NorwegianDJ's journal of personal growth

[NorwegianDJ]

2/2

Imagine me, reading this book and several other books, and listening to two gurus, and checking in with myself, and being in the midst of becoming / having just become an adult. And more. No wonder I am manic.

It's confusing because the messages have subtle conflicts and I am trying to pick up on them and resolve them.
The punchline is that my efforts are unnecessary. I think that I am only to exist. Be calm, create space, and find joy. The rest will take care of itself.
But it is in that very concept, which is not a concept, to "just exist". It implies to untangle myself of everything I've entangled myself into in my 25 years. And the confusion is that it is possible to do that in this very moment, "given the right formula and explosiveness". And that is what I am experiencing. I am fundamentally different and I can never go back to how I used to be. Is that an awakening? I also experience moments where I am just existing, but I am not sure if "that's it". It so silly to write about. I feel as though even though in those moments I am, I am also retaining the personality and its concerns. I am chasing it. I know what it can be like. Being immersed in life, fresh, anew, joyful, full of love, and being connected to all. I have experienced that, but not in sober states. I'm experiencing that there is a peaceful space within me. That joy, peace, and to some degree, love, that spring from letting go of illusion. But I am so occupied with myself. I am witness to some of these experiences in my everyday life. The rest I am promised from the people in my life that I trust the most. I am also pointed this way by grace.
**** me, you know? I'm just gonna do my best to sit back and relax.

It's also a neverending process.
And it is probably happening because I have found a way to quiet myself.
That ability I discovered in being loved. And in that love, letting go of all my fears and worries and concepts.
And losing love strengthened me.
It started with pain, self-consciousness, and sorrow and loss. I cried for 60 days straight.
I moved out and witnessed my burdens fall away.
I watched as so much of my desire for "more" dissipated and also transformed into other desires.
I've been full of joy, caged in sadness, and all these other passing states.
And sometimes, my mind doesn't stop running. It doesn't stop, because I identify with it and latch onto it. I latch onto it, because I identify with the thought, desire, or idea that it is going on about.
It is this very identity that I am holding onto. My desires, my past, my conclusions, my formulations, my methods.
I suppose I can be thankful that they won't go away when I let go of them.

So I am obviously quite occupied by this desire to become free. It is so entangled with itself! It's a Catch-22.
Here! Here's the path! You should walk this way! But do it effortlessly and without purpose.

This is where faith comes in.
It'll resolve. Just live. Have love for yourself.
What does it mean to emulate love?
Take responsiblity for yourself. Have compassion for yourself. Be patient with yourself. Be humble.
This innocent and patient quality breeds creativity. And creativity is the method.
Catch-22.

Ironically, I'll reference back to one of my favorite books, God Calling, a Devotional Diary by Two Listeners.
That's the feeling I have now. Just take it easy. Let's rest right here on this plateau. I am good enough.
Focus on being still. Being happy. Letting go of fears, worries, all shame. Be joyful.

"Strength is a child of rest"

"Let go of the burdens of yesterday and tomorrow"

"Cultivate the silence. In it, God speaks. Quiet his kingdom comes. Listen in the silence."

"Happiness is borne of peace. Let patience work its quiet gift in you. Don't be tense."

"Say thanks for each truth bestowed on you."

"You must learn equilibrium, balance, and harmony. It is the daily toll that counts."

"Learn to disconnect in my presence, and you have the things you desire. That's your job. Keep your inner life undisturbed. Nothing else matters. Leave everything to me. Be calm in my vicinity."

"When self-obsession, fear, and worries dissappear, the gifts of the spirit immediately take their place."

 

[BPH]

Oh hey, you're still doin these huh?

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Oh hey, you're still doin these huh?

Hey, old friend! I actually just got started again.

A lot has happened since Friday.
I am quite alone.

On Friday I went to a cafe to work from somewhere else.
I was looking at these two girls sitting at the opposite end of the cafe. An expressive brunette with a cap, a hoodie, and high cheek-bones, and a young blonde girl. It looked as if it was them against the world.
A guy came over to their table, they talked a bit and exchanged a bag. Brunette waves him back for two cigarettes, then waves him off.
I packed up my stuff and went over to chat with them.
Turned out they weren't as attractive and interesting as they looked from afar. They were a little beat down.
Well, nothing interesting happens if you stop and leave, so I kept it going.
Went outside and had a smoke with them.
Long story short, I ended up getting threatened by a speed-junkie. Lots of lessons learned along the way.

Saturday I was driving a friend after having had a walk. I got this feeling that I should buy some doughnuts from this place we drove past and bring them to enjoy with my ex. Yesterday, on the phone, she told me how she didn't want to, but said yes anyway. There were no doughnuts, so I ended up bringing chinese food.
I felt like it was a really nice time. Her girl and I spent a lot of time playing and adventuring. We really connected. I thought my ex was just stressed these days. Which she is. But her experience was quite different. My presence depresses her. It irritates her and makes her feel rigid.
I should've noticed, because I know how she pulls away and how she acts under that pressure. But again, I didn't.
We got to tell each other how much we care for each other when we said goodbye.

Sunday she calls me up and asks if I can bring a drill. I show up with a drill and end up spending a fair bit of time with them. Again, mostly playing with the girl. I leave and come back to collect it again that evening. I end up staying longer than I intended. I didn't feel as though I was intruding. Over dinner we finally get to have a little bit of a proper talk. It was moreso that I was the recipient of thought and emotion. It was a little stressful, so I never got to say much. She told me that when we met that I had convinced her that I already had developed the capacity for channeling love, and that when she found the truth, she lost her motivation. She said that we all envision what kind of partnership we want to be in. The implication was that she didn't believe in us.

I could write so much more, but I also write in my notebook.
I knew what this meant. I've been holding onto this attachment so dearly.
You get a taste of heaven and all you want to do is to go back. Because it really was heavenly, back then. No one may ever understand.
And I have such affection for the both of them. For what they've given me.
And I clung to a future. I cage both her and myself by being like that.
There's a lot of details on her side that go unmentioned. Our lives are very different. I feel young & naive. She is wisdom and compassion, but she's spent.

Oh how I screamed that night and on my way home. From the bottom of my heart. The sense of injustice and misunderstandings. Feeling judged and not seen.

I spent the next day obsessively journaling on love.
On a walk, she called me up yesterday evening. In essence told me that she didn't want to be a part of my journey anymore. She'd had enough.
Now I'm alone. That arc is disappearing.

Now I'm all alone. Enjoy it.
It's interesting how, although I'm all up to my eyeballs in melodrama, I can still sense that little bit of peace and equinimity inside of me.
Now I can narrow / widen my focus.
I just got called up by my work and got a new "mission". I've been idle for a while.
Grace.

I'd like to share some of my findings from yesterday.

----------
I have re-discovered my boredom here ... where I can fight "what next" with nothing.

All our boredom becomes a laboratory for presence ... a nursery in which to grow the capacity for paying attention, a studio in which to master the vital art of noticing, out of which our contact with beauty and gladness arises - the wellspring that makes life livable.

Interest is the crucible of intimacy
and
Intimacy the crucible of connection

Learning to meet this mystery that is Love with the full realness of our being - to show up for it with absolute clarity of intention - is the dance of life.

Understanding is love's other name. To love [another] means to fully understand his or her suffering.

When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love.

The most precious inheritance parents can give their children is their own happiness.

When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.

Thich Nhat Hanh argues that real, truthful love is rooted in four elements:
- loving kindness
- compassion
- Joy
- Equinimity
Fostering these lends love "the element of holiness"

Loving kindness adresses the dialogic relationship between our own suffering and our capacity to fully understand our loved ones.
The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine of another person. You can't offer happiness until you have it for yourself.

So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself.
Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment.

If you have enough understanding of love; then every moment can be a moment of joy.

Likevekt / Equinimity / Upeksha - Inclusiveness, nondiscrimination. [Preferences, but no attachments]

Subsidiary elements: Trust, Respect.
The essential mechanism for establishing such trust and respect is listening.

To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love. To know how to love someone, we have to understand them. To understand, we need to listen.

When you love someone, you should have the capacity to bring relief and help them suffer less. This is an art. If you don't understand the roots of their suffering, you can't help. You need to understand the cause of your loved one's suffering in order to bring relief.

The more you understand, the more you love;
the more you love, the more you understand.
They are two sides of the same reality.
The mind of love and the mind of understanding are the same.

Spirituality is a practice that brings relief, communication, and transformation.

The intimate bravery of letting ourselves be seen, of connecting with our fellow human beings with the vulnerability necessary for openhearted living.

If you love someone, there is no possible harm in saying so.

Don't worry about losing. If it's right, it happens. - The main thing is not to hurry.
Nothing good gets away.

Mad people = people who stand alone and burn. I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.

I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.

Qualities that turn me on:
(Someone I love must have at least two or three)

1. Intelligence
2. Beauty
3. Douceur [Sweetness, gentleness]
4. Glamour
5. Strength
6. Vitality, sexual enthusiasm; Gaiety; charm
7. Emotional expressiveness, tenderness (verbal, physical), affectionateness

Love is an emotion, that is true. But it is also a "response" to an emotion and, therefore, an "active" expression of what is felt. Love is not learned by osmosis. It is actually acted at and acted upon.

Love, especially, is learned best in wonder, in joy, in peace, in living.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer that person is your presence.

Fearlessness is what love seeks.
Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected in the future.

This notion of presence as the antidote to fear and the crucible of love is as old as the human heart, as old as the consciousness that first felt the blade of anticipatory loss pressed against the exposed underbelly of the longing for connection.

All meaningful transformation springs from purposeful, devoted intent.

Our mightiest antidote to fear is the quality of love we give through the quality of our presence.

Amor Mundi.

To love is indeed nothing more than to crave something for its own sake.

Temporal goods originate and perish independently of man, who is tied to them by desire.
Constantly bound by craving and fear to a future full of uncertainties, we strip each present moment of its calm and its intrinsic import, which we are unable to enjoy.
And so, the future destroys the present.

Happiness consists in possession, in having and holding our good and even more in being sure of not losing it.
Sorrow consists in having lost our good and enduring its loss.
The happiness of having is not contrasted by sorrow, but by fear of losing. The trouble of happiness is that it is constantly beset by fear.
It is not the lack of possessing, but the safety of possession which is at stake.

In their fear of death, those living fear life itself, a life that is doomed to die. The mode in which life knows and perceives itself is worry.
Thus the object of fear comes to fear itself.

The triumph of love is in the courage and integrity with which we inhabit the transcendent transience that binds two people for the time it binds them, before letting go with equal courage and integrity.

Happiness is achieved only when the beloved becomes a permanently inherent element in one's own being.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

I'm just looking for any sort of therapy and spiritual work right now.
I've had some explosive and turbulent days.
My problem is that I always have a problem.
My problem is also that everything in my world is about me.

Yet, I get so damn holy at times.
I get peeks at how the universe really is. And it feels True.
Being in the stillness and witnessing the moment from a new vantage point.
But then the sorrow hits me. Or the spite, the injustice, the aloneness.
I go through thousands of personalities each day, only to be surprised the next day.
I'm so done with normal life. I went to shed all of my skin in this instant. I am so hurt.
I just want to be done with all this suffering.
I am just happy that everything is as it should be. I can feel it. Every day I get signs.
Wacky stuff. Try it sometime.

Three books by Ram Dass found their way to my local bookstore this week.
And by that I mean that I ordered them a long way back.
Be Here Now is absolutely rocking my world. It was completely unexpected.
It's a complete spiritual manual, and I am just where I need to be to appreciate it for what it is.

Just like in January when we broke up, I barely slept for several days.
It just is. I get tired, but I function just fine. I lay in bed for hours and there is no sleep to find.
It is such a powerful attachment. And it's central to my being. I've always sought love and approval. It's been a core theme as long as I can remember. So it interacts with me in its own way. It almost feels out of my control. It just takes me over.

"When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago."
"When we feel inadequate, we consume the world around us rapaciously."

Then each evening I find myself again.
On one of these evenings with two or three nights of almost no sleep, I was putting covers on my bed. I had smoked a fair bit earlier and been in a good space. Perhaps my first evening with Be Here Now.
I was quite quiet. But I witnessed how I was still subtly judging my every move and thought.
How much energy it requires to oversee that everything gets done well enough.
And it disappeared.
I didn't disappear, but I changed vantage point.
I was watching it all going on. There was no one attending to the laundry, but it was still happening.
Each moment in that bleeding minute was savory and full. Then I was back and my mind was racing for the next 24 hours.

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.
Remaining in doubt without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

"Truth waits for a mind unclouded by longing."

It's all about cultivating the witness. Finding the stillness within and going deeper and deeper within and into the moment.
Shedding skin.

I look back a year from now, three months from now, and a month from now, and I see how much I've grown.
It is incredible. And it is just the beginning.
That helps me keep in faith.
Faith and Fate have been so kind to me.
Still, I haven't surrendered.
My faith is not all-consuming. You'd think it would be after all I've been through.
I think back to taking DMT in Havasu. How I did not care a bit for my body. How I saw pre-determined pivotal events in my past.
I think back to all of my transcendent experiences. The all-encompassing compassion. Knowing with complete certainty that it's all One. Being THAT. And all of my grace. And the people I've met.
I just need to be reminded again.
I don't need to.
I'd just like to give myself to this with even more explosiveness.

At the same time, I think back to being safe, loved, and in love.
How easy transformation comes about in that space.
I want to nourish that space within me in any way that I can.
Mercy comes in many forms.
If someone is hungry, feed them.
Equally so, I'll be honing in on what we're all used to on here. Some of the very human qualities and activities that promote self-love and security.
But that'll be for another post.

The Heart Cave
"Execpt ye be converted
&
Become as little children
Ye shall not enter
The kingdom of heaven"

Unless you
Start again
Become that Trusting
Open Surrendered Being
The energy can't come in
That is the kingdom of heaven.
The Energy
It is the same thing:
Cosmic consciousness.


Don't be someone who is going somewhere.
Be. Here. Now.

I've got 3 pages left in my notebook out of 240 pages since January 28th. Here are a few notes to celebrate:
---------------
The start is filled with reflections and misery.

Protectors (8 subtype) in stress become more retracted, restrained, and reflective.

The mundane, the moderate, and the mild have their own virtues.

Soften into your feelings.

Before reacting, follow your breath and tune into what you are feeling and sensing inside.
Less excessive, more flexible.

Don't teach me
Love me
Love will teach me

On February 3rd I cried in front of my parents. My mum held me, which is a first.

We choose recursive and infinite paths that lead to more of the same.

I encountered the Ace of Cups at two particular & close times.

I wrote down all our memories. The holiness of falling in love. Feeling small, filled with anxiety, and the blessing of only feeling loved in return.

"It's so embarrassing to be human"

Friendliness is about being a nourishing presence.

You can look for answers
but that aint fun
Now get in the pit
and try to love someone.

The word amateur comes from the latin word 'amator', 'lover', which in turn comes from 'amare', to love.

I finally found someone like me.

13/02 Be aware of Acedia. It is killing you.
Focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of.
The Truth is looking for you.

There's a lot of pain in these pages.

Our pain is the doorway to our joy.

Consider all forms of fasting.

The soul can only be healed when it patiently practices the virtues that are in opposition to our vices.
"We become our object of fixation."

03.03
"Da du betraktet meg
Inngav dine øyne i meg din nåde
derfor elsket du meg ømt,
og mine øyne ble i stand til å
tilbe det som de så i deg."
- Johannes av korset.

You looked with love upon me
And deep within your eyes imprinted grace.
This mercy set me free,
Held in your love’s embrace,
To lift my eyes adoring
to your grace.

~ by St. John of the Cross

"Love everyone
and
Tell the truth"

"balance and equilibrium
above all: be calm, untouched.
Keep peace of mind at all costs"

"One has to be the teacher of oneself and desciple of oneself; there is no authority, only understanding."

" If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. "

You can be both happy and sad in the same moment. As long as you try to stay in the world of polarities, you cannot experience the richness of the moment. The richness of the moment is the one that lies just behind the two.

Freedom requires complete surrender of who you think you are and what you think you're doing into what is. Dying into yourself. Grief.

The Great Way is not difficult, for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. The slightest distinction however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

It doesn't mean not having preferences, it means not getting attached to your preferences.

The Witness​

The ability to quitly observe the phenomena, including our own behavior, emotions, and reactions. As you cultivate the witness more deeply, it's like you're living simultaneously on two levels. The level of witness and the level of desire, fear, emotion, action, reaction.
That is a stage in the process.
A great deal of power.
There is another stage beyond that: Surrender

When the mind gazes into the mind itself, the train of discoursive and conceptual thought ends, and supreme enlightenment is gained. When the witness turns in on itself, when the witness witnesses the witness, you come into awareness where everything just is.
And you're no longer busy with one part of your mind watching another, you're not busy watching, you're just being. It becomes very simple again.

Intelligence as a trap​

We want to know we know.
The thing about freedom is that you can be wise, or you can know knowledge.
Wisdom has simplicity to it.
The intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master. It is the power-tool of our separateness, and t he intuitive compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity. The dialogue between the mind and the heart has gotten out of balance in our culture.

In a way, what the spiritual path at its best offers is a chance for us to come back into the innate compassionate quality of our hearts and our intuitive wisdom. And get back into the balance where when we need our intellect, its available as a servant, but we are not ruled by it and trapped in our thinking mind.

Integrate the spirituality into our daily lives and bring into it the equinimity, and the joy, and the awe, and the ability to look suffering in the eye and embrace it into yourself without averting your glance.

Change only happens through understanding.
Understanding = Love.
Therefore love your demons.
Love your sins. Love your neuroses.
You are everchanging. You are the process. You are what is.

The more true you are about where you are, the faster the transformation happens.

Being your own authority is the only way to wisdom, to inquiry.

Practice sincere compliments

Create contexts where trust can flourish

Prioritize good friends above almost all else.

Focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of.

The greatest obstance to living is expectancy.
You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control and abandoning what lies in yours.

Make glorious, amazing mistakes.
Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.

Bring your mind to one point and wait for grace.

Only as you give can you receive.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Henry Miller

The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly. … But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life. The acceptance of the situation, any situation, brings about a flow, a rhythmic impulse towards self-expression. To relax is, of course, the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is also the first thing a patient has to learn when he confronts the analyst. It is the first thing anyone has to learn in order to live. It is extremely difficult, because it means surrender, full surrender.

[…]

Life, as we all know, is conflict, and man, being part of life, is himself an expression of conflict. If he recognizes the fact and accepts it, he is apt, despite the conflict, to know peace and to enjoy it. But to arrive at this end, which is only a beginning (for we haven’t begun to live yet!), a man has got to learn the doctrine of acceptance, that is, of unconditional surrender, which is love.

Miller zooms in on the “key words in howe’s doctrine of wholeness” — balance, discipline, illumination:

For the awakened individual, however, life begins now, at any and every moment; it begins at the moment when he realizes that he is part of a great whole, and in the realization becomes himself whole. In the knowledge of limits and relationships he discovers the eternal self, thenceforth to move with obedience and discipline in full freedom.

Returning to our relationship with the present moment, Miller summarizes Howe’s proposition:

An attempt, in short, to arrive at a total grasp of the universe, and thus keep man anchored in the moving stream of life, which embraces known and unknown. Any and every moment, from this viewpoint, is therefore good or right, the best for whoever it be, for on how one orients himself to the moment depends on the failure or fruitfulness of it.

He brings it all back to love:

Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated.​

I had dinner with this woman I'd never met yesterday.
She's married with kids.
We'd been set up by a mutual friend to chat about some of my experiences at the last place I worked.
It was so refreshing to meet someone with the capacity to listen.
It was magical, to be out amongst people, have food & beer, and be totally immersed in our own world that we created together.
We barely talked about my prior work experiences. Her green eyes had this brightness to them when she leaned in to listen.
It was so nice to feel myself not feeling a slightest bit hung up or unfulfilled.
Not penetrating a wall of judgement, but riding the waves of conversation.
We stayed like that for two and a half hours.
Being validated like that was something I needed.
Makes me feel normal and capable. Makes me remember who I am. Who I was before. Who I have always been.
I've made a new friend.

Notice that there are no Don'ts on The Way. Only Do's.

Here's some of Ram Dass' work that I transcribed.

The Great Way is not difficult for those not attached to preferences.
When neither love nor hate arises, all is clear and undisguised.
Separate by the smallest amount, however
And you are as far from it as heaven is from earth.

The Witness & Surrender​

One way to get free of attachment is to develop the Witness consciousness.
To become a neutral observer of your own life.
The Witness place inside you is simple awareness.
You can cultivate that awareness in the garden of your being.
Along with that self-awareness comes the subtle joy of just being here, alive.
The witness is your centering device.
It guides the work you do on yourself.
Once you understand that there is a place in you that is not attached, you can extricate yourself from attachments.

Don’t try to change the patterns. Just notice them. As you cultivate the witness, things change.
You don’t have to change them. When you’re being here now in loving awareness, things just change.

The quickest way to get through your stuff is to learn to listen to that place inside.
You have to honor your own path and be able to trust that there is a place in you that knows what is best.

The quakers call it the still small voice within.
When it speaks, listen.
If, as you listen to your heart’s intuition, it feels right to do something, do it.
Witnessing is a doorway to living in your spiritual heart. Your soul-awareness.
The more you live in your spiritual heart, the more you see yourself and others from the Soul perspective.

How you see others starts with how you see yourself.
Who you think you are is a matter of perspective.
Don’t take your melodrama so seriously.
We’re really talking about giving up being the central character of your own melodrama.
Who you think you are and how you think it is.
All this self-narration of the ego is what keeps your personal melodrama going.

The art of spiritual growth has to do with how quickly you recognize attachments and how quickly you can release them.
If you could admit that you can’t see or hear clearly because of attachment, then the full wisdom of things will begin to shine through.

From a personality point of view, you develop judgement, but from the Soul’s point of view, you develop appreciation.
This shift from judging to appreciating. To appreciating yourself and what your Karmic predicament is, and who other beings are with their own karma.
Brings everything into a simple, loving, awareness.

To be free means to open your heart and your being to the fullness of who you are.
Because only when you are resting in that place of unity, can you truly honor and appreciate others and the incredible diversity of the universe.

One way of getting to this place of compassionate action is by honoring others and being patient.

The quieter you are, the more you hear the true nature of compassion. The quiet, compassionate heart is the doorway to our Unity.

Use every situation you have with other people as a vehicle to work on yourself. See where you get stuck, where you push, where you grab, where you judge, where you do all the other stuff.

Ideally you clear yourself right in this situation, but often it’s too sticky and you can’t do it.
Step back then and do the practices you do in the morning, in the evening, or on weekends to stay clear.
Do the stuff that quiets you down inside.
Next time you go into that situation, you may lose it again.
Just go home and see how you lost it. Examine it.
You go in the next day and lose it again.
You start keeping a diary of “How did I lose it today?”
Then you go and do it again.
After a while, when you’re starting to lose it, you don’t buy in so much.
You start to watch the mechanics of what it is that makes you lose it all the time.

When you get to the point of seeing stuff as it’s actually happening, the tendrils of attachments will begin to loosen.
If you don’t appreciate me, that’s your problem.
If I need your love or your approval, then it’s my problem.
Then my needs are giving you power over me.
The power other people have to shake you out of your equanimity and love and consciousness has to do with your own attachments and the clinging of your mind.

This is where your work is on yourself, where you need to meditate more, or you need to reflect more, or you need a deeper philosophical framework.
It’s where you need to cultivate the witness more.
It’s where you need to practice opening your heart more in circumstances that aren’t optimum or easy.
This is your work.

When you’re deep in the psychological realm and you keep trying to work it out, you just keep investing in it. It’s a bottomless well of stuff.
Witnessing will allow you to acknowledge the feelings and appreciate them as part of the human condition.
That’s the quickest way through an emotion; to acknowledge it, allow it, let it be, and release it.
Just keep letting go and letting go.
“Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast, calm ocean.”

The art as I understand it, is to cultivate these other planes of consciousness and then you no longer have to push the stuff away, because it falls into perspective.
It’s as if you just shift your focus and see it from outside of yourself.

When I studied people’s personalities and psychology, I saw that at the root of almost every problem was a feeling of inadequacy or not-enoughness.
These are the seed-components in personality structure.
Understand these issues and see that you’re subject to that pathology, just like everyone else.
That wisdom leads to compassion and love for yourself and others.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Bro, you started this journal in November 2010.

Have you not achieved what you set out to by now?

In 2010 I was 15 years old.

And no. Growth does not end.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Apparently.

Figure your life out already.

That's the beautiful part.

There's nothing to figure out.
Thanks.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

It seems that since new years, on average, each day has been better than the last.
What a lovely feeling.

But don't get me wrong. I don't think I've had a single day without difficulties.
It's just lovely, because I am witnessing how this path is unfolding me as everything that I am.
I've known the extremeties of my character for a long time. It's such a joy to be around me when I am safe & happy.
It's just that I've always thought that safety & happiness were things I had to accrue and maintain.
There's inherent insecurity and scarcity in that mentality. It falls apart under the changing nature of reality.

1. I am good enough.
2. This moment is good enough.

That's it. That's literally it. It was handed to me on a note on Christmas. Still it took me 5 months to finally put it together.
It's the path of the heart.

The mania, worry, and conflict and confusion fall away in the wake of acceptance.
Whatever happens, "Okay. Here we are." & "I am".

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth and rust doth corrupt,
and where thieves break through and steal"

There are a couple of things that make these two ideas really quite awesome.

• Any self-imposed negativity disappears
• Self-preoccupation, worry, unworthiness, and idealism withers
• Conflict and confusion is lessened. Let it be + Faith.
• It's the crucible for self-love and belief. I feel so much better, knowing that these voices that inhabit my head won't turn on me.

This effect builds on itself.
And out of this knowledge, comes space.
Space is such a wonderful thing to come across. To find that inside of me, there's this eternal calm center. I just have to listen and breathe.

I need to talk about it a little more. It feels like such a breakthrough. And it enables me to access those most beloved parts of myself.
Because they only appear when I am safe and loved. When I've bathed in that fellowship, marinated in it for a while, I am like a wonderful mischevious angel with a heart for everybody.
Finally finding the way to "bring that under my own control" is my highest prayer answered.
We'll see how this goes though. The paradox is that the power is given to him whom does not desire it.

I think of it in terms of motherly and fatherly love.
Where motherly love is unconditional and fatherly love is conditional.
My approach to life has been entirely conditional.
Now I am building a home inside myself.
I have, for a long time, but it has been a hostile and unrestful place.
A home full of love, inner peace, a fit body, and judgment. These cannot be bought.

I want to share some of my research again.
------

This is what we are here to see for ourselves. Both the brilliance and the suffering are here all the time; they interpenetrate each other. For a fully enlightened being, the difference between what is neurosis and what is wisdom is very hard to perceive, because somehow the energy underlying both of them is the same. The basic creative energy of life … bubbles up and courses through all of existence. It can be experienced as open, free, unburdened, full of possibility, energizing. Or this very same energy can be experienced as petty, narrow, stuck, caught…

The basic point of it all is just to learn to be extremely honest and also wholehearted about what exists in your mind — thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, the whole thing that adds up to what we call “me” or “I.”
Nobody else can really begin to sort out for you what to accept and what to reject in terms of what wakes you up and what makes you fall asleep. No one else can really sort out for you what to accept — what opens up your world — and what to reject — what seems to keep you going round and round in some kind of repetitive misery.
[…]
This is the process of making friends with ourselves and with our world. It involves not just the parts we like, but the whole picture, because it all has a lot to teach us.

Alan Watts
The self-conscious feedback mechanism of the cortex allows us the hallucination that we are two souls in one body — a rational soul and an animal soul, a rider and a horse, a good guy with better instincts and finer feelings and a rascal with rapacious lusts and unruly passions. Hence the marvelously involved hypocrisies of guilt and penitence, and the frightful cruelties of punishment, warfare, and even self-torment in the name of taking the side of the good soul against the evil. The more it sides with itself, the more the good soul reveals its inseparable shadow, and the more it disowns its shadow, the more it becomes it.

An experience of this kind cannot be forced or made to happen by any act of your fictitious “will,” except insofar as repeated efforts to be one-up on the universe may eventually reveal their futility. Don’t try to get rid of the ego-sensation. Take it, so long as it lasts, as a feature or play of the total process — like a cloud or wave, or like feeling warm or cold, or anything else that happens of itself. Getting rid of one’s ego is the last resort of invincible egoism! It simply confirms and strengthens the reality of the feeling. But when this feeling of separateness is approached and accepted like any other sensation, it evaporates like the mirage that it is.

This is why I am not overly enthusiastic about the various “spiritual exercises” in meditation or yoga which some consider essential for release from the ego. For when practiced in order to “get” some kind of spiritual illumination or awakening, they strengthen the fallacy that the ego can toss itself away by a tug at its own bootstraps.
------
Working rightly, the brain is the highest form of “instinctual wisdom.” Thus it should work like the homing instinct of pigeons and the formation of the fetus in the womb — without verbalizing the process or knowing “how” it does it. The self-conscious brain, like the self-conscious heart, is a disorder, and manifests itself in the acute feeling of separation between “I” and my experience. The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.

There is no permanent, static, and immutable “self” which can grant us any degree of security and certainty for the future — and yet we continue to grasp for precisely that assurance of the future, which remains an abstraction. Our only chance for awakening from this vicious cycle, Watts argues, is bringing full awareness to our present experience — something very different from judging it, evaluating it, or measuring it up against some arbitrary or abstract ideal. He writes:
There is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. But the contradiction lies a little deeper than the mere conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separateness which makes me feel insecure. To be secure means to isolate and fortify the “I,” but it is just the feeling of being an isolated “I” which makes me feel lonely and afraid. In other words, the more security I can get, the more I shall want.

To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.

To stand face to face with insecurity is still not to understand it. To understand it, you must not face it but be it.​

 

[NorwegianDJ]

On Time

You would measure time the measurelss and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
*****
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.
And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and spaceless?​

-------

It feels as though these months of anguish are coming to a natural conclusion. Not an ending, but a synthesis that forms the foundation for everything that is to come.
In January I spent a lot of time reading books and grieving. Sitting with my emotions and thoughts and letting them wash over me.
February also, but then my emotions started to slowly pull back. February and March transformed the way I viewed myself and the world. Constant philosophical iteration and inquiry. But topped off with a lot of mental anguish and conflict and confusion.

One of my main issues has been that I've been trying to control things. Intenally and externally, for as long as I can remember.
I talked about plateaus a while back.
It feels absolutely right, looking back, that the process took shape like it did.
However, it's weird that it took me over 5 months to realize that all that was required of me was to let go completely. Of everything. Absolutely everything.

Everything in my life has been conditional.
It was only last year that I discovered what unconditional love was.
That mercy opened a little door into my heart.
Now I am finally becoming able to shine my light with compassion.
I really want to describe this phenomenon decently.
It's the process of befriending yourself, everything that you are.
But it's more than that. Let me try.

It's the expectations of your own mind that is creating your own hell.

Complete acceptance means complete surrender.
Surrender of all your models of who you are and how things ought to be.
It means letting go of righteousness in all its forms.

It's about having your awareness free and spacious and not caught in anything.

You start to notice how petty and stuck negative energy is.
And you start to peek at the machinery that underlies the negativity.
And you accept that too.
There is no fighting, just accepting. Seeing everything that is and that you are with complete honesty and wholeheartedness.

It just FEELS SO GOOD.
This lightness and spaciousness that is unfolding within me as I keep accepting and letting things be.

"Give up that there is somewhere better to be and someone better to be.
Whatever occurs is not the beginning, nor the end.
It's just the same kind of human experience that's been happening to everyday people since the beginning of time.
Basic nowness is always there.
Open space is always there."

Express compassion where the spirit meets the bone.
There's probably a lot to be said for having a positive focus.
But if there's anything I've learned, it's that you cannot force things.

Treat yourself like someone you love.
"I am who I've been looking for. And deep in my core I knew it was time to stop looking for more.
Until I could look through all my fear and look into a mirror and see clearly that the man looking back at me was the only one who can make me happy and
I am already enough."

The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Rumi
​

It may sound weird, but I discovered love within myself at 11pm on the 27th of April. There it was. There it went.
It was pre-empted by a lovely and fulfilling day. I've been with my breath since then. I cannot not be with it even if I tried.

Don't push away the past, don't pull on the future.
It's a journey of extricating yourself from the definitions of yourself.

Absolute acceptance = Perfect Mercy
Mercy is the cradle of the Divine.
Mercy as a uterus. Mercy as the giver of grace.

"Like Moses lifted the snake in the desert,
so shall (menneskesønnen) Man be lifted."

Mercy as the mothers' empathy, who's only wish is to embrace her child.
It is a spontaneous reaction.
Just the sight of her child awakens the wish to hold, embrace, and kiss her child.

The child is everything that you are.
You are also the mother.

That image unlocked something inside me.

Patience is an elemental part of mercy.
Gratitude is an attitude that allow humans to see everything in light of mercy.

While my focus here is essentially on perfect acceptance, there is something to be said for the elements that comprise [self]-love. They all combine in the shape of loving arms that you can forever rest in.
Responsiblity.
Humility.
Compassion.
Patience.
Consciousness / Presence.

Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
- Mary Oliver
​

I took a walk on the 28th.
A question kept entering my mind. I was noticing how, just like now, I am not fully engaged with the moment. It's as if I am rushing to get to the next moment.
I don't know how to describe it, but suddenly I reached an answer.
I am trying to milk the moment for something that will benefit me, either in terms of entertainment now, or some accumulation of knowledge or character.
It may seem trivial, but I came to realize that whatever happens, neither result is better than the other.
If I "evolve", I get to have a more enjoyable experience.
If I experience more suffering, I grow. And that growth leads to more empathy and esteem.
But it just clicked for me and unlocked the present to a new degree. I feel as though I am closer to and more secure in the moment ever since. It's just been two days, so we'll see!

It's a little weird to write a journal and at the same time argue that my character is ficticious.

We judge only what we recognize ourselves as able to judge.
Mercy is a movement from judging to appreciating.

Spring is here.
I've felt it for a long time, but today, spring has sprung.
To me, while there's love and there's the divine, this journey is about living a full life.
I cannot afford not to live life to the fullest.
And it's just absolutely silly and the deepest irony that, as Gandhi said,

"God demands nothing less than [complete] self-surrender as the price for the only freedom worth having."​

 

[NorwegianDJ]

One of these days I woke up and felt like myself again. Honestly, it was disappointing. I was getting quite fond of being obsessed with Love and God and reading and all that jazz.
Now it's fading to the background.
In it's place, there's nothing.
And that's a little uncomfortable.
But it's also a great learning, because now I am making my own choices of what to do with my time.

It was a little unnerving initially, because my breath was so far away again.
It's been a lesson in learning to let it all be, each day.
It's difficult to unlearn our habit of associating our mood & thought with our character.
It's even more difficult to unlearn "having a character", but I don't actively do much about that.

I can go through most of the day ping-ponging between moods, feeling open-hearted and hopeless. I go through some mental gymnastics trying to remember how to maneuver my mental landscape. It's honestly quite taxing when I get stuck. I'm still not quite back to normal. That I can tell. But the whole process feels natural.
There are some key insights that have carried me these past two weeks.

Anything is bearable in the moment. It's only when we add to the moment that it becomes too much to bear.
Let's say I'm in the sauna.
After 30 minutes it starts to become a little unbearable. You're flustered, your head builds up a discomfort, your mind is telling you to quit.
It's the same thing with running.
But if you just let go. If you just breathe. And just focus on that in-breath, and that out-breath. Slow down into what is. The mental constructs, the thought that this pain will persist and get worse. If you manage to shift your focus away from it, you'll find that you're perfectly OK.
And you can lay in that sauna for another 20 minutes. Or you can run an additional 10K. It's not an issue.
It's just one moment at a time.
Hopelessness is the same experience. Hopelessness only occurs when you add the past and the future to the present. You'll find that as you let go of trying to control and plan, that hopelessness fades away. It needs fuel.
This is the sort of strength that cannot be taken away from you. Which is not conditional on a fragile accumulation or structure of external factors.

Another one is that, it's all perfect.
Having faith means believing that your thoughts and emotions are perfect.
For me, the philosophical underpinnings of this statement took a while to build up.
But it's not complicated if you see it.
We all have our past. We have our packaging.
And there's no "I" to do any improving.
You can't change your thoughts or moods.
The "I" does not survive scrutiny. It's a mirage.
But that, too, is perfect.
Your problem is that you're getting in your own way.
There is no objective "I" with its hands on the wheel. It's a mirage. The mirage is just part of the happening.
Don't get in your own way.
All you can do is to just let it all be.

It's not that I understand this from moment to moment, but it's an unfolding.
What it does for me is that it quiets down my mental chatter.
If there is no purpose in thinking about how I can change the present, future & past, to make myself better or feel better, then there's really not much to think about.
And ironically, that's the solution.
The absence of thought leaves spaciousness in its wake.
In that spaciousness you can bloom. What we seek does not reside in our minds.
It's not that I stop doing things or feel how they impact me.
But the very seeking for something that is not here is what makes the moment and myself not good enough.
When the seeking stops and thinking may yield, and when my mind may slow down, all my problems are gone.
Suddenly I am good enough.
I don't know about you, but being good enough is quite powerful.
It sounds simple, but it's the foundation for everything that you do. Whether you have it or not.
Because you cannot beat the mind with the mind.
It will not nourish you.
This, too, shall pass.
Surf the moment or resist it.
It's a choice.


Like a pendulum I move from self-esteem to insecurity.
It's very easy to feel insecure if you really see everything that you have been.
And when you feel repulsive. If you have these thoughts and these feelings and this energy, why then of course you are not good enough.
But I'm finding that there is no arguing with insecurity.
It's there under certain conditions. When those conditions fall away, the insecurity withers.
Welcome it in, see that it is well taken care of.
You'll see that if you can just let it all be, it's really not that bad. You may even find rest here. With everything that you are. Good and bad.
It gets easier.
Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.

------
The more pursuasive, the more compelling, the more authorative, the interpretation is, the less credible it is, or should be.

The superego is the sovereign interpreter… [It] tells us what we take to be the truth about ourselves. Self-criticism, that is to say, is an unforbidden pleasure. We seem to relish the way it makes us suffer [and] take it for granted that each day will bring its necessary quotient of self-disappointment. That every day we will fail to be as good as we should be; but without our being given the resources, the language, to wonder who or what is setting the pace; or where these rather punishing standards come from.
...and yet this supposedly authoritative part of ourselves is itself a coward.
-----
Well, one thing that can be done is to find someone we are not too much for…
-----
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.
…
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.
[…]
It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you.
-----
I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.
-----
“Trappings and charm wear off… Let people see you.”
-----
Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.
In your reading, find books to improve your color sense, your sense of shape and size in the world.”
-----
Stop judging me, evaluating me, categorizing me. I am an enigma and will remain one. If you include me, we can dance together. If not, I will shrink and be crippled and cower in the corner. The strength of my feelings will be undiminished, but if they have no outlet, they might burst out in destructive ways.​

 

[BackInTheGame78]

Your mind will do everything in it's power to keep you from changing. It likes you as you are. It's comfortable with you as you are. Your brain evolved to have you surviving not thriving.

Be wary of that and embrace the uncomfortableness that comes with change and growth, it is a sign you are heading down the right path.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

I had 2 more difficult and mentally exhausting days before the pain dissipated.
There really is something to the statement, "It's always darkest before the dawn."

I am learning what it means to plant your own garden and water your own soul.
Your ego is not the only thing that needs nourishment. So does your soul.
Learning what it means to balance being good enough with tuning into that feeling or inner voice that tells me whether I am in alignment or not.

I come from a place where I have large expectations of myself and my surroundings, and that I have to overcome each obstacle in my way, using force or control.
There's also this powerful sense of pride that is being slowly leveled out. Thinking of myself as more important than other people, because I have an understanding of myself and life that enables me to participate to a greater degree.
But my abilities and wisdom have nothing to do with me. I'm not responsible for attaining them. They're just a result of my birth and what has happened to me since then. I am made of little pieces of all the beauty in this world. And all the ugliness. I am nothing but an expression of the universe. Making an identity out of this is akin to basing one's identity on what other people think and feel about you.
It's fragile and has many inconvenient side-effects.
For starters, if I think that my thoughts have worth, then I am totally fascinated by them.
If there's something I know by now, it's that the mind is a lousy master.
It leaves me totally reactive and disconnected from my experience.
Figuring out how to relate to the mind has been and continues to be my biggest challenge.
It's something I must re-learn each day. Some periods it is more difficult than others.
It's helpful to remember some short phrases.

• Don't pull on the past & don't push away the future
• You're good enough
• Everything is perfect
• The moment is good enough
• Nothing matters. There is no one in the other row-boat. There is only you.
• While that is true, everyone else is just as alive as you.
• This, too, shall pass
• Just let it be. Let the energy flow through you undisturbed.
• What other emotions are present?
• Hold space
• It's about focus: surf the moment or swim against the stream.
• anything negative cannot produce anything positive.

I had a transformational experience on the 17th of May.
I've been revisiting the Enneagram lately, partly because I am starting a group here in my town.
It's given me another key that has become clearer over the past 6 months.
What I am doing here, at least the path that I am taking, is a movement from negativity to positivity.
I didn't ever think I'd be the person to promote positive energy, but here we are.
If you dive deep into the subject, you may find that it is so much more than you may be aware of.
I've always tried to control and overcome obstacles. Such has it been with negativity also.
It doesn't work that way. What is resisted only comes back stronger.
It requires observation.
When you're being here in loving awareness, things just change.
But what is that loving awareness?
I've pointed to it several times in my entries. Mercy. Love. Objectivity. And now, positivity.
It's akin to creating a safe and open space.
In that space there can be an unfolding. A telling of secrets. A trusted confidant. And just like in interpersonal relations, this is how healing occurs.
We can only see what is when we don't judge, evaluate, or justify it.
And I've lived in that mode of judging, evaluating, and justifying everything I do for my whole life.

It's ducking exhausting.
It's exhausting because you become aware of it and that creates another loop of the same kind of habitual thought.
And so it goes until you remember some of those phrases.
I'm really looking forward to having less of that in my life.

In the meantime, being your own best friend really helps.
And that is also a process. But when you remember your motivations, it's really fulfilling.
It means to learn what it means to be a friend to others.
It also means to remember yourself. Your true self. That's been a missing piece for me.
I am lucky enough to know who I am when I am safe & loved & full of love.
I can set aside time each day to remember that. It puts everything else in perspective.
I can also point to it when I am having a difficult time. Being both places at once promotes growth. It facilitates objectivity and positivity.
When I observe my mind doing loops and judging and evaluating, I try to allow it to be while I "shine my light" on it. Sometimes it works and it is powerful.

Not holding onto joys and sorrows is another sticking-point that I relate to a hundred times a day.

-----
After some time, you learn the subtle difference between
holding a hand and imprisoning a soul;

You learn that love does not mean leaning,
and that company does not equal security,

and you start to learn….
That kisses are not contracts and gifts are not promises,
and you start to accept defeat with the head up high
and open eyes,
and you learn to build all roads on today,
because the terrain of tomorrow is too insecure for plans…
and the future has its own way of falling apart in half.

And you learn that if it’s too much
even the warmth of the sun can burn.

So you plant your own garden and embellish your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring flowers to you.

And you learn that you can actually bear hardship,
that you are actually strong,
and you are actually worthy,
and you learn and learn…and so every day.

Over time you learn that being with someone
because they offer you a good future,
means that sooner or later you’ll want to return to your past.

Over time you comprehend that only who is capable
of loving you with your flaws, with no intention of changing you
can bring you all happiness.

Over time you learn that if you are with a person
only to accompany your own solitude,
irremediably you’ll end up wishing not to see them again.

Over time you learn that real friends are few
and whoever doesn’t fight for them, sooner or later,
will find himself surrounded only with false friendships.

Over time you learn that words spoken in moments of anger
continue hurting throughout a lifetime.

Over time you learn that everyone can apologize,
but forgiveness is an attribute solely of great souls.

Over time you comprehend that if you have hurt a friend harshly
it is very likely that your friendship will never be the same.

Over time you realize that despite being happy with your friends,
you cry for those you let go.

Over time you realize that every experience lived,
with each person, is unrepeatable.

Over time you realize that whoever humiliates
or scorns another human being, sooner or later
will suffer the same humiliations or scorn in tenfold.

Over time you learn to build your roads on today,
because the path of tomorrow doesn’t exist.

Over time you comprehend that rushing things or forcing them to happen
causes the finale to be different from expected.

Over time you realize that in fact the best was not the future,
but the moment you were living just that instant.

Over time you will see that even when you are happy with those around you,
you’ll yearn for those who walked away.

Over time you will learn to forgive or ask for forgiveness,
say you love, say you miss, say you need,
say you want to be friends, since before
a grave, it will no longer make sense.

But unfortunately, only over time…”

[and you learn and you learn ...
with every goodbye you learn.]

----
You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.
----
Fly me to the moon ...
----
He who binds himself a joy
doth the winged thing destroy
He who kisses it as it flies
wins for himself an eternity sunrise
----
"It can be easy."
Notice when things come easy.
When things flow naturally and are in alignment.
Be thankful.
----
Resisting change --> Sense of possibility
-----
“Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it does, it grows sweeter. When it becomes reliable, we are in a kind of body-heaven.”
----
MYSTERIES, YES

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.​

 

[NorwegianDJ]

I want to try writing on a keyboard for a change.

I've come so far. Progress hasn't been linear.
My mind is a kinder place and the impatience is dissipating.

"The Man in the hot air balloon."

I saw my ex girlfriend with another man last night.
The timing couldn't have been better for me.

On Saturday I rediscovered my capacity for joy.
I saw how forgiveness was something that I had to see through for my own well-being. To forgive myself, my family, my dearest, the world, and God. To do so, because I love myself so much that I want to be joyful. I don't want to hold onto this pain any longer.
I saw how free I would be if I let it all go.
I saw that when you judge someone, the very action of judging makes them guilty.
I saw that when I contemplated death - that I could die tomorrow or in an hour - the fear collapsed.

In that wake, I was able to live exactly how I wanted for a day.
I swam and I swam and I swam. I jumped and I ran and I told my parents I appreciate them.
I walked my slackline, drank water and ate food. I could stay with my joy, because although I still felt righteous in what has been done to me, I was able to let it go. Because retribution and justice is are parts of a future that will never arrive.

Of course such moments come and go. But they nourish and joy begets joy. Love begets love.

A major realization I've had is that I don't have to be the victim.
In my head there is a judge and there is the subject, the victim.
I can identify them both. The judge comes in many shapes and voices. He speaks my worst insecurities. He even seems to speak truth.
The victim just takes it. Defends itself. Has to prove himself. Isn't worthy and isn't good enough, because he is being judged.
I realized that I can take responsibility, because both of these entities live inside of me, they are not me.
I create my own reality. I create my own joy. Love is a choice. Suffering is a choice. It may feel impossible, but that's because we are trapped in our reality and who we think we are.

It is now easier to see what emotions and thoughts I get trapped in. Then it is easier to not get trapped in the impatience and judgement of that entrapment. I am able to smile at fear. Tenderly hold my hurt in my arms. I am slowly nursing myself to life. Sometimes it is so awful. And I just want to marinate in that difficulty. It's difficult to understand what it means to process your emotions. What it means to sit with them - the completely with them - but not caught in them. Sometimes it happens fine, other times I'm trapped. I'm trying to map out what it means to properly process your emotions while still being joyful, loving, compassionate, or smiling. This is quite fresh.

Came in very handy now that I saw my ex with another man.
In my past I would relish in that unforbidden pain.
Sure, I've cried quite a bit. It is painful.
But I don't seek it out. I don't hold onto it too much.
I am capable of seeing joy in those moments. I am somewhat able to find joy within myself afterwards.
At the very least I am not trapped in negativity and scarcity.

I'm moving to Copenhagen next month.
I had an encounter that was poignantly timed and meaningful.
I went to see my grandma. I went to town alone that night.
Before this, I could feel how close I was to myself and the world. Nærvær.
It's not something you can make happen, it's something that happens in the absence of effort.
I haven't felt that in a long time.
I met a girl that night and we went on a walk in the forest and waterfalls.
She turned out to be the 2nd girl I've met that sees the world the way I do.
She's a singer, songwriter. She inspired me.
So I essentially dropped my IT job and I'm moving to Copenhagen to partake in a course that I believe is in alignment with how I view the world.
Things are working out and I found a place to live until December.
It feels good to move in the direction that feels true. But also daunting and terrifying. I have a long way to go.

Here are some highlights from my journal the past month:

It is not your dream that must be released, but your sense of opportunity that must awaken.

Presence is a result of relaxing.

The only thing that brings you down is your own mind.

Gratitude is a portal
Appreciation is a portal

So much suffering comes from trying to fit into a box.

Don't rush your own life.

To look down upon yourself is the worst sin you can commit.

Life is to be lived.
Be wild for two hours a day.

The more I like me, the more I like you
The wound is where the light enters you

A relationship is a place you go to give. To celebrate. It is not serious.

The world (and you) is driven by human emotion

Effort as a contradiction of energies

Watch for all the beauty
Reflecting from you
and sing a love song to your existence
You can never overdo
Praising your own soul
You can never over-pamper your heart

Your fear of deprivation and your desire to entertain yourself prevent you from finding the fulfillment you seek.

As long as you are directly pursuing happiness and satisfaction you will never attain them.
Fulfillment is not the result of getting anything. It is a state of being that arises when we allow the richness of the moment to touch us.

Let go of the conditions I place on my happiness.

When an awakened woman loves you, then every action you take and word you speak that is out of alignment with your heart, matters. It matters not because she has a problem, but because her oracle knows your true potential and will not settle for anything but your deepest nature.

Sometimes a kind word is enough to help someone blossom like a flower.

To get relief, you have to go to the person you love, the one who just hurt you very deeply, and ask for help. Become yourself one hundred percent. Open your mouth and say with all your heart and all your concentration that you suffer and you need help.

Other people's actions are the result of the own pain and not the result of any intention to hurt you.

Deep inside you still expect something better to happen.

When we ourselves can't generate the energy to take care of ourselves, we think we need the energy of someone else. We focus on the need and the lack rather than generating the energy of mindfulness, concentration, and insight that can heal our suffering and help the other person as well.

If you don't reconcile with yourself, happiness with another person is impossible.
Reconciliation means to work it out within yourself so that peace can be restored.

You dance well to the degree that you are able to express your joy

Your idea of happiness may be the very thing that is preventing you from being happy.​

 

[NorwegianDJ]

It feels weird to be back. Particularly so at 1:40am with a heavy head after my first attempt at a solo ketamine therapy session. But I need to start writing here again. There's a magic that happens when I get deep into the writing. When I start writing, it is without soul. But somewhere in the midst of this unraveling put on paper, the magic begins to flow.

Y'all won't believe my story. You would have to live it to believe it. I'll sound like a madman in my writings, but that is something that I accept. My writings are an incomplete retelling of my story and if read by shameful eyes it will be worthy of disdain. It is but a small piece of reality. It is whatever comes through my fingers in the spaces I happen to sit down and write. With that said (again), let's see what unravels. Come sit around the fire. Bring a log. Fan that ember. It is all we're going to be doing for all eternity.

The last entry was from July. That's 5 months ago. These 5 months have been a change of pace from what is written on in the entries above. It all feels very far away now. Yes, in moments, the pain is extremely tender, but I feel far removed from my previous entries. Summer was filled with activity. I in essence quit my job to follow my Heart. This call was strengthened along the way. It's all very silly to those around me, but to me it was just right. And to stay sane, I had to follow it.

I moved on September 4th. There is a part of my story from Norway that needs to be told. As much as I am in a rush to spill the deliciousness that fate has put in my hands as a reward for accepting the call to adventure, I must tell a little story about Mary.

One of these days in July, I was sitting on a bench in town reading a book. The most gorgeous woman walked past me. She didn't belong in this town. She stood out so fabulously. Beauty, fashion, gold, unapologetic. She sat down at a restaurant alone. I decided to ask if I could sit down with her. When she retells the story, she tells me no twice, then I go and sit down anyhow. That was not my experience, but I'll grant her the truth.

A month passes and we become friends. We quickly become very good friends. I would string day after day at her peaceful sea-view apartment. We'd live so slow. I was so at rest when I was there with her. We'd wake up and have tea and breakfast. We'd talk and we'd read our books. Refill our tea, listen to ambient music, read our books, and talk here and there. I ended up moving half of my stuff into her apartment in my process of moving out.

Over time I have learned that I love Mary. I am still learning about love. Every day, but I have also realized that one needs to love in order to learn to know it. That love is - among many things - a decision and a responsibility.

I wonder how she's doing. I can see her smile and her face and her eyes in front of me. Her rare and tender embrace. It's funny how the three closest (women) in my life are all smokers.

I went on a 4-day trip in the wilderness alone. It was lovely. I mean, it was just like any other day, but completely on my own, without a soul in sight, alone and in nature. I suppose it was a time of integration and mastery. Mary hadn't understood how long I'd be gone for, so she'd called around to find out if something had happened to me. I remember reading her text message. The love she had for me. Yet not even a month later, she would tell me to please not be a part of her life anymore.

I drove directly back to her place with my sweat and all of my gear and all of my trash.
That evening I made the decision that it was right to smoke my DMT.
My oldest half-brother had left me some Changa 3 years earlier. I hadn't been brave enough to go all the way until now.
It was night. 11pm. It's a fairly cold summer's night, with a clear sky and a view of the ocean. Mary's got me packed in what had to be at least five blankets. She put on some yoga playlist, but the music turned out to be of another world. Synchronicities start piling up as one encounters these pivotal moments in time. I hit the pipe. White smoke enters my lungs and it isn't stopping. It just keeps going. Flash. Flash. Flash. Reality strips away layer by layer. God begins to commune with me. It is not something that I hear. It is told in communion with my being. "See what I can do." as the last bit of reality in front of me flashes with symbols and colors and textures. It's all Maya. It is all illusion.

I wish I could tell you what I saw. I had all of my questions from the past 6 months answered. I was brought to this room where this anonymous person (and someone else) went to work and presented to me how things worked behind the curtains. I got to live it. Not time-bending, but matter-of-factly. The DMT-elves were so fast and funny. The only thing that remained of me in that space was my consciousness and the thoughts that I decided to have. It was a complete return to what I'd been reading about for so long in these spiritual texts. "You are not who you think you are." It just happens to be true and it is weird. You're just behind it all.
When the trip was starting to lose grip and I was slowly starting to spiral out - the story is still ongoing and I am there with them. I ask, "what do I do with this knowledge? What now?". That's when I had a face again. My hand was God's hand. God held my face with such love and pointed it to the world and said, "you live. ..... ----" I spent ten minutes going from such heartfelt, joyful laughter, to, like a switchboard, going into uncontrollable gulping and crying. Because nothing matters and therefore everything matters so infinitely much. Because we are alive and we will die. Because everything we hold dear is not ours to keep and there is nothing in this world that you can possess. It is all just a fleeting yearning and there is so much hardship ahead. There is so much suffering and forgetting and the storm is coming. But we will live. Passionately. Deadly. You and I. Forever. Our love story. In this fictitious world we create for ourselves. We hugged and we cried and we laughed and we fell asleep.

I moved to Copenhagen on September 4th.
On September 7th I met Amanita, and my life changed. Again.

In fact I'd met her before I left the country. I sent her a superlike on Tinder.
I had just gotten my first bike and I was biking around looking for a place to read a book. I decided to stop at this place called Mina's. I ended up chatting with this guy from Holland. He spilled coffee all over himself and we went for a walk. On this walk we walked past Mindjuice. The coaching company that inspired me to move to Copenhagen.
By this time I had set my Tinder to "Everyone". Long story short, I was meeting this very interesting guy for a friendly date. However, Amanita texts me a tells me she is at Mina's, if I have an hour to spare.
To me, in my context, this was ripe with meaning. So I cancelled my plans and that changed my life.


Amanita is unlike anyone I've ever known. I feel as though I am at the center of the maelstrom of the world. She is also alike to many of those important to me. I was so graced to be able to see her for who she was, and that is because I did the work and I followed my path. I don't know if someone else could've seen what I saw (and see) in this girl. Fate just had it in for us. She is a gust of a woman.

"Now that you are here,
I will never let you go."​

In the first weeks with her, so many of my structures came crumbling down. A dismantling of my fears, phobias, and insecurities. I quickly discovered, that although it turns out - as we all are: Humans - in a very different way, like my ex that brought me here, she is also enlightened. I promise that sentence makes sense.
I am finding a new kind of love. She has so much love to give and she gives it so freely. And it shows in her relationships. Close or distant, she has put in the effort to share an intimate experience with them. Walking around Copenhagen with her, we cannot help but run into 1 or 5 people that will widen their eyes with a smile as they meet her with a hug as they recognize her. She also has the closest friendships I've experienced. Filled with love. With such incredible people. And here I am, surfing into the middle of it all. Placing myself on a pedestal next to her as fictional queen and king of this town. This is the tip of the iceberg. Welcome back to me. Also goodnight to me.

XOXO, Gossip Girl

 

[SW15]

I HATE WET DREAMS. I was actually concious while this was happening. You don't even orgasm. I've heard they're not as bad as MBing tho. Still day.. honestly dont know.. could be anything from 7-14. Been partly abstaining for so long now.

Wet dreams are not bad. It's a sign that NoFap is going well. If you don't watch porn, don't fap, and don't have sex, a wet dream will happen. I have complete orgasms in mine.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

I just feel like writing again. In fact, I don't know what to do with myself these days.
I'm hitting a little slump where I can't distract myself with nice things and nice people.
In it I find that I am very much the same person that I've been much of my life.
My internal state and how it ebbs and flows during the day. The pessimism. The entitlement masquerading as resistance to initiative. I'm afraid of myself. I believe my inner monologue. I am reactive and busy with my own stuff.
The problem is that I don't quite know what to do.
It was easier when I was in pain. It was knocking on my door all the time.
Now, whoever's there isn't so easy to see. I'm avoiding facing it. I'm running.
And I can feel how unsatisfactory it is. Nothing I can get my hands on here in my apartment feels satisfying.

From there, there are two things to do.
A. Slow down, give space, meditate. Feel whatever I am feeling and sit with it. Very good option that I should start doing again every day ASAP.

B. Change my environment. Fulfill my needs. Find out how to water this flower. Explore what it means to plant garden and tend to it. Slow down and listen. Give the unknown an opportunity. Get into cooking. Yoga. Working out again. And an idea I should've had before now: a work-hobby-project! Aish, that's a hill. Procure some skin in the game.

In essence, I am both dis-identifying from my needs and fulfilling them at the same time. Learning to be silent and peaceful, while learning to listen and live. It's a tough place to be. To finally start becoming competent at life at the age of 26.

I bought myself some lovely tea that I'm enjoying.

I'm going to therapy here in Copenhagen. It's only been twice. Yet, it's special. We form this space between us. It reminds me of Finland in October, when a woman and I shared a deep and bonding moment during an exercise. No sexual euphemism there.
It's just such been such a weird and powerful time since I moved to Copenhagen.
I essentially ran into the most popular girl in town.
On our first date - 5 days after my arrival - we took mushrooms and went biking in the forest and skinny-dipping under the airport. We took MDMA and watched an incredible queer play, to later go back to her place. We finished our date at midnight leading into Tuesday, 81 hours later. That was a precious time.

I started changing very fast starting that weekend. It was like I was made to be in that place, open up, and be willing to destroy and rebuild my internal structures.

Anyhow, my pen is going other places. I don't know where, but it's not flowing in that direction right now.

I guess, since there is no one coming to rescue me.. since this is how it is. That there is nowhere better or no one better to be. This is the experience I have. I believe that it is my resistance to my experience, my lack of acceptance leading into my reactive state in response to my internal state, and fear of being bored and deprived, that block my energy and cause life to be a little too unbearable.

Yes, I am responsible for my thoughts, my actions, my feelings. There is ownership that must be taken.
At the same time, nothing is ever going to change. Of course all things change, that is their nature, but this is the eternal human experience that I am going to have. Settle. Relax. Stop striving.
At the same time, it is my very desire for things to be better that prevent them from being so. My constant, just-above-the-surface evaluations.
Just breathe. Feel your body. Just because it is inside of me does not mean that it is truth, nor that it is a reflection of me.

Soften (around the pain).
It all comes back to love. How much can you tolerate? Can you tolerate this part of yourself? Can you tolerate it in another person? If we can accept these parts of ourselves, we find that we are larger than them. If we run away from them and feed them and believe them, we are holding them tightly in our fist and refusing to let go. Like that monkey that clenches its hand around the food inside the cage, and traps itself because it refuses to let go.

If we have faith in that under all the fear, we are perfect. It's just a matter of bringing the darkness to the light. Which can only be done in the present moment. If you look back at some episode and judge yourself, those are both abstractions and not real. But it is through acceptance, faith, and courage, that we can fully be in our experience. To be in it, but not caught in it. The middle way(?). Then we are that darkness. And we can shine our light on it.

I don't know the boundaries of this process. I only know what I've experienced. Some of what I write may be things that I have only read, but believe in.

But it is in that moment of the feeling that we discover how we are entangled within ourselves.
We must be willing to change. Only what we are ready to let go of will be released. So that there can be space for something new. For magic.

One way of releasing is to offer it up. To others. To yourself. To God.
Telling another how you feel feels holy. It grounds and it bonds. More on this later.

My process has been to understand.
To see the big picture. To experience how things are connected to each other. To understand why certain outside conditions cause disproportionate or out of place feelings in me. Gaining acceptance that way. Seeing that I am deeply interconnected with the world. That up until this point, I couldn't have done any better. Seeing that this amalgamation of moods and conditioning and perception is myself mixed with the entire world. Seeing that I am looking at this ball of emotionality and judgment, but here I am: outside of it. Judging it. Saying, this isn't good enough for me. This makes me anxious and uneasy and afraid. I want warm, bright lights and comfortable couch-cushions. I need things to be comfortable and pleasant all of the time, please.
Yet, I can choose. I find myself to exist outside of all this drama. (My problem is that I am caught up in it all of the time, so one of the things I must do is to create conditions through which I can remind myself to relax and of the truth). [There's your conclusion.]
Since I exist on the outside of all the noise and all the mess, I get to choose what my reaction to the mess is. Because from here, we increasingly come to understand why that ball is not who we are. We end up here again and again by dis-identifying (not a reflection of our true nature) from it by understanding. And having faith that it is not speaking truth makes it less engaging.

This is where real courage, real faith, and real compassion find themselves upon the altar.
We get to choose how we engage with life. We get to choose what we give from ourselves.
But it requires us to expand our courage, our faith, and compassion towards this ball of shame and anger and injustice and pain inside of us.
And perhaps even more so, to have the courage and total faith that you are beyond the conscious mind. To give yourself the gift of compassion. What you are, behind the mess, is perfect. We don't need to police ourselves. We cannot catch ourselves in the act, because we are also the ones looking. We are just chasing a ghost - a habit, the past.

Alan Watts tells this story of police raiding a house.
As the police enter the 1st floor, the thieves move up to the 2nd floor.
And the 3rd, and so forth. Such it is with our minds. The thieves exist for as long as we believe in them. As long as we believe in them, there will be police looking for them.


I find that there is fair bit of information that I need to lay forward to fill in some holes that should be explained. I'm gonna do that some other time.

Back in my bed, the weight has lifted. This synthesis feels productive and satisfying.
I suppose it feels satisfying because it brings me into a state where I don't look at the time. It's fairly flow-y.
I might try this a little more going forward. Be prepared for writings all over the place, because it only works if I care for what I'm writing about.

It's bittersweet to sign off, but I am getting tired.
Au revoir

 

[NorwegianDJ]

I'm really just writing here because it's my best option at midnight on a Thursday night. It's this, or spending money and taking drugs. I'm saving that for Saturday.

I don't have anything in mind. I love the entries that I write, so I hope this one doesn't blow me streak.
But this free attitude is necessary to produce any kind of meaningful writing.

The question that makes its way to the present at most points in my current existence is,
"what sort of life do I want to live, now?"
A constant question of which direction to pour my energy. To take control of my energy. To grab my reactive state by the balls. To say that "Yes, for the 200th time I see that I am displeased for the simple reason that I am not pleased."
To see that, and to decide, again, that happiness is a choice.
And if I'm not feeling happy, then I can direct my energy towards my needs, rather than using it to languish in the fact that no one is coming to save me from my predicament.

It can feel overwhelming, all the things that may need to be organized and mastered to live a life that makes me happy. Don't get me wrong: it is a present choice. Yet, self-esteem is a belief. It's only realistic to be attuned to where I am currently and to live for the moment, no matter how "right" or "off-base" it may be.
But it is difficult. Yes, the answer is to simply "do the next right thing", to stay present and in that present bodily awareness, feel where I need to move, and then, despite my mind blocking me, saying how effortful it is, to do it anyway. To see, again and again, that my templates - for myself and for the world - are faulty. To see that I can reach for the stars. To accept that I cannot see it most of the time. To have faith that this wonderfully light treading on clouds is always possible. Even when it is so distant. When all I feel is a push towards the next second. Skipping from desire to desire, from need to need. How do people live with themselves?

In short, a regression towards the mean.
The morning routine. Getting out of bed. The morning pages. Setting intentions. Being intentional in habit. Dream journaling? Journaling about what I did today.
The open space. Being mindful about doing what makes you feel good both today and tomorrow. Avoiding what makes you feel worse about yourself. Yes, it is an action we partake in and it is up to us to not talk ourselves down - yet - to recognize what brings us down, and to both avoid it and rise above it.
To more actively take a part in the communities I am uncovering.

I find it so funny, that to cook for myself: to cook dishes I haven't made before. To use foods I am uncomfortable with. In fact, much of the whole process of cooking makes me uncomfortable.
It's funny because, cooking is the one activity where all my needs converge.
It grounds me, slows me down, brings me in touch with a slow and initially disorganized process that must be mastered. It cannot be forced. The feedback is immediate and truthful. It is easy, yet it feels difficult. I have tons of resistance towards each step of the process. Finding & deciding on a recipe, sourcing ingredients, having a back-up plan, checking for equipment in advance, setting aside time and effort. Moving from rigidity to spontaneity. From the known to the unknown. It feels like yoga. It feels like becoming flexible and light. Learning that I have a body that can and should be fairly exhausted and then replenished. Coming to terms with that the world isn't scarce. Moving in the direction of an abundance of choice that doesn't need to be locked down. A knowledge that I can nourish myself. That if the world disappears under my feet, that I can still serve myself.

Food. Body. Service. Community.

There's also this mind of mine. There's employment. There's branding. There's passion. Creativity. Reconciliation.
One step at a time. I am making this promise now:
I will journal on what I do each day - to remember and to be mindful and intentional.
I will make a new meal each day. This is the main purpose of most of my days. (Can be reduced to 3-5 times a week).
Meditate once a day

Not promises, but also intents of varying degree:
Morning pages
Dream journaling in the morning (short)
Going to the gym again, starting tomorrow
Stretching
Finding a yoga studio (I have three very good leads)
Partaking more in one particular community.

I just want to remember that I touched divinity once last weekend.
Not an unusual occurrence for Group Therapy, but nonetheless, I'd like to keep it in mind.
It was when I devoted my thoughts and my love and my attention and energy to Amanita. When I thought, "I will always serve you and be here for you. What is it that you need? What is it that I can do?"
Selflessly, but rooted in a powerful place of grounded self-ownership.
That's when I touched the light.

Until we meet again,
Your resident DJ.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Hey.
It's so vulnerable each time I begin to write. There is so much to release, but I also show up to the altar with empty hands. There is nothing to do but begin.

What a life. I had Covid. We went to Norway. We celebrated Christmas with my family. It was so nice to have her there. To show my family that I am worthy of love and that my way of being is celebrated. It was nice to have someone to see my roots and to see what I see, and to see what I experience. You ever wonder if you're not enough? Give the simple gift of looking deeply. Of listening tenderly. You don't have to achieve anything, to be worthy of anyone. You've just got to be present.

We broke up on the bus on the way back to Denmark. It was planned and it was in the cards. The day we met was essentially the day she found out that she was moving to Berlin. She is leaving this week.
I could've been a much better boyfriend.
It is so easy to forget your true nature. To forget the love you have for someone. To be caught up in how your needs aren't met or that they are pushing all sorts of buttons and that you'd just wish they'd just do those few things, or just mind to not do those few other things. To forgive and to accept. To overextend myself and do myself and the relationship injustice. To set boundaries and to learn that one can always change. You have that moment of such deep love and devotion, and you build upon that. To steer your own ship and to come together to celebrate.
At the same time, I don't feel bad. In it's own way, the relationship had run its course. That's not exactly what I mean. We just had differences that we were unwilling to reconcile.

A small Lane 8 tribute. A minute and a half.

We returned to ring in the new year. We threw the best party I've ever experienced.
We had a dinnerparty at her apartment, where we invited 10 of her closest and some extras.
We imbibed in a tab of acid, a dose of mdma, I handed out a few mushrooms, and I smoked a little and did some ketamine later in the night. But it wasn't the drugs that did it, it was the collective build-up of energy. The living lights. The playlist I curated. And the synchronicities that aligned. And not to forget the people.

We were on the roof, the fireworks were all going off right next to us on the rooftop. Each little group had a different sort of moment. I decide to go downstairs and feel the party. Amanita and Matti had gone downstairs and had started dancing. I joined and two, three others also joined. I laid down in the center and absorbed energy. I got up and what commenced was the most awesome dance-party I've been a part of, and I've been a part of some awesome dancefloors since I arrived. We had this massive balcony window that served as an open stage-curtain for the entire neighborhood gathered on the street. It was so easy. To flow and to feel good. I told a whole story with my dance.

Tom Ashbrook - Klass (Official Video)

Taken from the EP 'Sensibus', 'Klass' - out now on all platforms https://tomashbrook.fanlink.to/sensibusFollow Tom Ashbrook▶Instagram: https://www.instagram....

youtu.be

I came back upstairs into the bedroom. There were a few people in the bed and I sat behind Miranda and she leaned back onto me. I have had a painful and bothersome neck for over a year now. But, it has also become a gift. I massaged her neck tenderly. I feel my fingers on her neck, her various small tender muscles as I move. I have become so sensitive to my own neck and to other's. I become my fingers. Eric joins and cuddles onto me. I exist in the music and the music is coming through my fingers. I can feel myself letting go and letting go. Having thoughts and returning to my fingers. And we were all in on it. I knew where I was headed, I'm not sure if the others what was coming. It's called ecstatic magic. The energy builds and builds as you let go into your vulnerability and the love you are giving and receiving. And it builds and it keeps building as you let go of yourself. And you lose yourself somewhere in there. Who's hand is that? Is that my leg? I am my fingertips. Everything else is formless. I cannot feel where my boundaries end. Where is my body in the middle of all this? Am I massaging myself? The sounds people would make as I touched them. I poured my love and sorrow into my fingers. They were a channel for my soul. The love that built in that room was so immense. I had one of the most tender kisses of my life. There was also Eric, in my arms. I was just giving him love, to him and only him. It was just us, in the middle of everyone, alone, loving. I only existed where we touched. Some of the most tender love I've ever made. As the party continued, I realized that I've never felt that safe in anybody's arms, that he is a DMT elf, and that he is the most magical creature I've ever met.

Phoria - Current (Live at Abbey Road)

Very excited to share this live Abbey Road session with you all today.. It was such an honour to be surrounded by so many talented professionals in such a ma...

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Coming back down to the people sitting in the couch, I received a line of ketamine and joined them, laying on the floor by their feet.
And I traveled. I stayed put, but I ventured deeper and deeper into the moment and my being. It felt as though I was handshaking with the universe. I would get closer and closer as layer upon layer stripped away. It was fractal and a cosmic joke. "Do you want water?" My head was lifted and my neck was supporting by four arms as another two poured water into my mouth. Matti played a piano improv. I was laying on the floor and could feel the vibrations. I lived through him and in my mind it was his arms that lifted and poured for me. When we were in bed I could see other beings in his face. An old laughing Chinese man. I understood why Amanita had fallen in love with him when he played her piano last new years.

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We sat there at 5am, with the knowledge that would have to clean this all up and then have a two week sprint with her work project. The magic was floating in the air still. Her eyes and her face were all morphing in such a beautiful way. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. She went towards bed and I put on The Killers and went to work. What. A. Song. What a vibe.

And the new year hasn't held back either.
It's been very difficult and boring and annoying. But it's also been predictable and grounding and full of closure and new frontiers.
The following week was another amazing party. Similar, but less love and more sensual, full of attractive, sex-positive people. I learned a lot about being forward and owning oneself, boundaries and responsibility. There was a lot of tongue. Before this got too heavy, is where I got a job as a machine learning engineer. I met a founder and now my co-worker there. We exchanged numbers, emails, I came in for an interview, did a little project, and tomorrow is going to be my first day, writing ML code to build an exciting film-production software. Same week that Amanita is moving away. Would you look at that.

I went to celebrate this weekend. We had Amanita's goodbye dinner. Emma, whom I also met at a party, was DJing at a wonderful restaurant and we went there. Later, many of us go to Thomas' place. When Emma and her friends left, Anja invited Thomas and I to a party she was DJing the following night. I had so many chances to convince myself not to go to this party. There was a storm blowing in my direction and I was so so tired. I made my way there and was greeted by a fairly young crowd in a sound-proofed concrete basement. I wasn't vibing and considered leaving. Thomas showed up, we snorted some ketamine and went onto the dancefloor.

We had been talking about Burning Man for parts of the whole day. The DJ playing was actually great and played such a vibe. It was such a joy to be taken on that ride. Then Anja was playing and she kept the vibe going, brought of out of the spiritual and into the highs and lows of house, techno, and disco. I was in the zone on the dancefloor, feeling myself through and through. It's all so easy when I arrive at this place. I made a couple of meaningful connections. The standards of endless compliments and kind looks. And sexy looks. Being hit on by girls and guys. Not being quite sure how to manage the space if I introduce more sexuality beyond a point. I carried that party on my back for a moment, it felt like. But then the whole place was on fire, again. The music would build and explode and there would be ecstacy and relief. I could really become someone in this city. I could really find myself.
I wonder if I'll make it to the Playa this year?

Some time in December I went to the nightclub on my own, after another party. I was standing in line for an hour. I was so close to leaving as it got colder and I wasn't seeing people coming out the club that I'd like to be around. It's a matter of perspective, most often. A girl started talking to me. She was very kind. I was low on money, so she bought my ticket. She told me about this DJ that was playing upstairs. I ended up upstairs and it was incredible. There was this other girl on the dancefloor that danced like me, and we found each other immediately. We bonded and danced together. She bought me drinks. It was incredibly fun, and that was that.

She invited herself over yesterday. She stayed the night and we shared an affectionate and intimate space for a long time.
"If you open a door, that doesn't mean that door has to remain open."
"It also doesn't mean that all the other doors open either."
She's leaving for Poland next week.

I finally bought myself a desk.
I'm really starting to live my life here.
I hope to do my best to remember to live, to choose living over comfort.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

I was given these questions in a tarot course I'm enrolled in. I answered them here.

The Emperor:

What is your relation to leadership?
What may leadership look like outside of a culture of dominance?​

Conflicted.
I like to lead. My automatic response, my default mode when interacting with people isn't to assume space. So I often find myself following someone else. But sometimes I don't like the role I end up playing when I don't get to dictate the energy. Or should I rather say, when I end up separating from my self. When I don't listen to myself. When I start to lose my self. I find myself when I write. When I give up and give in to the difficulty. When I slow down and stop running. Right here. Even while still caught in an illusion of conflict, I choose to be here. Or I try to. I try to lead my self into being an ideal person right now or in the future. But since the entity that leads is the same as the one that follows, the very act of imposing leadership over "myself" is a dominant act that only really causes tension and anxiety. The leadership I impose on myself is a fear-based response to the alternative of sliding into the magic of the present moment.

But I like to lead. I don't think I can be a good leader without a good group. Sometimes it is easy to be a good leader. Team-games and quiz-like things. Sometimes I'm a terrible leader and I try to realize when it happens and to voice it.

I think everyone should be able to do what they want. To be encouraged to be free.
A position of oversight and connecting of connections. I think that it should be an organic unfolding of a happening or a structure.
Something that you could see in nature. A web of nodes.
Leadership as the responsibility of the most aware person to boost each other's awareness, translating to presence and ability. A gift that keeps on giving.

The Lovers:

Can you think of a relationship (it doesn’t have to be an intimate one or even with another human), where something you desired, that you did not think existed in yourself, was illuminated for you?​

Love.
I knew it, parts of it. Each progressing day at Electric Forest. How I felt about some of my friends. When that song hit just right. At the peak of a party where everyone is gathered and I was appreciated and reciprocated.
But I thought that love was for me to give and at the same time, denied from me.
I didn't think about love. I didn't know much of love. Now it's a mystery.
Love, as the universal director. With great humor. A place to be held. By a thousand hands. Where the concept of peace is brought to life. To relax and to find myself. To try again. To choose to be with myself, always, as much as I can. To the degree that I let go into this, to that degree I am (in) love.
Love as the burning light that banishes fear. That needs fuel - love. That fuels - love.
Keep falling in love. To assume good. To not assume. To focus. To listen. To Understand.

What parts of yourself do you tend to primarily recognize in others?​

I notice kindness and presence. Consideration and control. The lack of presence and self-hate. Insecurity and shame. Joy and powerful attractors. Magnanimity and loss of self. I also recognize my qualities in their opposite. Being without ambition. Being happy without ambition. Sensitivity.

------

I should write more. Slow down more. Do nothing more. Give up on trying to find out that thing that I really should be doing to find relaxation or relief or peace or happiness or acceptance. And to instead just try to sink into whatever it is I give in to. And to surrender to that. To increase the span between each time I check in with my mental self, where I look for justification for my experience.
I still think that the simple solution is to seek to find that still place where you can find yourself again and again. Where you choose to face the present and everything it holds, not gracefully, but without running away.

My life is graced, but hasn't been so graceful since we last met. Lot of time to myself and my own many young parts of my self. Underdeveloped. Undernourished. Underexposed. What used to soothe, now stings a little. But just barely enough to get me finally moving. A decently small local minima.
I am lonely. But I go dancing. There, I'm still fairly alone, but I am dancing. I think that the pain I experienced and the ketamine dancefloor experienced have opened the floodgates. There's a life-force to my dancing that is so fun to tap into and people notice. I am almost flirting with the idea of pursuing it. I just went to a dance class yesterday and it was incredible.
I am excited about three girls in my life. It's all a bit of a let-down, while it's also an affirming mirror - that these wonderful beings find such pleasure or interest in me.
I am both at ease and self-assuming, while also an object to myself, half man and half cripple. Participating in this illusion of struggle gives me great insecurity about myself, since I want to beat myself to the punch whenever I should reveal myself - reveal that I have inner confusion and self-grandiosity. I don't want others to see the degree that I am lost. For someone to judge my inner landscape. To be abandoned for this. So I give myself anxiety because I am afraid others will spot my anxiety and dysfunctionality. Particularly my dysfunctionality.

I am so lonely. And world-weary. Weary of my own thoughts. I just started meditating again. I've been falling asleep. It's terrifying. To live a life, dead inside. Absolutely unbearable. But I'd like to get lost in people like me. I am lonely. But I look at many other people and how they spend their social time or who they are, and I don't want to be them or have what they have. Yet, I am lonely. Alone. To acquaint myself with loneliness. To find out what it means for me to plant my own garden and water my soul. To fuel that, I go dancing.

Goodnight, dancers.

 

[Chuck Taylor]

You should write a book. Get it published, so you can speak to others about your experiences. To be honest, it'd be a lot more rewarding for you than spending what I can only assume is an inordinate amount of time, crafting these posts on a forum.

You could definitely reach a much bigger audience than you do here.