Way Of Minds

I have been lost for so long, and it happens so easily. I really only realize it when I am already very much in it, or, maybe out of it is more relevant in this case.

I realize I need to just be more mindful of myself. That really is something that I feel I am lacking at this point in life. So, My challenge for the near future is to progress in maintaining mindfulness throughout the day. Noticing the changes in my mindset when I am not mindful and when I am, when I am on auto pilot, and when I am actually controlling and have some sort of grasp on myself.

The difference between thinking first and then responding to just reacting. Being able to take a moment before responding to anything. I have never actually learned to do this and I'm sure it will be a difficult road, but this is my commitment to myself. To learn how to do that.

I won't just jump into any expectation though, I will build it up, slowly get more and more into this habit. So, today it's just the realization of it, tomorrow its noticing when I am not mindful, maybe the next day is the same, learning and noticing. That goes a long way and gives a lot of useful insights. As the days go by, I will continue to learn and understand my actions, and from there I will start to try and do better. To breath in between. To not react, but to take a moment. To be calmer, not in terms of temperament, but in terms of reactions and responses. To just slow it down, and truly be myself.

Part of this process will be about taking a step back from people, from trying to be close to them. I don't feel like I am in the right place to get close to anyone, not intimate. That includes physically and just emotionally. Opening up to people is beyond what I am capable of right now. Not to mistake it, I can open and get close and intimate, but, doing that just leaves me feeling more lonely than I already am, and it just doesn't feel right at the moment.

So the goal is to take a few steps back. Still be there for them and with them, but to set a boundary with myself, one that I will not cross, but that will grow and expand until the day I am ready to be as open and intimate as I have been, but just from a far better place.

I feel like I keep going back and forth, and I'm not sure I am seeing the progression or the growth. Some would say that even noticing this and realizing this is growth and progression, but I don't feel that, because I have felt this way for quite a while. If anything it proves my point.

I feel like some days I am full of motivation and desire to grow and improve and do things that I know are good for me and help me and that I just want to do, but then at some point I just lose it without even realizing it. What usually happens is I sort of "wake up", that I just "lost" myself again and didn't do the things I wanted to, lost the motivation and desire, wasn't mindful, didn't improve and grow.

It's as if I am constantly waking up. And nothing actually changes, I wake up to the same thoughts, same ideas, same situations.

The point of this is that it feels like I am stuck in a loop, and I have tried taking some what drastic measures to change this, to get out of the loop, but I guess that wasn't the answer either since I am still here. Still waking up, still "falling asleep".

Maybe there is improvement and growth that I just don't see or feel, but it's there. Maybe at some point I will wake up to it and instead of realize that I am saying and thinking the same things every time, that I need to change and improve and growth, maybe I will wake up and realize that I actually have grown, and I have changed, that I am better.

I find it so difficult to get back into a meditation practice once I lose consistency. When I have a good daily schedule that includes meditation in the morning it feels easy to actually get up in the morning and do it, even though I'm not a morning person. The meditation itself also feels "easy", I feel I am actually in it, meditating, focused. Once I lose that though, it gets so hard to get back into it, and even when I do get up and have a meditation session, the actual meditation does not feel like it's an actual meditation, my mind is goin all over the place, completely unmanageable, which makes sense of course, it just makes it all the more difficult to do it again the next day.

I'm not upset about this, I am fully accepting it and aware of it as a challenge that I need to find my way to overcome. Maybe starting again with shorter meditations throughout the day will help build it back up until I can feel better about the meditations in the mornings again, or when I ever I do them, I used to do one in the morning and one in the evening for about 20 minutes each.

I am aware that i will lose my practice every now and then, and that things won't be consistent forever. That I can have a great schedule for a few month, and then it can suddenly get disrupted. And that is ok!

I am sure others experience this too, in their everyday life and not just in regards to meditation. The key for me is to be aware of it, and to not get upset that I am once again losing my practice, schedule, or consistency. It happens, and it will happen, I am accepting it and learning from it, specifically, how to detach from the negative feelings around it, and how to reintroduce the same schedule or a different one if needed.

Maybe I'll write more about it later on, in full, but I have been journaling a lot about something I have been going through, specifically this feeling of things not aligning within me. I came to a theory about an internal conflict within me that has 2 main sides, and a third antagonistic side.

Side A: The side that takes in what is literally said, this side needs either a yes or a no, sometimes, even a maybe is enough of an answer. As long as it's not beating around the bush, straight to the point, direct.

Side B: This side takes in the behavior. This includes, for example, if a person is being distant with you or showing affection. This also includes verbal communication, for example, if the person speaks to you in a certain way that is caring, or not caring.

The conflict arises when Side A and Side B do not match. To take the situation I was in as an example, a partner said that she still had feelings for me, and wanted a future with me, but, all of her actions and her behavior indicated otherwise. This created a conflict between the two sides. The conflict was that I was being told one thing, but, in reality, I was experiencing the complete opposite. And this caused me a lot of stress, which I will get into later if I post more about this. But it created restlessness to the point where I was chasing around for answers and clarity.

The third side, Side C, is the antagonistic side, the one that will always try to cause more chaos and conflict, even if Side A and Side B are in align, if there is an agreement between them. Side C will try to prove them wrong, and to bring up the slightest option for doubt for either side.

I'm not able to sleep right now. I woke up and have been having thoughts about this person that I just can't stop. I just go down storyline after storyline, endlessly, replaying the same ones over and over again, making myself upset and even angry.

I have complete chaos in my mind. I know the answer as to our relationship is simple, but, my mind keeps going through these thoughts, it keeps making things up. It tells me stories that are not even real, they are not reality, but to my mind they are so real that they just feel as if they are actually happening while I am thinking them. I am making it all so much more complicated than it actually is also, I know it's simple in reality, but it's so complicated in my mind. It's an odd feeling, because I know the truth and know how it really is, but, I also have this other part of me that knows everything else that my mind made up about it.

I feel like there is a shadow that is cast over all of the good things I have in my life, to the point where they are all dimmed, almost to the point where I can't even see them. I can't feel their positivity. It feels like I am incapable of experiencing and enjoying the good things I have going on, which are a lot. I have so much good in my life, from the experiences I have on a daily basis, to the people I meet every day. I even enjoy my current work and what I do. But I just can't fully enjoy it.

I have been meditating, hoping that will help, but that too is feeling like a dead end. Not that I will stop practicing and trying, I won't, but I am in a place where it all feels futile, as if nothing is getting better, even when I pretend it is.

There are moments where I feel like there is hope, and that I am getting to a good place and am in the right direction. Those are few though. But I do have hope and a knowing that I will feel better more often, and then I will feel better more than I feel worse, and eventually, I will just feel good, with an occasional fall, but I'll get back up.

I have been having trouble finding happiness. I experience momentary joy, but it never lasts. I laugh, sometimes to tears, but the moment it's over, that joy goes along with it as well, and I am left feeling some sort of emptiness that makes me feel like I am completely alone. It usually comes and goes, but sometimes it lingers, for a while. This is one of those times.

I am surrounded by people and friends, but even with their company, I feel the same. Sometimes, even when we are all together, laughing and having fun, I suddenly zone out and lose all that joy, and am just overwhelmed with emptiness.

What is this emptiness? I ask myself that a lot. What is this loneliness? It feels like there is an answer to it all that I am just not getting. It feels like there is something I am not doing right, or something I should be doing. Like there will be a moment where I will just have this realization of what it is, and the emptiness and loneliness will just go away.

Don't ask for something to be more than it can be right now. I heard this quote today and felt how much I relate to this. This for me has been one of my biggest struggles, one of the biggest lessons I have had to learn and am still learning. To not force things into being what I want them to be, when I want them to be.

This goes for anything, really. Especially for relationships and people. Whether you meet someone you are interested in, but they are just not interested in you, or its just not the right timing, sometimes all you can do is let it go and allow it to have its time, allow it to work when its ready. Forcing it, trying to make it more than what it can be right now can result in simply nothing, making it not even work when it could have worked when the time was right.

Its not about waiting, its not about predicting the future, it's just about letting go of trying to force things to happen the way you desire. Trusting in who ever it is you believe in or want to trust in, whether this is a god, the universe, yourself, or just having plain out trust, that things will workout, and that you will be pleased.

It's a big lesson, it's difficult to put into practice, especially when it is in relation to other people or a lover, but the more I do, the more I see that it just works. Letting go, allowing things to happen when they happen, and not forcing anything into existence.

What I have noticed is that I am more aware of my thoughts, and that I am lost in my thoughts. Getting lost in my thoughts has always been something that has consumed most of my day. The moment a story line would start, I would just get so deep into it and I wouldn't even realize it until it would completely take over and even change my mood.

I have been meditating on and off for quite a while, but it never really made a difference, I would even get lost in the story lines while meditating. That changed when I started going to a Buddhist meditation center about a year ago, I spent about 3 months there and they explained that you should not try to let go or get rid of thoughts while meditating, that instead, you want to be aware that you are thinking. Once you become aware of them, you just let them go by themselves. But to not force this process, simply sit and be aware of the thoughts.

Once that sank in, I started putting it to practice during meditations, and it actually showed some results, it started working, I started noticing that I was thinking and lost in the stories more and more, and was able to bring myself back, and that translated into everyday life.

Now, when I think about things, even before a story is created I am already aware of the situation, that I am thinking and that if I continue this way, I will get lost in the story.

I can't stop the story line and myself from getting lost in it every time, but, I am aware of it every time now, and that is a huge difference. It gives me more control over my mind and my thoughts, and the option to actually make a decision, if to continue down that path and get lost, or if to end it. It's just that for me some story lines are too tempting to not go down, but that is another practice!

Though I have been doing much better in the past 6 months, I still hold on to things too tightly. And recently was a great example of that in which I won't go too much into detail, but, I held on too tightly to the point where I lost the very thing I was holding on to.

Looking back now, I can clearly see what I was doing, but, of course, while I was doing it I was oblivious. Though, this time was different from the past because I actually was aware that I was doing certain things, where in the past I wouldn't even realize the state I was in. And though I was aware of how I was feeling this time, I was still oblivious to the bigger picture of it, the smaller and bigger impacts of what I was doing, of holding on so tightly.

For the things that I did realize, I just couldn't get myself to let go and to release even a little bit, I didn't know how. And the things around that, what it was causing the other person and me, I just couldn't see.

Now that I am past it, I can see it all and see what it did to me and to them. Of course like anything it's not as simple as that, there were many factors in this, but, I was a major one, and my lack of ability to release the holds even a bit made things worse and worse, very quickly, to the point where I couldn't even tell if what I was doing and thinking was even me, or if it was just part of this terrible attachment that I formed.

My lesson from this of course is to stay on my path, and learn to love loosely, to not hold on too tightly, but also to learn to identify when it is actually happening, to identify what causes it and how to prevent or stop it if it has already begun. This is a lesson that I have yet to learn as I just realized that I still feel powerless in this situation, I don't know yet how to handle it. But that is the ongoing lesson I need to learn.