Tag Archives: lack

Day 383: Projections and Imaginations

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I find it easy to become distracted by material things. For a while I have becoming increasingly enthusiastic, and equally anxious about changing/altering/refining certain parts of my living quarters. From being an innocent hobby, it has escalated, and moved, and now, I am basically daily imagining and fantasizing about new projects. The problem is that it is done, usually, from a starting point of anxiety, from a starting point of lack, where I perceive that there is something amiss in my life at the moment, and that I desperately need to direct/change/alter the point in order to streamline my life. Hence, the problem is not the actual changes, alterations I want to make, the problem is WHO I AM. I see this experience as symptomatic – and fact is that I suspect it actually originates in a different part of my life – and that it then moves itself into for example the dimension of my life where I deal with hobbies.

Thus – the problem I would say – the actual deep rooted problem – is my habit of approaching things from within and as a starting point of lack/anxiety – because if I would have not done that – then the projects I see around my home would simply have been that – projects – that I might or might not get to one day that does not change WHO I AM in anyway what-so-ever. That is the point that I want to get to. Because I do not want to distract myself, and exist in this state of continuous fear/lack/anxiety that I am missing something, or that there is something I should be doing, that I am not doing. I will thus push myself to live the word abundance – to embrace the abundance that is all around me in my life in the form of the physical with all its various expressions – nature, breathing, sensations, physical relationships, I mean there is so much to be aware of and discover, that disappears when I accept and allow my mind to be cluttered by anxiety/fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take on new projects in my mind, and then become stressed when I notice that I do not have the time to fulfill/walk them completely, and then become stressed and anxious, because I still try to walk and complete them – and within this I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question this behavior – to not question why I feel that need and urge to continue walking and pushing myself to complete and fulfill a particular point even though I notice there is not enough time

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become obsessed with taking on and moving new points into and as a form of fulfillment and completion – and thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become obsessed with wanting to make my environment, my life, and my world seem perfect, and then create, and form all of these projects in my mind that I perceive I have to get to and finish for my life, and world to become what I want it to become, instead of remaining stable, and questioning this way of approaching life, questioning, why the hell I get this experience within me, and why I feel there is such a shortage of time, and why I require, or feel the requirement, and need to push myself so severely, and harshly, to ‘get by’ and ‘make it’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become obsessed with achieving perfection in my outside world and reality – not seeing, realizing and understanding how this is literally a distraction – something that captures the attention of my mind – a point that I get focused and hooked upon – where I then lose touch and connection with reality because all of myself – all of my mind – is caught up in this state and experience of wanting to achieve perfection – picture perfection

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become obsessed with wanting to achieve material perfection through altering and changing my life to make sure that all parts of it works – and is perfect – that there is no flow – no mistake – nothing in my life that in anyway gives away that there is a problem and difficulty in my life – and thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use this way of becoming obsessed with the material side of my world as a way to escape and distract myself from walking my inner process of self-change and movement

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand what this tendency is showing to me – is that I too serious within myself when it comes to material success in this world – and that I am accepting and allowing myself to be all too possessed with making sure that I acquire material success and notoriety – and thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not take a breath – and smell the roses – to push myself to walk in the moment and not be so serious and determined to reach some kind of future that is not even here – to reach a future that I am not even able to at this moment clarify to myself exactly where it is that I am going and why

When and as I see myself going into a imagination, looking at, projecting myself into the future, from a starting point of lack/anxiety/fear – I immediately stop myself – I take a breath and I bring myself back here – and I see, realize and understand that this way of approaching life is not realistic – it is based on a idea of lack and that I have to fight/move/push hard in order to stabilize my value and get to a point of equality – instead of embracing my equality HERE – embracing the abundance that is HERE – seeing, realizing and understanding that I do not need nor do I require to accept and allow myself to limit who I am according to what I am able to produce and build, create, in the external – and thus I commit myself to breathe – to let go of material possessions and the anxiety/fear related to these – and I commit myself to live abundance within and as every moment of breath – to use each moment to integrate and stand with and as my human physical body – and the abundance that is HERE

 

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Day 377: Why Limit Self-Creation?

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“There is no time for me to express! Work, labor, having to get money to survive, it is using up all of my time!”
Recognize this backchat and the oftentimes accompanying emotions of stress, pressure, regret and nervousness? Since I began working full time, I have been finding myself thinking this a couple of times, because working, compared to studying, time wise there is a huge difference. Work requires a different form of investment, you must be physically at work, you must push and drive yourself forward, there is usually a lack of time, and there must be results. When studying, you can read your books wherever you like, and you choose your level of ambition, where you want position your standards so to speak. All in all, studying is a lot more flexible and less physically demanding.

However, we live in a world where work is mandatory. We live in a world where our time must be used to get money so that we can survive. We live in a world where money gives us the right to exist – and hence – we HAVE to work – there is no other way around it. Even though we would ideally like to spend all of our time exploring our hobbies and interests, it is not possible, not yet at least. Thus, for me, it is been big changeover, going from studies to work. And one point that I have had to remind myself of continuously is that it is not about WHAT I DO – it is about WHO I AM within what I do. And I do see this understanding as the solution to the inner conflict, because when I stop placing a focus on where I should be, what I should be doing, who I should be meeting, I open up a space for myself, HERE, that I can step into – and then from there – step into the REAL world. And the real world is never set up according to my expectations, though it is in the real world where I have the opportunity to influence, to change, to move, to push; to CREATE myself – and that is meaningful.

SELF-CREATION is the forgotten ingredient in all of our lives. It has become normal to look for something or someone out there to make ourselves feel whole, our lives meaningful, though regardless of how much we look, regardless of the places we visit, the homes we build, the works we get, the people we meet, the hobbies we acquire – unless SELF-CREATION is part of the equation – everything we do feels incomplete – it lacks that something we cannot really put our finger on.

Hence – WORK – and the time we spend there – it is all about WHAT WE MAKE OF IT – it is time that we can use to CREATE ourselves – or it is time that we can waste feeling stuck/controlled/diminished. This is the choice we have – to either fully immerse ourselves in all aspects and parts of our lives and use our time to CREATE – or remain stuck in an illusory world of ideals, hopes and dreams for something better and more.

I have decided to embrace work as a part of my life – as a part of WHO I AM – and I have decided to make work a part of my life where I am CREATING MYSELF.

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Day 374: Irrational Priorities

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For a while I have pushed myself to take on and develop carpentry as a hobby for myself. In this process I have come up with and walked several creative projects in and around my house, which I have found enjoyable, fascinating and challenging. However, in taking on this hobby, I also became aware of another pattern – that of irrational prioritization and placing an unmotivated amount of value on projects/things/tasks – that in turn creates stress, anxiety and worry.

Irrational prioritization is when something, that when observed in a wider context, is of no real impact, is seen as REALLY important. This happened to me with my carpentry hobby. I would come home from work and be tired, cook food, and then to my great dismay find that I had only a small amount of time left to devote myself to my hobby. Other times I would find that I had no time at all. Because of this I started to feel stress and resentment – stress because I had no time to do what I wanted to do/felt was important for me to accomplish – and resentment – because I felt that my work was stealing all of my valuable time that I could have devoted to my hobby.

However, I realized that I could not continue this way of relating to my hobby – and I saw that there was a misalignment with regards to how I prioritized my time. I looked at the point and saw the following: My hobby, it must be something that I do for and as myself, something where I develop and expand myself, my skills, my application, and where I do so as a moment of enjoyment. Carpentry as such is not something that requires me to complete projects, and there is no need to feel stress when I do not have enough time to apply myself within the hobby during a couple of days.

What is of REAL priority and REAL necessity in my life is in-fact such things as MONEY, FOOD, WATER, CLOTHES, TRANSPORTATION, HOUSING, HYGIENE – if those things are not in place there will be consequences – and thus they are a real of REAL importance – REAL priority. If those points are not aligned effectively, and I do not have enough time to get to them, there is a real problem – however – when I do not have enough time to get to my hobby – that is not a problem – it is not an issue – it is simply me not having the time to commit to my hobby.

Thus – what I have come to see is that a lot of my stress have been based on irrational assessments as to how important certain things are in my life. When I have defined and established the real priority/importance of a task/activity – it has been a lot easier to structure my life and move myself without stress. If I have had to little time to get to all the things I have wanted to accomplish, it has been easy to let go of the points that are of no real consequence – and then continue with my day.

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Day 357: Money and Dis-empowerment

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After listening to the Eqafe Interviews Power Play With Money and Freeing Your Mind From Money, in which it was suggested to write about money and its relationship to the emotion of dis-empowered, I have decided to do just that.

Money, either we have it, or we do not. And when we have it, the world is our oyster, and when we do not, there is nothing we are able to do, as everything in this world requires money. This is a polarity in itself, where money either gives us opportunities, or completely removes them. Hence, it is not strange that the lack of money is linked to the emotion of dis-empowerment, because without money, we are dis-empowered to realize our desires, dreams and hopes.

However, the way I see it, the lack of money is but part of the problem. Because as important as the negative polarity is to look at, let us not forget, that when we do have a lot of money, this is accompanied with feelings of great joy and feeling empowered to take on the world, and do whatever it is that we want to do. We have thus separated ourselves from the word empowered and dis-empowered and we have defined these words in relationship to money. And that is obviously a problem, because how can we ever stand stable, consistent, and directive within our lives, if our underlying strength comes from money. The moment money is gone, then so will our strength, fortitude, and momentum.

It is not unusual that people commit suicide due to financial losses and maybe the reason for that is what I mentioned above. When the money leaves our world, so does our will to live, our directive principle, our desire to move, motivate, create and expand – and the only option we seem to have would be to commit suicide. Though, obviously, this is experience is artificial. It is not natural or sane to base our character, our deepest convictions, and reason for living, on the abundance or lack of money. And hence, if we really want to stand and make the most of ourselves, this is a point that must be changed. We must make sure that we are not controlled by money, but that money is a tool that we use and nothing more.

If we base ourselves, our life, on that which is not dependent on the fluctuations and changes of the world system – then we will empower ourselves to stand through the worst, and be stable in facing the best. Jesus put it nicely when he said:

“Everyone therefore who hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house on a rock. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it didn’t fall, for it was founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of mine, and doesn’t do them will be like a foolish man, who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”

— Matthew 7:24–27, World English Bible

This shows that when we create and define our character, not by measuring ourselves in relation the ideals of the world system, but instead by our own, inner commitment, devotion and steadfastness, and by living/creating/standing by our own self-created purpose and direction, then having less or no money will not be experienced as an emotion of dis-empowerment – as we will instead look for solutions and how to best handle the upcoming situation. Hence, our life will be built on a rock. Because we are only dis-empowered when we accept and allow ourselves to be dis-empowered – as long as we are HERE – we have a varying range of things we can do to direct our lives the way we want them to be – that is not dependent on money – unless obviously – we make it so.

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Day 356: Creating Time, or Chasing Time

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There is time, and then there is the perception of time. Usually, the latter will be emotionally charged in some way – for example – with stress. Problems arise when we define our relationship with time through the perception of time, instead of seeing time exactly for what it is. Recently, I have started to look into and challenge my own perception of time – and I have seen a couple of interesting things.

First point: When I am on my way to work, or when I am at work as well, sometimes I get an urge to listen to some music, read a little bit in a newspaper, chat with a colleague, or do something that is not ‘productive’ in the sense that it does not relate to my work responsibilities. In such moments, I have noticed how I put myself off, through reasoning with myself that I do not have enough time. For example, I will not take up my phone and listen to music, because I think that the process of grabbing my phone, plugging in my headphones, and finding a song, will take too much time. Or, I will not stop to chat with a colleague, because I believe that I am then wasting my time, missing moments that I could have applied to get things done in my work. Hence, I will not give myself that small moment of pleasure and believe that I am through being strict with myself in this way save a lot of time.

Second point: My workload can be divided into two categories. Either it is work that have been planned since some time back, that I am able to foresee, or it is work that comes at a moments notice, that must take priority and get done before any of the planned work. Obviously, the unplanned parts of my work then ripples into the planned parts of my work, and disrupts the latter. Each time this happens, I have become tense, stressed, and anxious, that I will now not have enough time to complete the planned parts of my work. The thought comes up within that I do not have enough time! What I have done to solve this point is to start cutting corners, and obviously that is not supportive.

Now, here the turnaround. Lately I have begun to experiment with changing my relationship to time. To for example, give myself a moment to talk with my colleague, or listen to that song, or enjoy and push myself to walk through the unplanned parts of my work with diligence and detail. I have realized an interesting through doing this: TIME is usually not an issue! Yes, it is fascinating. I have found that usually, even though I give myself these moments, there will be sufficient with time for me left to get done what is needed to get done.

This goes to show two points: Firstly, we cannot trust our perception of time – that is to say our emotional relationship to time – because that is not a clear relationship and does not give us a true representation of time. Secondly, we actually use our time more effectively, and we are more productive, when we are not constantly chasing time, trying to save time, and make sure that we have the time that we need. Because if we do that, we will create imbalance, and that will in turn lead to us not being as focused, and as deeply committed and present to what we are doing HERE as we would be otherwise.

Thus, in giving ourselves time to ‘smell the roses’ of life – we are actually supporting ourselves to be a lot more effective in our day to day living – really – when we GIVE ourselves time – suddenly we have MORE time – is not that interesting? And when we chase time, we feel as if we have less time. It is all about perspective, where we can either approach our reality with a lack-perspective, and thus also create that lack – or we can approach our reality with a clear starting point where we USE our time to CREATE and GIVE ourselves and others moments of SUPPORT, ASSISTANCE and ENJOYMENT.

I find it very fascinating to see how the creation process of our daily living is so connected with WHO WE ARE on a beingness level.

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Day 336: Aligning Self To Reality

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What I have liked to do in my life when it comes to interests and hobbies is to commit myself a 100 percent to them. I have enjoyed making one sole point the center of my existence, pushing that one point as far as I have been able to. This way of immersing myself in interests have allowed me to develop skills and abilities fast, and reach goals that I had set for myself. I loved and still do love the process of taking on something new, a to me completely unknown technique, and then putting in the time to master point. The process of learning and expanding I find to be very rewarding and fulfilling, and it is fascinating to look back and see the progress that has happened.

However, growing up in this world, having to survive and make a living for myself, things change. It is not anymore possible for me to dedicate all of my time and energy to only one particular aspect of my world, as I have many other responsibilities and commitments that needs to be cared for daily. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it simply means that things have changed, my life is not anymore the way it was ten years, and because of that, the way I approach interests and hobbies must align as well. And this is what I would like to discuss in this blog, how we tend to limit ourselves in our self-expression through attempting and trying to re-live memories of the past instead of looking at the possibilities and state of our current life, and aligning our self-expression to the new conditions.

This is an example picked from my own life. Before I started to work, and before I moved to a big farm property, when I was still studying and living in a small tenant flat, I used to love recording music. I would sit for hours and play with sounds, record segments, and practice my instrumental parts to perfection. I experienced these moments as deeply fulfilling and enjoyable. However, as is the case with must students, my university studies got to an and, and a new chapter began in my life, where I now had to go out and find work for myself. Hence, this is what I did, which decreased the time I had available for music drastically. Then, as I have touched upon above, I moved to a big farm property, which for those that are not aware comes with a great amount of maintenance work, thus further decreasing the time I had available.

I realized that I did not anymore have the time necessary to sit down and pursue my interest for music in the same way as I had done in my past. My life had changed, yet my interest and desire to express myself within making music had not. This initially created a lot of conflict within me, and I blamed my work, where I live, and the amount of time that I had to place into ‘survival’ related points. The problem was that I could not fit in my hour long sessions the way that I had done before, and that made me feel limited, and constricted. There simply was not time for it.

At first, I believed that the solution to my problem was to move to a smaller property, and to decrease the hours I worked. I thought that if I managed to pull that off, I would have time again to do what I love. However, I could soon see that neither of those options were practical. Because fact is that I had made a decision to move to a farm property, than in terms of living space, comfortableness, and compatibility, is by far the best place I have ever lived at – and fact is that I did walk through my education and the job that I managed to get is directly related to my studies and a very good foundation for my future life – and fact is that this job is demanding and time consuming. Thus, I could see that even if I did not like it, my life had changed, and changed in such a way that it was not practical for me to redirect my focus and change the path I had started out on. I saw that it made sense to stick to my decisions and keep walking. Though, the problem still remained, I did not have time for my music.

At this point insights started to open up . I understood that I did not have a choice and that instead of attempting and trying to reinsert my past way of living into my new life – I had to restructure the way I approached things and align them into my current state of life. This is when I saw that instead of recording music for hours, I could take my guitar, sit down to sing and play some 10 to 15 minutes when I saw I had a moment to do so. Because that way of inserting music into my life did work with the conditions I was faced with – and within this I could also see, realize and understand – that what I was missing was not specifically the recording of music – it was instead my expression that I had accessed and lived while practicing music. Hence, I realized that I could bring through this expression in small bursts, when there was time for it.

This is what I mean with aligning myself to reality, instead of trying to align reality to my memories and ideas, where I try to impose and enforce a particular outcome, because I am too stuck in my mind, and not HERE – with the PHYSICAL. The solution is thus to embrace our current set of circumstances, work with what is here, be creative, and not accept and allow ourselves to believe that there is only one way to do things – because there is not!

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Day 333: The Lack Perspective

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The lack perspective, this is a way of viewing myself and my world and that has begun to open up and become more clear to me as of late. Seeing things from a starting point of lack is basically how the world currently operates, and most people use lack as their motivation to get things done. An example would be our economy, that is measured and valued in growth, and where stagnation, or shrinkage, is seen as a failure – hence – the point with our economy is to move away from apparent lack and into growth. The same goes with education and children, where the standard way of viewing children is to see them as lacking character, experience, and perspective, and that society hence need to fill them up, push that lack away, and make the children useful and valuable.

Lack, what is missing, what is not here at the moment, this is how we have come to determine value, where hence value is created by fighting and suppressing the existence of lack, wherever it rears it head. It is however interesting, to see, realize and understand, that this lack perspective is not based on common sense, and it is not natural. Because is there in-fact lack? Or is it rather our judgment of what is here already? Where we see that things ARE NOT the way we want them to be (aligned to our ideals) and thus strive to mold, force, design our reality to fit our ideas, and in that completely missing what is here in this moment – and how we thus – do not work WITH what is here but instead FIGHT it.

I will give a practical example from my own life. A year ago I moved from a bustling and vibrant university town, where my days were filled with studies, and time for myself to bicycle, write, swim, and pursue other leisurely activities, to a small provincial town, where I started my first real full time job. On top of moving to a town with a different character, and now having most of my time occupied with the responsibilities of work, my partner and I built a house, and we are now on our way to have a child together – to put it mildly – my life changed quite drastically – from simple, easy, entertaining, to being challenging, and very, very different. I could no longer take my bike and ride the 3 kilometers into the town center to attend my lecture, as I instead had to take my car, and drive 30 kilometers into town, to work an entire day.

I have experienced this change as a form of limitation, where my life as it used to be, with all its ease and comfortableness, was gone, and that I am now stuck in a set of circumstances that are less than optimal. This is what has triggered the thoughts such as: ‘It was better where I used to be!’ – ‘I had everything going for me before, now I am having this life, which limits me!’ – this in turn have generated the experience within me of LACK – which is basically an emotional experience that feels like a empty whole – combined with a sense of longing and desire for something MORE – something BETTER – something DIFFERENT – and in this case – with me – longing back to the place where I used to live in the belief that this would sort out my issues.

Thus, the experience that came up within me, and that I have for a moment gotten myself trapped within, is LACK, and this emotional experience is combined with constant mind-chatter, dreams, projections, imaginations, of how I could have lived and experienced myself if I had been anywhere but here. I had gotten possessed by LACK – and this is where I began to see, realize and understand the deceptive nature of the lack-experience and how it pulled me into a particular way of viewing the world that was actually limiting me.

Furthermore, what is interesting is that I have actually been creating LACK by placing my focus on the emotional experiences of lack/missing/longing, because what am I doing in that? I am going into and accepting and allowing a mental state to become the starting point of my life – instead of CREATING my life here in the physical, moving myself here, and instead of going into lack, asking myself; what am I able to create with what is ALREADY here?

The solution to lack is thus to embrace self-creation as the constant movement and flow of expression that comes through when I push myself to remain here, to remain physical, alert, ready, directive, sharp and aware of what is going on in every moment – thus ready and able to act and create when and as I see that it is required. And self-creation happens HERE – in every moment – it is not something that I am able to access when I am in a lack experience – as then all my focus and energy goes into LACK – instead of CREATION.

Lack is self-created – it is something we bring through by placing our attention on what we do not have instead of focusing on what we have and what we can do with it.

The solution: Work With What Is HERE.

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