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 383 - Directing Uncertainty

In my last post, I started investigating my relationship with Uncertainty. Now, it's time to write out the process of changing it, and we'll see if anything new opens up along the way.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize myself as my nature in moments of uncertainty, and so allow myself to freeze up, become indecisive, and not take responsibility for directing myself in the situation that gave rise to the uncertainty.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear uncertainty.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the unknown.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my own fears.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from myself through desiring certainty, confidence, assuredness, safety, not realizing that within this desire, my starting point was a fear-based energy which is not who I am.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am the fear-themed thought, not realizing the separation of self within and through the mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself into a future projection and become attached to a desirable outcome, such that when I cannot be certain that the projection will manifest, I create a fear reaction that the projection will not manifest.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realize and understand that living according to future projections is a breeding ground for fear. I commit myself to start shifting into moment to moment, commonsense consideration.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself by the future projections, wherein the uncertainty of it ever actually happening is a threat to myself as an ego. If failure happens, then I am defined by that failure, and I forgive myself for allowing myself to invest myself into this belief system.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear failure.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself be failures and success, instead of realizing that who I am within failure and success, how I respond to failure and success, is who I really am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create 'what if' thoughts to justify a limited existence of myself, such as justifying myself as fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to "play it safe" when faced with uncertainty, by pursuing only what has a higher degree of certainty. I realize here how I've been taking more risks in other areas of my life to balance out this personality design. Example: Physical adventuring out into the unknown, balances psychological freezing up in the moment of making the first kiss happen. In this I am seeing that my fear of judgement from others weighs heavier in contributing to moments of uncertainty than does matters related to fearing for my physical well-being. This tells me that I still have a strong connection to the self-definition that I've built through the years in relation to other people in my world. This has to stop. I understand that my ego is not who I am, and yet I still fight to keep my ego alive...funny wording. As if the ego is actually alive!..hmmm. I haven't considered that I'm looking at my ego as a separate, living entity. It's an intricate system, yet it produces feelings and fears that feel real in the moments when they arise..

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that my ego is an intricate system that obeys rules that I have set, based on all my past experiences. I have been seeing myself as the ego as living and as superior to myself. I built it. I created it. I want it to last...I AM THE ONE that is making my ego seem alive. I'm giving my life over to it. Wow, it's like the most fascinatingly integrated program ever, but I see it now. I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to see how I am substantiating my ego with myself through all my acceptances and allowances.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not stop the mind and direct my life from within my breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed a belief that it is difficult or "impossible" to stop the mind, my trusted program that protects me from exposing myself to myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist exposing myself to myself and others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to protect and defend the idea of myself, where if there was a potential for others to see me negatively, I would resist interacting with them to keep my ego/self-image safe from discord. In this play out, I realize that the whole while I have been creating the discord I was trying to avoid, and 'what you resist, persists', so on goes my relationship with the programmed consciousness.

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to bring myself into the awareness of what I've been doing to myself to the degree necessary to realize I must stop and change myself in relation to my participation within the mind, fear of judgement.

So the main point that presented itself today was that my specific system within uncertainty is related to fearing judgment of others onto self that would contradict my idealized self-image that exists in my head only, and has been created through future projections and past experiences of ego-validating moments with others. I realize that I this fear of judgement is substantiated in part by my own self-judgements, judgments toward others, and desires to be more than I am. To come: working on expanding my understanding of how and why I created these desire to be more than I am, to be better than others...yes. That's one of my original points walking into Desteni. I was a spiritual researcher, wanting to become enlightened and better than others to teach them all what's up. My ego drive went unfettered by me. This ends here.

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Day 382 - Uncertainty Flavored Resistance

Yesterday, toward the end of my post here, I opened up an important point. I have known for some time that there is something significant about my relationship to uncertainty, but I'm now moving myself to push through the uncertainty around my relationship to uncertainty.

Let's start with what I do know:

• When faced with uncertainty, a resistance comes up at least partially because the emotion of possibility of failing is accentuated because I am unable to predict a likely outcome.
• Within this point, I am erroneously defining certainty as that which my mind determines to be probably (with confidence) true.
• The uncertainty of succeeding produces an inner experience of being immobilized.
• Why? Because I define myself by my successes and failures (ego/mind level)
• Taking into consideration that my mind can't predict the outcome, I realize that facing uncertainty is inherent within personal growth; implying that solely acting within the parameters of what we know prevents us from discovering anything new about ourselves.
• Why? Because our mind's predictions are based on past experiences....which means that the comfort of certainty promotes only the repetition of our past, limiting our perception of reality, and thus our initiative participation within reality.

Well that opened up nicely. I am even beginning to see how this design functions in a social platform and global platform. Today, I'm writing about just my personal level interaction with uncertainty. This is the first time I've used the phase initiative participation, and it works well to capture a key aspect in my experience of how uncertainty affects my decision making process. To take the initiative in any situation, there must be a clarity, a certainty, especially in relation to the end-goal. Key.

There is a bit of a Catch-22 going on here, but it's not an impossible one. One can be clear and certain of what one aims to achieve, without being clear or certain of the exact process required to achieve one's aim. There could be many ways, but none of those ways will be discovered if one passively waits for the clarity to arrive. There is an active search for the solutions that is needed, which is derived from the clarity of one's motivation. Having a clear 'why' creates the certainty needed to create the resolve to push through all resistance arising from uncertainty. Understanding our motivation is a Key to overcoming uncertainty.

But there's more than just understanding required. There is a relationship between Self and Self's Motivation that needs to be looked at. Then being able to push through uncertainty resistance is also an equation of drive. What drives us? Survival, Success, Pleasure, Pain, Fear. We have to become intimate with our driving forces. Okay, I'm going in a circle here. 'Understanding our motivations' is essentially the same as 'becoming intimate with our driving forces', so this is the point I needed to find. It's our relationship with our 'WHY' that allows us to grow.

Why buy what I'm saying? It's math. There is a certainty that arises from walking the processes. We take the initiative, we figure it out, we press forward. With uncertainty, it's just an emotional excuse we use to keep ourselves from exposing ourselves to potentially ego-shattering information. And, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think, believe and perceive myself to be my ego; and so, protect, defend and preserve this limited self-definition that is my ego. I commit myself 100% to ending all excuse-generating uncertainty, regardless of how the energetic resistance makes me feel. I stop. I breathe. I initiate my participation. Why?

Because I know my 'why'. I have the best interest of all in consideration, and I'm not going to continue to accept and allow an inner, reactive experience, intertwined with a limited, egotistical self-definition, stop me from investigating and navigating the uncertainty required to get to my certain goal.

What's your goal?

How clear is it?

Why are you passionate about this end?

Where is uncertainty holding you back?

Have you taken the initiative to determine the nature of your uncertainties?

I'll continue tomorrow with expounded self-forgiveness and corrective application statements before I open up 'uncertainty' even further. I hope you enjoyed the bacon.

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Day 363 - Why did the chicken cross the road?

Some say the motivation was just to get to the other side...and it's funny. It's funny cause it's true. Because, we were expecting something more.

...I just spent a bit of time researching this classic "anti-joke," and I've found some interesting things. Here's the Wikipedia page, if that suits you...Also, here is a segment from an 8 minute video on the subject that interestingly goes into a neurological theory for why one might laugh at an anti-joke.

A realization I just had while looking more into why the chicken crossed the road: I must stay focused to clearly communicate my message, my conclusion, the point I'm trying to make. It's very easy to get off topic when there are so many directions that this could go, but the gift within this is the puzzle of finding the connection to the original point of discussion and articulating it in a way that readily makes sense.

This point of staying focused within the midst of a racing mind is a point that needs to be stabilized if we want to be effective in reality. To flow with the swaying of the mind is easier than disciplining oneself in physical reality context. This is the basis of what makes "ADD" kids less successful than the elite children in the private schools. I'll be using the Chicken to illustrate my concepts here on. You may see yourself as the Chicken.

Now, when Chicken is facing the road in front of him, and his mind is racing about all kinds of things, how is he going to get to the other side? The Chicken may even contemplate the 'how' as well as entertaining several what if's all related to one fear or another. But the question is: Why did the chicken cross the road? So, as the Chicken takes a deep breath and asks himself, Why?, he possess the power to make a choice and follow through. If a car is coming, it's a simple matter of common sense based in physical reality.

So, knowing your 'why' helps to focus. I'm pretty sure that a real life chicken would just operate with a 'why' starting point, and never even create a single thought. No energy is required for the chicken to motivate himself to cross the road.

So why am I crossing this metaphorical road? Let's first define the road. It's hard, difficult, risky, scary, real. On the other side of my road, I will define this as: being aligned with my physical body and all of physical existence through the principle of oneness and equality, unhindered in my expression (thought, word and deed) of what is Best For All in every moment of every breath. In this here 7-year Journey to Life blog, I'm writing about my process of crossing the road. In this process, I must face the road and forgive myself for creating energetic relationships (difficult, risky, scary, etc.) toward the road/process as well as all that constitutes who I have been in my journey before reaching the road. Getting to the other side is going to take some serious, focused introspection. 

If you took the time to check out that video segment I linked to at the beginning of this post, you get a nice visual for how the mind will operate in anticipation to reduce uncertainty. I most definitely am guilty of doing this, and the way I see it in how it breaks down is an ego desire to be right and the polarity fear of not knowing. This one information analysis/projection system of the mind is a major source of anxiety. Add it all up: Desire + Fear + Anxiety = petrified in uncertainty. Welcome to the world of being aware of being mind controlled.

The alternative is to be the Chicken who is so connected to his 'why' of crossing the road, it's clear, it's based in physical reality, that there is no need to think or worry or create projections and anxiety.

With purpose so clear

Focused fully, here

No need for fear

Ass is in gear

Fig. 2 - Ex. Immobilizing thought/desire

Day 298 - Under the hood of Self Doubt

Continuing from: Day 297 - Doubting Myself

Yesterday was a little introduction to my self-doubt character. Today I want to add some depth, still maintaining the perspective that this personality is a huge umbrella of points that I must face.....I just wandered off into a cool thought of creating an info-graphic map of my mind. Perhaps when I get closer to Day 2555, I will build a visual based on this blog. Heck, I could get started now. Day dreaming aside...actually this relates. I've come to realize that these day dreams are one of the key components of self-doubt. How? Let me explain.

I was searching for some perspective on 'doubt' in the wiki and found this blob of self forgiveness (here, and scroll down a little) related to "Desire of being Special." From there I drew a little map of how I might connect my spaciness design to self-doubt. To verbally walk you through it: My self-belief that I am special, leads me to think I will be able to obtain 'easy wins' in life, then reality hits, and I go into conflict and uncertainty. From there fear of failure grapples me to the ground.

This little cycle is nice and neat! I'm happy to have drawn it out. There is still room to expand if need be, but for now I have plenty to work with. Altogether now, out loud:
;)
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that I am special.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I can get what I want more easily than others can because I am special or gifted in some way.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to day dream about how I will achieve great feats.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that my imagination so powerful that once I have an idea, all the hard work is irrelevant.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize how important hard work is.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I can just get others to do the hard work, once they are on board with my great/special vision.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to attempt to escape hard work my whole life.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold onto the idea that my thoughts are special and superior to others' thoughts.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear facing reality and diminishing the realness of imagined greatness in my head.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I can beat reality if I am smart enough.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make others seem dumb, so I could preserve and strengthen the idea that I am smarter than others.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place value in the imagination of my ability, instead of realizing the actual value of practical application.

• In this I realize that by emotionally investing myself as the imagination version of myself that I've created the circumstances of uncertainty and self-doubt, for I am constantly reminded of the reality that is all around me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to constantly fight and suppress reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to continually attempt to validate my own inner reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I am wrong about who I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I know who I am though imagining the best version of myself that I could, without considering who I am in the context of reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear failure because then my inner, imagined reality of myself would shatter, and I would be lost.

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

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear rejection.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place value in how I think others perceive me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to construct the belief of who I am, based on how I think others perceive me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in self-judgement.

I forgive myself that I have allowed myself to fear failure.

--

When and as I see myself thinking about how great I will be in an imagined future, I stop I breathe. I realize that I am here, one and equal with the physical reality. I commit myself to start connecting my thoughts to reality by considering the practical steps that are required to achieve my vision. By doing this, I will have a grounded decision framework, instead of acting on an emotional whim whenever a 'brilliant idea' strikes.

When and as I see myself as inherently superior to others, I stop I breathe. I realize I am in for an uncomfortable, humiliating experience of myself within the domain of my ego. I commit myself to remember to breathe when in the company of others, and thus realize myself as and equal and one expression of life / chunk of physical.

When and as I see myself afraid to face reality, I stop I breathe. I realize that I have built an expectation, based on past memories. I commit myself to start looking more closely at the memories with which I construct expectations that I invest myself in, causing fear of it not happening how I imagined it / failure within a moment of reality.

Much still to go. Thanks for reading me.

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Day 119 - Imagined Futures of Grandeur

Photo from flickr

Today I re-realized a long running pattern of thought-separation. I place myself in imaged futures of grandeur and hardly ever make efforts to manifest them. Having many imagined possible futures for myself without any real commitment, I call being 'overly ambitious'. There is a very positive feeling association when I imagine myself in a possible future where I am a successful, big shot in whatever field I'm think of in that moment; however, within this head play I never take the time to imagine how I will get there or which practical steps to take. This point was briefly opened up on Day 13 - Relationship with Future Self, where I address

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from myself by imagining many future selves and thinking that I could be all or many of them, without taking any responsibility for creating myself in alignment to these visions.

I commit myself to begin practically directing my thoughts to prioritize which steps I'll be taking towards which goals. I realize that I have many goals, and to narrow and focus which ones I actually want to pursue will be a process, and by giving myself the time and patience, I will be able to direct myself more effectively than continually allowing thoughts to just rush around in my head. Choosing which passions to pursue is a seemingly dreadful task.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in the thought/feeling that focusing my life path is dreadful or scary. I realize that my mind makes up this feeling-orientation, and it only stands as an obstacle or procrastination excuse.

I commit myself to living my physical self-direction, to stop the thought storm, and get to work.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not see, realize, or understand that I am not these future projections of myself, and also underestimate the actual effort of physically walking toward accomplishing these great goals.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am these future projections without having to do any of the work, and so by participating in the imagination in this way, I am removing myself from the realization that I must work to achieve.

I commit myself to stop amplifying the image of myself and my ability in separation from who I am in actuality, here, breathing, doing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself as a dreamer in separation from a doer.

I commit myself to doing my dreams, and stopping the lofty ideals as potential, great accomplishments.

When and as I see myself becoming overwhelmed with the thoughts of life directions and future selves, I stop  I breathe. I realize that to stop separating myself from the million future selves / possible career paths, I must walk within a practical application. My life direction will unfold with me through this process of self-discovery. The more I write, the more clarity I will gain within myself, and I commit myself to the steadfast application of forgiveness of self to quiet the ambition storm.