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 370 - How to Program Yourself and Automate Behavior

This is a core concept that we study in the Desteni Group: How have we automated ourselves as human beings. It's a multidimensional point to look at because firstly there is the mind/body/awareness distinction, there's the unity amongst them, and there are the many layers of logic/emotion within the mind itself. Briefly, who we are is all three, but the distinction can be described as that awareness being who we are, enslaved by the past and future constructs of mind, with the body being our physical expression from which the mind generates or resources all it's energy from. It's like our physical body is a battery for the mental reality, just like in the Matrix! Here's an example of some Desteni material that actually illustrates this point and touches on what I'm going to elaborate on now.

The multi-layered mind holds within it a long history of decisions. We store many memories for the sole purpose of making future decisions easier. This process happens on various levels of consciousness, but primarily we integrate many decision frameworks on a subconscious level in childhood. We continue the process on a more conscious level later one, but the big kicker here is that our conscious decisions are built on the foundation of the subconscious layers. Big surprise: the basic motivations in making these decisions on all the conscious levels are based on avoiding pain and gaining pleasure; fear and desire.

So we've spent our whole lives automating our behaviors, our personalities, our entire perception of reality through a lens of fear and desire within self-interest. The Desteni principle of moving this starting point of self-interest into a starting point of best for all, is merely an act of compassion, integrity, and common sense really. I want what's best for all, but my preexisting mind programs that I've so carefully created to benefit me all those years of my past require an equal care to disengage and realign with my new decision to live by the best for all principle.

Now, putting this all into real life examples, and sharing with you how this point opened up for me. I have yet to stabilize my relationship to the nail biting habit, and I was doing well by not biting them at all for a week, in part because a friend saw my facebook post about breaking this habit and decided he'd strike up a conversation with me about it. We ended the conversation in an agreement to be a support for each other in stopping this obsessive habit. The day we were to speak again, I made a decision that changed everything..

I started to bite one of my nails, I stopped, I thought about what I was about to continue doing, I thought about it more, then I thought about the solution of not doing it AS I CONTINUED TO BITE. As you can see here, I fell. This playout was not a 'stop and breathe' movement. It was a stop and think movement. Interestingly, what really brought my attention to this point was how during the moment I was thinking about the solution and continuing to bite at the same time, my right ear started ringing. I referenced some of the desteni perspectives that I've come across in the past few years to relate the ringing to a misalignment in the structural/physical (right side) 'here' (h-ear) moment, which resonated really well. I was ignoring the physical correction that needed to be put into action in that here-moment.

For the next several days, I continued biting my nails, and I continued investigating the importance of that single moment of accepting and allowing myself to bite my nails, here. I was 'here' with me and my thoughts as I decided to continue biting. This was the moment that I automated an unwanted behavior.

What a silly thing to do. Why would I do that? It's moments like this, where the mind holds contradictions and yet directs us to pay attention to the just the information that suits our immediate desire/fear.

The solution: To stand back up, and begin again with the process of accumulating physical memories of asserting my self-direction with the relationship I have toward the nail biting habit. There are many dimensions of many contexts for which this solution is applicable. We create our reality. I created this relationship to nail biting primarily from a fear starting point of having a nail get ripped off in some freak accident with a screen door slamming shut (memory of this happening to my brother). I see, realize and understand that this relationship, born of fear, does not serve what is in the best interest of all, and thus, I must recreate my mental framework, layer by layer, until I am stable in relation to my nails.

Tomorrow I will continue with the self-forgiveness and corrective application writings. Still to come, How to Program Yourself and Automate Wanted Behaviors.

Day 206 - Freedom Forgiveness & Exploration

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing my freedom to act how ever I choose in any moment, and thus have created resistance toward decisions that might compromise my ability to act freely.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be scared of losing control of a situation be it because of forceful consequence or creating discord between self and other(s). This is a huge point that I need to further unpack.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel unable to address such a large point as this, not realizing that I can give myself as much time as I need to sort myself out. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try and race through process from a point of comparison.

Okay. With regard to the 2nd SF statement, why would I lose control of my free will in any given situation? 1. Given: homework, Answer: disconnect between choice and desire through time
2. Given: in a group of peers (playing soccer), Answer: Don't want to let them down / inconvenience them
3. Given: Relationship, Answer: Fear of leaving bad impression

Well, I've sure opened up a lot with just this! Workin' it through:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate my past choices from my present choices. In this, I see the disconnect occurs because of energy fluctuations: either because the past choice was unstable/energy based, or my present choice is unstable, energy based. So, in the case of doing homework, I defined my choice to go to college separate from myself as breath. I went to college because "that's the standard society expects of me" and "to have a good time (socially)." I can see here my past choice was not for me, but externalized. Also, my procrastination was justified by 2nd intention which was for me (to have fun). Cool. Opening up. Expanding.

For the second and third scenario, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to require positive validation/judgement from others to define who I am. This in a deeply ingrained fallacy. I believe most humans have this condition because we are taught in school of the concept: looking glass self (see image #1).  One of the primary components of this concept is, "We develop our self through the judgments of others." (Yeung, et al. 2003). This is not our true self as breathing life. This is our mentally reflected self. So the concept is right, the definition of self is where everything gets messy, especially since Desteni message popped up on the internet.

image #1 (from wikipedia)

Now, I see a connection between all of these above scenarios. Loss of control happens when I am already out of control. That disconnect between my past choice and present choice is not consistently congruent because I was never stable within my choices. The choice was fluctuating based on energy and self-interest. Much like "wanting to have it all," I hadn't realized that I am my past AND present choices, not taking responsibility for all of me. Bam!

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to attempt to evade the inevitable self-responsibility and accountability of my past/present choices. I now realize that this is a major component of delay/procrastination. Riding the tides of self-interested energy is not practical in reality, and this is how things get out of control. We are out of control.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to take responsibility for all of me, all of my decisions; past and present.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to realize and understand that it is me who has been robbing my freedom.
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When and as I see myself making a choice that is accompanied by a self-interested, energy fluctuation, I stop I breathe. I realize that I am responsible for all my decisions throughout and across time. I commit myself to writing about when I have not taken the time to consider the consequences of my decisions, for in these moments I can discover the egoist program that moves with energy , delete it, and make room for the best for all choices.

Note: I just took a writing break and was amazed at how much/often I am moved by self-interest energy. I practically commit myself to at least acknowledging them, and I realize that only through writing can I decipher an event, find what are the motivating energies, and release the pattern through self-forgiveness and precise commitments. In this, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not take the commitment statements seriously, as they are to be a new, written law of self. To be lived practically, in stability. Breath is the point of stability that connects past, present and future.

When and as I see myself resisting the writing of commitment statements because am unsure of my ability to uphold them, I stop I breathe. I realize that the only reason I would do such a thing is because I am not living my words, my words are not purified, rather based in energy. I commit myself to exploring the resistance toward making real commitment statements, and to stop creating energetic/unstable commitments to myself. Perhaps this issue may also pertain to being too general.

When and as I see myself out of alignment with a past decision, I stop I breathe. I realize that I can explore my past decision. I commit myself to giving myself the freedom to create a new starting point within a choice that may have once only considered what was best for me.

When and as I see myself experiencing an energetic low of consequence, I stop I breathe. I realize that this is a prime moment of self-investigation. I commit myself to writing about my experience and asking myself: how did I get myself into this situation? What decisions did I make? And why did I make those decisions? After these questions are answered, I commit myself to a steadfast process of releasing the patterns that lead to the unfavorable consequence through self-forgiveness.

When and as I see myself (becoming) overwhelmed because of a large point that I have opened up, I stop I breathe. I realize that "the only way to eat an elephant, is one bite at a time." I commit myself to pacing myself within my own process. I commit myself to stop trying to race to the finish of process. Lao Tzu once said (probably in another language): "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." So, like this, I would like to calmly pursue purity of self. To be investigated.

When and as I see myself avoiding or resisting a choice that will limit my sense of freedom, I stop I breathe. I realize that making a decision is not to be taken lightly when the consequences are drastic. I also realize that making decisions based on an idealized energy is an act of irresponsibility within/toward self. I commit myself to becoming evermore responsible within my decision process.

There are many, many decisions made everyday. Will I stand up and vote for what's best for all? Will I accept less within myself? I commit myself to questioning my behaviors/choices that are not in alignment with what's best for all, so that I may see where and how self compromise exists, expose the pattern and walk process accordingly...patiently. There's no where else to go. Give me the time to really see me. Ahh, what a nice gift.