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.

--

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 418 - Blogging Everyday

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being judged by others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to diminish my consistency with this blog because I am afraid of not being good enough in the public eye.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create and participate within fear-based thinking when I consider writing a blog post.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to NOT orient to the real reasons for which this blog exists: openly shared self-support.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have the thought, "I don't need to blog today."

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that my process has evolved beyond blogging.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify NOT supporting myself through posting to my daily blog, using nearly any excuse that my mind could come up with.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to stand within excuses and justifications for why I am not participating in life to my highest potential, each day.

I forgive myself for NOT accepting and allowing myself to see me clearly, AND take corrective action to realign my living participation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to wait and require stimulus for me to get moving and make the decision to support myself with daily writing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe in the thought "I can't do this."


--

I CAN do this.

When and as I see myself thinking "I can't do this," I stop, I breathe. I realize that my mind is now taking the wheel to steer me down a path of self-disempowerment. I commit myself to immediately stop this thought train, investigate the nature of my resistance, and move through it into an expression of "I can do this."

When and as I see myself formulating reasons, justifications and excuses, I stop, I breathe. I realize that I can be the directive decider of my living, instead of just allowing these classic mind-programs. I commit myself to waling real-time self-forgiveness on the reasons, justifications and excuses that come up in my mind for why I cannot do or be what is best for all.

When and as I see myself participating in any excuse for why I do not need to write my JTL blog, I stop, and I breathe. I realize that this blog will not write itself, and I commit myself to giving my best effort to write something everyday.

When and as I see myself resisting to write a daily post, I stop, I breathe. I realize that resistance arises from fear-based thinking, so I commit myself to exposing these fears to myself and moving through it.

I commit myself to no longer accept and allow fear to direct me away from writing this blog.

I commit myself to remember the purpose of this daily blog. When and if this isn't clear, I stop, I breathe. I commit myself to re-investigate why I started this blog until it is clear again.

I commit myself to continue opening up dimensions related to why I may not (want to) blog every day, like laziness and other flavors of self-interest, until it is clear, and I am here, everyday.

Day 417 - Damn Daniel! Back at it again...

...with the Journey to Life blogging!

In the summer of 2013, I had the great fortune of traveling to South Africa to live on the Desteni farm for a couple of months. During that time, I felt like I no longer needed to remain consistent with my daily blog because I had proven myself (to others) and made it there (feeling accepted), which reveals that my starting point in blogging wasn't fully for me. So, I let it slide and focused myself on interacting within the physically immediate relationships, despite Bernard emphasizing to me how important it is that I keep consistent with the writing, as a primary point of visibility in my process.

In retrospect, it was kind of like my social programming that I lived out in college, prioritizing the social scene over homework. I liked being judged by my immediate character rather than the permanent, anyone-can-see writings posted online. Managing the (projected) social judgments of a few personalities was kind of my forte, a skill I'd been developing since the sixth grade, when I moved from NY to CA and had the opportunity to recreate my self-perception without the baggage of my past social faux pas.

The consequences of orienting to a socially constructed self-perception, have become more and more...consequential. Building this inauthentic self-confidence, doomed to crack and crumble, was an uphill battle. Yeah, maybe I learned a few useful coping skills, like how to be "cool" in a small/dynamic social scene, but the real shit going on under the surface: low self worth, low self-esteem, fears of rejection and not being accepted by others - never went away. In fact, it only got worse, taking on new forms and intensities.

For example, my blogging tapered off because I couldn't so easily manage the perceptions of others. Posting publicly like this ultimately demands authenticity, which is totally cool because I still hardly know the authentic me! Another example: My agreement relationship demands that I reorient to my authentic self, because the facade-self only holds up for so long before breaking down.

Thus,

the Desteni "I" Process.

Which includes actively applying the tools of self-investigative writing, self-forgiveness, breathing and real-time self correction.

So, here I am, restating my starting point: I'm not interested in applying my efforts to maintain a crumbling self-conception, especially not when I'm surrounded by all the right information and support (thanks everyone). It's time to finally let it go and start getting to know who the real "I" is.

I don't have the white Vans, and I don't care. I commit myself to letting go of the importance of how others may or may not perceive me. I am cool in my own right, and I'm going to prove that to myself by giving myself the chance to really get to know me. Much to uncover in future postings.

Desteni.org | DesteniIprocess.com | EQAFE.com | wiki.destonians.com

Day 416 - Word Critic Bully Character

A little backstory before opening up this character:

While working through level 10 of my vocabulary building program, I came across the word infer, and slowed down to read all the definitions for it because I have long had trouble distinguishing between inference and deduction. This lead to a journey of understanding, aided by the internet and, well, Yahoo Answers. Reading through all the contributions from others, I was definitely starting to refine the boundaries of these two words for myself. Below is one of the more poorly rated answers, but I resonated with it. I thought was a really effective expression of her understanding. Then I expanded the 1 comment, read it, and went through a semi-heavy reaction as I closed the page in disgust of the nasty meanness of humanity online.

I reopened the tab to investigate what this reaction was. Rereading this, O_hutch may have been simply saying that it was funny, and not in a derogatory way. Regardless, my interpretation/reaction of the situation, was such, as to reflect my own nature; and so, I walk the necessary self-forgiveness, take responsibility for my contribution to this uncool aspect of our world/internet culture.

--

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge my own and others' words.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to polarize my understanding of the importance of clear understanding of individual vocabulary words, and create a positive experience attached to perfect word choice and execution, and a negative experience/judgment of fumbling my words, incorrect word use, nonsense - and within allowing my mind to polarize and energize this point, I now see, realize and understand that I am absolutely sabotaging an awesome potential to support myself and those around me, putting my understanding of vocabulary to its best use.

Scenarios:

- Listen for the definition mismatch when listening to others. This is accomplished by attentively listening to the whole of the other person to get their context and how it influences their understanding/use of particular words, and then comparing and contrasting it to my understanding. Additional cross referencing is often required, as my contextual associations with my words could just as well be misaligned.

- Use my Vocabulary Builder everyday. This is most clearly an expression of putting my understanding of vocabulary to its best use.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that my definitions and understandings of words are more clear, more refined, more accurate, and thus judge myself as superior to all around me (straight up ego design), and TOTALLY MISS how others choose their words according to their own understandings of them! It's kind of a..."duh" thing, but this also shows me how stupid and compromising it can be when I let my ego steer my perception.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to listen to others superficially and from the narrow vantage point of my current understanding, reactively ready to pounce on/judge others when they speak/write with any word-definition discrepancies to my own; instead of (correction) leveling with others and working to understand why/how they use their words to convey meaning, and resolve discrepancies.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to be fast and rush through information, and be the first person to correctly interpret what someone means, sometimes even before they finish speaking.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to treat others as intellectual inferiors because of an inflated sense of having comprehensive understanding.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abuse myself and others within and through operating from a partial understanding, inflated to seem to me like a better or more accurate understanding. I commit myself to humble myself and see the honesty of me operating within and from a partial understanding.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to trust my own understandings, which are actually inferences that I've been making my whole life.

I commit myself to be humble and willing to reconsider everything (311, thanks again for this song)!

I commit myself to actively realizing that we all don't have the same positioning and reach within the English lexicon, and take responsibility for creating shared understanding within what is best for all.

I commit myself to apply active listening to cross reference my initial interpretations and understandings with other potential meanings, especially meanings relevant to the individual speaking. This requires a humbleness and slowing down. Patiently taking in more information than I would normally cruising through my life at mind-speed.

--

It's a rather obtrusive personality program in my life, specifically in the realm of communication, which was my field of study in college. Damn, no matter how much I know, I really do need to humble myself and keep learning, all the time.

Bottom line: To have an inflated self-perception of mastery within understanding = not chill.


More to come on: listening, bullying, words, and my life experience. Thanks.

Day 415 - Hearing or Watching Myself

I forgive myself that I have been accepting and allowing myself to fear listening to my own voice, to cross reference what I’m saying before sharing it with others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to rely on Garbrielle to vet my expression for me, and to have created our relationship to be this way in my mind – never letting her really know and understand that I want this of her because I’m embarrassed about this dependency relationship point because I know better and because Garb’s really independent and I don’t want to be seen as less than her – which I now see is one critical dimension of why I haven’t allowed myself to support and be supported in this relationship because I’m competing with her/others to validate myself, my standing in the world, in process, and in relation to my peers/others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I am invalid, unworthy, “a zero”, an outsider, and someone who doesn’t have a voice, input, or impact in the direction of the world or my life circumstance.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear being impotent.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not trust my expression when I go out on a limb.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing fear energy to determine whether or not I go for it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to hide myself behind my hands via fingernail biting because I am afraid that if others get a good look at me AND decide I’m unworthy of their acceptance, then I have lost big time; and that by hiding behind my hands as an underlying objective within nail biting is a deliberate self-sabotage point so that I cannot be truly judged as who I really am.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear giving it my all because I fear being judged for who I truly am.

I commit myself to listen to reread my writings, listen to my voice recordings, and watch my videos.

Then, I commit myself to investigating any reactions, clearing them with SF aloud, and if anything still remains, I'll consider what practical edits would help me express the nature of what I am trying to say.

I commit myself to publishing myself much more frequently.

I commit myself to sharing myself with others, no matter how much ego-based resistance I generate.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to generate resistance to sharing myself within and through my participation in egocentric comparison judgments.

I commit myself to just getting myself and my process out there. No fear.

I commit myself to understand that I amplify my efforts in process by sharing myself! Exciting times ahead readers!

Thanks.