Day 312 - Taking Breaths for Granted

This is a cycling realization that each moment is a moment that I am either directing myself specifically or I am running on autopilot according to some outdated mental program that I created in my formative years.

It is a cultural phenomena to bounce around from distraction to distraction. Maybe we call it an occupation because we can make money. This form of distraction is "okay" because money is all that really matters, right? It defines us. Not only does it support our survival, but it's also very much a societal status thing. I'm slipping into a rant about money as I digress.

The concept I'm trying to share is the idea of I can take X amount of breaths a day for granted. I mean, what is up with that?! Why is this chill? How do I not realize the significance of who I am in each moment, with every breath? It's absurd, and yet commonplace. I know there are many readers (you) who can remember having at least a single moment where they felt alive! To enjoy life in that absolute simplicity of being life. To be alive....how awesome is that!

Alas, this accounts for only a small fraction of our lives, probably more during our childhood. So what happened? Where did I lose myself?

Since I've been walking with Desteni, one of the key tools they push is to breathe. And on my mind I kind of go, "yeah yeah, ok.," all while I'm totally missing the idea.  I realize this is going to be a long journey to life, BUT I don't intend to make it longer by repeatedly taking my breath for granted.

To be continued with specifically designed self-forgiveness.

Day 244 - Where has my Attention Gone?

Continuing from yesterday, I am expanding here on how my attention like to wander. I realize that each individual instance of attention wandering may have various, specific points that require my attention, ha. So the basis of all my self-investigation work requires that I be attentive to what takes my attention away.

cc

I have labeled myself as having ADD, but what that actually entails, I have not thoroughly investigated. To define it, once and for all, Attention Deficit Disorder is, in my experience of it, an agility of thought that moves on to the next thought rapidly and frequently. I can pay attention to something for a long time if I need to/want to, but usually I just don't want to. So, ADD for me is kind of a positive mind state seeking. I want to be engaged with the next thought. That's the positive definition that I have utilized to cope with "ADD."

The negative side is how the willingness to not give too much attention to any one thing causes much unfinished business. I tend to have a difficult time with long and tedious work, and usually just let my mind jump around until I must stay focused (i.e. procrastination & delay patterns). When I used to smoke weed, my attention was diverted continuously within a favorable experience, and the primary consequence was a trail of unfinished work/projects/pursuits. I don't blame the flower, but it did positively amplify the experience of my attention frolicking.

So, this point of establishing a stable attention within myself and in reference to my own self-honesty that is here in every single breath is not going to be as simple and straight forward as I would like it to be. What I've liked is the "freedom" of a wandering attention. This is a major key: realizing that this "freedom" is not real freedom. It's more accurately a predictable out flow of lack of self-control over my attention. My willingness to jump around with whatever is impulsed my way is like the ultimate programming, isn't it? I've opened myself up to psychological attacks from the media, namely,sex and money appeal, but even just now the bag of cookies that my brother just put in front of my face (impulse) caused an internal debate that lead to an imagination and mouth watering that took over control and I ate a damn cookie. In this specific case, I realize that I need to investigate several dimension of my sugar eating character.

Bottom line: establishing a consistent self-awareness of myself AS my attention will be a great benefit to my discipline. Enough prelude.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed with the alternative attention outlet such that I build up an internal friction-energy that takes me away from my self-attention. So, a key realization here is that what I am correcting is my relationship to the individual subjects/objects of attention that seem to take me over.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to let myself go within an energy experience overlay onto whatever is calling for my attention without me considering who I am within that movement.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not be here with myself as breath in every moment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize that my self-attention is who I am, and within this, every time my attention is diverted, I am responsible for that, it was my decision.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abdicate my responsibility and self-awareness when I become distracted.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to lose myself within a series of attention grabs. In this my sense of awareness of self, of my breath, is nonexistent.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget about my breath of life as who I am in every moment when I blindly follow whatever catches my attention.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to give my directive power away to whatever distraction that I have deem as interesting. In this process, I am not creating a self-honest agreement in relation to relinquishing my attention from one thing to the next. I am merely within a reactive, predictably programmed mind experience that I had once created within myself from a starting point of self interest.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define all self-interested pursuits as valuable and worthy of my attention  not realizing that through this program, I am placing control of my attention outside of myself as I passively seek fulfillment of this desire, which is the base program of my automatic attention diversion acceptances.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to intentionally become distracted because I am experiencing resistance to what is here.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not always be present with my breath, what is here, and what requires to be done.
--
When and as I see myself within the friction of an internal debate for my attention, I remember to stop and breathe. I realize that if I am with my breath, I may take into consideration a stable perspective and make a real self-directed decision. I commit myself to stop allowing my attention to move with distractions when I become aware of my who I am as my breath. I commit myself to moving from a common sense starting point, and when I am in discord with that, I commit myself to investigate my relationship to whatever had grabbed my attention without permission.

When and as I see myself in a series of attention diversion, I stop I breathe. I realize that I need to start writing down all the distractions, so that I can remember and analyze what I deem is worthy of my attention. I commit myself to the self-honest investigation of all attention grabs.

When and as I see myself deliberately moving into a distraction, I stop I breathe until I am stable. I realize that this is just a well embedded system of conscious diversion. I commit myself to breathing through the resistance that lead me to make a deliberate choice to go into a distraction from whatever I was currently facing.

When and as I see myself in a loss of directive control of my attention, I stop I breathe. I realize I need to investigate the specifics of each particular attention preference that I have coded into my mind. I commit myself to bring myself back to my hereness with my breath, so that I may once again stand up and direct my attention to what is here, what requires to be done to create a world that is best for all.

Thank you.

Day 232 - Work Ethic: Unplugged

How hard I work is a relative perception. As I began to see yesterday, I have been overestimating my work ethic for some time now. I have been working a sales/marketing job for the past 4 days, 8 hours a day, and it's pretty hardcore relative to having no job. What I've realized is how much work I am able to accomplish when I am really working. So far, the best part of this job was seeing this factor. Seeing exactly how valuable an hour of time is.

It's not a completely foreign concept and I've done some writing about this is the past, but the relative perceptual factor I hadn't really been aware of. When my environment is fast paced, I feel charged and motivated to do more work, and this is the climate of the work culture that is implemented through various "stay positive" techniques. Even when I was in school I was motivated with regard to seeing how much everyone around me was doing everyday.

So my question is: How do I determine my work ethic without relating to anyone around me? Why haven't I already figured this out?? I've taken for granted my external circumstances for a long time, to the point that I didn't ever realize the internal-external point of separation for the source of my motivation. This is interesting.

When I come back to this first question, the obvious answer is self-honesty, FYI. I can only determine how hard I work relative to how hard I can work within being honest with myself. What I've done over time is lose sight of how hard I can be working through a repetitive and varying dishonesty within self (a.k.a. excuse). And there is shame here. Will this shame be my internal source of motivation? It's better than no internal motivation. And quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of all the external motives that have pushed and pulled me everywhere throughout my life.

My internal sense of motivation needs an overhaul. And this is my journey. To examine my self-interested motives, find which are abusive to Life, which are supportive, stable, practical; and within this examination, I must rebuild my internal motivation so that it aligns with what is best for all.

This latter part has been my hang up because of the resistance code. I've coded myself to react to giant undertakings such would be rebuilding my motivation structure. The typical reaction is to become overwhelmed. I have used this excuse to do nothing countless times.

Boom. Key point found. If I am going to be stable within my work ethic, I can no longer be self-dishonest. I can no longer allow internal excuses and fluctuation external environments to determine my work ethic. It's time to take back control of me. Join me tomorrow for some practical self-forgiveness and corrective application.

pic: wikimedia commons

Day 198 - Embarrassed to Breathe?

Sounds silly, and yet I have identified this in me in small ways. Sometimes as backchat, sometimes as internal judgment of myself as some twisted excuse to remain in the mind. I remember this thought came up when I first started exploring Desteni: "...but other people will hear me breathing differently than normal." Haha. And I even have some fringe memory of worrying about my breathing pattern when I was conscious of it back in my younger years. Ooo, this is interesting.

When I was conscious of my breath, I would fear judgement as well as judge it myself: The way it sounds. "Is it normal?" "Will other notice me?" Fear of not fitting in. Fear of standing out.

Oh snap! This is crazy. I've defined myself throughout my years in school from the starting point of wanting to fit in and not stand out. From the moment of my breath, these were the first and foremost fears that came to mind, and through accepting and allowing that fear to direct me, I created some of my primary personalities throughout my social interactions over the past 15+ years. These still exist today.

Well, I've discovered some interesting realizations by examining my relationship toward my breath throughout time. This all started when I was in yoga noticing how loud my ujjayi breath was because my nose is a bit stuffed up. I decided that I should open up my fear of judgement in relation to my breathing, and I'm glad I did. I'll certainly be investigating these key-player characters as I move forward within my breathing purification process. For now I breathe and bring my focus back to this one point.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be embarrassed by the way that I breathe.

As breathing is my expression of myself, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear what others think of me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define who I am according to what others think of me, and within this I forgive myself that I have allowed myself to fear loosing what I think is my accepted version of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear loosing friends.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize that I fear loosing positive or potentially positive judgement by simply breathing and being myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear change because I have defined myself externally by placing primary importance on projected self-judgement. Within this, I also forgive myself that I have allowed myself to not realize the starting point of self-judgement and projected self-judgement as fear of non acceptance.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear not being accepted.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to simply breathe.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear simply expressing myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel like I need to fit in and be/breathe a certain way to fit in or be liked by others.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel that who I am as my breath is not normal.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel that I could be rejected for breathing and being myself here.
--
When and as I see myself departing from my breath into a thought in relation to being accepted as my breathing expression, I stop and I again breathe. I realize that the doubt that others care about my breath is silly, and even more importantly, the fear that they might care must be disintegrated. I commit myself to disintegrating my fear of self-honest expression as who I am simply breathing.

When and as I see myself feeling embarrassment, I stop I breathe. I realize that behind embarrassment is a fear of loss construct that is based on defining myself in separation of myself. I commit myself to using embarrassment as a flag point tool to investigate where I have separated my self-definition from myself here.

When ans as I see myself in fear or worry about how others will perceive my breathing, I stop I breathe. I realize that there are rudimentary fears that have been compounded and deeply integrated into my being over years of participation. I commit myself to investigating the characters of myself that I have exposed today.

When and as I see myself trying to fit into a particular group with a certain set of accepted behaviors, I stop I breathe. I realize the question of whether or not it is appropriate to be considering how I am coming off to others. I commit myself to stopping the unreasonable moments of fear separation, and within this to allow myself to act according to what will effectively produce a best for all scenario outflow.

Thanks for reading.

Day 194 - Priority for Process

Self First. I repeat:

SELF FIRST.

I look around and what do I see? I see people going through the daily motions of considering their self first. Before I was walking process, that's all I cared about: How to get ahead, how make money, how to be happy and sociable. So, it is primarily a daily goal of managing or creating emotional experiences of satisfaction. Am I on the right track to fulfill my desires and be happy? With this aim, the fears of failure step in: Can I find my soul mate? How will I make money and still have time for my happiness?

Alright, so this is a broad depiction fear and desires that are largely my own, though we all may share them. What is the difference between me and non-destonians? I am still pursing my interests, thought with a vague interweave of the principle of what's best for all. I say "vague" because I am not yet standing absolutely within what is best for all in every breath. I still eat candy, bite my nails and desire the company of others. These are the three primary points for me at the moment. These points get in the way of my focused self-direction. There is an energy. Residual habits.

One reason for delaying my process of sorting out these nuances of my own allowed behavior is the point of others. I want to help others see, realize, and understand what Desteni stands for. It's like an impulsiveness to just advocate (like in Day 7). I have a tendency to want to blame this design on my parents, which is yet another externalization, or abdication of responsibility. I am responsible for myself first. And this is the point. I started a thread on the forums about this point back when I started, and this particular post about sums it up. Since then I've been resisting the urge to share my process in relation to being Destonian. Now, I'm finally starting to see how Self comes first, and I can assist and support others with myself and after I have helped myself, not first. Others are doing their own lives, and just because I have chosen to take responsibility for the entire world system...well, it doesn't make any difference unless I am in action. I have made a choice, and now I must follow through in word, action and deed to not be hypocritical and ineffective.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the process of manifesting world peace must start within Self.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe that "if I can only just convince others of the solution, I won't have to put in the work" or actually become the solution myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to miss myself in relation to everything.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define myself in separation of myself, where I am conceptualized in my mind as "great/powerful" or the flip "nothing/insecure."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize myself here in and as every breath, not as a conception of self.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not bring my process of self back to self, for self.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify with the conception of myself, and so move into all sorts of thought & feelings reactions that contribute to the process of my self-definition.

Ok, key moment here: Process for self-concept or for Self-here. This is the answer to my question earlier: Why am I different than others in my life? It's because I am working a process toward identifying with self-here, and stopping my allowance of excuses and justifications for spending effort to work for the self-concept, which is largely defined by how others see us and how we feel internally.

Wooooooo! What a pivotal concept. Process for Self. Self-Here. It's going to take time to move the self-definition from an unstable mental conception into my physical. It's kind of a foreign notion. Before the Destonian Support Group, we all just "thought, and so we are." Welcome "breathing therefore we live." To discern where I am supporting what's best for my mental image (which comes with pre-loaded feelings; within the causal argument against free will, where past dictates the future, fulfillment of our destiny) vs. supporting what best for the physical Self and All (working for a new desteni, where all life will truly be supported; peace on earth).

Artwork by Anna

How this all ties in: working shit out for self first. I need to focus on my own process through the realization and understanding that I am one and equal with all parts of the universe. I am a fractal of the physical existence. WoooHooo! I'm stoked to be alive. Time to get serious and make this about me in the physical realm, so that I can most effectively support all life in the physical, instead of feeding the energies of the self-conception and egos of this world.

When and as I see myself judging others for not giving the same amount of attention and care to this physical reality as I, I stop I breathe. Realizing that each has their own process to walk, I commit myself to focusing my own process.

When and as I feel the urge to dispense knowledge and information, I stop I breathe. I realize that my internal self-concept is the driving force behind this, as I want, need and desire others to have a mutual understanding. I also realize that I do not fully understand all the points of becoming a physical breathing body that supports what best for life at all times. I commit myself to stopping this hypocritical tendency through flag pointing and writing about each occurrence, not getting upset with myself for failing, and to persist in this purification process of self.

When and as I see myself playing a part in Process for an externalized point, I stop I breathe. I realize that I must bring myself back to myself here in my breathing and do work for me. I commit myself walking process for self and others with the consideration of myself, within my process, first.

When and as I see myself working towards ego-fulfillment, I stop I breathe. I realize that standing within my physical is a mere breath and self-direction. I commit myself to taking that essential breath, and when the energy clears, to write about whatever experience I had in relation to attachment to myself as a mental conception.

Breathing. Until next time.

Day 146 - Still Wasting Time

There is a moment in time where I can decide to direct myself or allow my mind to steer me towards enjoyment despite responsibility.

This is what I've been trying to capture, and based on Day 140, I thought I could map out all of what is contributing to my delay pattern, work it through in one solid burst of attention, and be done with it. Yesterday, I realized that I created an external pressure to work this through, and I was no longer doing it for myself. Even though I thought I was, I was suppressing the thought of being driven to perform because of this blog being public and my responsibility to the group to be effective. I had been missing myself in the equation. Now, as I write, I can tell that I'm in my words for me because I'm not mitigating and managing thoughts to appear a particular way. I'm just writing about what I had intended to write:

Why and how am I dodging responsibility in the context of not being utterly self-honest?

So, instead of trying to lay out every point as I did in Day 40 for delay, I'm going to simply move through self-forgiveness on the points that are relevant in this moment. Sometimes a list (like yesterday's fear of loss list) is beneficial just as a reference point FOR SELF. Not so others can keep watch on me and make sure that I've done what I said I would do...this is the externalized fear point.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself place the importance of my process onto the perception of others and them seeing me as effective.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize how I've been missing the point of self-honesty within my writing direction and thus compromising myself in accordance to my fear of being ineffective.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being ineffective.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to to attach fear to being ineffective, and thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realize this design of manifesting my fears and allowing backchat thoughts. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed me to not realize the mind as safeguarding itself with backchat pertaining to a specific point, where I have not seen how I have been protecting my habits with the allowance of related, un-flagged thoughts to run as me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not be patient with myself in my process of actual self-change.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to rush toward the future/end, that which I fear, in an attempt to overcome my fear by force, where the typical result is a fall accompanied by self-anger.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become angry with myself for failing to achieve success when I have not given myself adequate time to investigate myself thoroughly.

From here onwards, I commit myself to persist through resistance and get up after a fall without judging self.

When and as I see myself rushing to complete a point, I stop I breathe. I realize that this process of self-perfection requires that I be patient and steadfast with myself and my application of forgiving the momentous manifestation of who I am today. I commit myself to providing the force of myself as life as all, within the application of myself in this process of decoding my mental accepted patterns that do not support me, here.

I commit myself to flagging self-anger and breathing as I stand up from it and immediately apply forgiveness on the related point that brought on the self-anger. I realize that this might need to be written down and that it will take practice to effectively apply immediate self-forgiveness. I commit myself to practicing immediate self-forgiveness.

I commit myself to persist in recognizing my fears that I have allowed as me, and to no get anger for what I see. Rather, I stop, breathe, and direct myself within the realization of what needs to be done in that moment.

I commit myself to bringing my process back to self.

Thanks all.

Excerpt from here

photo credit to Desteni Artists