Day 420 - Ode to Pot

For some odd years of my life, I have smoked the marijuana.

For many of those years, I thought I liked the experience more than I disliked the side effects.

Within this last year, I've made the decision to cut it out of my life.

It's taken me many years, to figure out how to stand by this decision.


So many years, I've intimately identified myself within and through the experience of weed.

It had become a best friend, a security blanket, and a tool to keep feeling good.

Served to helped me procrastinate my homework, and focus on the fun stuff.

Made my sense of epiphany stronger, which many times led me into some eccentric ideas.


For better or for worse.

The sticky stuff, I found, is very accurately that: Sticky

I got stuck in the self-aggrandizement, thinking so highly of my thinking.

I deviated further from the bigger picture, while feeling I had a higher perspective.


Getting high helped me mask the reality of getting high.

Consequences happen, sooner or later, so why not come to grips with reality sooner?

I do not regret my path, nor think my dance with MJ was bad or good.

I know that who I am today, is One man ready to take the step.



For additional support, I highly recommend this link: http://wiki.destonians.com/Drugs#Marijuana

Day 419 - Back to Basics: Blame

I'll admit, I've been a little naïve, thinking that I've got more of a grasp on the concept of blame at this point. Maybe it's a side effect of increasing awareness. In becoming more aware of it, I figured I'd have a better handle on it in my life. I suppose I can say that I've been getting better and better at identifying when other people are participating in blame, but when it comes to seeing it me clearly, haha, dropped the ball there.

There's a particular energy design within blame that feels kind of good...natural even. You know what I mean. Whenever there's anything negative going on, it's relieving and satisfactory to attribute the cause to anything external, anything other than self. So, if I can walk through my whole life, blaming anything and everyone for all the bad shit in the world and in my personal experience, then I can rest easy knowing that I was never in the wrong. I can die, feeling good about myself.

Haha, really? No.

But that's the thing. Taking responsibility for my mistakes and transgressions doesn't quite feel good or natural. It's like a sinking in my gut. Face flushes red with that "I've been caught" kind of feeling. On top of the emotional energy, there's the logical conclusion that I'm flawed, incorrect, or imperfect. From my ego's vantage point, there's a cognitive dissonance that needs to be resolved. Textbook says there's two ways this can occur: change in perception or change in behavior.

A change in perception would be to blame or redirect the responsibility away from me. A change in behavior, well, that's an interesting process in this case. To get to a change in behavior means I need to fully accept that I'm to blame, that I'm responsible. That can be tough to do given the emotional disarray described above.

The key = Self-forgiveness.

With self-forgiveness, I can release that negative energy that comes up with accepting responsibility. When applied effectively, forgiveness is so incredibly powerful. The challenge is in remembering to apply it, especially when the when the desire to blame is SO tempting. The knee-jerk reaction is to push away that sinking feeling - not to take it in, and apply self-forgiveness. I mean, who has ever heard of that? (Other than us process walkers) It takes practice, preparation (writing the JTL blog), and most importantly: the decision to just do it.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to so quickly follow into the blame energy programming to protect my sensitive ego.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to find fault everywhere outside of myself, so I may avoid that sinking feeling that comes with considering self-responsibility.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify blame.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear accepting responsibility for my mistakes and transgressions.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe I can avoid consequences through blame.

I forgive myself for NOT accepting and allowing myself to realize the inevitability of self-honesty, and thus, the inevitability of taking responsibility for my experience.

I forgive myself that I have NOT accepted and allowed myself to unconditionally consider taking responsibility for the totality of my experience here on Earth.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to creatively ascribe blame toward others, so that I may be free of guilt.

I forgive myself for NOT accepting and allowing myself to live courage to take full responsibility for the outcomes of my creation.


When and as I see myself participating in a blame narrative in my mind, I stop, I breathe. I realize that I can use my creative capacity to rather investigate personal responsibility, and I commit myself to do that. I commit myself to finding my humility and ending the blame game.

When and as I see myself actively participating in blame within and through the words I speak, I stop, I breathe. I realize that in these moments, I am speaking from a starting point of mind energy as blame. I commit myself to self-correct in real-time; or if this proves too difficult, then I commit myself to investigate the full nature of the blame point in writing.

When and as I see myself in fear of the emotional discord arising from taking responsibility, I stop, I breathe. I realize that this discomfort is my best friend, as it signals to me that I'm on the right track for moving out of the blame game. I commit myself to embrace this discomfort, and I commit myself to release it with self-forgiveness.

When and as I see myself applying reasons, justifications and excuses to validate blame and defer personal responsibility, I stop, I breathe. I realize that taking responsibility for myself is what I ultimately want to do, and thus, why should I waste time entertaining a mind-job such as blaming external forces for my experiences..

Within and through this, I see, realize and understand that I will need to specify my process in order to more readily accept responsibility. To quickly react with blame indicates a failure of self-investigation to the nth degree. So, I commit myself to going all the way, forgiving myself when I do realize a point of blame I'd missed, and keep my eyes on the prize: 100% Self Responsibility.

Day 392 - On Writing: Sharing is Caring

As everyone in the universe has or will have noticed that I've not been posting regularly in this Journey to Life blog, I now commit myself to rejuvenate my blogging initiative.

What does this mean exactly? Rejuvenate as in "Return to life," and Initiative as in "a new program or strategy for dealing with a problem." Writing in my Journey to Life blog is a personal process, shared with all. Writing on my own private computer journal has been trending recently, and I've made all kinds of justifications for why I write there and not here, publicly. No more!

I'm going to get back into the groove of unconditionally sharing my process and writing with you all because then you are able to hold me accountable and check my words. If you can relate to a mind pattern that I've opened up for myself, great. It's not fair to myself or others for me to keep my writing private, with the exception of sensitive subjects that common sense wouldn't allow for publishing. The main point, I'm here to do what is best for all, and sharing my process writing is best for all.

So, welcome back Dan!

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to desire to have a coherent progression within my Journey to Life blog, and to have used this desire as an excuse to not write on the most salient process points on the moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I need to first write privately and only later transfer the writing into a blog. Within this, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist editing and publishing previously written material from my private computer journal. In addition to the resistance, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel like it is 'cheating' to "plagiarize" myself and not just write new material directly into Blogger.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use the negative perception I had toward copying and pasting my own writing as an excuse to not post at all. In this, I realize that the uncertainty and non resolution of this point within myself was leading me into a mental stalemate, a confusion that I didn't sort out, I didn't find a solution, I suppressed it, subconsciously figuring that I'd address it sometime. Not cool. If I let my mind move me into such suppressions, the problem persists.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to desire to write a perfect blog, and so create a resistance toward publishing until I've written a certain amount, found a picture, labeled the keywords, and crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's (as if that was a real problem these days)

If you haven't starting your writing process yet: lite.desteniiprocess.com

If you have, keep moving! :)

pic source

Day 360 - Full Circle

360°

When you turn three hundred and sixty degrees, where do you end?

At the beginning. At the starting point.

I've been experiencing many different forms of resistance in writing this post. I haven't yet given myself the time to self-honestly look at each form because I keep allowing the resistance to guide me away from facing myself. I must, I will...I commit myself to direct myself to write the specific self-forgiveness for the points with which I experience resistance toward writing in general, that I am still using to sabotage my process.

The connection I see here is how I've been feeling like I had at the very beginning of my Journey to Life. Before I started, I had very specific backchat that would come up in my mind that convinced me that I should just put off writing and participating in process. To not face myself is so easy. I have the vision of accomplishment, I sit to do the work, resistance comes up, and I go watch an episode on TV, or eat cereal, or play a game, or go socialize, really anything that I can just exist without having to question who I am...

That's pretty intense to write out. The purpose and reason that I started writing this blog was to start seeing the truth of myself...the very thing that I resist. I know I need to see all of me, take responsibility for each behavior I have in every relationship, especially if I don't like it. Only at this point of self-honesty can I stop and change.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to burrow deep into layers of resistance to not have to face what I have become.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself and my writing before I even begin writing and not realize how this is a self deception and self sabotage.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that my excuses and justifications aligned with the resistance energy are valid and worth following.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I must write with a specific style so that I can please my readers with a delightful digest of my self-expression, forgetting that I am writing for me,

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fall back to the beginning and forget that I must continue to push myself to write and face myself, in every moment here forward, until it is no longer a push, and I stand stable, living what is best for all within equality and oneness.



It amazes me how I can just go into a time-loop like this. Meaning, where I shift into a perspective or personality for a certain amount of time and forget about the bigger picture. We all do it. I see it in everyone around me. It's like we all live in extended moments of limited experience, going from one to the next. We react to our environment with thoughts, and then we react to those thoughts, and BAM!! In it again. "One more round of pre-determined experience please!"

So, I dedicate today to realizing not only how I've time-looped my past 360 days, but also how I time-loop in my day-to-day living, as well as time-looping in my hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute...dare I say breath-to-breath?

I commit myself to bring myself back to the moment of presence, here, to check myself and take a look at how I'm looking at things. When and as I see that I am within a perspective that doesn't support what is best for me, I can be damn sure that I'm not operating within what is best for all, so I commit myself to then direct myself to right about the perspective based in limitation, so that I may begin to open up new dimensions of understanding myself.

When and as I see myself judging myself before I start writing, I stop I breathe. I realize that it's just an excuse based within a resistance feeling-energy. I commit myself to write about the specifics of my experience of that resistance energy before too long, while it's still here, so I don't hide it from myself. Within this, I realize that I must practice and become more disciplined to write and see me self-honestly, but within this, I commit myself to not use this realization as a backdoor to not give my full effort within my personal process of developing self-honesty.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to manipulate myself into thinking that "my process will take a long time, and I will fall a lot, so it's okay when I fall, it's to be expected, don't worry, it'll all work out in the end." No! This process is not the automatic, push-play and sit back kind of deal that I've been hoping it was.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to wish and hope that my process to self-honesty would unfold naturally and without much more effort than the initial decision to walk it. In this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abdicate my responsibility to walk each step of this process in real time, with myself, here, within and as each moment, every breath, the whole way through. I do this. I walk myself out of my time-looping mind programs. I direct myself to be a responsible care taker of myself and this world in doing what is best. I commit myself to end every time-loop I have created, even if it takes me 40 years to do so.

photo: deviant art

Day 139 - Combative Attitude

I recently realized myself within an negative attitude orientation towards another. This particular person happens to be my mother at the moment, but this insight can be applied throughout all of my relationships and interactions. It looks like this: I have general backchat as thoughts about a person that accumulate within my mind, and because I believe myself to be so right inside my mind, I go with it, and treat others as if they ARE the mental representations I've created of them based on my judgments. With my mom, it's like I'm trying to show her that I'm better, smarter, and capable, and while she does see that I'm smart, often we get into ego battles. And in this scene, I'm not supporting what's best for all. I'm not supporting her or me in the development of individual stability. So what the hell is going on here? My mind gets fuzzy and clouded with a multitude of thought paths I could take in searching for the simple answer that I need to stop and breathe when I am inclined to fight with her and direct my words to support us in reaching shared understanding. Also, when I'm accumulating a mental representation of others of which I act on, I commit myself to stopping this.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that my perspective is superior and absolutely right to the point that I disrespect others and create my beliefs of those other people as being inferior to align with my superior self-definition.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live out the judgments I have others by allowing the thoughts and then allowing the words/actions to manifest, all within a superiority experience possession where I do not stop and breathe and consider what's best for all in common sense.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not see, realize and understand HOW I've been existing within a particular negative/combative attitude that often looks like "me against the world," as in I am separate and superior within my perception.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore my behavior patterns from the stand point of ego-experience immersion.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget to breathe and stop the internal energy that's creating friction in my physical environment while I've lost all sign of what really matters as acting within the interest of what's best for all in each moment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I have to defend and protect MY 'unique' perspective by sharing it with others that "must see that I am right" because I want this validation to confirm that I've done a good job within me in choosing the 'right' perspective.

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When and as I see myself accumulating a mental representation of another human being, I stop I breathe. I realize that this not an effective starting point for supporting those in my world as equals. I commit myself to slowly and surely start recognizing when I go into thought-judgment perspective and stop it before I act within and as it.

When and as I see myself inside of an ego-immersed perspective that is ready to strike and attack anyone who doesn't share the same perspective, I stop I breathe. I realize that I'm harming self by not effectively producing a best-for-all result. I commit myself to using my words effectively in seeing if my stance is ego-immersed and then breathing and living the correction, where I speak of my mistake and make efforts to reach mutual understanding.

When and as I see myself building up emotion/feeling to support my perspective, I stop I breathe. I realize that I am activating a system in these moments, and as hard as it is to shut it down, I know that I may be able to better direct the situation within a common sense flow from the best-for-all perspective. I commit myself to stop allowing my attitude to go unnoticed. I commit myself to taking responsibility for my embarrassing ego-involvement episodes, diving into the humility instead of resisting it.

I commit myself to setting flag-points for the specific moments where I have routinely allowed myself to go into the energy of the mind and direct a situation in reaction to a particular circumstance to an outcome that best supports my personal ego, where I stand within knowledge and information. I commit myself to utilizing these mental flag-points to STOP, breathe, and realize myself within self-honesty.

Thank you.

Art Supporting Earth