Tag Archives: flexibility

September 5, 2017

602. Flexibility within Reality

By Marlen

 

Or how I decided to live a day where things didn’t turn out as ‘I expected’ and prevented myself from going into an exasperation about it and instead turn it into an opportunity to develop patience and understanding.  

So, part of my plans in the day was to write a blog yesterday, and I didn’t get to it. In fact it was one of those days where I woke up early as usual and wrote down all the points that I had to get done, keep an eye on, direct and get to ‘settle’ during the day as part of certain duties, commitments and responsibilities I have taken on in my life.

So, it was one of those days where nothing went as I wanted it to go/not as ‘I expected’ and all the things that I planned to get ‘easily directed’ during the first half of the day ended up being things and bits I had to direct and sort throughout the entire day… lots of phone calls, messages, being in a rather huge state of anticipation because of not being able to communicate with a friend of mine that was going to complete certain process for me in a long-distance manner, then ending up knowing that he had been in a compromised situation that was not cool at all for him, which led me to then be in a state of pressure of ‘I’m requesting this person to do this/that for me and they just went through such a shocking situation’ and having limited ways to communicate while having some deadlines to cover with timeframes for these processes that I could not just ‘go and complete myself’ because I just could not do them from where I am currently located.

I also had to deal with other ‘fixings’ in relation to certain services and that also took some time because of course, people in customer service are usually quite busy, some people make mistakes and so an entire thing becomes a greater problem because of that. I realized I had to understand how overworked they are, how they have to at times make up for someone else’s mistakes and how I had to be forgiving with the other person that had made an initial mistake that created great confusion in my process of attempting to get something sorted out. So I decided to remind me that ‘everyone makes mistakes, I won’t make a big fuss about it and just be patient while things get sorted out.’ So that process I had to do a couple of times today with different people/situations.

In the past in similar situations I would have already by the half of day been irritated, annoyed, calling people incompetent or not ‘wise enough’ to do things ‘just right’ from the get go – but interestingly enough I had the following audio from Eqafe.com quite ‘fresh’ in my memory in fact Failure and Success – Reptilians – Part 571. As I wrote the words ‘I would have been ‘whining’ about in the past like calling people ‘incompetent’ this audio came up because I certainly was that type of person that thought of myself as being spotless in terms of not making mistakes, always being efficient and doing things properly, which is of course quite an unreal view of myself and one that I had to definitely step down from in order to get more real about my flaws, my actual denial of mistakes and weaknesses which include of course this ‘short fuse temper’ type of tantrums I’d dive into within such starting point of believing that ‘If I was doing the work that others are doing, if I had been in this or that position, I would have prevented such problem, I would have done this more efficiently, I would have been able to clarify the situation faster for the client’ etc. And that is a very arrogant way to approach life situations, people and the many ‘out of the ordinary’ type of situations we can encounter in our day to day.

It seems as though this whole day could have been the perfect set of ingredients to make my ‘good old recipe’ of a short fuse temper cocktail that would lead me to ‘bash every single moment of the day’ and go into a state of ‘I don’t want to do any of it any longer’ and just throw a tantrum – read giving up while remaining angry about things – while believing that throwing a tantrum is righteous as in ‘the right thing to do’, which I never in fact dared to see or recognize as an actual weakness, as a form of giving up on myself and others within this attitude of just getting flustered, angry, irritated, frustrated or belittling people for what I perceived were ‘low capabilities to sort things out’ in other words, calling every other person ‘incompetent.’  

Yep, that’s really the truth of myself right there, existing in this ‘I know better’ position where I many times have wished I could just ‘clone myself and do everything myself so that I would never have to deal with incompetence.’ Yeah, again, ‘wow!’ I know… but till this day, I can still see these ‘old thoughts’ coming up within me and what are they indicating about me? They are a way for me to spot and identify where I am not being humble, considerate, patient and flexible towards life happening – as simple as that – because we are all humans, we all make mistakes, nothing can be entirely ‘perfect’ and I have to rather make space for a lot of trial and error in life, or else I won’t be able to ‘live in this world’ like my mother would say to me and my sisters.

My mother’s words come up in this because she had to live in a house with 4 other people  – my father and us three sisters – that have (had) serious ‘perfectionism’ issues. The ‘trademark’ was that of being apprehensive, going into tantrums if things didn’t go our way, if we didn’t get things done ‘the exact way we wanted it,’ if something/someone else would go missing in action and would cause some delay or something just not ‘happening’ to us, or say some teacher wouldn’t grade us in a way that we believed we deserved, the norm was to get angry, to blow things out of proportion, to be short-fusing all along and believe that such response in some way would give us an authority over things… lol, it never did. It only caused us some neurosis that I now know how ‘bad’ it gets when not taking care of it,  yep, learned along the way not the ‘easy way’ but the hard way many times.

This ‘short fuse temper’ point is one of those ‘biggie’ points I’ve been working on for several years now – otherwise identified as ‘anger’ for example – and this whole day was a test in my relationship to things ‘not going the way I expected’ and changing my experience throughout these ‘inconveniences’ and delays, things not happening, people not showing up, people going through actually rough things that delays other processes for me, people having shit happening in their management systems, people not sending out a notice about it, people having to be dealing with greater amounts of work because employers don’t want to hire an extra person to redistribute the load and so being slower in completing tasks, etc.

I had to let go in every moment that all of these ‘obstacles’ went on during my day and just embrace it. I had to remind myself that I could not fix it myself, I depended on others doing things for me, I had to make peace with it and so I did. But it wasn’t an ‘easy’ thing, I mean, I could still see the irritation and impatience wanting to come up, so in those moments I would remind myself to place myself in their shoes, in how there’s not only ‘one’ person that is responsible for certain things, that at times there’s several people down the line that cause such points. Other times it’s systems failing, other times it’s just people having literal shitty situations happening in their life which causes a turn on things that I had assumed would be ‘done as expected’ and having to ‘re-calibrate’ in certain ways.

So, the outcome was that I spent more time today ‘managing’ all these things and having back and forths in communication, sending emails, waiting for certain things to play out that I didn’t get to do what I wanted to get to do after I would have had those things ‘sorted out’ which I had hoped to have ‘sorted out’ throughout the first half of the day, and it just couldn’t happen that way.

As a result, I had to embrace the day, realize I cannot  always be ‘on top of my day’ but today was rather practicing being flexible, testing out my patience to not go into impatience, stopping going into an irritation about having to ‘wait in the line’ or letting go of wanting to have a definitive answer about certain opportunities opening up and in essence, had to ‘make peace’ with things just not being as simple, straightforward and easy-going as I had expected.

So, the last point of the day was that I was recording a translation for Eqafe.com, I’ve been doing it for so many years now that many times at the beginning I would be recording and find out I wasn’t recording at all or the microphone wasn’t plugged in and so I would ‘finish it’ without having a proper recording of the whole thing. In the past I would become so irritated about it! You know like wanting to kick something against the wall type of irritation, lol. Today it happened again, I had a ‘dimensional shift’ where I didn’t plug in the microphone, I just placed it in front of me and started recording. I did check a few times that I was recording through it, but I never noticed that the cable wasn’t plugged… so I finished and as I played it back  I noticed the sound was off, I had not plugged in the mic… well, that was the ‘cherry on top of the day’ or could have been so.

I noticed that there was an urge within me to just ‘want to repeat the whole thing and ‘get done and over with it’ right away’ but I know how this ‘getting over with it’ type of experience goes, it becomes a rushing-through-things type of stance where all of my expression becomes an I-just-want-to-get-this-done type of experience where I know I am irritated and I am just wanting to ‘run through the mistake’ and sort it out as soon as possible, without first addressing the actual irritation.

So this time before I even went into an experience of irritation or frustration for this mistake I made – and I did say ‘oh silly me, wtf!’ but I realized I was about to get into that ‘same old’ train of thought – so I hacked it – I said to myself: Ok, I will take a break, take a shower, eat something, do some cleaning, eat some actual cherries and cake lol and then come back upstairs to be settled enough to re-record it. It helped, I re did it, point done, no rushing rather enjoying the topic of what I was translating which precisely had to do with how if we are in energy and then get thrown into an experience that we react to with more energy, of course energy meets energy and it’s all blown out of proportion – which is actually a cool explanation of how if we don’t go in fact changing our relationship to all of these ‘bits of moments’ of ‘obstacles’ or inconveniences, we mostly get to that ‘tipping point’ where there’s that last drop that spills the glass full of water, which is a saying here that explains how we go filling a bucket or a glass of water with drops, little drops on a constant basis, and how if we don’t go sorting out that accumulation of ‘little bits,’ then at some point a ‘last drop’ will cause the water to spill out… because we didn’t work through or manage through the various ‘bits’ throughout the whole day for example.

So, in this, I didn’t judge me for having this slight reaction to the day, I just decided to understand it, to see how I could have ‘taken me’ to react in ‘bigger ways’ in the past and how I can decide to do things differently now.

I learned to place myself in the shoes of others, I learned to actually place myself in a position of providing assistance to someone that went through a rather shocking situation and doing what I would see I’d definitely gladly take on as support from another if I had been in their position. I learned to be considerate and not only focus on ‘my wants, my needs, my timeframes’ and be flexible. I learned to even laugh at my own silliness for example with missing plugging in the mic as I shared my experience with someone and look back at the day and realize that ‘yeah, this was quite an ‘out of the normal’ day’, but in the end it was a cool set of ‘tests’ for me to see who am I in the face of unexpected things happening or just things ‘not going my way’ or ‘as assumed’ or ‘as predicted’ and in that it assists me in learning to live with these ‘curve balls’ that lead me to create a point of anticipation, where yes I can anticipate something being sorted out soon, but realizing I don’t have to be ‘eating my heart out’ while anticipating…. Maybe that’s not the expression, but you get the point of how anxiety can pile up when something is not entirely in our hands to sort out or direct, but depend on someone else to do it for us.

So, as I re-did that recording, this time ensuring all was set in its usual ways, I realized how after all I thought I didn’t have ‘much to share’ about today because I didn’t get anything ‘done’ as in being ‘productive’ as such, but, I realize that I got other kinds of points ‘done,’ such as all of this ‘who I am’ in the midst of setbacks, delays, things not working, people going through unexpected situations, weather being really out of whack and not really being the best one to ‘plan my day’ accordingly, having to make room for ‘extra things’ I had to sort out that I didn’t plan to have to ‘fix’ etc.  And as I see myself at the end of the day, I didn’t get that irritated, except for rather being a bit too rushed in wanting certain responses, but I also got worried about a situation and it turns out some unfortunate situations did happen, but I could not do anything to prevent it or sort it out, other than provide some ‘moral support’ as they say.

So, instead of piling up reactions throughout the day, I decided to go testing out ways in which I could embrace these ‘curve balls’, practice patience, practice understanding, practice ‘letting go’ of my desired outcomes, embracing the unexpected, the unpredictable, the unfortunate and rather act to find alternative ways and be ok with having to repeat several things to get certain desired outcomes… it went out ‘ok’ in that sense in fact, so, that’s how I can also learn to see my day, not only through what I get ‘done’ as I’d like to see my day in terms of ‘production’ – but also embrace the day where I get to see who am I managing, walking through certain unexpected points, walking through certain consequences, walking through the unexpected, walking through ‘waiting’ etc.  Not going at all to ‘blame’ anything or the world for how things went through today – lol – but working along with it, finding ways through it, sometimes just plainly accepting ‘ok, not going to happen as expected’ and being ok with it, learning to manage myself in it and learning to let-go of my control over things.

Ok, thanks for reading!

 

 contourt

 

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August 28, 2017

600. Understanding Arrogance

By Marlen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading.

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

514. Debunking My Intellectual Arrogance

581. Living Reconciliation

561. From Provocation to Self-Challenge

547. How to Live Humbleness

27. It’s always only been me

 

 

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July 21, 2017

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

By Marlen

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.

Thanks for reading!

 

Running Away from Detachment

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

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March 24, 2017

545. Living Adaptability

By Marlen

§  Continuing from: 530. The Secret Behind Attraction
and second part to 544. Being Inadaptable as Self-Limitation

 

I had an interesting dream after having written about this point of inadaptability which I explain in a nutshell in this vlog that I made today for context, but overall it was very cool for me to get some clarity of this point that I opened up yesterday about ‘inadaptability’ and seeing from another perspective what I was in fact accepting and allowing to exist within me but seen from another perspective.

Here I apply a suggested way to approach self-forgiveness which was shared in the following Eqafe.com interview:  Breakups: Problem-Solution-Change! – Atlanteans – Part 466 which is a great series and this approach for the solution is something I’ll test out from here on.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to embrace reality as myself as where, through allowing judgments as liking or disliking a particular weather or a particular living set-up, I’ve allowed my judgments to create an obstacle in me being fully comfortable, grounded and enjoying my life and interaction with others regardless of ‘where’ I am located and what the weather conditions are or how the environment looks like.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live the word equality towards the physical environment I can be living in, wherein through allowing a belief such as “weather conditions can drain me and make me ‘lose my efficiency” I’ve been existing in a form of blame towards natural conditions that I’ve created a reaction to, instead of realizing that living this comfort and stability within me is not dependent on ‘the external factors’ or conditions, but it can only be lived through stopping the judgments I allowed myself to create towards heat for example or having fears towards particular animals, fearing having no access to basic resources wherein I believe that all of these factors place my life at risk – instead of seeing how I haven’t allowed myself to be expandable as in being grounded within myself wherever I am or can settle in and so focusing on living the word adaptability and flexibility when it comes to getting used to a particular environment and ensuring there are no judgments/separation towards it.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live the word embrace towards the environments I’ve lived in that I’ve judged as having ‘extreme’ conditions or particular lacks or deficiencies, making my entire experience subject to the external factors, instead of realizing how I am the directive principle within myself and I decide what kind of experiences or judgments I turn into an actual  way to experience reality through my own acceptance and allowance – therefore I realize that living the word adaptability or being adaptable is the ability to embrace an environment as is, to not judge it, to not react to it based on preprogrammed reactions of my past that I have recreated and ‘rehashed’ in my current moment and making it ‘as the reality of who I am’ based on my own participation in it, wherein I haven’t allowed myself to be congruent in living the word Equality not only towards people, but also towards the physical environment, other beings that are non-human and all of its conditions in it that are also an extension of myself.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live the word flexibility whenever I have seen myself feeling appalled by a particular weather condition wherein there are ways to mitigate the outflows of extreme heat for example, yet while I was in those conditions I decided to get frustrated and feel ‘paralyzed’ instead of seeking solutions and stopping the irritation that I created within myself ‘towards the heat itself’ here

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to fully take responsibility for my own experiences as reactions created towards particular weather conditions, such as irritation, annoyance, discomfort and helplessness caused towards ‘heat’ which are entirely my own creation and I have the ability to decide to stop it all considering how much of a habit it has become in my life.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live the word disposition wherein I can be an ‘available matter’ to go, be or live in wherever environment I have to be at, wherein I’ve used the excuse of my reaction towards heat as a reason to not go to certain places, using the self-definition of having ‘aversion to heat’ as a reason to justify why I am not willing to embrace a particular environment and its weather condition – which is proof of how if I allow these judgments, beliefs and reactions towards reality, I cause myself a limitation, wherein I see that I can expand and be much more flexible and pliable if I let go of these charged memories of judging, disliking and being uncomfortable towards heat.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live the word humbleness in the context of being able to adapt to an environment that is not what I have conditioned to deem as ‘suitable’ or ‘perfect’ in terms of certain standards I’ve created throughout my life and within that, having allowed comparison to dictate my decisions of where to live, instead of making a practical assessment to see the reasons to go and live in a particular environment without making the weather factor, the cultural factor, the ‘people around the environment’ factor a reason to limit my ability to expand, learn and grow as a person in a new environment.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to be tranquil and at peace and ease when experiencing myself in extreme weather conditions or new environments wherein I can require a process of adaptation, wherein I’ve allowed myself to go into desperation, helplessness, irritation, annoyance and ‘blaming the heat’ instead of rather learning to question who am I as these words that exist within me, as experiences that I create and pull out whenever I ‘feel’ extreme heat, therefore I commit myself to live self-awareness in my relationship to how I experience my physical body in higher temperatures specifically and make sure I can breathe and ground myself in my body and not allow myself to recreate the same old patterns around it.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to not yet fully live the word responsibility for my reactions which stem from my mind, not my physical body because my body has the ability to adapt along with any form of additional support such as being well hydrated in terms of extreme heat – therefore I stop the blame towards ‘heat’ and instead look back at myself and my memorized reactions I have to stop participating in.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live the word relax when going out and feeling the rays of the sun hitting on my face and all over my body, wherein my immediate reaction is that of discomfort, annoyance, cringing, wanting to ‘go back inside’ or only seeking the shadows – which of course in terms of a prolonged sun exposure it can be too much for the body and skin, but it is possible to still be under the sun and be ok within oneself, not participating in reactions considering that weather can be challenging and all human beings get to experience it in a physical manner the same way – but it is up to each one of us how we decide to live through it: embracing it or constantly fighting it – and I choose to live the word embrace in relation to heat and embracing the sun rays and sun light along with the necessary support for the body to be ok with extreme heat.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live humbleness in the context of being in environments or households that lacked basic services wherein I’ve allowed myself to go into fear of not being able to survive through that, instead of realizing that my fear and stress consumes and affects my body a lot more than the lack of certain basic services in a momentary manner.

Of course here also realizing how much we are depriving fellow beings from living to their utmost potential because of not having placed ourselves in their shoes to realize what billions have to endure when not having access to their basic resources, starting with food and water, and so in this, I also realize I haven’t placed myself in a point of equality to genuinely see that what I’m accepting to exist towards those billions is actually done all to myself as well and that nothing will in fact change if I continue simply fearing being in such precarious condition, instead of living resilience, an ability to adapt and keep going even if basic things we take for granted are suddenly not  available, yet of course continuing to create awareness of the need to sort out this problem for many more in the world.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to truly live the word equality towards animals, wherein I’ve still accepted fears and experiences of disgust towards them, perceiving some animals as intimidating or a cause of disruption of my environment, wherein I have in fact limited myself from really embracing them as life, as a part of who we all are and not seeing that I had existed in judgment towards them as something that I could only tolerate, but not fully embrace, instead of actually pushing myself to learn to embrace, which is to not judge, to not see through the filter of preferences, but to learn to see and live with them as an equal part of life that is here as myself.

 

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live the word adaptability in relation to weather conditions, wherein I’ve conditioned my own ‘state of mind’ to be defined and influenced based on ‘weather conditions’ all the time – therefore allowing me to react to external conditions – instead of realizing I can decide who I am in every moment and not allowing a weather-condition to define me.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to embrace the different kinds of weather and instead having gone to specify what is an enjoyable weather and what is not, which means that I’ve made myself subject to a how hot or cold an environment is to feel a particular way, an amount of clouds or lack thereof in the sky, the amount of wind or lack thereof there is, the presence or absence of rain, how ‘clear’ the air around is, how noisy or quiet the environment is, how dirty or clean my surroundings are – all of which I’ve defined as the experience of being inadaptable and generally ‘picky’ in my reality, which I am determined to instead live as the words embrace, humbleness, being forgiving and uncritical, non-judgmental which is the actual way to stop then placing my body under a ‘programmed’ stress that I then have blamed ‘heat’ to be the cause of, when in fact, it’s all self-created.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to challenge the learned and acquired patterns related to ‘reacting towards heat’ learned from others in my environment, wherein it becomes a righteous experience that goes unquestioned, instead of realizing that we always have the ability to choose to not get reactive and emotionally overwhelmed about something, but embracing it, especially with everything that has to do with conditions, factors and contexts that I have no ability to change, such as weather.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to be flexible and pliable in relation to the process of adapting to a particular environment or set of weather conditions, instead of wanting to be controlling towards my environment which only results in a constant inner-fight wherein I do more damage to my very own physical body through the emotional experience than the weather condition I believe is making me ‘feel’ a certain way or causing certain damage in my body.

 

 

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live the word acceptance and embracing when it comes to reality and all of its factors wherein the moment I start judging, I start separating myself and so begin justifying a fight, a conflict towards a part of reality – being it a context or environment, people, animals, wherein I have to remind myself to live equality towards them and that implies no judgment, not acting out on judgments, not making decisions based on emotional experiences or judgments, but learn to be very practically-oriented when making decisions, ensuring I am clear in my ability to work through these reactions which are really not a big deal if living the word embrace and acceptance – I definitely have blown things out of proportion in my head and that’s another thing I have to stop within me as well.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live the word flow wherein I can breathe through any emergence of reactions towards the weather, but instead I have become so used to always having a comment about the weather and how bothered I am by it or how much I am enjoying it which then becomes a polarity I’ve kept alive within me as some form of ‘righteousness’ with which I have created consequences in my life, that I had overlooked or deemed as not-important – when in fact, every single aspect of who we are in everything we do represents and speaks a lot about ourselves and ‘who we are’ in relation to life.

So this is one of those things that I would not have gone and opened up by my own volition because it was an ingrained set of reactions I had normalized in my life and it’s only through looking at the word adaptability as a trait that I would like to live and develop, that all of this opened up for me to look at and have present within myself whenever the ‘same old’ experiences may want to come up again, which is the moment where I need to apply myself and in essence, stop fighting my reality in whichever sensation I can perceive it to be, it is ultimately just that, a perception.

 I commit myself to live the word challenge as in questioning myself and the righteous reactions I’ve created towards particular weather conditions, environments, cultures, livelihood set ups and instead be flexible, humble, considerate of others, be ‘flowy’ and adaptable wherever I get to be and live in or experience myself in, because it ultimately all depends on who I decide to be in every moment and live that decision as words to live.

So, this is a plan for me to keep awareness on and apply in my reality from here on.

Thanks for reading

 

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

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November 16, 2016

450. Is it about Others or is it about ME?

By Marlen

Today there was a great point opened up in a group discussion about how easily we give up on ‘others’ which in fact means we give up on ourselves. This reminded me essentially of every single relationship I’ve had with people that are of more intimate and personal nature. It reminded me of how easy it is to keep that backdoor as ‘opt-out’-mode whenever any relationship becomes challenging, it is then when I can look at myself becoming very uncomfortable in those relationships/situations with people, starting to find flaws every time and in a way becoming paranoid wherein every single thing they said or did, I started to ‘frame’ it within this same belief and idea of ‘there being something wrong with them, very very wrong!’ and interestingly enough, I never, ever questioned myself as in seeing:

‘Who am I within this experience I have towards OTHERS in my life? Is it only my experience and so my creation that I am projecting as these emotions of discomfort, of disgust, of ‘unpleasant’ times that I actually am having within myself and imposing onto ‘them’ Where am I not focusing more on dealing with my inner experiences instead of focusing on others and calling them the ‘reason of my experience’?

Nope, I never asked myself these questions because I’ve realized how our default ‘status’ in our minds is that of believing that we are ‘always right’ and ‘always the ones that are ‘objective’ in the situation’ – lol, I can laugh at myself now because that’s exactly what I have been/become throughout my entire life, always considering that I had some kind of ‘special view’ that was more objective than others, and so if I saw anything ‘out of place’ in another, then it would be so… which is of course the ego speaking for us in which we trap ourselves looking ‘outwardly’ instead of inwards.

But as it was shared in this awesome group discussion, the only way to know if what we see is really an observation about another, is to Drop all Charges – to drop the energetic experience toward another and take responsibility for it – to then be able to first work with one’s own reaction as an experience of say ‘discomfort’ towards another and realize: it’s our creation and I have to take responsibility for it; and once that one is absolutely and totally clear, nothing moving energetically towards ‘another’ then I can focus in re-assessing if I still see this point in a situation or in another as I did when I was possessed/controlled/dominated by an emotional reaction within me.

Man, these are the moments where yes in a way ‘I wish I knew this before’ back in the day in my life, but as with anything, to convert Regret into a gift that we can give to ourselves in our lives from today.

Please watch this video for support from Sunette discussing on this one: Regret – Remembering the Great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6VbGWxbMoo  

Also this great other one about Conflict

A Conflictual Relationship with Conflict – YouTube

 

I remember exactly how some 10 years ago I would write ‘my thoughts’ on a diary, but mostly all of the words there were used to justify my experience, to build up on my paranoia about ‘why everything is so wrong with another person’ and never did I ever open up or even consider how ‘Hmm! Maybe I am the creator of that experience within myself!’ Never happened, and that very much shows the ‘real nature’ or ingrained status-quo of who we are in our minds, where we are always quick to judge, point fingers, blame – blame, blame, blame – others for whatever we are experiencing within ourselves.

Here, if there’s one point that I see is of utmost necessity that all of us human beings look at is the word Blame, really. There is nothing else that I’ve seen ingrained as fuck – sorry for the word but that is so – as ‘stuck’ in our minds as this desire to always look ‘outside’ of ourselves for the source of our experiences, instead of first asking ourselves ok why am I ‘B-Laming /(being Lame’ towards others? Why not first looking within myself, focusing on myself and my experience TOWARDS that person?  Actually today I was talking with someone about the word ‘inward’ and this can be a key word to remind ourselves of looking first and foremost at the inner-ward we are keeping ourselves in our inner-wars of experiences that we believe another is capable of causing within ourselves…. When in fact, time and time again, it seems we have to remind ourselves that this is not able to happen in fact, we can only do it to ourselves. And that’s the necessary bucket of cold water that we all need to wake up whenever we see we are having this ‘person in our heads’ and making of them our human-piñatas, the punching bag that we can kick and blame for how we experience ourselves, which is in fact a deplorable aspect of our humanity and it’s got to change, and I cannot change anyone else but myself.

So, back to the point of giving up on others in my life. I can honestly also see where it is that I did ‘all that was possible’ with some and how I gave up too easily and too quickly on others, very prematurely I’d say. And now it is not for me to judge myself for that either, but to rather see from now on and recognize these moments of going into a form of desperation really, where apparently I cannot ‘keep going with’ or think that ‘something is not working’ or believing that ‘I’ve done all I can.’ I now know I have to make sure I am not reacting about it, because if I am, what do I know? I am in fact justifying and magnifying my vilifying towards OTHERS when in fact, I have some real shit to deal with within myself first of all.

So far I cannot say I have done this successfully with most people, but have managed with a very few and it is precisely the points where I learned to understand another in their very context, situation, mind, getting to really know them to understand ‘why they are what they are’ and that has been very, very supportive for me to learn what it means to consider another in themselves, in the totality of themselves. I have shared before how this has been the case with my current partner and in the very beginning of getting to know him, there were several times I just saw ‘no point’ or a ‘lost cause’ in certain situations, but the interesting thing is that he would be very stable and just being ‘himself’ in those moments, lol, whereas I would at times break down in tears and expectations of ‘being treated differently’ or expecting some ‘evident changes’ in what? A matter of weeks or few months of talking/getting to know ourselves? Which also proves how I was coming more from the perspective of wanting to ‘change’ another, instead of actually first getting to know and understand another and being unconditional in the sense of not expecting ‘anything in return’ other than the mutual communication and support this can mean for both or more people involved.

So I can definitely relate on how if there is an experience of ‘giving up’ on another and seeing it almost as a struggle, then, hello! The problem is not ‘them’ but ourselves, who we are towards them, what are our fears, expectations, desires, wants, needs that are not being ‘fulfilled’ by another? Or what is it that we ‘wanted them to be’ that we just can’t get ‘from them’ and so in fact become unsatisfied and so bring up the ‘ending the relationship’ card any moment that one faces these challenges that don’t really define the other, but it defines everything about oneself/myself.

What I’ve learned thus throughout this relationship is to see what it means to let go of ‘my desire to change another’ and instead only be an example, be a point of support but at the same time getting to know myself in a relationship where yes I speak up whenever it is required and when I notice patterns that we have talked about time and time again, yet I don’t create a reaction around it – here, it’s not been as easy to get to this point as I am able to share it now – it is a moment to moment process, where I have to remind myself to not get possessed when not seeing my ‘expectations met’ and to not be demanding and controlling of another, but to rather stand as an example, if anything, for another yet at the same time not creating that condition of ‘wanting to be paid with the same amount/ways of how I’ve done onto another’ – because it’s not really about ‘another’ but about me living and expressing who I want to be as myself, as my expression, me doing as I’d like to be done onto – without expecting anything in return – and surprisingly so, this has actually created that flexibility or say ‘letting go of my constant expectations ‘towards others’, it definitely is one of those points I’d say can create an actual stability to ‘walk with another.’

Now I’ve developed ways to bring up the points and in the moment I also have had to still stop myself from several times wanting to ‘make a case against someone’ and not clearing myself first, and after I’ve cleared myself if I still see the relevance of opening up a point/subject, I do so, but what I’ve noticed is that it is no longer this ‘running around in circles’ point in my head, but I speak it very directly and ‘as is’ and then I can be assertive in my stance because I’m not reacting, I’m speaking based on a clear assessment and this is then where it even becomes easier to assist another if the other person goes into a reaction, to speak about it, open it up, but best thing is to be able to ‘see it for what it is’ and so focus on practical considerations once that the ‘storm dissipates’, what each one has to do/work with or let go of and so we keep walking.

An example of what I’ve noticed is how whenever I am in a reaction and I am trying to ‘make a point’ is that I start speaking louder and almost in a ‘preachy’ mode, which indicates that I am holding a personal investment in the point, that I am bringing it up hoping to get some kind of benefit back or ‘proving myself right’ etc… which has been also cool to be pointed out about it, because it is something I know I am experiencing and that’s where I have to spot a pride situation going on where I don’t want to admit ‘Yes, I am reacting’ as that would prove we first have to deal with the things within ourselves first.

It’s weird we have assigned almost like a ‘negative charge’ to being honest about oneself still having to deal with things, instead of making these moments those self-honest treasures that we can then open up to reveal ourselves to ourselves and work with those points to correct ourselves, to align ourselves for once and for all.

If we work on that first point of being OK with admitting ‘Ok yes, I am reacting here indeed’ or ‘Ok, yes you are right, I am exalted in this point, I need to take a moment to reflect on it’ or even ‘Yes, I agree, it is true, I am reacting here, what do you see in this point?’ and so get feedback on what the other person says and then it becomes about referencing self-honesty and common sense, rather than an: I said, you said, she/he said… and it is so much better to develop a communication and interaction with others where we actually learn to ‘dig’ within ourselves and so share our perspectives and experiences, rather than continuing building up our personal paranoia ‘about others’ and not even daring to open up the point ‘as is’ with another.

So yes, this is what I’ve worked with, walked with and continue to do so in my relationship, with a person that goes at his own pace in his decision to support himself to become a better person, which means that the first dimension is there for me to also stand with in this situation, we are both individuals supporting ourselves in our individual ways to learn to see ourselves as our mind, to understand our reactions and commit to work through it. And this has actually made of the relationship a lot less challenging in those aspects than it was before. Now this doesn’t mean it’s ‘perfect’ but it is quite great for me to learn to first take a step back whenever I see myself wanting to ‘flare up’ in certain situations and dig further, ask more questions, get the full perspective and so learn to even communicate effectively!

Lol this morning I was precisely remembering how it is that there have been existential wars between races because of essentially not having effective communication, having misunderstandings and this was like a huge ‘Duh!’ I had at the time when I got to understand that, because I see how a lot of the problems we create (note, we don’t have them, we create them) are based on not understanding something, so just like I read from Sunette’s blog one day whenever we have a problem we can instead ask ourselves: what am I not understanding effectively yet? And so learn to become like these investigators ourselves of our experience, of how to ‘solve’ our problem and so be able to more effectively support/assist others to try out the same ways/techniques of self-introspection within themselves, like asking questions, asking lots of questions in the ways of getting the ‘the self interest’ point, like: what do I fear losing here? What do I desire to get? What is limiting myself? Or ‘What is it in me for doing/saying/acting on this/that point?

Here then some examples of what I’ve been actively applying, where it does take that one moment to ‘put a guard in front of my reaction-engine’ in my mind and body so that I can instead take a moment to understand better, get more information, cross-reference the points in common sense, devoid of my preferred outcome or self-interest, so in a way yes being unconditional – and so in that, learn to better understand another, their context, their mind, their experience and so make sure that whatever I experience based on what is said or done, I take responsibility for and only when I am clear, I can lay out the points not as ‘this is the problem, deal with it’ but also with the opening to create solutions, to be willing to ‘do my part’ as well in being part of the solution, and in this, very important: also letting go of the expectation that ‘the other will do their part too as I do’ – because this is about myself, who I am and what I decide to be and become, not about another.

To me, having been a very controlling and imposing person – almost a fascist at times with people, sorry about that lol  – I am now learning more about what it means to be more considerate, flexible and humble toward others and so to let go as well. And so also have to remind myself to first focus on me, to not be demanding of others something I haven’t lived/done for myself entirely. And yes, whenever I am very direct, straightforward and to the point in how I ‘walk’ with another, how I assist another, it is because I have done this for myself and it works best – though in this I also learn how to be more gentle or approach the same support in various ways depending on where the person is/at in their life, process, mind, life experience. So this has been every enjoyable for me really, also related to assisting/supporting people in this same process, it’s such a nutritional experience for a lack of a better word, and I am grateful for being in the position I am and with the responsibility it entails because it also pushes me to become a better person myself in what I do and what I’ve decided to live for the rest of my life: making of myself an example of what it means to let go of conflict and problem-based mentality, but being entirely willing to first and foremost be my own source of solutions and corrections that I can then nurture, cross-reference with others and in doing so, create also relationships of support geared to changing the nature of relationships/interrelationships which is what currently life is based on.

In terms of ‘giving up’ on someone, doesn’t define them but it entirely defines who we are, and this can only be assessed case by case, situation by situation where we can make sure we’ve done all we can possibly can do to stand up with/par on par with another, where one is not compromising oneself for the sake of ‘supporting’ another in means of ‘saving them’ because that’s quite consequential. And I am entirely looking forward for more support on these topics through the great website that has changed/expanded the reaches of ‘what is possible’ for ourselves as human beings in this world Eqafe.com, so check it out too and learn what it really means to be focused on being the change we want to see in this world.

 

Thanks for reading

 

Artwork024

Backchatting too much about others? Not effectively breathing?

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July 29, 2016

439. Perfectionist? Me?

By Marlen

 

1. Caos

Where and how have I lived the words perfect, perfectionist and perfectionism in my life?

 

This is an interesting thing to ask because for the most part in my conscious thoughts, I have regarded the ‘craving’ for perfection as something that ‘most people do’ – read: ‘this is what I grew up with in my environment of course’ – therefore in my decision/condition and pattern of going ‘against the tide’ – read ‘against the family patterns’ – that I developed throughout my younger years, I tried to do things in an almost deliberately flawed manner when it came to how I express myself, what would make me ‘unique’ so to speak. In art school for example, the more I would see others strived for drawing the most perfect lines of a human body, I simply continued doing my quirky curvy lines almost in a statement of ‘I don’t care about perfection’ – again the ‘rebel’ mode – which was a way to also hide the fact that I acknowledged the actual work, focus, practice that it would take to do something actually ‘perfect’ which would mean flawless, looking exactly like the person in front of me – in the case of the drawing. Did I challenge myself to do it? Yes I did, but still regarded that it was not my ‘style’ or ‘aim’ to make things perfect, there’s too much of that in the world, I said, so I kept doing it ‘my way’. I actually instead used the traditional techniques in some of my work literally ‘screw them’ to a point of mistake or accidents that could create more unpredictable and rather messy results… so, it was a controlled process of course – can’t fool too much around when working with metal plates and acids and big machines – but! still I wasn’t ever really aiming for the normal perception of ‘perfection’ in that, but the opposite.

Same with how I have my immediate surroundings. Some 10 years ago I was about to become a control freak in relation to cleanliness and basically wanting everything around me to always be spotless and in order. I have definitely slowed down on that and accepted that my life is not meant to be a ‘museum’ of sorts, it also assisted me to lower my ‘visual viciousness’ I had wherein I would get a kick out of everything that would look in some perfect arrangement, specific colors, specific objects around me etc. I guess that moving to various places to live and also going to live in a farm for one year made me reconsider what kind of ‘traits’ I had which were not of a practical purpose and moderated that to a manageable trait. I care not if I have a mess around me even though I still know – for the most part – where things are.  With my clothes, I also don’t seek perfection either, rather comfort, simplicity and sure some ‘style’ but again has nothing to do with ‘no wrinkles’ on clothes or stuff like that…. Some specificity sure but not an ‘ideal image’ in place.

I can instead also recognize the ‘aversion’ I had toward the word perfect mostly stemming from what I would see around me at home, always the desire for everything to look arranged, perfect, coming out well or with the best outcomes in anything, almost in an anxious manner… so that’s why in my pattern of ‘rebelling’ against all things, I mostly would be the one that caused some reactions in my family because of having things just all over the place most of the time. When I started living alone some 10 years ago, that’s when I went into the opposite side of now becoming more like people in my family – striving for perfection at home – yet scaled it up to an almost frightening notch, flirting a bit with obsessive compulsive attitudes. This I was able to ‘control’ in relation to me, myself, my things, my cleanliness and so forth, but! There is an aspect that I certainly have lived it in and this has been pointed out to me lately precisely by my mother in our every now and then interactions.

This is living the word ‘perfect’ as an expectation of how things ( I think ‘should’ be) can be in interactions with people in the outside world. Within the consideration of ‘how things would work best for everyone’ I am constantly in the lookout for doing things as efficiently as possible when it comes to doing something for someone else, something related to work, something related to how I interact or behave in a public space, can be on the streets, at the shop, transportation, in any given situation where I can see a possibility of me doing something to better the situation, to make things run smoothly, to give space to others… at times yes a bit of sacrificing myself is applied in order to give to others or benefit others, even though I’ve been working as well on myself for the past couple of years precisely to not go too much on that side of ‘serving’ only and forget about myself.

Maybe upon reading this I consider “well! That’s how everyone should do and be and we would have a great functional and smooth-coexisting world/society/reality!” But the reality is that when this need to create a ‘perfect’ situation or the most ‘optimal’ and ‘efficient’ situation for others and myself comes with a pinch of anxiety or need to ‘control’ something in order to achieve a desired outcome that comes up with this sense of ‘urgency’ of doing it as fast as possible to not bother others or to ‘benefit’ others or to create a smooth transition of anything for others, then I am in fact not being here as breath and considering the same efficiency or best possible outcomes within stability, there is this experience behind it which surely has become automated for the most part which means: I don’t need to ‘think’ about it, it’s become a ‘natural’ thing to do. I have also seen how this pattern particularly kicks in with double strength when I am around people that I have considered – or assess after some short time of being around them – that they are ‘slow’ or ‘not so efficient’ or a bit ‘clumsy’ or see that they are not entirely ‘considerate of others’ therefore I step in almost pushing too much the point of ‘being an example’ to them in certain moments, or being that ‘awareness’ that I see they might be lacking in a moment, which comes with a tension, an extra ‘strength’ that can have adverse effects.

Here I will use the case of me towards my mother wherein she is quite lax about things and I tend to go into this ‘drive’ of doing things in a very specific, efficient, yet ‘smooth’ way in order to – in my perception – contribute to making things better in general. However what has happened is that, for example, if she is driving and suddenly she’s about to go into a parking spot, and realizes that’s not the entrance, I immediately go into seeing the rest of the cars behind and tell her with a loud voice that she’s causing a mess of traffic now, that she must just get into the wrong spot so that she can let others pass!… all of this in a rushed manner only thinking about ‘the problem’ that she must be causing To others. But in that split of a moment, I didn’t at all consider how I actually caused her to get nervous and panicky about the situation, because I got in such a state in one single moment when looking at how we could immediately ‘sort out the problem for others behind us.’ So my mother said that they must wait, because she wanted to get to the right entrance. After she got it right and we parked, she said how I immediately went into this exalted state just because of caring too much about the ones behind us, without realizing how tense she got because of my reaction, which could have caused more consequences if she would have acted in a rush and getting into an edgy spot with the car.

Afterward that day at the supermarket, same thing happened with the trolley where she would leave it wherever and I would get slightly annoyed or preoccupied about the trolley becoming an obstacle for other shoppers, and in that almost coming through toward my mother with a reclamation of ‘why did you leave it there, don’t you see others want to pass through the aisle as well?’ and so this was a second time in that day; but it had happened before where I have gone into recriminating her and others whenever something is not exactly as I expected it to be, even if upon assessing ‘the problem’ it was in fact a lack of communication, misunderstanding, assumption and general ‘rush’ that I tend to go into.

This has to do mostly with ‘doings’ as in things that relate to processes, environments, services that pertain to ‘giving a service to others’, cleaning, cooking, team work, walking in the street as a pedestrian which is a relationship of myself and the cars, etc. Which means it is ‘there’ in every day situations yet not every time do I get equally exalted, because there is a ‘sameness’ as well existent in this consideration with the person I live with – but, it does come up with others that are not in the same ‘stance’ in relation to these things and I definitely should not judge them either, but be flexible and considerate of their perspective/view and way of living things, as long as they are not entirely wrecking themselves or others’ lives and I can suggest something to correct about it, but in essence: can’t ever change another, that’s a fact.

It also seems to come from the need to ‘control’ the situation wherein I tend to get a point of satisfaction or ‘completion’ within me when schedules are fulfilled as I expected them, when things are done in the way that I planned them, when my interaction with others in the world can lead to a more efficient or better outcome = all of this I have actually charged with a positive value, and it has a lot to do with how ‘others can benefit from it’ as well, but not always. There are also my own ‘pet peeves’ where I seek to have control over certain ‘ways to do things’ wherein I forget to be flexible, yet I have been working with this word ‘flexibility’ in order to precisely not turn into a control freak, but according to feedback I get from my partner, it seems it still is there as a set of ‘unspoken rules’ that I tend to react to if not done in that manner. I realize this and continue to work on it, which means I need to apply more awareness in those ‘auto-mode’ moments, be more attentive.

So, as I can see, probably living with me and being with me in a constant manner can be quite a challenge where I can end up stressing people around me if things are not done in a particular way or if there’s just too much of a mess that I cannot control or keep track of, and this doesn’t happen much at home since I live with someone that is actually quite similar and specific to my traits, so it is something that comes up mostly when interacting with someone like my mother that is definitely the contrast point in our family where my sisters, father and I seem to have the same ‘perfectionist’ relationship toward everything around us. She does have it as well but mostly when it comes to reunions/parties where there’s many others to receive at home, but that’s about it.

This is a tricky point because I have rationalized as in ‘realized’ that I cannot control things, that I require to be flexible, that I don’t have to get all flustered by mistakes or ‘things’ that don’t come up as expected in my day to day, or when I don’t get the expected result of something where others are meant to ‘do their part’ – and this is where I’ve kept the word ‘flexibility’ in mind and it has gotten ‘better,’ but there’s always room for improvement for sure as my reality has demonstrated to me.

So, what is the solution? It’s certainly Not to say ‘Ah I should just stop caring about it all and do my own thing in whichever way I can and let everything just ‘fall’ by itself’ because that would be going into an extreme or polarity. Here it is mostly to investigate what lies behind my desire to have certain things be ‘perfect’ in my life/reality when it comes to ‘doings’ that are related to others in my environment. It has to do with the previously mentioned ‘satisfaction’ or sense of security that I’d get from ‘getting things done in the most apt/perfect possible way’, that ‘kick’ that I developed probably from doing things the way my father expected me to do and when he would approve with words like ‘That’s right, good’ it was like being less of an obstacle or a nuisance in how I knew that he wanted things to be done around the house for example. The opposite polarity or outcome of not doing so? Anxiousness, nervousness, tension and general fear from not doing things ‘perfectly’ or to the T as he would expect, or messing things up which I actually at a later stage learned to be ‘ok’ with in his presence, but these kind of reactions did certainly get recorded or engraved in the way that I deal with things, mostly remembering the sounds he would make when things would ‘fit’ just perfectly in the food cupboard after coming from supermarket, or when I would go with him to supermarket and he would always move accurately, fast and efficiently getting all the stuff in no time and so being just ‘precise’ in how he does things,  that kind of father that would get you the stuff that you were about to empty up because he was aware of it and bought one just so that you don’t have to go ‘without any’!

So, these points I have linked with security, comfort, even enjoyment when things just ‘go right’ and ‘fit perfectly’ and are ‘solved in no time’ – but! The thing is I never really pondered “Hmm, well if I get a kick out of getting things right, perfect, efficiently and accurately, then what is the opposite polarity of it, what kind of fears are hidden behind this?” No! I never really have questioned that because in my mind, this is ‘the way’ that everyone should be and this way the world would be just ‘best for everyone’! and surely, I still see that If I remove my fears of fucking things up, being an obstacle to others, being a nuisance, messing things that were previously ‘right’ or not giving to others the expected service/result, and instead do things in an apt and efficient manner as I know I can do, without fearing making mistakes, without fearing making others ‘wait’ or have the experience of ‘extra energy’ to it, without getting essentially angry or flustered about it, or ‘panicky’ about things, it surely can be a way in which one can be considerate of oneself and others around, generally assessing potentials for improvements, seeing efficiency as a process in which things can be done with reasonable effort, in stability and considering all parts involved, with a leeway or flexibility for trial and errors as well.

This would mean that in the example of me telling my mother to ‘get off the way’ to let others pass behind her in this exalted manner, this would can be now turned into a realization that: Ok we are in a ‘catch 22’ she cannot go further or she crashes the car, therefore she does have to take some time to go back and then drive into the right entrance, which means that surely the drivers behind might not be able to advance for a few seconds, they might not be ‘happy’ about it but, it could also happen to them and I’m sure that my mother would be understanding of that…. In theory – lol – because the pattern is that most people get very anxious and flustered whenever someone makes us ‘waste time’ when driving somewhere. However, this is then something that can be brought up in response to ‘asking for others time’ when being in a tricky situation, and so be flexible and considerate when others are in the same ‘catch 22’ situation.

Most of my reactions have to do with time in fact, and linking efficiency with doing things in ‘no time’ or the ‘fastest possible’ and if possible, leaving ‘no trace’ at all, not being a ‘bother’ to others, or making others ‘do what I should have done’ – which again, makes sense in a certain way but when it becomes almost a constant paranoia when being around others or in particular environments or responsibilities that affect others, it can come through with some of that fear behind it that is expressed in tension, in a rush that can at the same time be perceived by others as this ‘extra charge’ and so get equally tense or anxious and stressed out which is then not at all the way to actually ‘be efficient’ and care for others’ wellbeing.

Therefore there is a balance needed where I realize that the ‘efficiency’ I can get most of the times has to do with a few seconds to a couple of minutes of doing things, sometimes hours and that is ok because we live in a world where we can’t control everything and everyone else to ‘get things right’ or ‘fast’ all the time; to realize that not everyone is in the ‘same rush’ as I perceive they are – or to realize that I am in fact the ‘rushy’ one all the time – and to realize that many times solutions – even if considering the whole situation – might not always come out in a way that makes ‘everyone happy’ as in realizing that I cannot always ‘please’ or ‘benefit’ others the way I would like to, which comes from a genuine spot in me of actually wanting the world/things to work the best way for everyone. I truly no longer do it for the sake of ‘being recognized’ in an ego manner, but more in that sense of sure, being an example of how things can work or be done, but this can still be coming through with a ‘pushy’ manner which can lead to opposite results, like the arguments I had with my mother when coming to realize what I was doing and wasn’t aware of, and kept doing while she was explaining this pattern to me, such as quickly pointing out to her that ‘hey the green is on, go!’ just because of having the consideration in the background of ‘we’re making others waste their time if you don’t step on gas!” as if hell was going to break lose for those seconds lost, which doesn’t make sense, but it also as to do with preventing honking and people from calling you names for being slow in such situations so yeah, a fear there as well on ‘affecting others’ but also preventing some further conflicts or ‘name callings’ and such. Better be ‘slow’ in these situations as a precaution, instead of rushing and ending up squashed on the car on the front.

I have also seen how this same point comes up when being in someone else’s car and if they are not the ‘fast and accurate’ drivers, then I start getting tense for them going with low speed in the high-speed lane, or for not realizing that there’s people behind them that need some space to cross and things like that. What happens is that because I create an idea of ‘what I would do’ in such situations and so because of not getting the ‘expected result,’ I go into this tension because of seeing that others are not considering others the same way I would, and pondering if I should bring it up or not as a point to become aware of, or if I’ll come off as too demanding or bossy or intransigent or plain neurotic.

These are all things I’ll for sure keep working on to create a balance in it. A practical solution I’ve been applying since this point was brought forth to my attention some 2-3 weeks ago is to deliberately ‘let it be’ or ‘let it pass’ in times when I in that moment assess that ‘me bringing up this ‘desired outcome’ is only a point of personal preference’ or if I see that there can be some flexibility applied in the situation. Some other times I have still brought up the ‘old’ pattern of getting a short-fuse temper situation toward cars while walking such as them not stopping to allow me to cross or going to fast in a yellow light and so forth, it’s at times baffling how automated my behavior can be, but it is that, just an automated aspect that requires a notch up of slowing down and living attention which I just see I can apply as ‘a-tension’ or ‘a=without tension’ which allows me to create attention – as in being stable – observing the situation, surely continuing to see what are best ways to ‘follow through’ with something but making sure I am not ‘tensing up’ about it, but being considerate, flexible and add a pinch of ‘letting be’ to it, which is more aligned with the ‘flow of life’ like the series about Perfectionism from Eqafe explained, which are a real gift to someone like me that had not entirely investigated what was behind this need for ‘perfection’ or had even identified this ‘knack’ for perfectionism in a form of control, yet having some extra ‘energy’ there disguised as an efficient/perfect outcome for myself and others.

So, I conclude that there is a requirement for a balance within this. I realize that I have automated almost this ‘holistic observer’ mode where I am constantly aware of things not only in my immediate surroundings but in general on the ‘outside of myself’ as well, almost in a natural manner if I can call it that, aiming at things being efficiently done, getting them done, consider others, consider best for all outcomes and so forth. But! I can certainly turn a notch down in the ‘how’ I live this, which is without the fear of ‘losing control’, without going into short-fuse temper or anger, or irritation if something goes wrong or if mistakes are made, or if others are not as considerate as I see the potential could be, but to understand that I can only be the example of this myself and live it in equanimity. This implies as well to not be so exigent toward others to ‘learn from me and do it!’ but to realize it’s been an entire process for me to, till this day, to change behaviors, patterns and reactions in me. I still keep working on many ingrained patterns that I was most likely going to become in a ‘full-fledged’ manner if following the patterns acquired from family and so forth, which is why I am always grateful for when it comes to walking this process of self change for some 8 years now and it’s awesome to keep discovering points like this one on ‘perfectionism’ that had to be brought to my attention, which I am usually grateful for as I’ve expressed in these blogs throughout time.

 

Will keep an eye on how I continue developing my moderation on this point, and will share if new dimensions open up around this one.

Thanks for reading

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March 15, 2016

435. From Control to Flexibility

By Marlen

 

Being a control-freak or wanting to impose a form of control is definitely an underlying pattern that I played out in the previous situation I shared on ‘hissy-fit’ and transcending it. In essence a cool question that comes up is ‘what am I fearing?’ when seeing that we try and control something. Example, when thinking or being scheming what someone should say, how a situation should develop, how others must behave, what the weather should be like, what someone can/can’t eat or drink, what ‘must’ be done and what ‘must not’ be done… all of these points seem quite exhausting to deal with on a constant basis, and the thing is that it exists as a point of control ‘outside of ourselves’ without realizing it’s in fact first a point of control within ourselves as the mind that is dictating what we are supposed to want/look out for or be careful with. Every time I see this pattern unfolding, it reminds me of certain family members again, wanting to keep a certain image in an almost political way where there is constant PR processes going on, where one would want to control situations and events to what one considers is appropriate and generates no disturbance to our status quo – all entirely fear based.

This point of control is definitely rooted in fear, where we want to keep a certain idea, state or condition of something to please – again – certain idea or belief of oneself, or what others should become to please oneself, how an environment should be to please oneself. I faced a lot of these patterns when living with roommates in a house and having quite a lot of ongoing irritation, anger and frustration for things simply being out of my control at all times, which means: me not being able to impose my will and how I thought things should look like and function around in all ways. I am aware I tend to be dominant, and there is no point in now going into feeling bad about it. There can be constructive ways to use this ability to be in a constant ‘overseeing’ mode of reality in order to be more present, more aware of what’s going on, yet without wanting to control the environment or a situation. Though in this also realizing that me trying to have things work entirely ‘my way’ or have little to no inconveniences is definitely not a possibility in this world where multiple variables are constantly interacting with each other. Hell, not even a ‘god’ could have ultimate control on reality.

So, what word have I been using and practicing to letting go of or managing this pattern of wanting to control? Flexibility and consideration. Flexibility is being able to adapt to whichever outcome emerges that is unforeseen, unpredictable or ‘out of the plans’ and so being able to adapt, move, change in order to integrate such situations while being directive. Otherwise, when fixating to how something ‘must’ go, we are prone to constantly be fighting against reality, constantly creating the most unnecessary frictions and conflicts. So it is better to rather make it a point to make peace with it anyways, with whatever ‘out of the plan’ conditions emerge instead of fighting it or trying to have something or someone work in a particular way. So for example yesterday I said I would not complain for how hot the day was. In the end I was able to do this for the most part, except for the very end when I said that it was a very damn hot day, and started scheming the ways to avoid going out at the same time of the day under the same heat.

Is that the way to go through life? It’s like a constant fighting. Also I see that when others do this ‘PR’ process or ‘damage control’ in a way of ‘everything is fine’ it has bothered me, because I see the flaws behind that but it happens to be that I have done exactly the same, it is another form of control instead of facing the music for what it is and work with it bit by bit.  The question is then what is there to ‘save’ or ‘rescue’ from a mind that thrives of judgments, superiority and inferiority traits, delusional beliefs….? Nothing really.

Whenever I then see myself wanting to control something within an environment or toward another, I rather ask myself what do I fear losing or experimenting or exposing and why? Is it really relevant?

 It is true that not everyone in this world is ready to be fully honest and have this marvelous openness right away, but if one does the little bit of enabling things to unfold as they usually do, without trying to control, we will realize that this is where the actual ‘self-test’ emerges, where we can act and live according to what we face in the moment, challenging or not = it is our reality, we can only arm ourselves with the tools of self-support to develop self-trust over time, realizing that no matter ‘what’ or ‘who’ comes my way, I know I can support me to walk through it and get to a resolution or create solutions that can be supportive in both or more ways.

Sometimes instead of wanting to immediately ‘control’ someone as in preventing them from doing something, it’s a matter of rather communicating the potential outflows or consequential development of something, sometimes even finding third party accounts or stories that can assist a person to consider the same point and so, open up the conversation in common sense to that everyone is aware of the points of responsibility to it all. This is then turning the point of control based on fear – just like parents do with their children when preventing them to do something out of fear, instead of explaining to them how things work, the consequences and so having the child decide and go through it all to learn from it – that’s how you build a sense of responsibility. There the point of control as in preventing others sometimes from ‘fuck ups’ is then turned into a learning process for everyone involved, where even if ‘mistakes’ are made, at least each person would know ‘I did it to myself’ or ‘I created this and I knew what the outcomes would be.’ This way one is instead of controlling, providing certain perspectives or input into something, so that each one can still make their own decisions while one can remain ‘at peace’ because of having explained the reasoning behind one’s attempt to control – or if already prevented – to explain or give a perspective as to why one would or would not do a certain thing with arguments that can be understandable in practical reality terms.

 

I consider that it is best to make some choices being aware of the uncertainty they entail – we cannot predict or control what is going to happen in something – rather than preventing oneself from moving at all because of wanting to control reality, to wait for a better moment to act, to have the perfect conditions for something –that possibly won’t ever arrive by the way – one can instead embrace the unpredictability, while remaining aware of the developments, potential consequences and make decisions based on common sense – considering what is best for all involved – that can lead to the most supportive and potentially effective outcome.

Being flexible there implies not trying to impose oneself onto others, not trying to control their lives, but rather making sure that I can instead share my perspective

 

Control

 

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March 19, 2014

384. Word Wars: Agreeing to Disagree

By Marlen

 

Today I’ve got to understand another reason why we have failed as humanity to  establish supportive communication and relationships because, within us completely embodying our mind, we’ve become our own military to defend our beliefs, thoughts, perspectives and when we get into a situation wherein we conclude that ‘we can’t agree’ with others, there’s usually the right(eous) off the bat expression of ‘well, we then have to agree to disagree’ which is a rather pusillanimous way of ‘ending a conversation’ where conflict is avoided or where one has gone ‘too far’ within emotionally reacting to a disagreement in a conversation with one or more people, and that’s where we then stop the conversation, ending up with a ‘bad taste’ which is usually remaining in an emotional reaction about the argument and seeing others as ‘being wrong’ or even sometimes taking another’s words as deliberate attacks or blaming them for the kind of statements that they’ve expressed, that leads us to further judge them and see others as ‘the problem’ only.

 

In my case, I’ve noticed a tendency that exists when I communicate with others and If I see that this person or people directly oppose what I speak of as what I’ve realized is common sense, or best for all, I start judging them for ‘opposing what to me is common sense.’

For example, a situation I was in wherein I was discussing with other individuals a child being bitten by another child and how that situation can be directed. These individuals pointed out that they had taught the child to close the fist and hit/attack back as a point of self-defense. So in essence is teaching kids how to ‘hit back’ when they are hit or bullied, as if that was the solution to the problem, which I then got to understand it was actually a pattern themselves had gone through in their lives and so had taught their own children to do the same, wherein the mentality is: well my son/daughter is all that matters, doesn’t matter if the other kid (the attacker) is hurt.

I then begun explaining why this idea of hitting back and continuing the violence between children and children-parent relationships is never the solution as the cause and core of the problem is not being understood or addressed. So, these individuals were rather shocked I was saying that, completely denying and refuting what I was saying, coming up with arguments such as ‘we are bred through violence, violence is everywhere so how can you expect the world to change?’ ‘How can the child allow him/herself to be hit and not respond back? It’s only Natural to fight back! Look at history!’ as well as the ultimate ‘we won’t ever change’ and so, Marlen’s red flags went on and I noticed a bit exaltation coming through as I spoke the words on how this kind of thinking patterns and beliefs are precisely what has perpetuated our violent behavior, our spite, our retaliation, our lack of skills to communicate and instead only learn to ‘defend ourselves’ which is an euphemism to say ‘fight back’ because that’s all we believe we are capable of – and because of the rather close relationship with these individuals, I left it to the point where I ensure I made it clear why I do NOT support violence and physical abuse/hitting/spanking or even ‘biting back’ between kids when one of them is first attacked. And the situation overall in the reunion changed so we didn’t give continuation to the discussion which also included why because violence is everywhere, even in videogames and children play them, then violence won’t ever go away.

 

Now, there are Multiple points to this and I will be walking them through because it’s not only my reaction to seeing how other human beings can still think that violence is the solution – disregarding the evidence in this world where no problems are solved through violence and only further separation or personal gain ensues – but also how I tend to not take other people’s process/mind into consideration. And so this will lead me to disclose how to live the word Flexibility as it’s been something I see I haven’t lived, wherein I become quite rigid and militant-like with what I see is common sense, what I’ve walked through and come to a conclusion is best for all. See, even if it is best for all to stop the patterns and cycles of abuse of enabling physical abuse as a way to ‘teach lessons’ or ‘get back at another,’ the fact that I make it a problem in my mind because ‘people are not agreeing with me’ has to do with myself and how I still believe that ‘It’s impossible people can think such barbarian behavior is a solution!’ and within this, I sweep aside my own reaction, turning it into a ‘righteous act’ wherein I justify my behavior because ‘they are wrong!’ without taking in consideration at all how other people have lived decades on within a particular mindset that they have carried out and even “educated” their own children with, involving the retaliation and vengeance thinking and behavioral patterns of ‘If I’m attacked, I attack back,’ without ever looking at the origin of the problem and further solutions, because in the mind: we’ve never actually learned how to establish solutions.

 

Another example is how some people believe that ‘spanking children to behave is ok’ – and me reacting to once again the ‘barbaric belief!’ without  placing myself in the shoes of others and realizing that  it’s all people have ever learned when it comes to disciplining children, it’s all that has been done onto them and as such me pretending to change their mind in a 5 minute explanation  is no different to me coming to a hardcore religious person letting him/her know that god doesn’t exist and to stop believing in it.

 

So we’ve lived our history within the ‘Might Makes Right’ statement and we’ve  become such belief to the extent that we see no other way out but exerting and imposing power, applying vengeance because we have become our minds, our patterns, our history, the sins of the fathers that were also people that were not able to ‘think outside the box’ into solutions but only use the brute force to establish solutions – so, how can I ‘blame’ a few individuals for simply mirroring our entire history back in that moment where violence is seen as the only way out?

 

Is it then a solution to want to change a person’s entire mind, context, personal experience, genetics, history in 5 minutes in order to convince them why violence is not the way? Or is this something that requires to be walked point by point in order to come to the realization that it’s about time that we stop believing ‘we can’t change’ and instead share my own process of how one Can in fact change and walk them through how this is able to be done, while being flexible, patient and in full consideration of their minds, their process and context? Well, of course the latter is the way to follow through with this. So here I walk the process to recognize the problem and get to the solutions.

 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get angry when certain individuals contradicted myself when it comes to the principles I stand for of not participating back with violent behavior or promoting abuse in children as self-defense, wherein I reacted with the judgment of ‘I cannot believe that they are saying this, how stupid can they be?’ in my mind, without realizing that in this, I was actually already expecting them to be able to agree with me, with the principle and common sense I communicated to them and that I stand for – without taking into consideration that at the moment none of these principles are being lived in this world – and as such, I have not taken them into consideration, understanding them as the starting point of their perspective, their entire process, their life, their mind, their personal experiences, their own education as children, as parents that they also are and as such being able to see their statements  as nothing else but their mind speaking, the who they are and who we all have become as our mind – therefore

 

I realize that I took their mind, their statements, their beliefs personal because I believed in the first place that ‘they would see things differently’ without realizing that it’s actually rare that people get acquainted with any form of principles, values, common sense and considerations that are taking others into the equation as what is best for all, because as humanity we’ve always only lived through the principle of ‘what’s best for me, how can I protect me and fuck the rest’ and as such, I now see, realize and understand that their statements came from that survival mode that is actually quite prominent in our minds as humanity, and as such it is for me to rather realize that me reacting to their words is furthering the problem instead of being a stable observer that can look beyond the veil of emotions and rather see how such conversation was me facing ‘the system’ as it exist, and how vehemently the ‘who we have become as the mind’ protect and defend one’s point of view which is why I got into a reaction instead of absolutely stopping myself and immediately bringing through the consideration, the flexibility when it comes to taking others’ processes and minds into consideration and into the equation of the situation.

 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to later on complain about the statements these individuals had made when commenting about this with other individuals, without realizing that in such act I was continuing to blame them, to judge them as ‘ignorant’ for the kind of statements they were defending and the type of attitudes they want to still promote with other human beings –  In this I see that through only judging and getting angry at what others speak of, attack, or the beliefs that any individual can be supporting, I am not entirely seeing the opportunity that exists in order for me to first of all not take it personally and secondly, see why the reaction to this comes as the anger that I created myself upon layered judgment wherein I’ve seen ‘others’ as the problem for us to be able to change, blaming ‘humanity’ instead of taking the point back to myself. So, I see that this is an actual layer of the system that we’ve become and instead of ‘not wanting to talk more with them,’ and getting exalted about it, I can take the opportunity to slow down and direct the situation in a mutually beneficial manner, or course without wanting to convince them otherwise and now having them ‘agree with me,’ but simply being able to communicate what I see, my perspectives and so have a normal conversation of the pros and the cons wherein I don’t immediately try and impose what I see is common sense.

 

When and as I see myself getting angry, upset,  feeling certain pressure in my head/chest region as I hear another speaking words that go entirely against the principles I stand for as the end to all forms of violence – I stop and I breathe – I realize that by reacting and wanting to ‘stop talking to them’ and leave the scene, I’m only shutting down yet another opportunity for me to first of all not take it personally, not go into reaction and then be able to immediately take into consideration their mind, their process, their upbringing, the amount of time they’ve lived with such mentality and as such, be able to integrate within me a more gentle way to live flexibility and humbleness as the ability to be open and considerate of another’s mind and process, and be able to hear/listen to what others have to say, make questions to understand their beliefs further and as such, while breathing and ensuring I am and remain stable, rather share from my personal perspective and practical realizations why I don’t agree, why I don’t support any form of violence and most importantly why I see this as actually detrimental to children’s education. Then I can proceed to share how I’ve proven to myself that it IS possible to change as a human being, to establish new principles that can prevent ourselves going further down the downward spiral when it comes to lacking education, principles, values that are virtually non existent in our society nowadays.

 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take people’s words personally when I perceive they are directly denying, attacking or simply ignoring the principles I am speaking about, what I am communicating of, and more so when they speak over my own words  as I see that I’ve defined this as ‘attack’ without realizing that I have to take into consideration their particular ways of expression which I already know are also quite frank, direct, without ‘holding back’ which is why when I also embodied such directness along with the reaction of getting angry about what they were saying, I tensed up because we were speaking over our words, without realizing that obviously this won’t ever lead to actual communication, but only a desire to defend our views and perspectives on the subject, which is how we as human beings usually end up in fights or in the covertly ‘tolerant’ saying of ‘We agree to disagree’ which I have valued as the easiest way to avoid confrontation and remaining at a certain ‘peace’ that comes as the result of a temporary ‘war of minds.’

 

I realize that there’s no point for me to mirror another’s experience and expression in an exalted manner when they are conveying points that I can directly understand deny or oppose what I’m saying, and within this not taking it personally as in ‘they are deliberately attacking me’ because it’s actually their mind, their process, their beliefs that is up to them to further investigate their expressions and reactions. Otherwise by giving into the reactions, I become exactly what I am judging: the one that perpetuates the war of words and the war of minds leading nowhere.

 

I realize that my stance and staring point within all of this is to remain stable – and simply speak/convey about the principles I stand for, how I apply myself and the reasons why I do this and how I see it is an excuse to believe that ‘we can’t change’ as human beings, because this has been the easiest way out of actually placing the effort and discipline that we all require as human beings in order to be able to change mind patterns, behaviors, belief systems, roles, etc. that we’ve nurtured and acquired ‘by default’ from birth, without a question throughout our entire history on whether this ‘mind’ could ever be stopped, changed or corrected to benefit us all in our lives – and yes, we can.

 

I realize that it will take quite a long time for an individual to even come to the realization that for example, there are other ways to prevent violence or attacks between children beginning with the education that parents, society and the media can provide in order to begin phasing out this idea that we can only resort to violence, physical abuse and attacking back when one is attacked, without first understanding the origin and starting point of the attack, which is not an ‘out of the blue’ situation, but has a context that can be investigated and further taken into consideration for solutions, to then expose how we’ve come to believe violence to be ‘the way out’ because we have never worked with the principle of prevention, preventing the problems in the first place instead of furthering complicated ways to ‘deal with the problem.’

 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ever take it personal that people might not agree with what I’m saying – because I believe I stand for what’s best for all and within this, I have created the equation that ‘if you oppose what I say, then you stand for what is not best for everyone and as such: you are part of the problem,’ without realizing that in shifting responsibility to others as ‘the problem,’ I have not allowed myself to see why I have taken it personal, instead of considering each individual’s mind, process, context, life experiences that will still have to be walked by each one of us, individually, in order to align ourselves to principles where no longer our mind, our ego, our lives can override the principles we can stand for and live by as human beings.

 

When and as I see myself taking another’s words personal as ‘attacks,’ as ‘opposition,’ as ‘competition,’ as ‘deliberate defamation’ toward myself and the principles I stand with and as, I stop myself within that surge of anger that can be rising up from the solar plexus, I stabilize myself within breathe until I see that I am motion-less inside, stable and then apply the living word flexibility, wherein I take such individual/s mind, process, life experience, age, context, culture, upbringing, and every other aspect that I realize I require to also see as the origin and starting point of another’s words as those words come from the mind, from such programming, environment, culture, life experience and in essence the ‘nature’ of humanity that we’ve perpetuated throughout our entire history – and as such also prevent myself from always wanting people to end up agreeing with me, as this is something I cannot control nor is my duty to do either. I can only share myself as an example of the principles I share and live by.

 

I commit myself to live the word flexibility when being discussing certain points wherein I see that there’s no general ‘agreement’ of others toward what I say, to not take it personally and instead rather integrate the understanding of where those words, beliefs, perspectives are coming from as ‘who we have become as the mind’ as ‘the system’ and not just see ‘the person/the people’ that are speaking such statements as the ones to blame or be angry at, as emotions divert us from seeing the point within its full context, and  instead

I commit myself to also see, realize and understand how we as human beings have become the embodiment of the mind, the system, the preprogramming that has been consequential and detrimental to each one of us that have blindly accepted the mind as ‘who we are’ without seeing the obvious consequences of us still fighting wars and ‘agreeing to disagree’ because we haven’t been able to physically be here and look at things directly to consider what is best for all, but we’ve instead sold our own freedom to become egos in our minds where we ‘fight each other back’ and that simply doesn’t make sense, so I commit myself to stop judging others’ perspectives, thoughts and beliefs and rather take the context into consideration and rather learn from the situation than victimizing myself about it.

 

I commit myself to instead of getting angry or blaming another for ‘the kind of thoughts, beliefs’ they have, to instead remain humble as in considerate about another’s life process and mind, and simply state what I stand for and how I am available to discuss this further if they are interested in getting to know more about how I got to these conclusions, perspectives and principles that they are initially opposing – as we all know that’s a trait of the mind to defend itself at all cost– so instead, I practice ways to not be defensive, but remain open, tranquil in my communication toward others so that I don’t become part of the war-mentality or the aggression principle in order to ‘defend my point of view at all cost’ as that recreates the divide and conquer war mentality.

 

I commit myself to breathe through any immediate surge of energy that might be emerging as I see, hear or read someone contradicting the principles I stand for, and instead remain as breath to continue reading, investigating or asking questions as to gather further context to their mind, their beliefs and perspectives – I realize that we can use this further to get to know about our patterns, our old-age behavior, our embedded traits and beliefs systems so that we can pattern-them out, map them out and further support us by developing material or sharing perspectives as to how one can support oneself to stop living within such patterns after having a particular education, environment, culture, life experience, even points of abuse that are so common  and why it is most beneficial for everyone to stop participation in such patterns and rather decide to change to integrate living principles that are beneficial for everyone equally – this once again, as a voluntary process where we agree to discuss and walk through solutions.

If another is not open for solutions then I let it go. If I am not open to another’s perspective I have to investigate what am I holding onto and where am I not being flexible to consider other’s perspectives and input too.

 

I commit myself to be the point that stops furthering the ‘taking it personal’ pattern we’ve lived as humanity, and instead live and become the example of what it is to be able to observe the patterns that come through us in and as the mind in order to understand us better as the mind and as such, be able to walk the solutions and further ways in which we can begin changing the way that we hear and comprehend each other’s words and can use our relationships as points of support to learn more about ourselves, our minds and see the practical ways in which we can change the existing patterns of ‘fighting for our right to ‘be right’’ to rather learn how to establish common sense which is simply practicing how to consider what’s best for all in every thought, word and deed we express as who we are.

 

I commit myself to take self-responsibility for the words and actions I express toward others, regardless of what they might say or express as this will ensure that I remain stable and stick to principles instead of giving into the mind and losing the opportunity to rather learn from the situation and the patterns developing in the moment for further investigation. 

 

I commit myself to assist and support myself to be available and willing to assist and support those that want to know more about the principles, the perspectives of how we can change our patterns as humanity, how one can walk the process of implementing such changes at an individual level and as such be a point of support for others the same way that others have been for myself and that have enabled me to see, realize and understand this pattern in our lives as human beings, to walk from ‘fighting’ and ‘opposing’ each other to turning the point into a self-supportive aspect that we would not have been able to see if it hadn’t been opened up through communicating and sharing perspectives, so that’s another point to consider when it comes to realizing the need to share and open up topics that are usually not openly talked about, due to this inherent ‘respect’ for each other’s beliefs, which makes no sense because in the end we are all affected by each other’s beliefs and actions, so it’s best to rather see how we can establish a common ground to prevent further separation and problems and instead focus on establishing solutions within and outside of ourselves.

 

 

 

What are we doing to ourselves

 

 

To learn how to stop being only a mind that perpetuates the patterns and sins of the fathers, research:

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