576. Facing the Self-Created Delusions

 

Or how everything that I judged, thought and created as an experience towards art came back to haunt me.  

I’ve been busy these past weeks/months rekindling my relationship with art. It is a relationship at at the moment because – as I’ve shared before – it became a source of many judgments, opinions, beliefs about who I am in relation to it, which means I ended up creating a bunch of experiences ‘towards it’ and identifying that as my posture within doing art or towards art in general – but interestingly enough, I stopped seeing myself as my art because of how I started imposing my experience towards it – as judgments, beliefs, opinions, emotions – instead of focusing on simply doing it and working with the physical outcome of it.

And this also reminds me that even if I give myself the authority and ‘green light’ to create something, I will invariably also confront all the past baggage and sort it out in the process, can’t have a clean slate by itself, I have to actually do the ‘cleaning’ process which is what I’ll share here.

I consider that making this difference is a primary point here because we tend to create an ‘experience’ towards something or someone and lose that objective view on things and start romanticizing them, just like we do with anything in our minds through energetic experiences that we end up being controlled and driven by in our lives, making decisions based on an experience, rather than objectively and consciously looking at something, assessing and then making a decision.

What I’ve been realizing is that I am facing all of that clutter of experiences, judgments, opinions, comparisons, insecurities and self-doubt that I imprinted onto ‘art creation’ over the last years, which wasn’t necessarily always the case. I started doing art as a response to wanting to express and do something for and by myself that I could solely enjoy for the visual aspect of it. I’ve called myself a ‘reformed visual vicious’ because I did get to a point of turning everything into something I could fixate on and create an experience towards, be it related to beauty or astonishment which is again me creating a relationship, an experience towards things instead of embracing what I would see as myself – take it in and breathe it out so to speak – but instead, I developed a form of romance with art which became eventually a love hate relationship where as some song goes, to ‘hate’ something you first had to ‘love’ it and love in this context wasn’t a living expression of myself towards myself at the time, but glorifying something external to myself through which I could find a sense and meaning to my life, which I now don’t really seek to find one because #IMatter, so I am the meaning of whatever it is that I am living, doing and placing my effort on.

Within seeking to do something ‘meaningful to life’ and others’ lives specifically, I disregarded myself in my own self-creation process – this became obvious in the kind of relationships I created over the years, how I placed myself in at ‘at your service’ type of stance to anything that sounded good to me and in that, well if I would have continued, a strong sense of ‘losing myself’ would have continued emerging from it. I distanced myself from doing that which in fact was challenging myself the most and that is art creation, because I linked it to self-creation and because I linked it to this whole process of transformation of who I am where my points of view have dramatically changed over the years about virtually everything, going into an extremism of sorts where my absolutism led me to the ultimate limitation: “you can’t do anything that is for your own pleasure and visual viciousness, you have to do something meaningful to life.”

But, who told me this? No one else but myself, I created my own standards and limitations, I created my own ideas of what was more ‘noble’ to do in this world according to the idea of getting to create a substantial change in this world, but how could I if the expression underlying that attempt was one of self-limitation, martyrdom, self-sacrifice, denial of what is it that I truly want to be and express? It is the truth of it really, how can I attempt to be an example to the world of what living ‘freedom’ is if all I’m trying to do is impose my principles and views on others while living in a continuous self-limitation within myself?

And that’s what I’ve been facing currently in the practical day to day process of painting. I am the creator, I have the creative ability as anyone else in this world and I set the limits, I set the boundaries, I define the shapes, the forms, the colors, the subject, the meaning, all of it – and that to me has become in my head quite a challenge in fact, which culminated in the past days going through a physical experience of pain and headaches because of all these ideas, beliefs, perceptions, judgments and opinions about what I’m doing in art again and in essence, facing my-self-creation: facing all of these reactions that I imposed into something that is part of our reality as ‘art’ and confronting myself with my self-created limitations and fears while doing it.

Well, this is the real challenge to me, to go beyond the conditionings I’ve imposed to myself in something that used to be ‘so free and careless’ to me as an experience, it was ‘my point of liberation’ yet I turned it into a masochistic experience over the years to the point of not wanting to do anything with it and now having to ‘take the dive again’ into the same pool and face the process of creating or recreating myself as these words that art used to be for myself: enjoyment, liberation, carelessness, a sense of freedom and authority to decide an outcome, a final result of something.

I ended up turning that into an uncomfortable ‘limitless’ set of possibilities. I am being challenged out of my very ‘squared’ way of living actually, where I can be a very efficient and structured oriented person when there’s a beginning and an end to a task and project that can be gauged and ‘mathematically measured’ as finished, as complete… but! I am definitely challenged when it comes to having no limits, no boundaries and having to actually push through my own fears within this notion of reinventing myself in it.

So, this is more of a realization of that ‘crisis’ that comes when we have resisted to do something for so long because of all of the reactions we had imprinted onto it and finally decide to walk through it. I don’t have a problem to get myself to ‘do something,’ but being satisfied with what I do is a whole different thing and that’s what I want to focus on here, because I have the determination, I am creating the discipline to incorporate painting – at the moment – as part of my day to day, except for this week where I’ve been mostly reflecting on all of these points, which has resulted in spending more time in my head than actually doing anything about it. But, I won’t criticize this either, because I’ve been writing and speaking with other people about this creative process which kind of opened up perspectives in me to not judge this ‘stage’ that I’m facing, to understand it as part of the process in itself and also, to practically start redirecting myself in every moment that I see there’s this limitation or ‘idea’ of what I should be doing creeping in and instead test out ways, find my way of expressing myself, without creating ideas, beliefs, perceptions of ‘what it has to be.’

 

I had postponed the decision to actually get to paint for months to the point where I had these lined up white canvasses in front of me without actually moving myself to make the necessary space in the place that is now my ‘workspace’ for painting and get myself in motion.

So now I’m ‘in motion’ but that was the easy part it seems… To me what has become the most challenging is the ‘who I am’ in it where a lot of doubts, uncertainties, ideas, beliefs come up in me about what looks fine and what doesn’t, what I’d like to express – but at the same time considering the painting as something that someone else will buy according to their taste and hang on their wall as something they will be having around and part of their living pace.

I consider that part of the reasons why I had decided to give up art before is because of the plethora of ‘uncomfortable places’ I found myself in while doing anything related to it, thinking more about how others will see it and then using that as a way to limit myself though projecting ideas, beliefs of how it’s going to look at the eyes of others – potential buyers of it – and if it will be ‘good enough’ for them.

Essentially what has been coming up these past days is a fear of failure, fear that no one will like them and so ending up with a stack of stuff that no one will ever pay something for. And this is then the right place to be at within my process, where there is no finite way to measure what’s ‘good or bad’, where there is only an expression that I can be satisfied with or not and getting to know such ‘zone’ within me which, I understand is existing in me, it is there as a potential but here comes also the second layer of what has been creating a sort of ‘cloud’ over my head.

I stopped doing art for several years. It used to be my ‘daily bread’ for a part of my life and then I started judging it in all possible ways as meaningless, as purposeless, as a waste of time, and in that I justified stopping doing anything related to it for quite some time, even though it always remained there in the back of my head. And this has made me in a way be regretting those decisions. These past days I’ve been in somewhat of a ‘lost zone’ within me because of being thinking too much about all the opportunities I once had in front of me related to art and I denied it all, I said ‘no thank you’ and turned my back to it, completely and in quite a righteous stance I must say. And within that, I became all the thoughts that I created towards art, only to now be in the process of having to forgive myself for all those limitations I created towards it and also letting go of ‘all that could have been’ ideas in relation to it and how I ‘think’ that I could have developed myself if I had not given up on myself in art for some time.

What comes up mostly is the perceived ‘lost time’ and this is the idea that has been running around in my head, which is now creating a sense of having to ‘rush’ to practice, to get things done now in a way trying to ‘make up for’ the past, for the ‘wrong decisions’ I believe I made, not only in relation to arts but other contexts in my life like relationships or mistakes that I’ve made for not having sufficient precaution and consideration, as well as an outflow of procrastination in relation to my professional status which I am now on the way to take responsibility for and close those ‘holes’ that I’ve left behind me.

So, within participating in all of these thoughts – which are also fueled by the lack of money, fear of not making money, fear of not ‘making sufficient money’ – I’ve caused myself quite a strain in my body these days more noticeably so, fueled by also comparing myself to what I am aware my fellow peers in art school are accomplishing in their lives and in a way seeing myself as ‘having lost my track’ or even ‘having lost my mojo’ so to speak when it comes to creativity, and in essence, being a bit too exigent on myself expecting certain outcomes or results ‘already,’ considering that with arts- and with anything really – one has to practice to get to a point of satisfaction and eventual mastery, and it is kind of obvious that if I didn’t practice for such a long time and completely disconnected from it,  it’ll take some time for me to ‘get back on track’ and develop myself with it, which means I have to change my current approach stemming from fears, judgments, limitations, regret and in a way yes even if subtle frustration that if I would continue to allow as ‘my experience’ would lead me to ‘give up’ because that’s apparently the easy way out in our minds, which I am aware I won’t do as a conscious decision, but still, I lay out that potential outflow if I don’t actually take a self-responsible action in what I am experiencing.

So this takes me to seeing ‘who am I’ when I am in front of a canvas to paint? All that exists is the idea of having to do something that can be liked by others and this is the challenging spot for me, where I can create a balance between expressing myself, representing myself while also at the same time considering others without going into the point of compromise. And to understand where and how I would compromise myself in something as ‘subjective’ for a lack of a better word as art is not an easy task, but I am willing to find my way in it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to regret the choices I made in my life before in having created a load of judgments about art in order to justify stopping doing anything related to it instead of seeing that at the time that’s who I was, that’s where I was in my life and that even if I could ‘go back in time,’ I would still be ‘me’ at the time making those decisions that I was quite certain of at the moment. Therefore this is where I have to own my creation, to see nothing and no one as the ‘culprit’ for me desisting on this creative path but myself and so that means I can place myself back on track on it as I can now decide to test out this route and see how I can develop myself on it and so continuing to see what I learn and discover of myself that I had ‘given up’ to before.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be deciding to create art from a starting point of fearing failing, fear of survival where then all that becomes is me living as ‘fear of survival’ while painting or doing anything related to arts within which I create a pressure in me that eventually takes a toll on my body and gets to the point where it becomes unbearable to do anything, because my head and body physically gets drained every time that I am seeing through the eyes of fear at what I’m about to create or in the process of creating, therefore

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live trust, consideration and patience within the process of creating something new, where I am instead trying to ‘achieve’ something in a short period of time within a starting point of ‘need to produce more and more’ and in that, not seeing that who I am and what my expression itself is existing as is fear of failure, fear of not having these pieces being liked and bought and therefore having other fears in the background having to do with survival and sorting out other consequences that I’ve also created in my life and that I have to attend as well.

I realize that existing in that ‘survival’ mode while creating something won’t lead me anywhere but creating further stress and pressure on my body, which I actually need to be at ease and in an equilibrium in order to create.

I also consider that I have contaminated my expression a lot based on adding this dimension of ‘potentially selling’ something where I haven’t equalized myself to that possibility and outflow of creating art and instead, have turned it into this murky experience that I believe I have to be at all times considering in order to satisfy a potential buyer’s taste.

If I look back at how I started doing art – and the reason why I also decided to go back to it – is because It was one of the points I took on for myself as a decision I made and lived up to the point of choosing it to be my career, which I then regretted, which I now not regret, and this is the kind of ‘change of mind’ that in my mind and system seems unreliable, untrustworthy, believing I ‘cannot change my mind about something like that, I moved on and that means moving on!’ but I have had to also face the absolutist in me and be humble enough to ‘eat my words’ and rather understand them within the timeframe and context I was in.

It is quite interesting though how righteousness veiled my stance towards arts, believing that what I was thinking, judging and creating as opinions within me were ‘right’ and ‘justified’ and it only makes sense that now I am facing my own ‘bullets firing back at me’ so, yep! I did it to myself and it’s a great way for me to realize what owning one’s creation is, it’s nothing glorious but sometimes it will be as uncomfortable as what I am describing here.

So, how I see it is that unless I clear my relationship with art in all the minute reactions that come up as I am doing it, I’ll continue compounding this experience within me, because as with anything: we are the words that we live, we become what we think, act or don’t act on – therefore if I am constantly churning these experiences of feeling inadequate, incompetent, out of practice, having ‘lost my mojo’ then I will only continue tampering the actual practical process it will take to get back on track within it again and see how I can develop myself currently in it.

I also have to make peace with the fact that yes, that time where I didn’t get to do anything related to art is the same as when one used to exercise every day and stops for several years and one suddenly wants to ‘get back at it,’ I cannot expect my body to respond exactly the same as it was when doing it on a constant basis and I’ve proven this to myself also with exercise even with two or three weeks of not getting to it, takes some time to ‘get back on track’ and readjust.

So, I consider that as much as I’ve been trying to get comfortable with starting over, painting over what I consider as ‘not good enough,’ I also have to stop trying to ‘achieve’ something ideal in my mind, because it only creates a pressure that then becomes a compounded reaction that gets to eventually become more of a physical pain to sort out that prevents me from painting or doing anything related to arts.

I also have to stop judging all of these points as petty points as well, considering how for many it would be a luxury to be dedicating myself to what I am now taking on again as a career path – however, can’t compare myself that way, nor try and compare myself with the idea of what I believe ‘I should be doing by now’ and instead be realistic and humble about the fact that as much as I may have had some practice before, at the moment it will require some time to develop the skills again, to rediscover them if anything through practice over time. I am aware I am dedicated, and I can spend time on it without a problem, so working on something is not the problem – this is about my self-expression and breaking through the multiple self-imposed barriers I’ve created in my mind towards or ‘within’ the creative act and finding the equilibrium to create something that I am satisfied with and at the same time becomes a source of income.

I have to also let go of the ideas of comparing my stuff with what I see some of my peers doing because I am quite aware that becomes also a recipe for disaster if I then create an idea of what ‘I should be doing’ instead of working with what’s here, what I can do, express and work on developing and be OK with the process it will take in this case to develop the skills, because that’s an actual practice that takes time and diligence to it.

What can be immediate though is me living words that are supportive like patience to develop a consistent practice yet not expect ‘excellent results’ right away or ‘master pieces’ type of ideas, because that becomes also an underlying pressure that I am trying to achieve which ends up causing more of a wreck within me than being of any support, therefore I have to Let Go of those ideals and even letting go of seeking that ultimate ‘good outcome’ that I believe I should be aspiring to create – because this becomes also something I am ‘thinking’ about in my head, instead of rather focusing directly on what’s in front of me to work with and express myself as, which is what I consider I haven’t fully aligned within me, all related to notions of ‘good enough’/ ‘not good enough’ and the subtle frustration that comes in me when realizing I’m not ‘fully being myself.’

Doing art is quite the perfect challenge for me to focus on, because there’s nothing else that triggers so many points for me to face by myself, alone, with my literal creation than this. I’ve tested various things and I’m usually ‘good’ at getting things done and taking responsibilities, doing tasks from a to b, but anything that exists within an actual ‘open possibility for anything’ it becomes a challenging task for me, as much as there is an enjoyment in it at the same time I end up clouding it with my ideas, expectations, beliefs, judgments that for sure then become ‘what I express’ in a very literal and visible manner.

One thing I’ve been more ok with is making mistakes. Before I would not dare to start over again or paint over something, I have been more accepting of that rather than giving up completely on it and not working on it for years as I’ve done before.

Also the point of ‘I matter’ works quite well for this process as well, where I have to yes, consider others, what the purpose of this creation is for, but at the same time to do it for myself, not ‘for others’ in my mind constantly or the ‘potentials’ for this or that creation – I have to first and foremost find out again what it is to express something that represents me, is me as who I currently am and I consider that with that, the rest becomes by default an easier point to approach, because then I am trusting myself in it/as it, which are cool words and platforms to start from.

The rest is entirely up to me, where I can translate these words in forms, ways, trying out things that I haven’t done before and be ok with taking those risks and experimenting and seeing ‘what comes out of it’ without trying to control such outcome in one way or another. I have to be fully embracing me in this and stop torturing myself with thoughts of ‘I should not have stopped doing this, I should not have left this behind, I should not have made that choice, I should not have listened to this/that commentary’ Because what’s done is done, and can’t turn back time, but can only work with what’s currently here in my reality from now on.

At the same time, I also have to be flexible and see what outcomes I create, where I don’t create an absolutism of ‘this is the only thing I’ll  fully dedicate myself to from now on’ and take on the absolutist stance in that and closing any other potential ways, doors that could open up as well. This is in a way also assisting in realizing that my whole life doesn’t ‘only’ depend on this, yet at the same time considering there is a potential to work on and be patient and diligent with it too, so that I can embrace myself, my creations and be more carefree with it as I used to be within it, which was the actual source of enjoying my expression in art, ‘boundless’ in a way and realm of possibilities this implies.

I am glad I am embarking myself on this path again, because as much as I ‘separated’ myself from it with a cloud of judgments, it is something that never ceased to be in the back of my head, I just denied it and judged it and told me ‘don’t go there,’ but why deny it any longer? I see how supportive it is to transcend these judgments and actually get to do what in a way has been a constant in my life, very present at times, some other times in the back of my head as a suppressed potential, and now I placed it back on the board for myself. I definitely have to also let go of the idea that I’ve wasted ‘precious years’ for it, because this is also not about ‘time’ entirely, but about what I decide to live and do in this moment and from now on, as myself, as my expression and not judge or compare myself within it based on ‘what I could have achieved by now’ in a parallel universe of having continued doing it without interruption.

So, that’s what I’ll be focusing on while also not creating an absolutism about it and being ‘only driven by’ certain desires to fulfill with it, but discover what it means to express myself as it/in it completely… and there’s only a way to find out: By actually doing it, not thinking of it.

I suggest checking out these audios on Eqafe.com that are assisting to see how we create this absolutism in our minds and establish ways to investigate where we are being one and so limiting ourselves in our creative authority and capacity:

My Life of Absolutism – Life Review

My Life of Absolutism (Part 2) – Life Review

Hitting a Wall

 

 

 

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558. Walking Through Avoidance

“We will forever remain HERE in the GIFT and REBIRTH of ourselves / SELF after and during the confronting of our consequence, our manifested consequence we cannot escape, we cannot deny and we cannot run from…it will come, it will manifest, as it is already done and created. But the power we have, the CHOICE we have, the ability to respond we have – is WHO WE ARE THROUGH IT. How we LEARN from it and CHANGE from it for ourselves and generations to come. Our consequence becoming our REBIRTH or our death…we do, in fact, choose…” – Sunette Spies

 

When I read this last night I definitely wanted to take it on to my blog as a personal reminder and to expand it to many more people that may benefit from carefully reading into it, because it is so in terms of how we always have a choice to live instead of wallowing into an outflow or a consequence that we believe is ‘out of our hands’ to change, when it is in fact no so. And I particularly also appreciate how these bits of moments that we can stand up from can be seen through the eyes of living potential, not only for our current lives but also in the context of everyone’s lives that are yet to come.

It also assist us to place into perspective the notion of ‘walking through consequences’ and not fearing it, not feeling disempowered by them, but rather seeing that we can learn to honor and learn a lot more from ourselves by owning our creation.

I was translating some interviews on the topic of avoidance and how we tend to externalize it into not wanting to meet with, look at or have discussions with people we believe are ‘the problem’ or ‘cause’ of our experience that drives us to avoid people or certain situations, but the reality is that we only in fact avoid taking a good look back at ourselves to see what are we in fact avoiding to acknowledge, to open up, to recognize about ourselves that we are ‘fearing’ looking at.

I’ve seen this aspect come up in myself and many others within our lives and so in our process where we actually know what we are facing and creating as a result of letting our emotions, our opinions, our beliefs and the rest of unsettledness be our directive principle, where ultimately what ensues are actual situations that we then go into a conflict about, that we fear facing, that we feel completely disempowered to, but here I’ve also learned to challenge the quick responses we have to it such as saying ‘I fear looking at it’ ‘I fear walking through that’ ‘I feel hopeless about that situation’ ‘It makes me so nervous and anxious I rather not look at it’ and so we end up evading it in all ways that we can, but are we really ‘getting away’ from it for real, or are we only prolonging the inevitable confrontation of our creation, of our results or consequences? I’d say the latter is what’s accurate because! As they say ‘what goes around comes around’ and this is a simply saying to remind us that we cannot really ever ‘escape’ from our creation, but the point is also not to be looking at ‘ways’ to evade facing ourselves, but rather realizing the actual gift that walking through a consequence can be in our lives.

This also inevitably brings me back to my childhood years where I feared having to assume responsibility upon something I had in fact done because of fearing being scolded or losing someone’s trust towards me, so the immediate reaction was that of hiding, of lying to ‘save face’ so to speak, which inevitably would lead me feeling guilty because we in fact always know what we did, what we are in fact responsible for and I know that everyone has experienced how uncomfortable guilt and remorse is, which is an outflow of not taking responsibility first hand upon realizing we’ve caused some consequences or outflows that might have been destructive for ourselves or others.

Truth is, the best thing to do and what I’ve recently confirmed in a situation I shared in this vlog is to immediately take responsibility for the situation, to stand up and own one’s consequences, because then we are not defined only by ‘how we screwed something up’ but how we decide to stand in self-respect and honor the situation and the people involved in it by taking responsibility for it, even if that involves only letting others know one is aware of the outflows and has learned the lesson to not repeat it ever again, even though sometimes there are no ways to prevent what has been set in motion – but we surely can only remind us to learn about it.

So how this all ties with evasion is that if in such moment of realizing I had ‘screwed up’ in something, I would have gone into hiding, not immediately responding to the people that were asking for a response to their complaint, I would have remained even more anxious and in a state of guilt which invariably causes more damage to myself and others eventually, whereas in my immediate decision to face my creation, to take responsibility, even though there were consequences I realized it was part of owning my creation and so being able to learn from it myself, to not repeat it in future situations.

The outcome? I eventually was able to get back to my stable self, after doing some self-investigation as to how and why I allowed myself to go into a haste and cause certain consequences – I definitely have learned from it, I assure that. And this is part of what comes within an insta-moment of instead of wanting to wallow in guilt or regret and fear = evading the whole problem and conflict, I decided to stand up to it, own it, take responsibility. Now this is something that doesn’t necessarily need to be applied only to causing ‘conflicts’ with other people – this also very much applies to ourselves and how we relate to our own inner-conflict.

Many times we fear self-honesty, we believe we can hide from a constant experience with which we drown ourselves in fear, in anxiety, in petrification, in guilt, remorse, shame, sadness, helplessness, hopelessness, embarrassment and the list of reactions can go on… but why do we decide to stay in the reactive mode instead of rather taking the situation in our hands and face it, confront it? It’s fascinating how we fear doing what’s most supportive in our lives, and this applies 100% to stopping evading the problem, stopping avoiding the inevitable facing of our creation and that might be temporarily daunting, intimidating, nerve-wracking, but all these are only outflows of having avoided it all for some time – sometimes too long –which compounds everything to a point of making it unbearable – and the reality is that it has always been in our hands to act in the moment, to not allow something to compound to a point of making it unbearable for ourselves/our bodies.

This is what’s implied when it comes to being self-directive, being able to stand up in the moment and take responsibility, take the wheel in our hands and not procrastinate getting to walk through the problem, fix or amend what may be possible to fix or simply learn from it so that we can prevent it from happening again.

Ultimately if one sees that the response to ‘why am I fearing facing this consequence’ is nothing else but more fears or an emotional reaction, then we have to dig deeper by removing the word ‘fear’ and instead seeing what actions or inactions are contained within the basket known as ‘fear’? What am I actually hiding away from by saying ‘I fear consequence’ or ‘I fear my creation’ – same if our response as to why we fear facing our creation is ‘because we feel helpless’ about it, we can investigate further, who am I as helpless, what does it indicate about myself? And that’s where one can go into realizing more about the things we are doing or not doing to assist ourselves that we in fact know we can do, but we haven’t just yet decided to apply ourselves to do so. All of this proves that we in fact do know what is best for us and everyone else involved or not in it, we simply have to get past the fear-excuse and get our hands straight into the necessary changes within who we are in order to face our creation.

So, instead of doing the ‘void-dance’, let’s rather get close and intimate with the situation, being vulnerable, realizing that fear of getting to know the details of our ‘problems’ or conflicts is only a mask to prevent us from actually empowering ourselves with doing the real dance of self creation which comes with its ups and downs, its flaws and charms and all of it is who we are.

Pretending we can forever be perfect is an ideal that leads to perpetual fear of making mistakes, of believing that we can be forever ‘trouble-free’ – why not instead of fearing problems or negative consequences or avoiding all situations we believe might ‘bring consequences’ we instead learn to be comfortable with our ability to stand up from a problem or a consequence, challenging ourselves to own our creation, to test ourselves who we can be and how much we can learn and expand in our response to these things we were hiding, avoiding and running away from. Ultimately, we can only ever really deceive ourselves, so, we can only ‘face the music’ and get to dance to the tune of self-honesty.

Thanks for reading!

 

For further support on understanding and walking through Avoidance, please check out: these series at eqafe.com

1. Avoidance: Introduction – Altanteans – Part 277
2. Avoidance: Not So Honest, Actually – Atlanteans – Part 278
3. Avoidance: Guilt and Responsibility – Atlanteans – Part 279
4. Avoidance: How You Change – Atlanteans – Part 280
5. Avoidance: Face Yourself – Atlanteans – Part 281
6. Avoidance: I’m Right, You’re Wrong – Atlanteans – Part 282
7. Avoidance: Support – Atlanteans – Part 283
8. Avoidance: Recognition – Atlanteans – Part 284

 

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

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

• Get Real with Cerise & Joe

• Desteni Radio

• Desteni Articles

• Destonians

• Desteni I Process

• Agreement/Redefining Relationship Course

• Desteni Forum : Discuss and share with us

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• Creation’s Journey to Life

• Heaven’s Journey To Life

532. Expressing Self-Trust and Confidence

 

§  Continuing from: 531. Redefining Self-Confidence

 

Here I’ll apply self-forgiveness on all the points I wrote out in the previous blogs, in order to tackle my self-created limitations and for once and for all rather see the benefit of owning my creation as my expression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to experience hesitation, self-doubt and lack of confidence whenever I am having to make decisions on my own and have no one to reference my decisions with, wherein I have gotten used to always being able to have the approval or disapproval of others to then decide to make a particular decision in my life alone – instead of realizing that regardless of what others might say, I am the one that will ultimately live with the outcome of such decision and as such, it is ultimately a point where I have to learn to trust myself, which in this case means learning from making my own decisions, moves and choices and accordingly walk through them, not fearing making mistakes or going ‘the wrong’ way because that’s how I’ve found that I get to then define and fine tune my decisions, my next steps and next choices.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not investigate what is really behind the hesitation, self doubt or uncertainty before which is in fact a fear of making mistakes, a fear of not really achieving my utmost potential – however I forget that such outcome as ‘best potential’ can only exist through practice, through making many choices, possibly many mistakes and walking many paths to then get to find ‘my expression’ wherein, in fear, I actually don’t get to truly develop myself because of existing mostly in ‘fear’ and as such in a constant limitation that leads me to be in a stifling position, ‘giving up’ in doing something out of giving too much weight on an outcome or the opinions on them, instead of realizing that I am the only one that is able to give weight – or a negative value – to mistakes, to attempts, to apparent ‘failed choices’ – and instead learn from it, stand up and do it all over again.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to rely on others’ opinions and perspectives on my expression in order to keep going or completely use them as a deterrent to stop my expression in certain ways, instead of realizing that a point of expression is to represent who I am in that particular moment with what I want to create, what I want to communicate to others ultimately and as such, there is no ‘right or wrong’ or ‘good or bad’ in it, but only a process of referencing myself, seeing how satisfied or not I am with it, taking myself into consideration and not looking for others’ opinions to decide to continue or not.

I realize that I have been my own worst critic as well so, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be my own worst critic wherein I have defined what I do as not ‘good enough’ when I compare it to what others do/express and so, have allowed myself to use this judgment as a reason to completely give up on something and get into an experience of ‘what’s the use’ – when a point of expression is precisely about practicing, doing it as much as one can until one can create or build a point of self-trust and confidence in it, which I can attest is definitely a process in other aspects of my life, but interestingly enough when it comes to creative expression, it’s like hitting a wall and this is mostly based on others’ feedback that I’ve taken ‘to the heart’, instead of staying true to myself, referencing it with myself first and foremost.

 I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exist in self-doubt when it comes to assessing ‘what to do next’ or ‘what could I change or improve’ wherein the actual fear behind it is ‘fucking it up’ – wrecking it, messing it and so apparently ‘lose out’ an opportunity to have created something that I could be ‘proud of’ – but in reality there is nothing that we can create in ‘one go’ and have it come out ‘perfectly’ at once, and I realize that this ‘perfectionism’ or the idea that I have about what I can be satisfied with can be a huge show-stopper to me if I dare to start over-analyzing everything and then concluding that it is not what I expected, or it wasn’t as I intended – instead of realizing that this is a process of self-creation and self-expression, it takes practice, will take time, will take several tries maybe, but the point is to persevere and not give up ‘trying’ or getting frustrated for not getting a desired outcome.

I realize the practicality of practice and perseverance in this, wherein over time and continuous practice I am aware we can get to be more confident in doing anything – and the same therefore can be created in any point of artistic expression.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to give judgments, opinions, positive and negative values to words in relation to any point of artistic expression to the point of using them to validate or disqualify what I do as ‘good enough,’ where deep down I know I can trust myself in what I see, but have ultimately usually veered to get others’ reference and perspectives, which over the years I’ve used as a reason to not keep going, but, this is entirely my own decision, my own process in reality that I cannot blame on anyone’s opinion, because it’s only me that has given it sufficient value/worth to make an opinion more important than what I decide to express.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define confidence based on ‘doing something that is unique’ and so ‘special’ and so, whenever I started finding ‘similar work’ to mine, I sank into a pointlessness because of thinking that ‘everyone else is also doing it, so what’s the point?  When in fact, this is when comparison kicks in and so I stop seeing ‘the point’ when in fact, the point is myself, it’s about my expression regardless of what others do or not do or how similar it is.

Ultimately if I would measure anything I do based on how others do it, I’d be in a constant state of ‘giving up’ because ‘everyone else would be doing a lot of the same things I do anyways’ lol – when in fact this is about my expression, my development, my process, even regardless of the ‘final outcome’ but more so focusing on what I go learning about myself in the process as well.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to for example diminish my photographs as something that ‘anyone else could have taken’ or something that ‘everyone nowadays can do with cellphones’ which I used as an excuse to give up on taking photographs based on ‘others already doing it,’ instead of rather realizing each one of those photographs were moments where I was truly focused in my reality and making a decision to capture something, it actually assisted me a lot to pay close attention to my surroundings in a constant manner, which I still enjoy doing yet don’t take photographs any longer because of thinking ‘what’s the point, there’s thousands of pictures with the same thing, nothing new’ where I then doubt myself even with the potential of taking a photograph because ‘others probably already took one similar’ – which again, if I expanded this kind of assessment to anything else, I would be constantly stopping myself from doing anything based on what ‘others have done already.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to doubt myself, become hesitant and ultimately feel ‘incompetent’ in relation to points of self-expression in arts because of going into comparison, believing that there’s nothing ‘special’ in my stuff so why should I bother? But I realize and have seen from others’ examples how people that stick to developing themselves and persist on practicing, eventually get to be quite confident in their creations – and that’s the potential that exists when we don’t stop to compare ourselves to others, but stay true to oneself, to the purpose of the point of creation which is ultimately of self-creation, where the result is only that, an outflow or a consequence of a deeper process that takes place while creating something.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be focused on ‘a result’ within my expression, instead of considering the ‘who I am’ throughout the whole process, which ultimately is what is part of my self-creation that I’d like to develop and focus on, every moment’s decision and trusting myself within them, considering it all as a process to learn about myself, to learn about giving ‘shape’ to something and also to take responsibility for my creation where I am the one that is entirely behind it, and not any one else’s opinion or perspective on it – this way, whatever anyone else can say about it is an extra opinion, and not a defining factor that determines anything for me – but can only take it as a point of feedback for sure.

 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to discourage myself from continuing any point of self-expression based on my own opinions, judgments and expectations standing as self-criticism, that led me to then rather ‘not bother’ at all with it, in spite of how I see that when walking through my own veils of perception, I can actually enjoy doing it and I enjoy seeing ‘me’ in every step of the way and reflect it all back to what I am, where I am and who I am behind that one point of self-creation.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have defined confidence in the past based on reassuring or supportive comments made by others whose opinion I deem as important and in some cases having certain authority or superiority over myself, to then decide to continue or not doing something, wherein I then placed my expression, my perseverance in the hands of an opinion, a judgment and a perception – instead of having allowed myself to trust me in continuing to work on it, and stop my own backchat in relation to it, while focusing on the physical process of creation.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to covertly blame someone else as the reason why I decided to not play music anymore, wherein I am the one that took another’s words and attitude personally and made it a reason, excuse and justification why I didn’t have to bother anymore with practicing playing music, and instead only focus on doing visual arts – eventually extending my own judgments to anything related to visual arts wherein I then stopped doing any of it at all because of believing how pointless it all is – therefore, there is no one to ‘blame’ for this. This is essentially something I did to myself and so I can only now stand up from it.

 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take an opinion, a judgment, a perception as ‘truth’ – when in fact the truth is who I am in every moment of creating something, the decision I make and their outcome – which means when I decide to stand all the way in every step of the way, that’s where I see I build self-trust and confidence in relation to ‘the outcomes’ because then I am certain that this is something I created for myself, by myself, without any pretense other than expressing who I am, which is where I want to develop my strength as well, instead of taking ‘what I believe others will say’ into consideration, which is not really about ‘others’ then, but about myself not limiting me by all of that. .

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to perceive that ‘I didn’t enjoy making art any longer’ when in fact, it was the series of judgments, perceptions, opinions that I allowed to take precedence over the creation process of me-expressing-myself, and so that’s where it became tiresome, unbearable, causing more ‘stress’ than enjoyment – and it all was because of how much I gave value and worth to judgments.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ‘fear’ not having any other point of reference for my creation, wherein, I believe that I cannot ‘continue’ doing something unless I get any form of feedback from others – and in such situations or contexts it makes sense, but when it comes to artistic expression, it is truly the one point where I am the one with the ultimate and only say, because it is a point of expression that cannot be judged as ‘good or bad’ and this is also why I also started resisting to do anything related to arts, because of how ‘ambiguous’ it would be through my judgmental eyes in terms of being unable to define it as good or not based on ‘others’ perspectives’ but ultimately, this is where I have to be the one that stands through in it all regardless, doing it as my expression, which cannot be ‘contained’ in a few judgments of value.

I commit myself to continue practicing building, consolidating and densifying my ‘confidence’ through artistic expression – and any other point of expression for that matter – where I can learn to trust my decisions, walk a point of self-creation all the way and ultimately ‘own’ my creation regardless of the outcome, learning from it  and trusting myself in my ability to learn and stand up from mistakes, not being afraid to making mistakes but rather reminding myself that’s the way to continue moving forward in any point of creation, to persevere, to be consistent and to not allow judgments, opinions or perceptions about it in my mind to deter me from continuing.

This is then how one gets to be comfortable in doing something, through practice and then ultimately that practice & repetition creates a solidity of it at a physical level, where there is a point of control and flow as well, which means being present, being directive yet not rigid about the outcomes, flowing with it yet being aware of the path all the way – and this is then what I can integrate as a physical expression of self-confidence.

Thanks for reading.

 

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