Day 371 - Accidental Self Programming

This blog post is a continuation from Day 370 - How to Program Yourself and Automate Behavior.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try an over analyze and make a moment of physical decision more than what it simply is.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to intellectualize my intellectualization by further removing myself from the basic facts of what happened and why, and to have instead written my last blog in separation of my experience, analogous to how I had removed myself from the experience of myself for that single moment of observing myself choosing to continue biting my nail in that moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to continue within a physical denial of responsibility when I see myself in a self-abusive pattern, specifically in this case, biting my thumb nail.

I forgive myself that I have continued accepting and allowing this automated decision to delay the stopping of my nail biting habit.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to be able to make the physical changes that I see in a moment of clarity.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will do as I have always done, within this, seeing how I haven't always done this behavior, and so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make this habit more than what it is.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am less than my automated decisions, creating an experience of inability to change, rooted in fear, and confirming this fear with repetitive failure as I subject myself to the whims of these particular energetic parameters instead of realizing my response-ability to direct myself into and as change.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget the importance of breathing. When and as I see myself trailing off into a mind-moment, I stop, I breathe. I refocus who I am in my physical body, and I make a decision to live what is best in the context of everything and everyone, including myself and my fingernails.

When and as I see myself biting my nails, I stop and I breathe. I see myself, and I commit myself to immediately take a physical action because I realize that if I hesitate, even for a moment, I give my mind time to spin and take me away from the physical, here reality.

When and as I see myself in a repetitive behavior that I don't explicitly and confidently want as a part of my lifestyle, I stop, then I take a breath and look at how did this pattern originate. If I do not immediately see the starting point, I can be sure that this behavior pattern is an outdated automation that I had created in my past and reaffirmed over time. In this case, I commit myself to take note and put forth the time to write about this experience until I am clear within my understanding of how this program came to be. From there, I commit myself to writing/speaking the specific self-forgiveness and corrective application to support myself in the process of real self-change.

I commit myself to take a close look at the relationship wherein I continually allow myself to not change, even when I see the self-compromise within the pattern. I realize that I have the solution as writing, self-forgiveness, and self-corrective application. Expand self-honesty, here. Wholesomeness. Integrity. Self-integrity.

Barring self-judgment, I see, realize, and understand the importance of adhering to true integrity, and I commit myself to move steadfast through my attachments/definitions and limitations that I have accepted and allowed of myself up to here.

Thanks me-I-you-us, for together we stand up for and as the solution.

Day 339 - "I don't know"

When faced with a self defining question, it's pretty damn easy to say "I don't know," but there's a problem: I typically hit a wall here. To parkour this wall. To overcome it. To continue onward and figure out the answer to, let say for example: What am I capable of? I would have to really apply an effort to answer this for myself. I'd first have to understand that I need to give some context before I can assess the question seriously, a step that is not taken when resorting to an "I don't know" response.

In some ways, it's a particular relationship to the phase, where upon saying "I don't know," I also assume that someone else will give me the answer, or dig my psyche to unravel my core issues for me. It's a habit formed from when I was young: Mommy, Daddy what's...why...how? The function of "I don't know" wasn't to hide my inner reality. It was an expression that expanded my world. But now I find myself utilizing this phrase out of habit and in the wrong context. Instead of using this set of words to assist and support myself, I've allowed the habit to evolve into escaping the responsibility to investigate, understand and discover myself.

For clarification, this issue only applies with personal questions like: "How are you feeling today?" or "What's up?" Not questions like what's 37 x 689. To discern when I am being self-honest within "I don't know" there is a simple test: Is there backchat?

If there is a fogginess or background thinking process going on when I speak "I don't know," I can be sure that the statement is not being used as a direct, self-honest expression. Stop. What is my inner reality? What am I thinking in my secret mind? Why am I resisting to share the first answer that comes to mind? Probably, I am protecting my ego. That seems to be trending.

So, if I am to discover my potential, I'm going to have to realign my relationship to not knowing what it is. So far in life, I've placed way too much emphasis on the idea of my capacity without ever testing myself. It's like an imagined, glorified idea of myself in the future vs. the living reality of myself, here. This disconnect, I'm finding is a serious problem. I can't create the life I want to live if I keep telling myself and others that "I don't know." After all, without physically moving to overcome a mental wall of self-limited understanding, I'll just suppress the wall, save it for later and create a temporary perception (of "not knowing" for example) to feel okay for the moment. I no longer accept myself to live in the mind and support the illusion of self-control. I commit myself to walking the physical process of transcending the mind's automated, directive control.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I can simply reach a higher level of self-control by mentally suppressing my way through life.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe I am the superior mental idea of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abuse the words "I don't know" to hide my self-honest expression within my secret mind.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hide myself behind a wall of "I don't know" and not realize the dynamic of presenting an illusion of myself to others and myself. In this, not realizing the consequences of compounding self-dishonesty.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek attention and interaction through using "I don't know" as a way to outsource the responsibility of self-understanding and to engage others in my life.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to speak "I don't know" while having a perception of who I really am in a glorified imagination space of my secret mind.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize that entertaining myself in this way is is only an entertainment and not the reality of myself, even though I like the idea so much and will try to integrate it with who I believe myself to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hide the physical reality of myself, to verbally claim that "I don't know" who I am, and then participate and believe in the mental idea that best suits me as ego.

When and as I see myself saying "I don't know" with simultaneous backchat, I stop I breathe. I realize that there is an inconsistency, a separation between the physical reality of who I am and the idea of who I am. I commit myself to consider this moment and utilize it for personal insight by checking out why I had chosen to hide behind the words "I don't know."

When and as I see myself participating in a thought or imagination about how I am, I stop I breathe. I realize that if this were a reality of my living expression, I wouldn't have created the thought in the first place. I commit myself to investigating how I can realign myself to live within physical and express myself fully as life in support of an outcome that is best for all.

When and as I see myself mentally shaping who I think myself to be, I stop I breathe. I realize that using the statement of "I don't know" to protect what I think about myself in my secret mind is a way for me to see that I'm not living myself into and as reality. I commit myself to flag pointing the context and/or particular desires of how I would like to be when I hear myself say "I don't know" so that I may walk myself into a point of self-directiveness, here in the physical living reality.

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Day 337 - Competition Breeds Ego

An interesting point came up today. My relationship to competition is well developed by this point in my life. I didn't ever spend the time with metacognition, thinking about how I think, in relation to competition. Now that I am considering this point, I can certainly see how I've been competing from a starting point of self-interest, fueling my ego. Let's unpack this.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize that I am supporting my ego when I go into competition with another human being.

Define ego: The glorified representation of myself created in my mind. A selective self-definition. Who I am as my desires for myself. In this, my ego defense is a reaction to undesirable information about self in relation to others. I deal with this information by skipping over it, suppressing it, ignoring it, or humility. I will dig more into ego-defense in posts to come. For now, I'll just say that humility is not my initial, automated reaction to negative information about myself.

Another dynamic: Entering into competition is hardly a choice. I've automated the selection of my battles to reduce the risk of losing in an ego confrontation.

Also, when I am losing a confrontation, I will fight more recklessly to avoid the humility of defeat. This is done by standing my ground by perceptually up playing the weight of my argument, and not recognizing the other person's perspective as greater than or equal to my own, unless there really isn't a comeback that would trump the opponent's point. This is more from a conversational competition.

In a physical competition, again, I selectively participate in 'games' that I think I can win at and simply "do not like" games that I don't perceive a threshold of confidence that I will achieve victory. Now, victory isn't only defined in the context of another person, but also in relation to surpassing prior skill level. This is likely because with steps toward mastery, I will get ahead of the competition as a general entity of all possible competitors. Not to say that there isn't a dimension of physical enjoyment within the challenge of developing aptitude.

So, then there is this notion of competing with myself...verses collaborating with myself. Why am I inclined to fight with myself to better myself? I fight with others to 'better' them, I so often justify with a subtle thought based relationship that I created in my 'unknown' past. To restructure my methodology and application of self-support, I must first identify who I am now, and what I will become through change, then the rest is just a process.

In the context of self-support, I challenge myself to grow. Sounds great. Looking at the patterns and relationships in this, I see that there is a significant amount of self-judgement and/or fear of failure. When my ego battle is within myself alone, it can be very definitive. Bad = I am bad. Good = I am good. There is a feeling and emotional charge. This polarity and friction must arise out of a separation of self. How? Imagined, ideal self vs. the reality of self. Here is a key.

Success and failure emotions are created within the context of the idealized self. Furthermore, an ideal is limited by thoughts based on memories. How do I even know what I could become if I am spending all my time chasing an ideal copy of only what I've seen in my little set of past experiences?  And even furthermore, the past thoughts that have arisen out of relationships to past events and experiences have all been constructed within a starting point of self-interest. Ego.

Solution:
By participating in the throws of mind as thoughts, feelings and energy, I am accepting and allowing myself to be defined by my past successes and failures. The possibility of growth is very narrow, and at that, stinted by the fear of failure. I must realize how to collaborate with myself, until I really realize and embody the oneness and equality within and of myself, here. To not judge myself, but rather recognize the desires and fears as the primary internal motivation sources that I've so long obeyed without question. To walk with my breath. To live based on principle, not just what feels right and wrong alone because how can I trust my self-programmed reactions when they're based in such a limited context of a handful of personal experiences? I can't. A limited context = a limited response to the situation.

I commit myself to breathe through the reaction of desire and fear when faced with an ego point, a point that I would take personally. Here, I stand and stop. I do not allow myself to limit myself to the confines of personal experience based perception alone. With the principle of equality and oneness, I commit myself to giving as I would like to receive: What is BEST, of course.

Disclaimer: Walking realizations into physical application takes time and practice. Give self the space to change. Understand what a process is. Have fun with this physical challenge.

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Day 276 - Embracing the In-Breath

I became aware of a cool point today while practicing my breathing application. I was laying down during the final resting pose in yoga (savasana), and this is a moment that I used to let my mind wander. My physical had just undergone a strenuous workout, and I always considered savasana to be prime time for daydreaming. The thoughts would run so naturally and my body would melt into the floor as I drift away in consciousness. It's interesting to consider that I typically fall asleep this way as well..

Over the past few months of practicing yoga, I began utilizing my savasana as a time to practice staying in my body, with my breath. I do this by applying the 4-count breath technique. Lindsay Craver did a blog post that gives a good idea of what this tool is and how it is used here.

I've tried this technique many times to support myself to remain present and grounded, here, within my physical body. Today I finally noticed a pattern of having the most trouble with holding the in-breath.

I contemplated on what this could mean. The first thing to mind was my presence. By anxiously rushing through the in-breath hold, I was severely compromising my presence. I associated this phenomena/habit of cutting my in-breath short with self-doubt and impatience. I experimented: When I held my in-breath, I was really, really present for it. I could visualize myself moving more effectively from this starting point.

Now, I am noticing myself fall into another consciousness trap. From that in-breath, I decided to direct myself into a visualization/imagination of potential out flow. That in itself isn't the trap. The trap is buying into or becoming vested in the feeling of being in control, unencumbered as a result of my imagined successfullness. I walked that point in the beginning of my 10 day series on success.

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Recap:

• I realized I've been short changing myself by not being present with my in-breath.
• I realized the power of staying present within my in-breath is presence itself,
• and the ability to direct self.
• I directed myself into an experiment of testing the difference in my relationship to my in-breath when cut short vs when I am patient and give myself the full 4 counts.

Why might I be rushing through the in-breath:

• Self-Trust
• I do not trust that my breath will carry me.
• weird fear, maybe related to my underwater fears post.
• Self-Doubt
• Related to not trusting myself
• fear of being present
• fear of being self-responsible.
• trusting the mind consciousness system
• feels safe, known, & comfortable

Consequences:

By not embracing my in-breath, I am not present. It's the difference between automatic living mode and self-directed living. It's very easy to forget about the breathing...must set lots of flag points!

Solution:

Utilize flag points to prevent full system possession states of being. Acquire awareness and build flag points through writing. Awareness of every breath is not a goal I hope to achieve tonight...or ever (within the context of hope). I will stay consistent within my process of self-realization within self-honesty to realize my breathing in every moment. To hold an expectation, goal, or hope is to externalize the responsibility to live as this mental/behavioral change.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to undervalue my breathing application.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to value my breath.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself not to just breathe and be the breath.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that it is hard to be aware of my breath.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget that I am my breath.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize that becoming aware of every breath is a process that will be walked over the course of many years, that my mind is the starting point of wanting it done as soon as yesterday.

I commit myself to repeatedly bring myself back into my breath, not to fight the mind, but to work with it in discovering why and where I am still afraid to fully be with every in-breath.

I commit myself to becoming evermore acquainted with my breath, until it's of my nature to be within and as every breath.

I redesign myself here.

Give it a try @ DIP Lite

Day 215 - Where am I in Self-Movement?

As a continuation of the past two days:
Day 214 - Self-movement: Continued Expansion
Day 213 - Self-movement: Perspective

To sum up these days: I had begun to conceptualize being with the physical movements vs being involved in the mind while moving. Being in the physical, with the physical, and aware of the physical is the goal. Being in my mind while physically moving is how we get hurt and/or create unintended consequences. One of these mental layers is an effort overlay on physical tasks, where the delay/resistance steps in and makes things more difficult than they really are. It's these kind of energetic relationships that unintentionally sabotage our lives with. To get back to living, to walk the journey to life, we have to dispel these energetic, physical assumptions that are killing us. Here, I'm going to forgive the initial layer(s) of movement. From conscious distraction into physical awareness. This point will continue to unfold as time goes on.

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I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize my physical body.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from my physical body.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am more efficient if I can think independently of space-time, where I allow my thoughts to wander unrelated and without regard for the present moment. Note: Big one; key attachment point to thought; multitasking.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to move my body in separation of my thought. Example: thought goes into an alternate reality while my finger nail starts finds its way to my mouth. Scary to think of how often this happens.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that it is too hard to stop this abusive pattern of nail biting, and I commit myself to reconsider this point with the knowledge that nail biting in itself isn't the problem, it's who I am behind the act that needs correction (i.e. the many dimensions of anxiety).

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to automate my physical behaviors without considering the starting point of the automation as what is behind the encapsulated energy relationship toward the physical movement(s).

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create relationships toward my physical movements. This opens up an overwhelming number of thought-trains. So much of me has been automated. Scary.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be afraid of the extent of which my life is augmented by energetic relationships toward the physical.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not care that I have augmented reality and have chosen to live through this mental copy of reality, not realizing how/why I chose to live this way in the first place. There are many moments of which I encapsulated a physical experience into an augmented, energetic relationship. For examples: sex, money, truth, soccer, writing, work

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed by my existence.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to exist in separation of my physical body through my mind. The mind is so quick and entertaining.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that the mind is me and superior to the physical reality.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to move my body without considering my environment in detail.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think I know where my body is in space-time, as opposed to a constant, experiential awareness of my physical body and environment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from awareness of breath into consciousness awareness on a regular basis. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to disregard the physical breath and energetically relate to it as 'less important than thought/energy.'

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When and as I see myself in separation from my breath while exercising or doing any physical movement, activity or task, I stop I breathe. I realize that from a breath starting point, I am better able to consider reality and what is best for all. I commit myself to recognizing where difficulty arises as stubbornness of mind when attempting to regain breath awareness.

When and as I see myself moved by fear or anxiety, I stop I breathe. I realize that it's just a programmed, energetic relationship play-out and only I am too blame for for what I allow myself to exist as/through. I commit myself to taming the energetic relationships that have been automating my life through self-investigation, forgiveness, and these commitment statements. This process is me directing me in the physical, to move from energy into life awareness. Who I am in self-movement has everything to do with this entire 7 year journey to life. Please bear with me. And Dan, remember to bear with yourself.

When and as I see myself overwhelmed with my current self-existence, I stop I breathe. I realize that I can only work with myself one breath at a time. I commit myself to being patient with myself in this process of releasing energetic relationships that narrow my perceptual awareness of reality.

When and as I see myself existing in a dragged out head space, I stop I breathe. I remember that I am here within my physical body, one and equal with the physical. I commit myself to investigating the more apparent, repetitive thought patterns that I find myself participating in. For example, when I keep worrying about what others are thinking about me instead of remaining stable in reality, connected to my breath, I will examine the nature of my worry, the starting point, and related components.

When and as I see myself trying to take on multiple points, I stop I breathe. I realize that I can't walk all the points at once, and I also realize that it is more effective to laser focus in on one point. I commit myself to walking whatever comes up that is related to my top priority point that I'm currently walking. For instance, delay has been a predominate theme by choice so that I may more effectively walk process. And I'm glad to say I have seen a rise in my productivity levels.

When and as I see myself giving my directive power over to the mind, I stop I breathe. I realize that mentally induced experience is not really real, and that only through my acceptance and allowance of that experiential outflow, does it seem real. I commit myself to increase my comfortability with breathing through my energetic reactions so that I may calm down and find the source origin of the relationship.

This is a work in progress, and until my breathing application is consistent and my mind no longer dominates my awareness, I walk it out. My overall reflection of this post, I am been walking a large, broad point the past three days, and I intend to utilize this perspective (which is now more grounded) to reach for more depth and specificity of my favorite mental programs. Thank you(rself) for reading.

Day 213 - Self-movement: Perspective

Today, I kept thinking about this perspective for some reason. It's the perspective of the detailed effort involved in a physical movement or set of movements to get a task done. This is hard to describe inside of myself, so I'ma write it out!

This perspective that I am going to do my best to describe it seemingly common sense movement. Great example: Walking across the street. What does it take to do that? FIRST, it's a turning of the head in both directions to check for cars. Then, there is a step, followed by another step, etc, but even before that there is a neck movement to place one's head slightly off balance in the direction we want to walk.

One of my real life examples from today: I waxed my snowboard for the first time, so maybe that was another reason why my movement-perception wasn't so automated. From one perspective it takes a lot of work, almost an overwhelming amount of work (thus the $8 alternative of paying someone else to do it). This overwhelming perspective happens before any time is spent. When one is willing to dedicate the time, the series of steps naturally unfolds when the tools and the know-how are available. Heat the iron, drip the wax, spread the wax with the iron, scrape off the excess, clean up the excess, turn off the iron. Even this quick description I didn't immediately think about having to toss the excess wax in the trash. Heck, we could have swept the floor if we wanted to be thorough.

The point of sharing this perspective is to unfold the decision process and bring a little awareness to the physical. I notice that I make quite a few decisions based on the perception of all the effort required to complete a set of physical movements for a given task. This "effort" is a loaded term. Effort is relative. How I relate to work determines effort perception. The relationship indicates a separation, and I think with today, for some reason, I was more tuned into what is required to complete physical tasks in a simplistic perspective that was intriguing. Just doing what has to be done.

The inverse perspective (instead of this perspective), is that the movement is automated. Decision to cross the street does not normally consider ALL of the physical movements/effort because there is a relationship toward these movements. Tilting the head forward is easy. Placing one foot in front of the other by bending the knee in conjunction with a minimal effort abdominal contraction is easy. The only real consideration that happens is how many of steps it will take.If the road is 7 miles wide (i know, crazy) then we may choose not to cross the road depending on the reward vs effort of walking that far.

Yes, this is a broad perspective, but I was intrigued with insight. It's not a new perspective, but I've never written about it before. It's a perspective I am drawn to and the primary reason I like to study parkour, free running, and everything related to balance. I really like trying to understand and gain mastery over the physical movement through space time...I think I like it because there is so much room to learn, grow expand my body vocabulary. The newness of learning how to balance on a unicycle is some kind of physical intimacy.

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Again, the inverse perspective would be that I already know how to...make a sandwich, or say with yoga, when I already know a posture or a movement, it is automated. I make a decision, and my mind just put my body there automatically, and I have room to think about something else. Ah, here lies the crux of it all. Long distance running, another example, on a treadmill even. The know-how of each physical body movement is squared away in the mind, and it leaves the space for us to zone out and think other thoughts and daydream. With parkour, there is more of a continual challenge and adaptation to the environment that keeps me more present with the physical reality. The main flag point of mind participation within parkour is when ego and pride step in, especially when others are saying "ohhhh, so cool, great job!" And that's how people get hurt: trying to uphold a reputation of being good or great instead of practically considering the physical limitations.

Ok, join me for some self-forgiveness tomorrow. There's a lot to this perceptual shift, and I want to see how deep I can go in releasing my physical movement programs. Also, I will report on what I notice in relation to daydreaming (separation from the physical) that occurs while I'm boarding down the mountain.