Skanzi

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Everything posted by Skanzi

  1. Unfortunately my first topic that was going to be my journal failed. This is because apparently at some point you are not allowed to edit your posts anymore, which I understand. But for visibility, I wanted to post a link here in the first post which would redirect to a text file which shows many previous journals I have written in the past 1,5 years outside actualized.org. I can do that now. No worries, everything in the previous topic I made here on actualized.org is also included in this one. https://justpaste.it/6avm0 because the site on the link is a place where I can edit at any time, for any vital information regarding this topic here on actualized.org, if there happens to be, please look at the top of the page where the link goes to, as i can not edit this post on actualized.org anymore after a while, would some vital information have to be added. This is a diary in which I reflect upon experiences I had, thought immersions I went through, and much more. I can also decide to post links, images, and other types of media if I feel that to be appropriate. I decided that I wanted to post my thoughts because I feel that my sometimes very thorough reflections, insights or inspirations could be of use to those who read it. After all, almost every time I write in my journal I come upon certain insights and realizations —some deep and some not so deep— that often help me quite a bit at that particular moment. If it helps me, perhaps it can help the reader quite a bit as well. Who knows? Feel free to add your own comments by the way in this topic. It doesn't necessarily need to be a monologue.
  2. I want to address a topic that I sometimes see even highly conscious developed human beings undervalue. And that is the importance of valuing your own direct experience over any sort idea that society has put into you. This includes even ideas that I sometimes even haven't seen anyone making it a subject for questioning. The most obvious example that comes to mind now is the topic of food. Everybody, almost everybody I have ever seen seems to have this attitude that certain types of foods are absolutely and undeniably unhealthy whilst other types of food are absolutely and undeniable healthy. But what do you really know about healthy and unhealthy foods from your OWN experience? Have you witnessed how the food affects your body without the preconceptualized ideas in your mind affecting the way you judge the way the effect of the food on your body is? Have you truly experimented with an totally open mind with different kinds of food to see how it would affect you? I doubt you ever have. You may think you may have, but you don't understand how powerful your (subconscious) expectations on the way you are going to perceive it. Take for instance Coca-Cola. Does anyone think Coca-Cola is healthy? I don't think it has to be, but I think in many cases it can be healthy and nourishing to your body. On what basis do I make this statement? Nothing more than my direct experience. What I experience drinking Coca-Cola is that it is initially sweet and pleasant, that it also has this prickly element of the carbonic acid to it, and that it generally doesn't make my body feel any more unpleasant afterwards. I have however noticed that if I do drink Coca-Cola in the evening that I find it hard to fall asleep that night; I assume this is because of the caffeine. I am however mindful of the fact how quickly I am drinking it. Do I guzzle it down all at once, or do I take more tiny sips? Do I fill my glass up with this soda halfway or almost full? These I have noticed are factors of in which way I experience the soda affecting my body. This is just one example. How do you know Coca-Cola would be truly unhealthy? Have you witnessed it from own experience or have you simply believed everyone else when they said that this was an unhealthy drink and have you assumed that what they said would be true? Have you made an identity out of this person that prides himself of being a "proactive, responsible and conscious human being" and have you believed that not drinking Coca-Cola is part of living up to this identity? Have you merely adopted this new approach of demonizing certain foods and idolizing others because you used to come from the paradigm of being below the level of taking proactive responsibility for your life, and now in order to defend yourself (to your idea) to slipping back to that old paradigm of being at the effect of your conditioning instead of taking responsibility for it, you feel the need to identify yourself with a certain idealogy that does not accept the mechanical, unconscious way of acting, and therefore it needs to have certain standards of what is and what isn't acceptable within its belief system in order to make you feel like you have some sense of control over your lower unconscious, impulsive habits? In other words: Do you feel a certain need or necessity to demonize certain foods and idolize others in order to be part a moralistic idealogical system that you can cling to in order to make you feel like you have sense control? And do you choose to adopt this idealogical system because it's a good midway between not following the habits of the majority yet not being willing to standing completely on your own? Because it's still a group you're trying to be part of. You have seperated yourself from the herd of sheep, you may think, but you are not willing to stand completely on your own, so you have chosen to be part of a smaller splinter group of sheep so you can together feel like you are different and wiser than the majority. To be a part of the minority still implies being part of a herd. A smaller herd perhaps than where you used to come from, but still a herd. You are not willing to take FULL responsibility for your life and to be COMPLETELY on your own, where there is only you and your own direct experience as the ultimate authority. Unless you are willing to take absolute full responsibility to stand on your own two feet and let nobody else —not even a small splinter group— decide what is ultimately true for you, you are not going to be free. So if you have a certain group of people telling you what you should and should not eat, or should or should not do, or whatever morals they are trying to impose, then what you are ought to do is to investigate directly in your own experience whether what is being said is going to be true for YOU. If whatever is being said —however unlikely and absurd it may appear— does not seem to correlate with your direct personal experience, disregard the teaching. Because ultimately, nothing is going to free you but your own direct experience. I've always had trouble with accepting something that anyone else said to me as the truth. For me, it doesn't matter if it's supposedly verified by all scientists in the world, or expressed by the most conscious, awakened people that have ever lived, because I sense that unless I get to know it by my own experience, I'm just subject to allowing my intelligence to be hijacked by someone or something else. That's why I have a bit of an issue with the whole subject of science in general; especially the field of psychology. I'm okay with science being used for technological advancement, but if I hear that scientists have discovered that you should eat this more often, or do that more often to be happier, it just doesn't feel right to simply believe them, no matter with how much purity their studies have been performed. Because the issue is: How could I actually know for certain that this is true? And if it is true, how do I know it is true? I rarely ever reference my statements to what someone else has discovered or said because it hasn't really any value to me if I haven't internalized a truth that is being given to me from the outside, or I can't verify that the data that is being shown from a scientific test would actually be accurate. I do however like reading up on scientific discoveries or words that (spiritual) teachers say just to wonder and amaze myself over the possibilities; just to dream a little bit or get my mind a little bit challenged. There's no harm in just looking at it, but just don't blindly believe anything you read. You can also check if what's being said resonates somewhere with an understanding that you yourself already had at some level. Other people's teachings or words can facilitate and help your own contemplation upon life and numerous insights may be had just listening to or reading the information that other people have to give. But what they say will be useless to you if what's being said doesn't connect with something deeper within yourself. Ah well, you can also just do it for fun And you know, maybe even in cases where you're acting upon certain habits that even with a higher degree of sensitivity and awareness there doesn't seem to be anything bad with them, maybe there is even in these cases a potential that it does have a longer-term negative effect on your body and health, but personally I'm just allergic to any knowledge I can't verify by my own experience so I just can't really follow up on it. Because how do you know that when your body starts forming certain problems later on, that it was without any doubt because of this supposedly bad habit you allowed yourself to indulge in? There are numerous other factors that could have caused this physical problem. My feeling is that there shouldn't be really much of a reason to worry about it because I feel like the wisdom that you need to make this discrimination of what's going to be good for you and what not is already innately available in as the intuition of the higher Self. I can't prove that statement absolutely, but that is my feeling. More about how the higher self later on. Having taken this attitude of always going by my own experience —or at least approximating it more and more— I have found simply in my personal experience that a lot of things that the health, nutrition and exercise gurus say are simply not true, or at least not absolutely true. They are at least not true for me and my physical/emotional/energetical/mental/spiritual system at this time. There are many different factors and many different layers in which different intakes may lead to different outputs or effects, that you are not to take ANYTHING that ANYONE says simply for granted. Sometimes people may speak the truth and in the way they express themselves it may appear to be the truth, and it in fact may be the truth, but how will you know if this is the truth if you don't see it for yourself? Take what others say into account, be open to it, but verify for your own experience and your own experiments —without as little preconceived notions as possible affecting your experience and interpretation— what is ultimately your Truth. It doesn't matter if it is (alledgedly) against everything that science says, because science is still in development and scientists are often blind to their own ignorance and biases, or there can be intentional, deliberate manipulation and hidden political agenda's or other agenda's playing a role here. Or it may be so that some things they say may generally be true for the majority of people, but it doesn't have to be an absolute law. So having taken this attitude of always wanting my own direct experience to be the ultimate authority, I have experienced that certain things that almost everyone deems to be unhealthy can in some cases be healthy, and the other way around. In my own experience I haven't generally found pizza having a negative effect on my body. Cheese can sometimes feel like a very nice thing to eat, other times it doesn't feel super pleasant to eat that. Sometimes I really like eating different kinds of grain products, other times these same grain products don't make me feel that great at all. The point is that I can often quite accurately intuit how its going to affect my body and feelings by just sensing within myself whether I feel eating it or not. Sometimes I like to eat candy, but if I eat too much at once if it it doesn't feel good. I now experience that even eating one piece of liquorice or candy can make me feel a bit restless in my head for like 15 minutes afterwards. I do however notice that for instance fruit juices with a decent amount of sugar in it don't seem to generally have this same effect, interestingly enough. I think this may have to do with the fact that water can act as a great neutralizer for what would otherwise be a sugar overload. So I drink lots of fruit juices, but I never buy sugar-free. i feel like sugar is an important and perhaps essential ingrediënt in our or at least my energetical/physciological system. Sugar free means it is added with all these sweeteners which may perhaps be pleasantly sweet, but I feel like it doesn't nourish me. It's a bit similair to as if you're chewing on a piece of food but not swallowing it. It tastes nice but it is missing something. There are moments or days/weeks when I feel like eating a lot of chocolate and then it feels really nice to me, and then there are other stretches of time where it doesn't interest me whatsoever. I have this oscillation in interest/disinterest in certain foods quite a lot. Some foods I eat a lot during certain periods of time, and after a while it completely disinterests me. For instance: Sometimes I buy a lot of strawberries of blueberries and then I absolutely just munch on them, and when having eaten enough of them i don't feel like eating them again for quite a couple of days or even weeks. And so I have a lot of eating habits that most people wouldn't be able to see the intelligence or sensitivity of. When they see me eating candy or drinking a Coca-Cola or whatever they may be thinking I'm just acting out of habitual, unconscious impulses. Little do they know I'm actually very sensitive to what I'm eating and I make most that is in my diet a conscious choice not based on a logical system of what "is meant to be healthy", but I intuit in my body what it desires for and I trust its instincts. OKay, sometimes I do habitually reach for food that then I realize I don't really want to eat, but it doesn't happen too often. The same thing by the way for me also is applicable with for instance exercise. I hear everybody say that exercising is healthy and one should do it more often. In my own experience, it simply makes me feel more congested, uneasy, unpleasant. I think the difference between me and a child that wants to steal the candy pot and eat it in its entirety (and afterwards finding himself sick), is the fact that my decisions aren't only informed by lower instinctual impulses, but also by a higher connection with spirit or the higher Self. If you are both connected with the higher and the lower, then the higher will inform the lower what to do: Spirit will inform body what is good for it and what not. And if it were to be the body and the lower unconscious impulses alone, then indeed there would be an unhealthy lifestyle. That is why this advice of trusting your own experience is in reality only applicable to those who have gotten enough distance between them and their lower drives that now they know they have a developed capacity of discipline, and once discipline has come to its full culmination one will be able to make a conscious choice to let go of their disciplinary rules and idealogies and let once again body speak for itself, as now you have been able to connect spirit and body together and now every time you choose to let go of your discipline and instead follow your intuition, it will be a proper decision. If you are not developed enough, any of this advice will be malicious since now instead of allowing spirit to take charge, you are indeed reverting back to the lower unconscious impulses and it will not be an improvement at all. The important difference here is whether it feels like a decision you have to gather courage for to make. This is actually key. Advising to let go of discipline to someone who does not have the right amount of development and understanding can in fact be very, very dangerous. Because the receiver of this message may in fact not be the higher self but the lower self (ego) in such a case. If the higher self receives this message, it will be an incredibly useful advice. If the lower self receives the message, it is simply the ego seeking an oppurtunity to reinforce its own position. A choice made through the lower self (ego) or a choice made through Spirit (or higher self) may seem very, very similair on the surface. But the quality of this decision is vastly, vastly different. Generally, the advice to trust your instincts should not be given to people who lack a capacity or history of disciplinary action and willpower. People who have gone through such a phase though can be greatly benefited by the advice to forsake discipline, or at least try to. There is however a great possibility that some ego will be left that will now try to make this letting go of discipline and willpower into another form of discipline and willpower. Still, it may be the way forward, as holding on to discipline and strict regulation may imply coming from a more egoic standpoint. That's why I say it requires courage to trust spirit and allow instincts to have their own say and to forsake any of your old idealogies. Because going deeper into the egoic position does not require true courage. It is very easy and convenient for the ego to use any well-intended advice for its own purposes. It requires courage to let go of old identities and beliefs, but it doesn't require courage to stick to a position you have already been familiar with for too long. So with this post I would like to invite people here to be more critical towards their own assumptions and really start to examine: "What do I actually really know for certain?". And what do you know for certain? In fact, is there in philosophy actually one thing we can know for certain other than that we are? I'd like to invite the readers here to just really examine their own experiences better and to see where there's potential for your own beliefs to color the way you interpret your experiences. Beliefs are very powerful in the way that it colors our reality, without this belief actually needing to be an objective truth. Examine how beliefs might affect your life. So that's the end of my post. Be brave, be intelligent, and be alert.
  3. Part 2 (still continuing to talk about events that happened december 11th, but now for a different topic) So In the evening that day, I was going to once again revisit the guided band training course at my local culture center that happens every week. To clarify: It's not a committed band which has formed on its own who is doing shows and stuff, but it is part of a paid course in which the people who gather there together are rather random in the sense that whoever has signed up for this course is welcome. There is no 'audition' or anything like that. It's not meant to be an 'official' band. It is just practice for people who would perhaps want to eventually be in a real band. I was already aware that the couple of weeks before it, it hadn't gone very well. I found in myself a lot of discomfort and resistance during the rehearsals. It does however help that there are two other singers besides me. This time I wanted to prepare a little bit so I contemplated beforehand on how I wanted to be dealing with this situation may the resistance once again act up. My best bet was to be very keen in not trying to prove myself, and to say "stop" to myself in my head would I feel the tempation. I also decided that if thing would get too uncomfortable, I could always retreat to the toilet in the building and gather myself there. Before I went, I already tried to do some energy work on myself in relation to this topic by using these "stop" or "it's ok" autosuggestions. Once I was there, I already quickly noticed that this bubble of resistance started acting up. I retreated myself and tried doing some energy work. Initially when I walked back into the room, it was quite fine. There was unexpect4edly the song "Last christmas" from wham which we were singing, and I could initially do the higher octave no problem. But as time went on, this stuggle in my mind started to return again. How can I describe it? It's like I feel very unsatisfied with staying in a lower range when I know I can go potentially higher, but I feel to insecure and nervous about going into the higher range, which at the same time also reflects back into my voice when i try to do that, making it feel really cringy to at least myself. And the problem is also that there are quite a lot of songs in which going with the higher octave the entire song long is very challenging and pushing for my voice even if I were to just to sing it alone. And I am also becoming more sensitive to how the way sing fits into the enviroment. If with some song I were to try actually sing and belt the higher octave, it would make my voice really big and loud, and I feel insecure about doing so as I don't want all the attention being put on me. And I also don't want to overshadowing my fellow other two vocalists. But at the same time, staying in the lower octave range is frustrating and boring to me. For some reason, there is this strong urge to prove and to push myself and to challenge myself, whilst at the same time I'm way too insecure about doing that. And for some reason even though I'm quite insecure and anxious about singing false or even somewhat uncomfortable about belting loud and big even if I would sing with a clear voice, even though I have these insecurities and fears, I still try it anyway. But at the same time BECAUSE I have these insecurities and fears and I am coming from that place trying to prove to myself and others that I can do it, the exact thing which I'm fearing most (to sing false or not very clear) starts happening anyway, and it makes me feel very embarrassed and ashamed. It's this tug of war within myself. It's not good if I go low, because it's too boring and I don't feel like I can give it a lot of energy, and it's also not good if I go high, as I carry a lot of shame of singing false, and even if I don't sing false or unclear or choked off it still doesn't feel good to me as I am not comfortable in overshadowing my fellow vocalists. I'm damned if I do, I'm damned if I don't, is what it feels like. To make matters worse, many of the songs that are selected aren't very suitable for the kind of low bass voice I have. To go the higher octave with many of these song feels once again too big, and to go the lower octave feels once again too boring. Not many songs seem to be appropriate for the kind of voice type I have. Or perhaps that's not true, but that's what I came to believe about it. What to do with this dilemma? How do I resolve this struggle where neither going high or low feels good to me? Let's examine this. So if I am singing alone at home, i sometimes try to go really high just for fun, and I then don't really care so much about it if I sound false or choked off or whatever. After all, I know I'm pushing and challenging myself to a point which is outside my vocal comfort zone, so i am not surprised or embarrassed about it. I used to be embarrassed even singing on my own about singing false or having some form of lack of control over my voice in the past, but right now this isn't really a concern to me anymore. But there are quite a couple of differences between me doing this at home, and me trying to sing in this. - The first thing is that I'm not used to singing an entire song in one go. I'm used to singing different parts of the song. Whatever parts I happen to feel like singing at that moment. Singing an entire song long requires a lot more endurance than singing just parts of a certain song. For that reason, I can sing individual parts of a song often quite nicely in a higher octave, but if I try to do the entire song in that octave, it will just demand way too much from me. ESPECIALLY if we are going to sing multiple songs in a row. I don't get to pause either. So that's the first thing - The second thing is that I don't get to choose if we want to transpose the song to half an octave higher/lower. I feel that for many songs doing that could really serve me, as that would allow me to reach the fine balance in which I can give the song enough energy, but not so much energy that I overshadow the other vocalists, or that it would take too much of a toll on my vocal endurance, as described in the paragraph above. - The third and perhaps even most important thing is the fact that I'm just actually really insecure and self-conscious about the way i sound in such an environment. I care a lot about what other people think about the way i sing. I don't wanna sound bad ro false, but I don't wanna sound boring either. I am very insecure about singing false which prevents me from feeling the freedom to experiment in a higher range, but I also want to make other people feel that I can bring something interesting to the table, and that I can vocally match up/compete with to the other two vocalists. The main thing which is giving me all these insecurities and resistances and dividedness is simply the fact that I am insecure and being too concerned about what other people think about the way i sing. I find it hard to relax and just sing carelessly, whether it sounds beautiful, boring, cringy, awkward, overly big or just perfectly neutral and normal. I keep having this insecurity. The interesting thing is that I didn't have this insecurity to the degree that I have it now all the way through this band practice course that I am doing. It's only been since like a week of 4/5 that these insecurities started really acting up, but before that I was a bit more comfortable and careless. I remember that for the most I sang low, but I gave those lower notes much more grit and made them much more dynamic. I was much more comfortable just owning up to these lower notes and making the most of it. I also tried to sing higher a couple of times, and even though I didn't get it quite right all of the time, that also felt quite fine, as it somehow felt that experimentation seemed much more appropriate in these earlier singing classes. Why did I feel more comfortable experimenting with it back then? I think it's because I have the idea in my head that back in thos eearlier days, it felt still more normal and okay to be new and not know exactly who you are and what you're capable of as a singer, and therefore it felt better to make mistakes. But right now, as we've been going on for a while now, it now feels as if i'm simply supposed to 'get it'. Things are supposed to get more serious and I am supposed to prove myself and live up to certain expectations. This is what my mind tends to think about it. ESPECIALLY as we are working towards doing a show, which is sort of the end-goal for this course. I now really feel the pressure to live up to certain standards and expectations, which is starting to make me feel really insecure. By the way, I think we have been going for about 13 weeks now (of which I missed the firsts two or so as I was late with signing up). There will be 16 in total. I'll post this already and will write this further a little bit later. Feel like I have to do some energy work now. Later edit: So what am I supposed to do or understand about this? I think the most essential thing is not so much about what actions I change, but what attitude I take with it. You see, I had already tried practicing the songs and tried to be really scientific about where I should go high and where I should go low, and what I should change would I happen to start feeling more uncomfortable and stifled (which then I would try to sing lower for more parts of the song or the entirety of the song). But none of this practice or these ideals really helped me much when I was once again in this class two days ago. The insecurities and resistances and such didn't really seem to leave me just because I had certain strategies in mind. The basic thing I already intuitively have been knowing for this whole time, is that I have to JUST FUCKING LET IT GO. This isn't really so complicated as I make it out to be. Just let the whole damn thing go. Go low if you want to go low, go high if you want to go high. If you feel resistance and insecurity against going high, then let that go and after you've let it go just do whatever. Just go high or just go low... Neither is very essential. neither choice cuts down to the core of the issue here, because the issue isn't so much about what I do, but how I feel about it. And the same with if I would feel resistance against going low. First thing is to just let go this resistance, then decide —the not so relevant as it seems— option whether you want to go high or low. Yeah I can practice the songs to see what is comfortable with my voice to do. i can study it and make certain plans and strategies. That's all fine. But the essential thing here is that I simply let go of the need to prove myself, the need to live up to certain standards, the need for other people to appreciate me or for them to think I'm a good singer or not... But that's really tough to do. But even more than it would be tough to do... it just takes time. Maybe it's not even that super tough, but it just takes time. I could write more about this right now but I think I'm just going to leave it with this for now.
  4. Well the thing is that if you're coming from a place in which you truly enjoy consuming this kind of content, then I don't really see the problem with it. If you're however doing it because you're only distracting yourself from something else you KNOW you should be doing, then it may be a different question. (although it's an entirely different topic in itself on how you can actually know with certainty what you should be doing). Don't restrict yourself from doing things you truly enjoy. Laughter is healthy. Truly enjoying something is healthy too. There is no need to go down the path of masochism. Well... Unless you really want to but I'm not sure if I could recommend it. I think it's best for you to start watching yourself to see if you come to a point in which you don't enjoy it as much anymore. In such a moment, it can potentiallly indeed be worthwhile to stop. Just don't restrict yourself in areas where it doesn't serve you to restrict yourself. You'll waste your energy going into unnecessary struggle with yourself. And don't take Leo's word to be the Ultimate truth or anything like that. He also has developed a lot over the years, and his stance on many things have also changed. It is likely that Leo doesn't feel the same way anymore about this situation right now as he would have expressed in that video (although I haven't watched the video)
  5. Decided to go with a new profile picture which people will actually be able to recognize me. Even though I'm a little bit uncomfortable with it, I want to come out of hiding and not be afraid as to how other people may judge me and perceive me, and actually just own up to who I am. And this of course includes putting up an actual picture of me in which I can be recognized. I feel like it's a step I want to be taking. If I do however second-guess myself at some point, I can always use the old picture again (or another picture, or this picture in negative)
  6. Thursday December 12th Let's talk about yesterday still. Yesterday morning I had my first appointment with a sex coach. She was a woman whom I'd guess to be in her 50's. She has experience with tantra and taoism. I was very pleased with the approach she took. Instead of just (only) talking about it, she introduced me with a sensual massage in which I got to choose whether I wanted to keep my underwear on or not. I'm a daredevil. I chose to take them off. Before I got to doing that though, I expressed my concerns to her about fearing to get an erection. She assured my that it was okay if I would get an erection. This was the kind of response I was hoping for. It gives a certain feeling of freedom and elation to be able to feel that you can be aroused as a man —and let is be physically shown— and not be ashamed for it. After I had gotten this reassurance, I also wanted somehow to feel reassurance to I heard it right in that she gave me the option to take off my underwear. If I think about it now, I don't see in how there was a way how I would have not heard it right or how I would have misinterpreted it, but somehow I really feel the need to ask this question again before it can feel safe to actually take off my underwear. And after having gotten that reassurance too, I laid down naked on the massage table, starting off with the front of my body laying on the table and her massaging my back. I could feel that she knew how to massage. At some point she gave certain taps on my tailbone, and this stirred up a surprising amount of sexual energy. At some point she asked me to turn around. I enjoy the image of me laying there on the table completely naked and the both of us being completely comfortable and unashamed with this fact, including the fact that I was having intermittent erections. It never really got to the point though where my erection was rock-hard, or at least where it stayed that way for a long time. It stayed a bit in between the flaccid and erect state for most of the time. Although her massaging was very sensual, the intention of this massage was not to do me a sexual favour. She never gave me a handjob or anything like that. She did not mind sort of brushing past my (semi-)erect penis, and she pressed the base of my penis at some point with one hand and my heart with the other hand, but I could see that the intention of this was energetical movement. The intention of this massage was more to provoke sexual and sensual feelings, and I suppose also to make me more aware of my physical and energetical sensations that came along with it, but not to fulfill my instinctive desire for penetration and/or ejaculation. Although the idea was the I focused on witnessing the breath in my lower abdomen, at some point this felt unsatisfying so i decided to put my awareness on following the movements of her hand(s) and how this felt on my body. This felt more comfortable. After this massage she created a situation in which I was to lay down on the table for quite some time still, but she hadn't announced it nor did she say anything during this period of silence and non-activity. I actually didn't like this so much. I suppose the idea of this was to give me some post-massage energetical enjoyment, but I didn't really experience it as such, and I really just wanted to get off the table. Aside from that part though, I did quite like it. Afterwards we had a conversation, in which she said that the cost would be 65€ (I did not know what the costs would be before that moment). This price was actually unexpectedly low. On top of that, my health insurance package refunds up to 250€ of alternative healing methods, up to a maximum of 45€ per day, of which I had not claimed anything so far. I discussed this topic with her also, and we managed to plan in another 3 appointments for this year (2019), so I could get another 135€ refunded (180€ in total) by my health insurance, and I only would need to pay another 60€ (80€ in total) from my own budget. Looking back at this now, I was very pleased with this woman and her approach to this coaching-session. It is because she actually made me feel my sensuality instead of just talking about it. Although just talking about it also could have had an effect, I feel such a massage and such a practical approach cuts down way more to the core than just talking about it and interchanging thoughts about it. I feel like taking an approach from the mind is a poor way of trying to reach a domain that lies beyond it. And because she is willing to actually engage with me in this practical, sensual way, it makes me appreciate her much more as a person. it makes me have more respect for her as opposed to when I would meet someone whom I would have a conversation about sexuality but who would not actually allow me to show by provoking or inviting direct sensual experience what it feels like or how to deal with it. Even better than this would have been a sexual surrogate partner (someone who you can pay to have sex with who teaches you how to have sex and be sensual), but I looked it up, and the costs of those kind of trajectories are astronomical. Unfortunately I have quite a tight budget so for me that's just not an option. I think I at some point in my life want to learn how to make lots and lots of money so I can have financial abundance and independence, So I can buy and do anything I want with that; That the lack of financial resources will never be a limitation again (or to a much, much lesser degree) for me having to deny such trajectories as a sexual surrogate partner. The lack of financial resources sometimes really frustrates me. If I would have had lots of money, on top of this sexual surrogate partner program, I would have also probably visited a lot more prostitutes. I want to learn how to improve my sexual competencies, but I also want to just enjoy myself. I want a bit of a mix of both. I don't really carry any shame of going to a prostitute. I may carry a lot of general sexual shame for whatever reason, but I don't feel like I am in particular ashamed of going to a prostitute. Well, that's not fully true. I may carry a bit of shame as far as expressing it towards other people is concerned. I however don't carry much shame towards myself about it. I had made the agreement with myself that I would soon visit a prostitute; even despite the fact that I am now visiting a sex coach. I haven't visited a prostitute in a long time, partially because there has been some resistance which has it roots in shame, but also because of financial worries. Lately during a contemplative walk I had decided that I should visit one anyway because even though I don't have a lot of money, I did realize that I was worried about it more than was rational, and I decided on a logical basis that visiting a prostitute just for one time now would be a justifiable and probably worthwhile decision to make. One may wonder: "Well how is merely busting a nut worthwhile all that money?". Well... It's not so much about merely that, but also about the challenge and the opportunity to learn and become more sexually unstifled and unfrozen. The point is that these kind of visitations to a prostitute I want to do only a couple a times of year. Mainly for financial reasons, but also for the sake of self-discipline. Seeking out the right kind of woman on this site that advertises women offering sexual favours usually turns out to be tremendously difficult, though... Mainly because I tend to get very horny browsing through all these options and I get very impulsive and my attention gets very scattered, yet at the other hand there is the part of me that ascribes a lot of value to making a logical, clear-headed decision. Not only that, but even if I were to decide to go with the impulsive horniness factor alone, then somehow every time that I think I have made my choice, then there always comes doubt up and I start thinking about this OTHER woman that I had seen in another advertisement. And it goes on and on like that. I'm very indecisive at such moments. So what I had decided to do was to actually make a list of women that are in my city, and actually write down the pros and cons about their advertisments, and give them a rating based on a bunch of different factors (such as price, openness and receptiveness, possibilities, physical attractiveness etc...), and then based on that rating I would make a decision. That was the only way I could kind of get to a decision without becoming completely overwhelmed by all this stimulation. And even doing it this way, I found myself at some point simply becoming too horny and I just had to masturbate. But setting these kinds of boundaries and trying to make a very logical clear-headed decision I find in this particular context to be very essential. Eventually I came down to a woman who seemed to be quite inviting and attractive too, seemingly offering a good amount of possibilities. I approached her like this: "Hi. Your advertisment arouses me I am excited to meet you. Do you by any chance have a bath tub at home that we can use? I think that's a very horny idea " I had written this about 24 hours ago and she hasn't replied yet. I wonder why she hasn't replied. Would it have to do with the way she interpreted me to be as a person in the way I talked to her, does it have to do with the fact that she only accept people calling her, or is she dealing with something right now that doesn't give her to space to respond to these kind of reactions right now? Or something else? What would it be? If it would be the first reason, that I wouldn't have been 100% gentlemenly, then I am okay with the fact that she is not okay with that. You see, I used to carry a lot of shame in expressing myself very sexually and bluntly towards women about my sexual desires. I always felt like I would be a creep and I just felt really ashamed and embarrassed about the idea of conveying my sexual interest directly without any sort of politeness or carefulness. But right now, that attitude is starting to change. I've gotten to the point where I now realize that it is actually okay for me to be very direct and possibly even vulgar in the way I sexually express myself towards women. I can use phrases as (prepare) "I feel horny", "I want to have sex with you", "That arouses me", "I want to stroke your body", "I want to suck on your nipples"... Perhaps to some women this can be interpreted as upsetting, but this is honest. Why should I not be able to express this? Why should I not be able to express to a woman that she sexually arouses me and attracts me, and that I desire to do certain things with her? I understand that in certain context this may not be as appropriate or socially acceptable, but I feel it should CERTAINLY be acceptable to talk to a prostitute like that, who is ultimately herself someone who talks in a very similair fashion, as far as the advertisment that I had seen was concerned. So I am starting to lose shame for talking to at least a prostitute in this very direct, sexual way. I feel like that is what she signs up for, and for her to prevent or avoid this kind of communication seems to be... Preventing men to feel unstifled and free within her presence, and to some degree even hypocritical. After all, isn't she the one who is using the same kind of language and sexual provocation to reel these men in, displaying the image in which the man feels as if he is sexually desired and thereby making him assume that she's automatically onboard with setting a very sexual and possibly even vulgar form of communication? I feel that what they are baiting for is what they should get and accept. Unfortunately, this quite often doesn't seem to be the case. The image that they seem to be representing seems to be quite attractive and sexually promiscious and free, but the reality is often different. If my hypothesis is correct and this prostitute (or perhaps I should say "women of pleasure", as that is how the site had advertised these women) that I had texted has not replied to me because I wasn't 100% gentlemenly (and to be fair, that may not be the reason at all), then I wonder what would decide for her not to respond to my message, then I would wonder what causes that. Perhaps its the reasons that men are quickly to be thought as "dangerous and creepy" if you as a man happen to be sexually provoking a girl. At least so if there's still a distance in which the mind still has space to resist. I know from what I have seen that if someone is very sexually provocative towards a woman but he's actually grounded and good at it, that her mind doesn't really the capacity to prevent her from resisting as her unconscious sexual desires in such a context are stronger than what her conscious mind is able tor resist at such a moment. I've seen that this is very clearly the case when I studied movements like RSD (real social dynamics) and the pickup community in general, which I had been interested in for a long time. Unfortunately, man's sexuality is quite repressed these days in modern western society. I don't think that is quite right. I also don't think that as a man you want to be completely insensitive to her feelings and the social context of a situation that you would just sexually harrass any woman you want, I think that is not right either, but I do feel like we could live in a much better world if men are not shamed for their sexuality and are allowed and respected when they want to express their sexual feelings towards women, or towards other men too if they happen to be going down that route. Sensitive yet direct and honest. Maybe I'll go deeper down the rabbit hole on that topic later on, but let's continue with what I still wanted to talk about right now. Although I could still contact this girl that I texted by calling her on my other phone (so she also doesn't know I would be the same person), I think I'm going to let this one slip. I have another girl in mind who, although she lives a bit further, has quite attracted me with her advertisment. I'll copy and paste and translate her advertisment, and I will restructure and edit it a bit because she is grammatically a bit messy and nor very eloquent in the way she writes. I'm going to leave it as a lin because the sort of language that is going to be used is... rather explicit. I feel like there's a small chance that moderators (or an auto-detection system) will not tolerate this kind of language and I may receive certain restrictions upon my account; Even though this journal is completely personal and it is written as a quote. https://justpaste.it/2xhwt So... You may be wondering after reading this if I am the type of guy who is interested in SM (Sado-masochistic) kinds of stuff. Well... I've certainly had the fantasies about it me being the dominant one, and I even (but much less often) also had fantasies about me being the submissive one. But although I certainly do feel like there's a part in me that enjoys Sm kind of stuff, I am not sure if I would be able to fully live up to that role, even if I were t put in a situation where I encounter a woman who is actively inviting me to take on such a role. If I am not sure, then why am I so interested in her advertisement? Why not just take a girl who offers regular sex services, you may ask. Well... The reason is that after I had sent that last text message to that other prostitute or "woman of pleasure" I had talked about a bit back in my post, I reckoned that maybe it was a good idea to just seek out a girl who was very outspokenly submissive and receptive. Now I don't know for sure that just because she seeks out to be a submissive girl in a SM-type of setting, that this automatically means she is very feminine and yielding and open and sensitive, which is what I'm actually looking for. I'm not sure if this is the case, but my mind lays the connection to a submissive woman being the same as a receptive, sweet, soft and in particular inviting feminine woman, who is very happy to assist a man who is discovering his own sexuality. Inviting is the keyword. In the sense that she literally invites me to cross certain boundaries in which I otherwise might just feel to insecure to cross. The idea thatif I were to be in a sexual setting with her, that she would not only by body language but perhaps also by using verbal cues or just directly asking me if I want to do certain things to her and her body. I feel like I am capable of being both quite dominant as well as very intimate in a sensual way, but I feel very insecure about doing so if I am not absolutely sure that the woman who I am with is absolutely 100% on board with doing so. That's why in that sex coaching session I was talking about, I wanted to make absolutely sure that my coach was 100% comfortable with me getting an erection during that massage by asking the question. Sometimes it happens in certain situations that I then receive a "yes" but it doesn't feel 100% convincing. That can be frustrating. but with her, it didn't feel that way. I like to feel the same way with this prostitute: That whatever I want to do, that I am able to suggest it and that she can give her honest opinion on it, and then hopefully authentically say "yes" to it. I envision my meeting with her to be one in which I express that I have certain insecurities, and that she is then able to comfort me and reassure me that whatever I want to do with her is totally okay. And that hopefully she even invites me on her own initiative to take it even further. I may take on a dominant, perhaps even domineering role with her too. I don't know that yet. I haven't really been in a situation where it was clear that this is what the woman desired, so It's very hard for me to say if I can spark up this sort of role within me and feel authentic and comfortable with it. What I don't like too much about her advertisment is that the way she expressed herself didn't seem very eloquent or intelligent. Hopefully that doesn't mean anything, and hopefully not expressing yourself as eloquent doesn't need to be the same as unintelligent. Though, even if she isn't very intelligent, maybe this won't be a problem after all, as maybe what I'm looking for in this particular context is just primarily an energetical connection and not a mental or spiritual one. I'm gonna send her a message in which I will express what my situation is and what I desire from her, and we will see how it goes.
  7. If it comes suddenly, it is most likely also bound to go suddenly. Sometimes this happens without us really knowing why. You can try to go and figure it out and maybe you'll find some nice answers, but this is not the essential. Be prepared for this too change. The best preparation for that shift is not to start fearing or mentally bulking yourself up or whatever, but to actually detach from the positive and pleasant sensations you're having right now. Just don't give it any special attention. Enjoy it, but when I say enjoying it I don't mean that you need to grab onto it. Just allow it to go through you and stay neutral towards it. People are all enthousiastic about the notion of detachment when things are going bad, but when things are going good they forget all about that notion and then completely lose themselves in the positive duality. This is how most people with bipolar disorder experience their life. They get depressed and then life gets all terrible and they may even start contemplating suicide, and then sometime later enter their manic phase in which they get all energetic and happy, and this depressive phase that they had loses all their meaning, and they get completely lose in the impulsive mania and start acting really stupid, because their thinking process is: "What does it matter? I'm completely happy anyway!". And then they have to deal with the shit they created in this manic phase when they enter their depressive phase again. And so the cycle goes on. You can't detach from the negative if you aren't willing to detach from the positive. Right now is your best opportunity. You may not feel like you're very interested right now because you're happy and nothing else really seems to matter because you're happy and peaceful anyways, but when you would get to a phase in which things would start to get much worse, then the notion of detachment will probably seem a whole lot more attractive to you, but then its in some sense too late because when you're low, you have much less energy and space for you to be able to detach yourself. When you're high, it's much easier to detach in a sense because the detachment won't come out of a struggle, which will be the tendency when you're on the low side of things. True freedom isn't what you're experiencing right now. True freedom is the detachment from this positive, pleasant experience too. Freedom is detachment from all. Good or bad, comfortable or uncomfortable. True and total freedom is to be aloof under any circumstances. That's what most people don't understand. They think that experiencing a high is the Ultimate. It's not the ultimate; it's just a high. It may be a existential melting with God and divine unity and infinite bliss or whatever, but once we get back in our normal state of mind and in the relative world, all it would have been was a high. Maybe such an experience is part of the Ultimate. But i feel that without the quality of the witness, of a detached Being, of what we could call "the fourth eye", I still feel like something is missing. If you come to get addicted or attached to such experiences, however divine and total it may be, then still you are not free. Seek freedom, not experiences nor insights.
  8. Wednesday December 11th This is really only a couple of hours after I had written my previous journal entry. I have also not slept in between. But... I'll write it as if it's a new day anyways I had intended to go out and take a walk and contemplate on a couple of things that I had not come to contemplating on last night. However, i realized something. Yesterday, I read a book from Osho called "Intuition". In this book, he explains the value of intuition and what it means. Through this book I realized that an intuitive decision-making process isn't necessarily worse than a logical decision-making process just because logic is more clear or comforting. Really thinking something through has a certain feeling of safety to it. It makes you feel that you're not going to make any mistakes by being emotional, deluded and biased. You feel as if you have prevented yourself from going astray, of going down a wrong path. The fear that the logic-based mind has of intuition is that it fears that intuition is going to be based on biases and delusion. It fears that intuition will not allow you to see where you are making mistakes. It fears that the intuition can be warped and that it is based on unexamined assumptions that are being mistaken for a 'higher and deeper intuitive insight'. I guess this was the reason why lately I have been relying on logic so much, why I've been relying on my left-side brain so much; Why I haven't been making bigger decisions in my life without first doing really deep and scutinous contemplation on it. Because I feared it would've just ended up in... inefficiency or some degree of conflict with the situations that I would've created for myself doing it like that. But just now when I wanted to take the walk, I really didn't feel that excited to be once again walking for 2-3 hours, as I had done before. I simply looked at my phone and just thought: "Why can I just not answer these items on my contemplation list right now?". And certainly it can be done like that. I feel that sometimes there is a lot of confusion or unclarity about a topic that just a quick thought process of just a minute or so isn't going to resolve or relief, but then you have the other side of the coin where you are really trying to think hard about a certain topic just because you are very afraid that you are going to make mistakes or delude yourself if you don't think really hard and deep about it. And right then, I was dealing with the latter situation. There is still the argument that you want to really think deeply on topics that are involving rather big changes in your life (and these topics were somewhat revolving around that). But... with that argument, also three questions came to mind, which I doubt would've have arisen in my mind had I not read that book called "Intuition" from Osho the night before. The questions were as follow: 1: How can I be so sure that logic is going to get me to the most comfortable or efficient choice (talking about the results that lead from that choice)? Perhaps there is a dimension or intelligence of which I may be able to tap into that makes the best decisions for me without knowing why, or without perhaps even being able to know why altogether. Maybe there is a dimension which holds a much greater intelligence than my mind can ever behold, and the only thing I have to do to access is, is just following my feeling. 2: Even if it were to be true that through logic you come to more efficient and/or comfortable decisions (again, the outcome from that decision. not the decision itself), then how do I know that efficiency and/or comfort is really what I truly needed? How do I know that encountering difficulties or disappointments is simply not what I sometimes need? How do I know what really would best serve me best in the deepest sense? From that perspective, the most awful things may sometimes turn out to be the best thing that could have ever happened in hindsight. 3: EVEN IF we could say that through logic and contemplation you can get to better decisions and outcomes in their deepest sense, then how do I know that all the time, energy and stress it takes to go through that much thinking does truly outweigh making a decision on a much quicker and shorter term? Is a life that is well-considered better than a life that is free from any decision-making struggle and confusion? Is all the tension and confusion surrounding the subject really worth it? Is there not a valid perspective in which it is a valuable lesson for you to learn how to drop the emphasis on the conditions of the outer world, and thereby end up with maybe a less efficient and outwardly comfortable life, but one that is much more carefree and relaxed as you are much more detached. Or maybe you can take it even further and not only drop the emphasis on the outer world and its conditions, but to drop the mind itself including, but not limited to, the introspection and contemplation regarding the inner world also: The thinking about feelings, attitudes, and the thoughts about thoughts themselves; The idea of dropping the mind altogether whether the mind has its focus inwardly or outwardly, so you can reach to the heart and to Being, in which all the tensions that the mind created will be evaporated. That would also be an argument for not trying to 'figure something out' and just go and act. Not that I think that I need to go and stay in that extreme, but I think it's good to just take into consideration. There are other ways to look at it. Let's leave it with that.
  9. Tuesday December 10th The intention to be proactive can also have a nasty side-effect, I have noticed. getting back to my previous journal entry... The division had subsided somewhat that day after I had decided to play a little bit of OSRS, a computer game, and I found myself being able to be preoccupied almost all day from my waking period from saturday to sunday (I am up during the night) from sunday to monday I did a little bit less, and yesterday (from monday to tuesday) I took a walk, in which I wanted to proactively think about a couple of items and then to act upon them after I had gotten back from the walk. But as I was about an hour into my walk, I decided that I wanted to take the last bus home and go cycling instead (and still also think whilst cycling or after having arrived somewhere with my bike, from which that point I would walk). However, that did not happen. I found myself not really having the energy to do that anymore, and I decided to just do some OSRS instead. After I was done with my OSRS session, the pressure of guilt and responsibility struck me. But instead of acting out of that feeling, i decided to attach myself from this need and this pressure instead. This is where the 'stop-technique' came in. This is in fact saying "stop" to myself every time I felt the mind-pattern of the somewhat neurotic obsession with trying to change myself would come up. I also sometimes say "it's okay" to myself. And I give some physical expression to it aswell by using a corresponding expression (having my hands in front of me, with the palms facing forward). This technique helps well for me with breaking an automatic mental pattern that has been ingrained into my psyche. It helps me to get some distance from this pattern. It can also help to witness the feeling that is created within my head as a result of this pressure from the mental pattern, but sometimes that (alone) isn't enough. Then the stop-technique often works well as a last resort. It has helped me to detach a little bit, using that stop-technique, but I still feel like there is some of this attachment to this old mental pattern of 'activation' and 'growth' left. probably will have to do a bit more work on it. I am glad that I'm entering a phase in which I actually now get shit done in my life, instead of trying to forsake all (worldly and outer) responsibilities. I am glad that this change is taking place in my life, and that I am learning all these new skillsets, attributes and attracting more resourceful situations in my life because of it. Actually, I feel the need to so some energy work coming up right now. I will just post this entry now and most likely edit this later. And if I wouldn't do that, then it will just stay as is, I guess. Later edit: As I was saying: I'm glad that i'm entering this phase where I'm getting stuff handled. Because this is new, I didn't use to do that before in my life, with to some degree the exception op 2013 and most of 2014. But that was a bit different, though. Unlike before, I understand better that there is a place for rest and detachment, and also the need to really contemplate upon a matter instead of jumping into it blindly. This understanding that there is a need for rest and detachment is certainly better than when I tried to activate myself in 2013/2014, but it is not total yet. So I still find myself somewhat attached to the need to be active, for growth, at certain times. Sometimes my intention to be active takes me over to some degree, and then the idea that I would take rest or enjoy myself before I have done a lot of useful stuff, seems unacceptable to me. I am however already managing to allow myself to get some rest after I have done some proactive stuff. But it is difficult to fully let go of this wish to grow and be proactive for more than a few hours at a time. Like I had told before. when I had been gaming yesterday night, after I had been gaming, I was in a state where I felt that I now had my time for pleasure and enjoyment, and that I now really needed to do some proactive stuff, to go and be occupied with my to-do-list. But I did notice how compulsive this felt. There was guilt. there was need. There was attachment. I could sense it. And I still feel that a little bit now. I find it difficult to really fully let go of the need to do anything useful at all for a while, and to just relax and enjoy myself, or to rest, even though I have been able to come up with perfectly good arguments for it. I thought to myself just like two hours ago, that the ideal position to be in is to have the intention to be proactive and make a lot of growth in your life, yet not be attached to that intention and allow yourself to let go and detach from it, knowing you don't HAVE to do it. But at the same time, you also don't want to attach yourself to the notion that you should stay detached. Because attaching yourself to the notion of detachment is just another trick that the mind likes to play. That detachment is simply a pseudo-detachment, but in reality it is the attachment to the notion, to the ideal of detachment. So the ideal position is to neither be attached to action nor be attached to inaction (the ideal of detachment). If you're neither attached to action nor inaction, then you are open to the spontaneous and natural flow of your heart, and at the same time able to use your head to create a plan and foster the willpower and discipline to bring out these innate qualities to the world. In other words: Do what you enjoy, but also create a system for yourself in which this enjoyment can be shared with the world as much as possible without forsaking the enjoyment of it. If you either become too self-indulgent by keeping it all to yourself, or if you become so obsessed with the ideal of sharing it and losing centeredness because of it, then the enjoyment will dry out.
  10. Friday December 6th I have been egaging in quite a bit of proactive, challenging activities in the past couple of days. I've for practiced guitar, went to the gym, send a couple of mails, done a lot of contemplation, tried to make a start with structuring things using a word-document, watched videos on how to structure and organize, practiced a bit of bossing in Oldschool Runescape, made contact with a sex therapist... And more I am finding more and more energy to proactively try new things and to overcome the blocks and resistances that before prevented me from doing so. Until I hit a certain wall... Yesterday evening after making a long walk, I was thinking how I was making a lot of progress in trying to become more proactive and organized, and the thought occured to me that: "You know what? I've done a lot lately. Perhaps it's okay to relax a little bit and forsake the plans and goals I had set for myself today. After all, right now I'm still in a phase where I still can. Once I advance becoming more and more proactive, at some point I will have a lot of responsibilites I have to meet and then I perhaps won't really have that much space anymore to just relax and forsake it all for just the time being. Now I still get to. perhaps I should just take the time and just indulge and enjoy myself. After all, this shift in attitude from consciously going from proactivity to passivity I really haven't made in a while (I usually simply had fallen into it instead). I do feel a good some resistance against doing so, but it seems like the challenging kind of resistance that invites to come and visit it". So I thought somethng along those lines. However, as it turned out, I couldn't really make such a decision whole-heartedly, even though I had a lot of logical reasons that would make it justifiable and possibly even a good idea. Instead, I found myself in a limbo, in a state of division. Not really being able to do A nor B. This state of being divided is not too uncommon to me. In fact, I think I've described it many times in the past before. I think I had however used the word "resistance" in the past instead of "division". Let's set that straight now. the term "being divided" is a more accurate term to describe it. This state of being divided, of not being able to really devote myself to either side of a decision or mode of operating, was all too common in the past, and apparently so still happens from time to time in the current phase of my life. It leaves me very incapacitated and frozen. I can't really get to anything at such a point, not even the decision to "just relax and game some". I can't really commit to anything because if I try to go for A, then B is still tugging on me and making me unsure of my decision to go for A, and vica versa. remain completely split, and the result is that I don't end up doing anything, neither passive 'activities' or active 'activities'. I just then fund myself in bed not finding myself being integrated enough to make a whole-hearted decision for anything. All I feel I can do at such a point is witness the energy in my head that is the result of this divided state, and make a walk once every so often to try and resolve this divided state. And I did two walks in which I tried to resolve this confusion and division, but although I did get a bit more clarity, neither of these walks was enough to get me out of this divided and confused state that I'm in where I end up not being able to do anything. That's why instead of doing another walk I decided to go and write about it. Sometimes I get really annoyed by my own mind. I know this struggle is completely unnecessary, but yet I can't help myself. Something I found humorous when I listened to it, was when Austin Carlile from Of mice and men screamed in one of his songs: "I'M SO COMPLICATED!". I'll give a link to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3LbVIif57I (at 1:00) I actually don't like the constant screaming so much. I think it's a bit over the top. but just out of curiosity I did explore the band and their music, just to see what they were about. I like some of their songs, but most of them with the continuous screaming I think it's a bit too much. I did however for some reason really liked Austin though as a person, even though my personal opinion is that he should've toned it down a little bit. I like the guy, I've watched an interview of him, but the music I generally don't like too much. Same thing with slipknot. I think Slipknot is a really interesting band to simply study. But as far as their music is concerned... It's a bit too much. I like for instance Linkin Park so much because they got those elements of screaming and grunting, but that's only the cherry on the top of the cake and not the entire cake. And that's the way I feel it should be. I guess songs from Of mice and men or Slipknot would be good for listening to for when working out, for instance. When you need some fire under your ass. Anyways... moving on. That line "I'M SO COMPLICATED"... I almost feel like that should be my new ringtone . I am in fact complicated beyond belief. Sometimes the complexity of my mind and all the little things that can come to disturb it, seems at times almost unbelievable to me. Sometimes I just really get angry at my fucking mind for throwing up this stupid shit that seems totally useless and pointless, yet I find myself being disturbed, distracted and confused by it. But what can I do... I know it will resolve itself or it will happen to get resolved as time passes and at some point I will have a moment of clarity or an epiphany, or I remember something that I used to do in the past that suddenly seems to have its utility again. But yeah, for now... I can't come to make a goddamn decision.
  11. Here is an piece of text I wrote some time ago. I didn't find it too comfortable to share it as plain text in this thread as of right now, so I decided to make it a bit easier on myself and just post it as a link, just so I can get to feel a bit more comfortable getting back to my thread, which I don't want to stay away from for too long because I would be too uncomfortable to revisit it were I to post it as plain text. Right now, I just have no interest in dealing with my own anxiety about that, so I'll make it easier on myself whilst still posting it. https://justpaste.it/2hskz December 2nd 2019 There are a lot of things I could write about, but I'm for now only going to write about the stuff that's currently on my mind right now; The stuff that I came here for to write. I can't or don't want to write down every process that I'm going through, as this currently takes more energy than I'm willing to give this journal as of right now. I do feel it to be a little bit unfortunate; Part of me would've liked to be far more detailed, extensive and broader in my writing, so I could cover everything, but I don't feel like I want to give this journal THAT much time as of now. Maybe in the future I will do so consistently. It's hard to say. So I went to "gym class" this monday evening, as I more often do on monday evening. It is an organised weekly event in which we do as adults roughly what we used to do in PE (physical education) class in school. That's the basic idea of it. In dutch the literal translation would be "Gym lesson". It is strange how in english I think people more quickly tend to have the interpretation of "gym" being a place where you can lift weights and stuff. Thta's not what I'm talking about here when I say "gym class". It's literally like what the english people call PE but then for adults. It's quite fun. This time, however, I was rather distraught and distracted by something. Namely: I was distracted by sexual desires. Attractive female bodies dressed in tight clothing that outline their feminine features, can sometimes spark something within me. This time it did. Not that I got an erection, but this attachment to this sexual energy resulted in the fact that it created a blockage in my system, which cut off my spontaneity and left me in a positiion where I found it very hard to focus. Not that I was constantly looking at these women, but it becomes sort of a mental cloud or a fog within my head that is very dominant and distracting. This resistance pattern cuts me off from my outer environment and from my body. That's the kind of effect it has. I know how to overcome it, which is to say: to retreat and do some energy work on myself, but at that time I didn't have the opportunity. It's interesting how this subject of sex and sexuality doesn't seem to concern me for quite a long time, or to at least a much less noticable degree, until it gets triggered. I also have this at the swimming pool. Seeing attractive female bodies in which their feminine features are very much up for display, can sometimes trigger within me quite a bit of sexual desire. Other times, however, it triggers nothing at all. I have after all gone through this gym class many times and this is the first time I encountered this bubble of sexual desire to this degree. It frustrates me that I seem to not find very good opportunities for releasing this sexual desire in context to having sex with another woman, unless I have to pay a lot of money for it. Even though I sometimes really crave it, I do hold myself a back for not only the fact that I don't want to get myself broke by going to prostitutes, or to sex clubs which you as a man obviously have to pay a good amount for. No, there is another reason. Or maybe multiple reasons. See, i could've just decided a long time ago to just invest a lot more effort in using tinder a lot or going to dating-sites. And I am in fact in a situation now in which I am starting to use tinder and in which I do have some matches, to which I haven't replied yet, for reasons which I'm going to explain in a moment. My bio on tinder is written like this: "Let me be clear: don't like me if you have no interest responding to my messages. Save me the effort. Please let us not play any games. Let's be authentic. I have my own vision on what I find attractive in a woman. Primarily, I'm looking for a good energy: A woman that is enthusiastic, open and interested in regards to our contact. If you have these qualities, the everything else about you will be beautiful too. I then don't care what you think about yourself: then you are beautiful." Is it authentic what I'm saying here? It depends. It is authentic when I'm not horny. When I am horny, however, the thing I care most about is an attractive female body. With attractive I simply mean clear feminine features. I don't really subscribe so much to the traditional idea of what society regards as attractive for women. Those are attractive too, though, but I don't care if the woman has some weight or has some features that would in society's eye would be seen as less attractive, yet aren't features that doesn't take away from her feminine beauty. When my sexual cravings are stirred up, then my whole talk of wanting good energy in a woman are all bullshit. Then I honestly just want to fuck almost anyone that has a vagina. But this is if I'm exceptionally aroused. When I'm moderately aroused, which is what I was when I scrolled through the women on tinder a month back or so, then I like almost any woman, except for women who seem to be very dark. i'm talking about those who choose to represent themselves in their pictures as sad and serious and dark. I am not looking forward to meeting such women as this kind of energy and the sort of dynamic that would come forth out of that is not something I'm interested in to encounter. I am seeking for a lighter, more enthusiastic, more feminine and light-hearted kind of woman at such a moment when I'm on tinder. Both because I find it more attractive but also because it'd be much easier to be around that person. So when I'm moderately aroused and browsing through tinder, I'm like: Almost anything goes as long as she doesn't showcase bad energy, or if she doesn't look to be very feminine either physically and/or energetically. My profile seemed to have worked out quite well. I had posted a profile picture in which I had a bit (but not overly) fierce look in my eyes, and just to experiment a little bit, I also put as my profession "Future rockstar". It seemed to have worked out okay. i'm still not sure what exactly is the best way to attract as many likes as possible, what the science behind it is (not that I'm going to sacrifice authenticity for a effective yet pretentious profile), but I remember a couple of years ago that I went on tinder and I didn't get any matches at all, where I alos portrayed myself a bit differntly then IIRC. Maybe it's also because tinder has changed or I went on it longer, but ah well. And now that I have a about 5 likes who I still have to find as a match, and about 4 matches from which 2 have made the first contact, I feel resistance in getting back to them. For context: It's been almost a month since we matched, and only yesterday I felt the readiness to actually look up what was written to me. I don't know why I often tend to get so uncomfortable in regards to written responses to me. It may have to do with the fact that I know that it is likely going to trigger something, and I at that moment don't feel like I have the willingness or the space or simply the time for it in order for me to confront it. It takes a lot of energy to process all of it, and often I don't want to go into it because I'm too preoccupied with another process. Or I may simply not feel the space within me to confront it at that moment. So now that I have matches and I wanted to respond to them, I suddenly find my mind judging them as not so attractive after all. It at least so was the case earlier this day, when I looked at these girls in a state in which I wasn't aroused. I wonder if this change in judgement is because I wasn't aroused, or if it is because my ego-mind likes to come up with strategies to escape the confrontration with my sexual shadows. i feel like it's a bit of both. I think of a woman in a paid "learning how to play in a band"-course I go to every week, and how I happen to find her moreso attractive then her co-student, who is also just like her has a physically attractive body, but I just so happen to find one more attractive than the other, and I can neither blame it on the body, and I also can't blame it on the degree of feminine energy, as that also appears to be around the same degree. So taking that example in mind, I feel that there is a certain attractiveness too that is not dependent on me feeling horny, but that there are certain women who I happen to appreciate more for no immediately recognizable logical reasons. I can recall certain situations in the past where this too was true; I remember even an instance where the woman I was attracted too didn't have particularly pronounced feminine physical features. it concerns me that my level of horniness seems to so much alter my perception of different women. I oscillate a little bit between me wanting a longer-term relationship with a beautiful, compassionate woman who I match really well with, and me wanting to just bust a nut in almost any vagina possible, without wanting to make contact with the woman other than with her body. It is frustrating because it's hard to make up my mind on how to go about it if my feelings are prone to change so rapidly. Even if I do happen to choose purely for sexual pleasure, there is another problem, apart from the costs it will probably take. i will now get back to the point which I departed from much earlier in this post. Let's say I somehow suddenly happen to win a lottery and I would be a millionare. And let's just for the sake of a hypothetical argument say that this amount of money is so big that there is no way that all of it can be spent in the duration of the rest of my life. Well, would I then just visit a lot of prostitutes and sex clubs to fulfill my sexual cravings? I probably would, but still I find this largely uncomfortable. First off, I'm physically very awkward. I find it difficult to touch other people in general, and particularly in sex I have a lot of anxiety about leading the sexual dynamic physically. It stifles me. I would really like to just touch, stroke and move the woman's body wherever I so please to, but I feel for some reason a lot of anxiety in regards to doing that. Also, I'm very uncomfortable actually making a sort of connection with her. I am very shy with making eye contact. I am quite afraid to just connect or bond with another person in general, actually. And especially in a sexual situation I am afraid to share this intimacy. The best sexual experience I've had so far was when I was in a sex club some time ago in 2018, and in that sex club a woman was hanging in the air with her wrists and ankles tied up, making it so that she was hanging in the air (front body towards the ceiling, back towards the fround), and her legs spread so her vagina was fully available for a line-up of guys to release themselves in. Also, and I think this an important notion: She was also blindfolded. Because she was in that position where we couldn't really make contact in any way, and there also wasn't any awkwardness about changing physical positions with her (as there was only one approach to penetrate her, really), it made it very convenient for me to just purely focus on my lust and to only take her body into account and not the woman herself. That was the best sexual experience I've had so far. She wasn't even necessarily even that attractive, but I didn't mind that much. But where does it go if such a situation is required —which have a lot of criteria— in order for me to be able to actually enjoy a sexual experience with another woman? in almost any other situation, I feel the fear of intimacy beyond physical contact is going to give me too much anxiety, make me feel too uncomfortable. And even if it wouldn't, I feel like it would after I would have ejaculated. I notice in myself after ejaculation in masturbation aswell, that the idea of having a woman laying next to me at that particular moment doesn't seem appealing to me at all. Not that I wouldn't care about her anymore entirely, but I wouldn't know what to do with her at that point. At that point, I feel like my reflex to go back to my old habits of wanting to retreat and to be alone would take me over. Again, I do feel like there's some compassion still that wants to take her situation into account, and I think that precisely because of that reason I also can't find myself going to the other side of the duality or the polarity in which I become what you would call an "asshole" who only cares about himself and his own desires, and uses the woman as a piece of meat to relieve himself in, not being interested in being compassionate and sympathetic towards her. I don't feel like I have that capacity within me. I feel like I am too sensitive and compassionate to go to that polarity. I could see myself becoming dominant and leading at some point, but I wouldn't see myself becoming indifferent and careless towards her. I can still use this sort of dominant/submissive polarity as a sort of play, also in sex, but I wouldn't see myself actually being able to become that guy who doesn't care about her other than to use her for his own benefit. So the only real possibility I see for myself is either becoming capable of intimacy without necessarily being dominant or a leader, or to combine the aspects of being dominant and masculine whilst at the same time also being able to be connect, to be intimate and loving. But how to get there? How to get even a lot of "training" or "reference experience" without wasting a shitload of money on prostitutes or sex clubs? Well, I still want to continue taking it a bit further on tinder and trying to get dates there whilst being intelligent about how to do that, but also I think a good idea is to take a course in which I get taught by experience how to physically touch people. I know these kind of courses, therapies or classes exist. They may still be expensive, but I think i would be worth it. Yes, I may also go to a sex club a couple of times a year. But I really don't want to do that more than just a couple of times a year. Maybe I'll go to one soon again. Although I don't know how much it is really going to teach me or free me. I think that's it for now.
  12. Well... I think it can go both ways. Burning yourself in public to protest against the soviet regime doesn't sound like an appealing way to die for me personally. I'm very much focused on internal transformation as opposed to external change. As far as his perspective is concerned... Really, it's still a matter of attitude. He can do it feeling greed for paradise, he can do it in rage, he can do it feeling pride for being willing to make such a sacrifice, feeling superior for having done it. He could've also been in failing in life and ending up in hopelessness and despair. At such a point, using the excuse of being a martyr is a good excuse to commit suicide, whilst suicide was something he wanted to do regardless. This is also a possibility. So all of that would be coming from the ego. It could've also been possible that he did it in a very clear moment, where there was no struggle accomodated with it, and where his decision to do was just a very clear recognition that his consciousness called him forth at that moment to do that act. So really, the act itself is not necessarily indicative of the state of mind such a person is in.
  13. Without further a due, here's all that I had saved up on this word-document. I had also written a part on the topic of sex and sexuality, but because I was feeling that the inspiration to continue to write on that subject was leaving me as I was writing it, I want to decide not to post it right now, as I had leaved it unfinished. Normally, I would post something that was unfinished anyways, but this time I feel like I want to leave it as it is now, and get back to it a later time and then make it complete. Saturday, November 23, 2019 I like to reflect back upon the previous couple of days Wednesday I set my alarm clock earlier because I wanted to receive more sunlight. I kind of had this feeling that more sunlight would equate with more energy to be proactive. When the alarm clock rang, I didn’t get up immediately, and I almost fell back asleep again. I didn’t have the feeling that there would be much of a point in getting up anyway, but just before I fell back asleep it occurred to me that I should at least just get up, have some breakfast, and then see how I would feel after I would’ve gotten up. I didn’t feel like I was in the headspace to be able to decide that correctly when I was still lying down in bed. So I got up, and I did against my expectation find that I did feel within myself the capacity at that moment to actually go and do things. There was one thing I had specifically in mind, and I had to take a break to do some energy work, but just doing the damn thing appeared to be the right attitude in this specific scenario. Later on that same day I went to the swimming pool. Here, as is usual, I found myself sexually aroused by attractive female bodies in swimming gear. I’m going to elaborate on this topic later down the line. Thursday I also wanted to continue being proactive, but I noticed that this time there was much more resistance against doing so. This time the situation was different, and the attitude of “just doing the damn thing” didn’t seem to work anymore. Not even so much because that attitude isn’t effective in getting the thing done; Of course it still is. But that attitude didn’t work anymore for me primarily because I am not capable in getting myself to believe that it is genuinely better to push yourself through any possible form of resistance or suffering just go get the thing done. There’s a difference between setting an intention and setting a requirement. I think this is where many people mess up. Most people in such a situation where they had an intention make it into a requirement or else they have failed as a human being, they tell themselves. That’s not true at all. In fact, I think the true failure is the failure to acknowledge that you have limits, and to be intelligent and sensitive enough to not cross those limits. If you do cross those limits, you may get the thing done, but it will do much harm to you psychologically. At least in the very act itself you will feel very uncomfortable, and that’s already disputable if it’s really worth doing at such a point, not to mention the momentum that this attitude will create to affect other areas of your life, often them not being very healthy effects to your psyche. Strangely enough I barely recall what I did this day. I remember going to the supermarket and meeting a friend/acquaintance, for actually two times in a row. I also remember starting to watch a lot of video’s on Jordan Peterson later in the evening and night. I never tend to catch onto a hype early on. When Jordan Peterson was really hyped up and popular (and I reckon he still is to some degree), I didn’t want to watch it because I tend to be the person who never likes to go with the ways or opinions of the crowd. Now that the hype is starting to wear off a little bit about Jordan Peterson, I actually started to take interest in him and watched some of his talks and discussions or interviews. I like what Jordan is doing. At first I had more of the impression that he was just some guy with a strong opinion, but not that he was necessarily right. Not that I had really observed and judged his arguments, but once again, I tend to have the attitude of not being able to value a person initially when he’s hyped up by a crowd, because the idea is pretty deep-rooted in me that the crowd can’t be right. But I have to admit that I was wrong. I like Jordan for his fire, his sincerity and integrity. He also actually knows what he’s talking about, and even though he may have a strong standpoint, he is not corrupted by this standpoint and is at the same time very fair and wise. I also like that he’s a scientist yet at the same time not limited to or biased by the scientific or otherwise materialistic paradigm. So I think I’m going to continue watching Jordan. Friday I had the intention to go to the gym multiple times to do a group workout that was guided (a virtual workout, though). I however never got to it, even though I had set the intention to go there at three different times. I say three different times because there was one of these group sessions I wanted to go to at three different occasions. The reason that I didn’t go was because time after time I felt a huge degree of resistance, to the point that there was no reasonable opening for me to actually go and do it. Once again, to clarify: It’s not that I’m literally incapable of doing if I really decided to force myself, but I am in such a uncomfortable state (about this situation) at that moment, that it simply doesn’t seem reasonable or worthwhile to actually go and do it. I figured that it was a mistake to say to myself after the second time I wanted to go but didn’t go, that I HAD to go on the third time. Because once again at the third time, I felt a great amount of resistance and energetical tension. Because I was so keen on actually wanting to do it this time, this created a great amount of confusion, doubt, and guilt by the idea that I wouldn’t go. I eventually didn’t go because I felt that it simply wouldn’t have been worthwhile, given the condition I was in. But I realized for myself that I had to stop making this intention so important to the degree that it becomes a “must” or “requirement” to go. I reckoned that i could still keep the intention, but that I would see at the moment itself if it would be appropriate to go or not. I reckoned that I could theoretically go on like that indefinitely and not create a build-up of guilt about it, but to actually make an intelligent, sensitive and conscious decision every single time. It’s not to say that I have to go to the opposite and that I HAVE to make a conscious decision every time not created by guilt, because if there is guilt, sometimes the best way to overcome it is to deal with it on the outer level instead of the inner level. Or in other words: doing the thing as opposed trying to detach yourself from the need of it. But if I have the capacity to not create guilt and not to act out of this guilt, then I don’t want to do it. Today (Saturday), I actually did end up going to the gym. Unlike yesterday, I didn’t need to make multiple ‘attempts’. I didn’t feel entirely clear still, but I felt clear enough to be able to make it seem like the decision to go would be justifiable. I did end going a bit too late. I for some reason thought it was a good idea to take 5 minutes out of my time before going to complain to my friends on whatsapp about how they did less sugar in syrup (the thing you mix with water). I don’t necessarily regret about what I complained, or that I complained, but I do regret complaining at that particular moment in time. For some reason, I though that time would just work out in my favor and I would still be on time for this group class. I wasn’t on time at all, especially considering I still had to change clothes. It was simply just a stupid idea to do that (at that time). It’s a thing to remember for another time. I also noticed I had quite a bit of upper back pain during this guided virtual workout (in which I was the only person participating). I also notice it when laying in bed, that my upper back tends to hurt sometimes. I always had the tendency to put my fists in my upper back and to actually crack my upper back. I always felt like that might’ve helped to relieve the pain from my upper back, but it might actually have made it worse instead. It at least hasn’t resolved the pain. I will try to stop doing it now, and instead I think a good solution is to put a pillow behind my upper back when I’m sitting or laying down. In this way, it will provide a counter-position to it being bent forward too much, which I suspect is the reason it hurts the way it does. I want to take a bit better care of my upper back, and if this fails too, I might just search up advice on what to do with this pain.
  14. Thanks Modmyth for your reply. The way I like you to see the way I reacted is that you see it as me needing to get something off my chest. As if I'm directing my frustrations at the open air instead of me shouting it at you. I reckon you could see it as some shadow aspects I was still carrying within me. Why did I get triggered? Well, I did think I explained it already for a good part, but let's see if I can explain it in a nutshell. Maybe there are more or other ways of looking at it than I previously stated (later edit: It defininitely won't be "in a nutshell") I'm stlll pretty insecure about expressing myself and the effects that my expressions have on other people. In order for me to be able to express myself anyways, I feel the need to close myself off from input and feedback from other people, as expressing myself and knowing other people are aware about the fact that I'm expressing myself I already find uncomfortable enough in itself. So when I get given feedback or asked questions about what I'm expressing, at such a point it can (depending on the kind of feedback) become quite a bit more than I am comfortable with. At the same time, when you asked those questions, particularly those that were indicated in bold letters, I do feel a responsibility to answer. I don't feel good with just ignoring you. But it costs me a lot of energy and time to think and really reflect upon what you said. I generally don't just like to take a little bit of time for it. My mind doesn't work like that. Or at least, not at this moment. I also felt quite nervous about getting back to my thread to read what you had responded. I had to write a couple of other entries to my journal on a word-document because I had felt too uncomfortable to get back to my thread until now. This obviously can also be an impactful factor that doesn't stimulate the desire for me to engage in conversation in this thread. But still, I don't regret having written my previous comment. I do this a lot, actually, where I say something and then for some time am too afraid to look back at it. But I think I had already stated this situation in my journal some comments ago. Even though it's uncomfortable, I think it's good for me to do it anyway. And an additional factor is the fact that I like to keep my journal focused on my journal entries. I feel resistance against getting sidetracked a lot. Right now, I feel a lot of resistance against this thread becoming a board for discussion and exchange. I am not saying there is anything wrong with discussion, but I had not intended my thread to become like that. I had wanted to keep it very personal. I felt like I would be okay with shorter comments from others that didn't require that much of a response, but when you expressed your previous comment, I felt it was a lot to think about and a felt a responsibility to answer or at least acknowledge what you had said, but at the same time I just wanted to get on with the often pleasurable act of expressing myself and writing in my journal. I felt like I now was in a double-bind where I felt responsible to answer you, but I didn't really want to as I had no interest in getting sidetracked as I just wanted to get on with what I felt excited to write about initially. But the mood of what I felt inspired to write about changed at that moment from wanting to express what I had come to this thread for, to reacting contextually to what you had written, but disregarding the content of what you had specifically asked and said. I didn't want to talk about what you had said specifically, but instead I wanted to talk about the context in which I regarded your comment in relation to this thread and my own current psychological dispositions and thoughts on this matter. So that gave me something to go on, whilst still not feeling like I had to exert a great amount of energy to recalibrate and contemplate on the content you had expressed. I really didn't want to switch gears and get completely sidetracked by allotting much energy to answering you. But going into the context of how I felt about what you said, it required much less effort and time, as this was all naturally and spontaneously flowing out of me. So amongst other things, it was this that triggered me, as I wanted to clarify that such a comment you made provided a lot of internal difficulties for me and would've slowed me down and sidetracked me from what I was originally excited to do (which was to just write an entry in my journal), because I felt the responsibility to answer it. But also, as I said before, there were other factors. One of them being that I'm a bit insecure about how others think about what I'm expressing, and therefore me having the need to close myself off and just stay focused on my own process. I feel like this is quite related to the paragraphs expressed above, but not exactly the same. A way to compare that —although maybe not a strikingly similair comparison— is as if you imagine you're trying to reason with a person who just heard that his house has burned down and his family has died in the fire, and now this person is crying immensely and is completely overwhelmed by emotions. In such a case, trying to reason with this person in the midst of his emotional outburst, trying to give him/her logical reasons to see the situation from a different light or perspective, isn't really what that person needs at that moment. At that moment, the person just needs to be hugged and consolidated. It doesn't even really matter so much if the other person uses really good logic or perspectives. It's just not what's needed at that moment. I know our situation isn't comparable in either extremity or the specific context of it, but still it has some similarity in the sense that I'm not really interested at this moment in needing other people to give me other perspectives or to provoke different ways of thinking in me. I know that may be a logical thing to think as what I'm doing is expressing a lot of contemplative thoughts, so thereby you would assume that stimulating more introspection and reflection would be the appropraite thing to do, but counter-intuitively, that isn't really the case so much. Even though I'm expressing a lot of thoughts, I don't desire other people to give me more thoughts, as I desire to stay intimate with my own process and not get sidetracked from it too much. I have this strong desire for intimacy with my own process, and discussion with other people feels as if that's distracting me and disrupting this intimacy —although it doesn't necessarily need to have that effect. I know that. I'm still not going to tell you that you need to necessarily write less —as perhaps I do need to be challenged, and I want to practice my capacity for surrender and to not control— but just know that this is the way my mind works. I might have a different way of going about the way I respond to you, though. "(Although... I do not see myself in your projections back either, when you responded to me more directly? I was not trying to tell you that you were definitely this or that, or that you needed to change. I guess I gave you a mirror that was broken. )" I just wanted to get back to this real quick. No, it's true that you didn't. But I don't think that was the point, even though I may have given you a different impression. I think the main thing is just that I have difficulties getting sidetracked or distracted in general; That I encounter a situation in which I have to completely switch gears and use a lot of energy which I otherwise would've have needed to use (at least in the way I approach it right now). But... going forwards into the future, I think I probably will be able to loosen up a bit and respond to your comments and/or questions with a bit more ease and spontenaeity, and thereby hopefully also a lesser degree of exertion and loss of focus. I think opening myself up for feedback and engaging in communication is also just something in which there is a learning curve for me, and therefore encountering a challenge in regards to it may be the appropriate event to take place. So by all means, don't interpret all that I have written in this reply as a means to silence you. You can express yourslef, but just know that I have some... sensitive spots. I find it important to have said that. In some way, I still do really appreciate the mere fact that you're willing to engage with me and give me the commodity of your attention . I don't think that's something I should just take for granted.
  15. Well first off, I don't think enlightenment is something that is definitive that can be delineated. People often think there's some kind of 'finish line'. I don't think that's true. I think it's more of a spectrum than a light switch. I think awakening is an ongoing and possibly even neverending process. I don't think the expansion of consciousness will reach a final point on the earthly plane, at the very least. So I don't think there's even a duality of 'being enlightened' as opposed to 'not being enlightened'. If you think you or someone else is enlightened, how do you know this person can't even get more enlightened? So that's the first thing. Secondly, even if there was such a thing as definitive enlightenment, then the hallmark of someone who has reached it is the person for whom asking the question whether he or she is enlightened would be absolutely meaningless. Not that it can't be questioned, but it's just meaningless. Someone who has reached really high levels of consciousness has gone past the paradigm of introspection and reflection; Gone past the paradigm of thinking altogether, really. Not that the person can't think, but the need for existential contemplation has disappeared. The need has disappeared because the faculty of introspective thinking has been exhausted and thereby deflated. Post-yellow stages in Spiral Dynamics are not attached and usually not even interested in thinking anymore. Not to mention, the awakened person sees that the whole game of enlightenment is just a silly and possibly even stupid notion anyway. I'm not talking about the hardcore inner work, but I'm talking about the constant evaluation, judgement and comparison that goes like: "How close am I to enlightenment? Am I enlightened? Is that person enlightened? Will this or that make me enlightened? How do I recognize someone to be enlightened? Is this person more enlightened than that person?". All these questions seem just utterly meaningless and even silly to an ACTUAL enlightened person, were there to be such a thing as an 'enlightened person' to begin with, which I don't think there is as part of a duality of 'enlightened vs non-enlightened' In fact, I would encourage people here to just do the goddamn inner work and drop the whole enlightenment game they're playing with themselves. I see it here way too much. The enlightenment-game is just another game that the ego-mind likes to play. The game that gets played in the mind about the topic of enlightenment is way different than doing the actual inner work that will facilitate the growth of your consciousness. The game that the mind likes to play of evaluation, comparison and judgement is simply just a sheer wastage of energy and time.
  16. I see what you have written, modmyth. And with all due respect. I think much of what you say isn't particularly useful to me as of now. I find it a bit difficult to explain why in a very accurate description, but it has to do with the fact that I don't really feel that there's is any genuine need for anything to be resolved, and then obviously I don't require the assistance of others for something that doesn't need to be resolved anyway. I know that this may perhaps strange to you, but this journal actually isn't so much about finding the solutions, but it is more for the joy of being able to express myself. That's the hidden catch to all of this. Most of what I write here isn't actually so much about all the problems or confusions that I have, but actually it's more that I find my thoughts and my journey so intriguing that I want to share it. God, I find it so difficult to explain this accurately. How do I say it... It's like I'm the producer of a tv show that watches and observes how the show is made, and sees the actors and acts play themselves out. The actors and acts could be considered my thoughts and feelings. But I realize clearly enough that I'm the guy behind the scenes that watches it all, and not the actor that is so lost in the play that he forgets that he is an actor that just plays certain roles. If you think you're talking to the actor of the show, you are mistaken. You're talking to the producer that is responsible that the show gets published. Or maybe that's not entirely accurate either. No, I'm both the actor and the producer of the show. I play in the show, and I am also the producer of the show that sees how the show is made and who broadcasts the show once in a while. But even as the actor, I still realize to some degree that I am merely an actor, and that it's only a show I'm playing in in which certain roles are ascribed. Or in other words: I realize that I am the witness which watches the show that is my mind, or what we call "my life". And I like to share that show, but I know on some level it's just a show. And that's the point where some people get confused about me. They sometimes see me expressing worries or confusion, and the way most people then try to deal with this is from the perspective of 'problem-solution'; Because they themselves lack the realization of the dimension of the witness. But I am both the actor and the one who is witnessing the actor play out its acts both together. Until the dimension of the witness is realized, the game of 'problem-solution' that the mind creates will simply go on unto infinity. And sometimes people misjudge the degree in which they think I'm identified with my anxieties or forms of resistance. It's interesting because there can be a lot of anxiery or resistance or blocking energy in my system, possibly a huge complex, but at the same time relatively little identification and obsession about this complex. And that's what I want to clarify to you, modmyth. I actually do have a great deal of mental/emotional/energetical disturbances or blockages in some areas, but throughout the time I've started to detach and create distance from these disturbances. I am now much more seeing it happen instead of thinking that I am those unpleasant feelings, or that I would be thinking that they need to be resisted or 'removed'. I have a great degree of yielding. So that's the first thing. I am more detached and relaxed than you might happen to think when you are reading my journal entries, because I'm not very identified anymore with everything that's happening within me. I have developed a great capacity to yield and surrender. So don't be worried. And I feel the reason why I don't feel so much resonance with what you're saying or asking is because I like the way the show is going, and for some reason I feel a certain resistance for the script to be altered by outside influences. I like to take amost everything by my own insight and intuition. I think this resistance is in a way very similair to the situation where my mother was surprised that I wasn't interested in taking any feedback on the way I was singing. With singing, I don't want feedback. I don't want suggestions. I don't even want applause or praise; Although I don't mind that either. The way I like to learn to sing or to act out singing is by going by intuition and kinesthetic experience. I like to feel how it feels in my body to sing a certain note a certain way. I don't need information about it from others how I'm doing it. I'm not interested in the "constructive feedback" of others about how I'm singing; particularly not if the way I was singing felt good in my body, and the reason they may be judging it negatively is because it wasn't in accordance with certain ideas they had about what a good voice was supposed to sound like, even though having listened to it without the filter of the mind would've probably made it felt like a good sound. Rarely have I watched tutorials on "how to sing (a particular way)". And if I did, it was only to compare how they sang with how I was singing, and then to see if what they sang felt kinesthetically good to me too. If it didn't, i didn't care how much praise the particular teacher may have received, I simply didn't buy into it. So how does this resistance —or perhaps more accurately described as: the lack of resonance— in regards to what you have written compare to the way I like to approach singing? Well... Simply put: I like to blaze my own trail, guided by my own intuitive compass. It's not that my intuition is always completely correct or that I can't use feedback from others, but if I always return to listening to my own inner voice, the more precise my intuitive compass gets to be. It has to do with the love for self-reliance and autonomy. And the resistance tends to be particularly big if the one who gives feedback is projecting their own ideas upon me in their own identification of the actor and its roles, and therefore most likely misunderstanding me what the place is of which I'm rooted in, which is the witness of the play. It's not my intent to blame or point fingers or anything to you with what I just said, modmyth; It's just the continuation of my thought process. In such cases, where people project their ideas upon me from their own identifaction with the actor role, they will miss the point that I don't necessarily have to be identified with many different forms of emotional pain that could still be in my system. This emotional pain is simply leftovers of past trauma, which in time will be evaporated by the ever-brightening light of my consciousness. This pain is simply momentum, and me expressing it is simply relief, and possibly even a form of enjoyment of the play. In these cases, people often project upon me that I would be suffering from, for instance, an inferiority complex in which they think I believe that I don't have much value and that I am unwilling to give myself permission to give credit to myself, or to take ownership of a situation or to act up where it would be appropriate. They may have projected this because I may have expressed or said that there were some feelings of shame or insecurity within me. From their perspective, if you experience feelings like that you must be identified with them, as they don't understand within themselves that there is a difference between experiencing something and being identified with something. It's funny because I don't believe myself to be inferior at all. I don't feel like there's even a single thought I'm overly identified with (although I could be wrong). I actually on a conscious level highly value myself and in fact people tend to think of me as rather selfish sometimes—at least in contrast to a society that is identified with being overly sympathetic and kind, in which I find myself in. But despite me valuing myself highly on a conscious level, it does not mean that I do not get visited by feelings of shame or insecurity or socially-related anxieties. But all of these feelings happen much more on the periphery instead that they have a grasp on me from the very core; I notice them coming up, I allow these feelings to flow through me, and then sometimes sooner and sometimes later, they disappear again. At pretty much no point did I take any of these feelings very seriously and latched onto them. Yes, there can be and is still some identification, but it's much lighter and looser now than it used to be. If you are confused with what I even mean with "Identification"... Identification in its basic sense means you take it very seriously and there's a lot of gravity or heaviness that you create around it. This can be both a belief system or an emotion. You take it to be very serious and it appears as very 'real' to you. I don't have that that much anymore. There's much more lightness and distance. I may have contradicted myself in the past with this, by using terminology interchangeably, having defined or described "identification" as something else, but let me now all correct that: I'm not very identified anymore (although there certainly still is some identification. Some areas more than others), but I do experience still a good amount of energetical/emotional/mental leftovers of past pain. I apologize may this post have come across as too judgemental to what you have written. It may seem like i'm being very critical, but actually it's just once again mostly one of these cases where I'm "talking to myself about myself". I understand you were trying to help, and what you have written was in fact not even that wrong at all. But it did trigger in me many thoughts which I felt the need to express, which I now have done.
  17. Some people are so deep into their belief system that they are hopeless cases that won't ever be able to find happiness, that you would almost think it's true. But it's not true at all from an absolute, objective standpoint. I'm convinced that every single person is able to find peace in their lives. I don't care who this person is, what this person has tried, and how deeply this person is convinced that it can't happen. The point is... There's simply a set of universal laws that can be followed to attain to peace and to awaken. There's nobody that is an exception to these laws. All that is required is first and foremost just an absolute commitment and willingness to seek out the Truth and then to follow it. People who suffer from "chronic unhappiness" and don't believe that they can't be happy, are actually being very absurd if they are actually very adamant about defending their unhappiness. You wonder why they even continue to live on in the first place if they are so convinced that happiness isn't for them. Devotion to Truth or happiness is in essence simply creating a "do or die"-situation for yourself. You create a situation for yourself where you either get to Truth or happiness, or you will die trying. Once fucking around and wasting your life in useless distractions isn't an option anymore, that's when you will get out of your misery, one way or another. The keyword is devotion. Relentless, uncompromising devotion. What your devotion is towards isn't even essential. The quality of devotion itself is essential.
  18. I like where I live, and where I've lived all my life for almost 25 years. It doesn't mean I've always liked it. Often when I came home I had thoughts like: "Dammit not the same goddamn old shit again". There have been bouts where I traveled because I just couldn't stand being in or near the environment where I lived anymore, that I needed some adventure, to get away from my home. But I think that even the most beautiful place in the entire world wouldn't have been able to satisfy me in those moments. I've come to a point in which my home environment doesn't start to bore or bother me anymore. This has much to do with me having evolved. This need to get away or to have adventure can often be caused by the fact that you crave stimulation, or that the mind needs an excuse to start and resist something, as the mind loved to resist stuff. When I felt agitated and restless in the past it often came with the thought: "Oh it must be because I'm home too much. I must go out!". But what would've been more accurate to reality would've been the fact that I just wasn't able to handle just being with myself for a long time without too much distractions or diversions. But in reality, I do like where I live. It's in a city yet it's a bit on the outskirts so you can easily get to a forest and take a walk there. The city itself is also a nice one to live in. It's decently spacious and the municipality gives lots of emphasis on greenery and culture. In spiral dynamics, the city is pretty 'green'-oriented. The Netherlands in general tends to be pretty green. Again, green in the context of spiral dynamics. The Netherlands is however quite overcrowded, which I find one of the downsides of just living in the Netherlands in general. I would've rather lived in a somewhat more remote area in Germany, I suppose. But it's good. I also like the fact that I still iive with my parents. I really don't feel very excited at all to move into a small apartment with only two rooms or anything like that. I get to alternate between two bedrooms because sometimes after having been in one bedroom for too long, the energy starts feeling a bit too heavy and I then like to switch. I also get to use the attic here to practice singing. It's very important to me that I have a good place to practice singing, as singing is a great passion of mine. Yes, I want to move out eventually, but I don't want to move out for moving out's sake. I think moving out for the sake of it is just unnecessary effort and trouble, with very little to no payoff. I need to have a really good complementary reason to move out.
  19. Friday 15 November (-ish) It's interesting to know I have an observer. I always used to write this with only myself in mind. Yes, I did post it online because I felt like it could perhaps be of some help to people, because I in fact did feel like I had something to share, but it did somehow give solace to me to think as I was writing in my dairy that nobody else would be reading it, because then I would've felt like I wouldn't have to fear what anybody else would think of it. It gave me more comfort in being completely honest and direct to almost the extreme degree. Not that I will deviate much from how honest and open I have been before —if at all... Being completely sincere here is very important to me; Both to myself and others. Because if other people get to read it, I want them to know how life actually IS (to me) instead of what I would like to make of it. Deceiving yourself or others from what actually is does nobody any good; Or at least it's not what I am willing to bargain for in this particular context. I might draw the line at for instance confessing a horrible crime nobody would've otherwise ever found out about, or perhaps I might not even stop there. I just like it so much to be totally free and unashamed (or at least unashamed for my shame). I might possibly post some pretty gnarly stuff in the future. Note that I'm still typing in this thread for myself first and foremost. Almost like this thread is my house and that anybody else is free to visit my house, but I dictate what happens in this house. And that anybody who is not aboard as to what is happening in this house, they are free to leave. But I won't change the way I behave and act in my house, even if angers or repulses other people. Because everybody needs to have a place where they can be totally themselves without any shame for who they are and what they want to do; Even if it's totally against the social norms. Note that it might still appear as if I'm talking to you because I've quoted you in the beginning, modmyth, but I once again have started to switch to the mindset as if I'm only talking to myself again. So just understand that I'm not strictly speaking to you anymore, but to myself about myself, which is why my tone is the way it is. Before I wasn't even really ready to ask the question if anybody else would be reading this. The last time you commented I also was a bit apprehensive to read what it would've been about. I have a tendency to say or state things and then never to look back at it again because I'm too nervous or uncomfortable to read what people said about it. I have made several topics on this forum which I simply posted and pretty much never looked back at. A couple of times I did read back what people had said about it, but rarely have I ever further commented on it. For similair reasons, I also didn't comment on your previous comment, although I did read it. Often I even regret or second-guess what I have written, but I decide at that point just to let it be whatsoever it was and just never look back at it again. Because even if I did happen to utter much nonsense, I've learned that it's better to leave the statement for what it is (or was) instead of either justifying or correcting yourself. At least this is so if those justifications or corrections are coming from a place of fear. I've learned it's sometimes better to be —or come across as— being confidently wrong than to express a lot of insecurity and to keep on correcting or justifying yourself. Not that I think a lot of what I say is actually so much untruthful or false, but I'm just saying what I just said for the sake of making a point. In fact, I think almost everything is say is true coming from a certain kind of viewpoint or perspective. For instance, I may be uttering a statement that intuitively feels to be true to me, and without me knowing for certain that it would be actually logically accurate, I still say it as if it were the truth, as the ability to allow your intuition to express itself. I have also explained this more clearly in the latest thread I made, which was about Yellow and Turquoise in Spiral Dynamics. Most people who state without thinking about it, however, are in a state of bias and delusion, because they have never learned to doubt and question. I'm still not saying what I'm saying is necessarily going to be the ultimate Truth because I'm starting to rise above thought and doubt. I think it's in fact usually more like a half-truth that is expressed with power. Half-truths can also be very helpful in certain circumstances if they're expressed with power. Sometimes it can be exactly what a person need. I reckon this topic perhaps needs some further contemplation later down the line Back to what I was talking about earlier: I find it hard to really understand as to why exactly I find it so difficult to read or get feedback from other people about what I have to express. The same with singing actually. Sometimes I go to the karoake bar to sing a song. When I am singing the song I don't want to get distracted at all and I want to close myself off from the crowd as much as possible, and once I'm done singing, I like to leave the bar as soon as possible. To be fair, I have this fear a little bit less than I used to before, but it's still definitely a thing. But I am ever so slowly getting more comfortable with not only expressing myself but also receiving the feedback or reactions to it Alright, let's leave it with this for now Part 2 Actually, I'm not done yet. I'm observing within myself a lot of guilt at this point. As I've written in my journal a couple weeks back, I had written how I wanted to seek for the openings in my system that would allow me to act yet stay detached. Though I did emphasize the need to step back, and detach and rest and moments where that was applicable, I also set for myself the intention not to completely forget my intentions altogether. Well, let's talk about that. This inner pressure to start doing stuff and be active whenever there is the right space within me to go and do it, starts taking me to a point where it's getting very difficult to just relax with myself without me doing anything useful. I have been able switch gears in the past couple of weeks without too much guilt as by-product, or without the pressure of this guilt being too strong, but now once again this guilt is reaching a point where I have to consider that it's perhaps best to let go of these goals altogether. Well... let go of them to the extent that I can have moments where I do completely forget about them. Of course, if there's actually a certain deadline where something needs to be done if otherwise it makes my life situation very difficult, then yes, of course I won't "forget it altogether". But I do want to be able to forget about it just for the time being. Just for the moment. And also going forward into the future, that I want to take these things on my "to-do-list" more gently with less significance. At least for now where putting this pressure on myself isn't helping anymore. This may change again if I dealt with a lot of the guilt I'm dealing with right now. Because I have been having a really lazy past week in which I have done barely anything. Remember how I've talked about how I wanted to repair the gear mechanism of my bike last week? Nope, haven't done it. I also wanted to repair my bag (it has some lose straps). nope, haven't done it. In fact I've barely done anything "useful" past week. As I said, it's been really lazy. And to be fair, I've enjoyed and I felt good about it whilst I was in it. And if I feel good about it whilst I am in it, I don't see the point of trying to motivate or guilt-trip myself in thinking that I have to do something more useful. It's just going straight into the flow in which life is taking me at that moment. But I tend to also be a little bit biased about the way I perceive such a period. As if the only thing I would've done in such a period was vegetating and being a plant. I have actually really practiced a lot in singing on last Tuesday and Wednesday. this was motivated because I was approached by a band if perhaps I could be their singer.But first I had to record and send some tracks of my voice. That motivated me to practice a lot and to seek where the limit is of my voice so i could send them my best vocal accomplishments. I had put an advertisment up like 3 months ago if anybody needed a singer. Since then I had done one audition in which I clearly felt like I wasn't ready yet, particularly for the mental aspect, and that I needed more experience. Now even though that was the case, I had never removed the advertisment and I had accepted their request because I still felt like that there could be a slim possibility that it could work out irregardless. Even though I practiced and tried a lot on Tuesday, I actually didn't get around to sending them the voice fragments the same day because I was too perfectionistic and wanted to send them whole songs. On wednesday I actually just decided to do shorter fragments instead, but at that point my voice wasn't as good anymore. Coupled with the fact that bold voice recordings on a phone without even any instrumental backing tracks makes any sort of imperfection stand out hugely. That's at least how I perceived that to be. Maybe for those factors, I still haven't heard back from these guys after I had send them my voice fragments on Wednesday. We'll see. I'm not too bummed about it if they thought it was bad. I am doing a course right now at a sort of creative center downtown in our city in which we can learn to operate in a band. It's paid and lead by a teacher. It's also not a permanent band or anything like that. but it should give me the oppurtunity to grow and learn a lot, and by the end of that course (in january somewhere it ends), then I want to start looking again to see if I can join a band. Back to the main story... So it's not like I haven't done anything 'useful' the past week if you take the whole singing thing in regard. In fact, how to decide what is 'useful' anyways? Are we talking about practicality or things being pragmatic? Because rest can in a sense just be as useful as activity. And contemplation I certainly don't regard as being useless either. You can say that watching random video's for entertainment on youtube can be 'useless', but then again, if I enjoy it, then why does it have to be useful? Really, the only thing i feel is actually totally useless here is worrying about whether I'm useful or not. Like really, why do I have to be useful? Why do I have to do things that are 'of use'? Or why even say to myself that I should do one thing and not another thing? Why should I have to repair the gear mechanism of my bike if it doesn't bother me right now? Why should I frequently go to a karoake bar to sing there if it doesn't interest me? Why should I go to the gym more often if I don't feel like it? Why should I frequently write some text in my book I want to begin with? Why should I learn to play guitar if I don't care for it right now? Why should I try dating women if I don't feel like it's the right time to do it now? Why should I try to repair the straps of my bag. Why not detach from the need instead and work around it right now? Why should i have to become a singer? Why should I need to have a significant impact in the world? Why should I prevent my attention from being dragged around by impulses if I don't have any more comfortable or interesting alternative to focus it on? Why force my attention in any particular way? Why should I try to do meditations based on willful concentration and discipline? The list goes on and on and on... It's kind of like... I have desires, there are things in the outer world to be achieved, and I think it's an interesting and worthwhile game to play, and the outer isn't necessarily seperate from the inner, but... Is it okay if I can just relax right now without any need for anything to be achieved or fulfilled or worked towards right now, if it leaves me to be very uncomfortable? Can I just choose not to if I just don't want to? Even if I don't want it a little bit, even if it's just a tiny, miniscule amount of resistance, even then, can it just be okay for me at that moment not to do it? Why should it not be okay for me to be like a cat? A cat doesn't do a goddamn useful thing all day, every day. A cat doesn't go to work, takes care of chores, gets a bike fixed, helps other people (or cats) with mental health issues... A cat doesn't care the slightest bit and yet is perfectly happy and contented. Why should I have to do any of the things that a human does as far as 'responsibility' is concerned if I can just be like a cat.. sleeping, staring blankly out of a window... you know it. Do I genuinly want to live my life exactly the way as a cat does? On the outer level of action and events, no... I actually like a challenge and some pressure to facilitate the growth of my intelligence But on the inner level... Absolutely I'm saying all of this because even though I have ambitions, goals, things to strive for and such... I feel like it's very important to at least at certain times emphasize the need to allow myself to relax and to not be bothered aout whether these goals are followed up or not, or whether they would be followed up quickly enough or not... If for usefulness and success you have to lose your inner rest and peace, it's not worth having. If for peace you would have to sacrifice your usefulness and desire for success, it would be worth having to some degree, but it would be limited also. You would have peace but you would not have growth. That's what we're here on earth for, to grow. But if you can both be peaceful and useful (or ambitious) at the same time, that's greatness... But I feel like I can't have both right now. But I don't have to. i feel that it's important to stick with peace right now as I currently do not feel like I'm being called forth to challenge myself. Guilt is a very poor, a very deceiving substitute for this call for challenge. This guilt alone is certainly not the real call. The essential thing is this: It's okay to allow myself to wait in this peace whilst being non-useful, until the call for adventure calls me forth; This can either be something challenging that pushes my comfort zone and/or requires discipline, or it can simply be a spontaneous and natural, like I just so happened start singing a lot this week.
  20. well, if you consider the worst possible experience a human being ever can get to experience and the best experience a human being can ever have, then even people who are generally very miserable or very happy rarely ever exceed the 4 or 6. So I guess I'm about 5,2. Above neutral I suppose But in the way people normally use the scale... I'd say I'm about a 7,5 on average at this point in my life. A stable 7,5 is honestly better than it has been in years. from age 12-23 pretty much it was on average like a 4-5 or something (I am now 24, I will be 25 in a month time). in 2013 and 2017 in particular I had a terrible year. I would've averaged about 3,5 maybe, and like 2/2,5 in the worst phases of those years. Those years were really terrible. So yeah, I'm finally starting to ascend out of the darkness to a properly noticable degree now. It's not to say that the darkness will be gone foregood, or will not make a vengeance or return, but I'm just glad I'm fairly stable and relaxed now. I feel like I've earned this too. I've worked really hard for this. However, it's important to not be too obsessed about the idea if you're happy or not. Happiness comes easiest when you don't care whether it's there or not. That's the paradox.
  21. Hey guys. If you happen to be one of the few people who are unfamiliar with what I mean with "Yellow" and "Turquoise", look up the Spiral Dynamics model. It is a map displaying the evolution of consciousness. I just wrote a reply to a guy in another thread which I personally felt was pretty powerful. I felt the desire to simply make a seperate topic for it to post it again so more people get to read it, as I felt like it was simply worth sharing to more people than only the ones who would've read that post in that page in that thread. Make of it what you want.
  22. @Forrest Adkins Truth is not an idea, but the falling away of your ideas, and then what is left is the Truth. How do I (intellectually) know that this is true? I don't. I simply speak. I simply speak because I have exhausted questioning and doubting. If you question enough, at some point you start to get to fed up with all the questions. The energy for your constant doubting and questioning will disappear, because it have proven to be so futile and exhausting, and it has given you nothing positive. You may have broken down a lot of the negative mental patterns, but it has not been replaced by something positive. Really, it has taken you from bias to confusion. It did for me, at least. So when you get fed up with questioning and doubting itself, that's the turning point from Yellow to Turquoise (referring to the spiral dynamics model). And the strange thing is that instead of continuing to be in an state of absolute ignorance, not being able to make any assertion for the rest of your life whatsoever for the fact that you think you've come to the ultimate truth that "I know that I know nothing", you start to see that even that statement you don't know for sure (even disregarding the fact that the very statement itself is paradoxical), as you start to act and speak from a place that is not based on your past logic and philosophies. For how do we know what "knowing" really means? As I myself am entering Turquoise territory now, I more and more often start to make statements that I don't provide logical backup for —whether it's inner contemplation or outer explanation. I simply speak, and it feels right to say or write it, so I state it. Forget your need for it to be logically supported. I don't really care about that anymore. It's not making philosophies; It's making music. Almost exactly the same as making music. There's no right or wrong in making music. You just make music, and people may like it or may not like it, but nobody argues whether this music is "false" or "true". That whole discussion would be ridiculous. There's nothing false or true about music. It just is. Whether people like it or not is a different matter, but it just is. So from the Turquoise perspective, statements are just music. Turquoise people don't care about being logically correct or incorrect. Their statements are just music, coming from somewhere unknowable. How do you or I know that what I've just written is true from the perspective of Yellow or the mind? We don't. How can we know? Maybe what I've just written has been absolutely untrue. But then again: Can Truth be contained in words in the first place? So as Leo said, can you know absolute Truth when it happens to you? From the Yellow (or the stages below that) perspective or the perspective of the mind, you can't. There's just no way. But from the Turquoise perspective, you can and do know it. But this statement will make no sense to you if you start THINKING about it, you see? What I am stating here is just music, not something that my mind can know whether this is true or not. I can say that maybe I am deceiving myself here by correlating no-mind and direct experience with Truth, but this once again is the mind talking, you see? So do I know Truth? I don't, but I do. But I don't... But I do. Do you see my difficulty ?. There's still some yellow fears and attachments in me and that's why I find it difficult to say that "I do know the Truth" and just be done with it.
  23. Most psychologists have no idea what they're doing. They may have expertise, but this expertise won't help somebody for which the mind itself is the problem. People don't understand that the contents of the mind aren't the problem, but the identfication with mind itself is the problem. So trying to work on your personal mental issues isn't going to work if you're not reaching for something beyond it. If you're trying to play the game of "problem-solution", you're in the end only gonna find more problems with every solution you're going to come up with. That's just how to mind works. The mind itself is the problem; Most people don't understand that. Or maybe not the mind itself is necessarily the problem, but the identification with the mind in which the mind is in control of you instead of the other way around. And the way to dissolve this identification is to stop trying to think in terms of needing to have solutions and strategies for everything. Psychologists may be good for helping someone who is less intelligent than them. In that case a psychologist may help his evolution a little bit further. If the psychologist is less intelligent than the client (which is not the same as being more knowledgeable), then the psychologist will only hold the person back. Most psychologists today don't even understand or appreciate the value of the feminine and the passive. Usually, a psychologist is trying to activate you, to motivate you, to get you to be a more active participant in society. This can possibly be good for someone who is in the phase in his/her life where this person is in or near the springtime of his life, where such motivations are potentially helpful and applicable. And then only potentially... Because with many psychologists I question if they're really doing any good whatsoever. However, if someone is in or near the autumn-season of his/her life, this kind of emphasis on trying to activate people can actually be very detrimental and damaging. It can create a lot of guilt in a person. The person is often quite helpless, really, as he is fighting against the natural current of life. You can't stop the autumn from happening, and the winter from coming. If you do try, you will waste a lot of energy, struggle a lot with yourself, and in the end not only fail but make things so much more difficult for yourself than it ever had to be. Rarely I see someone encouraging just dropping it all and allow themselves to be or do nobody/nothing useful in particular. But if you do allow that for yourself for that to happen with your full permission and devotion to it, winter-time will turn out to be a very valuable phase in your life. Hmmm... how did I suddenly come to talk about the seasons of life when I was just trying to talk about psychologists? Ah well... I've found two good books you guys could use if you want to sharpen your capacity for argumentation against a dogmatic materialistic scientific position, if that's what you're going for. Rupert Sheldrake has a pretty good book called either "The Science delusion" or "Science set free" (depending on whether it's in the USA or not). He talks about the limitations of science from the perspective of a scientist. But not only the limitations, but also the corruption, the hypocrisy, the hidden agendas, the biases and unquestioned assumptions... So he is a scientist himself, but at the same time not tied to materialism and rationalism, and very skeptical towards the integrity of the way science is operating in this day and age. Osho has a juicy book called "intuition" which I'm reading right now, in which he is also clear about the limitations of not only science, but knowledge altogether. So he comes at it from the perspective from the mystic. Very good logic for logic transcending itself, as far as that's possible.
  24. I wonder if people are finding my journal entries interesting enough to read. I myself find my journal entries very interesting . I think it contains a lot of valuable lessons in it. If anyone happens to follow my journals, you can give a shoutout if you want to. It is alright to let yourself be heard, although I do prefer to keep the focus mainly on just writing my journal entries instead of communication from or to other people. But for now it is okay. Even if nobody is reading it, I still feel like I have a responsibility to keep on going with it. Maybe someone in the future will read it and find it to be very valuable. Or even if nobody will ever read it, I still feel like writing down these things also contains teaching towards myself just by writing it down.