I'm Here for Me - Day 163

That was my "intention" for my yoga class today. Not really that I set that intention, but it was something I expressed to a friend right before the class as I was answering her when she asked for the fourth time how I was doing (she knew I wasn't just "fine"). The point of my saying that was that I was no longer going to accept and allow myself to be taken over by energies and thoughts and internal conversations about someone else or about some irrelevant situation. Like, that's not here, that's not mine. What's mine, I will face and walk. But the rest isn't mine and I don't have to carry it. I am here for me. I am doing what I see as best to do for me. So, not "dedicating my practice to myself" per se as yoga teachers might suggest sometimes. But dedicating myself to myself, my existence to myself, my choices to myself, in self-honesty and self-responsibility, and especially self-support.

My yoga practice has been "suffering" lately, as have many other areas of my life. I realized today that this is because I have not been showing up for myself in yoga or in other instances. Instead I have been bringing all my junk, all my baggage, all my energy, with me everywhere I go, hauling around all kinds of irrelevant reactions and hang-ups and road-blocks even while I am trying to do something completely unrelated, or even while I am trying to do something for myself, such as practice yoga.

So this was one of the coolest practices I have had in a while. Every time that I saw my mind beginning to get wrapped up in or around some irrelevant thought or experience, I brought myself back to my breath and back to the realization: I am here for me.

It sounds selfish. But one thing that I am learning, or is becoming clearer to me, in my looks at codependence, is how often I put others before myself. I do this most often, probably, in terms of my "mental attention" and energy. So that, even if there is no other with me, they are still with me in my mind, in my thoughts, in my reactions, in my internal conversations, etc. So that an experience that I have to myself by myself is taken over by this other person's presence in my mind. Now, obviously this other person is not actually inserting themselves into my mind. I am doing all of that. I am taking all of the many moments that I have to myself where I could and should be focused on whatever is in front of me, and instead I am devoting myself and my energy and my time toward certain thoughts, energies, reactions, and considerations that are not pertinent to me and are not pertinent to here, where I am.

I am here for me. I am here, for me and all as life. I am here for me, for me and all as life. I am here to support me. The things that I do, I do to support myself, so as to support myself in self responsibility and self honesty as what is best for all. When I am keeping another in my mind, there is no possible way I can do this. When I am keeping another in my mind, there is no possible way that I can support myself or be responsible for myself or ever have stability as myself. Because in this I am not myself, I am all kinds of personalities that are triggered when I think about that person. I am not here, with me, in the physical. I am abandoning myself to my mind and my systems of reaction.

One thing that I noticed too during my practice was how, in this presence with, for, and as myself, when I, for example, took rest: there I was. Often when I will take rest lately I will judge myself in some way, ridiculing myself and also projecting judgments out onto as sourced by others. So I saw in that moment of taking rest and being completely okay with taking rest because I was the rest and was not separate from myself within the rest, how I am almost never really within and as myself, really actually supporting myself and directing myself within the physical as whatever I need and whatever makes sense as a response to real actual experience.

Because: I am often or always judging myself. I am often or always judging others. I am often or always in my mind, considering others more than I consider myself, trying to make others feel a certain way, or otherwise existing atop layers upon layers of personalities, patterns, and characteristics that separate me from my actual self.

I also saw myself becoming wrapped up in thoughts about another person in the room, again not being here for me, not making my experience about me.

That was interesting in terms of the judgment point, too, because I saw how I might for example judge myself within a posture and then project that judgment outward, thinking about who can see me or might be looking at me at that time, and then believing that they are going to judge me and that I better adjust my posture in order to not be judged, or, better yet, to be judged very positively. And so I swing from judging myself to believing another is judging me to believing I can make another judge me highly to then being haughty within myself as I adjust my posture and believe that others will see it and think highly of me.

I mean I've looked at showing up for myself and I've looked at abandoning myself and I've been able to address these patterns thus far in the most obvious forms that they take. But now I am seeing again how these subtle experiences move and overwhelm me, taking me over because I have not directed them, until I am not really here for myself at all but am always in my mind with or about or focused on another. Or, if I am "with" myself, I am in fact against myself, judging myself even if only subtly, or blatantly.

So this practice was really cool because I was able to bring myself into myself and also see myself as I tried to slip away, and stop myself. It was a cool experience I would like to be able to expand to all of my living.


SO:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to the statement "I'm here for myself" as if this means I am selfish, within this judging myself and believing that I should not state this or should not try to live by this statement because it means that I am selfish and I should instead be here for other people or I need to add disclaimers about being here for myself as what is best for all or whatever and whatnot.

I realize that I am codependent and so for me to bring myself to myself in self honesty is for me to consider myself more in self-support rather than only or primarily considering others, and rather than making my existence about others. I realize there are other people who will need to adjust themselves differently in order to live in self honesty, dependent on their patterns and systems. I realize that the judgment that I have for myself in reacting to the statement "I'm here for myself" as selfish is a way to judge myself once again, and once again project those judgments outward with believing others might hear or read those words and believe I am being selfish, where here I realize that I have seen others as selfish when they have focused on taking care of themselves, because I have thought it is more important to take care of others.

I realize that when I showed up to yoga today with the "intention" "I am here for myself," I felt very free and capable and open and welcoming and welcomed and I felt less anxious and more free to talk to others and share myself and interested in getting to know other people too and generally more open and less closed off. I realize within this that by greeting other people with kindness and warmth, as I would like to be greeted, this changed my experience and my experience became one that was positive and welcoming, by being welcoming of others, also by showing gratitude for the community of other people because here I am beginning to see, realize, and understand how when I show up for myself, when I am here for myself, I am no longer expecting anyone else to show up for me or be here for me, nor am I making my experience contingent on anyone else: when I am here for myself I am my own responsibility and my experience is my own responsibility and within this I am free and open and capable and also ready and prepared to adjust and adapt to the reality around me.

I realize that I must be here for myself all the more because the job that I work is stressful and requires that I be ready and prepared to adjust and adapt to the reality around me which is to support others with their own ups and downs and their own strong reactions and to be a pillar of support and I cannot be a pillar of support if I am not first supporting myself by showing up for myself, knowing myself, understanding myself, and taking care of myself, also caring about myself.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to the point of "I'm here for myself" with judgment that it is selfish because I see, realize, and understand how being here for myself is what assists and supports me to live as what is best for all.

I commit myself to continue to assist and support myself with the "intention" or "mantra" that "I'm here for myself," continuing to define for myself what this means and what it feels like to free myself from my own chains of holding myself down and back with the irrelevant energies that I carry with me everywhere. I commit myself to continue to look at and investigate and define and  live out self-support and showing up here for myself, not abandoning myself, but instead living within and as myself, my whole self, because I see that this is the only way to take responsibility for myself, and this is the only way to live as what is best for all.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself at almost every turn, judging myself nearly constantly, judging myself to such a degree that I have gotten so used to it that I have not even really realized how much I have judged myself, and how much those judgments spill out of me and onto or against or as sourced by others, so that what is mine becomes someone else's because I have not been responsible for myself in my own self judgments because judging myself has become such an automated process by which I keep myself enslaved within my mind.

I commit myself to watching and trying to identify even the most subtle judgments I have against myself other others, positive or negative or neutral, because I realize that judgment is a point of separation and within judgment I am no longer one with and equal to that which I am judging but am instead separating myself, creating myself as one with and equal to the judgment, and within separation through judgment I am of course not able to be here for myself because instead I am here against myself or against another and within separation through judgment I am not able to see what is best for all or I am not able to see what makes the most sense within the physical because within separation through judgment I am within and as my mind in separation from what is here and so I am not able to accurately assess what is here nor move and direct myself within what is here in common sense as what is best for all because instead I am stuck in the point of judgment.


I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to be here for me and support myself unconditionally, because I realize that it is within this that I do not give to myself that I experience all of the energies that I experience including anger, depression, anxiety, self-judgment, self-doubt, elation, sadness, apathy, and so on and so forth. I realize that if I do not start now to be here for me and support myself unconditionally, I will continue to torment myself within those energies, and within the most extreme instances of those energies I really lose control of myself, and within a loss of control of myself I do not trust myself to behave in a way that is best for me or best for all. I realize that I face a very dark darkness sometimes within myself and it is only through being here for me and supporting myself unconditionally, embodying myself and unifying within and as myself as life, that I will be able to face those darknesses without giving myself over to them. I commit myself to continue this process of being here for me and supporting myself unconditionally and knowing and understanding myself as what is best for all.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to accept and allow myself to participate within and as thoughts and energies, subtle as well as obvious, that do not support me and do not support my stability. I recommit myself to stopping these patterns and reactions and energy creations when and as I see them. I stop, and I breathe, and I realize again that I am here for me, I am here to assist and support myself to be stable. I am here to assist and support myself as life as what is best for all, and it does not assist or support me to engage within and as those energies.