Thittato

Reflections around gestalttherapy group-processes and perhaps getting an art-studio next year or trying to figure out if that is just some daydreaming shit that will just make me more miserable. Mediated for 45 min this morning. Fell out of meditation for three days now. It has to do with having to do much work and a weekend-seminar regarding this gestalttherapist-education that I'm doing. Been going through a lot of shit for these three days. First of all I'm just going to finish this 2nd year of this education and then I'm going to quit. The education is 4 years in total, but I really don't like it anymore. It was good for the 1st year, but this whole 2nd year I've been really uninspired with this type of work. I think this form of psychotherapy lacks a spiritual dimension, and the sort of joy and life-energy you see in groups that practice meditation. This is a low-energy uninspired group that wallows in trauma, so it is pretty bad to be there when I've met so many joyful spiritual practitioners in my life. But anyways, I've signed the contract for this year, so I will just have to try to make the best out of it. Even though I don't want to be there, I will use this group as a mirror for all my projections. Fortunately I still like our main-teacher. She met me in a really nice way this time, as usual. So I'm reliving my school-traumatization where I've been sitting behind my desk for years feeling let down by my parents and the system and just projecting out that everything is shit and escaping into my fantasy, and she helped me understand that and that made me calm down. So I will just have to use the reminder of this year as a "projection screen" to get all this stuff triggered and then use the help of the teachers and my meditation practice to work through this stuff. So perhaps this is related because these last days I've also escaped into my fantasies about becoming an artist again, starting to think next year I will get an art-studio and that I will start to plan for my next exhibition (I've had several before, but this would have been my first solo-exhibition), but when I woke up again today that whole drive is just totally gone and I'm back to presence and meditation as my value-system. This sort of things happens over and over and over for many years, so I don't know what it is, whether I should go for it or whether I should just consider it some fantasy stuff. It is like the fantasy gets more and more real and realistic each time making plans and trying to figure out how I will direct my creative process in a realistic and dedicated way. But still that whole value system around making art seems to fall back on the ground when I mediate and sort of see through the narcissistic stuff in it. Probably doesn't have to be that way, but I guess I will just have to continue to meditate and see which way my life-force will move in based on that. Anyways, to use this gestaltherapy-student group that I don't like as a "projection screen" is probably the best that I can do for the reminder of this school-year, and it sort of makes me more settled to develop some understanding around how I will approach this. I think this gestalttherapy actually is some kind of trigger practice. No one can sit in a group like that listening to all that traumatic stuff without getting really really triggered. I don't think there is anything wrong with my capacity for vulnerability and empathy just because I don't like to sit immersed in a group like that for so long anymore. It was fun and meaningful when I needed that support and to get a sense of our shared sense of vulnerability and support for each other when I felt motivated to work with myself that way, but now it is just not inspiring anymore. I can still have a lot of vulnerability and empathy in my real life situations, for instance my job, when the situation calls for it, but those group-processes are some kind of artificially created groups where all this stuff is triggered up in too large quantities for me. Anyways, all this shit is stuff that I wallow in over and over, so I'm glad to get it out like this in the form of journaling so that I can see it in front of me instead of it just spinning around inside of my head.

Vipassana and samatha In the buddhist meditation that I do there are two components called vipassana and samatha. Vipassana is the aspect of clear seeing or insight and samatha is the aspect of calmness. These two qualities are supposed to be brought into balance. Sometimes my mind is naturally very calm, and it is nice to just let it settle down and get some well-needed rest. Other times my mind is more active and I have to work more in my meditation and that is when I have to emphasize the vipassana aspect more. Today was such a day, and it felt like my vipassana skill has become much sharper, which was really cool.

Meditation states Had a little depression going here again. Interesting how I don't notice that I fight it, and then I start to look in panic for external solutions, until I figure out what is going on and surrender to the feeling. It probably came because yesterday was so social fun, and now I feel left on my own again. I've already sat for 45 min, but I will sit for 45 more min after I'm done writing here. Also yesterday I was getting into a meditation state that was really mellow and nice, and today I didn't quite get there, but the momentum was sort of like there, but the state I was getting to, even though it was pretty present, had more of an edgy quality to it. I'm trying to learn to access these concentrated states of well-being, presence and softness, so I get a bit of a backlash when I'm not able to reproduce it. So I will have to look closer at this disappointment. It is like syncing up with what is here right now, and not trying to reproduce what was here yesterday which will always be a failure when I try, but if the attempt to reproduce is here, then that is something I can embrace. These states are a paradox. If I don't try at all my mind will never get collected enough, but if I try too hard I will squeeze them. And if there is more difficult stuff in my system that I need to process, then I have to work with that instead and usually these states are not available, at least not until the difficulties have been processed. So sit with what is. Sometimes I'm rewarded with states of well-being, sometimes not.

Back in my center Seems like now that I have re-established my meditation-practice again as my nr. 1 priority, that the momentum is really getting strong again, and that I feel much more grounded, present, and landed in myself. Holy moses how far my mind can go in between these glimpses of being landed in myself. So I'm really happy that I discovered this page and this emphasis on journaling and that now it seems I have managed to write myself back to myself again. And so the journey from here on will just be to take this art of presence to the level of mastery, in other words being present all the time. I don't think that that is really all that hard, even though I have to admit that I have meditated for 16-17 years without managing to do that, but there has just been so much suffering and confusion in my life, that again and again I've lost the belief that I can actually bring my mind to the present moment and make it stay there. Like that priority and the will to do it just totally disappears in all the confusion. But now, with the help of both journaling and meditation, I'm going to map out how I can make this come alive in a gradual and systematic way. I really feel that I have suffered enough now, and when my mind goes off again to wallow in some negative thoughts and emotions, I think I just have to tell myself over and over that I don't want to go there in the sense of wallowing in it. I can go there in order to "feel it to heal it" and that takes just being present with whatever is going on, but that wallowing part, I think I can now gain the mental discipline to avoid that bad habit. I've simply seen this suffering going on and on over so many years now, that by now I should really know that no amount of spinning around in my own mind will ever be the solution to anything. Interesting how this journaling-journey started out with me being pretty much everywhere in my various creative projects and all kinds of thoughts about everything, and now I've managed to write myself back to the very core. Like trimming down a bush in the garden that hasn't been taken care of in a long time with wild branches going off in all kinds of directions. Haha, that's actually how I've been feeling.

Full lotus 4 Sat for 1 hour today. 15 min intervals alternating between doing full lotus my normal way and then with the odd leg on top. In between these intervals I did the two yoga-exercises I have that are good for opening up my hips. Felt cool to do a drill like this. Already the odd side feels much less odd. Feels like my body is really opening up now. I will do some more yoga in the coming days as well to enhance this feeling of my body opening up. Feels a lot like my yoga-practice and my meditation-practice is merging into one thing.

Full lotus 3 and gratitude So before I'm going to bed now I wanted to sit for 15 more minutes in full lotus, and so I did 2 yoga-exercises to open up my hips that are really great. So then I sat for 15 min, and when I was done I was so inspired that I wanted to sit for 15 more min with the opposite foot on top, so I repeated the yoga-exercises and did that and that also worked really well even though it felt a little bit odd compared to the usual way I sit. But I just meditated on this odd feeling going into it and embracing it and that was really fun too. Wonder why I haven't thought about this before. I've been meditating for 16-17 years, but I always just sat in half lotus with the same foot on top of my thigh. That is like getting stuck in the same comfortable pattern when I could have been using this time more efficiently getting more physical benefits out of it as well. Anyways now I'm doing that, and it feel like I'm translating some of the things I learned on snowboard over to this. Last time I was snowboarding I was specifically training for learning to ride with the opposite foot in front of what I usually do. I've always sought safe patterns like that to settle down in, but now I get angry at how lazy I've been with not challenging myself with simple things like this. So anyways, learning to do it the odd way is now my friend :-) Feels like just mediating has a lot of health effects, and especially when done in full lotus. It is something about the circulation that it creates in the body that is both vitalizing and strengthening. Feels like my body is just ready to open up much more now. Like untying itself. Funny thing is when I sit in half-lotus I sit on a cushion and than often when I have gotten some momentum in my practice I have felt like a king sitting on my throne. Although that has some healthy aspects to it, I think a sense of pride can be healthy, it also has some narcissistic aspects to it. When I sit in full lotus I sit directly on the floor only on top of a blanked, and I somehow feel smaller in many ways, but small in a humble and cute way. Like this meditation thing is no big deal. I'm just going to sit there for a little bit, re-charge and tune into a more gentle and friendly state while my body is open and relaxed. Perhaps that's what much of it is about. Just getting the tensions out of my body so that I can become just gentle, friendly and humble. I've given too much weight to this sense of feeling powerful and strong. A lot of that is just some ego-stuff wanting to get ahead of everybody else. Feeling so much gratitude right now :-)

Full lotus 2 Today I sat for 35 min in full lotus, and then the remaining 10 min in half-lotus. Worked well today as well, no pain in my knees or my lower-back yet, but I can sense that it will be a strain to go for 45 min straight in full lotus every day, so I will try to build it up more gradually by doing only the first 15 min from now on. But 15 min of that every day will probably make my body quickly adjust to it because it already seems pretty accessible, so better just be careful not to over-extend. Fun to have a physical project around this as well :-)

Full lotus So today I sat my 45 min in full lotus. I will see if my back and knees can handle it. Been training for this for a while, and it gives me a very powerful feeling when I sit like that. How to best describe it? Feels like my body is as collected and concentrated as it can possibly be, and erect and proud, and somehow also small and humble because I pack myself together to such an extent. It feels like some kind of bodily mastery, although the potential to "master" this pose is much greater. It is far from without strain so far, but still it was pretty pleasant today. I want to make these 45 min into as much of a "power pack" as possible, and training for full lotus really contributes to that. It also gives inspiration to my yoga-practice, because meditation feels much more like also a physical project this way. I find it is also symbolic regarding where all this is going. I started out with lots of thought in all kinds of directions, and now I try to collect and concentrate down all this energy, both physically, mentally and emotionally.

45 min of meditation per day I feel that now I have landed at a daily meditation practice of 45 min per day. This has been my standard before that I have returned to again and again. Just did my meditation, and I feel really grateful for this combination of meditation and journaling. Finally I have something going that gives my spiritual practice momentum again. I've been also looking more into Leo's teachings lately, and I have to admit that there is a lot there that I like, so there was probably a meaning why I came here. Especially I like his principle of self-experimentation in his 65 Core Principles of Living the Good Life. Basically just that we continue to experiment and experiment until we find what works for us, and that what works is different for everybody. Right now my self-experimentation brought me to the combination of journaling and meditation - which I think is a really powerful combination. So I feel grateful for my life these days. Seems like so much shit is starting to get sorted out after I started these journals. And I have a lot of faith in this process. The things I've been struggling with for years will get sorted out. And if I need something else or more to get my life to where I want it to be, I will figure out what that is and go get it. I have faith in my process again.

Thank you! I'm very glad to hear. I really appreciated that article you posted me, and I look forward to get to know your journal better :-) One of the first meditation techniques I studied centered around feeling this tingling in the hands and feet, and seeing how it was connected with the breath, and starting to think of this tingling as a "breath energy" and to see how our whole body is breathing this breath energy in connection to the actual physical breath, and in this way to stimulate it and make it flow in our whole body and make this into a unified flowing whole to collect and deepen our attention around. Pretty cool :-)

Purification - "Fire Meditation" Sat for 1 hour today. Felt a lot of hopelessness and depression before I sat down. Quickly after I sat down the resistance towards this emotional pain started to disappear and I could go into it without fighting it, and then quickly after that the pain started to feel like it was burning with strength and vitality - like the pain was good because it was transforming into strength and dedication. Normally when I sit down I start to feel a lot of tingling sensations throughout my body, especially in my hand and in my feet. These tingling sensations represent a sense of well-being and flow in my body. I think of them as the Qi Energy from Chinese Medicine. Along with these tingling sensations I get a visual image of flowing light behind my closed eye-lids, and when stuck energy really starts to flow and my concentration feels good I start to get a sense of my whole being turning into a light ball of flowing energy and vitality. Today when I meditated this energy ball feeling much more took the flavor of my whole being being a fire of purification, and my visual images were filled up with the colors and motions of a fire. To increase this feeling even more, I add on to it with the intent to visualize these types of images so that both my bodily feeling and my visualization-ability is co-operating to immerse myself as much as I can in this experience. I sit in half-lotus, and usually when I start out feeling down like I did my posture doesn't reflect strength at all, but as this experience literally started catching fire I was sitting very erect and I felt very strong in my body. I've had many of these types of purification meditations. In fact I think there is an element of purification every time I sit down, but this is the first time I have felt that I've had a successful "Fire Meditation."

The skill of meditation So today I meditated for 45 min pretty soon after I woke up, but still I'm going to trim that time down even some more because I was fooling around 5-10 min on social media before I got out of bed. I'm going to make it into the very first thing I jump out of bed to do when I wake up. Been feeling much more energized about my meditation again. I think with all these skills and tricks I want to learn on all these other areas, perhaps it is because they are much more tangible. With my meditation I can't really show it to anyone else, except that my vibe gets better because of it and that is really something that gives social value, but still it is less tangible. However, I got to pursue this as if I was a teenager eager to pursue snowboard, for instance. The meditation world is the same with tricks and community and stories and heroes and youtube-lessons and coaches, and yeah, pretty much the whole culture that all human activities is surrounded by. Gonna clean up my place because it has gotten messy here as a reflection of how messy I've been feeling on the inside, and then I'm going to meditate for 45 more minutes.

More on dark night, meaninglessness, existential crisis, etc. So this whole journaling-thing started out with me pretty much having the attitude of reaching some new level of complexity in all areas of my life. I dabble in a lot of things - art/drawing, guitar/music, dating, yoga, chess, psychedelics, snowboarding, etc, etc. And somehow I think I can become good at all these things. But whenever, with any of these things, when I'm starting to feel that I'm getting some kind of basic foothold in the understanding of these various pursuits, then I hit that same wall, over and over. So I've been blaming myself for this - thinking there is something wrong with me, or that I have some kind of ADHD or something like that. But now I think that wall that I hit is the wall of meaningslessness. And I'm just too scared to face it. So I try to kick up some other project that will get me away from it. But then the same thing happens, again and again. It is like peeling away the surface layers, to really get to the core of what is going on. And the core of what is going on is some kind of spiritual/existential crisis that somehow always returns and that I haven't yet been able to process fully. So it is impossible to escape this thing, no matter how hard I try, so I better just deal with it. And I think meditation in combination with journaling is perhaps the best tools I've had so far. Feels like it helps a lot to understand my "condition." I'm actually feeling pretty excited about this.

Feeling cornered in life / "Dark Night of the Soul" 45 min of meditation today. Some pretty rough feelings today related to feeling "cornered" again in life. Not seeing any clear path ahead. Feeling that most of my tricks have been used up. I regret that I procrastinated for so long before I sat down today to meditate. I will work on making it the very first thing I do as soon as I have the opportunity. When I sat there was actually some relief just sitting with the anger, grief and frustration that I feel today. I feel like a dabbler in everything that I do, and it is just random which kind of activity I have juice on at whatever kind of point during the day or week. Wondering if this is some inescapable point that I will always return to, and whether there is some deeper spiritual crisis hidden behind all my attempts to find some activity to indulge in that will always bring me back to this feeling of feeling cornered in life as soon as the juice runs dry on whatever kind of escape route I try to indulge in. Kind of makes sense to see it in this light. Instead of scrambling around to try to find some solution to this, I should probably instead just continue to sit with it. Face it head on. Helps to write about it. Makes it easier to see what is going on. In fact I don't think I've ever been at this point and had access to the tool of journaling at the same time. Feels like I'm loosing all interest in all the cultural stuff that I normally do, but actually that would be quite a relief if I was once again forced back to the contemplative life. No need to fight it. I will sit for 45 more minutes right now. Funny how this journaling first started out with me making a journal about music, and then about drawining, and then I return to making one about meditation, and then I get side-tracked a little bit here and there in my journal about meditation, but eventually it returns back to this inescapable point.

Daily meditation Yesterday I meditated for two hours together with two friends. It was really nice. Sat for 45 min again this morning. I'm noticing that my meditation practice is not as daily as I want it to be, and that I write about many things here that are not directly related to my efforts to keep up a daily meditation practice. Perhaps I'll need to put some kind of structure on this, but to begin with I'll just say that from now on I'll make an effort to at least meditate once per day, without putting any time-requirements on for how long quite yet. For me today, meditation represented the transformation from negative energy to positive energy. Also when I walked around outside afterwards I felt like I was living my deepest purpose just by being in a state of presence. That is a pretty cool feeling. I was enough just by the simple fact of being. Nothing extra needed. I will mediate for 45 more minutes now just to celebrate that feeling. And I will try to make this journal more specific about my attempts to master the craft of meditation. I'm still suffering from spreading myself too thin, and it is pretty clear that I should intensify my efforts at gathering and collecting my energy in a state of presence.

Normalization So waking up back home again, starting the day with 10 sun salutations to get the stiffness out of my body. These three days were totally a success, both technically, socially and as a nature-experience. But once again, it is one of those kicks that I get, that seems temporary. I've been on two snowboarding trips this winter, and after the first one (only one day) I was extremely hungry for more. But now after 3 days of snowboarding, I seem to have gotten it out of my system (at least for a couple of days), and the question remains - where do I want to invest my time? Should I just go along with whatever kind of kick comes my way, or should I more actively pursue one targeted direction? So back to this central theme in my life of directionlessness. I think the feeling of directionlessness usually comes on pretty strong when I've been focusing very strongly on one of my interests for a concentrated little period. The emptiness that comes after having been very inspired. I guess that is pretty normal. It is like waking up after a really cool party, being alone again after all your friends are gone. I like to normalize things these days. Still these questions are valid, but I was about to get stressed here (like I often do hehe...) Anyways, whether snowboarding (or some other kind of "extreme sport") becomes a lifestyle, or if one trip per winter is enough, it was pretty cool to make into such an intense and conscious learning-experience. The whole group-dynamic really boosted the experience for all of us. Towards the end we were all in a state of flourishing riding down the hills together like a playful and fun crew. When I woke up this morning, once again, I was in doubt about everything. I'm very often in a state like that when I wake up, and gradually as the day goes on I wear it off, and towards the end of the day I'm often in a state of flourishing.

Three days of snowboard-bootcamp So me and my two buddies vacation turned into somewhat of a snowboard bootcamp. Hehe. And my buddy who struggled in the beginning did really well the 2nd and 3rd day, so he is really happy and has now been initiated into the art of snowboarding. And I really love the concept of microdosing. When I was a younger psychonaut, eager to blast myself far out into cosmos, I was seeking probably much of that same experience that adrenaline junkies seek in extreme sports. But now high doses of psychedelics don't do it for me anymore. It's just too rough on my body and mind, and it takes too much time to integrate and process. But microdosing - that's just perfect! And microdosing combined with my interest for extreme sports - well, that's the perfect combination, paradoxically enough, for a somewhat older psychonaut than my younger self. Now I have to say my take on extreme sports has a pretty soft approach to it, but still, for instance with snowboarding, if I can combine such experiences with a microdose every now and then, well, that's a pretty rich life for someone seeking the type of experiences that I seek. And of course - meditation. Meditation is the most important ingredient in this. But only meditation gets too boring in the long run. I'm not a monk any longer. I really like the concept of a bootcamp - a dedicated period of intensified learning. We talked about having other types of bootcamps as well. A creativity bootcamp, for instance. I guess you could say meditation retreats are meditation bootcamps.

Microdosing on mushrooms on a snowboard cabin-vacation So I had the opportunity to microdose on magic mushrooms today, and that was pretty sweet. I'm on a trip with two friends, staying at my parents cabin for four nights, going to snowboard for three full days. Pretty awesome. Anyways, I could really feel that the microdosing was helping me process all our groups experiences together so far. It is pretty interesting when a group like us get together on a trip like this, how the dynamic between us develops, and what kind of habits we gradually land into as we settle down into this cabin for this short period of time. In the beginning it is sort of chaos, but then gradually everybody find their role and their place. Originally we thought about microdosing while in snowboard, but after some discussion we figured it would be better to do it in between the sessions, to help process the experience from one day to the next. Perhaps the biggest challenge for me is that one of my buddies had a challenging day today because he is new to snowboard and he was falling a lot and got a bit discouraged. But he got very happy in the evening, and said that the courage was back again. I think with sports like this it takes a little bit getting used to falling. I mean in normal daily life the patterns we move in are pretty comfortable and restricted pattern, so of course it is going to be shocking for the body to fall over and get a little bit smashed every now and then. I can notice my own driving getting a lot more nonchalant and laid-back. I feel much more robust in my driving. So tomorrow, I will try to help my friend, trying to coach him to get this basic cruising technique down so he also can get a sense of mastery. Perhaps just driving together for a while is the best thing to do. He seemed pretty eager to get some coaching on this now, and if me and my other buddy can help him and support him, I think that will totally be the best for our whole group-dynamic. Actually, when I think about it, I think actually him getting a sense of mastery is more important to me now than my own driving. I'm just here to have a good time with my friends, and letting go of striving I think I have recognized as one of the most important things I can improve on in order to get my life into balance. But my own snowboard-technique has developed tremendously today, and now I can do simple jumps, spin around and around in both directions, and also drive with the back-foot in front (so-called goofy). It is also pretty cool the stuff be have brought with us to the cabin that we spend time on when we're not snowboarding. We brought guitars, drums, ukulele, chess, drawing equipment, and etc. So it is like a creative retreat where we are exploring our skills and interests together while learning new cool stuff. The only thing lacking, is perhaps we could have formalized some meditation together, like put more of a retreat structure on the whole thing, but on the other hand I'm working on letting go of control, so perhaps it is just perfect the way it is that it is flowing in its own kind of way. With the microdosing thing I think the most important thing I still have to learn is to give up the craving for a more intense experience, just settling down into the experience as it is. Sometimes with microdosing I get into some kind of in-between landscape, where I'm not quite fully tripping, but I'm not quite not-tripping either, so that can be a little bit confusing, but there is something interesting about exploring that tension. So anyways, great stuff going on. I think all this can only grow. Like really getting the musical instruments, the chess, the drawing, the microdosing, the snowboarding, and the supportive and warm social interactions really integrated into some really cool habits that just continue to feed each other. It is about creativity. To just let it flourish all the time in an integrated and fun way. I'm not going anywhere, but this stuff can just continue to grow out of me while I'm right here, right now. And yeah, also with borrowing my parents cabin, I can notice my mom is very enthusiastic about this. They are actually spending a lot of time at this place, sometimes up to 60 nights per year, so this is a big part of their life, and it makes my mom very glad when I'm taking an interest in their life.

Self-love So that Gestalt-therapy school wouldn't let me quit without having to pay for this semester, because I have signed the contract for the whole year, and it is pretty expensive, so after much back and forth, I decided to just finish this year after all. But I'm changing to another therapist, because after 2,5 years with the same therapist I feel that our relationship has really stagnated and we're not getting any further in my process together. But that will make it more fun to finish this last half a year. The education is 4 years in total, but I'm only going to finish this 2nd year. The first two years are primarily about ones own process, both as an individual and as a member of the group, while the two last years are about training to become a therapist. It will look better on my CV to have completed two years of gestalt-therapy self-development, and then I can refer to it in my job as a social worker as a successful chapter of my life and something that I'm proud of and something that I'm inspired by in my work as a social worker. And if I ever decide to go back to this study I can just start immediately in the 3rd class, instead of having to do the 2nd year over again. Seems like when I decided to quit, and I really told the school that I was quitting and I was pretty mad at my therapist, something inside of my died. There was a letting go of everything this school has been to me, both good and bad, and also to my identity as an inspiring therapist, and now, this weekend is the first start-up after the Holidays, and guess what, it is more fun than ever to be there. I was a "process junkie" before, really craving really intense and dramatic processes in the group, but so far this weekend it has just been so fun and enjoyable being together with the people. I've been going at this so intensely before, holy moses how much self-therapy exercises I did at home, and I have waaaaay above the requirement of hours of individual therapy with my therapist (I started seeing him 1,5 year before the education started). Also I've already practiced trying to do gestalt sessions for friends and family, I've probably testet out the techniques in 15 people already, and got damn how much I idealized this school and this was like the coolest thing ever, until it flipped to the opposite side, and I couldn't stand it any longer, which is my typical pattern. Anyways, perhaps a lot of that fixation died out, and now it is just much more enjoyable to be there. Now, of course, part of the story is that whenever I feel good in life, I think that I'm done with all processes and that now I can just continue with living a fun and cool life, and that I'm done with suffering. So that is a trap I fall into, over and over, so, well, guess you could say I'm an optimist at least. But still, I feel done with therapy, like at least for me personally, I wouldn't pay to go see a therapist at this point in my life what-so-ever, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm bound to this contract for another half a year. But lets just say that that will be a very thorough way to smooth this process out. I'm not quitting abruptly but I smooth it out over 6 months. And it looks good on my CV, and it has been very useful in my job. So now I can just lean back, and enjoy, and I've already done so much work, more then anyone else in that, technically speaking, but I haven't been very chill. I've been in a crazy rush. So everything actually fits in with probably the best thing for my process right now is just to lean back and tell myself I'm good enough already. No need to strive to get anywhere else than right here, right now. Funny enough, that is what I just told myself about my guitar, my drumming (I play the djembe), my drawings, my snowboarding, my chess-playing, and my meditation as well. I'm good enough already. I'm at a level that I'm satisfied with and that is matching my aspirations for having these fun and cool ingredients in an integrated and well-balanced life. So thanks to journaling I think all these activities are now starting to get integrated. And I think I'm actually starting to get firmly established in genuine self-love.

Cognitive restructuring So when I was into Gestalt-therapy, we used to look down on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, saying that they ignored the body and the feelings, and perhaps they do, I don't know because I don't know much about it, but I think the focus in gestalt-therapy on releasing emotions stored as trauma in the body can become too one-sided, and one term from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that has really intrigued me lately is Cognitive Restructuring, ie, learning better and more skillful ways to think about various situations. I do think there is usually a lot of feelings that need to be released, but I also think this can become a never-ending loop of releasing upon releasing, and I think one can become pretty fragile by continuously doing this and out of this fragile state I think there can often seem to be much more feelings that need to be released than what is actually the case. I think Cognitive Restructuring can be really great in reducing unnecessary worry and ruminating, and perhaps that is a much better way to build resilience, at least I think both approaches are needed.

Presence and flow in my work-situation Woah! That must have been some of the best three nights of working night-shift I've ever had. And the leader of our crew was so satisfied with my performance. I think journaling really helped me bring my focus over to the meaningful and interesting part of this job, instead of just the challenges. Of course when I've been away for a while I come back with renewed focus and enthusiasm, but I thought that would have rather made me rusty, but instead I had a really great sense of mastery. The months before I got burned out I didn't enjoy my job very much, except for a few cases when I worked with some patients that I had really good chemistry with, but most of the time I was really slacking off and had a guilty conscience because of this. There is also something about when I start to daydream about all the other things I would rather do than being at my job that really takes the quality out of what I'm doing. When I have the right spirit about my job, nothing is more fulfilling. So I will use this journaling also to help increase my level of enjoyment in my work, because that is so related to meditation and presence. Who needs to dream about being somewhere else if they can experience fulfillment right where they are? I think it is really fun and meaningful to help someone going through a crisis. How can I make this person in such a vulnerable situation feel safe and supported? This patient I was working with had a really hard time sleeping, and woke up a lot of times being very anxious, so I had to sit by his bed the whole night and comfort him. I experimented a bit with just sitting on the floor. It seemed like the most casual and relaxed way I could appear in his room, instead of looming over him in a chair above the level of his bed. Also, when he was sleeping, sitting on the floor meant that I had the perfect position for meditating while nothing else was happening, so that was also a really cool way to integrate meditation into my work-situation.

Being a therapist Working night-shift this whole weekend. Felt really good to back at work. I worked only 3 shifts in december because of this burnout, but now I feel ready again to give this job my fullest. Also it feels really good that I dropped out from this psychotherapist education that was just simply too much. I'm having some grief going on as I have to let go of my identity as an aspiring psychotherapist, but to fill that lack I will rather re-invest my identity-building into my job as a social worker. I'm a licensed social-worker, so that should be enough, and really this extra education has created more confusion for me than I think I will have now as of having a more simple and stripped down identity, and still, I can put my pride and my love and my care for other people into doing a good job as a social worker, and all the stuff I learned from this psychotherapist education, I can put into my role as a social worker. I still do a lot of therapy in my job, although not as formally and structured as a psychotherapist would do, but I get really close relationships with people in extremly demanding situations. Tonight, for instance, I had to spend the whole night sitting next to the bed of young guy who is suicidal because of a psychotic depression he is in, trying my best to comfort him. I must have been crazy to not consider myself worthy of the title therapist. My job-title is actually "milieu therapist." But there is soooooo much I can improve on her. Like tonight, but of course being careful with the boundaries, I think I should have sat down on his bed when he sat up on started crying. I should have laid my arm around his shoulder, and told him that he was safe here and that we would take good care of him. Of course I told him these things, but I think in these situations if you do it right and carefully, people actually need physical support along with comforting words. So anyways, now that I'm no longer burned-out and overwhelmed because of way too much therapy-focus in my life, I think I can actually be a much better therapist. Also, I just visited my mom briefly, and she has been a little stressed out lately, and even though she is very inspired by this mindfulness-teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, she has never done much formal meditation and hasn't quite seen the usefulness of it, but today I spoke passionately to her about the usefulness of meditation, and demonstrated a few tricks, and she actually said that that was what she needed to do now. So she is going to start with 10 min per day for a little while and see how things develop. That was also really, really good. To share with her some passion for meditation. I don't need this added gestalt psychotherapist stuff to be a complete person living my purpose. I'm already living my purpose, and buddhist meditation is primarily my path and my deepest purpose, so it is more powerful when I give directly from my deepest purpose, instead of thinking I need 2,5 years of more education of something that isn't really my primary path, before I can start to share. Now I do want to point out, that besides my job as a therapist, I don't want to take on the role of a spiritual teacher in any way what-so-ever, because I still got ALOT of unfinished business to deal with myself, but I think it is OK to share a few tricks with friends and family, as long as it is in the context of stress-reduction.

Being present in my life-situation as it is. So if I'm left with just directionlessness and presence, what are the simple realities of my life here in this physical form? Well, I need money in order to survive, and I have a job that I most of the time enjoy that gives me these money. So why don't I obsess more about my job instead of art, music, chess, snowboarding, meditation, etc? In the light of this way of looking at it, when I start to obsess about all these other things, they just seem like some sort of escapism. Well, not meditation, because the cultivation of presence is something I can still work on while I'm at my job. So my job doesn't stand in the way for my highest purpose. Of course if my highest purpose was to become an artist, then spending all that time at my job would have been a problem, but with my kind of highest purpose I'm pretty privileged because I can work on it under any circumstance, so whatever kind of life circumstances I find myself in, I just have to consider them my monastery for working on my meditation practice. Working as social worker in a psychiatric hospital, it is almost like I'm being some kind of modern "Aghori Yogi," ie, a yogi who dwells in a charnel ground to observe very directly the suffering and disintegration of health that is part of life. So anyways, I feel l need to ground myself more in my work-situation. Daydreaming about being a full-time snowboarder when I'm at the age of 35, it feels like I refuse to grow up. But being enthusiastic about all these types of activities is very good in my job-situation, because sometimes I can use these activities to build relationships with the patients I'm working with, bonding with them over a game of chess, over drawing together, or jamming on the guitar together. So when I consider my enthusiasm for classical hobby-activities in the light of their usefulness in my work-situation, they are certainly a boon. But when I start to daydream about going full-time with these activities, well, then I'm reducing the quality of my meditation-practice, and it probably also reduces the level of satisfaction I get out of my job. Another great thing about my job is that it is a very social job. Sometimes it feels like I'm just paid to show up there and be social. Of course that is a simplification, but there is some truth to it, and I really enjoy to work on getting better at socializing, so that is certainly something that I can obsess more about which will also benefit my performance at my job.

The paradox of directionless direction, the pathless path, etc. So today again, all these kicks I keep on having are gone, and I'm left with emptiness. But a little bit more content emptiness this time. I've meditated for 45 min today so far, and I will do another 45 min session after I'm done writing this. Sometimes I feel utterly directionless in life, but then I land back on my primary direction being the path of meditation, and that is a pretty clear direction. Somehow, though, it is a bit of a vulnerable direction, because its results are primarily internal and difficult to measure. Perhaps that is part of the explanation why I get these pretty intense kicks on for instance snowboard, or art, or whatever. Especially when my mind has been filled up with the energy I get from meditation, then this energy is easily hijacked by some more material pursuit that gives more tangible results. Again, not that there is anything wrong with having hobbies. I guess that is pretty healthy. But it seems like this path that I have chosen, that I have to keep choosing it every day, or you could even say, every moment. Perhaps that's what commitment is. So I'm touching upon a paradox again and again. Somehow I often feel like I'm a person that is utterly directionless in life, but then on the other hand I'm very dedicated to this path, so whenever this feeling of directionlessness pops up I just got to keep remembering to approach that feeling with meditation, ie, to embrace it and wish it welcome. My internal response to my experience of directionlessness is my path.

Microdosing Then the chance to microdose on LSD came around yesterday on New Years Eve. That was pretty awesome. I can only summarize it with saying that that is probably everything that I've been looking for when it comes to psychedelics. Somehow I was very greedy for extreme experiences as a younger psychonaut, but clearly lower doses are much more conducive to what I seek to get out of it. Seems like it is much less demanding to integrate the experience, as it is so close to what daily life is like anways, just with an added subtle psychedelic component. When I was younger I took pride in making this extreme jump from daily life to being blown out in cosmos, and then to smoothly return back to daily life again. But it wasn't so smooth. It always was quite demanding to go in for landing again. But this was a much smoother experience, giving me exactly what I was seeking without the demanding side-effects.