Day 173 - Delving into my mind's favorite escapes

Continuing from Day 172 - Glazing Over & Day 171 - Zoned Out Episodes

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize when I depart into a day dream.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think that is it ok/harmless to wander off into my mind.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that zoning out can be a beneficial recharge for the mind.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become intrigued and invested in my mental wanderings, believing that it is warranted/justifiable because the end result may lead to a positive experiences of insight/realization.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to move from physical task, to physical task without realizing the mental spacing out that happens in between, where I blindly follow along. I have referred to this process as side-tracking or "tangenting."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get frustrated with myself for getting side tracked instead of realizing how I became side tracked within self-honesty and stopping the mind's desire to automatically wander on to the next interesting/enjoyable thing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to unintentionally prioritize mental escapes when faced with work/resistance.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that it is difficult to remain here and always present, and for allowing myself to use this as an excuse to give in to the mind.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to desire to just zone out because it's easy and not tasking.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect spacing out & comfortable/easy.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect breathing in physical awareness & difficult.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to space out when listening to another speak. Within this, I forgive myself that I allow myself to become more fascinated with my own thoughts and/or fear not responding well. I forgive myself that I have allowed myself to fear just being myself when in conversation with another.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear not being present and with my breath because I could get hurt when doing physical activities while participating in a mental augment/adventure.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not consider myself within each breath that I take. This will be a process, and while I keep coming back to my breath, I commit myself to working through and facing all self-created points of fear that may stand in my way to self-realization, here.

I commit myself to recognizing and stopping a mental tangent escapade as quickly as I can. Within this, I commit myself to investigate why I was so fascinated to begin following my mind into the abyss in the first place to be able to effectively apply self-forgiveness for that point.

When and as I see myself resisting a task I have planned to do, I stop I breathe. I realize this is the point where I allow my mind to wander and distract me. I commit myself to not get overwhelmed within trying to stop this by remembering the simplicity of the self-assistance tool of taking a breath.

When and as I see myself faced with work, moving toward a distraction, and becoming overwhelmed with my choice to follow the distraction, I stop I breathe. I realize that I have repeatedly been disabling myself from effectively bringing myself back on track within not realizing that the experience of overwhelmed/too difficult is just another allowed mental outflow of a relationship I have not yet explored in detail. This is a key. The key is and has been breathing. I stop, I breathe. I see my mind moving me. I stop. I, I breathe. I continue to breathe and direct myself with intention. I commit myself to stopping all emotional movements. I commit myself to not get angry at/toward self when I accidentally allow myself to participate within/from emotion, not realizing that anger is yet another equal, reactive emotional experience of mind participation.

When and as I see myself enthused with my own thinking when conversing with others, I stop I breathe. I realize that I have not wanted to give this up, and will require to continually assess why/where I place value in my thinking processes that are in separation from physical space-time. I commit myself to continue my mental-self investigation.

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Day 172 - Glazing Over

This is a continuation from yesterday (Day 171 - Zoned Out Episodes) where I am continuing to open up this aspect of myself that seems impossible to overcome.

A friend told me today that she heard from someone who recently learned from a higher-up yogi that we should not judge ourselves for spacing out because sometimes we need it to recharge. I thought is was kind of cool because I didn't think of it as recharge. Yesterday, I was framing this phenomena as primarily a negative distraction and didn't consider it as a mental recharge. This could explain why I'm finding it so easy to drift off: Mentally, I crave it.

While I was free writing about some more Zone-Out dimensions earlier and have gained a little more insight into the extent of this mental behavior:

• It's easy in, and easy to stay in - I follow the thought, into another thought, into another...
• ends with glorified conclusion - insight, realization, connection
• Intriguing thought-train
• There is a feeling of comfort & safety associated
• I allow/excuse/justify drifting off when experiencing resistance to writing/work
• It happens while listening to others
• relating to pre-existing knowledge and/or formulating a response
• Loss of awareness of posture / all of physicality

So, bottom line: I do not support the mind as me to exist in separation any longer. When and as I see myself "recharging" my mind, I stop, I breathe. I commit myself to breathe myself back into awareness of me within the physical reality that's stable and remain here always.

I commit myself to working through all the layers related to zoning out, where I let myself go free into mind without any real consideration/care for the world around me. I understand this will take some time, but without starting, I will get nowhere.

Prepare your minds for tomorrow's boatload of self-forgiveness, as I proactively remove some of these conditioned layers/relationships toward allowing my mind to freely take dominion over my awareness.

Thank you for reading.

I stopped eating donuts but thought this to be an appropriate image for today :) 

photo credit

Day 171 - Zoned Out Episodes

So, I feel less rushed after the past 6 days of focusing on the topic. There will be more layers to address, but for the moment I am comfortable with not being moved by that urgency/haste energy. I feel like it's simply up to me to do work. Tonight, I was having trouble pushing myself to write this, but I am not writing from that last minute motion. I'm writing from wanting to just get this done with already so I can move onto other things.

Tonight is about a procrastination-like sub-pattern: Zoning out or Spacing out...Which is actually quite expansive.

This moment is when I follow some random thought away from here. So this can be considered a very broad/general point. I noticed it today while I was playing soccer: I was off into a thought; I can't remember what exactly I was thinking about, but I was suddenly aware of how far from here I was. My body was physically present, but I was lost in thought. I was moving into position and somehow just trusting my space-time position was correct. And because I didn't need to be absolutely present at that moment, I allowed myself not to be.

So this is a matter of simple allowance. This happens a lot. I'm sure it happens to most of us. For me to stop it in the entirety of all my participation, it will be a process. Being an ingrained, habitual pattern that spans many specific behaviors and circumstances, I will have the purpose of today focused on where I enter my zoned out states, to sort of map it out for myself, initially.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to follow my thoughts along a journey of mind where I was hardly even present with my thoughts, let alone the physical existence of myself within every breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to allow myself to remove myself from the physical reality living walk and go into a mental space from which I allow myself to follow a distraction. This pertains to all of the problem points I've been writing about, but the common examples that first come to mind: video games, candy, desire for female interaction, social interaction in general, boredom, fear, nail biting.

Dang, here, it's easy to get overwhelmed even with this partial list. To focus on just one point at a time is the only effective way to face the mind. Why am I typically so inclined to be general? I think it's fear related...maybe a fear that I need to have the whole picture laid out before me so that I know what is there, what is left, how much more effort is needed. This is silly. Comparable to OCD.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear getting lost within process and believe that if I map all of me out first then I will more effectively walk my process, not realizing that this preparation work is akin to procrastination. This is desire to reduce uncertainty. Fear of unknowledgeable. I see this design in my mother: always asking why to not, not know. Turning it back on myself hadn't been so obvious.

I see and realize myself deviating from today's topic because of following the mental energy, not directing myself here. I did somewhat allow it within stating today as general and not a specific point, however I did not clearly direct my starting point as a rant. It's just turned into it. Through realizations, I can change my starting point whenever I want. That's nice :)

Ok, I'm going to expand on this further tomorrow. TBC