The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 18,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals
This blog is analyzing the origins of specific points of which I am walking the consequences right now in my day to day life. A U-turn to go back in time to correct or change my decisions is no option, so I will have to investigate specific moments in my past to be able to understand and correct myself here and now. Only so I will be able to stop ever returning patterns.
Today a new fact popped up that is adding to the list of consequences that have manifested since we as a family are back in society so to say. Already for a certain time I am seeing that since we moved to Italy, or maybe better, since we decided to move to Italy we started to plant a series of ‘things’ (I can’t figure out right now what should be a proper name) that grew over the years and which we are harvesting now, without having kept track of everything we have planted. I speak in we to indicate me and my partner as we are partners in crime in this, both having thought/created and accepted and allowed.
If I look back at the motivations we had for wanting to move to Italy I see now clearly it was a wish to escape. But to escape from what? Over the years, starting somewhere in my youth, I developed a view of the world that at first was very naive since I was raised in a family that had enough wealth to live a comfortable life. Later in life I experienced more and more how the real world was working. Where at first I was frustrated by the fact I was not able to grasp how things worked because they did not seem to work as I imagined, I slowly started to see that a lot of things were fucked up and started slowly but surely to distantiate myself from the ‘real’ world, at least I tried to do so. I was not willing to accept the world I was living in and started to make plans to escape the sick society in order to create my own micro world somewhere far away from everything.
If I look back at the period that preceded our ‘escape’ to a life on the edge of society I see a series of things that have not been managed properly. Most of these things are money related, and since life is money that shouldn’t be too surprising. There are several factors playing a role here. I will try to find a beginning here in my relation to money working backwards in time.
- Still paying the consequences of the loans I had to take a few years ago
- Issues with bank accounts that have not been properly closed down resulting in bank not willing to give us a mortgage for a new house
- No income due to work opportunities that dried up and forcing me to stop being self employed and to look for a new job
- Forced to get a loan to be able to pay my taxes
- Sold our house for less money than expected
- No money from the fine the first buyer of our house had to pay after he signed but could not pay for the house
- Extra expenses for lawyers and cleaning after a non successful sale and rent of our house
- Irregular income as self-employed consultant leading to a not so clear picture of what my financial situation was
- Lost job after not having a contract renewed due to lack of money within that company
- Changed job because I was looking for new challenges (From HP to a small company)
- Changed job because I felt I was doing work below my capabilities (From Ikea to HP)
So, where did it go wrong? Maybe my motivations or starting points. Why did I decide to swap job? When I decided to leave Ikea I did not have a new job. I decided to dive into a multi level marketing business where I was supposed to sell water filters. It did take a few months and some money to understand that this was not something for me. I was not a sales person and I was not prepared to sell to my friends and family trying to convince them to get into the business too. It was in the period right after this that I met my partner. In the first months of our relationship I settled and managed to get a job at HP.
Looking back the only motivation to leave a secure job was the fact I wanted a more challenging job and did not see any opportunities. Looking deeper, and this is a pattern that will come back more often, I see that I was looking for inspiration in order to do my day to day job. In other words, based on the feeling that my job was no fun anymore and did not give me the challenges I was looking for I decided to look for something else. The fact I looked for another job is not the point here, it is the motivation that lead to the fact of leaving my job. I have not been honest with myself (and to others) about this point and the fact I left one job without having another one. Why did I lie to myself? What was so important to achieve that I decided to lie and be blind for the real facts? Was it the hope to get rich? Was it the urge to get out of a boring day to day routine? Was it the idea to be free and do whatever I liked?
At last I managed to get back to earth and stopped participating in this idea of making money with a promising story overlooking all kind of important points. And finally I popped back into my place in the matrix and started working for a new employer. Not surprisingly this whole pattern popped up again. It took a little bit more than the previous time since I was settling more and more in the matrix of life, I got married, had children and all this was ok with a day to day routine of gong to the office doing slave work, every day again the same thing.
Also here I started to feel the burden of this much too static working environment. As soon as I saw the opportunity to leave for a more challenging job I left. I choose for a small company that was still tied (read entangled) to the corporate I was working for before. The only thing I did not foresee was that the crisis already started in these years (2002) and that Corporate HP was already taking measures. This trend of reducing costs, canceling training programs (I was working as a trainer) led to the fact that a couple of years later I ran out of business (by that time I was self-employed). I could have seen that, but I was blinded by the pictures of living in a remote area in the countryside somewhere in Italy.
And here I am touching another point. Italy! Ever since I finished school and moved from Italy, where I lived most of my youth, to the Netherlands I wanted to go back to Italy. The first year in my supposed country of origin had been a hell, at least that was the way I experienced it. I had a hard time in fitting in into the Dutch society. Not because people did not allow me, I was not allowing myself to fit in. I cherished the idea of being special, I was different, the ‘Italian’ and so giving myself a identity, something I apparently thought not to have.
I carried this identity with me for a long time, actually for the whole period I was living in the Netherlands, 22 years long. When I moved to Italy in 2006 with my family I had the idea I was back in my mother country. I son discovered a lot had changed in all these years. I also discovered that it was not the same life I had back then. I had to make my own money and that was quite difficult since plan A was to work as a trainer for HP in Italy, I only overlooked the fact that due to cost reduction HP canceled more and more trainings until almost nothing. Not willing to leave the Italian Dream and see that I chose the wrong horse to bet on I adapted and managed to get part time jobs. Together with other small projects I managed to earn a modest living, but not for long.
A factor that plays an important role in my motivation to go ‘back’ to Italy, besides the idea of leaving a rotten society to live on my own in a self (almost) supporting house with veggie garden, wood for the stove and so on, was the fact I could maintain my feeling special character. For 22 years I had been the Italian guy in the Netherlands, now I was the Dutch guy in Italy! That was feeding my specialty character with a lot of energy. I topped living this character when I was getting in more and more trouble and needed to change the situation I was living in since it was not acceptable anymore.
Having been confronted with the situation of having barely to no money to live I experienced a kind of resetting of myself. When we decided I had to go to the Netherlands to look for a job I kind of started as a new born child. This was the first time I actually did live in a country with no mask on of a special character. If ever I am recalling the old times in Italy is when talking to a colleague and old classmate of mine about the good old times (lol).
Having said this I can do a step further back. The being special character started somewhere of course. It might have started at the age of 5 when, while living in Italy as a very bond child among all other children with dark hair, I was seen as special. When strolling in the city with my mother and brother we had regularly people stopping to have a look at the blonde twins and had to touch that curious fair colored hair. My mother recalls that she had to wash our hair after each visit to the city.
Although the first years on the primary school seemed quite normal and being fully integrated into the community there were still a couple of ‘anomalies’. First the fact I am a twin and that my brother and I sat in the same class for the first three years until my parents decided it was better to split us (after having changed school from a small village school to a larger suburb school).
Later we moved as a family to another place and I and my brother were together again at the European School together with Dutch classmates on a school with lots of different nationalities. A nice feeding ground for feeling special. So, having looked back this way I see that during most of my life I have been living in my special character. Not to mention I have been always proud of the fact I never smoked of felt attracted to trends without seeing I was living a character myself with the real me hiding behind this mask.
The following self forgiveness sentences are focussing on the ‘being special’ character.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel special because of having a different background compared to the people I was living/dealing with.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself not to see that all those years I allowed myself to hide behind a mask of feeling special instead of not trusting that my true self was good ‘enough’ to stand in my day to day life.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I needed to be seen as special in order to achieve something in live/work.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel proud when people recognized the fact I was special by acknowledging I was as an Italian with wooden shoes (typical Dutch) using the best of both cultures.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to abuse the fact of not being a real Italian or Dutch person using this point as an excuse for (not) having to do specific things, thus not willing to take full responsibility for my role within society.
I commit myself to stop participating in the feeling special character as I see it is leading to deception and a false impression of comfort and safety within a non existing identity instead of just being myself in Self Honesty all the time, breath by breath.
The following self forgiveness sentences are about the fact I did not want to see the situation I maneuvered myself and my family in by moving to Italy.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have ignored all kind of signals while pursuing my dream without realizing that my goal was not real but just an idea in my mind.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not having taken full responsibility for the consequences of my choices related to my desire to go back to Italy and the desire to live on the edge of society.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have delayed the decision of making a change in my life until I really had to deal with the harsh consequences instead of having seen and accepted I needed to change the way I was making a living in order to avoid nasty consequences for myself and my family.
I commit myself to stop in participating in pursuing a dream and to take full responsibility for everything I do in every moment, breath after breath.
Today a new fact popped up that is adding to the list of consequences that have manifested since we as a family are back in society so to say. Already for a certain time I am seeing that since we moved to Italy, or maybe better, since we decided to move to Italy we started to plant a series of ‘things’ (I can’t figure out right now what should be a proper name) that grew over the years and which we are harvesting now, without having kept track of everything we have planted. I speak in we to indicate me and my partner as we are partners in crime in this, both having thought/created and accepted and allowed.
If I look back at the motivations we had for wanting to move to Italy I see now clearly it was a wish to escape. But to escape from what? Over the years, starting somewhere in my youth, I developed a view of the world that at first was very naive since I was raised in a family that had enough wealth to live a comfortable life. Later in life I experienced more and more how the real world was working. Where at first I was frustrated by the fact I was not able to grasp how things worked because they did not seem to work as I imagined, I slowly started to see that a lot of things were fucked up and started slowly but surely to distantiate myself from the ‘real’ world, at least I tried to do so. I was not willing to accept the world I was living in and started to make plans to escape the sick society in order to create my own micro world somewhere far away from everything.
If I look back at the period that preceded our ‘escape’ to a life on the edge of society I see a series of things that have not been managed properly. Most of these things are money related, and since life is money that shouldn’t be too surprising. There are several factors playing a role here. I will try to find a beginning here in my relation to money working backwards in time.
- Still paying the consequences of the loans I had to take a few years ago
- Issues with bank accounts that have not been properly closed down resulting in bank not willing to give us a mortgage for a new house
- No income due to work opportunities that dried up and forcing me to stop being self employed and to look for a new job
- Forced to get a loan to be able to pay my taxes
- Sold our house for less money than expected
- No money from the fine the first buyer of our house had to pay after he signed but could not pay for the house
- Extra expenses for lawyers and cleaning after a non successful sale and rent of our house
- Irregular income as self-employed consultant leading to a not so clear picture of what my financial situation was
- Lost job after not having a contract renewed due to lack of money within that company
- Changed job because I was looking for new challenges (From HP to a small company)
- Changed job because I felt I was doing work below my capabilities (From Ikea to HP)
So, where did it go wrong? Maybe my motivations or starting points. Why did I decide to swap job? When I decided to leave Ikea I did not have a new job. I decided to dive into a multi level marketing business where I was supposed to sell water filters. It did take a few months and some money to understand that this was not something for me. I was not a sales person and I was not prepared to sell to my friends and family trying to convince them to get into the business too. It was in the period right after this that I met my partner. In the first months of our relationship I settled and managed to get a job at HP.
Looking back the only motivation to leave a secure job was the fact I wanted a more challenging job and did not see any opportunities. Looking deeper, and this is a pattern that will come back more often, I see that I was looking for inspiration in order to do my day to day job. In other words, based on the feeling that my job was no fun anymore and did not give me the challenges I was looking for I decided to look for something else. The fact I looked for another job is not the point here, it is the motivation that lead to the fact of leaving my job. I have not been honest with myself (and to others) about this point and the fact I left one job without having another one. Why did I lie to myself? What was so important to achieve that I decided to lie and be blind for the real facts? Was it the hope to get rich? Was it the urge to get out of a boring day to day routine? Was it the idea to be free and do whatever I liked?
At last I managed to get back to earth and stopped participating in this idea of making money with a promising story overlooking all kind of important points. And finally I popped back into my place in the matrix and started working for a new employer. Not surprisingly this whole pattern popped up again. It took a little bit more than the previous time since I was settling more and more in the matrix of life, I got married, had children and all this was ok with a day to day routine of gong to the office doing slave work, every day again the same thing.
Also here I started to feel the burden of this much too static working environment. As soon as I saw the opportunity to leave for a more challenging job I left. I choose for a small company that was still tied (read entangled) to the corporate I was working for before. The only thing I did not foresee was that the crisis already started in these years (2002) and that Corporate HP was already taking measures. This trend of reducing costs, canceling training programs (I was working as a trainer) led to the fact that a couple of years later I ran out of business (by that time I was self-employed). I could have seen that, but I was blinded by the pictures of living in a remote area in the countryside somewhere in Italy.
And here I am touching another point. Italy! Ever since I finished school and moved from Italy, where I lived most of my youth, to the Netherlands I wanted to go back to Italy. The first year in my supposed country of origin had been a hell, at least that was the way I experienced it. I had a hard time in fitting in into the Dutch society. Not because people did not allow me, I was not allowing myself to fit in. I cherished the idea of being special, I was different, the ‘Italian’ and so giving myself a identity, something I apparently thought not to have.
I carried this identity with me for a long time, actually for the whole period I was living in the Netherlands, 22 years long. When I moved to Italy in 2006 with my family I had the idea I was back in my mother country. I son discovered a lot had changed in all these years. I also discovered that it was not the same life I had back then. I had to make my own money and that was quite difficult since plan A was to work as a trainer for HP in Italy, I only overlooked the fact that due to cost reduction HP canceled more and more trainings until almost nothing. Not willing to leave the Italian Dream and see that I chose the wrong horse to bet on I adapted and managed to get part time jobs. Together with other small projects I managed to earn a modest living, but not for long.
A factor that plays an important role in my motivation to go ‘back’ to Italy, besides the idea of leaving a rotten society to live on my own in a self (almost) supporting house with veggie garden, wood for the stove and so on, was the fact I could maintain my feeling special character. For 22 years I had been the Italian guy in the Netherlands, now I was the Dutch guy in Italy! That was feeding my specialty character with a lot of energy. I topped living this character when I was getting in more and more trouble and needed to change the situation I was living in since it was not acceptable anymore.
Having been confronted with the situation of having barely to no money to live I experienced a kind of resetting of myself. When we decided I had to go to the Netherlands to look for a job I kind of started as a new born child. This was the first time I actually did live in a country with no mask on of a special character. If ever I am recalling the old times in Italy is when talking to a colleague and old classmate of mine about the good old times (lol).
Having said this I can do a step further back. The being special character started somewhere of course. It might have started at the age of 5 when, while living in Italy as a very bond child among all other children with dark hair, I was seen as special. When strolling in the city with my mother and brother we had regularly people stopping to have a look at the blonde twins and had to touch that curious fair colored hair. My mother recalls that she had to wash our hair after each visit to the city.
Although the first years on the primary school seemed quite normal and being fully integrated into the community there were still a couple of ‘anomalies’. First the fact I am a twin and that my brother and I sat in the same class for the first three years until my parents decided it was better to split us (after having changed school from a small village school to a larger suburb school).
Later we moved as a family to another place and I and my brother were together again at the European School together with Dutch classmates on a school with lots of different nationalities. A nice feeding ground for feeling special. So, having looked back this way I see that during most of my life I have been living in my special character. Not to mention I have been always proud of the fact I never smoked of felt attracted to trends without seeing I was living a character myself with the real me hiding behind this mask.
The following self forgiveness sentences are focussing on the ‘being special’ character.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel special because of having a different background compared to the people I was living/dealing with.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself not to see that all those years I allowed myself to hide behind a mask of feeling special instead of not trusting that my true self was good ‘enough’ to stand in my day to day life.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I needed to be seen as special in order to achieve something in live/work.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel proud when people recognized the fact I was special by acknowledging I was as an Italian with wooden shoes (typical Dutch) using the best of both cultures.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to abuse the fact of not being a real Italian or Dutch person using this point as an excuse for (not) having to do specific things, thus not willing to take full responsibility for my role within society.
I commit myself to stop participating in the feeling special character as I see it is leading to deception and a false impression of comfort and safety within a non existing identity instead of just being myself in Self Honesty all the time, breath by breath.
The following self forgiveness sentences are about the fact I did not want to see the situation I maneuvered myself and my family in by moving to Italy.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have ignored all kind of signals while pursuing my dream without realizing that my goal was not real but just an idea in my mind.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not having taken full responsibility for the consequences of my choices related to my desire to go back to Italy and the desire to live on the edge of society.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have delayed the decision of making a change in my life until I really had to deal with the harsh consequences instead of having seen and accepted I needed to change the way I was making a living in order to avoid nasty consequences for myself and my family.
I commit myself to stop in participating in pursuing a dream and to take full responsibility for everything I do in every moment, breath after breath.
During my working day I decided that tonight I will do some work that I want to be finished by tomorrow. It is one of those days where a lot of unforeseen (unwanted?) things happened and caused my planning not to fit anymore into the available hours. Making this decision I was surprised by the fact it was so easy to make and to assume that I will indeed do it. If i them compare my behavior when it is blog writing or working on my DIP assignments I see a big difference. I am much less motivated.
Let’s have a look at my motivation. What is really motivating me? The fact I want to have things done within the timeframe I agreed on with others? Or does it go deeper? What is it that keeps me running faster for my boss than for myself? Yes, that is it! Writing my blogs and doing my DIP assignments is all stuff I do for mySelf. Making long days in the office and even continuing the work at home is… Fear, Enslavement! Fear to be seen as less competent by my superiors/boss, enslavement by the money system that tells me to work more and more so I can save holidays for extra days off or to be paid as extra salary.
So, enslavement/money/fear are more important than Self. That is not a good balance. But how to find this balance? How to establish the energy/time to dedicate to work and to Self development?
Self-honesty!
Within Self-honesty it is not possible to decide that work is more important than working on my self development. It is equally important. The first to properly function in the system/matrix with no need to exaggerate, the second to become more stable and aware of Life so I can stand as one as breath to the benefit of all and everything.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see my job to be more important than my self development through blogging and doing my DIP assignments.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see my self development through blogging and dong my DIP assignment as less important than my job.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to allow fear of survival to decide what is the best to be done instead of allowing myself in a specific moment to stop and breath and in that moment decide what is best for all.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be motivated by false arguments drive by fear of survival and enslavement to money instead of get things done because what I do is simply in the best interest of all.
For more than six months I am stuck on a specific lesson in my DIP course. There are many reasons to it. In this period I’ve been going through a rough period of looking for a new job, finding it, living in another country, moving my family, finding a house, living in several places in a short period of time, etc. Many practical reasons not to focus on my DIP course.
I’ve ran out of practical limitations now and still I see there are resistances that prevent me going on. Looking at it rationally I do not see any reason why I shouldn’t be able to find half an hour a day to dedicate to the DIP. I still hear the excuse voice in my head telling me that I had health issues making it hard to find enough energy to dedicate on DIP after a day of work where on the other hand I easily tend to work extra hours for my boss (and to finish the work that from my point of view needed to be done anyway).
When I finally started again to work on my assignments a couple of times I was confronted with the consequences of the long delay. The assignment had been updated and at the end I had to start the whole lesson from scratch. Not an issue since the work I did before was done a long time ago and it had its purpose anyway. At a certain point I thought to be ready and handed in my assignment only to find out I only did half the work and not even that, The second half of the assignment was not properly understood and needs to be redone.
Time to really focus on what needs to be done. I still have been not self-honest and did not want to thoroughly redo the assignment as described in the materials just because I thought that I still new what I read some time before. To me now it is very clear how one can fool him/herself with just assuming and thinking. Assumptions always ted to serve self interest and that is not helping to get a stable and well founded situation.
This simple experience is a clear point to me that I still need to address this point of being more accurate in the way I deal with assignments/tasks. I will have to stop assumptions and thoughts that have as a starting point not willing to face the real thing and deal with it in its full extent. Therefore I commit myself to pick up this point and systematically address it by performing the following actions:
- I will dedicate every day a specific amount of time to the DIP course
- I will go through all the necessary materials (even if I might think it is overdone or unnecessary)
- I will check if what I have done is according to the requirements
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to delay working on my DIP assignment because I felt disappointed and therefore trying to find reasons to blame outside myself to justify my delay instead of taking my responsibility and asses the situation in this very moment, decide on the action to take and perform these actions.
Only very recently I experienced I was walking very relaxed while whistling a song. I was enjoying the moment, the fresh morning air in my face, the street I was feeling through my feet, the movement of my body walking. It was a short moment before thoughts popped in again but nevertheless very enjoyable. ‘Wow’ I thought, this is to live the moment, being aware of your body being in contact with what is around. I started to guess why I was so relaxed and could come up with a series of reasons that seen from a perspective of the mind could be important to justify why I hadn’t been able to experience this before. To keep it brief all the reasons were based on some kind of self limitation. It is as if I ran out of plausible justifications for not dedicating myself to enjoying life.
The past months have been full of challenges aiming at one goal: restoring the stability of my life and that of my family. The whole thing started with the need to generate a stable income. This meant I had to quit my life as a self employed person with a uncertain income and look for a job. While living separated from my wife and children I managed to find a great job. A couple of months later, which could have been less if I did not allow myself to limit my possibilities by some convictions about availability of houses to rent, I was able to rent a place where we could live again as a family. Thanks to the help of friends we managed to move all our stuff from Italy to the Netherlands. Next milestone is to settle and get organized again, a process that for some odd reason seems harder that ever experienced before.
Looking at my situation right now what I would try to achieve is to get everything around me organized before allowing myself to do other activities than assembling furniture, unpacking boxes, organizing my stuff. I see that I can look at the situation in two ways, the first is to see all the things that still need to be done as a kind of backlog that needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible in order to reach that ideal starting point from where I can pick up normal life again. The second is to see the situation for what it is in the moment and evaluate in that very moment what should be done taking into consideration what is best for all and the consequences of doing or not doing certain things.
I am not there yet, but taking it all breath by breath it is amazing what I manage to do in a relative short span of time. So, back to blogging and writing myself out, picking up again the process of writing myself to freedom. No excuses anymore to frustrate this process.
In the run of sorting out everything in preparation for the move from Italy to Holland, my partner asked me what to do with the broken espresso machine I’d left in the garage catching dust. I left it there since it stopped working about a year ago. I started drinking coffee made with the typical Italian ‘caffettiera’ and enjoyed that coffee a lot. Later I stopped drinking coffee completely due to a sugar, yeast and wheat free diet that included avoiding any kind of mould, fungi, etc. including caffeine.
Within this context it seems logical to get rid of the machine. Common sense will dictate how we should dispose of the machine but my reaction to the question was everything but common sense. I almost shouted that it was a crazy idea to dispose of an expensive machine that just needs to be checked in order to work again. I said that I would think about it and decide later.
I started to ask myself a couple of questions. Why is this machine so important to me. Is it because its value expressed in money? Or is it because the value I am giving it based on my personal emotions and feelings. Yes! It is fear of loss! On the moment my partner suggested to get rid of the espresso machine I feared to loose the possibility to have a nice cup of coffee. What value does that fear have when I know I did not use the machine and could drink very good coffee from a much simpler coffee pot? To make the picture complete, I could not afford the machine to be repaired at the time so I was kind of forced in finding another solution. It’s a fear of not being able to go back to a nice and cherished experience. But what kind of experience? Looking at it now it seems ridiculous. Year ago I could talk hours about Italian coffee, the way it should be brewed and the way you should drink it.
Another point is that I started to drink coffee again on a couple of occasions. The experience is different compared to the period I had a coffee every day. If the taste is not good I will just not have it again. I am still in doubt if I really enjoy drinking coffee again. If my starting point is to have an enjoyable warm drink, coffee is not getting high scores. So, it might be the right time to stop holding on old memories connected to mindfucks about coffee drinking experiences.
This leaves me with one practical question, what am I going to do with an espresso machine that needs to be serviced at an unknown cost? Am I going to sell it in a country where everybody drinks his or her coffee in a bar? Am I going to bring it to the Netherlands to sell it here? Makes a little more sense since in the Netherlands there are quite some people enjoying the good coffee made by an espresso machine at home. There is even a kind of fan club for this specific machine. I guess the best option is to sell it in the Netherlands since its value is quite high.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to let memories influence my behavior when reacting on common sense questions regarding object to keep or to get rid off.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to connect memories to objects so I experience a fear of loss when I have to get rid of the object.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself not to face myself regarding the emotions and feelings I have in connection with the idea of coffee drinking. The real coffee drinking is not connected anymore with the memory and therefore I can let it go with no fear of loss.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself that I reacted on the proposal of disposing the espresso machine just because I was not clear with myself how I stand regarding the consumption of coffee as if it is a secret thing I want to keep for myself and no one is allowed to question my point of view.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself not being able to react in common sense in every moment. I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to hold my breath when confronted with the question of disposing of a machine, seeing it as a disposing of a memory and not the physical machine instead of breathing and seeing in the moment what solution is best for all.
When I moved to the Netherlands I lived in the city of The Hague. Besides being the political capital of the country, or maybe just because it is the political capital a lot of wealth is concentrated in and around the city. This is mainly expressed in the type of cars you see on the streets and the houses in the residential area’s. Besides the popular city quarters mainly concentrated on one side of the city you see a clear trend. Near to the city center you have buildings that are centuries old and many of these houses are offices and embassies.
A selected group of people live in these houses and in the first three months of my stay in the Netherlands I was living in one of these huge houses. The amount of living space I shared with my brother in law and his wife was to my opinion quite out of proportion, almost to the point it made me feel uneasy living in that house. On a few occasions I had walks in the neighborhoods and every time I crossed residential area’s with series of villa’s scattered in the woods at the edge of town I wondered who was living in these houses and how it was possible that people could afford to live in such places.
This wondering is an old thing that pops up when I see wealth, or even better, I see people living in a ‘better’ situation than my own. And here is the tricky part. In the past I always told people I was not jealous of anyone. My reactions to other people’s wealth, however, tell the opposite. When I start wondering how it comes that people can afford something, an expensive car, a huge house, I am actually comparing my own situation to someone else’s. This comparison triggers a competition where I see myself as a looser and eventually I start feeding the idea I need to achieve the same level of wealth in order to win this competition.
The question is if it makes sense to compete in this way. My trigger point is jealousy, a feeling of being less than others and a need to compensate this feeling of inferiority. If I accept this competition I most probably will get more and more frustrated since I will have hard times if not experiencing the impossibility to achieve that idealistic goal. And, in the event I might succeed, will I be happy and satisfied? Most probably not. I will compare myself in my situation again to others and see other reasons to go on competing and fighting to achieve a goal that never can be achieved.
Why is this competition like a dead end lane? Because it is a polarity mechanism. You win or you loose. There is no stable situation. Once you win you go on trying to achieve new goals and over and over again you might win or loose. If I look at this mechanism in self honesty I see that it is a waste of time and energy, it is distracting me from the real things of life. It is only taking care of what I want or think I need to have in life without taking into consideration what is around me, people, animals, environment, everything.
Today I had again the same experience while biking along hundreds of huge villa’s with huge gardens and huge cars parked in front. I wondered again how it could be possible that there is people that can afford to live in these houses. I felt even a little satisfaction when a couple of these houses (not the largest ones of course) were for sale. With this fresh experience I decided that it is time to end this jealousy.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to become jealous when I see properties of other people I judge to be too big for them only because I am not in their same situation. I also forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to feel satisfaction/relief when I see people in a situation worse than mine.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to compare myself to other for the sole purpose to trigger the need for competition that is based on the feeling of unfairness: “Why do ‘they’ have something I don’t”.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to see big houses and villa’s as a representation of other people’s wealth instead of seeing it for what they are, big houses and villa’s.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to be tricked into this feeling of jealousy and unfairness again and again and that I have not taken my self-responsibility to stop this allowing it to distract me and preventing me of being there in the moment, breathing instead of being in the mind, preoccupied with being jealous.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to see myself as less then others just because I see ‘others’ as different than me, superior to me, instead of seeing that we are all equal and there is not such a thing as being more or less than others.
I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to get distracted by unreal preoccupations instead of focussing myself to take care of things in life that really matter, focussing on actions that are in the best interest of all and therefore also in the best interest of myself.
When and as I see myself participating within this pattern of becoming jealous of someone else’s property/wealth I stop and I breathe. Within this I realize that the energy of this experience is directing me and I am not the directive force here. Thus I stop this participation in this energy as living in my mind and escaping reality and myself and do not participate, but breathe myself here in and as the physical.
