596. The Gifts of Criticism

Or how to walk from a reaction to criticism towards an acknowledgement, discernment, learning and embracing of it as a way to assist ourselves to grow and develop ourselves to better ourselves in many ways.

I was listening to this documentary IDO PORTAL – JUST MOVE (filmed by London Real) while preparing some canvasses yesterday and it was quite amazing to hear the parallels that can be drawn from walking through this mind-self change process that some of us have been working on for the past 9 years and someone developing physical movement in all sorts of ways in their body in order to ‘master’ themselves, which becomes not so much about the end result, but the process of ‘mastering the craft’ as Ido says.

To begin with, this documentary or ‘topic’ is something that I would not have been ‘interested’ on years ago, yet the more I saw the name of this guy being shared around within the London Real channel, the more I got curious about it and this recently released documentary is quite a recommended and enjoyable thing to watch because it’s an awesome confirmation of many of the principles and ‘tests’ I’ve gone through in my own life within developing things I thought I would ‘never do’ and in general within this process of self-change – or dare I say the ‘reinvention’ process of myself.

There are many, many points that are valuable in it and it serves as a great source to cross-reference ‘who one is’ in relation to what Ido shares, however one that got my attention is where he speaks about criticism, which you can watch/hear here https://youtu.be/qJDz7qHBGQg?t=53m14s and there are a few points that I want to take on and write out because I consider that many times, for anyone starting to do something new, or doing something ‘for the first time’ or completely ‘out of the box’ of ‘normalcy’ in this world  – which easily can be associated with embarking oneself in this process of developing self-awareness and self-forgiveness and getting to change in our day to day living – can seem like a daunting task, something that one is ‘never ready for’ and sometimes we allow criticism to ‘overpower’ ourselves if we start reacting to our own ‘beliefs’ about not being able to do it, or about others’ sudden rather ‘harsh’ input in how we are doing things or how we are ‘changing,’ not questioning what of ourselves can be ‘hurt’ by criticism.

Many times throughout sharing my vlogs related to this process on YouTube I learned to read the worst of the worst kind of criticism, trolling and bullying that you can imagine: judging everything about my voice and the way that I speak, how I look, how wrong I am in my statements, how they wish I would die or how I should go kill myself.. all kinds of stuff, not worth mentioning or typing here really, but you get the idea.

Of course the initial experience for most people is to react and go into defense mode, try and ‘win against’ those that bully/troll in that sense, but in my case I also learned to start seeing where such words reflected back to the person that expressed them – and other times being able to humbly recognize they were truly supportive feedback even if myself/my ego didn’t like it, because they enabled me to look at myself, my stance, the way I spoke and start questioning the righteousness in my ‘intellectualism’ that I many times shared in my YouTube videos as ‘this is how things are and that’s it’ – lol, the ‘fascist me’ as I call it – which led me to in fact question in a very honest manner towards me: what is it about myself and my expression that is being shared from a starting point of fear: fear of being told I’m wrong, fear of receiving criticism, fear of being seen as weak, fear of not being credible enough… all those fears were there, so what did I do next? I then worked on really seeing what of ‘my ego’ can be hurt through criticism, writing it out, self-forgiving it and applying a humbleness and understanding to it, while of course practically not allowing the ‘overwhelming’ experience criticism can create to take me for a ride, which sure can be difficult but, any process of change involves that kind of challenge and resistance and difficulty, hence my suggestion to watch Ido’s documentary as well who explains this beautifully.

I grew up being a child that was mostly praised by adults and at times hated/envied/bullied by my peers, because it seems we like to destroy that which is in any way perceived as being ‘ahead of us’ and through the support of my mother in those days, I learned to grow a ‘thick skin’ to it and realize that whatever others said or did towards me spoke more about ‘who they are’ not about ‘me’ in essence, and started to learn to ‘take the heat’ so to speak, though not really yet learning to ‘reflect’ on such criticism or learning to ‘discern’ things, which eventually took me to create a certain ‘defensive stance’ that was still ‘here’ within me not until long ago.  

However I have also been on the other side of the coin, where I have craved feedback, I have craved criticism from those that know me best and so far only one person keeps having the guts to let me know where I am still being ‘taken over’ by myself in my ego/mind patterns, which is my mother and I’m grateful for that because it is so that only those that have known you for such a long time can really have a stand point to let you know where you are ‘losing your ground’ in any given moment.

Many times I have asked partners and friends to let me know when I am losing my ground, where I am becoming a ‘problem’ about something, where I am being righteous, where I am being one-dimensional or ‘tunnel visioned’ about something and I’m also grateful that I’ve had such wake up calls from them and other people here and there, but ultimately I realize that no one has the ‘imperative’ duty to let me know all of these things, that I can also get to see these points for myself when observing me in self-honesty as ‘who I am’ in the words I write, in how I express, in what I create, in how I decide to work and do things… it becomes a self-evident measure which then I use as a way to develop self-trust so that even if those that I’ve come to ‘trust’ the most can come at me with certain criticism, I can know and be honest with myself about it being a fact or being a perception or interpretation coming from them – and that’s where self-honesty is the key to see ‘who am I’ in the eye of criticism.

To me facing, dealing with, reading, listening, getting to know of criticism about myself has been one of the most challenging yet most supportive points in my life, and not long ago I was still fearing how certain people would ‘see me’ based on certain decisions I’ve made in my life and through walking through the fears of that ‘potential criticism’ I’ve realized one thing: the worst only critic exists within myself, I am the only one that can allow myself to be ‘affected’ by words, I am the only one that can accept and allow a certain word to cause an effect within me, and you know what? If it does, then, that’s actually quite great! How else would I know that I am still holding on to an ‘idea’ of myself as ‘untouchable’ or ‘superior’ or where I am still standing in inferiority to a word, a concept, an idea if no one would dare to come at me with certain words of criticism? And here’s an awesome audio that opens this up nicely as well and that I recommend having a listen to: Who Are You When Challenged – The Future of Awareness – Part 91

 

If anything, I actually would like to get more feedback in whatever I do and am, because in that it doesn’t mean that I have to change myself to be what others want me to be, it doesn’t mean that what others say will be ‘right,’ but because I can always learn something from anything that anyone has to say about me – either about separating the wheat from the chaff as they say as in taking what I can test out/apply/try out as a way to expand myself and test ‘new ways’ discerning what’s supportive and what’s plain backchat/reactions coming from others and ‘who they are’ towards someone that maybe is projected as a reaction to the challenges experienced through my doings/expression, or where one becomes a ‘boxing bag’ for them to blame for everything they can be dissatisfied for in their own lives… both and possibly many more reasons and starting points may exist in criticism.

I’ve done such kind of criticism as well, in fact I was sharing with an old friend yesterday how I was ‘wired’ to be constantly criticizing everything and everyone, which is the same as judging or creating ‘beliefs’ about anything that’s ‘out there’ of course within that ‘vantage’ point of seeing my judgments as right and just… lol the typical self-delusion. And so how it took me a process to really get down from my ‘high horse’ and start to truly hear/read/see criticism from others towards myself as a supportive process for me to ‘see me through the eyes of others’ and get to know what is it that can in fact be ‘standing out the most’ in creating more reactions in people than support.

In that, I got to test out new ways of expressing myself: stopping wanting to seem ‘absolutist’ and ‘right’ at all times – or fearing being wrong – being less intimidating or stopping wanting to ‘impose’ myself onto others – being less attackative or stopping fearing being undermined or ‘proven wrong’ by others, being less self-infatuated or learning to question my principles through trial and error – and stop being arrogant or stop seeing ‘my way’ as ‘the only way’ to live life – which is how I can agree I ‘felt’ within myself while sharing experiences, knowledge and information in my YouTube videos for example – and how that is definitely something I continue to work on in being more ‘chilled’ about things, which has proven to be a physical process of literally relaxing, not being as ‘tense’ and ‘anxious’ and ‘rigid’ in my expression, but to allow myself to actually ‘breathe’ and be more in my body as I am communicating and expressing with others.

That way I took criticism to really look at myself and test out a few changes that I can now reference have in fact been very supportive within my current life and the way I relate to others and how genuinely enjoyable it is for me to ‘be me’ currently, whereas before I would still feel like being in a constant battlefield where anyone was an ‘enemy’ that I had to watch out my back for and be constantly assessing ‘who was out to get me’ type of thing, lol, yes like living ‘war’ mentality within me, all because of mostly fearing criticism… man, have I limited myself so much because of this and it’s not like I am ‘completely over it,’ nope, it’s still a point to continue walking but here I’m sharing some distinctive differences around it.

Even recently someone came at me with quite a nasty kind of defamation and twisting of information about something I once shared with them, and for a moment I could notice there was this reaction coming up until I forced myself to re-read and see how what was being said was a plain attack, with no validity or veracity to it and how the intent was mostly to – sorry for the words – but spread shit about myself. I was able to then cross reference ‘who I am’ in the face of being criticized, judged in this particular way, understand the person, their possible context and starting point for it, self forgive the initial ‘knee-jerk’ reaction and then let it go, because there was truly nothing to ‘learn’ from such trolling.

Back to Ido Portal here, I can relate to what he says in what he once believed he wanted to be which was ‘to be liked by everyone’ which I also really tried hard to do before – and now I realize that it’s not about being ‘accepted’ or liked by others, but simply be myself, developing that stance of ‘this is me, this is the new me that can stand by my words, that is aware of what I say, do, decide to act on and then whatever ‘heat comes at me’ I can take the criticism, work with my reactions if there are any, take the considerations as constructive feedback and keep moving on’ which also exists within a humbleness of being open to learn from others, to learn to question my own ‘tenets’ and be willing to hear different perspectives and ways of living life, which lol, was quite a difficult thing for me to embrace some years ago, but it’s cool to deliberately be challenging myself within that.

As Ido says, critics, trolls, haters usually don’t provide feedback from a practical ‘walking in your own shoes’ point which means they usually lack understanding of the process that it takes to be/become/express/do what one does, and within that it makes sense to obviously discard criticism that is not at all considering the time, the practice, the trial and error, the evolution, the changes, the adaptations that any point of creation or change involves. As he says, it’s not to avoid criticism either but to embrace it for growth and self-development – which ultimately it is so, it’s about having a ‘mirror’ of sorts wherein we can reflect back to ourselves to see how is it that what we are sharing is being received by others, and to me that’s something really precious in life, sincerely, because that’s what I personally enjoy about being a human being, where I can learn about myself through others, I can learn new things, new ways, new approaches from others and in turn also get to hear or read how other people have benefited from who I am, what I am, what I share, how I share, how I live – I consider that that’s already one steps into ‘making an impact’ on someone in a supportive manner.

Of course I am aware how I have probably also impacted people in and for all the ‘wrong reasons’ or ‘the wrong way’ as they say, but then it would also become an opportunity for them to question certain things, to maybe ‘snap’ themselves out of a certain expectation and be confronted with a more harsh, direct and ‘challenging’ point of view which I can now relate to as ‘who I was’ in those old YouTube videos that I certainly have to stop being ashamed of myself and understand within the context of who I was at that time, at that moment in my process and ultimately see that it might have assisted others to ‘check themselves’ if they felt affected, insulted or plainly attacked by whatever I said – that will be my part to take responsibility for, where I wasn’t being clear within me when sharing, where I deliberately wanted to attack ‘the perceived wrong side’ of things and where I wasn’t truly embracing ‘both sides’ as myself, because antagonism has certainly been one of the main ‘wires’ in my overall ‘wiring’ in my mind – and for that I’ve forgiven myself for not taking ‘all sides’ into considerations – and I continue to catch myself doing this and continue to learn how to practically embrace all sides, which is also quite an expansive, nurturing and fascinating process to me.

So, something I got from the documentary as well is how we have to have the courage to do things differently, to break our patterns, to decide to ‘stand up from the crowd’ not in an egotistical/superiority way, but to challenge the status quo and this begins with all the ways that we ‘share’ ourselves, which as it was recently mentioned in an Eqafe interview, we share ourselves all the time that we are around people, with words or actions, they all represent forms of communication and to me this entails both a gift and a responsibility that I have towards myself and so towards others to honor that ability, that capacity of understanding, of verbalizing, of moving, of doing that I can use as a constant point of expression, like constantly making sure who I am and what I do can become an ‘act of creation’ in itself – just like the one project I said I would do in terms of ‘becoming my own work of art’ and that’s truly then embracing our capacity as creators and authors in our own life.

In this chat I had with this friend yesterday, it was interesting to see how he considers this same point of responsibility towards himself as part of what he defines as ‘godly’ as ever present in everything, that ‘divinity’ if you will that exists within it all – which I call life – and as such it’s about taking responsibility for it/as it, honor it ourselves in the best way that we can. Of course the ‘ways’ to do it are as varied as there are human beings in this world, but that’s also what I’ve learned to see as unique and enjoyable, no two ‘human beings’ will have the absolute same ‘truth’ to themselves even if united by the same principles, it will always be different, unique yet always relatable to one another as ‘who we are’ towards one another.

So that’s how I’ve been walking a process to discharge my relationship to ‘criticism’ experienced in a negative way only and actually learn to embrace it, in my case many times being thankful whenever one comes at me challenging my perceived ‘truth’ or ‘righteousness’ because it’s not many people that dare to be so upfront with me either, and that’s something I’d like to challenge as well, because if anything I can learn a lot more from it in seeing who am I in relation to that criticism, discerning what I can use to learn, expand, grow and develop myself further and what is the kind of criticism that only contains reactions, projections with no supportive substance at all.

Another point I’ve learned is to take responsibility for my criticism towards others. If I am perceiving something is not ‘good enough’ and I have ideas of how to make it better, I am not just placing them out for ‘others to do and implement’ and leave the work-load for others to ‘do that for me,’ but I am learning to take responsibility/be in charge of my own criticism and turn it into a proposal for change and expansion that I can actively create and commit myself to contribute with, which is a way where one can take that stand of not only ‘noticing flaws’ and blaming or pointing fingers at others because ‘they are not doing it,’ but rather turn it into a self-empowering point of contributing to the cause, of being the one that does, acts, creates that which we can see is ‘missing’ within something or that could better things for everyone – now that’s quite a constructive criticism as well that leads to actions, doings, to creating changes for the betterment of something or someone, which is lined to sharing responsibility, to empowering oneself in such capacities as well and of course considering the benefit for ourselves and others in it.

Here also making sure that I am aware of ‘who I am’ within that criticism or providing such feedback, if I am doing so from a starting point of blame and disempowerment or if I am truly genuinely wanting to assist with something to better it, and that’s also something where I can only check within myself and how even if it may be perceived as finding faults or blame, I can only ever focus on making sure my starting point is clear, which also makes room for becoming more specific in how to communicate things in a way where one’s intent, starting point and contribution is clear for all people involved in such situation.

So, if there’s any reaction of disempowerment, feeling ‘not good enough’ etc. when getting criticism by others – or even within one’s own mind –  it’s definitely time to place it out on paper, write it out, using self-forgiveness to see ‘who am I’ or ‘what of me’ is being ‘hurt’ by it, where am I going into disempowerment, where am I actually believing myself to not be capable to stand this ‘heat’ of the moment and use that to strengthen ourselves, to identify our weaknesses and actively work on re-aligning ourselves within them to a version of ourselves that can learn to read/watch/hear criticism objectively and develop an understanding of ‘where it is coming from’ and discerning what’s supportive and what’s not – that’s something that surely takes some practice but as anything, we all start somewhere and the point is getting to actually Do it, that’s the difference, rather than just remaining wallowing in worry, concern, pity and disempowerment about it, and that’s why I also recommend watching that first part of Ido Portal’s documentary, quite a fascinating parallel to understand what it entails to change at a Physical level – and not only talking about exercise/movements here – but about who we are in our minds as well.

Criticism is a great way to challenge myself and as such, I definitely have open doors to it, I kind of crave it at times which is an imbalance as well lol, so I have to simply take it as it comes and use it constructively as I’ve explained in this blog today.

Thanks for reading.

Please take your time and invest in supporting yourself while also supporting Desteni/Eqafe providing this information/courses that I have benefitted tremendously from and without which I would not have been able to write my story as I did just now, and you can do so by getting self-support audios, all of which will enrich your life in many more ways than what I’ve just shared above, including Ido Portal’s input on several things coincidentally being echoed in the content of this material, which is quite a cool confirmation of how this physical process of self-change takes place:

• Exploring the Physical with Bruce Lee – The Future of Awareness – Par…

• Bruce Lee on Becoming Idle for our Idols – The Future of Awareness – …

• Who Are You When Challenged – The Future of Awareness – Part 91

• Debunking Self Beliefs – Back to Basics

• Introduction to Self Bullying and Self-Hatred – Atlanteans – Part 473

• Self Bullying and Self Hatred Part 2 – Atlanteans – Part 474

 

 

 

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571. Reinventing Myself

Or how to live the words creative authority to change that which no longer suits the person I want to be and express

I find it very interesting to see the kind of contradictions that I’ve been ‘subtly’ living in when considering that in principle “I stand for what’s best for all life, the real expression of life in everything we are and do” – however I found myself at the same time making of these statements a sort of rigid imposition upon myself in my own life, which at the same time ends up being a form of projection through which I would go judging the rest of the world as people’s lives and decisions that I would become aware of.

What does that mean? I turned these principles into a dogma for myself in my own life, where a dose of self-limitation and ‘self-denial’ ensued, where I just could not fathom myself being capable of ‘enjoying’ life and actually having a ‘good life’ where I can express and be ‘happy’ because of the belief that I somehow had to endure a ‘tough time,’ or ‘have it difficult’ in life, a form of self-imposed necessary suffering at the same rate that ‘most of the people in the world are experiencing’ in my perception, which I’ve explained in the previous blogs.

Though here I’m diving into this notion of authority and righteousness as ‘energized words’ lived through the idea of myself as a ‘virtuous person’ that lives in ‘self-denial’ and ‘self-limitation’ and perceiving that to be an ‘honorable’ example… now that’s the actual contradiction that I had been living in – still am to a certain extent – and that I have yet to completely breakthrough from as well.

For example, yesterday I was talking to myself  – yes I tend to do that when I want to clarify something that is slightly ‘bothering me’ or that triggers an underlying discomfort in me – and this emerged upon seeing that in reality when being with myself and others, I am quite an expressive person, I have no qualms in my personal interactions with others – yet, when it comes to looking at the ‘persona’ I’ve created of myself in social media for example, I definitely have limited my ability to express myself in sharing more of myself, my expression, my enjoyment, because of judging them as ‘vain’/vanity, not ‘important’ for the world, not ‘relevant’ or ‘selfish’ in some way, yet it is what I would actually like to start doing because that’s where I see the ‘spark of life’ in myself existing for the most part and that I’ve refrained myself from openly sharing about it because of seeing it as futile, no point in it, ‘too superficial’, and the list of judgments goes on… so what am I actually judging here? My own real and genuine expression at ‘others’ eyes’ in an environment such as ‘social media’.

I was reflecting as well on the role I created for myself  in my mind in the past years, creating or making of myself a personality that stands as a form of ‘authority’, that is very serious,  that does not ‘fool around’ with what I would judge as ‘menial stuff’, which is how I would judge others sharing more about their immediacy, their day to day living, being more vulnerable about it all – whereas I took myself almost as a ‘political figure’ that could not ‘reduce’ myself to that kind of sharing, which I am in realizing would in fact represent the vivid, tangible and more realistic form of change that can exist at this stage in our lives: in our day to day living, in the ‘small moments’ and the ‘details’ of our life experience that I have many times intended to share unconditionally – but! Myself as the ‘authoritarian persona’ that I’ve become would always reply back with words like ‘nah, that’s not relevant, that would be too vain, who cares? What’s the point of sharing something like that? It’s not going to change the world!’ And in that becoming my own limitation to sharing the kind of more spontaneous and uninhibited expressions which to me was a ‘no go’ because of fear of losing a certain idea of myself as this super-serious individual that is all about ‘politics’ and ‘world system change’ and forming a certain aura of ‘rigidity’ around me that I am frankly not able to relate to nowadays, because I have been significantly changing my perspective about life, myself, what I want to be, do and express and what I had ‘been all about’ before.

So! The word that came up yesterday for me was Reinventing myself, which is something that I’ve been doing while painting and seeing how can I start breaking through the ‘usual’ ways and stuff I painted before and not be afraid to entirely paint over something and start from scratch or ‘reinvent’ something that I had done before within a new ‘air’ or expression that I would have not defined as ‘myself’ or ‘my own’ or whatever else I would limit/define ‘me’ to be.

I’ve also seen how I was trapped by my own authoritarianism as a form of belief and rigidity as a ‘role’ of myself I have kept in my own mind. Of course it wasn’t anyone else but myself that did this to me, my own ideas, beliefs and perceptions of ‘who I had to be at the eyes of others’ and what my apparent ‘role’ in it all was… but who placed such tags/labels onto myself? I did! And so I realized how this ability to reinvent myself was also greatly inspired in the past two days by the interview How to Stop Overcomplicating Redefining & Living Words – The Crucifixion of Jesus – Part 106 wherein I got to for the first time hear the term ‘creative authority’ which means realizing that whatever I decide to live as change, I am responsible for it, for the outflows of my creation and embrace such change as entirely my own, my decision, my direction, entirely responsible for it – which is actually quite empowering and damn liberating. 

This enabled me to see that I was and had been the only one placing myself in a certain ‘rigid’ position within an ‘idea’ that I wanted to project to others about ‘who I am,’ which might have been relevant in the past years, but not any longer and I am frankly quite happy to be going back to my ‘roots’ which actually have to do a lot more with expression in itself and being my own ‘creative authority’ in it, to not limit myself into a particular ‘label’ or ‘type of person’ I believed myself to ‘have to be’ or ‘take on’ as a position, and instead let loose, let go of the ‘what will other people say if I am not appearing the same way I was portraying myself to be?’

It’s very interesting because before I would say ‘Nah, I don’t’ really care about what others say or think about me,’ but this point really opened up for myself to see how I was in fact still giving too much attention to ‘how others see me’ within the realm of the internet, social media, the ‘persona’ I became that I certainly was existing as in the past, but change is here and I cannot relate to ‘that me’ any longer. I can only take ‘what’s best’ from that persona I became and direct myself to reinvent me and defining what that practically means, what kind of expressions are integrated within me that I can realistically look at?

As I write this, man! There’s an actual like stiffness in my stomach area, very subtle, but there, like an experience of nooooo! Don’t do it! As if I was going to actually ‘lose’ something of myself, but I can only fear losing that which wasn’t ‘real’ in the first place, that which stands as a point of self-definition and so limitation in my own mind. Therefore it’s time for me to expand, to change, to diversify, to test uncharted grounds, to do what I had resisted doing without fearing ‘losing my ground’ or ‘appearing vain’ or whatever else I had judged myself to be if and when sharing something I defined as ‘non important’ within the context of ‘world change’ type of thing. So here redefining what I define as me walking my process of change and entirely taking it back to self, to consider me, my expression, the detail and subtle changes that I want to share about instead of believing I have to only focus on sharing particular kinds of information or ‘stuff’ that suits this idea of me within a particular idea/belief of myself as a form of ‘authority’ of sorts ‘towards others,’ instead of first standing fully as my own authority, creative authority.

I got to also talk to myself about the following realization: changing the world will not only come from politics or world-system change, real change will come from people like me that decide to get real about who we are, our expression, that decide to be vulnerable, to actually dare to express and live life in the way that we’d like many more to live it, to break-free from our self-imposed limitations as well and live fear-free, because that’s then what I genuinely would like to see existing in this world and that’s where I am aware I can contribute to in fact be an example – as a part of the whole – that can implement that in my life, with what I am, what I have, in my environment and let go of our own ‘limiting personalities’ for once and for all.

So what words do I see included in the term ‘reinventing myself’ at the moment? Spontaneity, freedom, daring to start over, ‘painting over’, taking risks, taking the unknown paths, comfort in exposing/sharing my expression, simplicity, being vulnerable, innocence, enjoyment in expression… and many more to come 🙂

I recommend checking out more about this ‘feel’ of words that we may be lacking when it comes to looking at ‘redefining’ words as explained in this awesome audio: The Consciousness of the Orange Clownfish

 

Thanks for reading

 

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

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• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

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544. Being Inadaptable as Self-Limitation

 

§  Continuing from: 530. The Secret Behind Attraction

 

When looking at this word I can self-honestly see that I have not yet lived ‘adaptability’ to the extent that I see I could. I may be living this word when it comes to getting along with people, but there is a particular aspect wherein I see I haven’t just yet learned to live this word. Upon looking at the word ‘adaptable’ what came up within me is that I still have allowed myself to be defined and conditioned according to the environment around me, specifically related to stepping out of my comfort zone in the polarity between ‘city life’ and ‘farm life’ or ‘rural’ environments.

In looking at the memories of where I’ve felt most inadaptable what first comes to mind is my ‘unbearable’ experience in relation to weather, where I’ve avoided extremely hot weather conditions and what emerges is this judgment towards heat and wanting to avoid heat itself, lol which I recently mentioned when chatting with some people about me going to a concert soon and they were suggesting things I could eat to have a good set up of food for the day, and I quickly responded that no, that’s not what I worry about but I truly worry about having to be an entire day under the sun… and there was no further comment on that lol where I then silently judged myself for possibly coming through as a picky-ghost that never goes out into the sun because of ‘disliking the heat.’

I’ve come to make decisions in my life based on wanting to avoid such heat and so making decisions and choices that can prevent me from having to be experiencing extreme heat.

I’ve sincerely seen myself as incapable of transcending such aversion to heat and it is a form of believing that I’m incapable of adapting to it and that it is one factor that can lead me to ‘give up’ on something because of being unable to bear the heat. This certainly is a self-sabotage pattern that previously I probably could have an option to ‘choose’ from in the sense of being capable of deciding to not live somewhere because I could be somewhere else where there’s less heat.  But currently I do see that if there is a realistic necessity or opportunity for me to relocate to a place where heat is extensive and the activity I would be doing in such place is what I truly want to do and where I see I can develop my potential and share it with others, I’d have no choice but to adapt myself to the heat and assist me in finding ways to best coexist with it, instead of making a decision to not go somewhere because of the heat itself.

Being in a position of elitism in this world is also part of how I’ve been challenged when it comes to adaptability – not that I am ‘rich’ but all of us having this kind of services and basic infrastructure in our houses makes us part of the few percentage in this world that lives well enough, and I had a ‘glimpse’ of what it was to truly not have these services at hand which created a great impact in my life.

In high school – in my Jesuit school – we were taken to a very impoverished community for only 4 days to live and do what the locals did for a living. They were the most challenging four days of my life because there was no toilet, we had to sleep on the floor, access to water was limited, we had to be working under the sun and generally this ‘pickiness’ emerged within me where I would simply remind myself that this was only temporary, that in no time I’d be back to my comfort zone – which also made it unfathomable to me how these people seemed quite content with their lives, were hardworking and could conform with not having all of the services that I’ve taken for granted and gotten so used to have immediate access to in my life. It did create an impact within me that led me to wake up and smell reality, which is part of why I then got so invested in finding solutions for this world. In essence, we should all get our ‘rural experience’ in school or in life in order to truly wake up from all the things we take for granted and that billions of people have zero access to.

In this ‘rural experience’ as it was called in school, I witnessed how others that I had perceived as more ‘picky’ than me had a much better way of adapting and being comfortable in such a basic environment, even getting to enjoy it – whereas I struggled a lot more to the point of feeling completely disempowered and having this ‘knot’ in my throat both from the sadness of seeing people live in such places to my personal interest of missing the comfort of my own home. There, I can say I also mostly failed at adapting to this environment, even it if was truly only for a moment.

When I lived at the Desteni Farm for one year, the heat aversion came up within me, as well as any other set of conditions that to me were ‘out of my comfort zone’ like having little access to going to the city, being surrounded with all kinds of animals all the time and how since I was a child I developed certain fears toward horses that I did get to face to a great extent there, but I know I ‘left off’ where I was barely getting to ground myself around them, so I still see and consider my ability to adapt to a complete farm environment as a challenge for my ability to adapt in such an environment.

I’ve also noticed that throughout my life I have been fortunately surrounded by people that I consider are very simplistic and adaptable to ‘any environment’ and so I learned from them as I shared such environments with them. Because if it was based on a family-influence, it is definitely not something I could learn firsthand from them because no one in my immediate family has been that ‘outdoors’ adventurer, even though my grandfather is definitely an ‘earth worker’ throughout his entire life, I am a victim of having the apparent ‘simple life’ in the city, separate from the rural life or country side type of lifestyle that I got to learn a lot from and appreciate in several ways when I had that one year experience in South Africa – though I still left with a sensation of experiencing myself as having to be constantly ‘coping’ with the weather and the environmental conditions, wherein I didn’t get to entirely adapt and truly embrace the environment, the weather and the routines in that place, even if I got to ‘do it all’ and push myself to work hard from day 2 of stepping there, I still could not ‘find my footing’ completely settled, and I do see that it has to do more with a set of reactions towards the weather, the lack of this ‘matrix security’ that a city gives you, and more so finding it a bit unsettling to live in such an area that was somewhat far out from the nearest town, feeling in a form of confinement at times – lol even if one steps out into an entire open space around – which proves this is entirely a mind-created perception and experience that I could see wasn’t ‘there’ in others, which led me to consider that it was only me that was having this kind of ‘issues’ with the environment, and yes I did keep it quiet and not really investigating it at the time, which is something I could have opened up to work on and transcend real time, so this is a cool feedback for me to not suppress things.

Within past situations of going to what I can define as ‘uncertain’ areas – which are trips or situations I can count with my fingers in one hand – I would notice others’ ability to adapt to the set up and be comfortable, start opening up with the locals, and be generally ok with themselves even if the setup of where we would be staying was ‘rustic’ or not having all the comfort or services I would expect. So, I’m grateful for learning from others and how they can have this capacity to make themselves comfortable no matter ‘where they are’ – again what I’m having in mind is more natural environments, rural environments, places out of any perceived ‘comfort zone’ that I’ve defined a city to be for me.

Therefore in my life, I do consider I need to challenge myself more in getting out of my comfort zone or ‘city bubble’, and as I write this, there’s this slight fear that emerges as in really wanting to say ‘nooo! I don’t really want to!’ but, that’s the way that I see I would be tested out in terms of being able to adapt living somewhere that is different from my ‘usual’ environment or context.

And this is definitely related to city and countryside type of situation because when I lived alone in Mexico City, I chose to be in a rather basic set up that I got quite adapted to even if it wasn’t a ‘great’ environment to be in, but somehow the notion of being in the city and being able to move around whenever I wanted and having the usual ‘city services’ gave me a point of comfort and security that of course one lacks when being outside of the city and dealing with the reality of life outside of the matrix bubble.

This is also some hard wiring programming in me since I was a child where I learned to fear animals, dislike ‘getting dirty’ in natural environments, having to ‘eat whatever is available’ instead of me being able to choose for myself what I want to eat and having to do work that I would prefer not doing related to specifically again, being under the sun for a long time, fearing not having water – which interestingly enough I went through for just one day in Mexico City and I could not believe how ‘hellish’ that was for me and how apprehensive I got about it as in being fearful about it even paranoid about it which I’ve shared about before in this blog, and it was barely a 24 hour situation…

All of that surely has led me to reflect on the impoverished situations that other people live in wherein there’s this comfort in my mind of thinking that ‘they have adapted to it, they’re used to it’ – but of course this is not common sensical to justify at all! It is something unacceptable that we allow billions to live in such situations and conditions – but unfortunately this is something that I cannot change alone, we all have to realize this and eventually gather to create solutions for the majority.

For now I have to first deal with my perceived inability to adapt to such environments or living conditions. And I find it interesting that this ‘adaptability’ is not related to ‘being unable to adapt to people’ – people are not the problem in my case, but my own reactions to an environment, a living setup, a set of weather conditions. And if I truly want to support myself, well I’d have to also take myself out of my comfort zone where the whole set up in which I live – even if it is very simplistic – it still has all the basic services and even nearby environment where I get everything that I require at any time.

And this is where the notion of having to ‘move’ somewhere else becomes like a slight sensation of fear in the ‘pit of my stomach’ which is all related to a fear of the unknown and a conditioning that has to do with all that I’ve described having experienced before – which wasn’t really ‘bad’ at all – but it all has to do with all the unresolved emotional issues I created towards these environments, which I will be opening up within self-forgiveness in the next blog, because I can clearly see right now how this is truly one of those challenging points for me where I feel quite ‘unsettled’ opening it up lol, which means it’s great that I actually can open it up for once and for all.

How I came up with this notion of looking at the word adaptable in relation to that person I created an ‘attraction’ towards was upon seeing the guy take long hikes completely alone in the mountains and grabbing just one backpack with some basic items needed to do it. I envied his capacity to be completely fine and enjoying himself with just a few items on his back and wander into un-charted territory like a forest or hiking up some mountains, because my thoughts immediately went in the direction of ‘what if there are wild animals, what if he gets stung by something poisonous, what if he runs out of water or food, where will he go to the toilet, how does he manage to sleep!??’ and so picturing myself fearing missing all of those things that I’ve defined as ‘my security’ and basic services/environmental infrastructure.

I see that the one of the reasons why it has been not yet possible for me to adapt is because I keep holding on to the consideration of a situation like that only being temporary for me, that at some point I’ll go ‘back to my comfort zone’ in a city, in a preferred weather environment and so not having to actually embrace my reality completely, which is really not a nice experience at all, because even in one’s imagination, it all becomes about ‘longing’ or ‘yearning’ to be somewhere else but where you are and this I found a very unsettling experience. Yet I was creating it myself based on all the judgments and beliefs I had about my inability to adapt to those environments and truly embrace them as ‘my reality’ or ‘my home’ in that moment.

I therefore would very much like to get to be comfortable and be adaptable in relation to these weather conditions and environments that I’ve defined as uncertain or challenging, and shed that layer of discomfort or ‘pickiness’ that I haven’t managed to let go of – which is for now existing as a memory only as well, because in reality, I have not been in such conditions or environments for a long time. Even when people tell me that they went to the sierra/mountains to spend some days in a little town, there’s a part of me that would truly want to experience a sense of comfort in the notion of going to those places and genuinely enjoy myself, but at the same time what emerges in me is an idea of discomfort, of fear, of uncertainty, of lacking services, of insecurity, of being ‘at the mercy of an uncertain weather’, of not having the resources ‘at my disposition’ as easy as I have them where I live, etc.

I also consider that I’ve judged myself and have secretly been embarrassed throughout my life for having all of these fears I’ve defined as ‘pickiness,’ because I have seen how for many people such lifestyles related to farm life or country side are a ‘dream come true’ but for me it has always been the opposite for the most part and I am glad I did challenge myself to live in a farm for one year, but it wasn’t enough to truly enjoy and embrace my reality, because I knew it would not be permanent and this also sets a condition of ‘tolerating’ or ‘coping’ with something for some time only, instead of me having applied the ability to truly embrace that context and environment regardless of it being temporary or not and work through my reactions in real time.

So, the point here is for me to work with the fears, the anxiety that emerges when considering the potential of living in a place like that again and working with the mental-stuff related to it, to at least recognize how I’ve built this experience of me being apparently ‘inept’ in those environments – and so stopping ‘vetting’ myself from making certain decisions in my life based on an environment, to get the ‘weather’ situation out of the list of ‘cons’ to make decisions in my life and then, there will also be such a thing as testing the real thing and getting to apply myself with the corrections and realizations that I will lay out for myself, and discover for once and for all if I can truly be directive in an environment that I’ve defined as ‘challenging’ for me to be ‘this comfortable and stable me’ as I can apparently be in a familiar or city environment.

Of course all of these are self-limitations I have to break through and change within me as I continue ‘processing’ all of these with self-forgiveness in self-honesty.

More to come…. Thanks for reading.

 

 

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