Bearing Witness to a World in Suffering from a Distance. 404

Tags

bearing witness, Changing the World, Desteni, DIP, EQAFE, fear for my childrens future, fear of the future, fearing the future, Suffering, western society, zimbabwe

The other day there was a discussion about the current world situation, and in particular about nations like Zimbabwe collapsing, and the internet being shut down. It sparked a fear within me, although it’s not something I usually react to, and also something that, if I do, I can quickly speak common sense to myself and calm myself down. This time was different, and it is because I have a child, and it triggers a much deeper reaction within me. I also saw a post recently about a father in a war torn country having to sell his child. The child looked like my daughter in its expression, and the love they felt for one another was obvious. I cannot imagine having to sell my child because I can’t afford to feed it.

A bit later I asked my girl if she wanted to go upstairs and play in the bed together. Usually we don’t do that in the evening so it was a bit different. When we came up, a shift suddenly happened within her, and she froze completely, only to cling to me desperately. I had to hold her very tight, as though she wanted me to encompass her totally. Every time I tried letting go, she started wimping. It took about ten minutes. I held her in my heart and breathed and I shared with her how she could center herself inside herself and hold herself inside. Eventually I asked Viktor to come. I had a sense that it would be better if we held her together.

He came, and she climbed into his arms, sat with him, but holding herself, and in a few minutes she was fine. She’s never done that before, as she usually seeks me. But it was obvious that he was the one who could support her with stability in that moment.

I looked at the point and how I could relate, and I remembered how as a child I would experience this “existential insecurity” and I can definitely see that in my girl’s experience, and in it being directly related back to MY experience of going into this “fear of survival” which is not a common experience for me.

When looking at “Who would I be in that situation?” there is no doubt that I’d do whatever I can to protect myself. I’d go into “Let’s do this” mode. There’s not really anything to say about that.

However – the fact of the matter is that thousands and billions of people – and children right now are living under conditions that are not acceptable for anyone. And so I am confronted with feeling deeply ashamed. Ashamed that things are going so well for me, that I have it so easy. That I live in such a bubble wrapped reality (online and in the physical system here in Sweden) that I can, if I want to, completely forget about all the suffering that people experience here in this world. I’m ashamed that I can sit down and “relax” and “have fun” and take life and things for granted, beings spoiled and complain about things that others would kill to have.

Obviously a nation or world collapse can hit me as well, on a direct level, but what matters is that it’s ALREADY hitting me, as all the other parts of me. And it’s important for me to remember that, to carry that with me, and to not delude myself that the happiness I feel is real, because life might be going great for me, but for the whole as a whole its not. I’m not used to things going great for me either, so it’s definitely felt like “I made it!” and just wanting to revel in that. But I definitely also see and understand that it means that I have a greater responsibility to give back, and to do what I can to make a difference. It’s about carrying the world – as it is – with me inside my heart, and to never lose sight of that or what we’re here to do. When painful stuff comes up on my SoMe feed, I quickly scroll over it, because I feel so sick to my stomach when I see animals, humans or the planet suffering. It’s like my heart is breaking every time, and it feels like if I were to look at it, it will break. And maybe it has to. Maybe the only self-honest way to live is to walk around with a broken heart, for me at least. Cause otherwise I’d be living on a lie, and by living on a lie, I’m also capitalizing on the suffering of others standing on their backs, and there’s a deliberateness in that, when i KNOW that it’s possible to create a world where no one has to suffer. So how do one live with the state of the world in one’s heart, while at the same time remain diligent to make a difference, and perhaps even be successful at doing exactly that? I don’t know yet but I have to find out.

In the culture I live in we talk so much about how we can do “little things” to make a difference to things like climate changes, or we donate to charity or go vegan and think that we’ve done our part. But what we often don’t realize is all the myriad of other little things we do, through which we contribute to things being fucked up in this world. We are so far removed and separated from our own creation and ourselves as one, that we don’t even see the direct correlations between things we do (or don’t do), and thoughts we think, with the current state of the world. I was for instance just watching a video of two children at the same age as my girl hit by an airstrike in Syria. I feel incredibly sad and angry and despairing for these children, and when watching it, it’s almost like I can’t stand being inside myself… but at the same time, I am seeing it from a distance, I’m not a part of it, and it’s not (really) a part of me. There is a level of distance, through which I relatively comfortably allow myself to right after continue scrolling aimlessly in a state of comfortable numbness.

When looking at the world situation from a holistic perspective, it is like seeing all these dark spots of suffering around the world, and then in the middle there are these tiny white bubbles, and inside them are the rich countries of the world, the places where almost no one suffers in a fundamental sense of the word. And I am in one of those countries. And for us to change the world, only the people in these countries has the capacity to do so, because to even be capable of conceiving of creating greater ripples in society, you got to be fed, you got to sleep. You can’t worry about getting raped, or your child freezing to death. So where this whole thing lands is on the responsibility I have to do my part to make a difference in the world, which I first and foremost do through changing myself and walking through my own mind. If I don’t, if we don’t, we who actually have the opportunity to, the darkness will little by little seep into even our bubbles, and in the end, only suffering will be left.

Self-Forgiveness

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get lost in my own privileged life, because it is so easy for me to “turn the world off” as there is very little in my culture to remind me of the true nature of the world, unless I seek it out myself. On contrary, everything in my culture supports me to remain within my little bubble, and I allow it to, directly and indirectly.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to want to remain in my bubble where life is great and everything is comfortable, and not want to be disturbed in my bubble by real life events that remind me how fucked up the world is, because that brings me down, makes me sad and angry and scared, and that takes me out of my little bubble of comfort and fun and then I don’t know what to do with myself because I can’t just go and make those people’s lives better, so there’s a level of having to accept and impossible, and unacceptable situation that makes me feel desperate and powerless and I don’t like feeling desperate and powerless so therefore I do nothing.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to react when hearing about collapsing governments and the internet disappearing and people not having access to food, because I don’t want that to happen to me, instead of realizing that it is ALREADY happening to ME, as another me, as all the people in the world who are living in suffering RIGHT NOW who are also a part of me, and my fear is really bound in me not wanting to lose what I have, deep down knowing that what I have is built on a lie, a lie of safety and prosperity and equality and fairness – and the truth is that suffering can happen to any of us, and is, and tomorrow it might be me, and as such, this reaction is showing me that I’ve been living in an illusion in my mind, where I have been hiding from the reality of me as the greater me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to actively accept and allow myself to NOT care about what is going on in the world, in the real lives of real people, and despite knowing inside me the level of suffering that is going on – and that I am accepting through my creatorship – pretend like it’s all good and well in the world, because if it’s not happening to me directly, it’s not my problem.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to NOT realize that it is only through me standing up, in and as my full responsibility as a creator in this world that we will be able to stop the suffering that is currently the every-day life of billions of people and animals

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to deliberately avoid looking at images of people or animals suffering or reading such stories, because of how it makes me feel inside myself, like my heart is breaking and I can’t stand existing inside myself – giving myself the possibility to LOOK AWAY and pretend like it isn’t real, and that it isn’t happening to a part of me, and so convince myself that it’s ok for me to not concern myself with, because it’s not good for me to become upset or sad – instead of realizing that I SHOULD be upset and sad and use that to motivate me to make a difference – and to stand up in and as my creatorship in this world.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exist within and as a state of unawareness of what’s really going on in the world, and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed a mechanism and a habit to exist within me, where I deliberately will try to turn off any awareness I have of what’s really going on in the world, in terms of the extent to which people are actually really suffering

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to be ashamed of living in a country where suffering barely exists, and where I experience problems that aren’t real problems compared to the suffering many must go through, feeling tainted and undeserving and even unjustly targeted for my “white privilege”

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to feel sorry for myself because I feel targeted and guilty for living a painfree elitist life style compared to most people in this world

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to not diligently remove and shut down all the noise of my mind that is prohibiting me from taking full responsibility as a creator in this world, and of myself

Self-Commitments

I commit myself to push myself to stand WITH the suffering of this world, and to push myself until I do everything I can in my power to make a difference, and to end suffering.

I commit myself to push myself to stop avoiding the real issues of this world, and to directively recognize and see where I with my behavior am contributing to creating and condoning the suffering of others.

I commit myself to look at the images of suffering and allow my heart to break and be broken, and to use that to motivate me to walk my process from automated consciousness to directive awareness as diligently as possible – until no actions taken by me are contributing to suffering, but are instead alleviating it.

If you want to do what I do, check out: http://lite.desteniiprocess.com

I also recommend listening to this recording: https://eqafe.com/p/fear-of-death-life-review

[Photo by Franke Kolleman on Unsplash]

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Dedicating 2019 to my Body. 403

Tags

body love, body positive, body support, commitment to change, Desteni, DIP, love your body, new year new beginning, new years resolutions, Self-Love

I have made a commitment to dedicate this year to BODY LOVE. It is something I’ve been focusing more and more on over the past few years, and that I started really kicking into gear last year. This year I want to dedicate to my body, to have awareness and consideration with me as I move throughout my day, and do what I can to support my body to live its utmost potential. This has not always been a given. And it is not something that’s been easy for me. In fact, it’s been probably the most difficult point in my process to work and walk with. And the key to solving it has been SELF-LOVE.

So today I rubbed my chest muscles with essential oils that I let my body pick out (it chose wintergreen, geranium and ylang ylang). I want to push this point of allowing my body to come to the forefront, and trust myself to communicate with my body and listen when my body communicates. And on Saturday I’ll be going for a full body massage and facial treatment, a gift gifted to me by my in-laws for my birthday. I can tell you that my body is looking SO much forward to that one. I’ve also been pushing daily exercise/body movement, and I must say that a life lived from a place of self-love (rather than self-loathing, hate and punishment as I have in the past) is so much more enjoyable. Even the things I previously considered to be “boring” or “dull” or “annoying” are now meaningful because I come from a place of self-love. Things like broccoli, or exercise or learning how to best support my body online. Things that may be obvious for other people, who do them without hesitation. But for me, it was anything but. And slowly but surely, change is coming through, in small, everyday moments in my life. Small but significant change.

I am sharing so much about this at the moment, because I would like to support others to give themselves the same gift that I’ve been able to give to myself, finally, after so many years of being supported by others having walked the same path before me. I feel like a person who’s been walking in a desert for my entire life and has suddenly discovered that there’s an infinite source of water within me. If I can support someone to be a little less lost or dried out within themselves, I’ll happily do that. All you have to do is ask.

A NEW YEAR. A NEW Opportunity to Stand. A NEW Opportunity to Change. 401

Tags

7 year Journey to Life, be a force of nature, Desteni, Desteni I Process, DIP, inner fire, new year, new year new beginning, New Years Eve

I have decided to dedicate the remaining days of 2018 to reflecting on the years that’s passed, and in that, note the points that I will commit myself to change, expand and improve on in the new year.

One of the first points that’s come up as I have reflected on the “theme” of my 2018 experience, is that it has been one of the most INTENSE years of my life, on all fronts. I’ve never felt any more alive than I have this year. Every day has been like a roller coaster ride with intense ups and downs, and I’ve experienced myself as very “off centered” and “buzzed” half the time. This is something I would like to change; not the intensity per se (because it’s also an expression of who I am), but the roller coaster experience and then intense emotions – especially because I do not want my child to pick that up from me, and integrate it into herself as part of her. Again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it is not supportive, when one unnecessarily spirals oneself into the belly of emotion, with the purpose of creating drama and stir shit up, but where you end up losing yourself in the emotion and believing it to be real.

I like that this year has been intense too. Like I said, I’ve never felt more alive. But there is something to be said for keeping a nice balance and remaining grounded. I do not enjoy becoming riled up over small things, and losing my shit every two seconds. It’s kind of like being bi-polar and having the manic and depressive mood swings go off at all times of the day at its worst. At its best, I am like a force of nature, a force to be reckoned with. I joked with my partner that it is like I have this new superpower, like having a beam of fire flooding from my chest, and I do not yet have control over it or know how to direct it, and so consequently, I burn everything down half the time. And I am sure my body, however strong it is, is taking a toll because of it. So in the new year, one of my goal is to give specific and clear direction to my fire and my intensity – and to ground it within me.

So what is the solution?

The way I see it, it’s really very much about creating a physical anchoring and grounding within myself, which I do for example through my commitment to start writing again, through my yoga practices, through on-the-spot self-forgiveness out loud. Ultimately I see it being about preventing these explosive moments. Sometimes it is THAT simple. I can used the earthed/earthing side of me to ground the fire that is within me, so that I can nurture and harness it in the best way possible.

The Mother of all Mothers. 399

Tags

7 year Journey to Life, becoming a mother, being a mother, Desteni, Fear of Failing, how to be the perfect mother, Motherhood, the dark side of motherhood

I have been facing some quite intense experiences in relation to my role as a mother in the recent weeks, and I have slowly but surely started to wrap my head around what has actually been going on within me, and why it has become so intense.

So what I have found is that I have created an delusional, unrealistic expectation to myself to be a perfect/optimal mother to my daughter, really like placing myself on a high horse in my mind and think that I am ‘polished/well-rounded/elite’ when it comes to my ‘skills’ at being a parent. And yes, for sure, there are aspects of parenting that I am kickass at. But of course there also plenty of aspects that I’m not. Every single personal issue I have with myself will somehow compromise or reflect on my parenting in a potentially consequential way. But I had created this delusional bubble of perfection in my mind (which I’ve realized is not the first time I’ve done), and so all my energy went into feeding that and making that real.

What this meant was that I only accepted the positive aspects of myself as a parent, and completely rejected all the negative aspects. So any experience of frustration or irritation or boredom, I would suppress. I would do my very best to sound upbeat, gentle and calm around my daughter, which I find I’ve been surprisingly good at. The only problem was that I started becoming more and more bitter and negative towards my husband.

Obviously it can be quite a turbulent period in new parents lives when a child arrives, but this was something more than that. The more positively I experienced myself with my daughter, the more negatively I experienced myself in relation to my partner – to the point where I actually considered if it would be best if we ended the relationship. He couldn’t do anything right, and I remember catching myself thinking that I would never treat a child this way. Eventually when it became really bad, the thought that I didn’t want my daughter to see or model me being this way towards her father – I stopped.

Looking back at my life, I see that I have been the same way with my cats which I’ve written about previously, and how I became neurotic in trying to give them the best home possible. But I even see how I’ve created similar delusions in the past, as my own made-up way to try to succeed in life (because I had no idea how to do it for real), so I’d create this elaborate fantasy of how I wanted things to be, and then I’d hold, hold, hold onto that as long as I possibly could, only for that bubble to burst as hard as all the daydreaming I had put into it.

So what I did today was that I embraced all that suppressed emotions that I had hidden from myself in relation to my daughter and especially also to being home with her alone. I allowed myself to embrace that feeling of being annoyed or irritated because she’s so wiggly and difficult to change clothes on. I embraced the experience of shear boredom I felt over being isolated at home with my child. And you know what, it was liberating and it was empowering, but more than anything, it supported me to relax more.

When you’re constantly trying to uphold a (totally unrealistic) expectation to yourself, a lot of hard work has to go into keeping that delusion going, so dropping all that, and instead facing what is here, gave me some ‘space’ within, to say the least.

I have realized that I resist just being here with my daughter, and I have admitted to myself that that is a problem and indeed very odd. Why would I resist being here, when I am already here? Why would that be something that scares me, bores me? So what I’ve been doing is, when that experience comes up, I deliberately immerse myself in the HERE moment, whatever it is. And the more I push myself to be here with my daughter, the less bored I feel, and the less irritated I feel.

And I have had this sneaking idea that it is like my daughter being here and me having the incredible privilege of staying home with her, is my chance and opportunity to learn how to be here, because in the past I’ve been able to resist it and blame it on not having time for example. But at the moment at least, I’ve got nothing but time. There are moments, and days where I can’t do much housework because my daughter needs me to be physically close to her at all times. Or I put her in her ‘backpack’ and strap her to my back. And since we live far out on the countryside, there isn’t many places to go, so we are for all intents and purposes ‘stuck’ here (today we went to the little local supermarket just to get out for a bit and see some people) – but maybe that is not a curse, but a tremendous blessing in disguise.

To be continued…

Living the Word STABLE. DAY 387

Tags

being emotionally unstable, being stable, being unstable, creating inner stability, Desteni, how to create inner stability, how to remain stable, how to stop being unstable, redefining the word stable, redefining words, remaining stable

If there is a word I wouldn’t often use about myself, it is the word STABLE. Ironically however, when I look at certain aspects of myself and my life there are moments of stability, moments where I am stable. I water my plants regularly every week. When I work with children, I immediately assume a deliberate inner stability because I know how much we as adults can influence children, also through that which isn’t spoken or obvious. So it is not to say that my entire being, body and mind don’t know what stability is in any form or fashion.

When I however look at the general pace and process of my life, it has exactly been signified by being unstable, both through the circumstances I was born into and brought up in and through the way my mind has worked, particularly with being emotional and using emotions as a navigation and self-identification system. So when I look at the word stable, I look at it as a word that I am generally inferior to, as something that I am not, but that I look up to, and would like to be.

The word STABLE is part of my Beingness signature recording that I mentioned in my previous blog, and as such, it is a word that is an essential/inherent part of my being that I am thus not fully embracing/expressing/living. I will therefore here explore my relationship to the word stable and how I can implement it into my life as a Living Word.

Dictionary definition.

sta·ble 1
(stā′bəl)
adj. sta·bler, sta·blest
1.
a. Resistant to change of position or condition; not easily moved or disturbed: a house built on stable ground; a stable platform.
b. Not subject to sudden or extreme change or fluctuation: a stable economy; a stable currency.
c. Maintaining equilibrium; self-restoring: a stable aircraft.
2. Enduring or permanent: a stable peace.
3.
a. Consistent or dependable: She has been stable in her support for the project.
b. Not showing or marked by erratic or volatile emotions or behavior: He remained stable even after he lost his job.
4. Physics Having no known mode of decay; indefinitely long-lived. Used of atomic particles.
5. Chemistry Not easily decomposed or otherwise modified chemically.

Etymological origin

stable (n.)
early 13c., “building or enclosure where horses or cows are kept, building for domestic animals,” from Old French stable, estable “a stable, stall” (Modern French étable), also applied to cowsheds and pigsties, from Latin stabulum “a stall, fold, aviary, beehive, lowly cottage, brothel, etc.,” literally “a standing place,” from PIE *ste-dhlo-, suffixed form of root *stā- “to stand” (see stet).

Meaning “collection of horses belonging to one stable” is attested from 1570s; transferred sense of “group of fighters under same management” is from 1897; that of “group of prostitutes working for the same employer” is from 1937.
For what the grete Stiede
Is stole, thanne he taketh hiede,
And makth the stable dore fast.
[John Gower, “Confessio Amantis,” 1390]
stable (adj.)
mid-12c., “trustworthy, reliable;” mid-13c., “constant, steadfast; virtuous;” from Old French stable, estable “constant, steadfast, unchanging,” from Latin stabilis “firm, steadfast, stable, fixed,” figuratively “durable, unwavering,” literally “able to stand,” from PIE *ste-dhli-, from root *stā- “to stand” (see stet). From c. 1300 as “well-founded, well-established, secure” (of governments, etc.). Physical sense of “secure against falling” is recorded from late 14c.; also “of even temperament.” Of nuclear isotopes, from 1904.

stet
direction to printer to disregard correction made to text, 1755, from Latin stet “let it stand,” third person singular present subjunctive of stare “to stand, stand upright, be stiff,” from PIE root *stā- “to stand, set down, make or be firm,” with derivatives meaning “place or thing that is standing” (source also of Sanskrit tisthati “stands;” Avestan histaiti “to stand;” Persian -stan “country,” literally “where one stands;” Greek histemi “put, place, cause to stand; weigh,” stasis “a standing still,” statos “placed,” stater “a weight, coin,” stylos “pillar;” Latin sistere “stand still, stop, make stand, place, produce in court,” status “manner, position, condition, attitude,” stare “to stand,” statio “station, post;” Lithuanian stojus “place myself,” statau “place;” Old Church Slavonic staja “place myself,” stanu “position;” Gothic standan, Old English standan “to stand,” stede “place,” steall “place where cattle are kept;” Old Norse steði “anvil,” stallr “pedestal for idols, altar;” German Stall “a stable;” Old Irish sessam “the act of standing”).

Sounding of the word STABLE

Standing-Able
Stay-Able
Stay-Bull
Stay-Bill
Stale-Ale
Stabile
Stabel – in Danish it means “to stack/stack on top of each other)
Staple
STA – in Scandinavian STÅ means “Stand/to stand”

Creative writing

If we look at the dictionary definition, the general understanding of STABLE is pretty much the same as the one I have, where the word specifically has to do with a person’s physical or mental health, though mostly with mental health, and as such refers to the mental state that one is in. This then also comes through in terms in for example biology where something stable is something that isn’t compromised/unpredictable/changeable.

The other side of the word, which also comes through in the etymological origin, is the more specific/practical side, of the word STABLE referring to the word STAND. Another interesting observation, is how the word literally refers to a physical stable as a “standing place” but even has connections to the word “stan” that in some languages means “place/land/country” (like AfghaniSTAN). But also “the act of standing” and “place I stand” are interesting in this context.

According to the dictionary’s definition of the word, let’s have a closer look at my relationship to/with the word STABLE

1.
a. Resistant to change of position or condition; not easily moved or disturbed: a house built on stable ground; a stable platform.

With the way my mind has developed and how I have developed my mind, I have throughout my life in some situations been easily moved and disturbed. For example through my relationships with other people where I have defined myself based on my perception of their judgment of me. This has caused me to change who I am to fit in for example. Another example is in relation to being emotional, which is probably the biggest source of instability I can think of.

b. Not subject to sudden or extreme change or fluctuation: a stable economy; a stable currency.

This I again see relating to emotion where instability comes from accepting and allowing emotions to take over and possess one’s body, mind and being. Interestingly enough I’ve also had an unstable relationships to money and economics

c. Maintaining equilibrium; self-restoring: a stable aircraft.

This point I see relates to one’s ability to stabilize after a moment of instability, where one has tools and resources available on a consistent level that one will initiate if one starts becoming unstable and so maintain or correct oneself to a level of equilibrium. In this case these tools are self-forgiveness, self-corrective statements, writing and breathing in awareness.

2. Enduring or permanent: a stable peace.

This is then the next phase of restoring equilibrium where one has specific ‘maintenance’ tools of prevention to ensure that one doesn’t become unstable again.

3.
a. Consistent or dependable: She has been stable in her support for the project.

This I see specifically relates to how my instability may cause ripple effects on other people around me and on my environment.

b. Not showing or marked by erratic or volatile emotions or behavior: He remained stable even after he lost his job.

This one is self-explanatory lol

4. Physics Having no known mode of decay; indefinitely long-lived. Used of atomic particles.

5. Chemistry Not easily decomposed or otherwise modified chemically.

So these two are really interesting because they also refers to how mental instability affects the physical body and how stability on a mental level supports us to remain stable physically as well.

A friend of mine later shared her redefinition of the word STABLE which I also found very supportive:

“What I found was the word s-table – so for practical purposes I have placed a picture within that word of a table, the four legs equally balancing the top planted in the earth. So to be stable is like standing as a table, solid and balanced because if you hit it on any sides it can not be moved within it’s shape, it moves as a solid piece yes, but it always remains a table solid on the ground. Next I have placed within this word, the word courage – as core gauge to look within myself and who am I in my core? I like to check where I stand within myself, my core, as this supports with understanding if I am indeed standing stable or in reaction/movement. If I see movement, I support myself with moving into the word courage to support to stand within self honesty and what is best and change in that moment, so it’s like a check in of sorts. I also placed the word integrity within the word stable as well, here I have redefined this word as internal grit = integrity, like in situations where I need to stand stable, who am I in my internal grit – am I willing to grind the point to change, is a cool reference to access the point of ‘who will I be?’ do I react or do I stand (s)table through accessing my core – gauge = courage to live what is best for all, be the example, and do my best.”

I very much like her table analogy and completely understand it and see the value of it, like how the way the table is designed support it to remain standing because it is in equilibrium and also how she incorporates other words into a word – I haven’t played with that yet. Because for instance, I see that it would be cool for me to incorporate consistency into how I live stability.

What mind friend did which is so cool is that she doesn’t just work with the word in a superficial/pretend-like way, where one kind of things that just redefining the word will sort itself out like magic lol (I’ve done that in the past). But where she actually looks at where her ‘mental weaknesses’ are, also in relation to living a word effectively – and where she’ll then need support-words to assist her to actually fully live that word.

It is very cool as well to practically support yourself in moments of instability, for example through applying a specific supportive image or word. I also see that the only source of instability really is to be emotional – because emotions MOVE – whereas it is like thoughts are more one-dimensional/static.

I am realizing that the whole point of instability comes down to my relationship with emotions and how I have allowed emotions to literally envelop me. I have been very loyal to emotions throughout my life, blindly following them wherever they take me, defending them, protecting them, and emphasizing them.

This is what my friend wrote:

“When the emotions are moving in the moment of instability, there is like an imprint now of the words redefined as how I shared with the picture of the table, so I remember the whole point of what I wrote and redefined within this word, it brings up courage and also integrity, etc. as I expand within it, so these words become like networked or web to eventually be something in one moment I can see the whole network and transcend the instability into the new living words. I also practice these in not so intense times like always looking within myself can I live words here, what word can I live, does this word apply, if it’s a new word how can I redefine it and have it be supportive. Like the integrity word, I redefined rather recently, so it’s cool as it becomes more and more and practicing until the words become natural and I indeed live the word.”

I really like my friend’s perspective on courage and inner grit/integrity in relation to living the word STABLE. For myself I see that consistency would also be a cool word to focus on, so not just “how do I stand and keep standing?” but also “what/who do I stand as?”

What I find interesting about this exploration of the word STABLE is that it has so many connections to the word STAND. The most obvious and straightforward definition of the word I see so far is Standing Able, where it refers to how one in a situation remains able to direct oneself and the situation and stands through it, no matter what happens. Another dimension is the point of position of “where one stands”, where being stable is to “stand one’s ground”, stand with/up for oneself, which in the case of the mind means to not accept or allow oneself to be directed, controlled or pushed around by the mind.

So I kind of see two perspectives on STABLE where one has to do with a CURRENT state of being, being stable in the moment, where the other has more to do with a continuous stability, being stable over a longer period of time, as Still Standing Able or Staying Standing Able.

The image that I have, along with my friend’s image of the table, is an image of a tree. A tree stands within a solid foundation in the ground (GROUNDED) and because of that can be moved and swayed in its branches without being compromised. A tree thus isn’t stiff or inflexible, but can move to quite an extent because it has such a solid foundation. For me, I see what is so important here is therefore to focus on creating a solid foundation because that is from where stability comes from.

It is the same as with my friend’s image of the table. The table must be in equilibrium or things you place on it would fall off, as it would be wobbly and insecure. It is built through using specific measurements that ensures its stability.

Living the word STABLE for me right now is thus about STANDING ABLE and STAYING ABLE – like a tree stands and stays able to nurture itself despite of storms and snow falling on its branches, or like a table stands and stays able to carry what is placed on it through its balanced equilibrium. In my case it means standing and staying able to direct myself and my mind, to become the living principle of my being, body and mind, and to through this process, birth myself as life from the physical.

What I specifically see I have to work with to live the word stable are the words FOUNDATION, CONSISTENCY, INTEGRITY, BALANCE, FLEXIBIITY and EQUILIBRIUM.

In my next post, I will apply my friend’s method to create a network of words to support myself to live the word STABLE.

Thank you for reading!

I have Changed. DAY 378

Tags

becoming zen, Bernard Poolman, Desteni, Desteni I Process, DIP Lite, how to change, how to stop addictions, how to stop the mind, Self Change, Self-Transformation, Sunette Spies

I have changed. I have not only changed a little, but in fact become almost an entirely new Being. I say almost because I still have some patterns, behaviors and personalities that I access and go into that has been with me for many years, but mostly, I have changed. 7 years ago I was a reactionary person. Almost anything I did and experienced was reactionary. When I say reactionary I mean that virtually all I did was to react, to things that came up inside me, to other people, to situations. I would handle one reaction by going into another reaction. When I look back at how I was, it as though I was a zombie, I existed only as reactions, desperately trying to grasp onto something real, something substantial – BECOME real, but every where I looked, I only found more deceptions, more pitfalls of fantasy that took me further and further from reality.

I knew I had potential, I have always known that, but I channeled that knowing into ego and into spiritual delusions about becoming this enlightened, ‘higher’ being – it had absolutely no grounding in reality and I did nothing to actually change or improve myself on a practical level in terms of learning skills or developing capabilities. I only focused on improving myself on a mental level and I wasn’t even very successful at that, because whatever spiritual mind game I played with myself, I always ended up with the same shitty experience of myself.

At the same time as I engaged in extreme delusions of grandeur, my self-esteem was at an absolute low. But I wasn’t even consciously aware of it, I simply reacted. I was very fearful of people, of relationships and friendships and I engaged within them reluctantly because it always made me so uncomfortable, so tense, while at the same time, there was nothing I wanted more than to really connect with another human being, with a group of people, belong somewhere and actually make something meaningful out of my life.

When I look back I can see how desperate I was, and how I wandered around my life in a haze. It was as though I had a road map to life but the drawings and writings on it had been washed away so that all I could make out was faded lines and markings that I had no idea what meant and I desperately tried following those, hoping that they would lead me somewhere where I could live my potential.

That all changed 7 years ago, in 2009 when I one day came across a group online that was nothing like anything else I had ever seen or experienced in all my years chasing after spiritual groups and communities, trying to find myself a place to belong. This group called Desteni called it like it is. There was nothing warm and fuzzy about it. In fact, it scared the living daylights out of me more than once during those first initial months. I was shocked to the core of my being of what I read and heard – but at the same time, the truth of what I heard echoed with the most certainty that I’ve ever experienced in my life. I had not a single seconds doubt that this was real. If you have not experienced it I am not sure you can understand, and it is easy to say that this is the same as what religious people experience when they ‘find god’ – but in having experienced plenty spiritual delusions in the past, I can tell you that this was something very different.

There is a stark difference between hearing something that one can use in one’s mind to feel better about oneself and to dull the fear one experience, and to hear something that literally rips your heart open and exposes every single lie you’ve ever told about yourself.

So I started – in fact for the first time – actively walking a process of changing myself, through facing all the lies inside me that I had told myself throughout my life, lies such as “the universe is good” and “it all happens for a reason” and “I was born this way I can’t help myself” and all other lies that we as human beings tell ourselves on a daily basis to keep the deception of who we are going.

At first, I wasn’t at very genuine about it. I would do the work but I wasn’t fully committed with all of myself. I am still not satisfied about the way I walk my process. But someone once said to me that the fact that I don’t easily become satisfied actually isn’t a bad thing because it means that I keep pushing myself to excel.

And this is definitely something that has changed. During these past 7 years, I have become better and better and not taking shit from myself, although I still do it from time to time. And in my case, taking shit from myself means coming up with excuses as to why I don’t push myself, why I don’t apply myself fully, why I accept myself to become emotional and let my emotions rule me, why I don’t stop when I see I become emotional. Taking shit from myself also includes being extremely harsh with myself, loathing and hating myself and taking all of that out on the body.

I am a completely different person today – and for some reason, this has been difficult for me to admit openly in this way. I think it is some ‘taboo self-censoring’ mechanism inside me where I see it as ‘wrong’ to openly express the fact that I know that I have some pretty awesome qualities. Another reason is that I often doubt myself and I still tend to go into low self-esteem where I think poorly of myself and start doubting whether I’ve changed at all.

What is really cool however is that the proof is in the physical, so even if I doubt myself in my mind, I can see in my physical reality that I have in fact changed, not only a little – but a lot.

I can see it in my communication with other people, how I have so much more space within me to embrace other people. How can I access this ‘timeless’ dimension of seeing ‘behind the veil’ of a person’s mind and in real time give them support to empower themselves within what they are facing. I have always been quite ‘sharp’ in terms of ‘seeing through’ the veils of the world, but this ability has been heightened to an extent where I’ve sometimes – almost with fear – wondered whether it was some kind of magic I accessed.

And what’s even crazier is that I know deep within me, that I’ve only just scraped the surface of what I am capable of. Even with everything I have changed, I am still only at the brink of what is possible. And sometimes I fall into a trap of accepting myself to remain in this place, because it is 100 times more awesome than where I was before and my life is so much better and richer and more enjoyable, so I sometimes get a bit lazy in thinking that I don’t have to push myself further because this is basically where I’ve always wanted to be: to be somewhere where I make a real impact in the world, to have a lovely home, a career, a man, a group of friends and a satisfying life.

But I know that I can’t stand still – and considering that I’ve barely scraped the surface of what I am capable of, I cannot even imagine what’s to come. It is almost like becoming a ‘superhero’ through a process of directively self-transformation where I am creating ‘super powers’ within me – but in reality those aren’t actually super powers, because first of all, everyone has them (although each one is different) and secondly, we only see it as super powers because we’ve lived a life of totally wasting our potential and having no idea what we’re really – and naturally – capable of.

I have matured and I have developed space inside myself (which also gives space to supporting others) and I have become so much more specific than what I was before. It has taken a very long time and I am no where near done, in fact the more I walk, the more I become aware that I have only really started and sometimes I realize that I haven’t even really started yet – and still, I have started to access this potential inside of me that was always there, which has to do with becoming the utmost version of myself.

It is kind of like taking your best qualities and amping them up to the best they can be, while becoming the directive principle over the worst qualities of yourself so that you can stop them and eventually disengage from them completely, thus leaving space for even more of the best qualities to flourish.

For me, a lot has happened to bring me to that point and I have certainly had a lot of help along the way from others who stand as examples through the process they have walked of developing their own potential – but a significant difference for me was the day I gave myself a purpose in life.

When I look back, and even now, I realize that I could have picked anything really – and that in itself is empowering – and made that my purpose, by being tenacious and creative and by using my ability to hack through the systems, but what supported me so much was to give my life a specific direction – any direction really – that supported me to become focused and driven. After that I have pushed myself so much more and especially when I have started to see that my process have started to impact others and my relationships with them, where my work has been confirmed by others independently of the inner process I am walking.

I have been able to solve conflicts both internally and externally that I would have never been able to solve before, because back then I did not have the understanding I have now, I didn’t have the capacity to take full responsibility for myself – as I mentioned: I just reacted.

I have changed, already now with my existential baby steps, more than I ever imagined was possible. I knew I had potential, but I had no idea that it was this much and this real and something that I can actually use to make a difference in the world, where my life becomes more than just me, where the fact that I exist is something beneficial to the world as a whole – now THAT is empowering.

I can only recommended walking the process that I have walked and that I am walking every day – but your process will be totally different from mine, so there’s no point in comparing or trying to become exactly like someone else. You are totally and awesomely unique and no one can walk your process for you, because it is YOUR process – you are the only one who can be self-honest with you and see where you need to push more, where you are being delusional, where you are selling yourself short, where you are giving yourself excuses for not changing – only you can walk through that. But the beauty of that is actually that YOU CAN walk through it.

You can walk through the shit you were exposed to as a child, even the shit that you tell yourself is totally irrelevant and that you shouldn’t be bothered by as an adult, but that does in fact bother you. You can walk through the low self-esteem, the self-judgment, the addictions, and the delusions of grandeur. I guarantee you: if I can, so can you. And I do not say this lightly, because I was in many ways a sucky human being (as I have realized now: I also had some awesome sides to me that I am now starting to give more room to grow and develop) but I was a coward and I was an emotional wreck and I was an addict. I had very little control over myself, if any at all. Yet despite this, I also had a tiny little flicker of life and awareness and integrity within me – and that was what resonated with that message I heard 7 years ago. The real in me could hear the real in what I was listening to and it’s was physically impossible to turn my back on it.

I have changed – and so can you. And I will gladly walk with you and beside you, because there is nothing more honoring than to be part of another person’s self-transformation and seeing someone accessing the potential they have inside them, is the most beautiful sight in the world. It is like seeing the kids who had their lights put out when they stated school, get the light of life back into their eyes.

I could write a list and write all the things I have changed, from how I’ve developed in my professional life – which is an area in which I’ve taken quantum leaps, to how my communications skills have developed and been specified, but I will rather let you see it for yourself, in who I am in my day to day life and in yourself.

Because if I can change – so can you.

What are you waiting for?

Seriously, what are you waiting for? Because your potential is waiting for you. It’s right here, it’s always been right here. And you know what it is – you know exactly what it is. All you have to do is to start living it, even if what you start with is a tiny wobbly baby step of uncertainty and insecurity. One step is all it takes…. and then another… and another.

Artwork by Taylor James

Living The Word: Health. DAY 373

Tags

alternative health, becoming healthy, Desteni, fake health, Health, health as a living word, not wanting to be healthy, redefining the word health, resisting health, true health

In today’s blog I am going to be investigating the word HEALTH.
Health to me is something very dichotomous; I have both very positive and very negative connotations attached to the word health.

As a positive word the word health reminds me of certain women I have met throughout my life who would embrace a ‘healthy life’ to an utmost degree, especially in a more ‘alternative’ way. It is an image of a slender, healthy looking woman who drinks herbal tea and eats plenty of green leafy vegetables, who does yoga and who seems to be in ‘contact’ with her body. It is a woman who honors and respects her body with integrity. It is a woman I look up to and admire, a woman I could only hope to become and that I feel very inadequate towards.

The negative connotation on the other hand is something where I associate the word health with a lot of pressure, but also with fakeness and people, who obsess over health, to a degree where it can even become abusive. I also see health in a negative sense as something quite overwhelming where there are so many different voices and opinions and dogmas about what is health and what is not, that I feel like I am being spun around in circles and cannot seem to find my balance. There is also a lot of morality attached to the word in this sense, as something that I have rebelled against my life. Again I have an image of a woman, but this time she is uptight, anxious, controlling and highly judgmental. She may be vegan or vegetarian or she might have very specific ideas about the consumption of fat or sugar. It is repelling to me.

So, this is where I stand at the moment within my mind when it comes to the word health. Now, let’s have a look at how the word health is defined within the dictionary:

Dictionary Definition

health
hɛlθ/
noun
noun: health
1. the state of being free from illness or injury.
“he was restored to health”
synonyms: good physical condition, healthiness, fitness, physical fitness, well-being, haleness, good trim, good shape, fine fettle, good kilter; More
robustness, strength, vigour, soundness, salubrity
“he was restored to health”
antonyms: illness
o a person’s mental or physical condition.
“bad health forced him to retire”
synonyms: state of health, physical state, physical health, physical shape, condition, constitution, form
“bad health forced him to retire”
o used to express friendly feelings towards one’s companions before drinking.
exclamation: your good health; noun: your health; plural noun: your healths; exclamation: your health
Etymological origin:

health (n.)
Old English hælþ “wholeness, a being whole, sound or well,” from Proto-Germanic *hailitho, from PIE *kailo- “whole, uninjured, of good omen” (cognates: Old English hal “hale, whole;” Old Norse heill “healthy;” Old English halig, Old Norse helge “holy, sacred;” Old English hælan “to heal”). With Proto-Germanic abstract noun suffix *-itho (see -th (2)). Of physical health in Middle English, but also “prosperity, happiness, welfare; preservation, safety.” An abstract noun to whole, not to heal. Meaning “a salutation” (in a toast, etc.) wishing one welfare or prosperity is from 1590s. Health food is from 1848.

Sounding of the word

HEAL-THEE
HEEL-THEE
HEAL-THE
HEAL-TEA
HER-WEALTH
WEALTH
HELD
HELL
HAIL-THE
HEAL-THE-EARTH
HEALED

Exploring the word further

I find it very interesting that the word health etymologically is connected to the words ‘whole/being whole/sound’ as well as ‘heal/holy’and how it is now defined as the absence of illness or injury. I’ve often found that it doesn’t make sense to define words according to what they are Not/in absence of, because that automatically links the word to what it is not, and it is like you can never live a ‘pure’ expression of the word because it will always be connected to what it is not, like a shadow of doom hanging over the word.

Looking as health more in the context of an ‘ideal/optimal’ state of being therefore makes more sense; that being healthy is when you are whole as a human being, which also brings in entirely new definitions besides the ones that are commonly known today related to things like BMI and heart rate and blood sugar values in the body.

Here it is also interesting to then look at the soundings that came up for me where health can be explored in the context of being ‘held’, as one holding oneself and/or being held by the body, a form of support – as well as the sounding of ‘her-wealth’ and ‘heal-the-earth’ implying that there is much more to the word health than meets the eye.

In relation to my own relationship with the word health as you can see, I have been quite divided in my mind into two extremes. I have had a part of me that desperately have wanted to become one of these ‘healthy’ women who seem to be so in tune with their body and have at the same time been so resisting towards a more controlling and fake definition of the word where health seems to be more an external belief that one attaches oneself to, to feel better and more than.

But in the past couple of days I have been looking at the point of allowing my body to heal, or rather supporting it to heal/be restored from everything that I have put it through during my time on earth, and in that sense health can be understood both in the context of bringing the body/mind/being BACK to wholeness as well as the state of being whole – and here is also a context to the world as a whole: without me being the optimal whole I can be, I won’t be the best I can be and I won’t be able to make the full potential of myself to make a difference in this world.

Self-Forgiveness

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create and hold within me a positively charged definition of the word ‘health’ as an ideal image of who I would be if I was ‘healthy’, as a woman that is ‘pure’ and has ‘integrity’ and that is ‘perfect’ within her relationship with her body, never doing anything to harm the body and always doing what is best for the body

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to compare and hold myself up against the ideal image of health that I have created in my mind and to judge and blame myself for not being able to live up to this ideal image, believing that because I am not living that image, I am ‘dirty’ and ‘impure’ and ‘imperfect’ and thus see myself negatively because I am not able to live the ultimate image of positivity and perfection that I have in my mind – not realizing that this ideal I have created is a still image of something I believe to be a constant, but that is not in fact

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create this ideal of perfect health based on women that I have seen and met in my life whom I perceived and believed to be perfect and pure in every way when in fact I was only seeing one dimension that I was comparing myself to

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that health and being healthy does not mean to be perfect but to be and become the whole potential/optimal I can be as body/mind/being

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up on health and becoming healthy within my body because I judged myself as being too far gone to ever achieve the ideal of being healthy that I had created in my mind, which was in fact unrealistic and not grounded in reality but in a fantasy that I created when meeting women whom I saw as healthy and who I wanted to be like, but instead of actually investigating what they were doing, what words they were living, I created an idealized ‘frozen’ image in my mind of perfection and purity that I then defined as ‘health’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that being healthy is about the WHOLE; the being, body and mind and that being completely obsessed with physical health and doing everything ‘right’ is not necessarily the same as being healthy, if there is no balance and one does also not develop health in being and mind

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create and hold within me a negatively charged definition of the word ’health’ as the polar opposite to the idealized positive image, where I see and perceive health as a pressure, specifically a pressure to live up to my idealized idea of what health is

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge health and to judge people who I perceive as ’healthy’ as being phony and fake and rigid, within and as perceiving them as being overly anxious about their health and obsessed about their health and being boring because they do not allow themselves to let loose, which in fact stems from my comparison towards the ideal of health that I have held in my mind that I then react against to justify to myself and make it ok within me that I am not living it – in fact indicating that I am in conflict with concepts in my mind and am trying to balance them out by creating a negative polarity to outweigh the positive so that I can feel better about myself

Self-Corrective Statements

When and as I see myself participating in the image of the ideal of health that I have created in my mind of being a perfect and pure woman of absolute integrity when it comes to health, I stop and I breathe.

I realize that this image and ideal is an illusion I have created in my mind and that it isn’t possible for me to live or achieve this image ideal. I realize that health isn’t about being perfect but about being and becoming the wholeness of myself, the full potential of what I am able of being and becoming in mind, body and being and that this is a process that I have to walk step by step to create and develop within and as myself.

I realize that being pure isn’t simply a matter of consuming certain foods and avoiding others as I do not even yet know what it means to be pure in body, mind or being.

I commit myself to walk a process of bringing myself to health as wholeness and purity within my mind, body and being and I commit myself to specifically investigate the word ‘purity’ further in this context, to understand, embody and live what it means to be pure in body, mind and being.

I commit myself to stand within and develop integrity to bring my body, mind and being to a state and expression of health as being whole within the context of developing my full and optimal potential.

When and as I see that I am accepting and allowing myself to go into an experience of resistance towards being healthy when I hear or see people speaking about health, I stop and I breathe.

I realize that I have placed pressure on myself to live up to an ideal of perfection when it comes to health and that I have compared myself to this ideal and found myself wanting, not realizing that I was comparing myself to a fantasy that has nothing to do with the reality of me actually being healthy.

I commit myself to stop holding myself up against the ideal of health that I’ve created in my mind. I commit myself to let go of the positively charged definition of health that I have created as an ideal of perfection in my mind.

When and as I see that I am accepting and allowing myself to go into an experience of feeling depressed and sad and self-judging because I cannot and do not live up to my ideal of what healthy is supposed to be, I stop and I breathe.

I realize that I can take the word health and live it within and as myself as a living word that is an expression of who I am and I commit myself to create myself within and as the expression of health within the context of healing myself and making myself whole as the optimal potential of myself in body, mind and being that is a process that only I can do for myself, that no one else can tell me how to live or exactly how to do. I commit myself to learn from others and humbly do research and investigate ways that I can live the word health.

Redefinition of the word HEALTH

The state of being or becoming whole as the optimal potential of self in body, mind and being

Self-Honesty as The Key to Freedom. DAY 298

Tags

A Course in Miracles, Being Honest with Yourself, Desteni, Eckhart Tolle, Honesty, Living a Lie, living Lies, Louise Hay, New Years Eve, Self-Honesty, Spirituality

In this blog-post I am sharing how I have lived and expanded (and am continuing to live and expand) what it means to be Self-Honest.

Principle 3. Living by the principle of self-honesty – to ensure I am pure in thought, word and deed: that my within and without is equal and one. Who I am within is who I am without and vice-versa

Read all the principles within The Desteni of Living. My Declaration of Principle. 294

Self-Honesty is the most difficult principle to live and apply. The reason why that is, is because our lives and entire existence have been built on a net of lies.

“Remember – self honesty is the most difficult thing you will ever face as it will be your own self deception as the part you play in the mess as civilization that you will confront and must change if you ever want to become a real living being.” – Bernard Poolman

Before I found Desteni, I was walking a process of trying to free myself from my inner mayhem of emotions and feelings. I perceived myself to be trapped in a body and a personality that I desperately tried to get rid of. I tried ascending and enlightening myself through all kinds of remedies and spiritual paths and at the end of a decade of doing that found myself feeling more and more frustrated. I felt I had exhausted all my resources and no matter what I did I couldn’t get rid of or escape from the parts of myself that I felt weighed me down and prohibited me from participating effectively in my life. So one day I sat down and I had a look at all the paths I had taken and all the tools I had applied from A Course in Miracles to Eckhart Tolle, Louise Hay, Ayahuasca, Deeksha and any and all other personal development and spiritual tools of enlightenment. I was frustrated and I couldn’t understand why nothing had worked, why I hadn’t changed and why I time and time again found myself back at square one, being stuck with the ‘same old me’ that I so desperately wanted to get rid of. So I looked back at the process I had walked and in my mind searched for the tools and remedies that had supported me to accelerate in my process of self-change.

As I was doing that a memory emerged from when I was around seventeen years old and I was sitting alone with myself in my room and I realized how much I had lied to myself throughout my life. In that moment I decided that from now on I would be 100 % honest with myself. From a certain perspective, that was yet another lie because I didn’t actually understand what it meant to be 100 % honest with myself, however making that decision in itself and realizing how the problem was me lying to myself, changed me. And as I was looking back at this memory, I realized that of all the spiritual paths I had taken, of all the money I had spent on books and crystals and seminars, this simple moment alone with myself in my room, had changed me beyond comparison. When I say ‘being honest with myself ‘ in this context, it was about getting real with myself, facing myself where I was and looking myself in the eye so to speak and it especially also had to do with seeing where I was compromising myself in relation to other people. One of the prominent changes in my life that came out of that moment was that I started making choices more based on being honest with myself. I have for example never liked drinking alcohol and yet I would do it anyway to fit in with other people and to be part of the social community with my friends. Since deciding to be honest with myself, I slowly but surely started pulling myself out of the entire party-scene. At first I would go home early from parties and I remember how good it felt to stop forcing myself to try and be part of the group and instead chose what I saw was best for me. Eventually I stopped drinking all together. I remember the first New Years Eve where I didn’t have a drop to drink. I woke up early in the morning to a house where drunken people were scattered everywhere on couches and chairs. I carefully walked over them, got my jacket and went outside. It was one of those winter mornings where the sun is piercingly bright and there is frost everywhere. Everything smelt so fresh, so bright and I took a long walk. It felt so good to have chosen myself and what I knew was right for me. It took me some years to stop drinking completely and to also stop attending such parties and gatherings entirely but I could see how it all sourced back to that moment where I had decided to be honest with myself. I had started a process of giving myself back to myself. When I years later was looking back at my process of self-development, it shocked me to realized that this single decision to be honest with myself had changed me more than any spiritual tool or remedy. It was fascinatingly simple to realize that the answer to changing myself had always existed within me. So when I found Desteni I realized that it was this decision to be honest with myself that had made it possible for me to listen to what was being said in the interviews and on the Desteni forum. I knew and could cross-reference for myself that self-honesty was the single most important component to self-change because I had seen it quite literally for myself. However – I did not yet fully understand what Self-Honesty was and I am still walking the process of discovering Self-Honesty for myself. Self-Honesty is fascinating and complex in that the more I walk my process, the more I realize how dishonest I am. That’s the process of self-honesty. Something that was self-honest earlier in my process I know realize is self-dishonest. An example is how I early in my process stopped attending family gatherings and holidays. It is something that I never enjoyed doing and I never saw the purpose of. So at the time, I was being self-honest in recognizing how there was no real purpose in me attending these gatherings. I only did it because it was expected of me, to keep up appearances and because “That is how we’ve always done it.” It was so liberating to finally stop moving with the turning wheels of tradition and being able to step out of the entire consumerism scam of having to give gifts on birthdays and holidays. But as I continued with my process, I realized how I had blamed my family and how I had judged these gatherings, when in fact it was my own experience within them I was trying to escape. Now I can more freely decide when to attend and when not, where it isn’t based on a sense of duty and obligation when I do and where it isn’t a matter of judgment and resistance when I don’t. So there are layers to self-honesty where, as we become more self-honest we keep expanding our self-honesty and it never really ends. The more I push myself to be self-honest, the more I realize how extensively I’ve been lying to myself. On the other hand there is also what is referred to as Absolute Self-Honesty and this is what I am continuously pushing for in my process, because, as I have realized, our entire existence is based on lies. This means that virtually every gesture, every word; every blink of an eye is saturated in lies. And so from that perspective, even the idea that self-honesty is layered according to where one is in one’s process, is a lie. So it is a multi-dimensional process where nothing can be taken for granted and where we must in every moment keep peeling off the layers of lies that we have engrossed ourselves within. What I have found is that it is very easy to fool and placate oneself into a time-loop and a plateau where nothing changes because of beliefs and ideas. As such self-honesty is not something that can be taken for granted and if one does, one can be sure that one is lying to oneself. It is the essence of the esoteric expression: “If you see the Buddha, kill him.” If you think that you’ve become enlightened and that you’re now done with your process, if you find yourself in a place of serenity and bliss, that’s when you want to be worried and go back to square one of Self-Honesty asking the basic questions: “Where am I?” “What is my starting-point?” And “Who am I?”

“There is no Truth, only Denial of what is Here” – Bernard Poolman

When I read this statement back in the early days of my process it made a significant impact on me, because all my life I had been searching for ‘the truth’ in one way or another. And this ‘truth’ that I had been searching for was now, with one statement, invalidated to oblivion with the simple basic fact that what we should be searching for are all the lies that are preventing us from seeing what is Real, what is Here in fact. So while my spiritual process emphasized escaping myself on one hand and on the other embellishing who I believed I was, the process I started walking with Desteni was about removing the layers that prevented me from simply being and Living Here. The simplicity is so striking that our minds cannot fathom it as it thrives on complexities and unsolved mysteries. Becoming Self-Honest is the single most important part of this process and it is something that I have to push within myself on a daily basis. Within this, writing has been the anchor, the lie detector that is so important and so empowering. Through waking with Desteni these past 5 years I have learned that Self-Honesty means to Stand-With Myself, no matter what I am or what I have lived. That doesn’t mean that I have to accept what I have been or how I have Lived or that I cannot expand or change myself. It means to stop pretending that I am something and someone that I am not, neither good or bad, neither more or less. Self-Honesty means to stop running and to start facing myself, in the bare naked truth of what is here as Who I am, to first remove the lies, so that I can discover what was underneath it, all along. No one can be Self-Honest for me and within that is the realization that our processes is in our own hands. I Stand Responsible for me. And so I walk.

Here are some more links to Expand on the Principle of Self-Honesty:

http://wiki.destonians.com/Self-Honesty

Self-Honesty as The Key to Self-Change

It is TIME to Change – Reptilians – Part 150

The Solution of Life

Anu on Honesty vs. Self-Honesty – Part 153

The History of Desteni

Investigate Desteni, investigate the forum where on is invited to write oneself out in self-honesty and where any questions regarding the Desteni Material will be answered by Destonians who are walking their own process. Visit the Destonian Network where videos and blogs are streamed daily. Suggest to also check out the Desteni I Process and Relationship courses as well as the FREE DIP Lite course

Related articles

• Day 498: Be your own lie detector
• 399. What is Missing in this World for Real Change?
• 400. How to Best Contribute to Each Other’s Lives?
• The Words of the Desteni Group Dissected: DAY 221
• day 576: converting people is useless.
• 391. Noah’s Revelations
• The Words of the Desteni Group Dissected
• Bernard Poolman – Living The Word Alive: DAY 231

Changing our Brainwashed Value-System to Principled Living: DAY 239

Tags

Conditioning, Desteni, Desteni Group, Forgiveness, Intimate relationship, Living Principled, Philosophy, Physical body, Positional notation, Principled Living, true values, Understanding

In this post I will be prescribing self-corrective and self-commitment statements on the point of valuing things that aren’t actually valuable and that in fact are detrimental and destructive. I see that the pattern is still existent within me; I see its subtleties and how it is so ingrown that it’s not going to be changed from one moment to the next. Of course one can correct points within a moment, however the point of valuing that, which isn’t valuable in fact, is basically a fundamental problem in reality in general. So we’re dealing with virtually all aspects of our lives, virtually every moment we live and breathe. So there are many values to correct and I see that the best way is to walk the correction of them one by one as I see them emerge in my reality.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been working with the point of value, specifically in relation to valuing things that aren’t actually valuable, in the sense that I’ve for example found that I valued doing things that weren’t supportive for me or my physical body. Something quite interesting that has happened within this process is that, as I’ve started opening up the point for myself, it has only gotten ‘worse’ – meaning that I’ve increasingly been giving value to that which isn’t best for me. Practically speaking, I’m talking about seemingly ‘little’ moments during my day, where I prioritize based on self-interest rather than principle. It could be eating something that I know my body cannot handle. And as I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve found it difficult to understand why we would do something like that. Well, it boils down to some quite simple yet intricate pattern that one develops through one’s life. In my case, I come from a family where my mother did exactly the same. Throughout my life, she’s been a ‘quarterly’ alcoholic in the sense that she’s been battling an addiction to alcohol as long as I can remember. But she wouldn’t drink every day all year round. Instead she would have these binges and then pick herself up again and get strict and disciplined for some time, until she would fall into the pattern again and have some weeks drinking every day. So from that perspective, I’ve carried this pattern through with me, perhaps genetically and definitely from an environmentally influencing perspective. I see how this is a prominent point in my process and in my daily living, because it something from within which I generate a lot of inner conflict and thus generate energy for the mind. This is obviously the purpose of such patterns in the first place. So what I have realized is that this point has to do with making the decision to live principled. For some people this might not be a big deal or issue – though at the same time, very few people live principled and even if they think and believe they do, it’s often based on self-control and suppression with the possible consequence of one exploding and bursting one day because one cannot contain oneself any longer.

So principled living is something that I have never ever done in my life. The only place I’ve ever met principled living, is within the Desteni group. And while I’ve definitely established a somewhat principled life, there are also still points where ‘preference’ ‘wins’ over principle. Something else that I’ve realized is that even though writing about this point from an overall general perspective is cool, what is actually required is for me to get into the nitty gritty of how I prioritize, how I pick preference over principles and what specifics points in my life it is where I tend to ‘fall’ into this pattern. Something fascinating as well is that as I’ve been walking this point these past weeks, and I’ve seen it getting worse or more intense, I’ve also allowed myself to take it personally, to react to it and specifically to feel like I’m a bad person because of it. But now that I sit down and write, I can see in common sense, that it is in fact specific points that I’ve allowed myself to compromise, whereas with other points, I’ve in fact lived principled. On the other hand, I also see how, if we allow even one point of self-corruption, it actually corrupts our entire process and standing within ourselves. And this is obviously also what I’ve reacted to.

SELF-COMMITMENT STATEMENTS

When and as I see that I am about to accept and allow myself to act on an energetic urge to eat something that I know isn’t best for me, I stop and I breathe and I bring myself back here. I remind myself that I am about to act based on a preprogrammed, brainwashed belief and preference and valuing of something that I’ve conditioned myself into valuing as tasting good – that isn’t actually what is best for me, as I’ve now built an understanding of what in fact IS best for myself as my physical body. I also remind myself that it isn’t worth it because I know that the consequence is that I will feel like shit afterwards and as such by acting on this urge, I’m valuing myself as the mind over life. So therefore – I commit myself to from this moment stop eating refined sugar. I commit myself to walk with myself a process to live principled in every moment and to, in every moment that I see that I don’t live principled, to gently guide myself back with a caring and directive hand.

When and as I see that I’m accepting and allowing myself to place value on something that I know isn’t best for me and so not best for all, I stop and I breathe and I bring myself back to my physical body in stability. I commit myself to work with correcting the point immediately, through simply realigning my actions to that which is best for all and I commit myself to, when I see that I’m still holding on to this point of value, to investigate the point in self-honesty through writing and self-forgiveness, so that I can effectively de-program myself and re-program myself to valuing that which is best for me and so best for all. Because I realize that when I’m holding on to a point of value that I know isn’t best for all, it is because I’ve accepted and allowed myself to become brainwashed and programmed to live and exist in a way that is flawed and ineffective and as such I require re-educating myself and re-programming myself so that I can make a directive decision to realign myself effectively to that which is best for me and so best for all.

Investigate Desteni, investigate the forum where on is invited to write oneself out in self-honesty and where any questions regarding the Desteni Material will be answered by Destonians who are walking their own process. Visit the Destonian Network where videos and blogs are streamed daily. Suggest to also check out the Desteni I Process and Relationship courses as well as the FREE DIP Lite course

Interviews that Expand on the point of making Practical Decisions:

• Why your Weakest Points are your Greatest strength – Life Review

• Life Review – The Path of Money

• Life Review – Acceptance and Allowance vs. The Decision

• Reptilians – Facing Choice (Part 1) – Part 107

• Reptilians – Facing Choice (Part 2) – Part 108

• I Fear Missing out – Life Review

• The Life Review of an Avoider of Choices 

• How Thoughts Create Physical Reality

• Why Fear Feels Different to Different People

Related articles

• Brainwashed to a Flawed Value-System: DAY 236
• Are the Values We Proclaim to Have, Our Real Values? DAY 235
• Day 68: Response Seeker Personality
• Day 59: Automatic Defense and Protection-mode
• Day 58: Fear in Relation to Having My Own Business
• Day 66: From Personal To Physical Living
• The Making and Remediation of A Sexual Predator: DAY 20
• Day 62: Touch and Natural Physical Expression

 

Bernard Poolman – Living The Word Alive: DAY 231

Tags

bernardpoolman, Desteni, Desteni Farm, Dog, Experience, Human, Meaning of life, Mind, Oneness and Equality, Sunette Spies, The Living Word, Youtube

When people die, we write R.I.P on their gravestones. But the World will not Rest in Peace and nor will we until we have Gathered the Pieces of ourselves and brought all of ourselves back together again as Life. This is what I learned from Bernard.

The first time I heard Bernard speak in the end of 2008, it was through a video on You Tube. I heard this distinct voice with a clear accent that I could not place and immediately I experienced a reaction within myself, almost like my insides was shaking. One of the first things I noticed was how Bernard would speak all around a point in a way I had never heard before – embracing all aspects of a point and do so while swearing! It was one of the most liberating experiences I had ever experienced. Here was a man who spoke the truth of what was going on in the world, straight up, no bullshit, no romantic words of pep talk, but instead self-honest in-your-face support. I felt like I had landed for the first time in my entire life in a spot where everything finally made sense. But not in a pretty way – in a pretty fucked up way. There was no distance anymore with an idea of a world outside of this one or a meaning to life besides what is already here in and as this messed up reality. What is here is what is here – and now there was someone able to explain every single question I had ever had. It was scary and amazing and saddening all at once. I started feeling a deep love and appreciation for Bernard while a part of me wanted to shut his voice out and turn of the video. I literally felt sick from facing myself for the first time through meeting myself in Bernard’s words. I could not hide from this man. This man refused to hide. I had never met or seen or heard of anyone ever being like Bernard was and it was as if my entire life was reset and I had to start over from scratch. Now – this is not because Bernard was doing something to me – it was clearly myself I faced in Bernard’s words – words that resonated to the very core of my being –, which I knew without any doubt or lingering that was true. The best way to explain my experience was that until then I had felt like I was very small in a big world and after finding Desteni and Bernard, I experienced the world as being very small and suddenly it was my inner world that seemed so infinitely big. This I learned, is the virtual world we’ve created through and within our minds – it isn’t real. So I learned about the Mind and how we have created ourselves in separation from and abdication of ourselves through, within and as the mind.

I lived together with Bernard on the Desteni farm for nearly a year. I have visited the farm three times. When I initially came to the farm I was extensively afraid of meeting Bernard. At that stage I was still coming from a spiritual perspective and believed in the renouncement of material belongings, so when I came to the farm and saw all the food, the dogs, the liters of coffee being drunk every day, the mess and all the people, I was absolutely astounded. There were literally dogs everywhere and in the middle of it all was Bernard, a completely ordinary and extraordinary man, talking, watching movies, playing virtual slot machines and pushing everyone’s buttons to the max.

Whenever Bernard came into the room, I would feel so nervous because I knew that he would see through my bullshit, that he could see all sides of me, even the ones I was hiding from myself. Sometimes Bernard would push my buttons to provoke a reaction and only later would I realize what had happened – and gratefully laugh at my own sillyness and Bernard’s ability to call bullshit on me. Sometimes he would not speak at all. Other times he would simply be, hang out, stand by the grill or do the laundry. Yes – that is right, Bernard did the laundry! He did everyone’s dirty laundry, clean and fresh and folded for your pleasure.

At some point I realized that Bernard would be whatever I required to be reflected – so if I hated myself, he would reflect that back to me. I started seeing Bernard as a black hole that can contain anything and everything at once and that will become whatever you are so that you can face yourself. And I understood that only when I would stand equal to Bernard – as him, with him, would I see the real Bernard. The Bernard that is also simply a man – a man who has walked a process. A process that he pushed himself to walk, that he walked all alone and that he now shares with all of us, as we share our processes with each other as well. What is so fascinating is within how we say at Desteni that everything is in reverse – because Bernard is properly one of the most prominent examples of that. Bernard was loud, scary, and rude or whatever you’d perceive him to be – and at the same time, he was the manifestation of love in the flesh. Real love – not mushy love. As such Bernard once said that; “love per se -is the act of life assisting the delusion to give up its illusion–that is in its very nature brutal — and not some fuzzy word that give some a place of superiority purely due to the genetic predisposition to have a higher intelligence” And that is exactly what I saw in Bernard as well – that is the living word of Bernard.

When Bernard would support me and share with me points about myself, I learned to Breathe and not resist the words and to simply be still inside myself and let the words resonate through my body. Ironically I have never been so calm or so stable in my entire life as when Bernard was giving me the brutal truth about myself and what I have accepted and allowed myself to exist within and as. Because Bernard’s words is absolute – they are embracing, direct and they come from a starting-point of equality and self-forgiveness, to not accept anything less from each of us than that that which is best for all life. Bernard is properly the only human being I have ever trusted fully and at the same time, Bernard would do, say and be whatever it took to wake you up from your state of inner self-delusion and deception. Bernard was always supporting me to realize myself, even if it meant supporting me in lying to myself or confirming me in my self-judgment.

For this is I am grateful, because within this Bernard has assisted me immensely in realizing what I was doing to myself, what I was accepting and allowing, without enforcing realizations upon me that I would then be indebted to Bernard through forever.  There are many beings, including myself who’s had the tendency to follow Bernard as though he was a guru, a god or a father figure and I am sure that Bernard carefully made sure that any illusions of grandeur about him is removed so that the person can concentrate on themselves and not on worshiping Bernard.

Living with Bernard was interesting, but at the same time not as thrilling as one might think. From an entirely different perspective, it was the most thrilling experience of my life. Living with a being and watching a Being exist, who has no limits, no morals, no conscience, no fear, no feelings and no mind, makes for some pretty interesting experiences. For example: Bernard slept when he was tired and this means that there was no schedule or specific rhythm, because that is (obviously) something we’ve created within the constructs of this world according to the mind. So Bernard was up at all times of the day and night and in the beginning I did not even think that Bernard even slept at all. He always had at least 10 dogs around him. It is not something he told them to do. He wasn’t petting them like most people pet their animals.  Sometimes he would provide support if the animal was having an experience of its own or is indicating a point as a side effect to the general process. Bernard would touch them though and they would all sleep on top of him When he went to the toilet they would wait outside. One time Bernard asked me why I think they follow him and he shared with me that it is because he was a point of stability for them. He was the physical manifested as solid, firm unconditional support. And that is what he has been to many of us.

A point I noticed about Bernard was that he would wait with eating until everyone else had eaten. He would make sure that everyone was okay. If an animal required medical care, he would immediately ensure it, even if it meant driving far away late at night. If someone, animal or human had expressed a specific desire for some food or beverage, Bernard would buy it for them. When there were children on the farm, Bernard did not treat them special or as inferior. He would look at their expression and their situation exactly as he would with any other being and see how he could assist.  If someone, animal or human was acting in a way that is unacceptable, Bernard would make sure that the point was directed to self-correction. He would walk with the dogs in the morning sunlight and simply embrace the world in support and care and the humbleness that Bernard lived, is something I am not even able to describe within the capacity of my current vocabulary. Bernard stands one and equal with all life.

If I would complain about the load of work I had to do, Bernard would give me more work. Or if I placed special value in something or defined myself as more because of it, Bernard would point it out and tease me about it – this he did, not because he was evil – but because he understood that a practical, physical and tangible re-education is required, for each of us to stop living within and as self-interest in the delusion of the mind – of desires and fears and to start living here in common sense self-honesty.  So when I got more work, I started realizing that I had created the idea of it being “too much” as a point of delusion. I realized that I had defined myself according to it or held onto it out of fear of losing it. I don’t know anyone else in the world, who’s able to support Beings like that – so brutal – so direct  – so absolutely spot-on, every time.

One time when I was doing laundry, I dropped a piece of clothes out from the washing machine while I was emptying it. Bernard came by and he firmly informed me that what I was doing was spiteful against life, that I could not even have the care to make sure that this piece of clothes did not touch the floor. It was a shock to hear that such a small point – is how I saw it at the time – could indicate such a point of abuse and inequality. But I slowly but surely started realizing how I was in fact living as spitefulness, as disregard, in most of my actions.

Of all the things I learned from Bernard and while being on the farm, this was probably one of the most important. I learned that you cannot say you stand for something, if you do not live it in every moment of every breath to the fullest. Bernard would literally educate me, through assisting me to expand my understanding and awareness of my reality and through the example of those living together on the farm, who had already walked process for some time. It has actually only been recently that I have started realizing the difference this has made in my life and in how and as who I live. There are so many seemingly small points of practical physical living in and through which I have learned to be specific, diligent, caring and considering and I can see now, where I am living in an agreement, how important those points are. To understand that what you are doing when you let the water run for no apparent reason other than it being convenient or because you never considered doing it differently, is spiteful. To understand that living what is best for all is something that we can and must apply in every moment of living here, looking practically in common sense at our reality and applying ourselves according to what is – in fact – best for all life.

Through Bernard’s example, I have learned to care for and take care of animals. I have come to appreciate animals from an entirely different perspective. I have learned to appreciate self-discipline and structure. I have learned to get up in the morning immediately upon my first Breath. I have learned to support others as I have been supported. These things might sound small and insignificant, but when all these – and more – points are gathered, as all the breaths of a day – or a life time- it is clear that what we are doing is starting to create a world that is best for all. A world where each of us stand self-responsible, self-trusting and self-directed in equality.

My life has been forever changed because of Bernard Poolman. Because he dared to walk his process for himself, alone through fear, through losing everything, his family, his money, his sanity, until only he was left, self-forgiving and self-embracing in equality with and as all life  – He did it without any instructions or manual, because when he walked his process, there was no group walking-with, which is what we have created for ourselves now, as Desteni, the I process and the constant stream of material, information and support we supply 24/7 online.

Many beings will be sad because Bernard has died – but his death is not about keeping a legacy alive, hell no – we’re not going to ‘honor his memory’. He would have said: “fuck that.” lol – Honoring Bernard is honoring ourselves as life – Honoring Bernard is sharing the Living Word as it has been shared with us and to stand in every moment of Breath here walking the process of establishing a world that is best for all. I will miss Bernard tremendously and I am eternally grateful to have met him. But even for those who haven’t met Bernard in person – it is not a loss. Because Bernard was never about the personal. He said: “You must become me as I am you, so that we can trust each other no matter where we are, no matter who we are.”

I have never loved anyone the way I loved Bernard. I have never respected anyone the way I respected Bernard. I have never trusted anyone the way I trusted Bernard. I have never been challenged or supported by anyone the way that Bernard challenged and supported me. Bernard showed me the potential of what is possible – of what I can become if I stand up within myself.

Bernard is that part of us that has dared to stand up for life – that has dared to not only say that “enough is enough” but to actually live it in every moment of every breath – no fear – no compromise. Bernard stands with and as all of us, as our own brutal self-honesty – the only remedy that will cure this world from the delusion that we’ve allowed ourselves to live and become. Bernard is the side of all of us that has taken the first step to birth ourselves as life – now it is up to each of us to take the next.

Investigate Desteni, investigate the forum where on is invited to write oneself out in self-honesty and where any questions regarding the Desteni Material will be answered by Destonians who are walking their own process. Visit the Destonian Network where videos and blogs are streamed daily. Suggest to also check out the Desteni I Process and Relationship courses as well as the FREE DIP Lite course

Related articles

• Be Your Own ‘Chosen One’: DAY 230
• The Desteni Group – is it a Cult? Facts and Fiction: DAY 222
• The Desteni Group and the Journey to Integrity: DAY 226
• Hiding from Self Through Falling in Love (Relationship Paranoia Pt. 9) DAY 220
• Day 190: Is Desteni a scam? Part 4
• Day 458: Facts and Feelings: How to Stop and Prevent Brainwashing