided doing – again – within the mindset of: ‘Oh this is just a waste of time, no one is getting anything out of it, I’m not getting anything done’ etc. But over time, I realized that it was through that sort of dedication and openness that I got to connect more with people in my environment and stopped seeing it only as a nice ‘background’ or ‘scenario’ to look at or walk by, and instead I decided to be more a part of it all, to actually stop seeing myself as an outsider, as someone that will most likely ‘leave at any time from here’ and actually grow some roots as I heard someone in a documentary I watched yesterday say.

Man, it’s been such a change and I don’t mean to turn my bleak view on the world into a suddenly rosy everything is fine now mindset, nope, because in actually getting to create relationships with people, getting to know more about their lives and relationships, one does realize a lot of messed up things going on, which have also opened up my eyes tremendously to realize how much I was sort of deluded into just blabbering these higher than life principles but in reality there was no actual decision from me to create an actual Empathy with people, to actually connect, to actually step out of my misanthropy and get to really connect and decide to care about others. That’s the change that I’ve been working on and has definitely changed my life experience in quite a significant way and I’m only starting with this.

How did I got to this? By deciding to grow roots, to finally settle in and ‘go out there’, and instead be more present, be more HERE which I thought I was doing by keeping myself in a semi-monkish way with little to not distractions and very few interactions that I could be perturbed by. I avoided people, that’s the reality – and now it’s sort of the other way around and it’s not a 100% change, but  I definitely now push through to show up to meetings and places and family reunions that I would usually talk myself out of, giving myself certain excuses like being able to use the time for something ‘more productive’ apparently.

Looking back, I can see all the many things that I cut myself off from, like cousins that had kids and I wasn’t there at all when they were baptized or born or had their first birthdays, I always said no to any of it. Now that I’ve been rekindling those relationships, there is a bit of sadness about having missed out on all of that growth and now I see them with 12, 18, 5 years old and missed out on all of their initial developmental phases, including that of my direct nephew and niece because I was in such mindset of detaching myself from everything and everyone and believing that way I would not ‘be hurt’ if I had to leave this place that I live in. I deliberately created detachment to things and that definitely wasn’t the way… and yes, I’ve also gone through the route of being resentful to myself for making such decisions, looking back at ‘all that I didn’t do’ or that ‘could have been different,’ but, at the same time I’ve deliberately decided to not beat myself up for it, to make peace with it because that was me back then, having a very rigid mindset going on about my life and what I should do and how I should think, and yes I deliberately separated myself a lot from virtually everything around me, I was like an alien living where I am but not really TRULY seeing myself as a part of it all, I was just like an observer, a temporary observer. Of course this may sound like I didn’t connect ‘at all’ with people, I remember having had equally enjoyable time when being in art school, but once that was done, I did isolate myself quite a bit.

How did I come to open this up today at last? I was listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast, which is something I’ve been listening to for several months now and I’ve genuinely nurtured myself from it because I find that it is through people’s lives and experiences, the challenges they create for themselves that they create successful and enjoyable lives that do not come easy, they come with hardship, but see the benefit and satisfaction in doing so. So, yesterday’s podcast was about a guy that went to live with a certain kind of monks – not Buddhists – for 15 days and the stuff he gathered from it, and as I was listening to his description of how the monks lived, I realized that for quite a few years I lived like that, I’d like to say these past 7 or more years I sort of did that kind of detachment and unwavering discipline for certain things where one is living in the world and believing one is cultivating certain things – which yes I probably did – but are not really going ‘out there’ and really being a part of the world. I did this detachment for several years and I didn’t have to only go and live somewhere else in a similar seclusion for a year to do that as part of this process, but I sort of continued living that way even when coming back and I consider that was entirely my comfort zone and – still is in many ways – to not challenge myself further, even if I know that doing so is the most supportive thing to do.

Here I want to leave things clear that no one told me to do this but myself, that’s how I saw ‘the way’ to become a better person in this world, by not participating in a lot of what I considered useless, a waste of time, harmful, pointless, brainless, etc. And with that, I lost touch with actually being in reality and being able to enjoy and savor the various seemingly ‘meaningless’ living experiences.

I have to say that I actually have benefitted a lot from the various years I’ve spent going to documentary festivals now, like Ambulante festival here in Mexico, it was through that that I got back to seeing how people are living in the country I live in, the things that are unfortunately going on around me and that I was fully oblivious of, because I was focusing more on expecting some kind of world-reset-overnight-change in the economic and political level and a somehow miraculous ‘saving’ grace for this world to the point where I wasn’t concerned or rather interested at all in what was happening at a local level. It was through the documentaries and actually showing up to the screenings that I started getting ‘in touch’ with people in my community, it was a matter of deciding to care and push through the idea that it was pointless, that it was just entertainment and not judge it as that, and place myself there, learn to watch/hear/see the stories and kind of allow the idea to sink in that this that I am watching is not just some fictional story for entertainment, these are people’s lives.

It’s been such a nurturing process and it has assisted me a lot to finally develop that care, consideration, empathy and – god I will dare to say – affection for people. I never thought I would say that! Lol ‘so out of character’ and sure it damn is! It is as if the center of my being is finally ‘opening up’ in reality, not at an intellectual level in which ‘I thought’ that I cared about people and life on earth…. Seriously? By me having this constant ‘fighting’ mode and bitterness from the moment I’d step out of my home?   No way, how could I have in fact been ‘best for all’ with that sort of misanthropy exuding from my pores? Nope, yet I thought I was the most caring and self aware person walking on the streets…

This is what I was chatting about with my partner today, how much I have benefitted from art or artistic expressions actually, specifically documentaries and going to screenings and start getting to know of my community, and start seeing people that are presenting their work and realize I know them from another contact and getting to see their work and what their interests are and their different views on life and things… it has assisted me a lot to slowly but surely be stepping out of this rigid mentality where I thought that ‘everyone has to be like me’ or ‘think the same way I do’ because ‘it makes sense and it’s best for all,’ and instead, realize it’s about me being open to the myriad of living-ways that each human being represents, each one has got fascinating stories to tell in their own way, their own struggles and motivations to live and with their own purpose. I am now definitely interested in getting to know them, and savor it, and enjoy it.

This is me here writing it out at last, but this has been an accumulation process of several years now, like 3 at least where I noticed that I decided to step out of this ‘Grinch’ mode and started opening up to few things here and there and currently I am a lot more settled into this ‘newly’ found enjoyment and interest in being a part of a community, which I just didn’t care at all to do before.

Yesterday I got to confirm and kind of finally realized why I started being so drawn to these activities like going to watch documentaries or certain live acts downtown and through that developing a kinship to people that are more involved with this kind of activities, people that I had always just ‘passed by’ that I am now deciding to actually talk to and get to know and possibly collaborate with. I went to this short film festival from locals and it is so out of character for me to say this, but it was heart-warming to see some of the youngsters share their story of why they got to do certain works like an animation – which I personally didn’t ‘get’ much – but I got a lot more from seeing the nervous-stricken guy tell the story about his dad leaving home to do some PHD and having certain legos left with him that he got kind of an obsession with and developing an entire animation with them which surely must have been a LOT of work to do, but it was a way for him to deal with that sort of situation of how he lives his life, his own ‘isolation’ if you will and how genuinely happy  – to the brink of tears – he was to be able to show his work, his many hours of production to the people in his community, to his co-citizens, as he called us and at that emblematic place that is built for that kind of local reunion to watch certain acts live – music, theatre, movies, etc.  His words were a way to finally ‘put words’ to the reason why I also showed up, it is a form of care and interesting in other humans and their lives and creations.

Lol, I kind of finally ‘got’ why art is relevant. I laugh because I ‘studied’ it and practice it, but I had not truly given words to the reason ‘why’ it is relevant.  And this I also got from listening to someone in a podcast or so say that we need kids in this world, newborns, that will grow up to be the next inventors, the next artists that enrich our living experience – and that hit a core right there. See, I had no ‘clear’ idea why I would like doing art, or watching movies now on a regular basis as part of my time with my partner and going out to be a part of a communal show like it is to go to the movies, or going to the documentary festivals which I also very much enjoy as those activities that have genuinely made my life better, building myself as a part of the world through these activities. Showing up to all of these is a statement of ‘hey I’m here, I want to commune-icate with you, you are part of my community, we’re all here, let’s connect and support each other’ which to me, is becoming ‘the’ thing that moves me and drives me in my life: developing these relationships and connections with others.

This is quite a big change because I like being productive, there’s no way around it, I ‘dwindle’ if I just place myself in non-action consuming only information or watching something and not ‘doing’ something at the same time, which is why going to the movies is almost a requirement for me to watch something and be still, and it also forces me to go out, to meet with others, to be ‘part’ of a community for a moment, even if I don’t get to speak with the rest of the attendants, I’m there, we’re there and sharing a moment.

I guess that’s what it also boils down to. I was so glad to arrive yesterday to downtown’s theatre and see this long queue of people waiting to come in to watch these 4 short films made by locals. Sure, it could have been that each one of them invited all of their friends and family, but so what! It was such a nice thing to witness and again, be a part of, where I decided to make that time of my day to meet up with these other hundreds of people, fill out an entire auditorium to watch these emerging film makers that share the same city with us. It certainly isn’t the same as watching foreign films, because these are people around you, growing in the same culture, moving through the same spaces and seeing that on film kind of creates a form of bond that I had completely disregarded as ‘pointless’ or a ‘mind thing’ before.

I’ve talked about how I realized the actual care and enjoyment of people around me nowadays and how I went from hating crowds to enjoying the moment of standing in a crowd and watching musicians play, or being sitting around many that are there watching documentaries, and enjoying their laughter and their sadness which at times comes with watching these stories and knowing that we all got that experience right there to stay with us. And that’s – I guess – the power and purpose of the art sharing experience, or simply sharing experiences through film, music, seeing some visual art… but even more so, I get to enjoy hearing the voices behind those creations, that to me is essential nowadays. Yesterday I got to see that as well how some of the things that I watched were just ‘meh’ or not ‘my style’ but hearing the story behind it, about the connections they had to create to have it done, the challenges, the dedication, the effort, the resources pulled for it, that definitely became interesting and inspiring as well.

I was also very much touched by a guy that told his story of how he initially started his documentary wanting to share about how much he loathed his family – lol – because of a treason situation his uncle did, but through making the documentary and getting to know his friends’ stories about their relationship to their family, he realized that his initial premise for the documentary was going to be shitty and not inspiring at all. So through the making process, he literally said it was an act of forgiveness and him realizing the importance of family even if one feels like the ‘odd one out’ which I very much could relate to, so this documentary definitely spoke to me quite a bit because I had been so reluctant about family, family gatherings and such and it is only now throughout these past months that I’ve come to enjoy it and cherish it for what they are and represent, and this documentary also made me realize there’s plenty of people that felt like me, some that are still in that detachment phase – which seems to be related to being a young adult – and others that accept and have come to make peace with the variety of characters that a family represents yet, sticking together for the network of support and community that it is.

It was very cool for me to see this in the shape of several stories linked with this common denominator, somehow seeing people from your same city talking about these things turns a moment into an enriching experience where I felt a little more ‘connected’ to everyone around me and within that, taking one further step out of my bubble. Even with hearing another person next to me laugh at the same situation I could personally relate to from the documentary, became an ‘Ah! I’m not alone!’ type of realization, even if it is very obvious that we live in a city with lots of people and we barely communicate to each other – yet, it is in this kind of gatherings where to me the movie is a bridge to connect with each other, and that’s awesome. I’ve made a couple of friends now this way because of seeing what they created and wanting to get to know more about them and finding that kinship within their drive for this kind of creation.

After I went out from that whole after-film discussion, I was walking down the street with my partner and we saw one of his friends playing at a café, there was barely anyone there so we decided to join in. The sheer fact of seeing him see us decide to come in and drink a cup of coffee while listening to him play was enjoyable in itself, a decision to say ‘Hey I’m here, came to see you!’ and it surely was also enjoyable and ‘out of routine’ to do this kind of decisions, sitting there for a moment and share about our day became such an enjoyable moment as well, where we could later talk with his friend – our friend I’d say now – and get to give him some ideas of how to get out of a rut he was stuck with and impulse him to test out other ways to use his kills and make money out of it. It was a short meeting, a ‘moment’ only if you will, but to me this is the kind of substantial bits that make my life experience a lot richer… and it would not happen if I didn’t take the time to be ‘out there’ and actually have the disposition to connect with others too. I’m grateful for the connections like this that I’ve been able to make through my partner who is also very much linked to the local community and I am appreciating the benefit of having that starting point to be able to relate to many more people. In a way, I’ve come to definitely no longer enjoy myself only being ‘isolated’ and not having this sort of connections around others, and realizing more and more how no man is an island and when I pretended to be so, I definitely sank in it.

One thing I realized as well is that it’s not about creating ‘best friends’ with all kinds of people, but definitely relating to many more and being open to the variety of people in a community is part of what living life is… a complement to the rest of the personal doings, productive ways and personal achievements. I am opening my eyes to see how I definitely want to become a participating-part of my community and use the ways and means I have to start doing so, starting relating to others, instead of living like a hermit even when surrounded by people.

So, it feels like I had some kind of writing constipation for several months – I’ve certainly been processing several things and rerouting a bit my life and deciding to ‘grow roots’ here, which I am finally doing and looking forward to continuing developing.

I also realized that the most important thing is to share my story, how I’ve changed, what I’m busy changing, instead of wanting to come here and stand in a moral highground about how things should be or could be – I’ve been there and done that – so, there’s a tendency for me to want to end this with a note of ‘find your passion’ or ‘find your way’ to enjoy life, to genuinely get to experience that your life, your presence, your words, your doings are creating a form of meaning to you and others that is supportive, that is nurturing and expansive.

I am finding and developing that in ways that are very simple currently, as I shared in my past blog, that still stands and continues to be developing where the sheer process of getting to know one person and having that common stand point of creating a relationship in a way where living together becomes enjoyable and supportive IS worth living for, and seeing how that ripples out into the lives of others, without even ‘wanting’ to have an effect on them. That’s quite the remarkable thing I’d say and not to adjudicate any credits here to myself or anything like that, but simply seeing the effect of deciding to be a part of something and dedicate time to it, dedicate willingness to it, that’s quite an enjoyable thing to do.

This is currently the path for me, but I also understand it’s not everyone’s -and thank god for that, what would be the point if everyone would think or do the same things? – It’s all about being able to challenge ourselves, our ways, our ‘views’ and ask a very honest question: if we are dissatisfied about something in our lives, then what do we need to change and stop doing to stop making them shitty, meaningless and feeling miserable? And then dedicate the effort, time and actions to change that. I know the obstacles, I know the doubts, I know the fears, so, just taking the first steps over time is all I can say will open up new paths in how to get to enjoy living and seeing the benefit of it. I definitely am grateful to all of the people that have decided to share their music, share their films and documentaries, their stories with me and with many more. I get to enjoy my life more ever since opening up more to them and that’s great, otherwise, life would be too bland as I used to experience it.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

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613. Understanding

 

This has been a keyword for myself over this year that’s closing today and I’ve found great satisfaction and even pleasure in getting to understand myself – and not only myself – but also get to know and understand others better. It makes everything much simpler and much more enriching and expansive to place myself in a position of unconditionally getting to know myself and others, getting to know more facts and details about each person that I’ve come to establish a relationship in one way or another throughout this year, which started with rekindling a relationship with myself after having placed myself in a ‘second position’ in my life for a while based on having focused too much on others or trying to change people in and through relationships.

This last point however is one that I have to constantly be aware of within me, which comes along with believing I can say something that can suddenly inspire others to be better or change things in their life. I noticed how this desire still comes through as ‘subtle suggestions’ that I believe would better people’s lives in one way or another. I had fun discussing about these things with someone that has had the same ‘weakness’ as I have when dealing with people or standing in a position of guidance or leadership, and the conclusion is that there is a need to let go whenever there’s this imperious need that comes like an urge to want to influence others or make them change their mind or just do things the way I do. It is ludicrous, I know, and not every person may experience this, but I’ve found people that go through this exact same ‘inner conflict’ at times to know when to step back, when to intervene, when to give a little push, when to open up something that is quite obvious to be talked about with another and the realization is that there is no magical formula for it.

It is and will be something that one can direct according to the person, who we are in relation to them, the nature of the relationship, how far we are able to walk with the person through a certain process and how involved are we in fact able to be within such process of assisting others in ways that are actually sustainable, without compromising one’s own life or maiming another’s growth and realizations. Ultimately what I see is that this also comes from a desire to prevent people from walking consequence, but I’ve also come to understand how for myself and probably for many more people, walking through consequence is at times a needed thing in order to learn things that we might not have gotten to understand unless we had walked down the ‘wrong’ path so to speak, so I had to understand this ability to make mistakes and learn from it as part of the learning and growing process.

To me it’s relevant to check out whenever I am stepping into the ‘savior syndrome’ or wanting to ‘change others’ as a primary focus in my life, and how that is also indicating that I am not focusing on myself sufficiently, which is why I go focusing more in others’ lives in an attempt to provide ‘guidance’ or ‘support,’ but as I’ve been there and done that many times, I can’t base my whole life in being ‘that’ for others, because it leads to bitterness and dissatisfaction. I’ve also come to understand my role is to live myself to the best and fullest I can and stop trying to diminish myself and my existence to be ‘there for others’ all the time.

More so than before, I am realizing how each one has a very specific path to walk and that it doesn’t really require my direct intervention on it – yep! As far fetched as it may sound some of us have this idea that we have to be constantly ‘intervening’ in things and people’s lives if they are any close to us to ‘change them for the better,’ which is quite the impossible savior task that I definitely have to let go of. I’ve instead come to understand how this is simply a more natural process that opens up based on being part of someone’s life and process – but, it’s not something that I have to deliberately go finding or seeking to do either.

I used to be existing within this almost anxious state of being of having to constantly be correcting, suggesting things for others to be changed or wanting to save them in whichever way I came to be aware of. As I was discussing this with a friend of mine recently, I realized how it is still quite a thing for me to let go of, that urge and need to tell others that they are messing up their life if they continue to do this/that or question their detrimental habits and ways in an attempt to make them think about themselves and their lives a bit further.

So, a point that I have to continue working on is letting go of this need to ‘create an impact’ on others and deliberately seeking to do that, and instead focus on creating myself, focusing on being that very person that I’d like to become as an example and inspiration for others to consider what living a life in a supportive manner means. Therefore this is the end of the preacher and converter for a better life and instead get fully into working on myself. Sure, I can give feedback and support if asked for it, but I will continue to watch out whenever I feel an urge or ‘need’ to change someone’s life with my words or actions.

This is all to me part of my process of understanding myself, understanding my design, my needs and experiences in order to now let others be, let others walk the path they decide to walk and simply be here when and if people ever want to ask and know more about myself or different ways of living – and if it never happens, that’s ok too. Actions speak louder than words and that’s what I want to focus on: living words and that’s where I meet with myself, instead of trying to find myself through having an impact or influencing others in their own life.

Here’s to the closure of a life changing year where my world was flipped upside down in various ways and where I decided to mark the beginning of the new me, the creation of myself and this point explained here is a key stepping stone in this new phase in my life.

Thanks for reading and walking with

 

 

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610. The Mirror Process: Changing How I Look at Myself and Others

 

I watched a couple of videos from SOUL about the mirror process which is based on how we tend to judge, compare ourselves to other people based on certain appearances and expression that we judge as being better than our own or us lacking what we see in others, and I could relate a lot to what Sunette explained based on her own experience related to this.

What I recently found is that even if I thought I had worked through this kind of physical appearance self judgment, I definitely faced new aspects of it based on how I related in an instant to a certain woman that I got to meet and how intense this reaction was which certainly too me aback, shifting the way that I experienced myself in one single moment from being the regular comfortable self to suddenly feeling super heavy, stifled and generally tense where I could feel that any smile that I was able to muster in that moment was mostly coming out of the politics of meeting someone for the first time, but I knew that I wasn’t myself in that moment, I knew that I was in fact experiencing a mini-possession that was entirely based on how I defined someone’s appearance to be ‘everything that I am not’ as the ‘opposite’ of myself and regarding that appearance and expression as the epitome of being a graceful, beautiful and feminine woman.

Now, this is about experiencing jealousy and envy based on thinking and perceiving in my head that ‘this is what a female should look like’ and in that by default going back to assuming, thinking and perceiving that I’m not that, I’m not good looking enough, that I don’t have such fine-toned and perfectly shaped body – which I’ve defined as a tiny/small body structure and slim body – and how I immediately got a bit impressed by how this person would have a smile on their face and almost radiating such graceful expression that I judged as overwhelming or ‘too much for my taste,’ which mostly has to do with being intimidated by such ability that some people have to appear almost radiant to my eyes and my perception, almost like beaming with joy or happiness or simple grace that turns it all into an elusive expression for me.

This is also because of how I had previously judged that kind of people in my past and had not entirely resolved my judgments, which led me to see those expressions as fake or not genuine, etc. But! I later on found how these were my ‘defense mechanisms’ to make another ‘less than me’ and project and define all these negative associations to immediately ‘protect’ me from looking back at myself as the origin of every single one of these definitions, assumptions and judgments that I had concocted in a matter of minutes that such interaction lasted, and that was enough for me to have to take care of this whole stifling reaction within me based on appearances, judgments, ideals, projections that led me to feel insecure, less than, seeing myself as totally incapable of ‘ever being someone like that’ which I’ll be sharing how I’ve been walking through this in order to ground each aspect back to reality.

So what I had to do was to first understand and remind myself that every single judgment, idea, perception and experience was a creation of my own, and that I had to realize that whenever I am going into this insta-comparison towards other women based on appearances it means that there are points where I have yet to work on embracing my own physical body as is, my own bone structure, physical form, shape, weight and general appearance as is, because there is no way we can ever change how those essential aspects of our body look like, and no matter how much we would ‘like’ to look in a particular way, it’s physically impossible to do so – and instead the question would be what am I imagining, perceiving or thinking that I would ‘feel’ or ‘express’ differently if I had certain shape or form in my physical body, with a particular skin type or color of eyes or hair and overall looks? And why would I create such scenario within me to create a conflict within me as a hypothetical situation that is not realistic at all?

If I answer that then I would feel more comfortable, graceful and joyful in my expression, then I can already see where am I not living those words as myself because of believing that ‘It doesn’t suit my physical body’ or ‘I am not beautiful enough to express myself like that’ or ‘I am not fit enough to wear such clothes’ and so forth.

Here it’s also convenient to say how I’ve learned a lot from other people walking similar processes in their own lives and bodies and how I’ve taken note of many aspects they’ve shared in relation to appreciating their body, there’s Matti who has shared and walked this point as well as Anna Brix, she has been very open in walking her process to embrace her physical body and I suggest checking them out to see how they walked their points.

I realized that I also have to learn to appreciate seeing certain types of people and acknowledge when they are in fact appearing as beautiful to me or others. This applies to both males and females and see it for what they are, when people have a particular physiognomy that one can regard as beautiful and see it for what it is, a pleasing aesthetic experience. Though in this, also not to reduce the entirety of a person to an aesthetic experience, this doesn’t mean that I have to ‘be that’ or ‘look like that’ in order to be ‘pleasing’ to my eyes or others’ eyes. This is about changing who I am behind how I decide to look at myself and others.

That’s where the point of change comes in as well where I am the one that has to change how I relate to people at first sight, from remaining at a very superficial level of seeing shapes and colors and forms and defining them as beautiful or not – or whether I acknowledge that as the ‘first impression’ that it is and move towards getting to know the person and see who they are as an individual, rather than going away with that first judgment of ‘oh they are beautiful, they are so graceful and joyful, I am not any of that’ and immediately going into an inferiority and self-diminishing position that I created in my own mind and so making it a limiting experience for myself, because it prevents me from actually getting to know the person.

So I had to take a moment to write this situation out and write all the self-forgiveness related to every single judgment, belief, fear, desire, perception that I created that led me to have such an overwhelming reaction to seeing this person for the first time and also ‘caging’ the person in a particular ‘type of person’ that I would not regularly decide to approach or relate to in my life based on the sense of inferiority I would create myself when in the presence of someone that looks and behaves in a similar way, which I turned into negative judgments as a way to see myself ‘above’ that – that’s another mind-construct there that I had to understand in order to see how I perpetuate this inferiority and superiority based on my own judgments and perceptions, and forgive myself for that.

I’ve realized within this all how I am the one that is perpetuating this kind of appearance-judgments in my own mind and how I activate them in an almost instant manner where I am constantly assessing ‘where I stand’ in comparison to other females in my environment, especially related as well to females and fear of loss when it comes to relationships at the same time, where I then fear that my partner would ‘prefer a certain kind/type of body’ and that I am ‘not that for them’ and in doing so, create a plethora of ideas, beliefs, imaginations that I create solely on assuming that ‘I am not perfect enough in my physical body, I am not that pretty, I am not that feminine, I am not that graceful’ based on a comparison made towards another female that I judged to be embodying that in their expression, and assuming that ‘that is more desirable for a man’.

So, how I proceeded to assist me to walk this point is writing all of these judgments out and self forgive them one by one, so that I could see and understand I was the only one that decided to make myself inferior and so uncomfortable in the presence of another human being. I knew that I would not be ‘okay’ within myself until I could walk through this point and actually face the person at least a second time to test out my living corrections, which I got to do and actually get to interact with them for more than 5 minutes – lol – and focus on easing myself in my body, being comfortable and embracing who I am in my body and in my expression in the moment – that means stopping any judgments in my mind.

What did that practically entail? I had to decide to get the idea of me having to ‘be like her’ out of my mind. I had to remind myself of my individual expression which comes in the shape, form and type of body that I have, the face that I have, the weight that I have, the bone structure that I have, the color of eyes, hair and type of skin that I have and that in no way could I keep tormenting myself with aspiring to ‘look like’ another person in any way. It would be like a certain kind/type of tree wanting to become another kind of tree, namely a pine wanting to be like a palm – that is the basic analogy I can remind myself of whenever I am going into this body/appearance comparison, which means I have to embrace me being this particular type and kind of body that I have which I have been aware I can embrace and enjoy as myself and how I can be particularly fine within me and my expression whenever I am not desiring to be someone completely different in order to fulfill an idea or belief of ‘what I would prefer to look like,’ which is again, based on my own limitations of what I’ve defined as beautiful or aesthetically pleasing.

So the real change takes place when I stop focusing on judging myself, my looks, my demeanor ‘when compared to’ other females that I’ve particularly defined as more gentle, feminine and graceful. This also means that I had to instead look at how am I living those words in my own way already or where I can expand my expression and embrace ways of expressing that I’ve suppressed because of thinking that it looks ‘fake’ or not genuine’ – not realizing that I am the only one that knows ‘who I am’ behind any smile, any expression through voice tonality, gestures and words. That’s my self-honesty point and within this, I saw that I am expressing such femininity in my own particular way already and how I simply have to let go of expressing a particular ‘form’ or ‘idea’ of femininity linked to a particular physical appearance that I have defined as ‘more feminine’ that my own, which means: I can embody femininity in my own particular way.

Same with joy, I am aware how I can express joy in a boundless manner yet in a different way than if compared to that particular person in such moment, which means that, of course! I’d always be setting up myself for ‘failure’ whenever I start comparing myself to anyone else for that matter based on how I am living certain words and how they are living certain words or aspects within themselves. This is an interesting trick we create in our minds where we are always setting up ourselves to feel ‘less than’ when trying to ‘have exactly the same’ that others have, instead of simply focusing on what we are/have and seeing what we can develop within ourselves, within our own particular body and expression, because that’s ultimately what individuality is all about, not attempting to ‘be just like someone else’ in form, shape and expression, but learn to see others as sources of words and expressions that we can mirror back to ourselves to see what can I learn from them? How can I express such words in my own body and living experience?

An example is how based on how I had judged similar ‘kinds of people’ in the past, I got to experience my own backlash in that moment based on how I had defined me as not being able to be ‘genuinely’ expressing myself in a joyous and graceful manner without ‘faking’ it a bit – but I’ve realized that it all has to do with how I decide to stand in relation to particular words and expressions and how I had for the most part judged such expressions as ‘fake’ based on my own perceived inability to express them myself. But, once that I got to see how I can in fact enjoy and express myself and how I can relate to people, I can see that I am already being quite comfortable and joyful in my expression, it simply won’t be expressed ‘the same way’ as I can see it in other people, and that’s OK lol.

It’s astounding how much we can keep ourselves stuck in our heads trying to be like/look like ‘somebody else’ which is a pointless thing to do or even attempt; although yes some do go to that point with all current surgeries and stuff like that and I’m not judging it, because now I understand how far we can take ourselves to do something like that to ‘look the same’ as someone else and how it is all driven by an idea, belief or perception of how we think we will FEEL about ourselves IF having this/that physical appearance, while in fact it all exists within ourselves.

We each have the power to decide how we feel, experience and express ourselves within our one and only physical body that I definitely have to, for once and for all, stop seeing as an image presentation that can be ‘compared’ to others, and start acknowledging it as the marvel of life it in fact is, where the skin and structure of the body is only a part of it, yet there’s so much more to this that we are that enables us to live and not only in a ‘basic vital’ manner, it enables us to have the ability to embody/live and express words, actions, decisions, intentions and creations.

That’s how I want to establish my relationship with my physical body, not to cage it or define it in a particular form, shape, color, weight, bone structure or skin type, but seeing it as the actual breathing body of life that I am embodying in order to give myself the opportunity to actually live in it/as it, which means, stopping for once and for all perpetuating the judgments, the comparisons, the envy and jealousy towards other bodies and their appearance and instead focus on seeing me as the life that I can express and live every single moment of every day.

This sounds easy as a solution, but the actual challenging part is to physically change my experience, my expression in those moments where comparison and envy are rearing their head within me and remind myself every single time of the decision to focus on myself as a person that lives and expresses, to expand from the limited immediate definitions and judgments based on what I immediately see through my eyes and go one step further to generate interest and consideration to see what other people are all about, getting to know them, talk to them without being comparing myself to them every single moment. This is the challenging part, but in the situation that I’ve shared here I realized that ‘the next day’ after I had processed a lot of these points through writing, I was able to change my behavior towards that person and be more at ease. This resonant or personality of ‘inferiority’ experience wasn’t completely diffused/gone in that moment, but it definitely was quite a change from feeling heavy, stuck, stifled towards the other person to a more flowy and expressive self which is more like ‘me’ on a regular basis.

What I’ve found in terms of these points that I’ve faced with both males and females is that we tend to essentially make everything that we see as a potential expression within ourselves a source of desire, which is why towards males it led me to ‘desire them’ as in experiencing attraction – which is something I’ve walked in detail at the beginning of this year as well – or towards females in the form of jealousy, envy and comparison, which is more related to wanting to ‘be like them/look like them’ so that ultimately I could be liked/desired/wanted by males the same way I assume/perceive that other males would find them attractive. But, who is in fact defining all of this? I am! Therefore that means that I can change who I am in relation to seeing males and females and comparing myself to other beings in the form of ‘lack’ or ‘desire’ and instead move into seeing: What can I learn from them? How can I expand my own expression and life by integrating a word/living action that I see they are living in their own lives?

So, just as I did with males and instead of seeing them as ‘objects of desire’ because of particular words and expressions they portray, I can do the same with women where instead of immediately seeing myself as either ‘more’ or ‘less than’ someone based on judgments, ideas or perceptions – no matter how subtle or overwhelming – I can always take the point back to myself, work through my emotional reactions towards it, understand them as my creation and originating from me – not anything or anyone else, not society, not stereotypes but my own mind and judgments – and within that rather learning to see, embrace and appreciate someone else for the totality of who they are.

There are times where people tend to say that we have to only focus on what’s ‘in the inside’ and nevermind the outside, but I consider that’s also diminishing or relegating the physical body to a ‘lesser’ stance. It makes one push aside the image factor and make it ‘less than’ the actions, words and expressions that a person represents, instead of seeing a person as the totality of who they are as a body, mind, expression as a whole, no need to make one aspect more than the other. It really all boils down to how I relate to myself and my physical body, whether I am still living in judgment towards myself or whether I am more focusing on living me, living in the flesh/body that I am and using it – for a lack of a better word – to live and express the person that I am in the process of creating as myself.

By doing so, I learn to see people as an expression of their individual and particular body, mind and being and see them as sources of inspiration – when it applies – to see what expressions I am admiring, liking or enjoying in them that I can see I can integrate or incorporate into my own life and day to day experience. That makes me see people as equals, as living bodies that I can always learn from in one way or another, that I can get to know and understand rather than keeping myself at a very limited experience of judging certain appearances and expressions, go into an emotional experience of ‘lacking that’ or ‘desiring that’ and separating myself from that person… yep, that’s not the way to go here.

I also acknowledge that as much as I got taken over by this experience, I also I had the diligence to work on it as soon as I was able to, because I could not be ok within myself and my physical experience based on that reaction, so that’s also based on how I am living that honor and regard towards myself as a living being that understands how stiffing, uncomfortable and generally destructive it is to remain in that kind of reaction and separation towards another human being. And it was sincerely a relief to test my own decision to see them as a person – rather than a source of qualities ‘I don’t possess’ – and relate to the person in a very different manner.

Of course there’s much more to learn and change myself when it comes to seeing these ‘resonant symbols’ as women particularly that I have tended to compare myself to for most of my life, and in that remind myself of the basic steps I’ve shared in this blog related to recognizing, appreciating and embracing individual’s expressions in the totality of who they are, getting to know them – if the opportunity arises – and rather using those moments whenever I am seeing I am about to get possessed by the comparison-judgment reaction into a reminder of embracing me, which implies understanding that equality also means embracing each one’s particular and unique bodies, expressions and living experiences as they are, starting with my own.

Thanks for reading and check these SOUL videos out to understand more about the mirror process for yourself:

The Mirror Process

The Mirror Practice – Part 2

  

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609. Courage in Self-Expression

 

I want to share about the ways in which I’ve been opening up to a new understanding of what ‘living’ is about and letting go of a stifling rigidity that I’ve kept within an idea of what I like, enjoy, the kind of person I, what I dislike, what I’m supposed to be and do and I’ve been seeing how limiting all of that has been when confronted with new people, new ways of living, behaving, talking, expressing in day to day living – and of course also related to arts and music.

Well, it’s no mystery that a lot of my life is influenced by fellow creative people, especially when they are the kind that represent a joyful expression which to me contains a pinch of innocence, they seem to be ‘boundless’ and without a care so to speak in terms of how other people might see them, perceive them – in essence being carefree in their expression, not holding themselves back with ‘second thoughts’ or ‘what others will think of them,’ and to me that’s quite a precious quality in ourselves as human beings.

I recently learned from an interesting explanation about The Jonah Complex and the Fear of Greatness how we fear being different, we fear truly expressing ourselves, we want to conform and ‘blend in’ because we fear ‘standing alone’ in our own ways of being, essentially daring to be unique and so start fearing ‘to exist’ which means to emerge, appear, stand out and this eventually creating a ‘fear of life’ or fear of living, where we don’t want to be our own creators, we don’t want to achieve our greatness – which I read more as in creating our living potential – because that would mean changing, that would mean standing outside of our comfort zone, that means doing the actual work it means to create our individuality and own our creation. Yep, that’s the paradoxical nature of ourselves as human beings in our own minds and can definitely prove that. 

I really enjoyed listening that explanation because throughout my life I’ve struggled in that polarity of realizing how much I could ‘stand out’ – which I’ve shared in a previous blog – yet because of caring too much about everyone’s feedback, I decided to step back, ‘cease to exist’ and seek for more ways to hide out, blend in, stand in the back/to not stand out, to remain limited and inevitably becoming and embodying that fear of truly standing out and being ‘me’ in whichever way I genuinely wanted and could be.  

I went through a phase of first rebelling against anything that I didn’t want to achieve based on what everyone else was doing, which still led me to a form of limitation and still defining myself based on ‘not doing what everyone else is doing’ – which is the whole antagonistic personality I’ve shared a lot about in this blog before. But, I hadn’t really stepped outside of the paradigm to genuinely ask myself: what do I want to live? What do I genuinely enjoy? What do I want to create regardless of the ‘kind of person’ I think I am supposed to be? Or the kind of topics of interest that I thought ‘I was supposed to ONLY be interested on’? And I noticed how I was slowly but surely caging myself into an idea of who I had to be, look like, dress like, care about, act like etc. even though I could see all those moments that would come up within me wanting to do something different, wanting to test out certain expressions that I would see in others and would only ‘judge them’ for daring to express something that I wanted to express deep inside myself.

One of these aspects in the sheer ability to enjoy life. I know, sounds as if I’m veering into a ‘self conceited’ topic, but I will step outside of my own projections and say nope, this is actually the one point that I had refrained myself to do in an almost religious manner – and hell, I am still getting out of my cocoon on this one! – which has nothing to do with going into extremes of ‘libertinage’ when it comes to associating enjoyment with ‘parting’ or all kinds of excesses that we usually associate ‘enjoyment’ to be about.

Nope, actually this enjoyment is more of a decision in the most simple of moments, it’s not something that will suddenly ‘take over myself’ either or come up as an energy that I have to build up into ‘enjoyment!’ – no, this that I’m talking about it is more like an opening, a decision to express, to ‘step outside of myself,’ in essence to decide to exist in moments where I knew I wanted to express myself in such ‘carefree’ ways – yet would allow my ‘idea of self’ to dictate the way I was supposed to behave and look like at the eyes of others and the rest of it. But in fact, I am discovering that I am the most content, happy and joyful with and within myself when I have zero thoughts about how someone/others might be ‘perceiving me’ and in that I’ve found the most enjoyable quietness where I can simply ‘be’. And no, this doesn’t mean sitting in a quiet place and meditating, nope and it doesn’t also come as quick and simple as just ‘letting go’ – it is also the result of all of these years of working with myself, understanding my judgments, patterns and limitations, so that I can now be more comfortable in living the words that I want to ‘be’ and make exist as myself.

A clear example of this is how I started to listen to a type of music that I never thought I would get to be quite fond of. I would randomly hear a live band in my home town and they play very upbeat and generally joyful/happy music called Klezmer. I started listening to them every now and then around town 2 years ago, and I remember standing there with my then partner and having the impulse to move my feet, my knees, to kind of dance to the beats of that music – yet, the ‘rigidity’ of my own personality would come out in ways of ‘oh no, that would not be ‘me’ liking this kind of happy, joyful music’ – yet slowly but surely, I kept creating an interest in listening to them playing it and would stand still while listening to it, yet inside myself started kind of dancing to the tunes and enjoying those moments.

Well, long story short, after many times of listening to them in my frequent trips walking downtown, it is only now that I’ve been able to move my feet and legs and head around when listening to them, and yep knowing that people are watching and sometimes ask me if I’m ‘with the band’ lol, but nope and no, I don’t put on a show either, haha! But it’s been mostly children thus far that I’ve seen moving their bodies to the sound of the music, because that’s mostly what that music is for! Yet most adults – including myself in the past – would focus on enjoying the music and maybe craving to move around or bob our heads yet we kept bound to ideas of ‘how we are supposed to be’ or ‘not knowing how to dance that kind of music’ or ‘what will others say if we start moving around? I actually enjoy standing there while the band is playing and looking at people’s facial reactions, some do move around a bit while they pass by and so I’ve made it a point to learn from those few and in between that have dared to dance along or move around, including the guys in the band which is something I also appreciate from creative people in general, being quite ‘gutsy’ – for a lack of a better word – to own their individuality, show their courage in their expression and share it in a carefree manner – and by ‘carefree’ I mean without judgment towards themselves and therefore without projected judgments coming from others.

No matter how much one walks through ‘judging oneself,’ I find that one has to find an actual way to work through it in a practical and physical manner. To me, making paintings is one, learning to own my creation no matter how it looks, no matter if I ‘like it’ or not, but see them all as part of a process to express myself, to actually live my potential and I’ve met some people in the past weeks that represent that genuine expression of enjoyment in who they are through their creative process. And in this I don’t mean that everyone has to look at artists as a source of inspiration, to me that’s just how it has usually been throughout my life. It can be any other person that in their field of expertise or interest are really good at doing something and seeing how much they enjoy doing so is a source of inspiration, because they represent that potential that we can develop for ourselves in our own ways and lives.

Many times I’ve wallowed within myself when comparing ‘me’ and ‘my creations’ to those of others, and it seems that generally this obnoxious sense of comparison is a constant judgment that I bring up to sabotage myself – therefore what do I know? I can only remind myself about the uniqueness and individuality that each individual represents, to stop seeing others as a point of measurement for my own life or creations, and always remember that there is no point in comparing or judging how I express, what I express and the ways in which I go developing such expressions, because that’s a unique process to me and myself only. And in that, I can nurture myself from the many examples that I’ve found in people’s expressions, doesn’t matter how ‘simple’ it might be, it can start with having the ‘guts’ to sing out in public or play music in the streets – anything that I would consider as something that I would probably enjoy doing yet would not ‘dare’ to do it, I can then learn to see what words these people represent that I am not living myself. And what comes up is having that courage to express myself.

Yesterday as I was listening to this band playing live, they had no fears to change places in instruments and play in front of everyone their own practice of learning a new instrument, and even if the songs didn’t come out ‘perfectly’, I definitely appreciated the fact that they had no qualms about it or keeping their ‘practice/learning process secret’ but simply did it out there in public. And also being genuine when it comes to not lying about ‘enjoying every single moment of playing,’ but being quite honest on how tiring it can be, yet at the same time being inspired by the expressions that this music brings out in people  – and kids specially – which is quite awesome to witness.

So, this kind of music and the way these guys have come to create their band is quite unique in the sense that many of them might have been professional musicians, but some others didn’t know how to play any instrument, yet they had the will and courage to learn and be part of the band, so they learned an instrument in order to be part of it. It has made me consider how many times we admire people like musicians or any other form of performers because they have gotten to do something that we have yearned to do, which is to express, create and stand out with it in the world, to dare to exist beyond one’s own 4 closed walls.

Where am I in this process of having the courage to express myself? Definitely in the beginning stages, even more so considering how much I had to shed this idea that I could not enjoy life or had to suffer or could not just ‘be happy’ because ‘the world is not a happy place,’ yet I see for myself how people daring to do this in their lives becomes a source of inspiration for everyone else to dare to do what each one of us actually wants to do, and actually do it! Have the courage to do it, dare to ‘stand out’, daring to be unique, daring to not follow the crowd – not from an antagonistic or rebellious way but based on understanding our capacity to live in a very unique way that in turn, may inspire others to do the same in their lives, and that’s who I want to be and what I want to be, to give that back to the world based on all that I’ve learned from many, many people that have inspired me in my life and that have assisted me – without them even knowing – in becoming who I am today.

So, part of what I’ve been looking at in terms of embracing myself, my looks, my physical feature as the totality of ‘me’ – which I have judged as ‘odd’ – I can embrace within that uniqueness that I decide to live as myself, and reminding myself every time that I start going into judgments about myself and projecting it towards others, I have to remind myself how present I can be when I am judgment-less, when moving my limbs a bit when listening to this music out in the public in downtown and each time that I dare to do it more often, it feels more liberating and I become the most quiet and joyful and not in an ‘overt’ manner, but in that genuine ‘hereness’ of expression, because I’m simply there with the music, moving with it and there’s no thoughts, no fears, no expectations… and it’s hard at times to have those moments in one’s day, but I found that this is one of my moments of enjoyment, to have that ‘me’ time if you will yet sharing it with others at the same time.

And! No pressure if there’s no ‘live band’ I can dance to, I’ve been also playing some music that invariably leads me to want to dance as well, which is another interesting thing based on how I had thought that ‘I don’t like dancing anymore’ but I just hadn’t found the kind of music that I genuinely and almost naturally want to move my body to, which has been a cool discovery for myself as well and letting go of ideas that I had to like a particular ‘kind of music’ to ‘dance to.’ Hell no, we are the only ones that create our limitations. So I am definitely in that phase of challenging my own expression-limitations, breaking them apart and in that discovering the little bits of self-enjoyment I had held myself back from for such a looong time.

So for anyone out there, I can only suggest to have a look at where or in what/who do you find inspiration to self-express, what it means to embrace your creative self and I am not implying this is only an ‘art creation’ thing, nope – every human being is a creator, so in that we all are creating every single moment – most of the times without awareness! – therefore, if we become self-aware creators and in that determine the ways that we want to live every moment, the ways that we want to challenge our boundaries, our personalities, our fears, we will slowly but surely go realizing the potential that has always ‘been here’ as ourselves, just covered up with our fears, memories, excuses, reasons, justifications and preferences that have limited ourselves from getting to know ourselves and enjoy ourselves in the process.

Ok that’s it! Have fun

Here I share some of the music including this live band that I am speaking of here, which I actually got to record because I’ve become friends with the band J

Colectivo Klezmorino – Festival Rodarte

 

And! a taste of the other band I’ve been enjoying to move around to

DakhaBrakha: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

 

 

And this painting I made within the starting point of expressing me, having fun, while being inspired by the music represented in the image of the band itself  

 

 

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606. Stepping into Self Creation

Or how to walk through the Mother-Theresa type of personality design in order to start considering myself in the equation of self-creation

I’ve been working with something practically throughout the past month and that has to do with embracing the new potentials within my life and letting go of various ways in which I had kept myself limited within an idea of not being able to step beyond what I would had considered my life ‘had to be’ like.

In essence this specifically has to do with embracing the enjoyment that I can experience when taking on and walking the opportunity to start focusing on what I truly want to live in my life and embracing the moments as I walk through that, letting go of my constant worry/preoccupation about what I ‘have to do’ and not allowing myself to enjoy life essentially, because of constantly thinking that ‘not everyone in the world can enjoy what I am enjoying in the moment’ therefore using that as a way to deny, suppress and even hide any genuine experience of enjoyment in self creation and hiding that satisfaction with myself because of what I think, believe or perceive ‘others’ will feel about themselves if ‘they’ are not being able to live that/do the same for themselves in their own lives.

This has been a lifelong pattern, where very early on in school years I decided I didn’t want to be seen as ‘superior’ to others due to getting certain grades in school, therefore I created this idea that I had to ‘diminish myself’ in one way or another so as to be ‘more equal’ to the rest of the group, even if that didn’t necessarily implied me lowering my skills or grades to be ‘equal to others,’ but this did exist to a level of not wanting to be truly outstanding and embracing my potential because of thinking that ‘others can’t have ‘the same’ as me, therefore I cannot place myself ‘above’ others or ‘have it easier/better than others,’ which became a point of self-sabotage in seeking to ‘be at the background’ and not truly take that position that I know I could have taken in my life, because of not wanting to be seen as ‘more than’ others… not realizing that it was all in my head in my own constructions or paradigms of superiority and inferiority.

Fortunately I know I am not the only one that has experienced this and that it is a fairly common thing to go through when certain things come with ease in one’s life, and the reasons for this are currently for the most part unknown to me, but all I know is that it involves more responsibility at the same time in ensuring that one can then stand in a position in this world where we can then do what we can to assist and support others to realize and understand our ability to create our potential in our lives.

So, the way that I decided to live early on in my life is to become like Mother Theresa, which Is why I call it the mother-theresa complex, where there was this sense of martyrdom and wanting to ‘stay’ at the level of those that were quite troubled in their lives and having conflict within and without of themselves, because in one way or another I thought I could help them – or in a way thinking that their lives, their difficulty and struggle was ‘more real’ than having things come ‘with ease’ in one’s life, where there’s no visible struggle, no suffering, no pain so to speak – therefore I deliberately created conflict and struggle in my life just to have ‘something to talk about’ with others and ‘relate’ to their lives, yep.

This lead me to create relationships with friendships or partnerships where I had to diminish myself in my living potential in order to apparently be able to ‘support another’ to eventually stand ‘equal to me’ at the level that I was aware I could live and embody in my life. The result always led me to over and over and over again realize that I cannot keep trying to ‘do good’ and ‘help others’ that by their own decision and nature are not doing all that they can to stand up from their limited position – in whichever way it was, financially, emotionally, family wise, etc. – and every single time I tried to be the one that ‘helped them out’ until I got to experience the consequences that result from me trying to ‘do good’ to another in a relationship and it simply became an unsustainable point that I had to sort out in a single decision to stop creating relationships and personalities that stand for my own and another’s self-diminishment.

In a way, this implies having walked through the consequences of believing that I had to be there to ‘help’ others even when they are clearly not helping themselves out, trying to ‘do good’ and in doing so, believe that it was some sort of life mission to do so for me. Well, I certainly was missing myself in the equation where I’ve seen how much I’ve compromised myself for an overt consideration ‘towards others’ and missing myself in truly and honestly asking ‘Is this really what I want to live and create in my life?’ and looking back at my previous relationship for example, I see how I was diminishing myself in my living potential in order to create a satisfactory environment to assist another, even if the other person was not necessarily willing to support themselves to begin with. That’s self-compromise and that had become the very constant in my life, the masked ‘good-doer’ personality that kept me bound to a limited position in my life.

I still got much more to walk through when it comes to this personality for sure. An example is how I had a nagging resistance to share pictures in social media about my latest trip to be with my new partner, because ‘oh not everyone can enjoy that, they will feel bad about it’ which in fact reflects back to how I had resistance to watch others developing and creating their lives because I wasn’t really doing that for myself at the time.

And this is a simple example of many other thoughts and considerations that I’ve created in my mind in relation to ‘others’ where I would not be open to the world for example about things that I’ve accomplished or simply enjoyed because ‘what will the world say about me just ‘showing off’ my success and self enjoyment?’ Instead of realizing that I was the one that was judging others’ lives and shares as ‘flaunting’ or ‘showing off’ their lives or ‘being too positive’ associating all of it with ‘not everyone can have such enjoyment and recreation in life’ which was my own constant judgment as an excuse to not actually do the necessary decisions and changes in my life to dare to create that for myself as well. So it never really was ‘about others’ but it always has been about myself limiting my ability to step beyond the idea of ‘who I had to be’ in relation to others and for once, start focusing on myself, my self creation.

This is also  something quite cool to look at in terms of how I had been judging those shares in terms of pictures, relationships, living creations as ‘too good to be true’ or ‘too positive’ for my previous frontal personality of being more geared to remain in limitation, remain hooked on ‘life’s misery’ and focusing on ‘all that’s wrong and bad in the world’, all the tragedies and in that attempting to ‘change things’ while refusing to embrace and create such living potential in me… yep, wow! Isn’t it? But it is perfectly masked in the ‘good doer’ mentality of deciding to remain in limitation or ‘helping someone out’ even if that means limiting my own potential. That’s the mother-Theresa complex right there, the martyrdom construct of ‘I have to also suffer because the majority of the world is suffering too.’

Well, that’s clear to me that’s definitely NOT the way to live and I’ve been proving to myself that yes, all that it takes is actually having the courage to step into such potential that we can develop when having the principles, the intent, and will to do the actual work it takes to get to live the lives that we actually see are best for ourselves and in that, realizing that would in fact the way of living that is best for everyone as well.

What did I have to learn to go of? Morality and judgments. This strange sense of ‘compassion’ where I thought I could not even display a picture of being in a supportive relationship where I’m actually having fun and enjoying life because of already thinking – read projecting my own judgments – about ‘all the many that don’t have such a cool relationship and oh what will they feel when they see that?’ Well, I have had to start shedding such projections of my own with regards to what I used to actually think and feel when looking at other people’s pictures and now embrace my own point of creation and living potentials.

I also have to realize that what I am able to live, express and create right now in my life hasn’t been entirely a ‘ride in the park’ so to speak, there’s been a lot of self-work and trial and error situations and relationships where I have had to continually change my course of actions in order to redefine myself, and this doesn’t come easily and has required a lot of courage at times to take drastic decisions to do so, as I’ve shared in the past months as well in my writings.

But I am entirely happy and glad I had the guts and courage to do so, otherwise I would still be stuck in believing that I had to remain ‘limited’ in order to support others… that’s definitely a faulty idea right there and now I am working on embracing the ‘new me’ or the me that has always been there, but was  covered up with all kinds of fears, judgments and morality as to why I wasn’t embracing my potential, my ability to enjoy life in creating for example a relationship that is supportive, where there are plans in common, where there are principles in common and the same foundation and direction of what we want to do in our lives.

Why should I feel ashamed or hide what I have decided to create in my life? It’s ludicrous! But that’s how I would usually operate in my mind, having to ‘remain limited’ in order to ‘be normal’ or be like ‘most of the people,’ yep, wow! But that’s exactly what I did in my life before, making decisions that I fully knew were not supportive yet did them anyways because of wanting to be more like ‘the majority’ with lots of inner conflict and struggle and try and ‘help them out,’ which I am quite aware by now I created on purpose to have something to ‘share in common’ with others… yep, not kidding, that’s how I created a bunch of personalities based on books, tormented artists and the rest of it so that I could create a sense of being a ‘lost soul’ and have my life be seemingly ‘tormented’ and full of doom and gloom because I was not willing to embrace life and what we can in fact do to live a fulfilling and supportive life.

However I don’t regret it at all, it has allowed me to also get to understand about real struggle, pain, discomfort, emotional experiences and how far and deep these can go if we don’t act on them. It has also allowed me to get comfortable with my own ‘dark side’ which is surely there,  and in that I have been able to now understand what it means to change oneself from these more ‘negative affinities’ in life to simply supportive ways of living, without going into the opposite end of ‘fluffy positivity’ so to speak either.

Now here I’m not placing myself in a ‘special case’ either, but I share this because I am sure there’s more people that have this sense of self-sabotage to not really embrace one’s achievements, success, enjoyment or happiness in life because of believing that we have to always feel the pain, feel the struggle of the majority of the world.

To me this is challenged with something as simple as demonstrating affection for someone in a public place, hell! I would not do that before! Because of thinking/projecting that ‘other people would feel bad for not being able to have that in their lives!’ which was me over-considering others’ lacks, which are only reflecting my own judgments and my own reactions when seeing what others have and what I had not yet decided to create in my life.

So once that I’ve realized that I’ve been the sole creator of this diminishment, these judgments and limitations, I can at the same time decide to embrace myself, and nope, it’s not easy. I resisted posting anything about me enjoying life for weeks on end, just because of judging that as ‘too conceited’ or ‘too vain’ or ‘too positive’ or whatever… yet all of those are labels, experiences that I had judged in my past – which I am now walking in real time – are a way for me to finally embrace and let the world know that yep, I can embrace the fruit of my own self-work as well as embracing the potential and capacity I have to now create my life, live fully and trust myself in continuing to take on supportive actions and decisions that will be best for me and others as well.

A very supportive audio that allowed me to see this design is the following one Bringing Yourself Down when Others are Down – Quantum Mind Self Awareness, so check it out if you can relate to this kind of ‘design’ in our personalities.

Of course none of this would be possible without the Desteni Process so this is me sharing the result of years of walking this process in order to finally start stepping into the being and embodying the person that I truly decide to live and express  

 

 

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600. Understanding Arrogance

Or how to let go of the idea I had about myself as ‘untouchable’ based on knowledge and information in order to truly live and express ME.

So this is a word that was opened up in group discussions and in a couple of situations I’ve faced in my life in the last couple of days, so, I’m now here to share about my relationship to this word.

First things first, how do I relate to this word? I have ‘been it, done it’ in my life where arrogance comes as this ‘know it all’ stance where I’ve seen how it was in fact fear that stood behind this ‘untouchable’ type of experience I created mostly through ‘what I believe, what I stand for’ and in creating an energetic stance to it as ‘unbreakable, untouchable, this is the one and only truth of existence!’ type of personality, I became very antagonistic – without even noticing it! – to anything that did not ‘conform’ to my views, or anything that wasn’t aligned to them, which means yeah I could have possibly picked up intellectual back and forths with just about anyone really, considering how such arrogance came through perceiving that ‘I got a superior understanding of reality, of who we are in our minds and in existence’ and the rest of points that come from getting to know a lot of knowledge and information about, yes, the reality that we live in and how we exist as human beings.

I’ve shared about this ‘arrogance’ construct with other terms in these blogs before like being in a ‘haughty position’ or being ‘in a high horse’ type of experience, which is the same thing: being arrogant and kind of looking everyone as ‘inferior to me’ because of not being aware of what I was aware of. In doing so, I really limited myself because I made it virtually impossible for me to discuss anything with anyone, because I was not willing to hear/read any other perspectives, I wasn’t being flexible at all – I just wanted to preach my creed so to speak and ‘convert’ anyone that I could – or rather that would allow themselves to be converted – which of course it never happened.

It was only through realizing that this way of approaching my process was not going to work in the long run that I had to try new things and that meant having to let go of my desire to ‘preach and convert’ others through knowledge and information and disseminating ‘my truth’ through blogs and vlogs with the sole intent to ‘wake others up!’ and ‘have them join me and everyone in this process.’ Of course that doesn’t work, but hey, I was there doing it fully and completely in such a militant stance that I was too blind to see my own absolutism and fascism in it – very common words for me to describe such personality as well in these blogs.

So, where I am and how I am in this context is definitely a long distance from what I just described. Currently I no longer feel the need to ‘wake others up’ or ‘change others’ because! I’ve learned through ‘the tough way’ how that obviously doesn’t work and going through consequences that I’m still having to literally pay for till today, lol. So instead, I focus on sharing my own experience, my own ‘walking’ with these tools, the learning curves, the falls, the standing ups, the mistakes and how to correct them and all that is related to taking all points ‘back to self’ essentially, because that’s basically where I realized I have my authority on at this stage, and so share my example as ‘what I’ve lived, applied’ in detail, and yep sharing it because maybe others will find this useful for their lives and that’s cool.

In terms of facing consequence, I’d say it’s at times unfortunately needed and it’s cool, because I can become so obsessed and be such a stubborn with things that sometimes it is only through reality knocking my door that I can open up my eyes and realize ‘oh fuck! I’ve done it again!’ and realize what I had been obsessed by – that’s the process of what I define now as having to eat humble pie and yep! Been eating it nicely.

Then comes the dimension where I’ve spotted arrogance in others. I saw this during a meeting with someone and I defined the person’s stance as being arrogant – being the kind of person that believes that everything they do is right, they are never wrong, that they are always transparent about things, that there’s nothing that is incongruent with who they are, and in that being able to rather blame others for being the problem in their relationship to him. And in that what he’s created and caused is that there’s a lot of people that simply cannot get along with him because there’s rarely an opening to question himself, his ways, his stance, but in essence being kind of absolutist because of not allowing anyone to question his ways, what he does, his preferences, at all. The outcome in such kind of personality is that if one would want to be his friend, one has to entirely accept him ‘as he is’ and that’s probably a doable thing for many that are ok with such ways, but I personally cannot relate to someone that is not willing to ‘open up’ and ‘question further’ about ourselves as human beings and have no opening to even considering any form of ‘change’ or self-betterment, so in that I simply realize ‘I don’t have to go there’ with this person and keep things as simple as possible in our interactions whenever they are necessary – if ever. This is just a self-honesty point for me to also make a decision to not try an ‘get along’ with someone ‘just because’ but I definitely like to get along with people with whom I can actually have discussions that lead us to learn more about ourselves and question/challenge ourselves, which becomes a bit too impossible with such hardened personalities.  I decided to rather focus on sharing myself and spending time with those that do have more of an opening and similar stance to life.

However, after I noticed that I was describing him in my head as ‘arrogant’ I had to of course look back at myself and see how I have existed as such arrogance as well and how I in fact created the same outcome for me where there was a time where I became very obnoxious, to be honest, I could only relate to people ‘walking process’ and I’d judge everyone else as a neophyte in life – a fancy way to say ‘ignorant’ – and in that I definitely walked through the consequence of isolating myself, because of not being willing to let go of my ‘immovable stance’ as arrogance which stood as constantly judging, constantly comparing everything and everyone to ‘how I believe things should be and how they must be done’ which I’d do constantly, consistently towards anything and anyone, all the time.

I mean, in a way it assisted me to constantly be referencing or questioning ‘what would be common sense in this case or with this person or in that person’s life/situation?’ however the problem is that I would externalize this as in telling people what to do or how they were wrong about this/that in their lives and sometimes being so direct that of course I would not take their feelings/minds into account and yep, I’d end up blowing things out of proportion and causing conflicts, which led me to quite a few ‘breakups’ with people – all because of this arrogant stance within me.

Currently I’m deliberately opening up ways of communication with people where I now practice leaving my ‘preaching’ in the past and instead learn to relate to people, learn to get to know them in who they are, in their context, in their particular life – which is absolutely cool and a very enjoyable process, which has led me to kind of ponder ‘Hmm why wasn’t I doing this before?’ but the reality is that I wasn’t able to do it, because I was too fixed on this absolutist and arrogant stance ‘towards the world/people in it’ where I definitely would have remained in this bitter stance of ‘non-conformity’ which I eventually realized I had entirely caused by my own set of impositions by not allowing myself to actually live and learn from others, but rather wanting to have this ‘teaching and preaching’ stance towards them, which didn’t work at all and only backfired nicely.

In that I instead have used these key words to live whenever I see myself having this arrogant stance coming up again: humbleness, understanding and flexibility. These words in a way stand as the antithesis of my previous ways which were of control, of imposition, of antagonism, of fascism and totalitarianism as the dictator I had become for anyone that would know me.

And yes, I can also explain how this is not a ‘magical solution’ either – the words are there as a continuous reference for me, as the available solutions – but this point may come up at any given moment where I feel this ‘need to correct someone’ or ‘let them know about the ultimate truth in life’ or ‘explain how that’s such an irrelevant subject to discuss about’ or whatever else in whichever way it might come up where I wasn’t really willing to interact and ‘mingle’ with people in whichever context or ‘level’ they’re at in their awareness, but I wanted to come in as this very stiff and self-controlled robot that wanted to only point out what’s right, wrong and immediately disregard participating in anything that I deemed was ‘of the mind’ lolol… yep I was on my way to then become a bitter hermit to be honest, but I’m so glad I have realized what I was doing and have come to stir my direction towards the person that I in fact have seen I have the ability to live and express, which is an open, expressive, communicative and social person in fact! Who would have known!? When I was deeming myself as a hard-core anti-social and misanthrope – as I’ve explained many times before*

So, a practical ‘hack’ that anyone can apply here is to see whenever one is needing to ‘defend’ something or make oneself feel ‘superior’ about anything, or when one is constantly judging others as less than/inferior – we gotta ask ourselves: what are we in fact ‘In-Fear-of?’ because arrogance is an expression of fear, of an actual inferiority that needs to exist as a perceived superiority in order to be ‘ok’ within a ‘better idea of self’. So asking oneself ‘what do I fear behind my need to feel so ‘secure’ of myself in this stance of arrogance?’ van be a practical way to get to the core of it.

Like in my case, the fear behind my ‘stance’ as what I described above related to knowledge and information, was to actually have people question me, debate my views or deny them completely, which would then stir conflict that I actually didn’t want to face, or because I feared losing this idea of myself as the ‘know it all’ in my own eyes. But, I’m quite glad that I was able to debunk it little by little and yes, with people’s feedback in the internet and of my own mother who has been the one that over the years really emphasized that I should ‘lower the volume’ of my speeches in videos because I would come through as ‘preachy’ and ‘attacking,’ as being too superb and pedantic, which would mostly scare people away – and yep, it did, and for some others it might have worked… but it definitely is not an expression I want to continue cultivating related to who I currently am in my life.

I’ve found new ways to share myself where I have no intent implied ‘towards others’ other than plainly sharing myself, and that’s what I’ve been doing lately and it’s like allowing a breeze of fresh air flow through me, rather than being the very stiffened, armored, robo-like person that had to always ‘present’ herself in a certain way and be ‘untouchable’ in an arrogant stance, man, was that limiting.

So for now, I continually have to bake myself some humble pie which I like doing, because every time I am made aware of this kind of situations or where I catch myself doing it, I can ground myself even more. In a way this means I can ‘let go’ of an idea of myself in relation to ‘who I have to be’ or ‘who I am’ in relation to others, and that’s truly liberating, it enables me to truly expand, share, learn and enjoy others in a way I had not done ever before in my life and for that I’m grateful for Desteni and the tools that have enabled me to be living who I currently am – so! The least I can do is share myself back here J

Thanks for reading.

*some other blogs that explain in detail the points walked in relation to arrogance are:

514. Debunking My Intellectual Arrogance

581. Living Reconciliation

561. From Provocation to Self-Challenge

547. How to Live Humbleness

27. It’s always only been me

 

 

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598. Opening up with Parents

 

Or sharing bits of my teenage years and how my relationship with my parents has evolved throughout the years of walking this process with Desteni.

I listened to these two Eqafe audio recordings today Children and Isolation – Perfecting the Human Race – Parenting – Part 79 and Parent and Child Communication – Perfecting the Human Race – Parenting – Part 80 and they made me remember a bit of ‘who I was’ as a teenager in relation to my parents and how uncomfortable that phase in my life was where I essentially would keep my communication at a minimal point because of fearing having my parents prohibiting me to go out with certain people, etc. and because of knowing the ways that my sister’s teenage years had been truncated in certain ways by a mostly fearful mother, which is kind of interesting looking back at how she was back then and how she’s changed over the years too, which has enabled me to develop a supportive relationship with her now, but she definitely had to walk her own process in her own way and I’ve done mine, which enabled us to create a good communication nowadays, but it wasn’t always like that.

As a teenager I definitely was the loner kind that didn’t want to go out and do what ‘most people would do’ and instead would prefer being alone in my room – where I had all I needed: my cd’s, my paintings, my vhs cassettes with all my favorite music videos, my books and notebooks for writing – that’s all that I needed ah and my computer later on as well. I did notice that  my parents would be a bit worried that I would never go out on a Friday night like my sisters would do, and in essence they would be comparing how my sisters were very social at my age and I just wasn’t doing that at all, so it’s kind of understandable that they were a bit ‘puzzled’ about it but it was just the beginning of a series of ‘puzzling’ situations I definitely put them though and that I definitely recognize they did accept me and embrace me the best way they could through all my various life phases and somewhat ‘extreme’ changes I went through in my life.

When it came to being a ‘loner’ in my house up to the age of 16, in a way I was in fact craving to connect with people, I really wanted to find a friend or someone I could connect with in terms of tastes and things we could share and enjoy together, so that phase became the time when I started to develop ‘who I am’ in relation to all these things I would soak in from literature, music, artists etc. I was developing my tastes, I was finding my way in terms of how I decide to see life, to view things which I also was able to shape first through books and then through finding people that had similar views to my own, which became the friends that I’d spend most of my time with from age 16 and on until around 21.

Back when I was living with my parents as a teenage and already going out with friends, there were days where all my communication with my parents was ‘I’m leaving home, I’m home again, yes I’ll be careful’ and that was it. I deliberately decided to not do what my sisters did, who would sit around my mother’s room telling all of these stories about their friends and their experiences, I just decided I would not do that because of fearing that my mother would criticize my relationships, my friends and not enable me to explore all the things I wanted to do. This fear of being ‘prohibited’ to do certain things emerged when I started going out more with particular people they didn’t approve of and so that’s how I then made a decision to never tell them anything about my life, which was of course not cool for me at all. It was a constant source of stress, anxiety, fear and worry because ‘what if they would find out about this/that relationship or situation I was in?’ and so, if anything for any parent or future parent reading this: instilling fear is definitely not the way, creating a prohibition is not the way and it’s even worse if it comes within an explosive argument like the ones that I had with them which included threats of sorts which of course, led me to then become the self-proclaimed ‘rebel’ in my own family pattern.

I visited one of my childhood/pre-teen years best friend and her family not long ago, and it was interesting to hear how they remembered how my parents were reacting to ‘my ways’ and how I ‘broke the pattern’ that my sisters had set up in the family, and my friend’s mother explained that she recalled how my mother was very worried about me like ‘could not make sense of me’ lol – and the interesting thing is that I would notice such worry about them whenever they would see me just lying in my couch reading books, listening to music, writing or painting… but they would not say a thing, they never really opened up other than asking ‘if I had any friends?’ and ‘why I didn’t like going out as much?’ and my responses were how everything that everyone was doing was very superficial/shallow or plain stupid at the time and I just don’t like to ‘follow’ like that.

In a way it was cool that I also had that period for myself and that if they didn’t know how to ‘deal with it they did let me be in my own ways. Sure I was at the same time generally sad or depressed because I could not ‘connect’ with anyone in school the way that I had wanted to ‘connect,’ which is through opening up what I would define as interesting conversations, and even though I could usually talk to most people, it would all be superficial talk or ‘peer to peer’ talk but there wasn’t anyone I could dive into the depths of what I was experiencing until I found one person in my school that was into that kind of stuff and so we became best friends and that’s where ‘the world opened up to me’ to a bunch of other relationships and things to test out, live out in a more or less comfortable environment, which of course wasn’t at all a super healthy relationship overall – but I also embrace it now as part of that time in my life that led me to get to know more about people my age and the usual troubles of that time etc.

Of course at my parent’s eyes, this friend of mine was a very polite and well educated in terms of meeting his family etc. and me spending most of my days in his house, so they never questioned that. Only I knew more about the actual truth of what was going on behind the façade, which was quite an interesting relationship for me to have, however it was only later on when ‘shit hit the fan’ that I had to explain to my parents how troubled this friend in fact was and how I had tried to help and how we had to eventually part ways.

So the whole point I want to share here is how because of fear that I got from my parents as a response to my seemingly ‘abnormal ways’ of growing up as a teenager, they didn’t know how to handle it and for the most part I wasn’t going to open up because there wasn’t such development of trust with them, especially with my mother whom I had seen having long and deep talks with my sisters but I never did that or create the space it, and maybe it was for the best considering the things I was into at the time that would have shocked her even more than her already existent constant worry about me and my life choices.

However, at some level they were also certain about having provided certain principles and they knew how responsible I generally was, so, that’s how they actually allowed me to have much more freedom than my older two sisters had, which they still kind of get jealous of – lol – like allowing me to go and live to another city and be the first one to ‘leave the nest,’ or travel on my own at a relatively young age, stuff like that which I’m also grateful for that they did have such trust towards me to do all those things, but I also was a generally responsible person so I sort of ‘earned’ it in a way as well.

In terms of parents having children stepping into their teenage years, I can only suggest to not be judgmental about what they’re going through, sometimes to not even try and understand it completely but rather consider how it was ‘for you’ when going through that phase and how being alone to me was a way to find my way through it – though of course some people will actually benefit from communications so I guess it all has to do with having developed such communication with your kids at a young age so that there’s no ‘awkward’ sudden interest in talking to the children when they start reaching their teenage years.

I also have a small context of how current generations are in terms of kids and their parents. There was a general failure in the internet service in Mexico yesterday and a lot of what I read in twitter was how what I consider were kids or teenagers were suddenly placed in a position of having to get out of their rooms and interact with ‘these old dudes that say are their parents’ which I found interesting, meaning, there is really no interaction at all now with kids doing their thing in the internet. But, who am I kidding? I did the same and would spend hours in the computer when I first got internet and would do the same without computer and be stuck in front of my TV to avoid family time, lol, so it is a phase indeed that can be changed based on supportive communication patterns that can be cultivated from the very first years of a child’s life.

Teenage years are indeed a phase where a lot of things get shaped within our personalities, tastes, preferences – and even if the initial ‘shape’ things are taken is not the best way, it is mostly when one gets into the 20’s that one can actually learn from what one did around that teenage phase and realign our path. This means that maybe for parents it becomes difficult to be able to connect with their children during those first teen years, but once they get into young adulthood, it might get easier.

To me starting this process having 21 years old assisted me tremendously to get back to communicate with my parents in a different way, from a different starting point, deliberately no longer seeing them as ‘my parents’ but starting to see them as people. I did decide to even stop calling them ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and call them by their name till today – which I did ended up doing in a somewhat stubborn manner which caused more reactions in them than any form of support, so I would not suggest anyone doing that because the point is to be open to them as people, no longer as these ‘guardians’ that we have to ‘check in with’ or that we only relate to for the basics of survivalism. So I decided to explain how I wanted to see them, how I want to relate to them as people and no longer as these ‘parental figures’ that I fear or have no comfort to talk to.

And this wasn’t an easy process – my mother had to walk her own process to understand how much of a control freak she was – and she now recognizes it, which is great – and my father has always been quite ok with me doing my thing and being more independent, because he lived his life like that by leaving his home when he was 13 so, nothing’s too shocking for him. So here more in relation to my mother and how it was very supportive for me to start sharing what I am doing in this process which of course at first she didn’t fully understand, she was in shock lol, especially because I went full-blown extremist within it at first. But as time progressed and she started witnessing many of the ‘evolutions’ within me, she’s now at that stage where she asks my perspective for certain things she’s facing with my sisters, the grandchildren, her friends, herself a bit as well and that’s quite cool, to the point where her friends by default appreciate me quite a bit because they always say how my mother goes ‘like Marlen says…’ and shares back what I’ve shared with her about my own realizations and points walked or what I’ve learned through the education at Eqafe and Desteni, my relationships with people etc. which is great really.

But it all wasn’t built in ‘one day’ so to speak, it’s taken almost a decade to get to that point but it is possible to do that even if I had a very sour relationship with my mother back then. 10 years ago I truly thought that I wasn’t ever going to have a ‘healthy communication’ with my mother specifically and that I was going to ‘forever have a grudge towards her’ for certain emotional outbursts that we did have toward each other during my ‘teenage  years’  – while also considering she was going through menopause so, not a good mix lol – and only later on me taking responsibility to place myself in her shoes, understand all the variables of that time and so not take the things said and done personally, but understand her fears and also being honest with myself in how my choice of relationships weren’t also the ‘healthiest’ ones either, which is kind of common at the time as well – we all make mistakes and eventually learn from it, walked my way through it regardless.

Surely at times I did rely on going to the school’s psychologist to ask for a perspective, because I knew I could not talk to my friends about things because ‘they were ‘the point’ of worry/problem in my life’ nor could I go with my parents to talk about it because they would get shit scared about what I was going through and didn’t have any other people around me to open up, so I did go to her and she made me realize one thing that, man,  yep I could have applied for the rest of my life but until not so long ago I was still playing out this pattern as ‘who I am,’ which is how I tried to save people from themselves instead of focusing on myself. I’ll never forget how she said ‘well who’s coming for help? Is it really about them or is it really you that needs help, because you are the one that’s here, not them’ and that clicked quite a lot within me to see that I was the troubled one in fact, not them. But even if I got that realization, it took me over ten years to fully understand what that meant, which means I repeated the same pattern every single time until I saw the consequence it creates and decided to for once and for all say ‘no more.’ But that’s something I’ve already shared a few months ago.

Currently I enjoy going out with my parents and sharing what I’ve discovered about myself, my relationships, what I’ve learned from others, how I see ‘the world’ in general and what I’ve gotten through walking this process with Desteni and educating myself with Eqafe material. It’s become an awesome way for me to connect with them because I’ve now been able to apply that realization that I can ‘connect’ with people because we are all human beings, we all have that one thing in common and so I can share and open up things and ask them questions. I’ve gotten to know a lot more about them as people, the hardship they went through in their own ways while growing up, their family set ups, their environment and relationship with their siblings and parents, their decisions and how that defined their lives etc.

To me that’s been quite cool because it is through that that I’ve been able to see how I came to be ‘who I am’ based on who they both have been in their lives. I also enjoy looking at them as my ‘mirrors’ because of course I am directly coming from them and so I see them in a way as ‘cautionary tales’ for me to look at what patterns they have developed that have become a source of ‘problems’ in their lives, from anger, anxiety and stress issues to control-freakism and general patterns of fear and prejudice that I can see in them that I can then ‘take back to self’ to ensure I am not following ‘the same steps,’ because I can see how things turn out with time and with having an advanced age. Though this is done not in a judgmental way, but through understanding in how it’s now up to me to learn from them and stop repeating the same mistakes they’ve made, which is a general supportive thing to do with our progenitors, to identify their weaknesses and turn them into our strengths and use what we have gotten from them as ‘strengths’ or things we’re good at and develop them even more.

 And the truth is that I would not be able to be doing what I’m doing and who I’ve become without the support of my parents. They both have been very supportive with everything I am doing, they fully support this process and my work in it – even if it was kind of rough for them to understand it at first – and it’s also great to have that confidence and trust to have them meet my friends/partners which I had not done at all throughout my teenage years, they only met my first ‘official partner’ when I was 28 years old, lol.

So this goes to show that I did have quite a distance-relationship to my parents in that sense, but it also was linked to me not having made the kind of ‘supportive choices’ in my life before that I would be confident enough to share with my parents, so it took me quite some time for sure, but I’m quite glad that they understood my process and that I found my way through it all, while also having worked quite extensively on my own to not hold a grudge to them at the time for the impositions they created on my life, but understand where they were ‘coming from’ and also being able to be honest about myself and seeing how if I had been in their shoes, I would have probably freaked out as well with the things I was deciding to do, but I’m here and able to tell J

I’ll open up in another blog about how this ‘openness’ relates to current relationships and the benefits that come along with it, which of course is also an outflow or result of having walked this process with Desteni.

Thanks for reading.

 

Self Portrait circa 2005

 

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597. Embracing My Mind

“Be humble in your relationship to the mind, humbleness meaning to walk it in understanding and consideration, it’s like this beast that you gotta tame. And approaching the beast with an attacking egotistical superiority is going to just unsettle it even more, so take it easy, walk it slowly but surely, take it day by day, breath by breath. And if anything, your process in your relationship to energy, especially in your daily participation is something I would really focus on because it is primarily through energy and energy experience that the mind gets you. That consciousness will move your awareness from the physical into the mind, it uses energy.” Mykey – Demons in the Afterlife – Part 11

 

I’m going to open up some points and realizations and practical test-outs that I’ve gathered from various sources like Mykey’s description above of the humbleness required in our relationship with our mind, and the description of how we’ve been fighting against stress in our lives while also not challenging ourselves explained in this Eqafe.com interview Senility, Dementia, and Alzheimer’s (Part 2) – Psychological & Physical Disorders – as well as seeing a picture of one of my favorite artists/singers with a caption saying ‘Embrace the mess that you are’ and also some of Ido Portal’s interview which I’m also enjoying quite a bit because there are a lot of points that open up parallels to walking this mind-being-body process as well, which relate to the form of movement that we have to also create in order to develop anything, to change anything, to challenge ourselves and the effort, consistency, discipline it takes to do so.

Something that we tend to do is fight those aspects that we dislike of ourselves, or become uncomfortable with getting to acknowledge the ‘truth’ of ourselves as the reality, of that which we’ve become but that we’ve become so used to masking, disguising in all kinds of ways to make it seem ‘better’ in our eyes than what it is – and this is mostly because of wanting to keep a certain ‘idea’ of ourselves as perfect, flawless, never wrong, always right, honorable, ‘immaculate’ and so forth, well at least these are some of the ideas I’ve had to debunk about myself which were the perfect ‘shields’ for me to not even question certain things or experiences about me that I actually was wanting to hold on to because of the ‘pleasure’ I derived from them in a very ‘sneaky’ manner so to speak.

Though interestingly enough I’ve found that the more I get ‘down and dirty’ with myself in all kinds of ways – yep don’t allow your mind to run rampant with that idea though! – I find that I become the most comfortable, more raw and honest with myself where I have been throughout this past year – more so than ever before – being really willing to let go of this ‘effigy’ I had created about me/who I am or what I seem ‘to be for others’ which was a huge thing in me as well, like having this idea of myself as a ‘politician’ in a way that had to keep a certain image at all times.

I now know exactly where this comes from – as a result of the many writings about it to open this point up – and how I developed this idea of self, which has to do with yes having been taught to behave a certain ways in certain social contexts and seeing how my family would relate to others etc. And here it’s just an acknowledgement, not at all judging or blaming, but an understanding – and so what I became was this very stiff, rigid, inflexible, ever ‘strong’ version of myself that had to appear in a certain manner all the time – and this goes as far as my first ‘big contact’ with peers in the first day of school in wanting to take on this idea of myself as strong, not weak, superior, ‘not showing emotions’ and all kinds of things that of course now I’ve been able to identify and so decide to open up myself more and share who I am in a vulnerable, natural, open, raw version of myself that to say the least has become a very enjoyable process to integrate as myself and so share with others in my life too.

I was talking with a friend the other day and he mentioned how he had this very shocking dream where he had killed someone and everyone noticed that ‘the killed person’ was missing and he started to get very stressed out and fearful about the idea of having the corpse in a bag and not being able to do anything with it, not being able to compress the body of evidence into non-existence. He freaked out about the images, the scene, the very ‘act of killing’ itself, so I suggested to not dwell on the imagery of it, the gory details of it so to speak, but to focus on his experience, which is that of suddenly becoming aware of what he had done, trying to hide it, getting fearful about facing consequence, being caught by others, eventually maybe having to admit having done such a thing (in the dream of course) and I simply suggested to take it back to himself to see/write out where in his life is he having this kind of experience towards some parts of him that he is fearing to admit, to see, to embrace. I left it at that. He is on his 21 days of stopping smoking weed and of course suppressions are popping up and I understand how that kind of changes can suddenly open up Pandora’s box within self, but it’s quite cool to know that he’s taking on the writing as a source of self-reference.  Though I could notice there was some fear, disgust, aghast experience about the dream, where he then became more unsettled about such ‘truth’ of himself that he might not even be aware of instead of simply getting to know himself, to understand it, which is also part of being humble to our minds, our truth, ourselves: not to fear it or resist it, but embrace it with all its ‘doom and gloom’ in it, we created it so there’s nothing to ‘fear’ in it, nothing is really ‘unknown’ to us, only out of our awareness.

I also watched a documentary about a band and how they said they had to become ‘fearless’ in their way to continue walking their lengthy career, having some pivotal changes in their lineup, having ‘core members’ leaving, having rejection towards the new members, testing out new things but their decision to persevere, keep going no matter what has turned them into a long-standing band with some 30 years of history now behind them, which is quite a merit and example for many more as well.

The word ‘fearlessness’ was mentioned a few times and it stuck with me, which is also something Ido explains is a very normal function in humans – practical fears enable us to survive, to be aware, cautious, make decisions to ‘keep ourselves alive’ of course – however there’s also the point of being taken over by fear completely nowadays where we’ve allowed it to override everything we are and do, to the point that we are now limiting ourselves extensively because of fearing ourselves and each other… a world dominated by fear in fact.

So, in this process of self-change, self-awareness, self-creation I find it very supportive to walk a process of self-forgiveness in order to identify all those things that we fear about ourselves. I remember writing out each and every other fear I had in my mind in the beginning of my process, man, the list was immense but I knew I was a very fearful person – and I am continuing walking through them – but the point here is admitting to oneself those fears, deliberately creating that acceptance and comfort of the ‘uncomfortable’ at first, admitting to oneself those actual thoughts, words and deeds that we have defined as bad, evil, wrong and Embrace them.

This is a keyword right here, to Embrace myself because the actual living of the word implies I cannot judge it, compare it, define the totality of myself in relation to ‘a few points’ that I become aware of – I instead write it out to understand it, to get to know ‘how’ and ‘why’ I became such personalities, patterns, experiences within me, what was it within me that enabled that and within doing so, I am more taking a position of learning about myself, observing myself yet not creating a reaction to it and making it personal. Sure, it’s not as easy as it sounds, it has taken me years to walk through certain points that I was quite ashamed of myself to even ‘talk about’ to myself about them and through sharing about them openly with a few people, it has assisted me to also let go of the ‘hold’ I had towards it all as something that I apparently could ‘never forgive myself for.’

Of course in that it is to be considerate of who we share with such very personal points, always in common sense, but I find it very supportive to have someone in your life with whom you can open up and lay those points out in writing, in conversations, creating that safe space for self-support in relationships which is one of the benefits we have as human beings to create, develop and nurture each other within the context of relationships where two or more beings decide to share themselves, open themselves in order to assist each other in that very personal process of self-creation and self-change.

And if this is something that is not yet ‘here’ as a potential for you to be comfortable with in terms of opening up with others, then it means that there’s some self-work to first do within self, to start developing that self-relationship first, and to me this came through writing within a self-honest starting point which means pushing through to see the ‘truth’ of myself, even if I wanted to hide behind my chair to not type it out or see it ‘for what it is’, pushing through to lay it out and embrace those things I was ashamed for in my life, all those things I thought would leave me ‘powerless’ or ‘losing my mojo’ in a way lol, or where I believed I would become this ‘lifeless being’ if giving up my craving for certain things that gave me an ‘energy high,’ which I ended up realizing where actually the chains and shackles I had enslaved myself to as ‘reasons to live’ or ‘points of motivation’ in separation of myself.

I decided to place myself through all of those uncomfortable spots through writing, through being honest with myself and all I can say is that the ‘bitter taste’ is only momentary, the rest of what one gets out of the box and opened up creates an actual ‘flow’ within oneself. It’s as if bit by bit I went ‘disentangling’ myself from my plethora of fears, judgments, limitations – and still am doing so – and with each point I went opening up, it was like opening up a window to let the air flow, or digging more ground for a river to flow wider… that kind of ‘liberation’ in fact, which I was reflecting about yesterday with regards to a particular point I tested myself with in letting go of something that I had to admit would give me an ‘energy high’ and within doing the actual change and decision to ‘let go of it’ in that moment, I realized that I was apparently letting go of a very automated ‘fix’ I had created in particular contexts, but I reminded myself instead of the actual integrity, self-respect, honor that I created instead for myself in that moment and towards others implied in the situation as well.

What did I have to practically do? Instead of fearing placing myself in such ‘tempting’ position so to speak, I decided to create it, to embrace myself in that moment and learn to see ‘who I am’ in that moment. I saw the energy movement taking a position in my body, I saw how the justifications opened up in order to ‘go for it’, I saw how ‘natural’ this had become for me to act on this experience without giving ‘too much thought’ into it before – and it was quite fascinating to stand in that point in the moment and what I practically did was the following:

– I decided to consider the consequential outflows of me acting out on this ‘impulse’ I had which I became aware of was existing as energy, there was no substance to it, just an ‘impulse’ that If I had given too many thoughts into it, I would have ended up convincing myself of just ‘doing it’ or ‘going for it’ – neverminding the outflows, the aftermath and consequence which is what I decided to remind myself of in that moment in order to not ‘go for it’ or not ‘move’ myself under the influence of this impulse/energy as desire.

It was quite cool because I was able to see it, stand in it, feel how it ‘feels’ and feel how I could go either two ways: get myself to heighten the experience if I would have given more of an opening to it or stick to my conscious decision I had laid out before of ‘who I decide to be/do’ in those moments of defined ‘temptation’. Therefore,

– I decided to remind myself that I would not be able to live with myself if I would give into that experience and act on this impulse driven by an energetic experience defined as desire. And within reminding myself of this and how I had essentially made the ‘same mistake’  a few times in the past, I decided to stand strong in my resolve to let go of it, to not ‘go for it,’ to discipline myself to ‘stand my ground’ not as defensive, defiant or antagonistic to my desire, but through having ‘immersed’ myself for a moment in it, seeing, it understanding it, get a ‘feel’ for it as the energy it was where as I said there was no other ‘substance’ to it other than the remembrance of ideas, beliefs of perceptions of ‘acting out on the energy feeling good.’ And that’s it… never ever having considered the actual implications, consequences of acting out on it, what I would cause as conflict or consequences for it, which would eventually lead me to become very dependent of ‘recreating’ the same experience one way or another, becoming subject to an experience, becoming subject to a ‘feeling good’ sensation only – and that’s what I decided to no longer be.

So all of this happened in a couple of minutes and then I decided to breathe myself into stability and fully decide to let it go, to not act on it and physically stabilize myself so that I would no longer be in this ‘heightened’ experience – and even if it ‘kept coming up’ or ‘being triggered,’ I would then repeat some of the above mentioned points of reminding myself of the consequence, of deciding to live honor, integrity, self-respect in those moments which means to me not ‘giving up’ on myself for a fleeting energy, but to test who I am within it, see with clarity the starting point, the context, the factors that I led myself to in order to face such point and then be able to come out on the other side of it having in a way yes ‘tamed,’ controlled, directed myself to not give into it.

See, maybe a few months ago I would have still feared myself in terms of believing I would not have self-control or that I should not even place myself in certain situations, but in a way I created the context and then realized that I can in fact stand and stick to my decisions to not give into this desire and what I gained from that is the satisfaction of having simply done that which is best for all, that which I know creates and expands my integrity, my self-respect and honor to myself and everyone else involved whether they were aware of it or not. And that’s what I decide to make the new matter to me.

Also it was quite cool for me to open this point up and reflect on it, see it within clarity and share it, communicate it as is because it becomes a way to debunk this ‘secret mind’ that I’ve kept for quite some time as ‘who I am’ because of in a way wanting to still hold on to that kind of ‘thrill’ or ‘power’ or ‘experience’ which boils down to energy that in fact tampers with the ability to simply express, enjoy, embrace and appreciate myself and others without attempting to ‘get an energetic experience from it’ – which is what we’ve become very ‘addicted’ to – and instead embrace the interactions in their simplicity, without any hidden agendas, without any ‘suppressions’ either, but simply understanding what comes up as ‘desire’ for example for a particular experience, seeing it, holding it, becoming it for a moment, not fearing to ‘get lost’ in it but keeping the focus on making that crucial decision to let go of it and in that moment decide ‘who I decide to be’ in the face of that experience or ‘temptation’ I created for myself in a way.

And that’s how I would define an experience of ‘embracing’ the whole of myself, not fearing to ‘have no control’ of myself, but to rather use the opportunities, situations, experiences as playgrounds for me to see ‘who I am’ in those situations, in essence creating my own test-drives so to speak to see if my written process and the commitments, corrections and solutions I’ve set for myself are practical enough for me to actually change in that moment.  And I did, it was in me all along, that ability to decide to not go for the ‘quick fix’ of an energetic experience, and seeing once again that I can in fact live beyond that and not really ‘lose’ anything other than an energetic experience, but instead gain self-respect, confidence, self-trust, self-integrity and honesty. In this I am also learning to see interactions with other people without wanting to get a ‘fix’ from it, which had become very underlying and common way to do so before in my life.

Ok! I had a very simple idea to start this blog, I ended up expanding it too much, well, it is what it is, I still find it quite a challenge stay in a few words… maybe I have to stop judging it or trying to ‘battle’ against the extension of these blogs and simply let myself be in it. It is how it is and comes out for now

 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

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