Self as "Artist" - Day 98.2

Watercolor pencil drawing I have tried (& failed) to recreate

Here I am sharing from a DIP Lite assignment from a few weeks ago.
Relevant posts:
Art & Process - Day 98

Art & Money - Day 98.1


Memory:

Remember times when I have been very prolific in making art and feel limited like I cannot access that kind of motivation / focus / patience / ability again.


Self Forgiveness:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to remember times when I have been prolific with my art making or when I have made art that I "liked" and to then feel intimidated by this memory like there is no way that I can recreate the experience of being prolific or of making art that I "like."

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become intimidated by my own past as my memories of my past as my perception of my abilities within my past, and to allow this intimidation to move me such that I do not even try making art because I believe that there is no way I can recreate or re-achieve the level of prolific making or of making art I "like" as exists in my memories.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to limit myself within my art through and as my memories of experiences I had where I felt motivated and focused within my art, or where my "creative expression" was simply "flowing" such that I was able to make a lot of art in a short amount of time or make art that I was proud of or that I "like."

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to look at the art that I like or the experiences of art making that have stood out as "positive" and to ask myself WHY, why do I like that art, why was that experience positive? And to then within this investigate "who I was" within those experiences or within making art and instead have just believe that it was chance or fluke that I was able to make art that I liked or that I was able to be so prolific.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not be aware of myself within the process of making art such that I have believed that it is a kind of automated process that I cannot "access" and cannot tap into to repeat to direct myself to focus on my art and be motivated to create art that I "like."

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge my art as my expression and creation as either "good" or "bad" and that within this judgment I have stymied and stifled myself because I fear making "bad" art and I fear that I am "out of practice" and therefore cannot make "good" art anymore because I have not made something that I "like" in such a long time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that making art is an automated process inasmuch as I have never allowed myself to be aware of myself within making art to see how it is that I have actually achieved the results that I have achieved, to look at the actual techniques I have used and to teach myself techniques and to perfect my skill in actual awareness of what I am doing, and instead have just felt sort of "lucky" that I have ended up with some end products that I "like."

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear selling my art because I do not want to part with the art that I do not even as of yet understand, because I was not aware of myself within making that art and so looking at it is like a question mark in my mind, like how did I even manage to make that?

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I am a fraud of an artist because some of the techniques I use are like "cheating" like using grids and reference pictures. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I am "skilled, but not creative" such that I have limited myself within my freedom to express myself in free form pure expression, utilizing the skills and techniques which I have learned to use to express whatever is within me to express in each moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear making more art because I fear that it will show a decline from my previous art where others will obviously be able to see that my new art is obviously "worse" than my old art and therefore I will not receive the praise that I have received in the past for my art.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be intimidated by and feel pressured by the praise I have received in the past where I feel like I need to keep on making "better" and "better" art to increase the amount of praise I receive or at least keep it constant.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make making art about receiving praise.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear selling my art or even selling prints of my art because I have feared my ability to make more art, so it's like what's the point?

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to self identify and define myself as an "artist" when I do not in fact make art.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to all of these fears and intimidations within and as the thought that I should just stop making art, just let it go, not let it hang over me anymore as something that is a part of me, of who I am, or something that I will someday "get back into."

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create myself as an artist and my relationship to art as being directed by self imposed pressures to be a certain way, to achieve a certain pre defined "quality" of my art, and to keep up and meet the expectations of those around me that "I am an artist."

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to enjoy making art.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to push myself to make art because my art making has been encouraged and praised by those around me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make the starting point of making art outside myself as the expectations/opinions/praise of others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to limit myself within my beliefs of what I am capable of doing within art, of how I am capable of expressing myself, where within all of this I have built and constructed all of these walls to confine what art is, not realizing ever that art is simply expression, and that art simply is.

So I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be within and as a battle with myself as an artist as a battle with art and art making, so that I am suffocating my own expression through and as this battle, intimidation, expectations, self doubt, etc. and so that I am limiting myself within my ability to exist as life, as one with and equal to my art as my expression of myself as life, where within this battle with art I am fighting against my own ability to express myself and my own ability to simply be as life.


Self Commitments:

When and as I see myself thinking back on times when I was particularly prolific or art pieces I have made of which I am particularly proud or have "liked," I stop and I breathe. It is cool that I was prolific and it is cool that I have made art I have "liked," but it is not cool to let these memories limit me within my present self as who I am, and as who I am within making art should I choose to participate in this activity. So I commit myself to release myself from my expectations of myself to meet my perceived expectations of others and my self imposed expectations of "topping" my old art, of continually "progressing" and getting "better" where here I realize too that different people "like" different art and therefore being "better" is a subjective term.

When and as I see myself judging myself as my art, or judging my art, I stop and I breathe. I realize that my starting point in making art should be self-expression, one with and equal to what I create as expression of myself as life. I realize that within this there is no room for judgment. I commit myself to experimenting with the art making process from the starting point of expression and to suspend judgment to see what difference this makes in the process and the experience.

When and as I see myself struggling with myself as my self identification and definition as an "artist," I stop and I breathe. I realize that I simply am, one and equal to all as life, and that if I choose to create art then I am choosing to create art. I realize that holding myself under the self imposed identification/definition as "artist" is at this point limiting me and assisting me in creating pressure for myself to create art within the confines of what I have constructed to be "art" and "artist." So here I commit myself to investigating my relationship to and as myself as an artist, as a maker of art, and my relationship with art. I commit myself to investigating how I have constructed artificial definitions and confinements for art such that I have limited myself and created this pressure. I commit myself to breaking that down.

Art & Money - Day 98.1

The art I sold

Here I am sharing from a DIP Lite assignment from a few weeks ago.
Relevant posts:
Art & Process - Day 98
Self as "Artist" - Day 98.2

Memory:

I remember having sold an art piece about 4 years ago for a decent amount of money. I "miss" having this piece of art to myself, though, and so when I remember this art piece and the fact that I sold it, I have a negative/emotional reaction.


Self Forgiveness:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in regret when I think about having sold this art piece.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to, in reaction to this regret, have the thought that I would not like to sell any more of my art as originals because I do not want to "lose" them and I do not want to have to "miss" them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a dysfunctional relationship with the art that I create where I want to hold onto it as evidence of what I am capable of creating but then within other aspects/dimensions of this dysfunctional relationship, I do not participate in making art on a regular basis. So I have created an identity for myself as an "artist," yet I do not make art.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed my dysfunctional relationship with money to interfere with my experience of selling art, where instead of feeling "proud" of myself for having made something someone else wants to buy, and instead of using common sense and good business sense to make money to support myself financially through art that I create, and instead of using the money that I make from that art to support myself, I have instead resented that I sold art because that money basically went "nowhere" which is to say that I have such a horrible time managing my own finances that I have no idea what I spent that money on.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed my dysfunctional relationship with money to interfere with my experience of selling art, where instead of establishing within myself a reasonable price point for selling my art, I instead establish that no amount of money is worth selling my art because "chances are" that the money will basically just "disappear" within my reckless spending / mismanagement of my money.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed by and at the point of looking at my debt that I lose sight of how to diminish that debt and instead feel hopeless and helpless because I will likely never receive/earn an amount of money that will make the debt go away in one fell swoop, and so I do nothing to chip away at it bit by bit because I feel so overwhelmed and helpless/hopeless.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to bear the weight of money and debt within my relationship to and as myself making art as an artist.


Self Commitments:

When and as I see myself participating in a relationship/connection between money and art, I stop and I breathe. I realize that I create art for myself as expression of myself. I commit myself to this end.

When and as I see myself becoming overwhelmed at my debt and reacting within that overwhelmingness to where I feel helpless/hopeless, I stop and I breathe. I realize that within this reaction I am paralyzing myself and self-sabotaging wherein I am not supporting myself to decrease my debt but am instead reacting emotionally which not only is not productive toward decreasing my debt but also often has the effect wherein I end up spending money recklessly because "it doesn't matter," "the debt will never go away," and "I don't know how to manage my money." So when and as I see myself making excuses for myself in relation to my debt and being able to pay off my debt and appropriately manage my money, I stop and I breathe. I realize that these excuses are self-sabotage and are simply not true or do not have to be true if I direct myself to consider the ways that I actually practically can get myself out of debt. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to put myself in debt. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to continually increase my debt. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be reckless and careless with my money under a multitude of excuses and justifications.

I commit myself to taking proactive practical steps toward decreasing and paying off my debt. I commit myself to learning more about financial planning and management.

Art & Process - Day 98

Collaborative painting with an old friend

I did some painting today, so I am going to write a little about my experience, and then I want to share the DIP Lite assignments that I did a few weeks ago about art making.

The other day a friend from high school who was visiting came over and checked out my art space. He is a very talented artist that I have always admired. He was impressed with my set-up, and basically said there is no reason I should not be making art. I agreed with this, also reflecting on how I managed to paint even in my dorm room in college, where the space was much more limited than what I have now. Admittedly I have not unpacked all of my art supplies, which has been a hindrance, but there is no hindrance to the act of unpacking my art supplies, other than, of course, myself.

And actually there is no hindrance to making art, but myself. I have everything I need. I have far far more than I need. There are people who make art with whatever is around them, gluing paper with their spit, drawing with dirt or rocks, etc. -- there is no substantial excuse not to make art, if it is what I want to do.

I got into some of the whys for my resistance to making art in my DIP Lite assignments, so you can read that there if it is a topic of interest.
Art & Money - Day 98.1
Self as "Artist" - Day 98.2

What stood out to me today though, reflecting on how there is nothing stopping me from making art but myself, how I am actually totally free to make art, how, here I am, making art, and it wasn't even on my "to do list," is that the same is true for this process, and for supporting myself. The only thing in my way is myself, my judgments, my self imposed limitations, my resistances, my beliefs, etc.

I got some cool support on the forum the other day where Marlen said this:

...process has changed quite a bit since then in terms of the specificity of how to apply the tools, but that shouldn't change the starting point to be unconditional and will yourself to simply self forgive the voices in the head/ the thoughts/ the future projections and so forth and commit yourself to re-establish your starting point in process every time, every day realizing that this process that you walk is your decision to support you and that whatever judgment you have about you or expect to get from others is only you judging yourself, so: if you're here to support You, then who is the one that must first stop all acceptance and allowance of self-judgment? You.

Thanks Marlen.

Tonight I finished a painting that I have been working very slowly on for months. I would have just added dabs and lines here and there and called it a night, except that I basically told myself there was no reason not to do more. In fact, there is no reason not to finish it. It has been "hanging over my head" so to speak, where every time I look at it I feel guilty or ashamed that I have not finished it (in part because it is for a friend, and she has been waiting for about 3 months at least for me to finish it). I also don't feel like I can/should work on anything else while this is still in the works.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to create a relationship with my art and this painting in particular of resistance and self judgment, believing that it is not worth finishing because I do not "like" it and also thinking that "maybe I can just half-ass it to get it done since my friend will probably like it either way, or if she doesn't, so what?" I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to really put myself into my art as my self honest self expression and exploration. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to develop a dysfunctional relationship with art, art making, and myself.

Back years ago I would sit and complete a painting or drawing in just one sitting, just a few hours. That has changed a lot, and my relationship with making art has changed a lot, or maybe not at all but has just taken the expected course from where it used to be based on all the beliefs and judgments I have always had about myself in art making.

The point here being that every move I make is my decision, and all the judgments and beliefs in my head are mine, and no one else is going to make art for me, and also no one else is stopping me from making art (in fact many are supporting me in this, although no one else but me can actually follow through on the actual making of the art). Likewise, no one else is going to support me for me, no one else is going to stop the thoughts and judgments that go through my mind, and no one else is going to walk this process for me. No one else, either, is going to stop me from walking, or is even in a position to stop me -- I am the only one who can stop myself: stop myself as my mind, or stop myself as my process. So I am here for me. I move myself. Any limitation or resistance or judgment that comes up, is me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place limitations on myself for my ability to move and direct myself in multiple areas of my life, such as art, and including this process here with desteni.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to trust myself, that I have accepted and allowed myself to look outside myself for guidance, for indication of "right" or "wrong" or like "you're getting warmer/colder" in terms of directionality and being "on track" -- expecting judgments from others one way or another and trying to move myself according to my perception of these judgments rather than seeing for myself in self honesty what is "right" or "on track" and allowing myself the time and space within this process to do so, all the while, trusting and supporting myself, exploring/investigating/excavating myself, finding myself while also being myself.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to have my starting point be ME as my self honest expression, exploration, and discovery of myself as one as equal as life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold onto and continue to create judgments about myself believing they are what others think of me. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to care what others think of me, even just as my perception of what they think of me, rather than caring simply about what I can see in self honesty, supporting myself unconditionally.

My friend and I had several discussions during his visit about art and the process of making art, and what kept coming up for me was this differentiation between the starting point being unconditional self expression, and the starting point being the end-goal, as what one wants the art to look like, or trying to align the art with something else that already exists or some preconceived notion of what the art should be. This has been my "problem" perhaps in my art, which is not surprising as it has also been my "problem" in myself -- not allowing myself true expression in self honesty, but always looking to how I can please and fit in with others, trying to estimate what it is others want from me and moving myself from that starting point as a kind of end goal.

And that is what I noticed actually the first time that I painted after starting with desteni, when I first started this painting I have just finished, where it felt much freer, less judgment, more breath, just moving my hands and creating art as a free self expression. It was cool. And admittedly, intimidating, and a little scary. It didn't last, because I didn't allow it to last. I snuffed it out.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to be intimidated and scared of the freedom that comes with self honesty and self expression, like a wild animal that has been locked up all its life and no longer knows how to be free. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to lock myself back up, snuff myself out, stifle and suffocate myself.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to realize the importance of starting with myself in self honesty, of really gutting myself out, because I am all I can gut, and no one else can gut me. I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to embody myself and trust myself and move from within and as myself. I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to BE myself.


I commit myself to making art as self expression and as learning to trust my expression and my ability to move myself. I commit myself to making art with the starting point of expressing myself, creativity, and experimentation. I commit myself to making "mistakes" and realizing there are not really any mistakes in art. I commit myself to giving myself the space to learn and grow in art, realizing that this is a way of understanding myself and is a part of my process.

I commit myself to using the process of making art to learn about the process of myself and writing myself. I commit myself to further realization and understanding about how I am the only person here who can do this, or not do this. I commit myself to stop floundering and either choose to sink or choose to really swim. I commit myself to letting go of the judgments, or writing and writing and breathing and writing until they are gone.


I am going out of town tomorrow for a few days, and am not sure if I will have internet access to be able to post (I think I will, but perhaps I will simply not post anyway). I will post my DIP Lite assignments about art in subsequent posts just to keep this post a little cleaner.

Having Things "My Way" - Day 97

For this post there are two particular situations in front of me as I write, but the words here could be generalized to a pervasive personality I have developed and lived of wanting to "have my way" and wanting to influence/be in control of outcomes and consequences, even in terms of simply giving advice or my opinion.

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Admittedly I am the youngest child of 3, and the only girl. My mother has actually told me I am her favorite. Obviously there's a lot more within my family that has contributed to who I am, but I know I have gotten special treatment as compared to my brothers, and so I can see how this, along with other familial dynamics and events, has been a big factor in the creation of this personality.


I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to take advantage of the special treatment I was allotted by my mother growing up, where I was given special privileges, care, understanding, and trust as compared to my brothers.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to see this as normal and the way it should be.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to investigate how this dynamic has influenced who I am.

I commit myself to investigating specifically this dynamic and how it has influenced who I am, along with specific memories within this, and also in terms of my beliefs about myself about being "young" and "a girl" where I have believed myself to be inept or powerless, needing assistance outside myself, wanting my brothers or dad to protect me, wanting my mom to do things for me, etc.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to always want things "my way."

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to always want things "my way" even when "my way" is not necessarily "what I want" because I do not know what I actually want, or even what I pretend to want because I am so ambivalent, because "what I want" is often not self-honest, and I often do not ask myself self-honestly "what I want," and I have yet to fully realize and understand that "what I want" and "my way" are not what is best for all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to have my hands in the outcome of events or situations, where I want to have control of the outcome and some influence over the outcome, where I will argue or fight for a specific outcome because I want to control, or I want to be right, or I want the satisfaction of like "winning," without ever stopping to ask myself what I want in self honesty aside from my ego or my need for control, or what is best for all.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to be honest with myself before moving myself, such that I will move myself from a starting point of my own self interest, which I realize is also often heavily intertwined with my own self-sabotage, regardless of who specifically suffers the consequences of this sabotage it is sabotage against myself, because I am one with and equal to all that I direct myself to be and do and create.

So I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fight and argue for self sabotage and sabotage of others through my negligence of looking at what is really self honest and what is best for all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to influence and control outcomes and consequences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to behave impulsively in order to manipulate situations for specific outcomes that are like "my way" where I believe/perceive I will somehow benefit personally from that outcome either by seeing someone else suffer or by like "winning" because I have gotten "my way" or another person has bent to my will.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to see someone else suffer, and to want to implement consequences for another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want what I want, when I want it, which may be now, or may be later, but the rest of the world better be ready for whatever and whenever I finally decide.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to manipulate for specific outcomes that do not even necessarily affect me, or that would not affect me if I were to take responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to manipulate for specific outcomes that do affect me and others directly, but without understanding the full consequences of the outcome I have manipulated, and as such: sabotage.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to move myself without first understanding myself in self honesty and taking responsibility for myself first.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to simply be self honest within and as myself, taking responsibility for myself no matter the outcome of various situations or events or relationships or consequences. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to control these things within a belief that it will keep me safe or that it is "the right thing" or that if I do not do this, then something else bad will happen / I will lose something. I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to trust myself to support myself in self honesty and self responsibility no matter what happens around me, what other people choose to do, or what outcomes come to pass.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to trust and respect others to make choices and to face the consequences of their choices -- consequences which will happen whether I manipulate the situation or not.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to realize that the consequences which come to pass if I do not try to manipulate the situation will actually be more appropriate and natural and therefore greater learning opportunities than the consequences that will come to pass if I do manipulate the situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the consequences of my own actions such that I continually evade them by creating more, different consequences, some of which might have a delay in fruition and so I am able to delay facing consequences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear facing myself and facing my own consequences such that I try to manipulate others to face consequences or manipulate situations in such a way where I perceive that others will have to cope with the outcomes, but I will not.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be selfish and self interested, only interested in attempting to preserve my own ego and personalities or my own substantial gains.


When and as I see myself trying to "get my way" by manipulating situations, outcomes, or consequences, I stop and I breathe. I come back to myself in self honest consideration of my own responsibility to myself and all as life. Is it necessary that I participate in this situation? Am I participating from a place of self honesty? What do I fear if I do not have my hand in this? What consequences of my own am I evading / how am I not taking responsibility for myself such that I believe I need to manipulate the situation in order to continue evading self responsibility? How am I judging the individuals involved in this situation, and what of those judgments can I apply to myself? Who I am in this? I commit myself to asking these questions. I commit myself to really stopping and breathing and breathing through the urge and urgency to have my hand in outcomes. I commit myself to writing myself out to see who I am in self honesty and how to take responsibility for myself in these situations. I commit myself to trusting myself to support myself and trusting others to take responsibility for themselves, to walk their own processes to life whether they are aware that they are doing so or not. I commit myself to live by example, not by manipulation. I realize that this is what is best for all, and that what is "best for me" as "my way" is best for none.

Showing Up for Myself Part 2: Walking Through Points in Writing & the Writing Process - Day 87

This post is a continuation within a series:

Showing Up for Myself - Day 83
Showing Up for Myself Part 1: lONEliness - Day 85
Showing Up for Myself Part 1.5: Abandoning Myself through Participation in My Mind - Day 86

Now I am moving on to the next point within the original post, which is in regards to resistance through a feeling of overwhelmingness when facing the writing process and thoroughly walking through points. 

Today I listened to The Metaphysical Secrets of Imagination - Omnipresence of Self Judgment - Part 12 and it was very supportive on the topic of self judgment as well as resistance to writing -- highly recommended. 

I will copy and paste the section from the initial blog on which I am reflecting; feel free to skip it, or not, if you are reading along.

I feel a little bit overwhelmed at the great amount of points there are in front of me, that I've opened up but still need to explore more. I feel like I don't know where to start. Which is a familiar feeling, like for example last week I had to write a monthly report for work and I put it off because in my mind it was like some big thing and I was looking at the whole wall like how the heck am I going to get over that? Or like I just didn't want to put forth the effort to hurdle the whole thing, identifying the end point as my next step rather than the next step as my next step. Rather than simply taking the first step necessary and looking at what exactly needs to be done, then doing it. 

So within a feeling overwhelmingness it seems like a good plan/course of action to just start somewhere, and walk that first step with commitment and diligence. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate within and as a sense of overwhelmingness to all of the points that I see in front of me that I have opened up but still need to explore further. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel "disorganized" within this and like the organization of my writing and of myself is "chaotic" and like I am going to lose track of something, some point, and thus lose track of myself. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to experience points as "piling up" so that they are like a big pile that I must pick through and find what I have already written that is of substance. 

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to support myself by writing a point to completion to the best of my ability. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel disconnected between days such that I have not wanted to continue on points in consecutive days and that if I have begun drafting about a point on one day, when I try to pick it up another day I have not been as interested in it or I have felt like it doesn't matter anymore. 

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to actually really breathe through the process of writing myself out so that I can face this task with integrity and self honesty to actually look at myself and the points and write them out in a way that is self supportive and that actually assists me in creating change within myself. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become a writing automaton.  

When and as I see myself becoming overwhelmed by the number of points I see before me to walk, I stop and I breathe. 

I realize that my writing process is here for me to support myself within self honesty and self responsibility -- integrity. 

I realize that there is no point in writing if it is not self supportive, so I realize that placing pressure on myself to write every day is not self supportive. 

I also realize that even if I am going to write every day, I have only expected myself to write one blog each day, so here I can support myself to direct myself to select one point, and walk it, and do so with integrity. I have already seen how this is more efficient/effective and self supportive than allowing myself to write multiple points and not complete any of them. 

So I commit myself to walk this process day by day, breath by breath, and point by point within self honesty and self responsibility, thus integrity.

I will get into some new self forgiveness shortly, but of particular note in reflection on these above statements is that I have decided to support myself in the organization of my blog through taking some of the themes I have already seen emerging and gathering them into lists within a page on my blog so that I can see, for example, what I have already written on depression, resistance, migraines, friendships/relationships, tiredness, money and money management, etc. So I am working on compiling these lists into a page which will be linked at the top of my blog as reference for myself or anyone else interested in reading on these topics.

I also know that there are probably some points I do not particularly want to see. I'd like to think they're moot because they aren't right in front of me anymore; they've sort of "passed." But not really. They're still here. I'm just ignoring them, and they aren't yelling as loud. So this may well be one of the biggest contributing factors to my current state.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to run an energetic experience through its course and then when it is "over" to believe that it is really over and that there are no residual consequences which are influencing who I am as what I have just accepted and allowed without stopping or seeing or investigating myself. 

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to write out points as they come up even if only privately for myself. 

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see myself privately so that I can at least see myself in that way but have only allowed myself to support myself publicly -- which is great, but paramount here is self-support, and if I can do this with greater stability and integrity in private, then this seems very necessary. 

So I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to write for myself in self support purely and absolutely, no matter the platform. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore certain points because I have not wanted to own them, I have not wanted to admit to myself or anyone else that they are mine, that they are points I have accepted and allowed myself to create and experience. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be ashamed of these points, not realizing that these points are only who I am if that is what I accept and allow, and that within facing/writing the points, I am no longer accepting or allowing them as me. 

So I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to self sabotage through my shame of various points such that not only do I not release myself from the points through writing, first owning them and then rejecting them, but I also am thus directing myself in such a way that I will have to face the points again, and that the consequences will still be experienced within me.  

When and as I see myself avoiding facing or writing about certain points, I stop and I breathe. 

I realize that it is okay for me to write privately if this is helpful in actually writing -- many people do this and it makes perfect sense because the whole point of writing is to support myself, sharing is simply what is done for transparency and for sharing for the benefit of others. 

I realize that ignoring points and denying ownership is like tying myself to the points so that they are not only mine but are ME as who I am within accepting and allowing them to continue through my negligence and ignorance of them. 

I commit myself to supporting myself through energetic experiences and points to which I have an experience of shame through private excavation of myself, which will not only support myself within these points but also support myself within building self trust and feeling safe within and as myself to be a point of stability for myself, to provide myself with self support through writing, and to "show up" for myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sit down to write physically but within my mind I am thinking about what I want to do instead, or what I plan to do after I write, so that I am not really present or with myself, but am within and as my mind.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to direct my focus, attention, and energy toward seeing myself and supporting myself when I sit down to write.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel obligated to write, and to write from a starting point of that obligation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to just want to "get through" the writing process so that it is done and I can say that I did it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sort of "hold my breath" through the writing process such that I experience a kind of relieving "exhale" when I finally post, like I can finally breathe again.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to breathe through and as the writing process, with myself, in self support.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create this relationship with this writing process where it is like a chore and something to get through and a task during which I do not allow myself to breathe.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to assist and support myself through and as my breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel chaotic in my writing, and like I am going to lose track of the strings of topics and points that I have written on, feeling overwhelmed at the massive amount of content I am producing, and plan to continue to produce, so that I feel stifled and like I have to "wade through" it all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hoard blog posts, both finished and unfinished, and to sometimes hold onto one and not publish it because "what if I have a day where I really don't want to write, and then I can publish this one then instead?"

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to walk points as they come up.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to like "jot down" just a few sentences about a point that arises with the intention of expanding on it later, not realizing that the point is here now and so it is now that I can see it and now that I can support myself through it -- even in cases like when it is a general point that perhaps I am not presently experiencing but I am remembering that I have and often do experience, the moment that I am jotting it down is a moment where I see it, so I should really write it to the best of my ability for myself, not just "jot down for later."

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to realize that when I write blog post drafts, I am still writing, and although there is often some mind energy that is creating a resistance to completing and/or publishing those posts, I am still writing for self support within them -- in fact if I let go of the pressure/obligation to publish then I am left with only writing for myself, which is all I should be doing in the first place.

So I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself within the writing of these drafts, believing that a writing session is only "good" or worthwhile if I have published it, thus not allowing myself to have self support within self honesty as my starting point for writing, but again almost always having the intention of publishing, the end result, as my starting point.

So I commit myself to releasing myself from the above self judgment and to instead see and utilize my blog draft writing as self-supportive writing of myself in self honesty, releasing myself from the pressure to publish within my ability to see myself clearly and self honestly, because it is within this pressure as this obligation that I have created the resistance in the first place -- how very counter productive.


Over the past 2 days since writing these reflections I have actually taken opportunities to write out points as I see them coming up, and to write really just for myself in self support, without the starting point of "writing a blog" to give a day count and to be able to check this task off my list. It has been really interesting so far and I am grateful to now see this use for the tool of writing where I can support myself in the moment of a reaction or in the moment of whatever it is that I am seeing in myself, and can support myself through that moment through writing. Today in particular I had a point of reaction and I was able to stabilize myself relatively well as well as discover, or perhaps rather admit to, many new things within that point that I had never allowed myself to fully see/admit in previous writing. The stimulus itself helped in seeing these things too, I'm sure.


Alright, so tomorrow I am thinking I will skip the weekly reflection and instead move on to the next point of this original post for this series, which is my commitment to read at least 3 JTL blogs per day to support myself as well as this community. But, we shall see, perhaps instead it shall be something else entirely! 

Seeing, Realizing and Understanding for, as, and by Self - Day 56

For much of my life I have participated within and as a personality of "therapist" or "helper" or "person who can help others see (what they should do, how they should be, what choices they should make)." Sometimes this assertion and insertion of myself and my opinions has been requested and sought out by friends and family. Sometimes, however, it has been unsolicited. In many of the times I would see that the other person might seem to benefit from the conversation wherein I shared with them my perspective of "what they should do" (of course this perceived benefit may have merely been a projection of my ego state of being a "good helper" and "having the answers"), but nonetheless there have been many times when actual change within the person did not manifest, which is to say that they did not choose to apply my "teachings" and went about living their life as they saw fit. Also sometimes my insistence on sharing my perspective has actually become a point of conflict in relationships to where I was basically telling a person what I thought they should do without any regard for what they thought they should do and the fact that they are walking their own process and must make their own choices. So in all of this I have almost always been invested in the outcome where I have attached myself to a desired outcome in what the other person decides to do with the "assistance" I have given them.

I have become increasingly aware over the years how my approach in these instances sometimes is experienced by others as abrasive. Even in an approach of simply asking another questions which might assist them in coming to their own self-supportive conclusions, I have been told or have otherwise realized that I am often asking these questions with my own answer in mind, and thus the questions are "leading" with the expectation of the other person reaching that same conclusion, and within this I have been informed that sometimes others experience awareness of this expectation to where they sense that I have this expectation of them and feel pressured to come to that conclusion or feel like they are wrong if they do not come to that conclusion. It has also been pointed out to me that I will make this expectation all the more obvious by continuing to ask questions beyond their answer if their answer is "wrong"/not the answer I "wanted to hear." So here again it is obvious that even in the act of attempting to assist/support/help another, I have my own self-interest in mind as my starting-point as a way to feed my ego within feeling "good" about helping another and feeling "smart" for having the best answers for their problems.

I can also recall a great many times in my life when I have received advice from others, both solicited and non, and I have in fact become defensive within this advice or otherwise have not implemented it within myself.

My point here is that this exchange of advice is not always supportive, productive, or beneficial.

At one point in college I was living with two other young women, one of whom was my age ("T") and the other about 4-5 years older ("C"). At one point, I was in the process of making life decisions for T under the premise of helping her and creating friction within myself regarding my investment in T's choices or T's adherence to my set of life guidelines to where our friendship suffered not only because I was inserting and asserting my opinion but also because I was attaching myself to the specific outcome I had destined to be the one true "right" outcome rather than aligning myself with T as one and equal to where I would see and respect her as able to make her own decisions and walk her own process for herself and not for me. It was all very self-centered, among other things, such as interactions with my ego and pride and multiple personalities I have created for myself.

At one point, C pointed out to me that T needed to see, realize, and understand for herself (not these exact words of course), that I cannot direct T according to my will. This serves here as an example of advice that I received and rejected because I was so insistent on not only having and providing but in fact BEing T's answer/solution. And now I see why I received and rejected: I, too, needed to see, realize, and understand for myself that every individual needs to see, realize, and understand for themselves. C had the "wisdom" of having already seen, realized, and understood this for herself. Here she was trying to bestow this lesson upon me by sharing her perspective (and only sharing it once), but when she saw that I rejected it and continued to insert/assert myself to the detriment of my relationship with T, she continued to embrace me and T as equal as life forms who have not yet seen, realized, and understood for ourselves various aspects of our processes. She let us make mistakes so that we could see, realize, and understand for ourselves, and she loved us unconditionally.

The strategy which C utilized here to assist and support me in my relationship with T is one that I have attempted to use to varying degrees of success and about which I have decided upon a useful metaphor, which is to lay information on a table and let the other person pick it up rather than forcing it upon them, forcing it into their hands, at which point it is much more likely they will reject it / react to it. "Laying it on the table" allows the other person to see it and consider it and either leave it or take it, and also to come back to it later to pick it up for, as, and by themselves, while decreasing the likelihood that they will go into a reaction about it or engage within and as their pride/ego to the reception of guidance. It also safeguards against the fact that not every solution is best for every person or situation, and that the person giving suggestions does not know the entirety of the situation and thus cannot always offer the best advice. And within this metaphor and within my pattern of investing myself in the outcome of my assistance of others, it is then imperative that I remain unattached to whether or not the other person "picks up" what I have "laid down" such that I am merely sharing my perspective, "take it or leave it." So it leaves it up to the individual to take responsibility for themselves while still assisting them with perspective. Generally speaking this seems like a very effective way to communicate any kind of differing perspectives which could turn into conflict/debate/argument, since the only person who can change one's mind is oneself.

It is through my own process and also now reflecting upon the example that C set (laid on the table) that I am able to see, realize, and understand now for myself that every individual must see, realize, and understand for themselves and direct themselves to change themselves for, as, and by themselves.



I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take on a role/personality of "ultimate helper" and "knower" and "seer" when others experience "problems" that I believe I can answer.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to help others from the starting point of my ego and self-interest.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as an egotistical energy when and as I am helping/assisting/supporting others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, when I see myself helping another through advice-giving, hear what I am saying, "like" it, and then actually just like the sound of my own voice continuing to help this person, within and as the thought "yeah! I'm so smart! I'm so great for helping this person!"

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to invest myself in and attach myself to the outcome of my assistance/support of another to where I project expectations of what that outcome should look like within what the other person decides to do in response/reaction to my help.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that other people must see, realize, and understand for themselves and make decisions about their lives for themselves and face consequences for themselves.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that I must see, realize, and understand for myself and make decisions for myself and face consequences for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in the destruction/demise of friendships because I am so attached to my ego and the outcome of the advice that I give to others, where I want to possess/control others through and as my self-interested egotistical desire to be right and to have the answer.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to assist/support others from and as the starting-point of my self-interest and ego and that within this I have not accepted or allowed myself to align myself with another as one as equal as life and so within this I have not accepted or allowed myself to align myself with what is best for all and align my advice/support/assistance/help with what is best for all.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to give "advice," support/assistance/help as a suggestion but instead have given it as a command.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to, within and as my self-interest and ego, create a presentation of myself which is "abrasive" even as I am attempting to "assist," "support" and "help" another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I know the answer to another's problems and that from this even when I ask questions in an attempt to allow another to draw their own conclusions, I am asking "leading questions" with the expectation of the other person arriving at the same answer I have.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to assist/support/help/advise another from the starting point of self-honesty within and as what is best for all.

Perhaps all of this is relevant to and as why I have a tendency to become so defensive/self-protective when I receive support in the form of a differing perspective of what I should do?

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to hear and receive another's support/assistance/help/advice/perspective from the starting point of self-honesty as what is best for all and instead have reacted within and as my ego/self-interest/self-preservation.


When and as I see myself in the position of providing support/assistance/help/advice/perspective to another person, I stop and I breathe. I have a look at myself and who I am within this moment. Am I being self-honest? Am I aligning myself as one as equal as life with this other being? Am I respecting this other being as one as equal as life? Is my approach here what is best for all? I realize that if I am participating within and as my ego and self-interest while attempting to support another, then I am supporting no one. I commit myself to being considerate of all of this and of the other person as one as equal as life and to align myself within and as what I am able to share with another to assist and support another from the starting point of self-honesty and what is best for all.

Healthy =/= Thin - Day 50

Here is a growing problem, no pun intended.

Weight.

... Where do I even begin? Bullet points to the rescue:

• I "starved" myself in high school as a distraction from things happening in my family. When the situation improved, so did my approach to my body (I "cold turkey" stopped counting calories and restricting). 
• But during this time I indoctrinated myself with beliefs and thoughts about my weight and my value within my weight and how I should look and how much I should weigh. 
• So the urgency to distract myself with a preoccupation with my weight subsided and I was able to take a relatively more healthful approach to my body / worry about things besides my body (like college), but the thoughts and beliefs became ingrained within my mind to where I still believe and think these things, 7 years later. 
• For the last two years I have been losing significant weight as an "unintended" side-effect of becoming more healthy through regular exercise and better eating from the initial starting-point of a work morale competition for improving employee health which then developed into an interest in yoga and rock climbing which then developed into an increased care for my body and what I put in it. 
• I developed consistency within exercise and diet that for a variety of reasons has been relatively easy to maintain, not the least of which has been the "success" as proven by physical appearance as well as experience of myself within my body (increased energy, stamina, strength). 
• When I first began to lose weight at the start of this process, I would look in the mirror and see that I had lost weight and I would be pleased, and then FLASH right along with/immediately subsequent to that pleasure I would be bombarded with all of the old thoughts and beliefs that I had indoctrinated into myself in high school where I would look at parts of my body that were still "not good enough" or where I still needed to lose weight, or memories of things my mother had said to me about my weight. 
• And so in once again seeing my body get smaller, suddenly I would be IN MEMORY of those experiences where I would abuse myself in the mirror and where I would visually switch back and forth between seeing my body and perceiving my body wherein with seeing my body in the mirror I was seeing it physically and then my mind would switch over to perceiving my body and suddenly it would be bloated and disproportionate and in my mind in my perception/seeing of my body I would really literally fluctuate between these two images of my body in a matter of seconds, back and forth or sustaining in perception after initial seeing. It was alarming, kind of scary actually, to see how my perception of myself could change so drastically and so quickly when all I was doing was standing there, looking in a mirror. 

I forgive myself that, when searching for this image and seeing an image that said "skip dinner and wake up thinner," I accepted and allowed myself to become charged within this statement to where I wanted to enter a competition with myself to see how much weight I could lose and how quickly and how long I could go without eating or how little I could eat, effectively taking me completely out of the physical as the here and now as one as equal as life and into my mind into my fucked up game where I abuse myself, right back to who I was 7 years ago and now I see as who I still am within what I have accepted and allowed and continue to accept and allow. 

• Eventually that experience of myself in the mirror subsided and I consistently lost weight and my clothes became larger and I was consistently happier with my body. When the flashes would happen in my mind in my image of myself in the mirror I noticed them but I did not pursue/accept/allow the thoughts/beliefs any more than simply inasmuch as they happened. So their power subsided as consistent healthful weight loss increased along with healthful attitudes and healthy diet and exercise. 
• So here I have not had to really face any of what I created and then participated in within and as myself as my abuse of my body through and as my beliefs within and as my mind ever since I first created them in high school. 

Now fast-forward to now:

• For the last month+ I've been working at this new job and I haven't directed myself to exercise as much as I did before starting this job. First I noticed that my body became less toned, and tone was something I had already been striving to achieve/increase so it wasn't even yet fully satisfactory within my mind perception of my body, and here I am regressing. Now I have noticed the girth of my torso and arms increasing and some clothes being tighter or otherwise not fitting the same. 
• For the last week I've been eating quite a bit of ice cream every night, mainly because I have it and therefore I eat it... so there is something to look at just right here. 
• I notice that I feel really anxious when I'm eating this ice cream. I almost feel like I can literally feel the fat sticking to my arms -- not a new sensation, but recently increasing in incidence and magnitude. And each day I notice that I feel within my body and that physically as I move my hands over my body it feels fatter and flabbier. And then I experience a kind of anxiety where I think "I'm getting fat" and within this I feel helpless and hopeless because for some reason I believe this is irreversible and that I cannot intervene here to direct myself toward a "healthy" body. 
• But here I see that for me a "healthy" body in this statement is a "thin" and "toned" body, and so within this I see that there is nothing "unhealthy" about my body as it is now, although I can see that eating ice cream like I have been every night for very long would likely begin to be detrimental to my health. 
• And here I see that I am completely ignoring the need for a "healthy" mind within which I would not accept or allow myself to become anxious just because I have gained 5lbs or just because my body is changing. 
• And then within all of this I have for many years told myself that I am "cured" -- that, because I no longer live in the conditions where this all began, I no longer have an "eating disorder" or experience "disordered eating" or have a poor relationship with food or with my body. But I have also always known that I have created these beliefs/thoughts within myself especially through my deliberate participation in online "pro-ana/mia" communities when I was in high school and I have known that these beliefs/thoughts have remained at least "in the back of my head" throughout all of these years, and sometimes have come to the "forefront" of my mind to where I have been more aware of them and they have had greater directional influence over who I am, usually when I have experienced myself as "gaining weight" (which may or may not mean an actual change in the scale but means merely that I experience myself as fatter or flabbier). 

So I don't really know where to go from here. I do not want to hate my body and I do not want to hate myself for having my body and I do not want to separate myself from my body and I want to approach this from the starting-point of releasing myself from the power that I have given my mind over my relationship within and as myself as my body and as my mind.

BUT I also don't want to "get fat" and I also do still maintain and want to hold onto the "ideal body" that I have been working toward, to where I am not "ready" to release myself of this ideal because I still want it.

So there's like this tug-of-war of starting points/motivations. 

But one thing I can know for sure, to start, is that I am not in any way "unhealthy" in my body just because I have gained 5lbs. And so I cannot use as an excuse within myself that "I want to be healthy" and therefore I have to somehow restrict my dieting or exercise more or things like that. So that is a good place to start here. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to equate "healthy" with "thin." 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hate myself as who I see in the mirror as my body . 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to run my hands over parts of my body and to feel the fat and to hate myself for having this fat on my body. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see other women with toned arms or other parts of their bodies and to then hate myself because I do not look like them, but also within this I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to really look at and see myself as what I look like in the physical but only as what I look like within my mind to where I am not even actually physically comparing myself to these women but am only comparing my perception of myself with my perception of them. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to compare at all, though. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hate what I have and to desire what another has. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to view a body as a thing to be "had" rather than as what to BE as myself as my body in whatever form. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to distract myself from reality in high school when things were bad in my family. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to create, develop, feed, and sustain an "eating disorder" and a really fucked up relationship with food and myself as my body as a distraction from what was already really fucked up in my family. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to fully deliberately participate in the creation of disordered eating and a fucked up relationship with myself as my body within my mind. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to starve myself. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to count all of my calories.

I forgive myself that I did not accept or allow myself to feed my body the sustenance it requires to be healthy.  

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to exercise my body to the point of exhaustion and to the point that I burned more calories than I consumed. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to weigh myself 2-3 times per day and to become obsessed with numbers both on the scale and on food packaging. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, within and as my mind, deliberately morph and manipulate my perception of myself to where I looked for flaws in my body, hated myself for those flaws, punished myself for those flaws, and did everything I could to eliminate those flaws as quickly as possible. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to brainwash myself into having an eating disorder to serve as self-survival as distraction from what was happening in my environment. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, in the midst of what was already fucked up, create even more fucked up situations within and as myself, wherein I was not supporting or assisting myself within the environment that I could not control but was controlling my internal environment to match my external environment to where both were fucked up and I was deliberately fucking myself up. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that this is all a non-issue simply because I have not been facing it, because it has not come up, because I have managed to be "thin enough" that my mind has not raised any large objection. 

I thank myself that I was able to develop actual healthy habits within exercise and eating over the last two years, and I commit myself to use this as a foundation to continue on this path. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to still be motivated within and as a desire to be "thin" even as I participated in creating and maintaining an actually healthy lifestyle for myself. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react within anxiety and worry about my weight when I have only gained about 5lbs. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hate my body. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hate myself as my body. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and align myself as absolutely my mind in what I tell myself about myself and about my body. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to experience friction between wanting to be "healthy" (thin) and wanting to be healthy within and as myself, my body, and my mind. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to lose weight so that I do not have to experience the judgments within and as my mind about my body to where losing weight becomes the solution to what I am noticing within myself within and as my mind. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as a sense of "hopelessness" when I notice that I begin to gain weight or begin to lose muscle tone or strength, to where I then set myself up for an increase of that effect within hopelessness and helplessness because within these states I do not direct myself to actually do something about it toward the end that I desire of a specific physical appearance and also a physical experience of myself, to where when I am muscularly stronger I have more energy and stamina and am more capable of various physical activities, which I see as positive attributes for the enjoyment of life, but instead I exist within and as hopelessness/helplessness and within this I eat more or sleep more and then gain more weight and the cycle accelerates. 

When and as I see myself equating "healthy" with "thin," I stop and I breathe. I realize that this is not what healthy means, and that health has as much to do with my mind as it does my body. So within this I realize that by equating "healthy" with "thin," I am not healthy within and as my mind. I commit myself to really stop myself when I use this as a justification for abusing my body through my actions (or inactions) or abusing myself through my mind as what I tell myself about my body and about myself. I commit myself to aligning myself with the starting point of self-support in self-honesty and self-responsibility, as one as equal as life, within and as the starting point of true and actual health for my mind, body, and self. 

Points that I can see to expand on in the future:

• Separation of self from body
• "Ownership" of body as "object" to be "had" within comparison between bodies
• The disparate starting points of wanting to be self-honest and self-responsible within and as my mind, and wanting to be thin and achieve an ideal body image, and also the desire to find a way to have both. 
• Residual thoughts/beliefs indoctrinated into myself through my participation in creating these thoughts/beliefs so many years ago. 
• Why do I want to be "thin"? 
• How to support myself in self-honesty and self-responsibility and how to direct myself here. 

Week 7 Reflections - Day 48

Monday, May 27, 2013
Internalizing the Criticism of Others - Day 41

• In this post I noticed how, upon making a silly mistake, I projected & internalized imagined or remembered criticism from others such that I judged myself internally as well as externally.
• I realized that within this judgment I was not assisting and supporting myself to learn from my mistakes but instead to just judge myself and feel bad about myself and stop my self in that moment of the mistake and hold myself hostage there in judgment. 
• This topic also opened up the point of immortalizing others where I accept their criticism as true and immutable primarily because I have identified them as superior to me and incapable of making mistakes or of directing themselves outside of what is "right" or what is best for all. 
• So here I realized obviously that within this I am not existing as one as equal as life, nor am I identifying others as one as equal as life. 
• I realized that within this I have a tendency to place trust absolutely outside myself onto another without trusting myself at all. 
• I also realized in this post how the criticism that I receive from others is spoken by and therefore about them and that rather than holding onto and carrying with me the specifics of the criticism or the specifics of my energetic reaction to the criticism, I can instead look at myself within that criticism and look at myself within my reaction to see myself and learn about myself and adjust myself toward what is best for all and directing myself within self-honesty and self-responsibility. 
• I committed myself to:
• Be patient and gracious with myself when I make mistakes and to see these mistakes as opportunities to see myself and learn. 
• Stop myself from reacting to criticism and judgment of another and to let myself trust and guide myself through the moment through my breath in self-honesty and self-responsibility. 
• Continue to investigate and come to understand what it means to live as one as equal as life with all beings, and what it is to trust myself and take responsibility for myself. 
• Hear the words of another objectively and maintain a connection with myself as one as all as equal as life within and as my breath in self-honesty and self-responsibility. 
• Reflections:
• I think it will be important to open up more on the immortalization of others and thus the superiority/inferiority adept/inept complexes. 
• I see that in general through my process with desteni I am more able to trust myself and to not rely on others to tell me who I am except as who I am within and as my relationships to those people. So here in the face of criticism I am able to practice my self-trust and self-support as well as self-honesty and self-responsibility. As in every moment, really. 

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The Truman Show - Living Paranoia - Day 42

• In this post I opened up the point of paranoia specifically in relation to how I had identified myself with the movie "The Truman Show" inasmuch that I had experienced paranoia within myself where I would believe and tell myself that every other person had some "secret" about life that they were keeping from me, that every person could tell that I didn't know this secret, and that indeed some people were laughing at me and maliciously withholding this secret from me. 
• So here again I see a real lack of existing in and as myself as one as all as equal as life, once again placing myself as somehow inferior and inept and all others as capable, superior, adept. 
• I also saw how this paranoia is extremely SELF-CENTERED and SELFISH in that it implies that all of existence is created FOR ME in order to deceive me, that all others care enough about me and who I am to laugh at me and judge me constantly, when in reality, people just don't. So am I somehow gaining something from this paranoia in terms of feeling special? It seems as if this paranoia is purely detrimental and exploiting my weaknesses, but is it in fact also somehow bolstering a sense of self as special and important? Certainly the intense need for validation through this paranoia necessitates exclusive attention placed on me by others in order to reaffirm my self-worth and well-being. Might be interesting to explore more. 
• I committed myself to:
• I did not make any commitments in this post. 
• When and as I see myself participating within and as a paranoia that others know something I don't know and that others are keeping it from me and maliciously ridiculing me, I stop and I breathe. I realize that this simply isn't true and is all occurring within and as my imagination in my mind. I realize that this imaginary paranoia is separating me from the physical from life from myself as one as all as equal as life. I commit myself to return to myself through and as my breath, return to the physical, and continue to direct myself within self-honesty and self-responsibility. 
• Reflections:
• What is interesting to me now is to notice how part of all of this was that I feel/felt transparent and like others could see that I was empty, which is like "my secret," and so here now I see that I assumed all others had a secret they were keeping from me while at the same time fearing that others could see and had complete and total access to my secret. So that is an interesting new dimension of this paranoia to investigate. What does this have to do with a sense of privacy, and why? What other questions can I ask in relation to this? 

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Feeling Tired as an Excuse from Life - Day 43

• In this post I opened up about feeling "tired" and how I have often used tiredness and then sleep as excuses/justifications from participating in physical existence as living, as obligations, as responsibilities, and as being aware/responsible of myself. 
• I noticed how quickly and seemingly arbitrarily (not pertaining to physical rest or exertion) my experience of myself as "tired" or "awake/alert" could shift and therefore noticed how this experience is energetic and therefore how I create it and maintain/sustain/participate in it. 
• I listed some ways that I could create an experience of being awake/alert for myself as a solution to my experience of myself as tired and also as further investigation of how these experiences are my creation / I participate in them. 
• I committed myself to:
• Direct myself through experiences of resistance to life/living where I excuse myself as being tired or sleeping so that within directing myself I can accomplish tasks and take responsibility for myself. 
• Practice utilizing every moment of my day to the best of my ability within self-support, self-honesty, and self-responsibility. 
• Reflections:
• I of course am still frequently experiencing myself as tired. I downloaded Tired Eyes - Reptilians - Part 196 and have found it interesting and will likely write more on that at some point. 
• I can see how sleep is like another mini-death, like succumbing to fear, or like giving in to resistance, where I can use sleep to basically commit a momentary suicide through abdication of responsibilities and separation of self from awake aware life. 
• It will be important to watch myself in these points to ensure that I do not latch onto experiencing myself as "awake/alert" as ideals because these exist within polarity to experiencing myself as tired and so I cannot have one without the other, so I must investigate how to find a balance and how to direct myself through both. 

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Intent: "I didn't mean to!" - Day 44

• In this post I wrote about a realization I had about using "intent" as an excuse for outcome, wherein I have seen myself excuse/justify my behavior with the statement "I didn't mean it like that," or "that's not what I meant to happen." I noticed that within the knowledge that I direct myself even through and as my personalities/reactions/desires/emotions/thoughts/etc., and therefore the outcome is always on some level in some way intended by me inasmuch as there is either "a part of me" that really does intend that outcome or that I have abdicated responsibility to fully consider potential/probable consequences/outflows to see the outcome for what it is/will be. 
• We use intent/meaning in order to appease ourselves to make ourselves feel better for making a mistake or doing something selfish / out of self-interest/survival. 
• We often move from intent as a starting-point without considering outcome/consequence/self-interest when and as we identify our intent as "good." 
• We separate ourselves from the physical as our outcomes by claiming that our "intent" and thus "who we are inside" is different from "who we are outside." 
• I committed myself to:
• I did not make any commitments in this post.
• When and as I see myself participating within and as my "intent" and especially identifying my intent as "good," I stop and I breathe. I realize that intention is not enough and that my intention is sourced within myself within my personalities/reactions/self-interest and is not necessarily self-honest, self-responsible, and best for all. I commit myself to be self-honest with myself within my intentions, to adjust my intentions toward what is best-for-all, and to consider the consequences/outflow of my intentions as real actual outcomes which will be best-for-all. I commit myself to see myself as who I am in the physical and not who I believe myself to be inside my mind. 
• Reflections:
• Open up more about excuse of intent as reaction to criticism 
• Understand better how to align self-honesty with what is best for all, because at present I see self-honesty as simply seeing/knowing myself/my starting points to where I would say "within self-honesty, I can see that I do not actually care about a best-for-all outcome in this situation" or knowing that I am operating out of self-interest. Presently it seems to me that this is an appropriate application of "self-honesty" where I am being honest with myself in seeing myself honestly. So here there is a separation for me where self-honesty is not inherently what is best for all, but that best-for-all intention comes through a process of self-responsibility and self-commitments. So I need to investigate this further to understand these concepts. 

Friday, May 31, 2013

Participation in Self-Education through Desteni Community - Day 45

• In this post I opened up the point of actually reading blogs by fellow destonian bloggers, wherein I see myself opening up multiple blogs in multiple tabs in my browser to read "later" but then never or rarely actually red them. 
• I saw how by opening multiple tabs at once I was creating for myself an illusion of a very large task rather than assisting myself in breaking it down one-by-one and reading each blog one-by-one. 
• I saw how I often sit around and waste time, basically "waiting" for myself to direct myself, waiting for motivation to magically appear or for tasks to just magically be done, rather than actually directing myself.
• I committed myself to:
• Read at least 3 blogs every day, one of which I specified as a Psychologist's Journey to Life
• Read these blogs one-at-a-time, as I open them. 
• Direct myself within learning from and supporting my desteni community. 
• Reflections:
• I have only had a handful of days to practice these commitments and already have fallen. So I see clearly that I must continue to work on this, although I also see that it is probably a good thing that I have not read blogs while at work like I had been doing on the days when I fulfilled these commitments. Time management in self-direction here! 

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Self as Paranoid Hypochondriac - Day 46

• In this post I was writing about a reaction I saw within myself while reading literature about paranoia and a tendency/pattern I have of identifying "problems" within and as myself through physical and mental health/disorder, and why. 
• Within the diagnostic terminology of "qualification" I saw that I had charged this word within its typical dictionary definition to where I have wanted to "qualify" through satisfaction of diagnostic criteria in order to receive attention, have needs met, or be special. 
• I saw how within reading psychological texts I often identify myself within the words and then apply the whole entirety of the words to and as myself, and within this I look to these texts to know myself and to know how to be myself and also as a form of validation for my experiences of myself. 
• I saw again how I have both created and participated in the sustenance of "mental illness" within and as myself. 
•  I committed myself to:
• Create myself within self-honesty, self-responsibility and self-support as one and equal with all as life in what is best for all.
• Relinquish the power I have given to diagnostic definitions of myself
• Define myself only within and as who I am in each moment in each breath
• Investigating and taking responsibility for all the points I encounter within the ways I have defined myself within and as "mental illness"
• Reflections:
• Refer to list at end of post about relevant future topics. 

Intent: "I didn't mean to!" - Day 44

But do we really see, realize, & understand our intent?

Creation's Journey to Life recently opened up the point of "INTENT," and this is something that I have been considering recently as well.

A few weeks ago I realized the meaninglessness in "meaning well" when I would see myself justify or excuse my behavior or words by saying "I didn't mean it like that" or "that was not my intention." Often this is in response to discovering that I have moved myself in a way where the result is not "what I intended," which is to simply say the outcome is not something I considered as a potential or probable consequence or outflow. But what I realized is that nonetheless I have moved myself in this way and so my intent was in some form on some level to have that outcome, or to ignore/neglect consideration of the outcome such that I moved myself from an irresponsible self-interested starting point wherein I was inconsiderate of the consequences of my choices. As Bernard has said:

If one then Measures the Practical Application – which is What you Should be Doing because you should be Measuring Exactly What it is that is Actually Being Produced through the Participation of Yourself and Others, and thus How as the World System Everything Functions, then you’ll Notice that All the Intent – and this is All Throughout Human History - has Always come to Nothing, because there is only One Way where One Can Have an Outcome that’s Best and that is to Actually Do it. Any form of Intent has ONLY Ever Been an Excuse.

As we all can see in our interactions it is the outcome of our movements within the physical that actually determines what occurs and what impact is made. We can intend all we want but it is not until we actually DO that we are effecting change within the physical.

So here I can for example become aware that something I have said or done had impacted another person or situation negatively and I can excuse myself by saying "Oh! That was not my intent!" and thus feel better about my participation in the creation of that outcome. And I noticed myself doing this a lot in particular at my old job where there would be times that I had failed to take full responsibility for myself and within that new awareness I would see myself continue to abdicate responsibility by justifying outcomes with my intent. So then here I can also see how this tendency toward excusing myself through intention is linked to a refusal to take responsibility and within that this commonly comes up during the arrival of criticism -- another dimension to explore as I open up more about my defensive personalities.

So within excusing myself through my readily accessible sense of self-intent, and within the realization that self directs self even through and as the personalities/reactions/patterns/memories that I accept and allow within and as myself, I can see then how "intent" is actually always outcome and thus outcome is always intended, even if I want to claim ignorance toward that outcome or intent. I know that I am buried in layers upon layers of what I have accepted and allowed and so the point here is not to place blame or judgment or even to place the expectation that I should suddenly be able to direct myself to intend and produce best-for-all outcomes, but simply to be self-honest and take self-responsibility and within this forgive myself and commit myself to slow down myself to the point of being able to see and consider all consequences and then to release myself from my personalities/reactions/patterns in increasing my accessibility to my SELF in every moment so that I can be aware of intent and I can truly intend and thus move myself toward, within, and as best-for-all outcomes, within this being fully responsible within self-honesty and self-awareness for my intents and outcomes.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to justify and excuse my behavior within the statement "I didn't mean to."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not consider all dimensions of myself in every moment and when making decisions that require consideration for best-for-all outcomes wherein I allow myself to ignore and remain ignorant to aspects/dimensions of myself that are contributing to and behind my starting-points and thus my intentions to where even if I identify my "intent" as being "good," it is really only "good" for and within my self-interest, and therefore the outcome of my actions within my intent which is my direction of myself will be an outcome based in my self-interest.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to purposely ignore parts of myself which are selfish and self-interested, reactionary, greedy, paranoid, etc., to where even though I can see that these dimensions of myself exist and even though I can sense that they are influencing me within my intentions and thus my direction of myself and thus the outcomes that I create in the physical, I suppress them and remain within the thought "I mean well" and "my intentions are good" so as to appease myself and allow myself to knowingly and deliberately self-sabotage and sabotage others through and as my self-interested intentions, directions, and outcomes.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist recognition and realization of my outcomes to where when and as I see the outcome of my movements I tell myself or the other person "that was not my intent" as if to say that because my intention was "good" the outcome does not matter, when obviously within reality the only real thing and thus the only thing that matters is in fact the outcome, and so within this I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that my "intent" is worth cultivating and identifying as "good" and "positive" rather than looking instead at the outcome itself and what outcome would be best-for-all and then coming to a common-sensical way to move myself toward that outcome while seeing myself and my personalities/characters/patterns/reactions in self-honesty to reject these dimensions of myself as influential in directing/moving myself toward outcomes.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist recognition and realization of my outcomes to where when and as I see that the outcome of my movements I tell myself or the other person "that was not my intent" and within this I abdicate responsibility for myself and for the impact that I make in the world because I am allowing myself to direct myself within and as my pride and my ego to where I am unwilling to allow myself to SEE life for what it is and SEE the physical for what it is and SEE myself for who I am and who I have accepted and allowed myself to be and thus the outflow and consequences of who I am and how I behave within this world.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to excuse my outcomes with my intent because within this I am sweeping the consequences of the outcome "under the rug" to where I am not only not looking at myself as director of myself as intent  but am also not looking at the consequences of myself and my outcome and therefore I am NOT LOOKING and am closing my eyes to reality and to suffering and to the problems in this world which I have participated within and as and have created and sustained through my self-directed ignorance toward anything that is unpleasant to see.