Day 398 - The 'Creation through Certainty' Character

I have created a character that allows me to feel comfortable in knowing that I am on track, and because I'm on track, I don't really need to exert myself. I'm going to call it "The Universe will take care of me" character. This stems from having a comfortable and privileged upbringing. My parents did a good job nourishing me and increasing my capacity to take on great challenges, but I didn't have a whole lot of practice taking on challenges. This probably connects to that feeling of anxious ambition that I have identified with for most of my life.

Now, I'm not completely spoiled nor unwilling to work. I like to envision and create some pretty cool stuff, but I haven't had many serious applications of this. I would create little, fun projects that yielded a sense of pride. For example, when I was in elementary school, about 9 years old, I saw a roll of raffle tickets in the store one day and realized that I could run my own raffle to make money! I sold several tickets to some of my school friends before I got sent in to the principal's office.

The the underlying point is: I've had lots of creative experience with ventures that were relatively easy. I could see the start through to the finish, and the amount of effort required by me was unmistakable. This way, I had enough overall certainty to determine that I would succeed before I started...

Here is where I messed up. I liked the certainty so much that it became the primary way through which I initiated creation. And that's the problem I did not foresee from the vantage point of youthful ignorance. Whether or not I could have is irrelevant because there's only one reality here, and that's what I have to deal with.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realize and understand how creating within the confines of certainty is vastly limited in scope.

And I forgive myself that I haven't allowed myself to see, realize and understand how I had created this habit for my creation process, and so have vastly limited myself and my potential.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear uncertainty, risk, and loss.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to be okay with loss.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to welcome uncertainty and risk into my life so that I may challenge myself to ask the relevant questions and make decisions of greater magnitude without fear, but instead with common sense.

Here we go.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe fear to be valid within my decision making.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be moved by fear energy.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create thoughts and backchat within fear, and then accept this inner voice/perspective as valid, and at that, more valid than any other perspective.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to substantiate my fear-spawned beliefs and opinions by acting and moving within them.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see, realize, and understand that with common sense discernment, I can make significantly better decisions in life.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to fully embody the realization that I can stop any energy - thought, feeling or emotion - that comes up within me in reaction to any specific circumstances. Breathe. Release. Forgive. Let it go.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realize and understand that the energies+thoughts that come up within me automatically, are self-creations of the past that must be updated.

I created me through the vastly limited perspective of my youth. I created me through an incomplete picture of reality. I created me in consideration of only my own interests: desires and fears.

I now commit myself to creating and recreating myself within expanding awareness of Self and All.

That's huge! The criteria with which I create myself is continually changing with expanding awareness. There's the full circle key insight. All my creations, external and within, were based on known certainties of the past. They were all neatly packaged up and ready to be executed. If something went wrong...I'd just abandon the mission. Remember how I mentioned only being comfortable with uncertainty and risk when the stakes were low? If the stakes were high, and abandoning the mission were not an option...

...I simply wouldn't try.


I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the end of the road, being left with no options, no alternatives, falling into the darkness of the unknown. It feels like death, or at least has a strong connection to the fear of death point.

Transmutation of perspective: There is always a way. Where there is a will, there is a way, as my dad would often say. (Why didn't I orient to this from the beginning?... I was lacking the will.)

Parkour Philosophy agrees. When there appears to be no path, keep looking. Regardless of if it truly is a dead end, real-time, solution-oriented focus is unyielding and may even become stronger.

This is my resolve.

I commit myself to breathe some life into my process.
I commit myself to persist with solution-oriented living.
I commit myself to create without fear of failure.
I commit myself to bring serious effort into all my pursuits.

Day 359 - Fear of the Unknown - Part 1

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear
is fear of the unknown” 

― H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

“Fear of the unknown and the other is the root of almost all hate. It is born of ignorance and fed by those who would keep us divided.” 

― Tinnekke Bebout

Starting this post was difficult. I keep asking myself: where and how do I start writing about this giant topic? There is so much to say about fearing the unknown that I didn't want to do a disservice by capturing but a minuscule of what is involved here. I realized a few days later that I can just start with where I started. Enjoy the story.

 It was Halloween night, and the street was crawling with masked civilians. I was no different. I gathered some sweetness from the neighbors house before I carried on, pondering the night. I made my way to a dark wooden bridge where few souls dared go on that frightful night. I began contemplating the multitude of attitudes that humanity has toward the celebration of Halloween. As naturally as a breath of fresh air, I began speaking aloud Self-Forgiveness:

"I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the darkness. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being mugged or raped. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear strangers. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear noises coming from places that are out of my view. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the unknown."

There were several others pertaining to other possible fears such as witchcraft, paranormal events, etc., but when I came to forgiving myself for accepting and allowing the fear of the unknown to dictate who I am in a moment, I relaxed, I eased into my body, and I knew that I had to write about this.

End.

Just to debrief you from that story, I have to say that was only the beginning. The ways of which fearing the unknown has affected my entire life are vast. I freeze up when trying to write about it because I'm racing through my mind. Stop. Breathe. I fear not knowing what people will think of me. I fear not knowing if I am accepted. I fear not knowing how another will react to my expression. I fear not knowing if I have written something that others would want to read. I fear not knowing in general. I fear not knowing what I do know. I fear not knowing how to be in control of a situation. I fear not knowing myself.

This is just the beginning. The beginning of the end of fearing the unknown.

Much more to come.

Thanks for reading.

cc: scary pumpkin

cat pumpkin

Day 355 - Specifying Clear Direction

I recommend reading yesterday's post: Day 354 - Being Clear and Direct  for context here,

Today I asked myself "what am I missing?" I am looking for solutions to my not doing what I really need to do. The procrastination system is so ingrained that even as I see it, I still don't make the decision to stop the pattern and do what is best. Now, typically asking this question threatens the system and my mind goes into being overwhelmed or just coming up with any diversion to not face the reality of my physical (in)action. Why is this?..also a great question. I fear failure on many dimensions and it runs deep. That's one of the reasons I perpetuate my bad habits, because if I commit to stop and then don't, I fail. Thus a commitment places me in a place of vulnerability through my specific definition of what 'failure' means. It's got a negative charge, my ego has a positive charge (perfection, flawless), and I can't maintain that ego illusion if I takes risks of failure.

Interestingly, without taking any of these risks, I'll surely fail. You know how it goes:

"You can't succeed if you don't try." - everyone
"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." Theodore Roosevelt

That point is clear. What else am I missing? All that is coming up right now are the various dimension related to fear of failure. A perspective shift has to happen, and as I imagine myself moving without fear of failure, the point of allowing myself to be vulnerable is emphasized. Damn, I hate being vulnerable. That has to go. I'm limiting myself through a desire to be strong that I have placed in the hands of others perceptions of me. Meaning, I have long been defining myself by how I perceived others perceive me. Sometimes it was pure self-judgement (typically negative), and other times it was actual feedback from others (mostly positive)...That's an interesting dynamic in itself.

So what do I mean with 'Specifying Clear Direction'? My goal is to clarify the process of self-direction. By being ultra-specific with myself, I leave myself no backdoors. I am clear on all the relevant points of moving myself in a specific direction. I could produce 100 sentences using these 3 words to ensure that I am direct about specific clarity, but I'm going to allow some physical application and feedback happen while I patiently participate in the space-time continuum. For now, I commit myself to practice different forms of planning and investigating the what and how of individual task so that I am prepared to plan. BUT, importantly, it's not just about planning. The real meat is the execution. It's just to recognize that when execution isn't stable and consistent, that I must take a step back and introspect a little: "what am I missing?"

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get locked into a perspective that I know what I'm doing, while simultaneously not showing it. All back and no bite, as they say. I'm done barking. I commit myself to start going straight to the bite, and when I hesitate, I investigate whats going on inside of me.

"He who hesitates is lost." - My Dad

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear taking risks that could compromise my picture perfect self-concept that my ego has accumulated to be over the years. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue participating within and as my ego. This must stop. Expanding my perspective to be able to see how my actions ultimately support what is best for all is not possible if I am stuck fighting to identify myself through, as and within ego. I commit myself to self-honestly exposing my ego-workings to myself so that I may continue accumulating the self-trust that is necessary to flow with clarity in my self-direction.

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to be vulnerable in allowing myself to try new things, express myself without concern for how others may judge me, do something that might not work, create something that isn't perfect. Obviously there are several points related to my invincible character, and I commit myself to opening it all up and to start giving myself the space to fail, and experiment, and live free of fear of judgment, as am in the process of standing up and living by the principle of what is best for all.

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to be extremely specific and clear with myself when determining my direction. Within this, I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to walk myself through all the necessary points of understanding to be able to direct myself effectively, yielding physical movements that contribute to a specific goal. I commit myself to move myself through these practical guidelines that I've laid out for myself through today's writing. Until I am effectively contributing my daily efforts to what is best for life, I commit myself to investigating all of the finer details of myself, to remove the limited scope self-interest, and replace it with comprehensive consideration, a.k.a. common sense.

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