reflectivesun

Ah, I've begun looking forward to writing while having breakfast. Very good. My recent return to my former self-care and self-expression practices seems to be improving my overall sense of wellbeing. I feel more at ease with myself, others, and life in general. It occured to me today that I still have a number of agendas pulling my attention and desires in different directions. It would probably be best to get rid of all of them and truly relax into and trust in Life's spontaneous unfolding, ...

participate sincerely but without investment in the outcomes be content with yourself, others, and life as it is and unfolds let go, relax, enjoy it all for what it is don't try to change any of it into what you think it should be appreciate, love and care for it all as it is and it will grow on its own, willingly while appreciating, loving and caring for you back ...

It came to me that in the past decade or so I've gone through a number of experience that I look back on and cringe at. When those unwelcome memories cross my mind, I physically contract and shrink, feeling ashamed, embarrassed, small, less worthy, powerful, confident. When I was a bit younger, I didn't have many of those experiences and consequently rarely felt that way. I had a sort of relentless rationality - I simply wouldn't do things that would risk exposing me to those feelings. It occu...

Had a bit of a breakthrough yesterday. It occured to me that I've been suffering from overidentification with the ego and its insecure fluctuations. Basically, I've been very self-absorbed for a long time figuring out "who I am" and how I feel and what I think and all that, and have been working towards integrating that data more into my expression and lifestyle. Becoming more authentic and integrated, basically. This is not a bad thing, since its largely been ignored throughout my life so it's ...

Can I be the space for the constantly flowing river of sensations, thoughts and feelings, without reacting to any of them? After all, they are all essentially misleading. They are all essentially based on false premises, assumptions, judgments. Sometimes it feels lonely, less human in a way, to detach from them. But those are judgments too, generating feelings, sensations that are judged as uncomfortable, unwanted. Can I embrace and be with these when they arise, and let them come and go too?...

These screens have become the portals through which countless poisons enter the mind, mostly in the form of information or entertainment. Almost all of it ultimately brings about distraction, confusion and suffering. The screens can also provide access to antidotes, but these are only needed in the first place because of the cumulative effects of the screentime. Life outside the screens is comparatively simple. I confront and contend with what happens in the moment and things turn out how they...

Don't fight darkness (aka whatever you don't like/want). This will only cause it to grow and multiply. Always focus on the light. On enhancing the light (aka cultivating what you do like/want) without concern for the dark. Then the light will naturally crowd out the dark around you, and even attract/inspire/convert what's dark into light. ...

Deepening realization that I am, in fact, responsible for all of the suffering in my life. All of it. Not in the sense that I'm to blame, because the patterns that compell me to make life harder for myself are unconscious and passed down, but I'm still the one responsible for my choices. I'm not really to blame for the damage but neither is anyone else. Everyone else is just who they are. What they say and do has nothing to do with me, even if it's directed at me. What matters is my responses a...

There is actually nothing wrong with my life. There's only a lack of sufficient love, joy, and healthy orientation towards myself, others and life. There's only poor conditioning, basically. The actual conditions are fine. I am fine. Others are fine. Life is fine. More than fine. I have people that love and care for me, as I love and care for them. They just don't know how to love me, as I don't know how to love them. They are not villains, they just don't know how, and as a result neither do ...

"We think there's something wrong with us, but the only thing wrong with us is our thinking." This came to me while listening to others sharing some of their experiences and problems. It occured to me that underneath our judgmental thoughts about ourselves is pure neutrality. The essential "problem" isn't who we are but only the thoughts themselves, or more specifically how we relate with our thoughts. If my mind is conditioned with thoughts that identify me as shameful, guilty, helpless, ugly...

I've recently been listening to stories about hard times in other peoples lives, and my mind eventually made the connection that these times really come and go for everyone. Right now I'm going through a difficult period, and one day it'll pass and things will be better. And there are so many people who have it way, way worse than me right now, and chances are I'll go through even harder times someday. I don't say that to invalidate what I'm going through now but to put it into a more broad and ...

I've been losing weight. Starting to look skeletal again. Meditated properly for the first time in a few...weeks maybe? Hmm, more than a week at least. It was good to sit in a state of relative emptiness for a bit and watch the stories playing out as stories rather than getting caught up in them. I noticed the moment I shifted to a state of meditation and thought oh - it's been a while. I'd forgotten why it's so valuable. It's hard to say whether I've been so caught up in my stress and stories...

Gosh, the past couple weeks have been interesting. I should be sleeping but I'm going to write some things down. HUGE lesson recently, very important. When I am mad at someone, I am not actually mad at the other person. I am mad at MYSELF. I am mad because I failed to express something, assert something, prioritize myself, take responsibility for myself or otherwise meet a need while some narrative is playing in my head that's making me feel victimized. The other person is just a patsy, a fall...

Wanting what you don't have is actually such a scam!! Loving what you do have while taking good care of yourself is the real shit. ...

I think I'm almost ready to leave some things behind. To put it bluntly, God, for one. And healing/recovery work. I think I've been going about things all wrong, or maybe I needed to dive into these things so I could move on from them and just be another person again. I've been feeling phony and it's getting tiresome. I have a lot of knowledge in my head now and can speak comfortably on these things, and I don't like how people start to think I'm this especially good or smart or healthy person....

Note to self after forgetting keys again: shit always works itself out, so don't waste energy worrying and stressing. Just wait when necessary, patiently and happily and trustingly, for life to bring along what you want and need in some form. Then you can enjoy yourself/life even while waiting. ...

So the body is basically an empty vessel that's hooked up to the mind. When the mind is empty of thoughts, the body operates simply and efficiently. It automatically does what it needs to do. It feels hungry, it eats. It feels tired, it rests. It feels energized, it plays. It feels horny, it fucks. It feels, it responds. Simple, animalistic. In these cases the mind seems to work primarily in service to the body. It generates images and sensations of whatever's accessible that would most suit the...

Woke up from a dream just now where I was standing on a small island of rock overlooking the sky and the sea a couple meters over from land. The few clouds and the light of the sun were making shimmering patterns against the clear blue of the sky, and when I looked down at the sea I saw a flock of seagulls flying in a way that they collectively looked like a giant bird flying into the sea. I was amazed and said to myself "when did they start doing that!?", and then saw another formation of gulls...

I have some uncomfortable feelings moving through at the moment. I want to escape or stuff them but I'm closing my eyes and breathing through them. They're coming up after a pretty vulnerable conversation I just had with someone in which I don't feel I articulated myself very well. I'm worried what they'll think or what could happen - vague fears and thoughts of what I should have said instead or could say to clarify things. I'm not going to, but the thoughts are there. The ego feels threatened,...

Thoughts are dreams, phantoms. Memories are dreams too - remnants of past incidents colored over and reinterpreted by whatever thoughts and feelings are present while remembering. There's no substance to them - thoughts are self-contained projections being overlaid onto reality. I've spent so much of my life in thoughts. I'm thinking right now. My thoughts separate me from life - make me afraid to fully live. Because that's my conditioning, aka the thoughts that were passed down to me. Fear, gu...

It seems like the momentum of the past is still working its way through/out. I go on doing these stupid things, running around like a headless chicken, far less than before but still doing so. And then every once in a while, things wind down and fizzle out and it starts feeling like it's time to move on. Like it's time to let go and simplify even more. Things are starting to shift in that way. I've done a loooot of processing over the past couple years, much of it through outlets that involve a...

I've recently been having a bunch of shadow qualities/suppressed truths coming into awareness. It's strange, they're not pretty but for some reason I'm kind of delighted by them. It's like ah - there you are! That's who's been hiding under there! And actually, it's been surprisingly easy to embrace and love myself more for them. It's relieving to more clearly see how much of a flawed and fallible human I am underneath the pretty thoughts and efforts to transcend. For the most part it seems like...

We think we have problems, but what we really have are feelings. Feelings and their accompanying interpretations/projections/thoughts around the supposed causes of those feelings. "I feel sad. I don't want to feel sad, but I don't know how to make the feeling go away. I think I feel sad because of x. I will go out into the world and try to find people, things and/or situations to make the feeling go away." This does not work. People, things and situations can only distract us from our feeling...

These past couple weeks it's almost like my mind has become a self-correcting mechanism. The key seems to be feeling. As long as I withdraw my attention from thoughts and keep it on feelings, the thoughts automatically correct themselves. Anytime something uncomfortable comes up lately, I notice it, go to the feeling, stay with it for a while without analyzing, worrying, judging or resisting, maybe release/express if something comes to the surface, and then my thoughts and perspectives are corre...

Dreamt that I was watching characters on a train talk about the unreality of things constructed for the average person in the world. I woke up in my room then closed my eyes, felt the vibrations of sleep coming on and had the thought "oh, I could go into a lucid dream" but felt wary since in past attempts something would spook me (sleep paralysis, visual/auditory phenomena). Then I had/heard the thought "it wasn't a scary one, just try it out", so I did. I felt some apprehension but stayed still...

It's comforting somehow to realize, or maybe remember, that no one can ever really know or be known completely by someone else. All we can really see are observed qualities, patterns, appearances, expressions, feelings which we guage in relation to what we've already experienced. So we mostly come to know our own thoughts and judgments projected outward. The underlying essence is always indefinable and coated in different layers of impressions. When we experience or express judgments, whether p...

Sometimes it's good to remember how awesome life is without all the baggage and desires. Just being alive. Having a healthy and comfortable body. Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, feeling, dancing, singing. All these are available here now. Why so much fear of loss and hunger for more? It's greedy, really greedy. And it's all in the body/mind. Thoughts and feelings. I want that [thought/feeling], I don't want to lose this [thought/feeling]. Reality is going on around these thoughts ...

Got another compliment on my intellect today, or rather the clarity with which I communicate my thoughts. It's interesting how quickly praise can go from feeling pleasantly stimulating to uncomfortably confining. For a time I was getting complimented way too much on my appearance and demeanor and eventually felt more self-conscious and insecure than ever. I worked through it in time but it really messed me up for a while. I don't want the same thing to happen with my intellect, but maybe it's ne...

I'm the one who's responsible for all my relationships souring and ending badly. It's me, it's always been me. It's not necessarily my fault, but it is and has always been my responsibility, and my failures. My lack of self-awareness and self-knowledge, my unwillingness/inability to prioritize and communicate my wants, needs, preferences and difference, my conditioned fears, traumas and baggage, my learned tendency to relinquish responsibility to others and then blame them for my discomfort. It'...

Everyone is pre-programmed with certain things they're drawn to, enjoy and are naturally good at. It's pretty fascinating when I really think about it, sort of like a chicken and egg situation. Which came first - the external thing we're drawn to or the capacity to excel in it? I've lived most of my life trying to force myself into things that I'm not naturally suited for. Naturally I've felt relatively clumsy, incapable and stupid the whole way, and like everything was a bore and slog. I figur...