Day 400 - Self-Leadership in a Relationship, Part 2

The key insight for the success of a relationship:

Reorienting Self to Self

I got stuck in a subtle, long-term possession of sorts. Moving across the country to live with this lady person wasn't the plan. Two weeks later, it was. I prepared to leave my family over the next 5 months, and when the time came, I was in a completely new environment. Granted, I have had a lot of practice with this when in college. Each year I picked a new place to live and embraced the randomness of Craigslist to assign my housemates. Each year, I adapted, and in doing so, I significantly created myself based on who I was living with. My operating philosophy at the time: In order to be successful in the future, I needed to be able to handle myself in any living environment. I saw it as a challenge and a practice in flexibility; however, I didn't realize how much I was compromising myself by creating my character to be at the whim of my world. Perhaps I promoted harmony, but I didn't stand as the director of my reality.

Now, living with my LP, we're committed to becoming the directive principle of our lives in alignment with what is best for all. That's not an overnight process. Closer to 7 years. Walking with another process walker, we are constantly facing our minds, day-in and day-out. It's safe to say that this is far from the easy, go-with-the-flow style of living that I had been operating within most of my life. This has been far more real, far more challenging, and unquestionably more rewarding.

So what is really the difference? How I had learned to live was primarily through self-interest, meaning that I would dynamically alter my expression: thoughts, words & deeds, to get from life that which I wanted. The scope of my consideration was narrowly what I saw would best suit me. I enjoyed laughing and getting along with people, so one of my favorite characters was a humor-oriented personality. There is also a fear energy of not being accepted by others, so I was kind of hitting two birds with one stone. I had no idea how I was using my mind to create these well-adapted characters, nor did I have any idea of the consequences.

Creating harmony-producing characters is simply not working anymore. Those personalities function on a more surface level. My LP and I are committed to going deep, sorting out the false personalities, and getting to know the real Self here. This task is much more involved than creating a temporary personality, and this means it's not going to be all pretty and lovely-dovey all the time. The friction and conflict between us is much like tilling the earth for the next season of growth. This can be most uncomfortable! We're drudging up many of our personal 'truths', the ways which we've accepted and defined the world to be. But Hey, it's a new year, and they say the first year of an agreement relationship is the hardest.

I have already begun to see how we're shifting from 'fighting for our limitations' - which is how we say: fighting to be right or to protect our existing 'knowledge' - and into understanding each other, accepting each other, and moving to firstly change self. Letting go of her in a way, frees me up to focus on myself and my process through the mind. One of the most supportive tools I've been focusing on developing is: Listening. More on that to come.

There are plenty more tools to define and use, and I'll make a more sincere effort to begin sharing them with you here. Writing is so incredibly essential if you want to move forward into/as life. The mind will play games to no end if you let it. The coolest part about being in an agreement is that neither of us will let it happen to either of us. There is no question in my mind whether moving across the country was worth it or not. My life partner and I are going to Garb-Dan the world together :)

Day 325 - Missing my friends

It's been just over a year since I graduated college, and one of the major associated events is the friends I had last year are graduating and leaving the area. I no longer have the ability to drive down and visit all of them as I had done last month. Loss. The design of the experience is fear of loss.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear not being able to reconnect with all my past friends.

This is really my holding on to the memories that I had when I was going to school with them. I had a lot of fun when I went to visit recently, but it was different. I was chasing a memory and instead ended up creating a new memory to get attached to. Like a nostalgic feeling, but also strongly associated with the people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become attached to, and define myself by a memory, wherein I fear losing that chapter, that part of myself, and being unable to ever relive those moments.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to relive my past.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to go back in time to live my past differently with the knowledge I have now. = regret

Soon after my visit was over, I had a dream that burnt into my memory banks forever. It was basically all of them singing this song with an elaborate movement performance in the streets of Isla Vista. It was like a 'goodbye' show directed at me, and there was this overall feeling of connection and honor. I didn't reflect on it too much, but now that I do, here's what comes up: I personally feel a connection and honor toward them. 

There is this concept that I like to apply, I call it "loving detachment." It's like a perceptual frame that I willingly live to keep moving through life and not really pay attention to my past relationships. It seems now like it exists as a coping mechanism to avoid my fear of loss of past relationship, whereas I have usually always considered it to just be a smart/superior way to move through life. In fact, I was protecting myself from being in the vulnerable position of being left behind myself. I can support this conclusion also by the fact that I always wanted to stay friends with my ex-girlfriends. I'm sure I had a few mental tools / programs that I implemented to avoid feeling sad or uncomfortable or inferior. It was a choice.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to chose to create and live in an illusionary perspective.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think this was the best way lead a life, by keeping myself in the positive experience.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to disregard the affect I've had on others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to value others' perspectives less than my own.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to treat others poorly.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to only care about myself and my own experience of myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to like having friends to support my ego / superiority frame.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have friends just to support my ego / superiority frame.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use my friends to support my ego/ superiority frame.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to miss my friends because they no longer support my ego / superiority frame.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to miss my friends.

I realize now that the design of missing friends and attachment to memories is really me as a mind trying to preserve my characters / personalities that I enjoyed. The positive experiences of myself in a certain context. To get stuck in the past, to fear loss / letting go of my personal memories with my friends, is me wanting to preserve a part of myself as a particular personality and experience of myself.

This is silly. Not only does it take away from my creative powers that are here as me building myself by adapting to my immediate environment in a way that is best for all, but I'm also fighting to save an energetic layer of myself. This energy is a personality character that I created in my head and lived out in a social environment. It's an illusion that I built and lived, and thus validated. And when this version of me loses it's momentum, when the social and environmental stimulation no longer feeds it, I'm going through this feeling of loss.

When and as I see myself longing to be in the past, in a memory with specific individuals, I stop, I breathe. I realize that this past scenario will never again happen just the same. I commit myself to flag this self-compromising form of nostalgia and releasing my attachments to it through investigating it and speaking/writing specific self-forgiveness.

When and as I see myself desiring to relive a moment of favorable, past interaction, I stop I breathe. I realize that I am here, and my life can only be lived to it's utmost potential in this moment. I commit myself to realigning myself with hereness, with breath, whenever I see myself day dreaming in the past.

This process has to happen. I can't allow myself to define myself based on energetic personality interactions, and go my whole life from within a perspective of self-interest and experience seeking. At what cost is "fun"? To think about the many that can't afford fun, the many that die and will die because of world systemic inefficiency, and then to also be aware of how I can make a difference with a bit of hard work...and then still just sit around wanting to feel good...no.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to feel good while being ignorant of my ignorance is bliss stance.

I know what is at stake. To live here and not support what is best for all is going out of style. The quicker we all educate ourselves on our individual responsibility to support what's best for the whole, the sooner we can all start living a dignified life. Research and support the BIG solution (example). This is our shot. The window of opportunity is a moment where you make a choice. Investigate who you are within that. Why did you go this route? Where do your priorities lie? How much longer can you justify regrettable pursuits? Aha! Hehe.

To all my college friends: I cherish and honor you all. Thank you for the range of experiences. Enjoyable to educational. My only regret is trying impress you. I forgive myself that I had accepted and allowed myself to place myself as less than you and trying to disprove my self-doubt with a multifaceted facade of personalities that truly aren't who I am. The consequences of living to present myself in a certain way had unforeseen consequences. Thank your for the memories that I will always have and be able to work with in my journey of self-discovery. I commit myself to waste no more time trying to relive old personalities. I commit myself to further investigating the intent/motivations of my self-made energetic characters. You will be able to read it all here.

Thank you.

Day 290 - Departure Feelings

Anytime I am leaving a familiar home-zone there is this feeling that I need to do everything and see everyone and have the perfect 'happy ending.' Similarly, there is an excitement to do it all and meet new people when I arrive at a new living situation. This is an interesting point to walk because there are only so many times when these emotions come up, and I've never really thought about the departure feelings/thoughts before; I usually just lived in/as them.

Ok, so what's going on here? Fear of loss, primarily...yep, that's about it. I'll expand: I come to a new place with excitement for the experiences and memories to be created, and when I leave, there is a strong undertone of "I will no longer be able to have these experiences anymore." Ohh CHANGE! Why are you so cruel? haha

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel an ache of need to see it all and do it all before I depart as a final goodbye to capstone all of my experiences.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to be recognized and validated, seeing my departure as this critical moment of receiving positive judgement from the friends I've created enjoyable experiences with.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define myself according to a living environment and developing an attachment to particular places and people that validate who I think I am.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear losing a set of experiences that are in fact memories.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear losing the ability to recreate location/person specific memories.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to desire past memories. Bang! There are so many positive feelings associated with past memories. They move and motivate me to recreate. Stuck in a groove of chasing what I already have come to know as positive experiences.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to chase after my past because I KNOW that I have been happy within those memories AND I fear the unknown.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear the unknown, as I will not have control over how I will experience myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I will not have control over the experience of myself if I haven't yet already lived similar past experience(s).
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When and as I see myself getting all nostalgic and sad to leave, I stop I breathe. I realize that I am able to enjoy myself in this moment within and as it all, one and equal. I commit myself to understanding how I've removed myself from reality through going into mind and feelings of how much I will miss it all.

 When and as I see myself wanting to "see everyone, one last time," I stop, breathe, and realize that this desire comes from a need to define myself on my past experiences with others. That last moment of interaction with another is usually one of the highlighted memories. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to be special in the eyes of others in my memories so I can think back to how great I am. I commit myself to stop and breathe when I see myself utilizing my final memories with someone to define who I am now.

When and as I see myself afraid to let go of a living situation, I stop I breathe. I realize that I create myself in a new context in every new situation, and in every new breath. I commit myself to move with my breath, into the future, unhindered by fear/anxiety of what may come.

When and as I see myself wanting to control my future experience of myself by comparing it to my past experiences, I stop I breathe. I realize that I create myself here, within every breath. I commit myself to bring myself back to the moment that is here when and as I seem myself anxious about the unknown set of experiences to come. Here I am. Here I breathe. Here I move. Here I stabilize.

Day 284 - Party vs Blog

Today is the 'Cinco de mayo' excuse to party in the college scene. There are a plethora of sombreros and fake mustaches flying around the crowd. Here I am, thinking I should have........8 minutes of heavy dancing later...should have written earlier, knowing full well that I would be faced with this conflict of self-support vs socialization. It's a point of self-honest responsibility. Reminds me of my Day 54 - Other Distraction where I briefly discussed this dynamic of placing social time as a higher priority than time with and for myself.

Halloween 2010         - picture credit

It was effective to some degree because here I am. Thankfully, I can get away with missing the 'getting drunk' phase and join the group momentarily because I've practiced the art of sober partying since Fall of my senior year. The point of treating others in the social scene as a higher priority than myself is a huge point that is still rooted within me. On the cool side, here I am, pushing myself to be responsible to myself within process even in the moment when the music gets shut off and everyone is moving to the next party. It's intriguing how I want to be out there with everyone on my vacation, but I didn't consider this moment when I was delaying my writing earlier in the day.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wait to blog without considering the potential of the situation I was in now. In this, I was vaguely holding the potential of just skipping my blog post today, but when the moment came, I chose to stay back and finish my responsibility. Why? I am on a streak in terms of not missing any days....that's the first reason to mind and I don't like it. I really do want to simply write as a method of effective self support, and when I am rushed like I am now, I could very easily just be pumping out the bear minimum 'to just get by.' In fact, I am doing that to some degree.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to put myself in a position where I am rushed to pump out a blog post that isn't my best material, in terms of self-support. I realize that I started out very oriented to how I perceived others would judge my writing, but even as I write this sentence, I wonder how useful all of this post so far has been really supportive. Next moment, I feel that by writing/revealing that, seems very self honest and thus ultimately self-supportive as I imagine looking back to this post as I did for Day 54. It really does all build together. The important part is that I DO write. Also being mindful of who I am within my writing is essential if I am aiming to support myself in realizing myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to delay asserting myself within myself, for myself, in finding/realizing what it requires to be balanced and effective with regards to self-support and social life. I realize that social life is equally as one important as my self-support, thus by delaying my self-supportive writing, I have compromised my social life. Through realizing this, and accepting my responsibility within it all, I sit and I write.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become angry with myself for making the choices that lead me to this moment by not really, and I mean really, considering how the practical consequences would likely be. It's obvious that I would find myself here, or out sober partying while worrying if I would be back before midnight with enough time to pump out a cheap blog. Within all of this, I realize that delay does not frickin serve me at all. I feel like a little baby-man, whining inside myself....only to ultimately find myself stuck with myself, alone. Very eye opening.

When and as I see myself delaying responsibility to support myself within process, I stop I breathe. I realize that I am making a choice, I am making a statement of who I am. I commit myself to that understanding of who I am within a choice of delay and what the consequences of doing so are. To hide the consequences from myself is the dishonesty, is the core problem here, is how I've been letting myself get into these situations.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize the consequences of inaction.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize that I have been hiding and/or quickly suppressing what the consequences are in the critical moment. This moment is where the only real choice exists: To be or not to be....Self-Honest....that is the question.

I commit myself to to continue this writing process to build awareness of myself within this critical, self defining moment. Thank you.

Day 239 - Becoming Responsible

I am getting a sense for what it means to grow up. This is a rite of passage that all kids go through when entering adulthood. Moving back home after college has prolonged this process a bit, but the cool part is that I've been writing and blogging about my daily experience for quite some time. I started my first process journal June 2010 and started this blog about 2 years later. Now, I'm beginning to feel like a year's worth of blogs is just around the corner.

This time creep, if you will, is an interesting experience. One day I'm young, the next I'm old. You hear this from older people all the time, and it's as if there is a disconnect between reality and perception of self. There is an imagined version of self that is idealized and able.

My college lifestyle

What I am realizing over broad period of time is that I too am growing up, and with that comes a multitude of responsibility. This type of responsibility is typically learned by necessity, but there are ways to delay becoming responsible, especially when one is able to do so. In my case, I have been able to delay the onset of responsibility. Perhaps a slower transition is will lead to a better outcome... Whoa, no, hold on. This is smelling like a justification. It sure is easier to transition more slowly, and it's a heck of a lot easier to postpone responsibility when the world is not pressing on me.

College was a place far from home that I was able to get a sense of what it's like to be on my own feet. While this is true in some regards, I was not funding my own education/rent/food. I had severally underestimated what it takes to make ends meet. I was simply following the groove of my destiny, boarding to class and living like a really chill cat. I took care of my pressed responsibilities (i.e. passing grades and cleaning dishes), and the rest of the time that was afforded to me, I just had fun. That was the plan: Get a degree and enjoy my social experience. I also enjoyed my own time in being creative or going to the beach (Ya, school on the ocean)!

My point here is there are several perspectives of responsibility, and I haven't considered them all. This is changing. I easily accepted that I was responsible by the definition of getting passing grades, not even good grades. I was weaker yet in terms of eating a healthy, physically supportive diet. I got my exercise through having fun, so I didn't even consider being responsible in that area (an issue in itself: that of ignorant irresponsibility). And that leads me into the big one...being responsible for this world as a participant.

I had this imagined version of myself, where I was great and leader-like, and I was going to study communication and talk to the world. Through this idealized version of myself that was just going to happen sometime in the future, I had lost touch with reality. I almost felt like that was who I was already, and no hard work would be required to become who I already am (fascinating).

In a way, I had reduced the definition of responsibility to "making the right choices." I wasn't very aware of this definition. I had always just made a decision and followed through, and doing hard work can simply be that. What I was doing though, was only choosing to expose myself to easy paths. Some verb-age from my fathers mouth "...path of least resistance," was said in a positive way, and so I adapted this into my program.

So here's the interesting end thought:

Above, I made the statement "I was simply following the groove of my destiny," and I meant it as kind of a natural unfolding of life. What I had long believed my destiny to be was to be someone really significant and change the world to be a better place. I have a vivid memory from 7th grade history of wanting to be written about in the history books. The problem was that I didn't think I had to work very hard to get to such a position, and later on, as I became exposed to 2012 readings and new age spiritualism, I saw a nice fit in being able to become the "great, enlightened world saver" I was destined to be with no real effort. All I had to do was meditate with mantras and cast violet light across the neighborhood (yes, I did that).

Now, I find myself in the shoes of a Destonian, as a member of Desteni. I am no longer within my simple destiny groove. The transition from destiny to desteni was similar to the derailing of a train. Had I spent several thousand more dollars on reaching higher consciousness, my train may have been moving too fast, too confidently to consider that I was wrong in any way. Fortunately, I had an open enough mind to conduct a thorough investigation.

And what did I find?

An overlap. I was on board with oneness, but I couldn't wrap my head around equality. I had wanted to make the world a better place by becoming better (than others) myself. That fit nicely with the "best for all" principle. One of the most mind boggling perspectives of oneness and equality that Desteni presents is becoming responsible for the entire world. I perceived that was what I wanted, not what I already was. That was the real source of the initial shock. Actually hearing the message of becoming responsible.

I am leaning what is means to be responsible in a practical, create myself through effort kind of way. This is not exclusive to Desteni, but the Destonians aren't kidding around. Desteni I Process is a fast track to removing the mental limitation and excuses for not being responsible for self and this world as a whole. All things considered, greed and self-improvement just don't make the cut. Aligning the expression of self as life, to support what is best for all life, through a process of self-perfection...is becoming responsible.

Investigate for yourself where you stand in this world.