Thittato

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Posts posted by Thittato

  2. Posted

    Social worker, or artist, or both?

    A 10 year long obsessive quest that never seems to end.

    Today, wanting to become a visual artist, has been very strong. Gosh. This has lasted for almost 10 years. On the one hand I'm a social worker working in a psychiatric hospital training to become a gestalttherapist, and on the other hand this wanting to make a living out of my drawings and paintings comes up really strong on a pretty frequent basis.

    This life situation that I'm in right now would be really perfect if only I could settle down with it. My job is the perfect environment to develop my therapeutic skills while I'm training to become a gestalttherapist.

    Am I a healer, or am I an artist, or both?

    Haven't really found my purpose, yet.

    How to figure this out?

    We're going to have a two day seminar this weekend at the gestalt-training, so consciously or subconsciously I hope to work some more on this aspect of this impasse.

    Also since I have decided to at least finish this 2nd year of this education (until summer) I have another 6 months to figure out the therapeutic aspect of this since the first two years are just all about ones own therapeutic aspect.

    I'm also going to journal like crazy to figure this all out.

    It is very challenging to have a mind like this. Sometimes it feels like I have some kind of syndrome I just have to learn to live with.

    At the very least I meditated for 45 min today as I woke up in a very challenging state, and after that I went to work feeling so positive and full of good energy, so it is really amazing what meditation can do, and when this trying to sort out my direction in life stuff has been too crazy for too long I usually just surrender to my dedication to meditation practice thinking:

    "Gosh, I'm just too fucked up to really pursue anything else than meditation, and since I'm able to keep a normal job and help people who are even more fucked up than me, guess I should just surrender to this normal job kind of thing and continue to meditate and stop dreaming about being an artist, or whatever kind of crazy story my chronic sense of wanting to be somewhere else cooks up next time."

    Here is another one of my drawings while I'm chewing on this.

    16388331_10157981325265136_3505911213948650683_n.jpg

  3. Posted · Edited by Thittato

    Vulnerability, emptiness & lack of direction

    So this day I've been walking around with a feeling of being stripped of everything and the only thing that has remained has been vulnerability, emptiness and lack of purpose, except, when it feels like this, my only purpose at that point is to go into the vulnerability in order to expose myself to it and own it.

    There has been a sense of panic about all these cool projects that I've been grooving on lately being gone, and sort of like:

    "damn, nothing is worth it anyways, I better just work on my meditation instead in order to get enlightened, all these things that I groove on, it is just some kind of mania I get into that will quickly change into something else."

    But that is like my old tendency to go from one extreme to the other.

    I wish I could just stay with my vulnerability when it gets like this, instead of drawing conclusions like that out of a sense of panic. It is like I desperately seek a position to cling to in the face of life's uncertainties. Like I go from clinging to my identity as a guitarist, for instance, to instead go to clinging to my identity as someone who meditates. So when I feel stuck in vulnerability and lack of purpose,I project that into the future, the same way that I project my mania on guitar into the future.

    Whatever kind of direction my life takes, I need to really work on all this pain and vulnerability hidden behind my projections into the future.

    My prayer for tomorrow is:

    "Let me face my pain and vulnerability, whenever it shows up, with softness and understanding, and let me have the courage to give up my tendency to try to find some fixed position to cling to."

  4. Posted

    45 min silent meditation this morning.

    In the light of the calm I feel today, I'm seeing this whole journaling as riding out the wave of energy and inspiration (and also the other side of that coin which is aversion and repulsion) that psychedelics trigger in me.

    Whatever kind of sidetrack I temporarily get into, I always return back to silent meditation. Not that that excludes anything else, but it really brings me back to presence and life as it is right now, instead of all these manic fantasies I have a strong tendency to get into.

  5. Posted · Edited by Thittato

    Woah!

    I had a really amazing session this morning, all on my meditation cushion:

    first 20 min of drumming

    then 25 min of silent meditation

    then 5 min of playing guitar and singing mantras

    and then 10 min of freestyle guitar improvisation

    after that

    I did yoga for approximately 20 min.

    It all felt like a very potent and integrated spiritual practice, and now I feel really fresh and VERY enthusiastic about this journaling-project.

    It felt like a dry-work session related to these solo cacao-ceremonies I'm now preparing for :-)

  6. Posted

    And of course while I'm writing this, my old guitar-teacher, whose name is also Magnus, sends me an email telling me about some new coaching thing he has going, and that he will only be in Norway one time quite soon now to do this coaching thing before he'll be away again for half a year. Something for me to consider :-)

  7. Posted

    Holy schmokes.

    That was too much having all those instruments hanging around in my tiny studio-apartment. So except for one classical guitar and the djembe, I drove the rest up to my brother for some time. I was getting into some stress and mania jumping around between the el-guitar, the keyboard, the ukulele, etc. So now it is perfect. The classical guitar and the djembe is a perfect combo for a while. Funny I just bought the el-guitar and then I'm storing it away, but got to experiment a bit to find the right dose of things. Feels sexier to only have two instruments here.

    Also I'm storing my weight lifting equipment (a few kettlebells and some dumb-bells) down in my basement instead of having it up here. Been lifting weights for a year now, combining it with yoga, and it was inspiring with some change to my normal yoga-focus, but I think I will go back to focus my exercise routine primarily around yoga again.

    Stripping things down in order to add depths.

    Regarding adding depths I have always been very fascinated with chess but never any good at it, but 2 months ago I started playing on chess.com and carefully reading a little bit about strategies and tactics here and there. Yesterday I finished watching this lesson from chess.com on youtube:

    All you need to know about chess: The Opening

    All you need to know about chess: Tactics and Strategy!

    All you need to know about chess: The Endgame!

    All you need to know about chess: Bringing It Together!

    I was sort of stuck in a rut until I saw "Bringing It Together" and realized how fun it is to hear commentators analyze famous chess games on youtube, so that will be my next clue in order to add depths to my chess game as well. Since I play chess every now and then anyways, why not add some more depths to it by investing a little bit more into actual studies of famous games? That is much more fun than just reading theory about it, also... :-)

    Anyways, this whole stripping things down thing happened after I sat on my meditation cushion this afternoon and had another amazing djembe-session. I realized that finally I've reached one of my goals with drumming, and that is just to be able to sit there for an extended period alone and enjoy it like a meditation or like a solo ceremony, and then I realized my place is just too crammed up with too much of everything, and that it would be much more powerful to go deeper with lesser things.

    So here is a picture of the two remaining instruments. I'm realizing the guitar has the most feminine qualities of these two, and it was the ayahuasca ceremony which gave me back the inspiration with it, and the djembe, is very masculine, and the peyote really opened my eyes up for the djembe again, and as mentioned above ayahuasca is known for having very feminine qualities and peyote for masculine qualities, so together this picture shows the king and queen in my life right now, also the two most important pieces in chess hehehe :-)

    Also that last drawing published above here, "The impasse," was also heavily influenced by my interest in chess these days, and even though I don't think impasse is a term used in chess, the definition of impasse: "a situation in which progress is blocked; an insurmountable difficulty; stalemate; deadlock" is a situation that can easily occur in chess, in fact it actually just happened 12 times in a row between the world champion and his challenger before they had to do extra rounds in quicker chess.

    The world champion Magnus Carlsen (which is a Norwegian just like me) is said to be a more intuitive player, while his challenger Fabiano Caruana is much more analytical, some said it was a competition between man and machine, and Magnus Carlsen easily won when they moved on to quicker game and Fabiano Caruana couldn't use so long time to do "computer analyzing" anymore.

    And that was what my cacao-ceremony was about, getting more intuitive, because I have the tendency of getting stuck in trying to calculate everything in life.

    So perhaps my personal impasse, the stalemate, mentioned above, found flow again through intuition.

    Holy smokes, that was a lot of symbolism. I love to bring all the things in my life together - to create a symbolic meaning for myself like this :-)

    IMG_3816.jpg

  8. Posted

    Started this day with meditating for 45 min, and then a really nice djembe-session. Feels like I'm back in track regarding my studies to become a gestalt-therapist. I will at least finish this 2nd year, and study as if I'm going along with the program. So that means I will have to start to read the study-material again. I had some sort of crisis that lead me to going back to the ayahuasca circle and asking this plant teacher for guidance on how to deal with this crisis. For instance I was projecting a lot of my father issues on my therapist (transference and perhaps counter-transference) so that I felt rejected by my own therapist and that made me doubt the whole education, but now my relationship with my therapist is re-established and I will at the very least finish this 2nd year as if I'm fully going along with the program, intending to perhaps start the 3rd year, but I will just have to see about that. But at least I need to finish this 2nd year to deal with all these issues that has been active lately. It is a 4-year part-time education where the two first years are only about working on ones own process, while the two last years the focus is on the role of becoming a therapist, so no matter which way it turns out it will be cool to have 2 years of gestalttherapy self and group-processes on my CV when I'm working as a social worker.

    So doing psychedelics again triggered a lot of extra processes again, especially this creative process, so it was nice to write about it here, and I love both music and art, but for now I think I will continue with it just as a hobby (as it has always been) and continue my training as a therapist as if that is what I intend to become.

    But I will finish the goals I've established for my guitar-playing here, but it is really nice to not have this rush to get anywhere else again.

    Basically I think perhaps my goals with both guitar and drawing is to just have them as an integrated and balanced part of my daily life. And that sounds pretty cool to me - to have a normal job working as a social worker in a psychiatric hospital as I do, and then have some really cool hobbies that I really enjoy.

    Also I'm really glad I discovered cacao, because that is the type of really mild and nice plant teacher I need these days.

    I have to admit that doing ayahuasca and peyote was a bit irresponsible because my job in the psychiatric hospital is quite demanding and it took me 3 weeks after the ayahuasca and 2 weeks after the peyote to get fully back to my self. But fortunately it turned out very well, and I even had some extra love and inspiration to give to several of my patients in the afterglow. But generally those types of processes are too demanding to my taste. It seems people react very differently to these plant teachers, and perhaps at another point in time my relationship with them will be different, but for now I'm really satisfied with how this lead me to discover cacao :-)

    Ok, back to the gestalttherapy-books :-)

  9. Posted

    The awesomeness of this day has just continued. This evening I was at a mantra circle singing Gayatri Mantra 108 times together with 20 people. And now I have just had an awesome conversation on phone with a friend while I was coloring one of my drawings. Played the djembe two more times as well. I'm starting to believe that I can fully heal my emotional wounds and live to my fullest potential every day.

    The interesting thing is now everything feels perfect in my life. But my pattern is that that can easily change, and probably it will in the course of a few days. While now my art and music and meditation and studies and job all seems to go in the right direction and there is a meaningful unified whole to it, when the switch flips from flow to contraction the same life with exactly the same ingredients will just look like crap with only loose ends diverging in all kinds of contradictory directions.

    But of course that is how life is bouncing back and forth between emotional/spiritual expansions and contractions.

    But I do believe this can balance itself out and that I can live grounded, kind and humble awesomeness every day.

  10. Posted

    Had a really amazing session playing djembe this morning. I'm starting to love this journaling. Felt like it was just craziness only a few days ago, but then I managed to express this impasse very well here I felt, and then I encountered this cacao-ceremony, and suddenly I'm on the track of something new. Cool how this was kick-started by an ayahuasca ceremony, but then I felt that these days ayahuasca (and peyote) is too much for me, and not really what I'm looking for at this point, but still I would love to study with some kind of plant teacher, and then cacao appeared as a really mild and gentle teacher. I also love the aspect of ceremonies and ingesting some kind of sacrament, so I'm glad I've found a sacrament that is what I'm looking for these days. Also music is often a very important part of ceremonies, and since my music interest has been so much triggered by these types of ceremoniel settings, I'm looking forward to see how this journey will continue when I'm doing my own solo-ceremonies with cacao. I'm planning to meditate, sing mantras, play guitar and djembe during these ceremonies, to go into it with an intention that I express in some way, so that will be really exciting. Also I've found inspiration now to at least finish this 2nd year with the education in gestalt-therapy that I'm doing because I really need to get to the roots of this impasse that I've been in. Its not just over by me encountering cacao, even though that will help, but I know I have some really deep wounds that I need to heal, and probably I'm closer than ever to get to the roots of this, so it would be a stupid point to quit this education right now (which I have considered being tormented by doubt as part of this impasse). Part of this journaling is just getting all the stuff out so that I can clear my mind and be present. Doesn't really matter that much which direction this takes as long as my healing journey continues.

  11. Posted · Edited by Thittato
    adding title

    Cacao-ceremony

    Hah!!

    Spontaneously I dropped by the near-by yoga studio where they had a cacao-ceremony today, and that really answered all my prayers. First of all, I'm really glad I did both that ayahuasca and that peyote ceremony mentioned, because it gave me a lot of important lessons, but it is really not what I want to spend a lot of time doing these days. Basically I'm getting too old for that stuff. I need something milder. And the cacao was just nice and friendly. It wasn't really a trip, but it just gently supported my process without pushing me into it.

    The intention I set for this ceremony was to get more into my intuition and out of my head. During the ceremony I resolved to let go of any mental ego notion of becoming an artist or musician, and basically just settle for presence and trust in whatever the process of life has to offer me.

    I bought enough for 10 doses of cacao, so this I will continue to explore for some time now with doing solo-ceremonies setting up an intention for each ceremony etc.

    Also I met a friend tonight and told him about my journaling about this, and I also told him I had sort of getting hooked on journaling because first I started journaling about my meditation process at a meditation forum, and then I started journaling about my dating process at a dating forum, and then this sort of combined psychedelic / music / creativity thing and we started to play around with the idea of making the crazyness complete by making like a mother journal over all my journals journaling about the process of journaling itself which was pretty funny.

    He also suggested making the whole thing into an art project - the instruments, the drawings, the journaling, the yoga, the meditation, the whole craziness, which I thought was a really cool idea.

    Anyways, lets just see where this all leads. Here is a picture of where to roads continues regarding the ceremonial aspect of this journey :D

    47377699_736925350020659_1964408120092393472_n.jpg

  12. Posted

    I will do my very best to not try to figure this out in my mind, which can be hard because I get obsessive about it, but rather to feel it in my body, the underlying frustrations and pains that I'm probably trying to escape by becoming mental about it. As Fritz Pearls, the founder of gestalttherapy, said: "Loose your mind and come to your senses."

  13. Posted · Edited by Thittato

    So in 2009 I came back home after having lived as a buddhist monk in a monastery abroad for two years, and I was ready for life and I started exploring creativity, psychedelics and socializing quite extensively, and for this long time, I have had this tendency in my mind to create so-called false dichotomies where I artificially think that one things excludes another, and now again, as so many times before, now I put guitar up against drawing, or more generalized music VS. visual arts, and it is pretty frustrating and I'm not really sure how to go about this thing.

    So why is this so?

    I can see some reasons:

    Having hided behind a religious identity for so long as a buddhist, there has ever since been a vacuum in my identity-process where I have wanted to find a new simplified identity to become religious about. Some new doctrine and practice to devote myself fully to.

    The infinite potential of creativity and expansion that psychedelics open up for is very inspiring while on the trip but can be challenging to translate into everyday life. I think psychedelics for me has contributed to some kind of "multi talented genius complex" where I have started to believe that I can have it all and really reach excellence in all parts of life. I've explored dancing, improv theater, stand-up, drawing/painting, music, writing, etc, pretty extensively and I have this notion that I can become good at them all, which most of the time basically just creates a lot of trouble for me.

    So then I juggle back and forth, if it is not so that I can have it all, which direction should I choose to go deeper, much deeper, with, since I have this strong need to see some kind of creativity really flourish in my life?

    How to bring the felt sense of abundance into actual results, instead of just spinning around in this craziness. It might not sound so crazy when I write about it, but it feels pretty crazy walking around inside of a mind like this.

    I'm also studying to become a gestalttherapist, and I'm in deep doubt about this whole education right now, so I might quit after this 2nd year that I'm now doing. Altogether the education is 4 years part-time. At the very least I'm getting a lot of therapy out of this education, so I'm going to use the help of the therapist-teachers to sort this all out.

    In the gestalt-theory I've reached a point in the course of therapy called "the impasse" which is a pretty dreadful place where there is no obvious way forward, but standing still feels dreadful to. I see impasse has this definition in the dictionaries online:

    - a situation in which progress is blocked; an insurmountable difficulty; stalemate; deadlock

    - a position or situation from which there is no escape; deadlock.

    - a situation in which progress is impossible, especially because the people involved cannot agree.

    So feels like I'm in the middle of my major impasse here, and especially it plays out the way my mind goes crazy over guitar VS. drawing dichotomies.

    Here is the most recent drawing I made. It is made to symbolize this phase that I'm in. I made it out of gluing post-it notes to paper, so it is kind of a post-it note mosaic :-)

     

    47294056_1963528673754173_2025813379192455168_n.jpg

  14. Posted · Edited by Thittato

    Also, since journaling about this process, both the instruments and how the psychedelics have played into this, has been so rewarding, I've been considering journaling about my drawing-process the same way, to kind of map out where I want to go with my art and how to get there. Perhaps this journal will eventually turn into a drawing-journal instead as drawing is the form of creativity I have the longest history with and what I have identified the most with at times. Perhaps the guitar was just a process to filter the psychedelic experiences through, or perhaps I will continue to do both. I have this strange urge to lock down on one thing and really go for it and exclude everything else, and I thought that was what I was going to do with the guitar this time. Perhaps I will continue to do several things, or perhaps I eventually land on one thing. Guess I just have to see about that. At the very least, with the guitar, I will finish up really getting the 5th song down, and getting those 5 pentatonic scale shapes solidly into my fingers, because that will have really brought my level up quite a few steps and have given me something I can improvise with and play around with for a loooong time even if I don't continue to practice in a systematic manner. I feel like including two of my drawings here, just because they have also been such a big part of this whole process now, and it is nice to put some visual symbols on the whole thing. Lets say they are a visual glimpse into how my mind works. Both are hand-drawn.

    15665628_10157799506270136_5381489133185990337_n.jpg

    995624_10154357030060136_329641011098468880_n.jpg

  15. Posted

    So the day after I got this electric guitar, a friend dropped by with some really cool effect pedals to plug in between the guitar and the amplifier to add some really cool effects to the sound of the guitar.

    I feel fully landed from the two psychedelic journeys I've told about in this journal, and now I actually feel very grateful for both of them, but there is no urge to do anything like that again anytime soon and that is also something I'm satisfied about - that I can consider them rewarding experiences that I can enjoy the lessons from but there is no rush whatsoever to chase new experiences/lessons.

    I'm borrowing one of the effect pedals my friend brought to play around with, it is called a distortion pedal. Here are some of the ones we used that day:

    46507263_341515939764771_3660914609964974080_n.jpg

  16. Posted · Edited by Thittato
    adding picture

    Fantastic day!

    Started off with a drumming-session on the djembe. Then practiced the 5th song which is getting better. Then a lot of freestyling, and then I got so inspired I went off and bought an electric guitar, and man that was so awesome, standing up playing and dancing at the same time. Never played guitar standing before, but this new electric guitar has a strap around it, and that really added to the experience. Also, a few sessions here and there on the djembe is the perfect supplement to guitar-playing for a lot of reasons, especially training up rhythm, but also just blowing off some steam with something entirely else. Here is a picture of them hehe ;-D

    46845672_1950400635265744_5942995390491000832_n.jpg

  17. Posted

    Getting a tiny little bit more familiar with this 5th song. Lots of resistance, but I think I'll soon be over the top of the hill.

    Been drawing a lot lately again, and wonder if I should include my drawing and painting process in this journal.

    Perhaps the guitar is more like a support for my drawing process, because that is certainly the art-form I've identified the most with and spent the most time with in my life. But it is good to have this discipline going with something since my drawing process is much more intuitive and improvised. It feels like I can more easily indulge in improvised stuff when I get the energy and good feeling that comes from doing something structured as well.

    Perhaps that's a good lesson to bring with me to all things in general. Like I should always do a combination of both structured and improvised stuff. If I only do structured stuff then I'll kill the joy, but if I only do improvised stuff it usually quickly feels like I get stuck in a rut of just repeating myself without giving myself important challenges to conquer and grow from.

  18. Posted

    Also I used to get pretty stressed out because I have so many creative impulses in all kind of directions, but I believe now that I can trust the process. There is nothing wrong with me just because I want to do EVERYTHING. As long as I have the discipline to stick with one project for an extended period of time. Doesn't mean I have to stick with guitar for ever either, just until I get to the next level that I crave. Then I can follow the flow wherever it leads me. I believe this is all moving towards a balanced and integrated wholeness that I can now only see parts of, so it is important to just trust the process.

  19. Posted

    A bit of an effort getting familiar with the 5th song, but it is getting better.

    I can sense a new very creative period is on its way, and then it is very important for me to also be rooted in a discipline, so that I don't get carried away by all the inspiration and all the people who are drawn to me in these periods, so that makes this guitar-project a very good project to have.

  21. Posted · Edited by Thittato

    Been looking a bit more into how the major and minor scale is built up, and also been playing around a lot more with these pentatonic scale shapes, and I've improvised some melodies and even a improvised song. I understand better now how melodies are made out of scales, and perhaps that was the major thing that I needed to understand regarding music theory, but of course there is a lot more to learn.

    It took me 3 weeks to get fully back to myself after the ayahuasca ceremony, and 2 weeks after the peyote ceremony, and it kind of makes me think psychedelics are overrated as a self-development tool, but everybody has their own path and journey with different tools. I used to be really obsessed with psychedelics before, but now I think my time is better spent working with the things I want to improve on on a daily basis and not thinking that some kind of psychedelic break-through somehow will improve everything for me. I guess that was like almost a religious belief I had before.

    Also I'm starting to get well-established in this guitar-learning-process, and I have a tendency to thing that I should quit everything else that I consider important just to find this one thing that I want to become really good at, and perhaps that was necessary for a limited period to get better establised in this learning-process, but now I think I can start to open up to all these other things that I also want to pursue, especially drawing and painting.

  23. Posted · Edited by Thittato

    Insanely cool! Those pentatonic scale shapes are already down, and now I can improvise all over the fretboards and jump back and forth between all these scale shapes. My barre chords are also getting much stronger already. The cool things about learning these new things is that it takes a bit of effort to get it down, but once it is down, it just becomes part of my vocabulary and I just need to run through it quickly daily and then it just grows naturally into next level of confidence and skill and running through stuff like that on a daily basis really keeps my fingers in good shape and makes everything about guitar-playing much easier.

  24. Posted · Edited by Thittato

    Going to add something more to my practice routine. I already know 5 barre chords, but they are far from tight, so I found an excellent exercise to boost them up and that is to alternate between playing the E major barre chord shape and the A minor barre chord shape in every fret from bottom to top.

    Also I'm going to learn 5 Pentatonic scales from Guitarhabits.com article "The 5 Pentatonic Scale Shapes You Must Know" just to get more juice going in the scale department. Practicing scales is a really great way to warm up.

    Also I'm going to work on putting together some kind of Action Plan in order to get where I want to get. I don't know yet where I want to go, but at least part of it is being able to tie this all together into one unified whole. How can classical solo's, simple mantra-songs with open chords and strumming, fingerpicking, playing melodies out of scales, improvisation out of scales, barre chords, songwriting and etc, become integrated into something whole? I don't know yet, but I'm going to figure out. Especially I'm going to figure out what is the relationship between chords and scales, and how can strumming simple chords become spiced up some more with using the scales. Probably music theory is important in figuring this out.

    First edition of this Action Plan is:

    - continue to work on the 5 classical solo's I'm committing to memory

    - continue to work on my barre chords

    - learn 5 pentatonic scales

    - continue to read on Guitarhabits.com to get a better overview over what guitar playing actually consists of technically speaking

  25. Posted

    First time of playing through song nr. 4 purely from memory.

    Love/hate relationship towards psychedelics still active.

    I guess the important thing here is that I love creativity for its own sake regardless of the inspiration I have been getting from the psychedelics, and I still need to translate my inspiration into a daily practice routine (which has been happening lately).

    Also, keeping my apartment tidy and clean is very important to keeping inspiration and motivation going. Much easier to sit down to practice when this place feels like a good place to be.