646. Choosing How To Give Birth

It’s been over a month since I gave birth so, it’s time to share about the actual big decision we made when it comes to giving birth to Minerva, our daughter.  I’d like to first of all clarify that what I’m about to share is a very personal process and decision that doesn’t imply ‘is the right or correct way’ to do things or ‘how it should be.’ I respect each woman’s and couple’s choice of how they give birth, and as such I’ll share the story of how we got to choose ours, which we were really glad and satisfied to do after all.

 

From the 5th month or so we started looking at ‘where to give birth’ and few names of hospitals came up, I went to visit one and even if it was an entire hospital just for giving birth, something didn’t quite sit right with me. I had initially considered that I would be having possibly the usual C-section like most of the women in my family and that would be it. However, as I was in the spot looking at the rooms and the list of instruments and stuff that’s used for the ‘birthing package,’ I got calmly freaked out, I couldn’t really fathom myself being at a hospital giving birth, though I thought I had to ‘suck it up’ because ‘there was no other way’ apparently.

 

Well, I kept having such hospital in mind, trying not to think too much about it in the subsequent weeks, but then a few things came to my awareness as I started investigating more about the birthing process that led me to become aware of alternative ways to give birth and by this I mean both in and out of hospitals, beginning with the idea of having a natural birth, which I had sincerely not considered before seriously enough because of the idea of how painful it would be.

 

One day my cousin – who is now pregnant by the way, lol – told me about the documentary ‘The business of being born’ and that opened up my eyes to what actually goes on with doctors and hospitals in terms of how they essentially benefit from sending a perfectly healthy woman to get a C-section by making up all kinds of stories that lead the mothers-to-be into a path of apparent ‘no other way around other than C-section’ or ‘no-other-way-around but to get an episiotomy’ and a bunch of other so called ‘problems’ that are in fact rare in nature that could make a birthing process difficult.

 

Around that same time, we had a chat with my friend who is a neonatal care specialist and she made us aware of all the things we would have to be aware of that are routinely done to newborns in hospitals… there were quite a few things that we got to understand could disrupt the bonding and feeding initial processes that are so relevant to do in the moment right after the baby is born, along with other shots and intervention that I had seen in the hospital’s TVs when my nephews and niece were born, which by the way horrified me and I couldn’t understand how everyone would be so joyful at seeing the newborn being treated like a piece of meat about to be sold while I was shocked and almost cried of seeing how they were being handled by the doctors. I didn’t want this for me nor for our child at all, but this is ‘how things are’ apparently.

 

I also got to chat to my friend Anna and she expressed how she would have liked to have a woman accompanying her birthing process – a doula to be precise- and that got me pondering how is it that I ‘really’ wanted to give birth, because I was just superficially looking at that significant point as if it wasn’t relevant enough, but it all was due to me not being informed about ‘how things go’ in fact at a hospital and the potential of having either natural or C-section there, and the relevance it has for both the mother and the baby. All of this peaked my curiosity and interest to actually try and do things differently than how I had observed people around me would do with their pregnancies and birth processes.

 

So, I avidly started investigating the benefits, the pros and cons of C-sections, natural birth at hospital, the procedures etc. I still couldn’t fathom me going through this at such a place, but I was ‘settling’ for it because I thought there was no other way in hospitals where I live.

 

Then, I stumbled upon the ‘humanized birth’ concept and some doctors trying to sell that for many thousands… well, talking to them didn’t sound like they were totally ‘humanizing’ after all when including all kinds of expenses for anesthesia even if I didn’t end up requiring it. Then I got to watch the birthing process of a yoga teacher on YouTube which really peaked my interest in finding a way to do something similar. I had been following her yoga lessons throughout pregnancy so that’s how I got to see that she gave birth at a birth center and voilà, that seemed like an awesome thing to do: giving birth in a tub, in water. Hmm that looked so nice and peaceful, away from this spooky hospital place. I thought how that would be so awesome and I did further research on it, but I only found some costly services from Mexico City, which seemed like a lot and improbable due to the preparation required for it, and I was already getting to the 7th month by the time.

 

Well to short-cut the story after watching a lot of information on water births, investigating ‘who’ could do it and not finding anything, I went to my first actual prenatal yoga birth class and there I met a woman that, in our 10 minute conversation, told me about her plan to have a home birth with midwives and in water! I was like ‘what? you can actually do that here?’ and so I finally got her midwife’s contact and that changed the course of the birth story and something I am entirely grateful for, perhaps I just hadn’t done a proper search on Facebook for it, lol, but I found the right people at the right time.

 

Oh, I had also known of another friend from my qi gong class that was choosing to give birth at home with midwives, it sounded too ‘hippie’ to me lol, of course this is a  prejudice I’d then clear up with proper information on my side, she was 3 months more advanced than me in her pregnancy, so I got to know about her – also – lengthy birthing process and it turned out it was the same midwife that assisted her 🙂  so that created more confidence in our choice. I also remembered Joana’s birth at home and I remembered her having a tub, so I kept considering that there should be a way to do that here, and perseverance played a role because I got to find the right people to accompany me and actually do the whole process that we both had by then considered would be the best way to give birth to our child.

 

Talking to the midwife -whose name is also by coincidence Minerva -was refreshing in the sense that she explained to us the way she does things and that’s exactly what we wanted,  we were in the same ‘wavelength’ so to speak and at the time we still were going with the regular doctor who would indicate to us – as I have shared in previous blogs – how everything was going just fine and without any complications, which of course then was like a ‘green light’ to pursue doing things in a natural way.

 

Here it is relevant to say that this whole process of ditching the hospital idea and going for the home birth plan is entirely a personal – and as a couple – decision that doesn’t mean ‘it’s the best way’ for everyone. I’ve met women who didn’t feel at all at ease with the idea of having a child at home and went to the hospital because that’s where they would feel most at ease and safe, some others just can’t have natural births due to medical reasons or any other physical complication, even though I’ve also now gotten to know more about the medical tricks used to entice women to get C-sections and so forth, but that’s another story and something each women would have the responsibility to investigate to not be, essentially, tricked and fooled into believing they can’t give birth in a natural way, The reason for this? Easy: money.

 

To me, choosing to give birth this way was like a 180 degree turn again, where I went from being very vague about a birth plan and sort of brushing off the idea of having to go to a hospital to give birth and postponing looking at those – gory to me – details because I actually didn’t want to, and circumstances led me to find other ways with which I was definitely more comfortable with. And this to me was also a revelation, because… the idea of giving birth without any ‘painkiller’ is probably something I feared the most in my life, the sole idea of giving birth was one of the reasons why I didn’t want to have children to begin with. However with sufficient amount of YouTube testimonies on natural birth, several documentaries about midwives, births at home, births in water, learning about the multiple – horror – stories of obstetric violence at hospitals and women’s accounts of their terrible experience at hospitals was enough for me to realize that this would be the best way for us, and that we’d have to work a bit hard on it, since it wasn’t going to be easy, so I set myself up to have this ‘mountain-hiking’ like experience that giving birth resembles, according to Minerva, our midwife.

 

The most interesting part of this is how ‘uncommon’ and ‘dangerous’ and therefore feared this way of giving birth is for a lot of people.  When we talked to my mother about our home birth decision and asking her if we could use their home – specifically their TV lounge – to be the space for our choice of birthing process, man, it was very difficult, she reacted a LOT and it’s all because of fears and misinformation that we’ve gotten throughout the past decades about a birth process being some sort of ‘illness’ or ‘complication’ that needs a whole medical team to do it… this is of course in the majority of cases false, however, as with everything, we have been brainwashed to think the other way around and have forgotten the thousands of years that women have given birth without the ‘clinically sanitized’ hospitals, when in fact there’s a lot of evidence on how counterproductive this can be for both mothers and children – yep perhaps not in everyone’s case, but there’s still a lot to fine tune when it comes to giving proper aid and support to a birthing mother in hospitals to prevent a lot of the mistreatment that causes emotional stress and many times even influences the infamous postpartum depression.

 

We kept this plan under the radar for the most part precisely because of considering how most people would be fearing the worst by us doing it this way and possibly talking us out of this ‘crazy’ idea, so, it was our first choice anyways, but always also kept a plan B in case anything could possibly go wrong, and that’s also very relevant because there were certain conditions that ‘in the last minute’ could in fact be sufficient reasons to go to a hospital and get a C-section. I am entirely grateful that wasn’t my case, but I will detail as well in the following blog how the whole birthing process actually took place.

 

So with this all, the learning point is to not settle with what the majority of people do around you even if it doesn’t really ‘sit right’ within you. Once I asked my mother about how I’d like to have some ‘freedom’ in the positions to give birth. and this was way before our choice of home-birthing – and she was like ‘no way, you are doing to be in one of those beds where you put your legs up and that’s how you deliver a baby… that in itself already sounded like an unnatural ‘must do’ where my palms would start to sweat just by the thought of seeing myself in that situation with all the white bright lights and screaming my lungs out without being able to move… well that was enough motivation for me to look at doing things differently.

 

Secondly, to not back down with making this kind of choice even if multiple ‘worst case scenarios’ are presented to oneself by different people in an attempt to ‘do the safe thing’ according to their views, perspectives and experiences. It’s also understandable how a lot of people do this out of actually wanting the best for oneself, but, it’s also important to consider that without having proper information or education on the subject, any idea that goes out of the ‘norm’ may simply be feared because of not being the most common thing to do or having misinformation about it. In this, we learned to understand people’s fears and concerns, but we also take them from ‘where they come from’ so as to then investigate their claims and truly make sure that those fears are addressed with proper directions of ‘what one would do IF’ this or that complication takes place.

 

Thirdly, realizing that the thing one feeds throughout one’s life as ‘the thing I feared the most’ is probably something that one needs to actually do to then come through on the other side and say ‘hey, I made it! I’m alive’ and yes, this by no means down-sizes the actual rough process this was, but I also see how my disposition to stop just fearing and instead looking into a better way  – to me- to give birth, making an informed decision and choice and preparing myself for it – not having anyone telling me ‘what’ to do – empowered me to own my decision, in a way, knowing that yes, this will probably be hard but hey it’s my absolute choice and decision, and that actually helped me to get rid of fears of ‘not being able to do it’ and instead, entirely trust the process and trust my capacity to do it, along with the indispensable help of professionals to do so of course.

 

As a result of this, I actually felt a lot better in the last weeks and days leading to the birthing time, because I knew I wasn’t going to a hospital, I wasn’t going to go through surgery, I wouldn’t have to worry about extra expenses and charges that these places usually do – and doctors – and instead pay a round fee for it which included the whole attention and support needed throughout the whole birth labor process. This also was a settling fact, because I’ve heard also the stories of how hospitals kind of take advantage of couples being in this ecstatic moment of giving birth to their child and any ‘extra’ expenses are just unquestioned because ‘well at least my child is here and safe’ and bam, there goes some 25% or more of the cost on top of the initial expected fees… yes, yikes, there’s a LOT that needs to be changed in the medical realm and specifically in birthing processes, but that’s just my perspective from what I’ve researched so far.

 

All I can say for any woman expecting a child or looking for alternative ways to give birth or just having a regular plan at the hospital is to get informed, at least on the basics of how you will be ‘handled’ and how your baby will also be handled from the moment they come out of the womb – regardless of the way you deliver – so that you are the most aware possible of how things will go. I share this because of watching many women having sour experiences after birth because of not informing themselves or being tricked ‘in the last moment’ to do something they didn’t want to initially but believing there are ‘no other ways’ so, going for it without a question. In this I might sound as if I am encouraging people to do it the natural way, to have a home birth or with midwives, and that’s how i would do it if I had to do it all over again – not that I plan to either, lol – but I am simply suggesting to own your choice and decision so that whatever the outcome is, one can be settled with it, embracing the outcomes and consequences of such choice. I guess this applies to everything really, but this is just my experience with choosing a way to give birth 🙂  

642. Pessimism and Embracing The Blank Page

 

As I briefly mentioned in my previous blog, pessimism has been one of the very ‘ingrained’ patterns in me that I’ve become more aware of lately since finding out I was pregnant. I have to say that I didn’t see myself as a ‘pessimist’ per se, but I was able to identify this way of being in me based on the feedback that I got from my partner as a way to describe my focus on ‘the worst’ of the early pregnancy experience and the fears and limitations that I would bring up in terms of how things ‘would be’ for the future and so forth.

This all seemed ‘normal’ to me and that’s where this point begins, because! I’ve seen firsthand how the same event can be approached from a very different perspective, one that sees the inconvenience of certain symptoms as part of creating something that will be a life-change in our lives. One that can see the ‘adding’ of responsibility as a catalyst for change and personal growth, one that can bring fun times even with the stuff I could define as ‘a hassle’ or ‘troublesome’ – yep, this rather constructive perspective is how my partner approached the whole thing and I’ve been certainly learning more from him and learning to see living potential in it all, instead of only focusing on all that I could define as ‘the bad’ which, again, is not the best of me that I want to cultivate, it is the worst of me that interestingly enough has resurfaced again, because! Yes, this is a ‘life changer’ situation and one that I ‘feared’ a lot apparently, so I faced the consequence of cultivating all of those fears for many, many years. But I’m also learning to let go of them as I go facing this pessimism in different ways and in some of the most ‘sneaky’ forms.

This ‘pessimist’ core programming certainly started in childhood and yes, due to other circumstances unrelated to my pregnancy, we’ve been opening this up with my parents considering that these same fearful patterns have been spilling out into the children of the family and causing some consequences. So, confronting the situation is serving as a preparation ground for both of us to get to understand how I got to be quite limited by all kinds of fears that were imprinted from a very young age by my parents and within that, us all getting to see how that is affecting the newest members of the family, consequently to understand how these patterns came to exist in us and how they are still having ‘a hold’ on us.

Here I perhaps point out something that is by now a ‘well learned lesson’ when it comes to parents and getting to understand and forgive the ways in which they brought us up, because they most likely also didn’t know ‘any better’ and they did what they could in what they perceived as a way to care and love their children.  In this, there are no ‘hurt feelings’ for how I was raised, I instead enjoy understanding the familial patterns to see where and how I came to be ‘who I am’ and within that understanding, take a more active role in being responsible to change those very things that I’ve seen have limited me – and are Still showing up as limiting in my experience currently when facing the point of becoming a mother, becoming parents.  

I have come to make sense of how this ‘pessimism’ is therefore rooted in all kinds of fears that led me to ‘automatically’ think of the worst case scenarios, ‘all the worst that could happen,’ and it’s been quite astounding to see to what extent I do this on an automatic and “natural” way – meaning, I wouldn’t necessarily see it as something I had to flag-point and become aware of, because I deemed it as ‘care’ or ‘creating a sense of security’ – which by cross-referencing it with my partner, are more like my own conditioning – meaning, my past being ‘brought forward’ to the present and even ‘into the future’ … and that’s exactly what we don’t have to do, but instead approaching every moment, every day as a blank page where we decide how to live and how to face situations or ‘challenges,’ and to no longer kind of predispose myself to ‘facing all the worst’ because, I’ve seen how prominent that exists as a ‘normal thinking’ in my mind, and it doesn’t have to be that way, I have to actually stop seeing it as ‘normal thinking’ when seeing that I’m actually considering ‘all the things that could go wrong.’

It all really starts at that level of accepting and allowing those seemingly ‘small thoughts’ to creep up, feed them – which means go into them, thinking about them – to spiral them out into personality patterns like ‘the fearful mother’ and! Well, I would not want to become that, but I also see that I may face these fears in reality in order to become aware of what exists within me, so that I can become aware of them and change them. How else would I become aware of them otherwise?

I really even once thought that it was a cultural thing to constantly be gasping and fearing for a child’s health and wellbeing… well, nope! It’s more like a family thing that I truly need to become aware of Within myself, instead of kind of only going criticizing it and judging it on ‘the outside’ which in all cases, indicates that there are points I am not yet understanding and so, not forgiving that exist within me as well. This means that as long as I am reacting to it, then, there is less of a possibility for me to actually acknowledge, understand and embrace it in order to see where and how that exists within me, so that I can direct myself in a more flexible, understanding and unconditional way, one that considers the moment, and the present as that blank page and stop ‘re-loading’ all of my memories and fears and past conditioning as a child in my own family.

I noticed this pattern even more so recently where I was looking at a future situation of how people in my environment and their character could ‘affect’ the child and within this looking at it already from a starting point of fear: fear of the child going through the ‘imprinting’ of fears and anxiety that I went through as a child based on interacting with these individuals. And I allowed that to go as far as seeing how we would have to possibly disengage from being around these people to attempt to ‘protect’ our child from that kind of ‘character flaws.’ So here again, realizing I’m still holding a judgment and a reaction, which certainly I allowed myself to be affected by, which in turn I feared could ‘happen to our child’ and then going into ‘wanting to protect the child.’

I realize that as long as I am judging, criticizing, fearing certain attitudes and types of ‘character,’ then I am not yet coming to see ‘who am I’ towards those characteristics and emotions in others so that I can work on stopping my own reactions, realizing that others’ reaction do still create an effect on me – and therefore the child inside – and that it is precisely there where I need to act and apply myself to simply stop reacting and understanding why I get to react to them, so that I can decide in self-awareness to change how I respond in those moments.

It’s very easy to deviate from the point of self-responsibility when attempting to blame others for their character flaws, their patterns, their reactions and thinking that ‘they have to change’ or ‘we just have to avoid them altogether’ instead of realizing how it is only myself that can change how I face those situations and that that will in a huge way determine and be an example of how our child can face, confront and walk through similar situations with people. So it’s not about wanting to ‘prevent’ problems –  because we create ‘the problem’ when reacting to others in the first place – but it’s about being an example of how to best face the situation with stability, understanding and focusing on solutions, not giving space to ‘react back’ to anyone, but to stick to what is practical and reasonable to do. Now this is where the real self-change is at.

This time around again it took a good conversation while walking with my partner to explain to him what I was seeing with this whole thing that I just explained above and get back to Earth about it. I saw how I wasn’t really going to get anywhere with the ‘getting away from’ or ‘avoidance’ plan, I was mostly also ‘trapping’ people in their ‘usual selves’ and assuming how they would behave and be in a hypothetical future situation, which is one of the ways in which we keep ourselves ‘trapped’ and limited in the same personalities, the same judgments of how we believe ‘we are and will be’ and don’t give each other that space and opportunity to outgrow our old selves. 

I also was approaching the situation from already assuming and determining how our child would interpret certain attitudes, voice tonalities, expressions as if he or she was going to already judge it as something bad, negative, etc. when in fact, there is no reaction that is pre-recorded there. It is mostly all learned from the environment and that’s where our role comes in. The example comes from ourselves as parents to stop reacting to others’ expressions in a positive or negative way, but instead keep an equanimity and discernment about things which will in turn demonstrate to the child that one doesn’t ‘have to’ go into fear, worry, anxiety or anything like that if someone else is demonstrating such traits in themselves. This is where the change of character happens, with ourselves as the examples – the rest is then learned from observation and imitation.

Within all of this, I also kept on  ‘scheming’ how to ‘go about’ with certain people or situations in life, where I would most likely end up trying to seclude our child from anything that I would be judging as bad, wrong, negative, destructive. Of course, here I am not talking about some kind of ‘extreme’ unsafe or detrimental environment, I am simply looking at character flaws, which yes, we all do have as well so in doing that, I was ignoring my starting point – which was fear – and not taking these judgments, expectations and future projections back to self, to see what we are now more equipped and have tools to go about facing the reality of the world and the people in it ‘as is,’ without wanting to sugar coat it for our child to ‘be safe from any bad influence’ – but, who determines what the bad, negative, wrong stuff is? I do, through reacting to it.

So, it’s a great point for me to look at and stop reacting in FEAR of ‘what it will do’ to a new being. I also discussed that with my partner and I came to see that ‘the other way around’ is the way to go, to expose the child to various kinds and types of people so that there can be a discernment formed over time about people and getting used to getting along and getting to understand – eventually – why some people are a certain way and make their own decision in how they go about with them.

All of these points have opened up as well in seeing how my family and I are used to handling kids. I may say I am working on ‘debugging’ myself from these thoughts, but in general there’s that sense of having to ‘be careful’ all the time, and having to ‘protect them from anything that could harm them,’ and trying to ‘prevent them from getting sick’ all the time and all sorts of paranoia that I notice has started to ‘kick in’ as the ‘mother/parent’ construct and I definitely can work on stopping it on its tracks at this stage.

Once that I ‘spelled out’ the point – which means talking about it – things changed – but! New points opened up like the ones I have explained here in relation to future projecting how ‘things could be’ – for the worst – and forgetting about rather focusing on ‘what’s here’ and supporting myself to be the best that I can in my day to day, rather than being up in my head fearing and scheming ‘the worst case scenarios,’ wherein I’m not seeing how THAT is actually causing fear and stress within me, which is far more directly affecting the being inside me than any other ‘person’ out there.

Now that’s more of an eye opening perspective that I need to have a clear awareness on, that’s my real responsibility Right Now. Whatever else happens and opens up in the future, as my partner said, then we will deal with it ‘then’ and look at solutions, but no need to start kind of taking the artillery out already and start seeing threats and problems everywhere where there are none for now. So I decide to trust myself in being able to face whatever may come our way with a new perspective.

Something else that assisted me to look at it from a different perspective, is to remind myself how many times whatever I may perceive as something that I could define as a limiting change or something that I fear having to do – yes, stepping out of my comfort zone – are usually opportunities to grow, to challenge, to develop ourselves further and approaching it from this perspective then takes the ‘mind away’ from merely focusing on ‘the worst’ and spending time on scheming only ‘in the mind’ what I would do in such ‘worst’ that is not HERE at all. It is a waste of time and as much as it might be just ‘ok’ to consider certain potentials, I do have to make sure I am not creating a predisposition to ‘all the worst that could be’ and feed that in my mind as if that is a sign of ‘care’ or creating some kind of ‘security’ for our child, because in the end the starting point and origin is still just: Fear.

I had also been worrying about how to go about these let’s say ‘out of the ordinary’ ways – in comparison to how things are ‘usually done’ here – which we are planning to apply with our child, which may stand in direct contrast with, for example, how other people in our family do things and how they approach their own children, etc. So in this, I also realized that there was that same fear of being judged or going through what I ‘went through’ when I started doing some radical changes in my life over a decade ago and I basically had to step-away from my family for some time, because I just could not really ‘get along’ with them.

What I didn’t consider back then is how I was reacting and judging them all the way, that’s what caused me to find it – apparently – ‘impossible’ to be around them, and this also came from a secret desire for them to do things ‘my way’ or ‘do the same process I was walking’ and in general just causing more and more conflict until yes, it was for the best that I simply stopped seeing them as often until I sorted out my own conflict projected towards them and learned how to Understand them and so be able to be around, know our ‘boundaries’ so to speak and still be willing to share and open myself up whenever asked or needed.

So upon realizing this, I have seen how this is one of those situations where I am projecting already ‘My own experience’ onto our child and this is quite the red alert as well, because this would be caused by nothing more and nothing else than my own prejudices, judgments, ‘loaded memories’ that would in turn surely would be super limiting and causing a new being to be conditioned by ‘MY’ experience around certain people. This means: the work that needs to be done is entirely WITHIN MYSELF, instead of starting to project onto others how I believe ‘things will be’ for our child based on my own past, which I now have to prove I can truly let go of – and embrace the blank page that’s growing within : )

Within this, then it was also supportive to have another one of those lengthy talks with my partner about ‘who I was’ in my family and how I came to single-myself-out from it and how I remained in judgment towards them as if that was ‘the only way to be.’ But, I realize that if I apply my own mindset towards the child, the actual consequence would be caused by myself, not by ‘others’ and that I would then be recreating the same problems and patterns I lived through for most of my life.

So, within all of this, everything of course points out to myself, to learn to be more unconditioned, to learn to see every new day as it unfolds as a blank page that we are freshly writing on and that each blank page does represent that opportunity to re-wire myself, to change the old programming of fears, worries, what ifs, pessimist attitudes and bleak future projections and instead, welcome the potential of the new phase that’s opening up. This means stopping feeding any idea of wanting to ‘save’ or ‘secure’ the child from certain things because, yep! That can lead to paranoia of not wanting the child to see the light of day so to speak, which is of course parental abuse as well. This is an exaggeration of course, but I’m playing it out this way so that I get to remind myself ‘what I’m doing’ every time that I go into my mind and start scheming things from a starting point of wanting to ‘prevent’ certain things and realizing it comes from a point of fear that I have to simply let go of.

How can this be practically done? By being able to self-forgive it out loud in the moment as it happens so that I can then lead myself back to realizing how this is not about ‘the child’ or ‘others’ but myself bringing up all of these ‘loose cannons’ as fears that I had not become aware of yet, because yes, this is certainly a new phase in my life and within that, there comes a whole new and uncharted territory that I can simply work with and face as I go with this kind of approach towards these seemingly ‘simple moments’ where I go into my mind and start fearing or future projecting some ‘worst case scenarios.’ That’s entirely possible and in my hands to do, and whenever I may ‘still’ see some of these fears as ‘very real,’ then that’s when I can talk them out, communicate them and cross-reference them with my partner and any other person that I trust their judgment on and create solutions – or simply get to understand a situation to then decide how to best act and approach it.

It may sound as if this point is quite ‘big’ within me, and it probably isn’t, lol. But I do like to in a way create awareness on it as if it was already a ‘big deal’ because it ‘could’ escalate if I don’t see it through this magnifying glass and understand what I am accepting and allowing whenever going into fears, judgments, prejudices, future projecting the worst and so on. Otherwise, I would go ‘brushing it off’ and I have seen the kind of ‘accumulation effect’ that we can create in our minds, where we then end up getting into a point or experience where things seem too big, too heavy, too difficult to change, because we allowed all those small moments of ‘feeding the patterns’ to go unnoticed – and therefore not taking responsibility for them – and that’s where I then go compromising my own standing and self-awareness.

So, all in all it has been cool to open up these points and even get to discuss them with my parents to understand ‘where’ they got those fears from, how they affected their lives with them and yes also get to understand that, to them, some may be quite difficult to change, but that’s where I also then have to see the opportunity that I currently have in my hands to ‘change the tide’ when it comes to those family patterns that have been already passed on to the younger kids in the family. It’s not like ‘they are screwed’ now, because there’s always the opportunity to take self-responsibility and later on as they grow, they also can decide to change – or not.

My point remains in reminding myself that the child to come is a blank page as well and that I have to be of utmost care to not approach that opportunity to raise another being with fears of ‘what runs in the family’ or ‘what has happened in the past’ or ‘what I went through as a child,’ because THEN I would most likely be conditioning all of that and imprinting that through my every move, voice tonality and interaction with the child.  I often criticize – judge – parents that see their children as ‘the problem,’ and still gets on my nerves to see how it seems impossible to look ‘back at themselves’ – as parents – to see that their child came into this world as a blank page – sure some genetics and so on – but most of who they turn out to be is determined by the environment – a.k.a. the parents, mostly.

I consider I am at a timely stage where I can create a big point of awareness within me of stopping projecting my own fears and what I defined as ‘bad/negative experiences’ onto a new being, and rather focusing on understanding my experience – which to me comes through nicely when communicating about it with my partner which always leads me to a resolution, a point of realizing where and how I need to be the change, while also knowing yep! Can’t create a ‘perfectly clear ground’ for another being and mostly being ok with the fact that I’ll face things as we go and that it is OK as well to make mistakes, learn through consequences, etc. Otherwise I’d go into control-freakism aaaand nope! We don’t need that either.

So that’s it, hope that this may be supportive for any of you, not only parents or parents to be, but anyone facing some of ‘the worst’ that exists in our minds in a seemingly ‘normal’ way. I would not have been able to bring myself through clarity without all the Desteni tools of self support and the invaluable self-supportive material available at Eqafe.com, specifically the Parenting series and everything else that you may find there as a way to understand our minds and so understand the ways that we can change that which we see no longer supports a new way of being and living, for the best, that is, embracing the blank page every day.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own process of defining your Self-Honesty

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• Parenting For Life –

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• Get Real with Cerise

• Destonians

• Desteni I Process

• Desteni Forum : Discuss and share with us

• Desteni Español

• Creation’s Journey to Life

640. What does it Mean to Consider Others’ Minds?

 

I shared a situation that I got involved in today at the Desteni group chat where I reacted to other two people’s conversation that I was stepping into as I was getting in the car to go somewhere with the pilot. The conversation was gossiping or talking negatively about someone else and the conversation was leading to a lack of focus at the wheel by the person whose car I was getting into. So, in my attempt to stop having to be part of something that ‘I didn’t want to be a part of’ – the gossip – and steering the pilot’s focus and attention to the road, I made a comment that eventually got heard by the person on the other side of the line. I said ‘I don’t want to hear gossip’ – yes, I said it calmly and not in a loud voice, but still it caused a reaction and the person on the other side of the line ‘got the message’ and ended the conversation. The person I was with in the car got visibly bothered and angry about me voicing this out loud and ending up being heard by the other person.

Now, at first sight one would say ‘well yes, you had the right to do that, gossip is bad and you did what is best for all, which is to stop the ongoing conversation if it is simply talking badly about others’ – but, the reality is that, that is the way I would prefer to think of things and be righteous in my ‘right’ to ‘speak up’ and call people out if they are ‘talking shit’ about others. But, in reality, based on me understanding what reactions do and what my words may trigger in others – which I didn’t really consider at the time – I actually could have done better in how I participated in that whole situation.

After discussing it in the chat and opening it up with several people, I agree that I could have breathed through the gossip. I realize that a part of me actually got ‘involved’ in it by placing my mind into it and so judging it, otherwise, I would not have reacted to it. It wasn’t a situation where I could just ‘walk out’ of the environment or the situation since I was getting into a car that was going to be in motion, and I was actually aiming to get somewhere at a specific time.  I ‘should have known better’ and not judge or react to the conversation that these two people were having. It wasn’t my car either and I wasn’t asked to intervene or to give an opinion either. Instead, I could have focused on what really became an actual problem, which was the lack of focus of the pilot at the wheel.

So, I realize that I did react to what was being said, where I considered how unbearable their words were and what their ‘intensity’ was when talking about other people and their particular context, which I also considered to be greatly lacking in consideration and understanding to others on their behalf, but, there I a didn’t consider from the get go how ‘calling out the gossip’ in a situation that I just got into, in someone else’s car gave me no right to intervene in such a way, because in essence yes it was a ‘private conversation’ yet held through the car’s speakers, which is also why my remarks were openly heard. I had no problem with this, but the pilot of the car did.

So the actual fear factor involved is that I actually feared for a car crash due to the lack of  attention and dexterity that the driver was showing as a result of trying to focus on me giving directions and keeping ‘at it’ with the phone conversation in the car.

After assessing it and also talking it out with my partner, I realized that I also took the point to another level by trying to explain and clarify things afterwards the whole ‘reaction’ took place. Here I didn’t consider that, if someone is ‘already in a reaction’ they will most likely be extremely bothered by me trying to talk them out of the reaction or asking what was really wrong or trying to clarify things… I honestly haven’t considered that if someone is already quite pissed, the best is to keep quiet, instead of trying to explain myself and give examples or even alternative solutions to the kind of situation. I had not considered that if a person is in a reaction… no matter what I try and explain, it will most likely not even be heard if the other person is not really working on easing their reactions, or feel equally righteous about their reaction.

So, something that I also forgot in this moment – and I must say it was also fueled by a fear of actually getting into some kind of car crash because of the lack of attention to the road – is to take responsibility for MY reactions first and foremost – in this case, towards the gossip itself – and to instead focus on directing what was the priority in the moment, which was: the driving, the attention and the focus.

I even considered that I could have done better by actually speaking out to the other person on the line – since they could hear me anyways – and explain that the pilot was losing focus and attention on the road because of the conversation, so please calling at a later time. But I didn’t, because I reacted more to what was being said and creating the idea that ‘I was now being a silent participant of the gossip’ and I simply didn’t want to be a part of it. However, that’s also an excuse that is not looking at the source of the point, which is my reactions towards the conversation, the words and reacting to it as gossip in itself, which caused me to want to ‘voice myself out’ in the moment and then causing more conflict in the situation than the one I was trying to ‘get myself out of’ in a third party manner – and no this didn’t make the journey ‘safer’ or ‘calmer’ either.

It is cool to share this kind of things with others and gather perspectives, because I then am able to expand a lot from what I usually consider and also from taking a regular person’s perspective, like my partner, because he isn’t walking this process, yet he also sees how at times the way I word things out can be misunderstood and this is one of those things that I agree, not many can actually understand what I mean and how I see things and can simply become like word-bullets that people react to even if the context and starting point in which I am saying is not ‘aimed’ to hurt or be offensive, but this is also my point to work on and practicing communicating with ‘regular words’ or more descriptive to people that may not fully ‘grasp’ what I mean when I say ‘you are not being supportive at this very moment’ – because the pilot person then took it as if ‘they hadn’t been supportive at all’ and I was being ungrateful… instead of my initial intent which was to explain that having someone with me with such reactions towards me wasn’t  supportive for me if they couldn’t let go of the reaction based on the past moment in the car, also considering the situation that we were heading to.  

So, lesson learned: I have to find other words to explain what I mean and to learn to simply keep quiet and understand when a person is in a reaction about a certain situation and that it doesn’t mean that they now ‘totally’ want to get away from me or disregard me. So, keeping quiet is not something I usually apply, because I believe I have to ‘make things right’ and ‘explain myself’ but, if a person is already in a reaction, the best thing is to have the thing just cool down and not open it up until the waters are calmer on both sides.

My responsibility remains the same, I have to check my own reactions and if I am getting into someone else’s car and they are driving me somewhere as a favor, that’s it, I have to get used to whatever they are listening to or whatever conversation they are deciding to put in the speakers for me to listen to as well. I also considered that I could have just listened through the conversation and perhaps later on once everything is done and we could arrive safely to our destination, to give a perspective about how to possibly approach the situation where someone else’s words or deeds are being judged, and to consider ‘more than what meets the eye’ which is how I know gossip goes when we assume things and don’t really consider what may be going on in someone else’s life, but we then find it very easy to just talk badly about others without placing ourselves in their shoes, and fully consider what they were going through, and the same on the other people’s side, to understand is to be able to forgive as well.

Ultimately, as much as I would have liked that moment to possibly assist the people involved in realizing ‘hey, it’s actually not beneficial for anyone to be talking crap about others,’ I also realize that my intent should not be in ‘wanting to change others’ – ever – because! I’ve been there, done that and have fallen flat on the ground with it as it should be, because change and self responsibility is about ourselves, not about ‘doing it to others’ or wanting to impose something to others, which yes, Marlen knows quite a great deal of, but it still slipped out again today, even if in a more ‘composed’ way, it still caused reactions in others.

So, as much as I could be thinking ‘oh my god, why did I do that, what was I thinking, why didn’t I take my own responsibility and felt the right to say what I said?’ and feel bad about it, I also realize that I wouldn’t learn anything by only staying in feeling guilty about the situation. I instead have looked at different ways in which the same situation could have unfolded which involve me keeping quiet and watching my own reactions – putting a guard on my mouth – as the event developed, focusing on giving the right directions and perhaps only later on giving a perspective to the pilot, since the relationship is quite close and I consider I am able to give an opinion even if unrequested, and to perhaps give another set of considerations towards the subject of the gossip – there I am not judging the gossip, but rather seeing where there might be assumptions, judgments and a lack of ‘placing yourself in someone else’s shoes’ type of consideration.

Another option is that I could have intervened in the conversation by saying ‘Hello x person, look this conversation is distracting the driver, so would you please call by at another time – thanks’ – though some might still find this intrusive or disrespectful. So yes, I have to watch out for that kind of situations as well considering it’s not ‘my space’ and there is something going on as I step into it.  And another option was resorting to doing some hand signals to say ‘cut it off’ to the driver in order to simply focus on the road and the direction we were going. But, that didn’t even cross my mind since I am usually just quite direct, but I have to develop some ‘tact’ in relation to other people as well – which doesn’t mean to ‘back off’ and suppress, but simply to consider the moment and the people involved as well.

I also have to consider that yes, some people might be more reactive in their minds and that calling them out for something like ‘gossiping’ can be deemed as offensive. In this, the context is relevant as well, some people might know where I stand in relation to not being a participant in that kind of stuff and others aren’t – sometimes people get ‘carried away’ by the kind of ‘energy’ that floats out from talking gossip to the point where it’s as if the righteousness that it is being talked to could give a certain ‘high ‘to people, and that means losing one’s ground. I know it because I’ve done it, and that’s even with feeling so very righteous about it like criticizing a ‘bad government’ or politician or ‘the system’, which were my ‘specialty’ piñata-like topics to hit on every time that I could back in the day.

So, with this all being said, I have to learn to consider others more, otherwise, people will simply react more and possibly cause more conflict if the person is reacting, they still lose focus on the road if I keep trying to ‘explain myself.’ I have to learn to let it all ‘cool down’ and keep quiet and possibly change the subject in the awareness that I am not avoiding to talk about it – because I usually do exactly the opposite and insist on ‘opening it up’ – and realize that some people deal better with a  moment of anger or frustration by keeping quiet, not discussing it any longer and not questioning their actions right after ‘the facts,’ because…. It usually leads to no growth or learning process because the reactions are on the way, and that’s something I know very well so, I can’t expect someone else to be entirely ‘ok’ after such kind of situation just because I feel ok and calm about it. There I have to extend my consideration to the other person’s mind and state of being and understand them, even if I was fine about the entire situation.

In conclusion, I can’t expect people to handle this kind of situations like I would or be wiling to ‘be self honest’ about their words and deeds if that is not what they are ‘into’ doing in their lives. If I decide to step into someone else’s ‘world’ or space for a moment, I have to be willing to walk through whatever is going on with them if I am asking them for a favor, and if I see that it is an ongoing pattern, then I can simply voice out why I don’t find it supportive to be in that kind of situations – if they are often – whenever I get to drive around with them and find another way through. So, it’s about communication and finding solutions and seeing what is important for each person and be willing to understand that, otherwise, I do become a tyrant in someone else’s land and, it’s not an uncommon trait in me that I actually have to change.

I share this because it might be very common that some of us may feel ‘righteous’ to call people out in certain moments by believing we are stopping certain kind of abuse or situation that we deem as consequential or negative. In this case it wasn’t my intent to call them out, I voiced what I wasn’t ‘willing to be a part of’ but it ended up still coming from a reaction and being received as an offense and as a calling out, so, that’s where I see that I have to be careful of how I say things and what my starting point of it is and ensure it’s not coming from a judgment that causes a reaction. Otherwise, I become the very gossiping that I am judging by judging the gossip in my mind and reacting to it, so, in wanting to prevent myself from ‘being a part of it’ I became a part of it by giving it my awareness and ears and taking it ‘in’ and reacting to it in one way or another, which is then, defeating the whole purpose of ‘stopping the gossip’ in the first place.

There’s a quote I read yesterday from Nietzsche “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster…”  it’s interesting because I had mostly always remembered the second half of the quote but never really ‘registered’ this first part, and it is so important to consider that, in my attempt to ‘stop something negative’ going on, I created or caused more conflict, negative reactions in others. So, instead of ‘trying to fight’ what I am judging in a moment as bad, evil, conflictive, I have to understand it, to remind myself that calling it out from a reaction won’t lead to an outcome that is supportive for anyone – and instead, get to understand why people tend to gossip, what it ‘gives them’ as an experience or what the righteousness about it all indicates about themselves, which then in itself also gives me a good idea of ‘where they are at’ in their mindset, in their experience in the moment, and so, realizing there are already reactions going on that I must consider if interacting with the people involved.

Then, ultimately, I wasn’t part of the conversation, it is also as if I had stepped into a taxi and the taxi driver was having the same conversation with an unknown person… well If I had ‘called it out’ by saying ‘I don’t want to be part of this gossip’ then I would have been surely kicked out of the taxi. So, I took it personally also because of the relationship with these people and what I consider was ‘unfair’ in relation to the subject they were talking about and the way the subject was talked about as well, so it also indicates my own judgments.  So that’s also a good way to put things into perspective where the relationship with these people form a reason for me to try and ‘stop it from continuing’, like preventing ME from being a tacit participant in it – when, well, if I did the same about Everything that goes on in this world that I judge as bad, negative, harmful or consequential? Then I would be wanting to ‘call out’ a lot of problems that happen every single moment and ‘not be a part of it,’ isn’t it?

It would have been a very different story if I was asked for a perspective or if I was there from the beginning as a known participant in a situation of gossip – and one that I could simply turn and walk away from as well. So, I recognize my flaws in this one, while also realizing that it is cool to give feedback to the closest people that I care for, but sometimes even that, can be unrequested and not really wanting to hear my perspective on certain things. This is also to ‘let go’ of wanting others close to me to ‘open their eyes’ about certain things that I consider they could change and are damaging to themselves, and instead, be an example of that with my own living and the way that I can express myself when talking about others, one that is understanding and considerate, so that is where it all begins, within self.

Thanks for reading. 

 

And! Because I recently translated these to Spanish, if anyone can identify more with the ‘feeling offended’ side, this is a great series to follow through and support yourself with:

1. Offended: All About You – Atlanteans – Part 315
2. Offended: Understanding and Changing in Real Time – Atlanteans – Part 316
3. Offended: Inferior|Superior – Atlanteans – Part 317
4. Offended: Stop the Polarity Game – Atlanteans – Part 318

 

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own process of defining your Self-Honesty

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• 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

639. Reconciling with the Artistic Expression In Me

 

It’s been a while since I shared a blog. I’ve been on a ‘writing diet’ where I write at least 3 pages on a daily basis in my personal diary or notebook which is something I begun as part of a process I’m embarking myself on to reconcile myself – yes, once again and yes embracing the process – with my artistic side or artistic interests which I’ve been basically focusing on investigating and aligning throughout these past months. I’ve been realizing some of the most ‘shady’ aspects that I’ve allowed to get in the way of me continuing to express myself and I decided to write self forgiveness on these points along with some realizations and share them, since I’m aware many can be at a similar situation with any given aspect in their lives too.  

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to realize I created a sense of being unworthy when it comes to expressing myself through creative means simply because of being told that no one would buy that, no one would like that and that I had to do stuff that most people liked in order to be paid for it, which then became a way to constantly create a hellish experience within me while creating, having to satisfy these invisible people that I believed I had to please and within that, causing that split within me where expressing myself in a more intimate and unconditional way – as it was in the beginning when I started – became a thing of the past and I then had to ‘use my skills’ to ‘be bought’ by others, and in doing so eventually wanting to once again distance myself from doing anything creatively.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to hold a negative experience to the idea of my work being valued in a certain amount of money where I’ve judged such amount of money as ridiculous and just not worth the ‘thing’ that I created, which I then believed was something good or positive but slowly with time I allowed that notion to sabotage me from continuing to create because I then would be having to ‘think in money terms’ when creating, which became a departure from myself – because art for me was not intended to be a ‘product’ but it was a very personal, unconditional and dare I say innocent form of expression with and for myself that I then allowed to be influenced on ‘why I do it’ and ‘what kind of stuff’ I should do, missing out the point of it which has always and should always be Me and the process I’ve been walking, which is what any form of expression for me is really about.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a silent inner war in relation to art and monetary value where I slowly but surely sabotaged myself from creating anything as a way to not have to see it as a product – instead of seeing that I could have simply realized that I was  attaching some monetary values to something that should be first of all a point of self-expression and communication, where an economic value would come only if and when I would decide to offer it for selling it and only when and if there could be any potential person interested in buying it, therefore leaving all of that as a secondary purpose to it, not ever forgetting that my main purpose and value is for myself, for my own satisfaction, expression and enjoyment – otherwise I now see I corrupt myself by thinking in ‘money terms’ other than me expressing me and sharing unconditionally.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to realize that the moment that there was a struggle in my head because of having others’ opinions, views or expectations of ‘what I need to create’ I should have stopped and not allow myself to go there, since that is not the reason why I signed up to do anything creative in the first place, I did it as a point of curiosity and exploration for myself, to communicate myself with myself and then it became something I would have to do as a profession to be paid for and satisfy others with it, which is not a ‘wrong’ thing to do either, but that’s not where my true passion is for in it.  I totally buried myself under those ‘expectations’ I projected upon myself even when I believed I was doing something ‘for me,’ I would still be having ideas of ‘having others liking it’ in the background and in that, I corrupted my own expression which I see has of course nothing to do with the ghostly voices in my head of ‘others eyes’ on it,  because they were entirely brought up by myself and it then became in a bundle of  fears around it that I now see I used as a justification to not continue doing anything creative for a while.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to many times create a dissonance, a split between ‘what’ I had to do instead of asking myself who do I decide to be and according to that direct myself, because of having fallen on the usual ideas where I would have to choose one thing to become ‘something’ in life– like having a certain title, career or diploma – in order to perform certain tasks which show me the extent to which I have been mostly perpetuating the same kind of labels and boxes wherein we have defined ourselves to be just ‘one thing’ and only be that ‘one thing’ throughout a lifetime, instead of opening up the endless possibilities that are in fact possible if we tap into that source of what and who we really are and so expressing that into any aspect of our lives, regardless of ‘what we do.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to split myself between the idea of supporting others and making that my living purpose and my own natural tendency an d interest on artists and artistic creations as a source of both enjoyment and understanding to me, and in doing so, I ended up creating a division from this natural expression and judging it as selfish, as a waste of time, as shallow or without any consequence in others’ lives, without realizing  that in doing so, I was cutting up, chopping off a part of myself in such judgment process wherein I then created a constant push and pull friction game towards that inclination that emerged from a very young age in me and that I judged later on as frivolous and part of my ego-creation.

I realize currently how yes from a very innocent and instinctive move to paint and draw, I then turned it into a an expectation of making it my profession and then buying into the idea of that having to be my way to ‘climb up the ladder of success’ and feed my ego with dreams and ideals of fame and recognition, where – even though I had the idea of ‘doing so to help to save the world’ – the motivation was still the aggrandizement of my own persona, which is why I then took myself to the opposite side of not wanting to show what I do, not wanting to share it around and judging others that would dare to do so as egotistical or seeking others’ approval, which only stands as my own projection of my own judgments and what I’ve done towards myself, which I realize is a product of tainting my expression with the norms and ways we have created the current system wherein art has also become an industry which is not wrong in itself since it can be considered work itself, but to me art does go beyond the ‘final product’ but I’m definitely more interested in the person that is behind the work of art which is where I see that lies my interest on the artistic field.

I forgive myself  that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to taint my expression with the ideas of ‘what I would have to do’ in order to sell or in order to have other people like what I do, which I realized has been a rather painful process considering that it doesn’t mean I have to make money out of what I decide to express in a very personal way of communicating with myself, which I can share unconditionally without having to make it ‘fit’ certain market standards or having certain ‘qualities’ which is what I’ve then come to experience an inner conflict with, because my aim is to use art as a way to communicate and to see myself, to understand and learn from myself and enjoy while making it and making that very personal and sacred moment where it’s just me expressing and communicating with myself.

I realize that the moment that I place ‘others’ or ‘the public’ as the ultimate outcome, I distance myself from myself, I move away from that very core point that got me into wanting to create art in the first place and it becomes a job, something I have ‘to do’ for money or to be able to be ‘sellable’ and in that, losing my own essence and shaping myself into whatever I am believing ‘others’ want to see and get from me, which is entirely created in my own mind and as such, there has never been ‘others’ or any form of exigencies, it’s all been me allowing my own judgments and ideas to influence and maim my own creativity over the years .

I realize that the various comments and opinions I got over the years were all standing as expressions of their own views and standards, and to me they represented moments where I would have had to fully stand as my expression – but I didn’t. And that’s why every time I would succumb to certain demands, I would feel a little more lost in it all and ended up feeling meaningless and purposeless – shallow – in the whole process of making anything related to art, even doing any form of indoor decoration because of then tainting it as shallow, superficial or non-substantial or supportive to life itself – defining ‘life’ outside of myself as ‘others’– instead of seeing that I am the source of it and the ultimate end point of it, if it exists in me – and me being part of the whole – there should not exist any limitation to this point of expression that is intended to see ‘what comes out of me’ as an individual, simply to see ‘how I am doing’ and express it in ways that I may not be able to do so through words at times, and so seeing that it has been essential for me to draw and paint things that are just inside of me and come out as an extension of myself, that are devoid of a certain ‘receptor’, which I consider is the actual essence of what any form of art is, an externalization of the creator because of the sheer will of the creator itself to have it happen or just ‘be’ for its own sake.

In my case I have decided to make of that art not something that I ‘have to do’ but something that I can decide to express as part of my self-communication, self-enjoyment, the creation of that me-time that I now know I have to give myself and create for myself since I have shaped my life and time around all of the other doings that I require to do as a way to survive and as a way to relate to others, which simply require a balancing point so that I can in fact give me and create more time to do it and stick to it the same way that I stand in a disciplined and responsible manner to any other responsibility and duty I have.

I realize that If I cut out this limb of mine, this part of me that has continued to be a relevant aspect of my life, I’ll end up feeling forever frustrated for not having had the guts to give myself the time and courage to do it, to make it actually OK and acceptable that I create time for me to continue developing any form of creative expression that satisfies that self-communication and self-understanding beyond the usual self-writings, because that stands as something that can break the mold of what I regularly do on a daily basis and what I dare to say to myself through words only.

I also understand the importance of creativity, it is that ‘creative germ’ that is needed in all of us if we truly want to ‘break the mold’ and create a better world because otherwise, as I’ve seen for myself, we can just fall into the comfort of how things usually are and have been and not having any new things or challenges coming our way and getting too complacent and obedient to whatever we have all collectively come to believe is how ‘we should live our lives.’ And I know that it takes courage and a real sense of authority and will to decide to not fall into such expectations and categories and live differently, which then doesn’t become a constant ‘against the flow’ rebellious type of process as I used to do it before, but it becomes simply living the realization that this is the actuality of myself that is no longer seeking to be liked, appreciated or conform or fit in, but embraces that individuality devoid of judgment and expectations, and simply decides to get back in tune with myself, to be ‘here’ rather than seeking to be somewhere else or be accepted by others here or there.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to maim my own authenticity whenever I allowed others’ comments, opinions – or the lack thereof – about what I do creatively to affect and define the way that I relate to my works of art, where I then stepped into the realm of valuing opinions and judgments and forgot to look at myself, asking myself why is this important or relevant for me to do, what it means to me and why it satisfies me or not to do it.  

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to become too concerned with monetary values and I realize that it is not about saying that selling my art is wrong or an act of self-interest, but that should come as a byproduct of me first standing fully in absolute congruence with my creation, where I can be sure there isn’t any noise implied in its creation while having thoughts about possibly selling it or thinking what colors would be liked more by ‘the majority’ of people, or what kind of stuff would be ‘easy to appreciate and like’ and hang on a wall or have around – and instead focus on simply being me, expressing me because I can see how I have been living that within myself and I have stood up when realizing I’m about to enter into a ‘shaping’ process that doesn’t respect me – but I haven’t done that with my own artistic expression.

I realize how easy it is for me to get into that shady space of not sharing or showing myself, all having to do with holding ideas about ‘who I am and have been’ in relation to a particular ‘personality system’ of having been placed in the spotlight at a certain time in my life, creating and building expectations upon myself that I then couldn’t fulfill because they, of course, came from a place of separation, of arrogance, of superiority and idealism that can’t be in fact satisfied because it’s not coming from the truth of who I am and who I want to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define me according to people’s opinions and values given towards me, where they all in fact felt phony to me ever since being a child and receiving accolades, it became a great nuisance to be told all of these good things and being praised where I eventually wanted to ‘not be singled out’ and hide in the background, to not stand out and in doing so,  I ended up diminishing myself because of having created a negative experience to being the source of opinions and critics, even if they were favorable, it seemed unfair and unreal for me to be able to define someone based on numeric characters or only a few characteristics that were ‘worthy’ within a particular system, like in schools.

That’s also why I wanted to do something that could enable me to see myself outside of values and titles that we are supposed to get in society, that define ‘who we are’ and that’s why I started doing what I did within an artistic expression – that I later on ‘vandalized’ with adding all kinds of judgments, opinions  and expectations to it and I perverted it and turned it into just another ‘thing’ that one ‘does’ in the ‘system’ and that’s it, it’s like taking the life out of myself by turning that which was once very personal and unconditional and a point of enjoyment to me and turning it into a show ‘for others’ and to find ‘my value and worth’ in society, which I then failed to do as I should, because it would have led me down to another rabbit hole if I had been successful at that.

I also realize that it’s not that ‘others’ are the problem in fact, since they are me. In any case each person stands as a good mirror where I can look back at myself and see what I can learn from it to either expand  myself or try out new things, without any longer seeking to be liked, accepted, valued or appreciated that way, because I realize that such values are in fact standing only in the eye of the mind and can only serve a way to ‘see’ things, but it’s only me that will ultimately know WHO I am behind WHAT I decide to do, whatever it is.

I realize that we lose ourselves many times in the eyes of others and allow ourselves to get quietly and deeply hurt and don’t dare to speak it out in the moment, because of fearing to come through as sensitive or immature – but opening up about those aspects that were impactful for us is the first point, to realize that many times there have been assumptions, misunderstandings and a general projection of who each person is in relation to their opinions and comments. I realize that I also have been able to consider certain constructive aspects from what others say about my work, but even with that, I realize I have to define what I will accept and allow as feedback and what I won’t because to me, artistic expression is that one sacred place where no others’ ‘laws’ or ‘ways’ apply and where I can in fact transcend myself and my limited views, beliefs and morals. I desecrate that space, that part of myself every time that I use someone else’s words as a reason or justification of why I should do something a certain way or why I should just give up trying to do anything creative.

I also realize that in my mind I have been the only one that has decided to give such amount of focus and attention to what others may or may not say – critically and constructively – and that I am the only one that can allow that to affect me in a negative or emotional way.  I realize that as one goes strengthening that sense of self-worth, self appreciation and being congruent with the expression of ‘who I am’ and ‘who I decide to be’ and what I focus on continuing to create and express no matter what may come my way, it should not change who I decide to be in that expression.

I can use the feedback  to make myself grow and expand and consider other perspectives, but reacting negatively towards it is entirely a self-created decision that I now realize I have the total capacity to work through and release myself from, which can leave me with a better understanding of who the other person is in their words and their way of seeing things and their relationship to what I do, but ultimately to not take it personally.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to compare my own expression, the unique actions and movements and expressions that I have to any other human beings’, which has led me within a never ending unfulfilled experience where I became the outflow of my own judgments and allowing that to maim my creative expression by giving up on it.

I realize we all – each one of us – is part of the whole that expresses in a unique way, which doesn’t make it more or less than or ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than – it is about embracing the multiplicity and learning to see it as that unique expression that it is, where I realize that I have made and turned myself into my own worst enemy when constantly deciding what is ‘good’ or not in my own eyes and then ending up projecting those judgments towards my own creations, which results in self-sabotage.

Currently I realize looking back how what I’ve done just IS and they are all testimonies and registry of the various phases in my life that I don’t have to feel ashamed of, since they were a relevant and important aspect of who I was at the time, a part of me, a reflection of me in that space and time and if I don’t embrace and accept myself and decide that such expression had its right to be at the time and represent me, who else will? No one.

I realize that my curiosity and general inclination towards some artistic expressions like music and visual arts have been a form of food for my beingness, which at some point I tried to simply distance myself from within the belief that they were just distractions or my own way to ‘escape’ from my reality. And I realize that at times, it might have been so in the past, but I surely realize that is not my starting point at the moment but the other way around.

I now see the potential in art and artists as part of what’s worth living for in this world, because I’ve gone from loathing humanity to appreciating every person that I get to know more about and seeing a lot of valuable things that I can learn from which I’ve come to do through watching documentaries, reading about artists lives and any creative genius, which I ultimately see as one of the reasons why I want to continue being me and developing my expression,  not only to support others but to get to contribute back in the ‘creative pool’ from where I’ve been nurturing myself from as well, because that’s how I’ve gotten to appreciate the life that is in each one of us and that manifests in all of these multiple ways that are worth getting to see and appreciate for who and what they are.

My starting point is not to feel ‘original’ since we are ALL original since we all come from the same and one origin point that we all express in a variety of ways that actually makes this life worth living and so, it’s absolutely worth getting to know one another and getting to connect with those that may be walking a similar path and living purpose to the one I have, which I’ve seen is quite feasible as well.

My current starting point to develop myself in relation to any form of artistic creation and developing communication and comradeship with fellow artists is because it’s proven to me how this particular sector of people in the world that, according to how I see it, dares to live ‘outside of the norm’ within their minds and so in their lives and dare to share that in any way that reflects their inside world, that reflects their particular inner experience are the front runners of changing the way life is lived and how new structures and ways can be created that benefit more of humanity and life in general.

 I’ve seen how easy it is to connect to that same common sensical level with people that are working or have experience in any cultural or artistic field, we just can click in one moment because there’s that same or similar understanding of who we really are and what’s worth working and living for in this life.

I was discussing with my friend about art in itself and it got me to think how I don’t have a particular fondness for certain works of art based on taste, but I surely get to appreciate the ‘who’ is behind that work that got to master themselves to put in the practice, effort, dedication and willingness to do something that perhaps was completely ‘out of their norm’ and did what they had to do in order to get it out of themselves and manifest it as a creation in reality; some others might have done it from a more natural talent that they just could effortlessly express, but in either case, there is a willingness to express and to me that is implying that there is an awareness of the creative potential we all have and can use to benefit our lives. How?

To me it is a primordial and basic point of nurturing your being, of expressing and so sharing it if one’s up for it. They are all bits and ways in which we go stepping out of the ‘usual patterns’ and dare to cross our own limitations and in sharing them, we assist others to do so as well. I also had to let go of the ideas of wanting to share or inspire others or wanting it to be ‘seen’ or ‘liked’ by others. It’s very similar to this process and writing where, whenever I place myself in a position of wanting to ‘share with others’ I miss out myself as being my own point, my own source, my own end of such creation. So now, If I find it supportive, then sharing becomes simply an extension of that self-support being in fact something that I see could benefit others because it is benefitting me.

This is where I can decide to own me and my every step of the way in my own creation, which I also relate to the way I’ve been able to own my decisions and choices in life and all the mistakes I’ve made, because they now make me who I am and I can look back and see that they are all part of the building blocks that I can now constructively use as part of the experience that makes me who I am today that may become stories of support to share to others as a way to learn from my own doings and wrongdoings and get to express the better version of ourselves.

 

Thanks for reading

I absolutely recommend listening to this series to anyone that’s interested in this kind of topics and specifically feeling meaningless, purposeless or feeling like there’s something yet to satisfy within oneself as a living purpose

1. 
   

   Meaningless: The Undefined Self – Atlanteans – Part 346

2. Meaningless: Searching for Meaning – Atlanteans – Part 347

3. Meaningless: Redefinition – Atlanteans – Part 348

4. Meaningless: Self Forgiveness Challenge – Atlanteans – Part 349

5. Meaningless: Standing as a Self Directive Principle – Atlanteans – Part 350

6. Meaningless: Giving Yourself Meaning – Atlanteans – Part 351

7. Meaningless: Fulfillment – Atlanteans – Part 352

8. 
   

   Meaning: Finding Meaning in a Cruel World – Atlanteans – Part 353

 

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own process of defining your Self-Honesty

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• 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

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.

 

 

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own process of defining your Self-Honesty

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• 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

630. #EqafeDiscovery: The All Encompassing Word

And the cookie-dough theory

The way I wanted to start writing this blog out was with a form of disclaimer about how this writing might sound a bit too ‘out there’ and how it may be a bit too ‘conceptual’ in nature, as a way to control the way that I believe it will go, to have a ‘handle’ of it. Well, I was in essence going to play out what I am about to share here.

I was listening to a podcast and the guest in it shared how he tends to be quite intense with things, he talks in a passionate manner about what he’s been through in life and how he takes on his life sounds the same way. But, that means he also takes things quite ‘to the heart’ as in very personal or creates heavy emotions or feelings about just anything. I can relate to being the kind of ‘intense’ person in essence as well, but the interviewer explained how also using judgment like that can be a way to control things, to have a ‘grasp’ on something, to kind of dominate it or believe we ‘know exactly what we are and what we are not’ and ‘what we are dealing with’ as a form of control. This got stuck in my mind and I said to myself ‘I have to write about that topic.’

This is an essential aspect of language itself. I keep going back to the cookie-dough theory that I created when I was studying linguistics. It’s about conceiving the realm of all things that exist as a one-single-whole, it’s life itself as I understand it and that is basically the broadest word I know that can define everything that is and exists, everything that is ‘here’. Some others may call it god or nature or ‘the whole’ or even ‘higher forces’– so for practical purposes let’s consider the analogy of life being this ‘wholeness’ as cookie dough. Then there was the emergence of ourselves as beings –even before we were humans – and our first expression came out of a desire to be more, to create some kind of ‘exciting experience’ that led this one part of the whole to separate from the rest of the whole. There, ‘the whole’ became ‘two’ and what happened with these two is that they saw themselves as different entities. They could not recognize that what they were seeing was themselves as well, because they could not see themselves…. They believed they were ‘different’ and so judged themselves as that. Bam! That’s the first moment of separation and what emerged from there was the definition of ‘who the other one is’ – a judgment which, for this case, can be basically any word used to ‘define’ what the other one is or isn’t.

Part of this cookie-dough analogy entails also considering that we as the beings and expressions that ‘came out of’ the cookie dough in itself, created these cookie-cutters as words, expressions that could encompass, hold or contain a part of that cookie dough that became a meaning in itself, an ‘identifiable’ expression, a thing, an action, a part of this ‘wholeness’ in order to be able to grasp it, to name it, to comprehend it, to communicate and so to live or do those words that we defined and created. Matter as life itself as the ‘cookie dough’ got cut in multiple ways that we defined through our minds, through the cookie-cutters that we forged or shaped ourselves.

To me this has been the way to realize how words became double-edged swords. They became both the tools and at the same time the ‘weapons,’ they could be used for virtually any purpose that we would define and decide them to be. That’s how as it is said ‘words are innocent’ and it is us that have defined how they are lived.

The world we are living reveals the nature of who we became as the forgers of these cookie-cutters, the way that we defined life expressions beginning with how we formed opinions and judgments as the way that we relate to each other from the primordial times of the emergence of life as we know it. We started defining, naming, judging and with that entirely consecrating the division of ‘who we are’ as seemingly completely separate individuals that ‘in no way’ could ‘ever’ be in fact one and equal…. Because we created an experience of disliking ‘the other,’ we judged ‘the other’ as inferior, as not good enough, as bad, as ‘the worst’ – or we went to the opposite realm of ‘desiring what the other had’ – at least as we believed it to be. In any case, words have been used to solidify our separation, both towards others but also within ourselves.

To me this has been an essential realization to understand the importance of being very specific in how I word myself, and how this ‘Me’ that I conceptualize as my story, as who I am and how I relate to others is in fact one expression of the whole that I have separated myself from. It’s essential for me to remind myself how we’ve gotten ‘very lost’ forgetting that we are in fact all equal and one, we are made of the same life, we are just existing in a multiplicity of forms and ways to the point that we’ve forgotten where we come from.

It of course now seems a bit naïve for me to even look at the possibility of us being able to realize this ‘today’ and live in fact ‘together as one’ as some songs have dreamed of. It is worth considering this, but I am quite realistic about the situation we are living in at the moment in our world and what I see is the prominent polarization, extremism and confrontation of all of the innumerable ways we have separated ourselves from through these very judgments, opinions and definitions that ‘separate us’ or ‘identify us’ in separation from others.

We are seeing the inevitable conflicts, confrontations, wars and constant tension and fighting that is being created now as we face all of those judgments, ideas, beliefs, perceptions we have held towards one another throughout the entirety of our existence. In essence it is a relevant thing for me to remind myself that we may have different shapes and colors on top, but we are essentially all made of the same dough, of the same life, we have just separated ourselves from each other in all these various forms to the point where we’ve forgotten that we are in fact ‘one and equal.’

Why do I find it useful to remind myself of this in times like today? I keep track of the global events mostly at a political and social level – and what’s currently visible is how the differences that we can see ‘on the surface’ are more prevalent than ever today and causing a serial form of ‘outrage’ in everyone without a second thought to even consider what I just explained above. It baffles me how bad things can get when people get defined with their cookie-cutter shape and forget the essence of who we all are as life, as humans in this case. I realize how we have wrongly ‘empowered’ ourselves through words, not using them to flourish and give birth to life – as we practice with Living Words – but how we have used them to do the opposite, to destroy life in all forms and ways. This is our current truth, and we can change it, but takes self-work to do that.

Sure some might consider that we’ve been always on war, always killing each other, always separating ourselves according to races, political ideologies, genders, sexual and any other form of preferences, religions, etc. However! Not many are aware of or could conceive that all of those identity labels are opinions, are judgments and they will eventually have to be realized as such to stop this seemingly endless charade. Sure, it might not take a few generations only, but it needs to start right here, right now because the process is in motion and it’s here to stay, no matter how long it takes.

Process is precisely that decision that life itself has taken in its utmost expression to no longer accept and allow separation, to bring through the expression of life itself in a way that is self-supportive no longer bound to ways, systems and forms that are meant to control – in the negative connotation of the word – life. Control is not something bad in itself though, as a word it is useful, for example we have to have control of our bodies to function properly. I see it more as a direction that we take on, but currently, we are just playing out the ‘play’ of separation, of deception, of conflict, of essentially perceiving ‘the others’ as separate from ourselves. That is a form of control that is perpetuated through judgment. And it is not only ‘externalized’ towards others, but it exists within ourselves, and it’s been there from the very moment of our primordial separation… that’s how far ‘mind control’ goes in fact.  

We have allowed ourselves to make it normal to judge ourselves by our character – the ways and personalities we have or don’t’ have – and our bodies, in terms of the shapes, forms, colors it may have and we make of it a ‘big deal’ to concern us about that, in terms of how we believe ‘others will see us’ and how they will judge us.

word

n   noun: a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used to form sentences with others.

 

judgement (also judgment)

n   noun: the ability to make considered decisions or form sensible opinions. Øan opinion or conclusion.

 

 

 

 

Emitting a judgment is then not a ‘bad’ thing per se, but it is so that currently based on our – for the most part – lack of proper education or lack of awareness on these basic principles of how we are in fact one and equal, we have come to disregard the life that we are in all its forms and how we relate to everything-else-that-is-ourselves-too in ways that are for the most part degrading, inferiorizing, deprecating, and the list goes on. In essence, we haven’t learned or weren’t taught How to LIVE words that are supportive, that nurture one’s life, that consider the life of others-that-are-me-as-well in the same way, because… we just conveniently ‘forgot’ who we really are as one and equal, as a whole that is an expression of Life itself. It is seemingly ‘easier’ to fight wars than work on an inner-process to create self-responsibility and honor the life that we are equal-to-each-other.

I know this is nothing new, it’s been written in many sacred books in various ways and in different philosophies throughout time, but strangely so, it has remained as some kind of ‘unified theory’ and holistic view of life that appears to be ‘way out there’ and has not been made practical, feasible and realistically doable – dare I say until now. This has created a seemingly ‘comfortable separation’ between all of those wise words pronounced by various philosophers, thinkers or prophets throughout history, and we’ve caged them into books of ‘religious doctrines’ or ‘quack theories’ that we have relegated to oblivion, but never really learned how to make the whole set of wise words and advices something practical.

Why am I so passionate to always go back to this ‘beginning of existence’ type of topics? Because this is something that I somehow ‘knew’ as a little girl and got confirmed of it through studying the Eqafe.com audios that explain the history of existence, all the material at Desteni, Heaven’s Journey To Life (read at least the 100 first posts that describe all aspects on this topic) and everything that Bernard Poolman shared to the public, which is not a ‘light read’ but by life itself, it’s been the one source of understanding that I am again eternally grateful to be aware of because as I was saying, it was soothing for me to know that that which I felt or acted on at some level was in fact a reality.

As a child I had some ‘weird’ ways of being such as not wanting to hit things because I considered they could feel as well, I wasn’t ‘mean’ to other people or thought bad about them because I cared about other children by imagining what it would be to be ‘them’ as well. I would get very sad and depressed as a child upon seeing that some children would not behave that way towards me… and starting to recognize evil in humanity and so how it played out in reality became a source of existential anguish that I tried to understand for many years by deliberately creating my own forms of ‘understanding’ what led people to act and behave in certain ways, including myself eventually as I reached my teenage years and I saw myself creating desires that I wanted to fulfill and would clash in an explosive manner with my parents. Yet, I wanted to know ‘why’ we were all so lost, so hopeless and helpless…. And yes I went through several routes as philosophies, books, spiritualties and religions until I essentially stopped on my tracks when I got to listen to the Desteni message on January 30^th 2008, a memorable date in my life that would forever change who I am, for the best.

The message of oneness and equality, as ‘euphemistic’ and ‘ethereal’ it may sound, to me it means the comprehension of who I am as part of this world, why I am here and what we are doing in this process is precisely to turn the tables from the mess we’ve made of ourselves – consequently of life itself – and to direct ourselves, to deliberately change our ways so that we can become ‘whole’ again. This doesn’t mean or imply that everyone will be holding hands as we run through the fields in an everlasting happiness…. This means simply being able to be a human being that considers that it IS possible to be the best that you can in whatever you do and wherever you are and with whomever you are around and from that, if everyone lives this: we go in fact shaping the new forms of living, the new expressions, using the words that express life itself, that expresses that ‘best version of ourselves’ that we know we currently aren’t, yet we know the potential is here, because we all can see what is currently very wrong in our world or at least the aspects that are causing conflicts and what everyone would want in order for all of us to live at a relative and acceptable peace.

It’s all the judgments, the imposition of opinions through charged adjectives that we believe ‘we are’ that separates us. This is a very ‘simplistic’ way of putting it, but it is in fact so… it is so that it is THAT silly to realize what we are in fact fighting and killing ourselves for something that exists merely in our minds as words made judgments, turned into weapons and deprecating words.

Is it difficult to live this realization? It is at times hard to see people getting lost in all sorts of separation and division – all words that lead to actions that perpetuate this separation. It baffles me, but now I create an understanding about it so as to remind myself in a simple moment of all of this that I’ve realized and understood throughout the years, so that I no longer get angry or sad about it. I also slip out of myself at times and get into the realm of separation through opinions, judgments, fears, ideas I create about others and that I speak and act on.  And at the same time, I’ve learned to not judge myself for it, because I know how deep this ‘conditioning’ goes, I am aware this has become the most ingrained way to ‘be’, that’s how it takes a deliberate decision to recognize any mistake or fall and from there to deliberately decide to correct myself in relation to it, to change myself and ‘my ways’ to become a more life-encompassing being.

Encompassing is a cool word as I see it, it embraces, it holds, it contains the whole, it also contains the word ‘compass’ as a direction that I can consider every time that I get lost in separation. It also sounds like compassion which I’ve also recently decided to redefine as a consideration, an understanding, and so this is also pertinent to remind myself whenever I get ‘lost in my ways’ essentially. To consider the whole, to put it simply.

The first time that I heard the series ‘The Secret History of the Universe’ it was like a revelation I have been waiting to understand, it was like a ‘Eureka’ moment for me, and from there it was like taking a soothing aid for my soul so to speak, I’m not even joking about this. I bring through to my awareness the essential aspects that I got from listening to this series in order to remind myself of who we really are and where we are going – I do this whenever I seem to get ‘lost in the mind’ and in certain experience. I especially do this whenever I read the multiple forms of judgments, bullying, calling names, complaining, blaming and the list goes on of words and declarations going on in our world through media and social media today. It too is part of revealing ourselves to each other, I remind myself that we have to bring through the common sense through it, but I also realize that it will take time for the mess to be sorted out, because we are currently in the ‘explosive’ face so to speak. It’s not a happy ride, but it’s a necessary phase, this is the real face of the revelation, the apocalypse as many called it. This is it! Seeing our truth through our words, thoughts and deeds.

This process is the only way with which I’ve been able to ‘soothe my existential pain’ and the series I mentioned above was one of the reasons for it, so I recommend it as an essential part of one’s self.-awareness process. I even suggest making notes, perhaps little drawings that assist in understanding it. I decided to make a photo back then to point out the obvious and what seemed like a very big ‘duh!’ moment for me J

Enjoy this and many other series on Eqafe currently available through the amazing opportunity that the Eqafe Unlimited  plan brings… as I always say, it will change your life if you dare to live the realizations you get from all the material there.

That’s it! Enjoy these audios that speak of the specific moments that got me to have this ‘Eureka’ moment:

• The Secret History of the Universe – Does Separation in fact Exist – Part 5 

• The Secret History of the Universe – Is Energy Life – Part 6

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own process of defining your Self-Honesty

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• 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

628. #EqafeDiscovery: Unlocking Yourself

 

One of my favorite series in Eqafe for Self Support is the one called Quantum Systemization and I’ve been translating it to Spanish recently, which has been quite supportive for me to remind myself of certain aspects that I tend to overlook when walking my process or that simply explains to me the inner workings of my mind and how it translates to experiences in my life.

I was translating this one Unlocking Yourself – Quantum Systemization – Part 71 and upon listening to it I realized how in my previous blog I mostly shared about the understanding, the realizations and in a way walking some of the solutions after I reached out for support in various ways to others in relation to what I experienced within myself and my body, but I didn’t get to describe how the experience was overall while I was completely ‘in it’ and not entirely seeing it, which lasted several months.

This audio talks about how at times we get so blinded by a point, we become it so completely that in one way or another we will get to be approached by some people that might assist us in delineating the thing for us, enabling us to give a name to our experience, or assist in ‘unlocking’ ourselves by giving us some feedback on what we are ‘resonating’ which is how people may see us and perceive us. This is somewhat what happened with me through one of my friends who also walks this process and offered some support which enabled me ‘give a name’ to what I have been experiencing and creating within me.

Giving it a name sounds ‘simple’, but it really assisted me to ‘unlock’ myself as the audio explains, I was able to pin point what I was in fact doing to myself. And yes, one may think ‘oh but aren’t we always aware of what we are doing to ourselves?’ and yes in terms of the actions and experiences, they were always here as myself, but I wasn’t giving it the name that described the precise mechanism that could enable me to see what I was in fact locking myself into – or blinding myself into –  and the shift also happened when she assisted me to place the focus back to ME and not necessarily focusing merely on the symptoms or physical consequences of the experience, which was quite revealing as well as a tendency of getting hooked on the physical discomforts, illness, pains and make it as if we already ‘know’ how we created it, but I was in fact missing out a big factor in the mechanism of it all: myself and what I was holding onto that created this whole pattern within me.

I mentioned about avenge in my previous blog, which was one of the patterns that she suggested as a possible pattern or mind mechanism I was embodying, and another word that came out is judgment. Perhaps I was more aware of the judgment I was holding, but avenge in secondary gain was truly hitting the head on the nail because that enabled me to clearly see what I was doing and how I was acting out this sense of self-punishment for judging something that I have done and thus, becoming it to such an extent that I wasn’t able to see that I was doing it, nor name it. I was aware of some guilt patterns and generally judging myself for it, but the word ‘avenge’ seemed like completely alien to me to begin with, because I don’t consider that the desire for vengeance, revenge or avenge exists within me towards others. But! I definitely could see that I do have this tendency of taking things on me and believing that my own pain, suffering or ‘punishment’ is a way to create any form of justice or compensation/ making up for what I believe I caused as grievance or negative consequences to others, which again was me being blinded by focusing on ‘the exterior’ and not looking back at myself.

So how would this pattern feel before naming it as ‘avenge in secondary gain’? I would think quite frequently that I perhaps should not be so happy or having such a ‘great time’ because I did something that was ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ in my own moral judgment. This is not a foreign pattern to me, I have mostly lived a life where I believed that I couldn’t simply be fine and optimistic if you will because of the world being suffering and the majority of people not having an ‘ok’ life, so believing that I had to behave according to what others are experiencing.

How else did it feel as I was in it? I felt torn between two worlds, the one that I am living in my current reality, and the one I kept bringing back in my head which usually would cause a ‘spike’ in my pulse, yes, just like when we get anxious about something, but instead of having a continuous acceleration of the heart rate, it would emerge as these ‘upheavals’ so to speak that I would then breathe through, seeing the thought come up and brushed it aside, because I believed that I had forgiven the guilt and that these things should not be coming up again.

The reality is that a part of me accepted this whole back and forth of inner experience as something I had to ‘carry with’ and in a way almost like having to punish myself with this whole experience, as if I had to in fact create some kind of justice ‘in secondary gain’ or ‘in the name of someone else’ for  something that I believe I’ve done and was ‘very wrong and very bad.’ And yes, it felt like haunting me in a series of thoughts, even in my dreams, but I was just not believing I could do something to genuinely resolve it, because I thought I was working on letting go of the guilt, the shame, on embracing the past and my actions and choices.

However, I was still too much focusing on ‘the past’ and the ideas I created about it, and how I kept judging myself for it but at the same time Justifying it as real, as genuine, as ‘that is who I am’ and that’s how I held on to it with a  rather twisted sense of ‘I need to pay for this one way or another’ and at a deeper level within me believing that the way to do it was to essentially not be able to be fully ‘here’, embracing and enjoying my life because of thinking that I wasn’t honest, that I caused harm and so I almost didn’t ‘deserve’ it.  

I let this go by for several months pretending I could be ok and it would eventually fade, but it didn’t. So, in a way yes then the story continues of how I had to face the point at a more physical level. So that’s how upon sharing some of this to my friends, one of them offered to have a chat with one of them, which assisted me a lot in changing the way that I defined and perceived the whole situation, which was very supportive. Then I reached out to physical and medical support including alternative therapies to provide my body with the support that I require as I take on this point to change within me at a mind level.

I particularly don’t see that I resisted being supported, I genuinely appreciate every person that has assisted me to see this. I mostly considered that this sense of ‘punishment’ or ‘suffering’ is something that I HAD to go through, and this is the righteous opinion that I held on to and locked myself into, this acceptance of essentially self-victimization but in a reversed way where I believed myself that I was ‘so bad’ I had to suffer for it and that it would eventually pass once I had paid my ‘penitence.’

Yes, sounds very religious in context, and perhaps this is how it exactly exists within me based on my family lineage, which surely have been devoted people that would have a certain relationship with piousness and punishment to clear one’s sins…. And now it’s my turn to also clean that construct from within me which I wasn’t acting on at a conscious level, but was more ingrained as subconscious and unconscious aspects within me, which involves understanding more of how I got to create and act upon these constructs, rather than looking at it at the limited level of the consequences of it or symptoms such as only working with the shame and the guilt. I honestly do not regret things, but I did feel bad about it because of knowing ‘I could have done things better’ and I didn’t, so that’s the main self-flagellation point that I am now having to let go of J and yes it involves now literally smiling to myself about it because of how even one change in approach to seeing it, assisted me to see how I was seeing things in reverse and using that as an excuse to continue punishing myself. I realized my self-honesty in it through those chats of support with various people and at times, yes that is what we need when we are so ‘locked into’ a point .

I have a tendency to over analyze and in that, also get sometimes lost in giving too much weight on how I perceive things and not really see at what it is that I am creating and recreating as an experience within me. So here also having the assistance of others to unlock ourselves is essential, as it has also been a necessary point of support throughout my process in Desteni where you get a personal buddy support in walking your process, someone that has been there for sufficient time to know which aspects we tend to ‘lock ourselves in’ as well.

This is a great reminder of how at times one may believe that one simply has to ‘go through’ certain experiences, emotions and reactions or ‘down phases’ and not cross reference them because ‘it’s just how things are or what we are meant to go through and experience.’ But here I remind myself and so share to everyone reading this that: it is not so. It’s best to approach any supportive person or alternative medicine practitioner that one knows one can explain the whole story to and get a perspective on how it may link to the physical symptoms one is experiencing, so that they can be worked through in such therapies. Not to mention I also resorted to regular medicine due to some of the severity of the symptoms, so in that I also walked not judging ‘regular’ medicine as bad, but simply realizing to some aspects I did have to get to it because of the extent it was compromising my body.

The explanation given in Eqafe.com’s audio “Unlocking yourself’ is a fascinating one to also understand why we have to also be more open to having others approach us when they are noticing something ‘off’ in us, or when we can decide to reach out for support at a timely manner, instead of waiting for things to just continue accumulating without resolution, so I recommend getting to listen to it to see the ‘background workings’ of who we are as life and committing ourselves to this process and how support arrives at a timely manner for it.

I also recommend investing in subscribing to Eqafe Unlimited which is the new way where you can subscribe on a monthly basis and have access to all the thousands of recordings that cover almost every possible topic that relates to our creation, our development, self-support and how to deal with every aspect of our minds and our daily lives. It’s a worthy investment considering that what one learns there, will forever stay with you if you act on it, place it into action and application, making your life considerably better, having the practicality of ‘how to’ get to reach your potential as a human being. It not only aims to assist us in self-development, but also to break down the locks we’ve been living as forever as humanity, that only now have become available for all, and now can be accessed in a ‘Netflix’ manner, which is quite convenient too.

Reach out for support when you see that you are just giving rounds to the same thoughts and experiences in the mind and in the body without them going away or getting any lesser. There’s desteni.org, the desteni forum and Eqafe.com for support too I’m forever grateful for walking this process along with people that are there to support you whenever you require to get feedback and cross reference what one is working on and experiencing and unlock ourselves from the inner blindness on a point.

 

Listen to: Unlocking Yourself

 

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own process of defining your Self-Honesty

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• 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

 

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

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• Get Real with Cerise & Joe

• Desteni Radio

• Desteni Articles

• Destonians

• Desteni I Process

• Agreement/Redefining Relationship Course

• Desteni Forum : Discuss and share with us

• Desteni Wiki

• Desteni Español

• Creation’s Journey to Life

• Heaven’s Journey To Life

591. Looking Forward and Missing Out the Life

Or how I’ve realized the expectations I’ve built upon ‘my life’ creating a ‘waiting mode’ for these ‘grandiose things’ yet to happen, instead of appreciating life as it takes place in every moment to truly learn to live.

I’ve been looking at my relationship with ‘meaning’ and I am aware that this might be more of a ‘philosophical’ approach here that I haven’t written out in a while, but it’s equally important to me due to what I’ve been doing recently which is painting again and doing so from a different starting point than how it all ‘once began’ for me in this curiosity and ‘desire to express’ all of these ‘things’ that I wanted to say somehow after having been writing and reading a lot on my own, taking on painting as a way to now ‘do my part’ in not only ‘taking in’ others’ creations, but also expressing it out/giving back something, somehow. That all started during a summer 14 years ago, so here I am 14 years later reflecting on what has been this ‘ride’ with my intent behind painting and ‘arts’ in general and how much of a ‘big deal’ I made of it in my mind.

I notice how I started paintings more as a ‘way of communicating’ something, wanting to ‘express’ something which yes at the time in the plethora of little watercolors I made were all related to feeling sorry for myself, feeling depressed, feeling lonely or painting an ‘ideal lifestyle’ that I would somehow someday get to experience myself in, so in a way yes painting emotional states or ‘ideal situations’ I’d see myself in, painted my fears of the future, my fears of growing up and getting into the ‘adult world’ and in a way wanting to stay within the realm of the ‘eccentric’ out of the ‘usual things’ to do in life, like the regular job and the regular ‘adult lifestyle’ that is completely immersed in the system and living a routine that ‘slowly kills you’ quoting Radiohead’s song which I would have on repeat mode while starting this ‘new thing’ for me to explore at the time which was painting, having no background on it, no painting lessons, no artsy relatives, no nothing, just some drawings here and there that I’d be focusing on during classes, because somehow it assisted me in remaining focused on what was being said.

Focusing here on that ‘desire to express’ to me was my way of ‘creating a meaning’ and ‘creating a purpose’ to something that I had many times judged as trivial, like paintings, stuff that I would fixate on and hang around me just for the pure sake of – as I’ve defined it – ‘visual viciousness’, which  yes I ‘gave up’ for some time apparently while walking this process but, I decided to not make it a fixation anymore or this energized relationship of ‘seeing beautiful things’ around me to give them a name, because some were not necessarily ‘beautiful’ yet they more had a meaning to me. Each thing that I had around me had a ‘meaning’ and I consider that until this day, that can be said so about the bunch of stuff I have around me, so that is an interesting thing to consider as well.

How I got to ‘connect the dots’ to get to open up this topic on ‘meaning’ and wanting to create stuff that would ‘mean’ something or that would ‘express’ something closely related to something ‘transcendental’ or ‘beyond me’ or whatever else I defined as ‘larger than life’ was through having watched Jim Jarmusch’s latest movie Paterson and I must say that his previous movie Only Lovers Left Alive had left quite a ‘deep’ imprint on me at the time when I watched it and yes, was very emotional and dealt with a ‘touchy’ subject for me at the time, and when I watched this one, at first I was like ‘meh’ because! I didn’t get that ‘transcendental experience’ from it – read energetically charged and overwhelming experience – I didn’t get this ‘life changing’ insta-realization from it or didn’t get a floor-moving type of outcome from it –  or at least I thought so initially. But of course I didn’t accept that to be ‘my final verdict’ on it as it was more of an ‘out of the movie theatre’ experience, though I had been aware that I had been in fact ‘disturbed’ while watching it in a certain way by the whole thing unfolding and not only because of ‘the movie’ in itself, but due to observing my approach towards It and what it had brought up in me while watching it.

So I challenged myself to see further, to see how I had been in fact disturbed by it, because of the role that routine takes in the movie and how we are creatures of routine, everything that happens day to day is ‘the same routine’ – sun comes up, sun goes down and we have to do what we have to do to keep alive – and then there’s the rest of ‘in between’ moments where our lives happen, and that’s where I noticed myself being almost ‘yearning’ for something different to happen, where I saw myself in this ‘waiting-mode’ for this ‘grand thing’ to happen in the whole movie… and it doesn’t – or shall I say it just ‘didn’t happen’ the way I was kind of expecting. In the movie, life unfolds, things just ‘take place’ and within realizing my expectations, I saw how I was in fact challenged on that, I saw how this ‘looking forward’ impulse in me was there the whole time until something kind of ‘unexpected’ happens and it becomes like a ‘start over’ in the film, but there was a slight sense within me throughout the whole thing of ‘is this it?’ and so expecting some ‘major’ event happening, some major ‘plot twist’ that would suddenly take me to the edge of my seat, lol even though I am aware of how Jarmusch’s movies are, there was still that kind of expectation within me… well it never happened and I am glad it didn’t, or more like it didn’t happen ‘during the movie’ but more on how it assisted me to reflect things about myself, my own life and day to day approach.

What this movie showed me is how much of a ‘waiting mode’ I create within life, where I’ve been ‘waiting for my life to happen’ so many years, waiting to ‘get somewhere’ or ‘go and live somewhere else’ for years only to realize that’s not really where I actually wanted to go to, yet I kept my whole day to day in ‘waiting mode’ for that and sort of ‘doing my thing’ in between, not really fully ‘living’ but again quoting Radiohead, it felt like just ‘killing time’ until I would ‘get there’ and I just didn’t.

What this film made me appreciate again is the simplicity of life happening on a day to day basis, where we cannot ever ‘get rid of’ routine, in fact it was a great test to be OK  with witnessing this whole routine unfolding throughout a week and not getting ‘desperate’ in it or go into some sort of backchat around how ‘this was so predictable’ because in essence it could be defined as such – but I decided to choose to rather appreciate the ‘moment by moment’ situations in the film and let go of expecting these ‘grand situations’ coming up, and instead appreciate the normalcy of it for ‘what it is’ which of course it has a lot of charms in it that had been carefully built in throughout the whole film that I also in that moment got to enjoy.

It was also interesting because I had written out before about my relationship to routine itself, but something changes when you are witnessing someone else’s routine, specially within the context of a movie which opened up new points for me to explore, and that’s great, because it also made me realize how I cannot really ever say ‘I’m clear towards that word/concept’ it’s a constant opening, evolving, changing thing based on how we interact with everything and everyone else.

Once that the film was over, the fact that my ‘great expectations’ were sort of by default deflated, I was pushed to ‘rewind’ it in my head to then see what it was really all about for me and how there wasn’t this ‘great meaning’ to it, this ‘transcendental outcome’ that I was expecting, but how it all depends on ‘who I am’ within watching it and so rather seeing what I decide to appreciate or take from the movie as a sheer enjoyable experience of immersing myself in this guy’s life and his day to day living for a week and ‘all that happens in between.’

This led me to see how even if I ‘thought’ of myself as not being conditioned by the ‘great plots’ and ‘great twists’ in stories, I had become somewhat ‘hooked’ on that kind of narratives because they end up engaging more of an emotional experience than a simple witnessing of life happening – everyday living happening – which also reminds me of a similar Japanese movie I also watched not long ago called After the Storm in a similar vein where the character is already a mature man that seems to be waiting for some things yet to ‘happen’ in his life  and there’s no big ending on the story, but more like the resolution of how he had to simply ‘keep walking his life’ and letting go of these hopes he held about his career and personal life. I also got to enjoy the movie for the depiction that it is of ‘regular lives’ without any transcendental events, just  ‘normal day to day’ relationships unfolding and the ‘charms’ in life as it unfolds.

My redefined approach to these movies assisted me to see how there has been this ‘waiting for the great moment’ type of approach to my life,  just like that ‘climax’ that we many times believe will somehow end up happening in our ‘life story’ and will ‘forever change us’ and will ‘forever be this grand moment’ but, that’s more like how I realize I have been conditioned to THINK of life, instead of actually Living it, as is, in its day to day, without expectations, without ‘waiting modes,’ without ‘creating these perfect moments’ that I probably got to read a lot about in books and that I many times tried to recreate in my own life through relationships and through the kind of paintings I would make, where I wanted to evoke this ‘superb’ experience, this ‘epicness’ that could somehow scare you and frighten you and give you this sense of this ‘bigger than life’ meaning that …. Well, I have to now realize has been my own ‘mindjob’ to be honest and how I am rather being grateful to once again through art and in this case through films and documentaries be able to ‘get myself off of my high horse’ and appreciate what I had previously seen as the ‘insignificant things in life’, the day to day, the Living moment, rather than being in my head holding this ‘grand expectations’ for ‘greater meanings, greater purposes’ over my shoulders about this ‘epic event’ or ‘climatic moment’ in my life that is apparently ‘yet to come.’

I once made a lithograph that reads ‘never wait’ and the face has got this anguished experience because that’s for the most part how I spent many years in my life, waiting for ‘my life to happen’ in some sort of ‘waiting for someone to knock at your door, discover your real talents and make you have a great life’ type of thing… not really realizing that life is not about building these ‘great outcomes’ or ‘grand schemes’ or ‘big climatic epic moments’ but it IS all about everything in between from the moment we are aware of ourselves as individuals to our last breath, it is ALL of our life, from the ‘greater changes’ and decisions to the ‘smallest’ moments.

I decide to stop living as a walking-expectation in ‘waiting mode’ for this ‘something great’ to happen to me… if anything, I am living it as I speak, we are all kinds of ‘miracles’ of life considering how far we’ve pushed ourselves in this world to coexist and have relatively ‘normal lives’ with all the inner and outer chaos that we recreate within and without on a daily basis… It showed me how much I have taken ‘normalcy’ for granted as well when it comes to polarizing my experience to that of the most unfortunate majority in this world that surely cannot even afford to spend a couple of hours watching a movie about ‘life unfolding’ because their own is not even being ‘lived fully’ but only ‘survived through.’

All of these points make me place my life into perspective, not to make me feel ‘bad’ or ‘insignificant’ with my topics opened up here when polarized and compared to ‘those that are suffering in this world,’ because of course anything will seem petty and meaningless when going into comparison with anything that stands as manifested consequences that yes, we will have to sort out altogether; but I’ve also learned to not attempt and try to ‘save the world’ without first living one’s life in an actual self-aware manner, and so beginning within changing the way I approach ‘life itself’ for example, stepping down from this ‘grand idea’ of all of these ‘meaningful things’ that I wanted to create and say and express in my head and rather equalize the meaning to every moment that I am alive – no more, no less – it’s there for me to decide who I am in it.

I’ve been aware of how far out I’ve gone to when it comes to ‘judging things’ but this is part of how I’ve created my own limitations/ fears and ideals in relation to anything in life, any part of ‘what’s here’ and that’s all based on how I’ve judged things, people, places, situations, events, outcomes as either good, bad, exciting, dull, depressive, joyful, and creating preferences around ‘what I want to experience’ instead of embracing life as a whole, as the compendium of all of these things as ‘what life is about,’ which is not about seeking an ‘experience’ all the time or finding any grand meanings, not about making these ‘transcendental pictures’ or wanting to ‘save the world’ or ‘save others from themselves’, but about getting to live fully in my own life and with those around me and in the relationships that I create.

For now I do see that if we all did this, a lot of the existential anguish as I like to call it would fade away and we would start reconsidering what ‘living’ and ‘life is really about – maybe we would start embracing and appreciating our life in every moment, ‘as it happens,’ where in my particular case I choose to take it also as an opportunity to create myself in every moment as the person I am aware I can live with for the rest of my life, where I can enjoy those seemingly ‘repetitive moments’ by stopping judging ‘repetition’ as a ‘boring’ thing or ‘uneventful’ thing, and in that sense stopping looking for these ‘grand experiences in my life,’ but simply take life as is

Some events will surely ‘shake us’ more than others, but it’s all part of living, it cannot happen ‘every day’ nor would it even be sane to live that way in a ‘high rollercoaster of emotions’ because we of course take a toll on our bodies if that was even a possibility… it just can’t and I shouldn’t even expect that as ‘LIFE happening…’ that’s not living, that’s a constant yearning to be forever stimulated into a perception or energized experience of living, but it’s not living as such.

I’d like to rather consider the simplicity of things, which yes I have before in my photography practice tried to also ‘turn into something more’ than what it is when taking pictures of ‘garbage’ or what I would judge as ‘deprecating things or ‘meaningless stuff’ and give it a spot through my eyes in a desire to make it beautiful or ‘sublime’ or whatever else, but that’s still me wanting to make things ‘more’ than what they are… and that’s not the point either.

Here I can instead look back at my physical body as a reference of what ‘life is’ and extend the same approach that my body lives on a day to day basis to ‘how I live life.’ It goes through its ups and downs at times, there are entire seasons where everything is just ‘fine’ and working well, it just ‘is’, it moves, it digests, it grows, it decays, it goes through its processing and challenges due to whatever I do or not do with it on my day to day, but it doesn’t NEED any meaning to exist, my body doesn’t require these ‘transcendental experiences’ to keep itself alive, it just lives, it just exists, it just keeps breathing whether I am aware of it or not, and I am entirely grateful for it because, man, we all know that we would not be existing right here and right now if we had to entirely manage every single process that is consciously done by our physical body in itself and at the same time handle ourselves as our mind and being…  it’s a marvelous thing yet, I’ve already shared before as well how much I had taken it for granted.

This same approach is what I decide to integrate in my life from now on and even in this week after watching that movie on Sunday, it has assisted me to ‘slow’ down’ in that sense in my ‘waiting-modes’ and ‘building expectations’ towards something eventually ‘happening’ in my life which are still there as potential outcomes, yet I have been deliberately focusing more on this ‘moment by moment’ approach, and more so, to not judge ‘the moment’ as ‘more or less’ than anything, to not seek to make every moment ‘larger than life’ lol, because that would be me in my mind wanting to still exist as some form of stimulation, an ‘experience’, a ‘meaning separate from myself’ in my head rather than taking life as it happens and living it to the best of my ability in that moment, pushing myself to in my case and current point of focus, stop looking ‘forward’ to anything, but be fully present and in that creating an awareness more towards my physical body, my own experience, how I ‘see things’, how I relate to people, how I perceive my environment, etc.

All of this is also a result of a great series of interviews related to many of these points I’ve opened up and that I am quite grateful for because it has assisted me to identify where I am still very much in my mind looking at life, instead of actually Living it, so I suggest checking them out to genuinely ‘enlighten’ ourselves for once and for all about what’s really REAL in this world and that I had definitely taken for granted.

Redefining Physical – The Crucifixion of Jesus – Part 109

Redefining Physical (Part 2) – The Crucifixion of Jesus – Part 110

Redefining Physical (Part 3) – The Crucifixion of Jesus – Part 111

 

I’ll continue with more on the ‘meaning’ and paintings in another blog…

 

Thanks for reading

 

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• Get Real with Cerise & Joe

• Desteni Radio

• Desteni Articles

• Destonians

• Desteni I Process

• Agreement/Redefining Relationship Course

• Desteni Forum : Discuss and share with us

• Desteni Wiki

• Desteni Español

• Creation’s Journey to Life

• Heaven’s Journey To Life

587. Adapting to the New instead of Wallowing in the Old

Or walking through an experience of ‘standing up’ in my dream and not going into past patterns upon seeing familiar ‘triggering points’ to do the opposite before.

 

I had a dream about moving to a new city to live with my partner and essentially finding myself in a completely new environment where things didn’t quite turn out ‘as I had expected’ initially, which means that the creation of expectations was the comparison point that I used to define that ‘the way things turned out’ was not satisfactorily or how I had ‘painted’ it in my mind. Even more so what became evident is how I had idealized the relationship with my partner and that once that we were in that moment of ‘settling it’, nothing was as I imagined it to be. I’d perceive him as being rather detached/distant, offish, lackadaisical, moody, not really wanting to go out once that we had arrived to our destination and in that it was interesting that even if the environment, situation and things weren’t as ‘I had imagined them to be’ I still decided to then be the one that would go out on my own and start meeting up with people, where I made that decision to move and ‘find my way’ in it, instead of what I probably would have done before which is to wallow and go into a similar ‘state of mind’ as I would see my partner do, which is something that resembles more of previous relationships I’ve been in and how yes, there has been people in my life that would definitely act this way and I would allowed myself to be also discouraged, to also go into a ‘depressed’ mode, but not anymore. However I’ll walk through how I made that change within me. 

 

Upon noticing how things would really be like in that situation, there was an initial ‘disillusionment’ in it as well upon seeing reality for what it was and not through the eyes of my ‘dreams’ or ideals and expectations, which I can identify as a ‘grounding’ moment as well to not build or create any expectations or idealize potential outcomes or future situations, but rather be able to work with ‘what’s here’ in the moment, which applies to anything in my life, to build and create something in the moment rather than future projecting, planning, idealizing something ‘too much’ out there in a distant future and this is how through the dream I became aware of my participation in this in a ‘background’ manner to bring it to the front and be more directive in relation to it.

 

As I was walking through or ‘processing’ what was my new reality arriving to live in a new country, with new people, I made a decision to not wallow into an experience of disappointment or disillusionment but instead, I made a decision to not give into a depression or plain ‘down’ experience and instead decide to literally go out and start creating my way, starting to talk to people that in my dream were ‘familiar’ ones actually which seems uncanny in a ‘new city’ but I get the gist of it as in ‘leading my way through it’, which then got me back to seeing how I decide how I experience myself in any circumstance, I define who I am in it – and within this not seeing places or people as limitations, but rather see through the eyes of opportunities as new environments, new ways, new challenges to adapt into, to overcome, to find my way through and so live adaptability and flexibility.

 

I also see it as something where once that one gives a certain step into this kind of life changes, such as moving to another place to live and start ‘a new life’ there, no matter what the inconveniences are such as ‘hot weather’ or ‘foreign language’ or ‘the people around me not acting the way I expected’ to realize that it’s still entirely up to me who I decide to be in it, which is what I did in the dream.

 

For example, I first have to decide who I would like to be in such situations, instead of going into my mind to see it all as a ‘mistake’ and going into some kind of ‘backing off’ from my decision, which I was slightly doing initially in my dream which felt like a ‘sinking’ or ‘wallowing’ physical experience – yes in the dream – until I decided to take the steps to literally ‘put myself out there’ as it’s said and that changed my whole experience in the moment, from that ‘sinking’ experience or even ‘depressive’ experience or ‘missing’ experience to ‘I decide to create how I live and what I’d like to create in this moment’ and ending up seeing myself enjoying the company of more people that I’d get to connect with there.

 

Here opening up a bit more about expectations which I’ve tested out and realized in my life are usually a certain road that leads to disappointment, disillusionment and most probably a belief that ‘nothing is as good as it seemed’ because we tend to create ‘ideal conditions’ in our minds based on how we would ‘like’ things to be, on our limited preferences and one thing we know about reality is that life is never what we want it to be and that’s how it definitely should be from my perspective, otherwise, how else would we learn to grow, expand and adapt ourselves, to get ‘new bits’ of ourselves created within the purpose of expanding our lives within and without of ourselves?

 

I also saw how creating expectations is linked to a desire for control which is also one of those ‘biggie’ points that I’ve been walking through in my life, and so making peace with the reality fact that we can’t really know how anything will in be for certain until we are living it here, in the moment. We can’t ever really have control over ‘how things are going to be,’ we cannot control at all the conditions, outflows, potentials and variables in any point of our lives, we can only control and direct and so change ourselves in it.

 

So to me the word that I’ve been looking at is the capacity to Adapt to the circumstances, to be flexible and enjoy myself in doing so, where instead of going into a ‘closing off’ within me upon seeing certain ‘hurdles’ on the road, I decide to push through and decide to see things from the starting point of potentials to develop, to see it as a challenge as well and not at all participating in the idea of ‘going back’ to my comfort zone, but instead walk through the perceived ‘unexpected’ experience and eventually see that as with any change, sure there’s an initial ‘settling time,’ there’s a moment to adjust, there are challenges, changes which is all part of getting out of one’s comfort zone, which is precisely where I want to be in my life really. Ultimately that’s definitely what makes one grow and expand as a person and with those around oneself as well, like in my case of the dream to now allow me and my experienced to be defined by the one that my partner in that moment was going through, but be a living example of creating the experience that I wanted to create in that moment, of course not just for the sake of ‘experience’ but in consideration of what I was there to do as a purpose I am creating for myself, which is very much linked to connecting with more people.

 

So, it was cool for me to not go into this ‘sinking’ experience as I would usually go into when having my expectations not ‘meet reality’ and instead embrace reality as is, no mind-preferences attached.

 

I have to be quite devoid of expectations towards my life wherein yes, I can have a distinctive direction and decision on what I’m about to live and do, but I am aware I cannot control all factors or have things be like this ‘perfect dream’ in my mind, but instead be open and flexible in whatever I decide to create and participate in, be willing and ready to take on ‘whatever comes’ and more importantly to trust myself in that no matter ‘what’ goes around or where I am: I am here, I can expand, I can adapt, I can learn, I can grow and if all things eventually don’t lead to the outcome that is best for myself and others, to again not be afraid to take a different road and walk through it from the start. 

 

Because that’s ultimately what was also an underlying experience in the dream, like ‘what if this was a mistake?’ ‘what If I made a wrong decision?’ and in existing within that fear of making mistakes, I’ve limited myself a lot before within fearing to make a different decision, to change my situation because of fearing failure ultimately or ‘things not working out,’ but I’ve been learning a thing or two about this as well in my life recently and having the guts to make radical changes and learn what it means to start anew, therefore I’m clear on that as well.

 

Ok so that’s a simple example of how yes, dreams to me at times become a very clear way to ‘walk through’ something that exists at deeper levels within me or that I have been participating in without fully opening it up and because it comes up in such a clear manner, it definitely prompts me to not avoid it, but look at it and rather see it as a gift to not ‘leave the points aside’ and take them on to see ‘who am I’ in relation to what I went through in the dream and utilize them as a cross reference, like in this case it was a way to verify that I am integrating this self-change in all aspects of myself – awake and asleep – which is cool.

 

I also see that whatever I projected onto the environment or the people in it don’t define ‘them’ but define me and aspects of myself that I’ve lived in my own life before or that or previous partnership situations where I have in fact allowed myself to ‘settle in’ with people that would not want to support themselves, and so in a way feeling restricted because of having to ‘be’ with someone that required a lot more time to eventually get to a point – if any – of self-support.

 

So I can only look back at myself whenever I see that I am existing as such detachment, coldness, aloofness or ‘offish’ experience to snap myself out of it. Doesn’t really happen to me lately, I can honestly say that, but I have surely existed as this before in my life and as with anything, we see in others what exists within ourselves, either in an active or passive manner so again, it’s up to me to also see who I would decide to be towards someone that I am perceiving is ‘subsumed’ in such experience and what I would decide to do in order to assist them in such situations, which in that case I decided to be an example of not going ‘into an experience’ but go out there and live out what I decided to do there.

 

Check out these awesome audios that touch upon a similar situation in someone’s life and how they ‘picked themselves up’ from it.

• The Moment of Change (Part 1) – Back to Basics

• The Moment of Change (Part 2) – Back to Basics

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• Redefining and Living Words: Facebook Page

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• Get Real

• Desteni Radio

• Desteni Articles

• Destonians

• Desteni I Process

• Agreement/Redefining Relationship Course

• Desteni Forum : Discuss and share with us

• Desteni Wiki

• Desteni Español

• Creation’s Journey to Life

• Heaven’s Journey To Life