Tag Archives: self intimacy

July 16, 2017

583. Intimacy Starts Within

By Marlen

Or how to share oneself in an open and unconditional manner with others after living self-intimacy for oneself first.

I’ll share a about an experience that opened up while I was communicating with someone about a subject or topic that I had not particularly shared about with anyone else before, therefore already holding this ‘charge’ within myself of sharing something quite ‘intimate’ or ‘secret’ within me that I had not opened up before or shared about myself with others because of having existed in a relationship of shame, regret and therefore secrecy towards it.

Here I created a predisposition of perceiving that what I was sharing with the person was ‘more meaningful’ or more ‘intimate’ than other topics, like imposing an idea of specialness towards it instead of simply sharing it for what it is – though it’s understandable here in my case considering that it’s the kind of experience one initially has when ‘opening up’ a rather ‘sensitive’ topic or what one has defined as ‘sensitive’ or ‘intimate’ or ‘secret’ aspect of ourselves to another, which I have in a way identified as ‘being intimate’ with another, which I’d say cannot really exist as such within an aura of specialness, but a simple seeing within self first and then sharing it with another, which is what I was doing in that moment according to my starting point.

So when I was sharing about this aspect of myself that I had already defined as  ‘I am sharing this for the first time with another’ there I was kind of already making it something ‘more’ than what it is in in fact in my head, which is also the reason why I had not shared about it before – and I noticed how the other person was looking away or dealing with something else in that moment,  which I communicated to see if there was something to be attended on in order to ‘get past it’ and kind of ‘get the focus back on myself’ but in that insta-moment what was triggered within me was a very old pattern in my life where I’ve believed, perceived or assumed that others don’t really want to hear me/my story/my ‘depth’ or what I have to open up or share, in all the detail that I share it with and what I activate is a perception of ‘others not being interested in what I have to share about me/myself/some deep stuff’ and have used that before to then react in ‘shutting down’, meaning refraining or stopping myself from sharing, so tending to suppress more– which I’ve also defined as ‘moments of intimacy’ that become thwarted according to this idea belief, perception or interpretation of ‘not being interested, don’t pay attention, so rather not do it at all’, or ‘not relevant for them,’ or they seem bored by it, etc.

The solution is to rather ask, be direct and share what is being experience in the moment, communicate about it if it’s a point of communication being built with someone that is at a more personal and yes in depth level. Otherwise within assumptions and suppressions one can build up large chunks of ‘unprocessed’ stuff that becomes a source of further emotions if not opened up and dealt with within oneself and shared with the other person as a point of shared awareness.

 

Due to how I’ve perceived this to be a ‘common thing’ in various relationships-partners and friendships before, I triggered it again which causes an experience of being ‘irrelevant, not important, not interesting, worthless to give attention to’ which at the same time holds underlying points of seeking some kind of ‘full attention/consideration’ that I had not given to myself either, which played out in the way I focused more on ‘supporting people’ or making myself ‘needed’ by another in a relationship or ‘finding ways out there to sort out the world’ but missing out these key self-aspects: giving, doing, being these points for myself first!

 

Also here it’s relevant to clarify this point of intimacy and being ‘intimate’ with another and how upon reacting to something I see on the other I went into a ‘shut down’ or assumption of ‘they don’t really want to hear’ which would be a source of self-pity and ‘no one understands me’ type of experience that is experienced as a remnant of the past, even though I actually have quite some enjoyment in opening and disclosing all of these points to myself as well, which proves that yes even one single thought invested into the ‘pop-up’ of the pattern, can trigger these old patterns which I’ve been seeing now are linked to various memories and what I’ve defined as ‘bitter situations’ in the past.

And due to that insta-reaction, the usual ‘next step’ was to – in the past – consider ‘ah they’re not interested in getting to know me or ‘be intimate” which is an externalization of what I had not lived for myself/given myself as full attention, self-appreciation and self-worth. Here’s then how intimacy is in fact into-me-I-see as learned through the Desteni material, where we can in fact first focus on getting to know ourselves, seeing within me, getting to understand me, appreciate me, honor me, enjoy me rather than expecting another person to do and be this for me, to ‘see me’ in the exact same way and ‘depth’ that I would like them to see me, but it’s practically not possible to do this in the reality we are in, where yes as much as we can share ourselves through words and actions, no other person will ever be in our exact same body/life experience all the way with ourselves as we have been for ourselves, and that’s merely a fact of life that leads me to remember to be ok with seeing within me, getting to know me, getting to appreciate me in all the things that I see, realize, get to understand and surely, share as much as I can through words and interactions with others, but without creating an expectation of a certain regard or experience from another towards it, and that’s where ‘sharing unconditionally’ is also the solution.

So yep, it all starts with an assumption, perception, idea of what the other is experiencing to which then I react in shutting down / keeping things to myself.  I’ve also been in the position of being directly told ‘I don’t care to hear that/ don’t want to hear about that’ which I would have a hard time with as in sadness emerging, like ‘shutting up a kid’ type of experience, which is as far as it goes in my case having been  a very talkative person since I was very young, lol, not really understanding that yes it might have gotten to be annoying for some at the time, but it’s definitely the kind of ‘deeply rooted’ reactions that led me to see myself as insignificant, worthless, not important, ‘I’d rather die/go away because I’m only a bother here’ type of thoughts. This goes back to childhood times – so, it all resulted in me generally ‘being there’ for others in relationships, only ‘hearing them’ because of perceiving that my stuff was not relevant, was boring, uninterested by perceiving any physical movement in the other as a reaction to what I was saying- while at the same time yearning to open myself up and having someone ‘be interested in me’ in the same way I may find myself and others fascinating to get to know or understand.

However here it’s not about now seeking another to say ‘yes you are interesting’ or ‘I am interested in what you have to say’ because then the point is missed. The point is not really about ‘another’ but about self and realizing how one creates ideas, experiences and expectations towards things that only we, individually, within ourselves can get to see in full scope. It is yes, kind of unfortunate in a way that we cannot yet see ourselves in ‘all dimensions’ and get to see the core of each other and in all transparency, because in essence we cannot do that for or towards others because we haven’t in fact done and walked that for ourselves first, and that’s then the principle of self-intimacy first.

 

So even if there were times when another person in fact wasn’t interested, or was in fact genuinely wanting to ‘slip away’ from the conversation – it’s not about judging them or judging ourselves for having had these reactions from others. I’ve learned to instead go into considering, understanding ‘who they are’ and what they were ‘into’ at the time and how for some individuals this kind of things might be too personal or too ‘intimate’ to discuss or ‘only pertaining me’ – which are all individual points to walk for each person, though I cannot ever change or control that, therefore it all goes back to what I can do and live for and as myself, which relates back to living self-intimacy first and then sharing myself with another unconditionally, no strings attached, no expectations, no preconceived ideas of what the other will say or how they will react back at it.

This is common sense in realizing that I cannot ask another to be in my head and be in that moment seeing all the ‘meaning’ or ‘depth’ that I’m seeing something within me that leads me to share it and expect the other person to receive it in that ‘equal meaningfulness’ or ‘depth’ that I am creating towards it. It’s kind of like the idea of ‘I’m bearing my soul here for you and you’re not interested in it’ type of experience and assumption  – and so learning that this is part of where I have to let go of any expectations and realize I can only share myself unconditionally.

 

I share it because I’ve definitely made that mistake of keeping things to myself before and not communicating about it, and what emerged in that moment was a distinctive experience, familiar if anything, from past situations that I simply have to practice walking through more and communicate about this situation so that next time I can open it up in the moment with the other person if they are also up for doing this kind of ‘alignments’ within themselves as well or in a relationship.

In doing so, sharing becomes also a one direction movement, where I share me without indirectly expecting the other to change or do anything about it, because that is entirely up to each one to do or act upon or not. Here it’s making sure that I am no longer expecting someone else to ‘fully understand me’ because that’s also still a point of ‘desiring to be appreciated, understood and known’ by someone else, instead of doing, giving and living that for myself first. So in essence being quite unconditional in what I share and continue cultivating openness because that’s what I enjoy and like to be, regardless of anything else I see in another. Of course if there are noticeable reactions I rather from now on ask and cross-reference rather than assuming, which is the key to stop making an ass-of-myself in assumptions.

There’s many times a fine line of whether ‘I should share this’ with the other person or not, but due to my tendency to rather ‘keep it to myself’ – which reads into self-pity, victimization and all of that pattern of suppression –  I for now decide do the opposite.

 Thanks for reading

 

Please check out this timely video by Sunette Spies for SOUL describing her process in walking through self-discovery:  Expanding Your Living Vocabulary – Part 1

 

 Living Roots

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

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February 28, 2017

521. The Invaluable Benefits of Self-Writing

By Marlen

Or how journaling and blogging have saved myself from my selective-memory deciding ‘who I was’ at a point in my life and instead, look back and see the reality of myself in my own words.

I was quite amazed last night when reading some older readings in my personal journal and be able to see with my own words and handwriting the reality of myself in past months.

I started writing for myself around the year 2000, I found it cool to keep a record of my every day, lol whether it was only describing what I had watched on TV or the new music I was into, the books I had read, the friends I would meet online… at the time, keeping a ‘record’ of myself throughout those teenage years became a way to describe some of my ‘growing pains’ and a lot of emotional personalities that I actually remember ‘solidifying’ and ‘fueling’ through my own writings – and surely that’s not the way to go through writing in the context of self-support as I do it now, but! I will apply what I wrote some blogs ago to not go into my own intellectual arrogance and dismiss all of those writings, because one good thing I did create for myself as a habit is that of self-writing and enjoying writing for myself, which yes over the years has transformed into this self-support tool that I very much have established as a foundation to create myself, to see myself and from there integrate self-honesty and self-creation into my day to day living.

When I started writing in 2008 with a new approach – which is within the context of this process of self-honesty, self-forgiveness and pushing to see the truth of myself – I found it was comfortable to do this in my personal journal and initially publishing it in these blogs as well at the very beginning but, lol, I also got to understand that self-honesty is not about ‘exposing’ oneself to others, but exposing myself to myself, first and foremost. Therefore even if throughout the years I have kept this blog as a more of a public record of things that I work with in my life, I also have had actual journals at the same time, a series of notebooks that I’ve been keeping throughout the years and it’s always kind of amusing to randomly open them up and see ‘where I was at’ 3, 6, 8, 15 years ago or! Where I was a couple of months ago, aha!

And that’s what I was reading last night at and I found something very revealing about how I – and probably we all in our minds – function when it comes to our memories and creation a notion of ‘where we are’ and ‘how we really are doing’ deep within ourselves.

So in this journal I was reading back on pages written 5, 3 and two months ago in a random manner and I discovered that I had created a sort of ‘ideal’ vision in my mind of ‘how I had been doing’ in those months and how I had been experiencing myself all of that time – painting it in a relatively nice manner so to speak, mostly handpicking ‘good times’ and ‘favorable moments’ where it’s as if in my mind, if someone had asked me yesterday before I actually went and read my journal ‘how I had been in the past months within myself?’ I would have said, “well, quite fine, all fine just going through some events and situations that shook my reality recently, but overall was quite well before that.’ 

That’s an example of how in our minds we like to stick to a minimized, very synthesized version of ourselves where we don’t actually see the truth, the nitty-gritty details of our experience as in who we have really been in those moments where we are alone with ourselves – devoid of nice words to describe it better than it actually was. Now, when I started reading through these pages I noticed that I was describing doubts, questioning my decisions, ‘sucking in’ some experiences as in suppressing actual things that I was noticing and that I was being too hopeful that would change in time, or where I describe how I had not been doing like physically well because of being drained by particular emotional experiences in me – losing ‘my footing’ at times and giving a hope to the next day getting better and that kind of stuff.

So it reminded me a lot to something I got to be aware of 10 years ago where I went through a year of really being ‘out of myself’ completely, there was like a veil upon all of that time where the distinction of days was like completely blurred and I was on a literal high of focusing too much on ‘who I wanted to be’ as an artist and completely losing ground in who I was becoming in the whole process. Back then in 2007 I wasn’t aware of this process yet and I was about to ‘step deep into the rabbit hole’ when I found Desteni in January of 2008, that’s when I literally saved myself with it, but that’s another story I’ve shared before.

Fortunately, the only way I have a recollection of what really went on within myself at the time were those journals where I would get deep into my own depressive and emotional ‘nature’ back then even though if someone would ask me how I was doing at the time I would have defined those years when I got into art school as ‘a really good year in my life, best times and all’. But the truth of myself through my own words and laying out all of my emotional turmoil, I was quite a mess to be honest. I was quite confused, accepting and allowing shitty situations for myself, being constantly seeking ‘something’ superior to myself, being very depressed, not being in the right company, being so out of my own two feet, holding friendships that at the time were mostly enhancing my own delusions and in essence I consider I would not recognize myself as in ‘who I was then’ to where I am now, but hey I am actually able to live to tell this and honor my decision to support myself.

The point here is though how in my ‘selective memory’ I had defined such years as ‘great times, fun times, expressive times’ – but, when reading the truth of myself in those journals where I made it a point to be real with myself, to lay everything ‘as is’ no matter what, I was able to remember how I really felt through it all and how it wasn’t at all a ‘fun time’ except for a few moments ‘with other people’ or in certain relationships or experiences with others, of which of course throughout the years I’ve also learned to see the ‘good things’ I could learn from others and integrate into my life, not all was ‘plain bad’ because it had to do mostly with how I was emotionally doing within myself at the time. The truth of myself is that I was an emotional mess and that writing  my woes and hopes out didn’t do much but at times reinforce those ideas of myself only, which is quite a world apart from how I use writing nowadays.

I also find it interesting that it was that time when people considered I was the most creative and expressive, and seemed quite successful in what I was doing at the eyes of others – but I definitely do know it was quite a ‘show’ for others in my pursuit of happiness, while the truth of my experience was a completely different story, which demonstrates how I was mostly ‘giving a show’ to others to hide from the truth of myself, painting a picture of success, dreaming big and hoping for the best but within myself, there were a lot of fears and discomforts and general self-abuse going on at various levels in my life.

 

So with this, I want to share how in these journals that I’ve kept throughout the years, I’ve made them my personal spot and space where I write for myself only – no one else – and that very private self-writing has enabled me to not censor myself, to keep ‘track’ of myself in a way that I by now know my limited memory would not enable me to recall the detail of all of those actual challenging experiences in me, the discomforts, the ‘down’ times, the doubts, the fears, the desires, the questionings in my decisions, how I truly observe situations in my life, how they impacted me in a nutshell, how I truly experienced myself in relationship to others and so forth and that’s been very cool and a supportive point for me to not only ‘keep track’ of myself, but also integrating it in my day to day life as the habit of ‘writing myself.’

And one pointer here is that they are not these super long entries like I sometimes do here lol, I might do at times some 5 minutes of writing and get to register some  ‘daily essentials’ to look at, which is from where a lot of the points that I then share in blogs open up. Sometimes I am able to open up a point ‘in a blog’ here, but sometimes I first have to get ‘deep into seeing within me’ within that journal, and that’s also cool how I have my own ‘spot’ that is quite physical and has my handwriting, very personal I’d say and that’s something I’d definitely suggest to try out.

It’s the development of that self-intimacy in my writing that I’ve come to savor and enjoy as well, because I’ve been able to debunk my own ‘lies’ within my selective memory of ‘how I was’ in a particular time in my life and where I tend to paint it all ‘better’ than it actually was – yet when reading those entries, it’s quite surprising even to myself when I get to see the truth or reality of me in a particular time or moment and then get self-honest about what I need to change, what I need to do in order to genuinely be standing, be clear within myself, which is the actual process and challenge that I continue to place myself in and walk in this lifetime.

And here it’s not like I’ve been super consistent with writing throughout these ‘17’ years of notebooks. I have definitely forgotten about it for months at a time, resulting in complete ‘blackouts’ of where I was at the time and usually yes, I can see I might have been too focused ‘in a relationship’ for example or in a complete new environment where I kind of ‘forgot’ about myself – all my decisions of course, but it also becomes a point of regret in terms of stopping that self-communication for ‘whatever reason’ I formulated for myself, an excuse really because over these past months and keeping a more consistent writing for myself both in these blogs and my personal journal, I’ve been able to debunk perceptions about myself, my life, my experience even from two months ago (!) lol, I truly was amazed at myself at how I wasn’t seeing the whole picture of me when thinking that ‘I was just fine and all alright’ – when it is in fact not so.

What are the gifts from writing myself unconditionally and in an uncensored manner? I’ve developed an enjoyment of ‘getting to know myself,’ seeing myself, recognizing what kind of experiences I had throughout the day and at the same time, it’s made it easier over time to be true to myself, to be honest and give that step into self-honesty, to actually make decisions of where and how I am going to create a point of change in my life, or where I require to stand up – as well as recognizing where I am genuinely enjoying something, changing at something, owning my creation.

It also becomes very clear where in my journal I am kind of kidding myself or hiding from sharing ‘the real truth’ which is kind of interesting because it would be ‘me hiding from myself’ which I know what happens afterward, there’s a ‘lag’ of suppressions that I eventually have to take out of the laundry bag to do some washing, lol. It’s all there, it’s all me and I am the only one that can push myself to  ‘get real’ with myself in those writings, which is something I’d recommend anyone doing if your thing is not yet to ‘publish blogs’ for the world to see, but you still want to write for yourself.

Get yourself a notebook or even build your own – I buy my journals from colleagues that make them and sell them, so they’re ‘handmade’ and custom – and get to taste the enjoyment of sharing yourself to yourself, seriously! I could not believe my eyes today when I read someone at the Desteni Forum saying they had not written out their thoughts in like 10 years (!!!) I probably would not be here sharing these blogs if I had not continued to write myself, to support myself through writing and learning how to do that with the tools at Desteni and the Desteni I Process, best gift ever for anyone that is serious about living life and supporting oneself to change themselves and so the world, taking one’s life in one’s own hands and directing it to a best for all outcome.

If you want to start online and doing it bit by bit, there’s also the DIP Lite Course, designed specially to get to integrate the habit of writing as part of your day to day living.

Now this is the benefit of this process, it’s something you can do for the rest of your life, by yourself, and even if or when you cannot write for whatever reason, you can still sound yourself, you can speak to yourself in a directive manner which I also enjoy doing these days, having conversations with me where I dig deeper into myself, look at things within myself, lol get real with myself – but the ‘down-side’ is that there are no records of that and it’s prone to be forgotten an hour later, so that’s where the documenting of all of this process through writing or vlogging comes to be so valuable and I’m thankful to myself that I have continued to do so even after those long ‘halts’ and losing track of this basic and most valuable self-support: writing, writing yourself to freedom.

Do it! Test it out! I don’t ask for much, just write with intent and starting point to get real with yourself, see what you find out, get intimate with you, this is also a very cool step into developing a relationship with yourself, which wrongly many times we go seeking ‘out there’ and forgetting we’re always here with ourselves first.

 

Enjoy : )

 

 

Join us in our process of Self-Creation as LIFE

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