Thittato

2 sessions of meditation this morning. First 45 min, then hot shower ended with a cold shower, and then another 45 min session. The cold I had is gone, so I'm back to work, and my sleep was totally messed up because I've been sleeping all day for some days now to get over this cold, so I only managed to sleep 2 hours this night, so I got out of bed earily and intensifed my meditation to build up some energy that can help carry me through the day in the absence of enough sleep.

Today I went for a walk in nature for about an hour. I walked really slow and listened to the birds and took in the surroundings. It was really beautiful. Then I went rollerblading with a buddy who brought his skateboard. This is the first time in 20 years that I'm rollerblading in a half-pipe. Oh my gosh. It was so damn fun. I can see a lot of progression already. I could easily drop into it, and then make a turn at the other side and go back and forth. I could also drop into it by doing a 180 from standing with my back against the drop. It is only a small halfpipe, but is was so FUN, FUN, FUN, and perfect practice-conditions. Now I only need to get aggressive inline skates again, so it is possible to do grinds on the copic, which I could do before, then I'm up to speed again. I only have like regular skates. Here is a picture of my buddy in the ramp. Pretty cute ramp haha

Meditated for 2x45 minutes today. Some stuff that I need to burn away at through meditation. I could feel the fire of purification burning in me through the last half of the last sit. A very powerful feeling, and at the same time sobering.

15 min meditation this evening. I was getting a cold yesterday, so I had to stay home from work. Normally I would have been going to work, but in these corona times it looks really bad going around sneezing at work. My boss called me later in the day to go through the corona protocol. I'm working day-shift on monday again, so I'll have to call a corona phone for the hospital to go through some procedure where they will advice me to go to work or continue to stay home. I'm pretty sure this is just a minor cold, but time will tell. They say the corona starts as just a mild cold, so who knows these days. Anyways, been feeling like crap today. Feeling bad from staying home from work. Been pushing myself too much lately with that rollerblading and that running when I was low on energy, so now I got what I was asking for (if it isn't corona and this would have happened no matter what). But there has been some good surrender and letting go in this feeling like crap as well. I'm so fed up about being hyped up about stuff. I just want to be more real and down to earth. This energy that I have been able to cultivate from my yoga and meditation practice - it is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is nice to have that extra level of energy and enthusiasm, but on the other hand it is difficult to keep it in balance. But I would rather have this challenge and learn how to deal with it then having less energy, so I better just continue to work on bringing this into balance. Some more focus on surrender and letting go seems like what I need these days. Also, I'm pretty sure that this period with jogging is over for now. I did 20 runs, and it amounted to exactly 100km, and I managed to push me through that run which was 9,2 km that I was so fascinated with, so I think my goals and the things I was fascinated with regarding this has been completed. It was fun to explore for a little while, but I really don't find it especially enjoyable or fun. It is mostly just hard work and pushing, and the whole culture around it seems to be about that. With all my other interests it requires too much to keep this focus going. I think I will rather just continue with my yoga practice as my physical exercise, and now that I'm getting into rollerblading again that will also be part of my exercise. It is nice to explore some other types of exercise just for a little while to get some inspiration and a new perspective on things, and that is what running was for me, but I don't think it is my type of exercise. So as for now I'll sharpen up my yoga-goals again, and then I'll explore this interesting interaction between yoga and rollerblading. That is much more creative, fun and cool. Ending my day with a few yoga poses, just to round this off and integrate and process all that I just wrote.

Gosh, over and over it is that same story of some kind of skill that I have dabbled in and not taken as far as I wanted to take, and now I need to go back and really master it. Seems to repeat itself over and over. Sometimes, or many times, I've been thinking that I should find one thing and get really good at it, but then my interests just keeps on moving. For now I have just surrendered to the fact that this flow just seems to unfold beyond my control. But maybe I need to change that story that there is something I need to get good at. I think there is some kind of underlying assumption that I'm not good enough as I am, so "if only" I get good at this one thing, then I will finally be good enough. I mean, it is fine with ambitions and all that, but I seem to be operating from a place that there is something inherently wrong with where I am right now, and at some point I will reach that point where everything is polished and like it is supposed to be. At the same time there is something so extremly satisfying when something I'm fascinated with just finally clicks and I understand it on a whole new level. And even though I change back and forth between many different skills, seems like my general level of knowledge and understanding keeps upgrading. The whole process is a mystery. It always comes back to some kind of paradoxical process of the dance between effort and surrender. I'm eager to learn to let go of control even more, and to surrender more into life.

One hour of running today. I ran 9,2 km. Then hot shower ended with a cold shower, as usual. I was so high on rollerblading yesterday. It is exhausting. Was watching rollerblading movies on youtube until late at night. Woke up this morning and was disgusted with the whole thing, as I usually am after those mental obsessions calm down. Been feeling vulnerable this whole day. But strangely enough I ran longer then I've ever ran. 5,3 km was the longest before this.

That sounds beautiful :-)

@Applegarden Thank you! And likewise to you by the way!! :-)

Awesome painting!! Do you think you are borderline? That is pretty heavy stuff, hehe.... I was diagnosed with both borderline and bipolar 2, but therapy seems to have gotten things more into balance :-) But the pattern of always searching is still there, even though the pain is much less. They say that borderlines "lash out" in all directions simultanously because they are so confused about who they are. I felt it was like a chronic identity crisis.

Two showers today that both started warm and ended cold. Just did 20 min of vinyasa flow yoga. The biggest thing today has been rollerblading for the first time in almost 20 years. I had an intense period rollerblading in halfpipes, quarterpipes, jumps and rails when I was 15-16, but I was not very good compared to my friends because I had such a low self-esteem and no understanding of how skills are developed, so I was pretty afraid when I was blading around trying to do stuff. But looking back now I realize that I actually had some skills, and they were easy to bring back up again even though it was 20 years ago. Today I could drop down a quarterpipe that was as tall as myself, and it felt very safe and natural, and I could jump on some jumps I thought was quite scary before I was warming up to it again, so it has been a really awesome day and I'm looking forward to spend more time this spring doing this stuff. It is the perfect continuation to bring this back up again since I returned to snowboarding both last winter and this winter, and last fall I got into longboarding as well, so I think I was already warmed up to these creative free-flow tricksing kind of sports.

I feel a lot of flow in my life. Many things are going very well and my energy and state of mind has improved alot thanks to what I have learned from self-development. I also feel very sad and frustrated about the situation in the world, and I'm longing for physical and social expansion. Things were going really well before this pandemic came, so it is frustrating to be restricted like this. But I also feel this is the truth about life as the Buddha said - that life contains a lot of suffering and that we are looking for a freedom beyond the world of the five senses. I feel I am in touch with some of that freedom, and that somehow makes it easier to just surrender into all the frustrations I feel about the world right now. Somehow, in a paradoxical way, there is something beautiful about it, and it is somehow, also in a paradoxical way, a joy to just allow myself to feel exactly what I feel about this. Also I feel a lot of connection with my friends and my family these days. I don't think we have been this close before. I think this pandemic has triggered in a lot of people the need to belong to a community. We are so individualistc these days, but even though I don't meet so many people these days, I feel less lonely than I usually do because of all the phone calls, chats, and video-calls and the level of connection I feel in these interactions.

A few more reflections on my latest LSD-trip. Even though it was a big release, I didn't like the fact that while it was lasting I felt that I had done something terrible wrong, and I wondered if I would ever get back to normal. It felt like "jesus christ, why did I fuck myself up this way now that everything was going so fine, if I ever get back to normal again I'll never ever do anything stupid again." I was also getting extremly needy while it lastest, I remember the extreme panic I felt when I tried to call a friend and he didn't immediately answer. I was also having long telephone conversations with 4 friends about my trip and the sort of panic I felt, while I was also conveying that I was managing fine but that I just needed someone to talk with. Another friend I was chatting with a lot on messenger. So next time I trip I hope to be able to relax into this neediness, instead of acting out on it and getting someone to be there for me. That said, we had a lot of great conversations and a lot of bonding, so that was nice, but next time I will try to spend much more time in solitude. This shock probably happened much because I took two doses, and not only one, which I will do next time, and also it has been a long time since I took a full dose of LSD so it probably takes some getting used to again. I usually never trip alone, it has only happened a few times, so it will probably also take some time getting used to doing it alone and to encounter this feeling of loneliness while actually being alone. Although a lot of this probably sounds pretty dramatic, and while it also was, the conclusion of the trip when I was going in for landing was that it had been a totally awesome experience, and that I had released a lot of difficult feelings, especially since I managed to do one hour of yin yoga while it was at its worst. It is like there is an inherent intelligence in LSD (and in all psychedelics) that guides you through a process that will almost always be concluded in a good way. Like the Hero's Journey in a way - meeting a challenge, surrendering into it / overcoming it, and then returning back as a wiser person. Another thing that made me disown my previous relationship with tripping was that I was going so all-in with it and almost disregarding everything else, but now my life is much more balanced and integrated, so it is not like tripping will become my only interest again. Combine going all-in with tripping with a strong aversion towards the way life is normally lived, and how I used to think that all those who didn't trip was just totally out of everything that mattered and utterly sucked - well, you can imagine, my point of view was pretty extreme and out of balance. So it feels pretty re-assuring to see that this is not happening this time. I was at my job this evening, and my connection with my co-workers was still good and not affected by me having re-discovered something that is much more interesting than the state of consciouness they walk around in. Another thing I realized is that I'm kind of a process-junkie, so that if I can kick something up that I can journal about this much, then I feel that I have accomplished something that is important to me. So a psychedelic trip is a really cool way to kick-start some processes if there is an urge for that happen. Another one of the mistakes I did before was that I had already too many processes going on, so kick-starting new ones with psychedelia just made me even more stressed, so that is another reason why I got burned out from it, and even though I already had too much going on, the fascination I had for psychedelics pulled me back into tripping again and again when instead I should have spent more time on integration. It also used to feel like I didn't have any stable plattform in my life on which to trip from, since I was so confused about where I belonged in life, so that also made it a bit too edgy. So nice to write all this down. It really feels like this trip has brought up a lot of useful material.

20 min vinyasa flow yoga today, and then warm shower ended with a cold shower. Great night of sleep. Was really tired yesterday as mentioned in the previous post. Perhaps I'm starting to get more integrated back into daily life again after this LSD-trip. LSD is really like a nuclear bomb for the inner world - blowing up the whole psyche so that all that is left is just fragments spread out all over the place - but then the psyche reconfigures and it is put back into place again, and it is like ones whole being has been shaken up and all those hidden little nooks and crannies in ones being gets a chance to get aired out.

Hot shower ended with cold shower today as well, and later in the evening now I did 25 min of yin yoga. Been feeling really lazy and tired today. My appartment has been a mess. Procrastinated cleaning it up for the whole day (and yesterday) but finally did it and then I did yoga. Perhaps I'm a little extra tired because of that LSD-trip on wednesday. Or perhaps only from the night-shifts. Not sure. Makes sense though, that I only noticed the energy the trip has taken out of me after the after-glow went over and not while the after-glow was still lasting. The trip was a demanding mental and emotional experience, so it makes a lot of sense that I would get a bit tired after it. But it also gave me a great relief, hence the strong after-glow.

20 min meditation today. Was tired after working night-shift. I was supposed to meditate for 45 min, but fell asleep after 20. This is my crash-day after some pretty intense days lately, but still feeling very inspired by this LSD-trip on Wednesday. Speaking to many of my friends about this. It is like we're having a psychedelic renaissance during these Corona-times. Someone posted this pandemic home-festival thing on facebook. I thought it was pretty cool. Also, I'm finally going to read Albert Hoffmanns book on his discovery of LSD, just to make this into a bit of a more serious study. Tripping combined with journaling, meditation/yoga and book-studies I would consider pretty serious.

No practice today, except for a warm shower ended with a cold shower, but that is mandatory for me now. Anyways, been feeling really great after this trip two days ago. It was simply just fantastic, the whole thing. Haven’t felt tired or drained or out of balance or anything - just chill inspiration. I have done LSD approximately 20 times in my life, but I have always considered it a bit too wild. Now I’m starting to feel that I could perhaps get really used to that landscape. I’ve done Ayahuasca approximately 20 times as well, and only one time after those 3,5 years in therapy was over. I had a break from all psychedelics while I was going in therapy, but first time I did Ayahuasca after I was done with therapy felt significantly different. I felt so much safer since it didn’t stirr up my trauma material so dramatically as it used to. This time with LSD was the same - so much safer even though it was pretty challenging still, but it was so much easier to just land again and be back with my normal self. No heavy after-process. So I’m thinking that perhaps now I could really start to master the LSD-process - learn to surf the wave - instead of being thrown around by an unpredictable landscape. The thing that made me denounce psychedelics was the swing-back that came from being so manic about them, and when the mania wore off I felt really disgusted by them, so I had this very painful love / hate relationship towards them, that would swing dramatically back and forth. Now it seems much more in balance. It is not like I had one good LSD trip and suddenly that is the only thing that matters again. It feels much more chill and integrated this time - less obsessive. Life has so much more to offer than just tripping, but of course tripping is a very interesting part of life.

1 hour meditation today. Good flow and momentum. Managed to sleep really late, which is good since I'm working night-shift tonight. That trip yesterday was really awesome. I feel renewed, refreshed, and it feels like I have gotten back the healthy pride and confidence in the psychonaut in me. Last time I took a strong dose of LSD, all my childhood traumas were released all at once, next to believing I had found my soul-mate, but I didn't work out between us, so I was in deep grief over both her and all the traumas from my childhood. Because of this I ended up starting a therapeutic process which was going to last for 3,5 years, and this therapy school and group had a lot of therapists and clients who had been drug-addicts, and my main-therapist was also a former drug-addict, so I ended up beliving I too had a drug-problem, so I denounced my former psychedelic self thinking it was all just a bunch of crap and that psychotherapy was the real deal. I still see a lot of psychonauts who should probably spend more time in psychotherapy, though. Believing that one can fix oneself through psychedelics easily ends up being classical drug-addict self-medication behaviour, though quite a bit more high-class then the stereotype very self-destructive type of drug-addict. Anyways, feels like me and LSD are friends again. I have been doing some microdoses here and there, and one ayahusca ceremony and one strong dose of peyote, so I have been back to psychedelics for quite some time after this disowning period that I had, but especially LSD I had a troublesome relationship with, so now I'm really glad we are friends again. Also I think I was getting some great exposure to my frustrations, it was really boiling over during the first 4 hours of the trip, but I'm really glad I managed to do one hour of yin yoga when it the intensity was the greatest. A lot of these frustrations of social distancing and feeling alone that came with the pandemic, and also the longing and vulnerability when it comes to a romantic partner, came up really strongly, so it was really good to clear out some layers regarding this. I have also been having a lot of nostalgia lately, probably triggered by this pandemic as well, thinking my life was much cooler before, and missing that art, music, meditation and psychonaut scene that was much greater here in my home-town before. It has been feeling like the peak of my life is gone, and now I'm just a boring and mundane person with a very normal job and normal co-workers, and that I have lost touch with my own awesomeness and the ideals I used to have. A lot of the people I used to know has moved away from town, and we are sort of in a vacuum here compared to how it used to be, and of course especially with this pandemic the experience of this is even waaaaay stronger. Actually I think my social life was really starting to take off again, but then this pandemic came, so I was just on the brink of really getting fully out there again. But anyways, with psychedelics, I feel I'm deeply in touch with this awesomeness I have been longing for again. I'm just totally a psychonaut, and I want to really own that part of myself. And also I want to be really serious about it and approach it much the same way as one would approach a scientific study. With such a powerful tool, no need to be half-assed about it. Feeling so grateful. I'm really glad I found this community. I have been getting a little into crystals lately, and on my alter I have an amethyst and a quartz, and it was super-cool to experience their energy while I was tripping. It felt like my trip made them super-charged. Or that I was receptive to their energy in a much more powerful way. Also I have been getting back a lot of inspiration in my guitar-playing, so that is super-awesome. This whole thing was just simply a very great catalyst for all the processes I have going right now. I felt stuck in many ways up to this point, and now I feel re-newed again. Also, I'm very aware that this is the afterglow feeling, and that I need to keep on keepin' on with my daily practice and integrate this to the best of my ability.

So, it has been going like this for the last couple of days: yoga, cold showers and long walks in nature. Pretty good flow. But I've been searching for a psychedelic experience, and today the opportunity came. Started the day with 1 hour of meditation, took two drops of acid 12.30. It started kicking in really hard after 2 hours. Did one hour of yin yoga when it was at its most intense, hahha, the worst class of yin yoga I've ever done, but it was worth it. Ended the day with a cold bath in the sea. I'm just glad I survived the whole thing. I think it was kind of a crisis reaction to this situation going on in the world right now. I wanted to face it head-on in the psychedelic way. I think the yin I did was pretty powerful. I was so vulnerable I just wanted to cry and ask my mother for help. Hopefully I didn't re-traumatize myself by trying to be brave and just push through, but I think I opened up a lot of really vulnerable chambers that hopefully some wisdom from the yin yoga will have seeped into. I was really brought down to my knees this time. This pandemic really sucks. But seems like my best reaction to it so far was to go and swim in the cold sea while tripping on LSD. Coming up from the sea, while it was dark all around, except from the lights from the houses near by, I felt so intensely alive. This is what I have been training for this whole winter.

30 min self-composed yoga flow this morning, then 20 min silent-meditation in full-lotus, and then 5 min mantra-singing at the end. So inspiring making up my own yoga-flow. That way I can string together all the poses I’m most inspired by.

30 min meditation today when I woke up. Went into the shower before I meditated. Started with cold shower today, then warm shower and then I ended with cold shower. So extremly glad I continued with this. The cold water is not as cold anymore, and it feels like I’ve faced the winter head-on, especially since I was bathing a lot in the sea in January. But after that bathing in the sea kick was over, I almost gave up on cold exposure, because I was getting so high from it, but then that highness also wears me out, but suddenly I started getting a kick out of just doing cold showers, and now the water is not that cold anymore, and it will only get warmer, so feels like I was riding the wave all the way from beginning to end. Well, it is far from over yet, but at least the peak is descending. For the first 20 min of my meditation I sat in half lotus, which I usually do. And for the last 10 min I sat in full lotus. Full lotus is so awesome when the body feels ready for it, and especially when the mind feels still and powerful. All the yoga makes so much more sense when one can experience how the yoga prepares the body and mind for opening up while meditating in full lotus. It is just so beautiful. Both the physical expression and the inner experience of balance and presence.

Hurra! Looking forward to read this one :-)

Today: First 20 min vinyasa flow yoga program, then 25 min yin yoga program, and then hot shower ended with a cold shower.

Came home from work, and was so on fire with inspiration, so I had to do a second round of yoga and hot and cold showers. It is almost morning now, and I haven't slept at all, but that is perfect because I was working evening-shift tonight, and this night I'm working night-shift, so not going to sleep yet is just like I'm being on night-shift already and that will make my sleep-rythm already adjusted when I wake up late tomorrow. Finally I'm starting to get used to the corona-situation. Or well, it is probably going to get even worse than what it is now, and who knows how I will deal with it then, but I'm starting to adjust to this happening. I think I was in denial to begin with, like "fuck this thing, go away fucking shit thing." I was like getting a double dose of this, because, not only did the whole cultural life and my favorite pub close down and all my social life, but also, our boss suddenly came and told us that our psychiatric hospital was going to handle all the people in the southern part of my country that needed psychiatric hospitalisation and who at the same time were infected with the corona virus. Not that the corona virus is going to be a big part of their mental illness, probably not, but since that thing is so contagious and we're trying to prevent it from spreading, we're going to have to have a place that is specifically focused on helping psychotic people who also need that type of quarantine while they are hospitalised. I think my whole department was in shock when we heard this. But now we have already gotten our first 5 patients, and we are getting into the routines, and actually we are all much more kind towards each other and it feels like a lot of us is getting closer because of this challenge. Already some of our co-workers are in quarantine because they got infected (before we started getting infected patients), and there is just so much more care between us. It feels like I might as well just face this whole thing head-on as a health professional, instead of being quarantined or laid off and then having a lot of spare time and walking around wondering what is going to happen to the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm scared as shit as well, but fortunately I'm spending a lot time together with professionals that has a very practical attitude towards this. So anyways, tonight I was browsing through Netflix to find something to watch, and I stumbled upon the movie Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru. And holy schmokes, that was some really potent shit! I had no idea that man had so much love in him. That film is super-inspiring! But also all that "finding your purpose" stuff also reminds of something very painful in my own life, because I've heard that stuff for such a long time, and in a lot of confusion always belived I was at the wrong place and that my purpose was somewhere else, but now I have really settled down into the fact that at least for now my purpose is to get as good as possible at this job that I'm already having. It might not be forever - but my career plan is to use the skills and personal development that I get from this job as a building block for whatever thing will be my next thing. So that makes it waaaaay easier to apply the inspiration I get from coaches like Tony Robbins. Since I've been like all over the place like sort of chronically for almost my whole life, the benefits of staying in the same job just gets better and better. Been here 2 years now, and it is only just recently that I'm starting to get any sense of comfort, stability and mastery. It might sound extreme to use 2 years to adjust to a job, but this is a pretty extreme job so it certainly takes some time learning to deal with all these challenging and unusual situations, but I'm also really getting a kick out of all the skills I'm getting from learning to deal with such extreme situations - so it feels like it is really worth it. I'm just really going to give my self the luxury of settling down this time. Always before, when I've finally reached that feeling of comfort and a beginning sense of mastery, I've had this strange pattern of moving on exactly when that started to happen. Maybe I was somehow addicted to chaos since that is what I grew up with. So in those regards it probably helps that my job is very chaotic then. So the paradox is getting stability and comfort out of a very chaotic situation. But that is what we train professionaly for. And the cool thing is you can actually train for stuff like that - just like a fire-fighter, police officer, or something along those lines, so actually there are a lot of people who are trained to deal with extreme situations - stability and mastery in the skills necessery to deal with emergency situations.

20 min vinyasa flow yoga program this morning as well, and then hot shower ended with cold shower. Today I just turned the knob down all the day quickly, and it feels much easier now. Also spending enough time under the cold water to get into a relaxed state before I turn it off. I don't time it, but there comes a very specific point where I feel that I've gotten what I wanted out of it where I'm fully relaxed and kind of baked.