Wireless troubles

Every time I receive a mail from my landlady I think: “What will it be about this time?”. I started to investigate why I had this reaction. First the reaction itself. I kind of want to hide from something I have to deal with but I am not willing to deal with. Where is this feeling of not wanting originated? By memories of course. Although the messages sent by my landlady make sense they trigger plenty of back chat like: Why didn’t she tell me before” or ” Why is she making things so complicated”. The memories are not connected to these mails but mail in general that potentially can contain messages that I would rather not face.

Next step is to see why I have these back chats and why I see the points she communicates as threatening. The answer was quickly found. It all has to do with my not wanting to be in this situation, living in someone else’s house where I feel limited In my movements due to all kind of rules I tend to rebel against because of the by my mind suggested freedom limitation.

Instead of rebelling I should live the points and discuss those that are unpractical from a commonsensical point of view. In other words, no big deal, just a matter of communication and agreement about practical points within sharing a house.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to see mails/messages as a threat instead of breathing and take and work through the presented matters step by step.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to have backchat about situations that do not exist in reality but are creations of my mind busy working out scenario’s that are in no way connected to real life.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to resist the living situation I am in right now instead of being here, now and act within the given context in the best interest of all.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to let memories of other situations that have no appear ant connection to the actual situation let influence me in my actions.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to let situations in the actual life be a trigger for feelings based on memories of past experiences.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to use scenario’s created by my mind in order to feed my feeling of self pity of being in the situation I am in right now.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to influence my physical well being by seeking energy in mind creations instead of focussing on practically use my energy living here and now, breath by breath.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself not to realize that only the ego on the mind is seeking revenge and conflicts in order to strengthen itself, to generate and build itself as myself.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to use anything I encounter in my landlady’s house as a potential trigger to develop back chat and doom scenario’s.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to have concluded my landlady gave me a wrong password for the WiFi network just because I believed that it is predefined the unstable WiFi connection will frustrate me until I leave this home.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to feel less than another being while having to live within specific circumstances that I see as limiting my expression as myself.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to feel limited in my day to day actions only because my mind suggests that there are limitations that are in fact not real or if they are they can not be discussed in common sense.

When I see that I am tempted to back chat – I stop and I breathe – I realize that it is just my mind that is seeking to create thoughts and idea’s that will feed feelings like inferiority and unhappiness and that I direct myself out of that experience by standing up within myself with the realization that acting according to inferiority and unhappiness is not what is best for me. I see with clarity what inferiority and unhappiness have led to within this world and reality and thus I realize that I am equally responsible for the outflow/outcome of people acting according to inferiority and unhappiness. I do not accept or allow myself to continue taking part and feeding this system of abuse but instead I see and realize that stopping inferiority and unhappiness is what is best for all – I stand up for life, I stop acting according to my inferiority and unhappiness.

 

 

Back chat about strangers

Today, while travelling home, I sat on a bench in the subway and just before I sat down I figured out that the two seats were squeezed into a relatively narrow space. Not much later a person sat next to me and started playing with his mobile phone. Not considering the space was too tight for the two of us I moved forward just avoiding to be squeezed between the man and the window.

I never appreciated to touch someone while travelling, especially when this person is an unknown person. Today I saw what I was experiencing and started looking at this event asking myself why I am reacting this way when having to have physical contact with another being. Immediately I saw backchat suggesting the man was not aware or did not care about me sitting there in that narrow space, he just took his space not considering mine. Mmmm, this smells like a feeling of inferiority. Useless, both the backchat and the feeling. I did SF on both.

Not much later the man left and a young person took his place. Now the situation was the opposite. I could remain seated upright and the person next to me leaned a bit forwards. “Is he now feeling less then me because of my age?”, was the question that popped into my mind. This could only be the case if I was considering myself more than him and that was not the case. Looking at the situation as it was, without any thought, backchat or feeling/emotion I was left with the fact that two persons shared a narrow space taking into consideration the presence of the other person.

A little earlier I walked in a shopping mall searching for a specific shop where I wanted to buy something. I almost bumped into a lady and when I looked down to see where to put my feet I was surprised by my own reaction when I saw the huge butt of this lady. “Gee. that is HUGE!” “So what” I thought a second later and again caught myself having back chat about someone else. It is shocking and also quite funny when you see the massive amount of back chat you are producing during the day. And it is also great if you can see in the moment that you are having this backchat and correct it accordingly. It definitely leads to a more here and now way of living without having to suffer (or ‘enjoy’ as a polarity to suffering) from situations your mind is creating for you based on tiny facts of your daily life.

Thinking back I already started this morning by making a joke based on an image a colleague was picturing while talking about the sport scar of another colleague he will buy as soon as he has enough money to afford it. We were picturing him and a well proportioned lady next to him and I couldn’t help myself by emphasizing the image by suggesting that due to the size of the lady it would be recommendable to de-activate the passengers seat airbag. This resulted into a laughter of the two colleagues that lasted several minutes. Later I realized that also making jokes about non existing pictures of persons is a kind of back chat. The fact the colleagues had to laugh was because of the ‘naughtiness’ in their minds suggested by the image created by my comment. Absolutely interesting to see events of a day in this perspective.

If you are interested in un-cluttering your thoughts and back chats, join us at Desteni.

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody

Normally  a TV series comes with max 1 episode a day. On YouTube there is no such limitation, you can watch as many as you like/can/manage. Both my children have been watching one episode after another since one of them discovered a series that apparently is very funny. They both are at about episode 16 of the “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” series. The series ends after 57 episodes. I could not help myself when I asked if they were planning to see them all in the next two days.

Until yesterday A. was working on a DVD cover art work and J. was busy making his funny video’s. These and other active activities suddenly stopped to be replaced by this addictive activity of watching this series. So, what is in this series that makes it so terribly appealing my kids are unable to resist from it? I decided to listen for a while to an episode while A. was watching. All I heard were very short sentence dialogues full of ‘funny’ words and sounds that should trigger your laughing. To make the effect even stronger every few words you here the laughters that are added to the sound track in a very smart way. A and J. will laugh occasionally but at a much lower ratio than suggested by the sound track.

The fact I see my kids diving in this activity, or better, this inactivity, is triggering all kind of reactions within myself. So, what is it that is disturbing me about the fact my kids are having a great time? Is it jealousy because they can spend the whole day watching the series and I have to do all my mandatory tasks? Or is it sadness because I see my kids entering a pattern they have been caught in before and knowing it leads to nowhere? Is it the fact I do not see how I can tell them they are wasting their time and even worse, feeding their mind construct with all kind of messages and triggers? Especially with A. it is clear to me she is seeking for ways to avoid continuing her process she is going through after the episode with D.

As a frustrated father I’ve made a couple of comments during the day and tonight, all waved off with reactions like: “I can’t hear anymore what they are saying.” and “Shut up with your stupid comments and leave me alone”.  For the moment the only thing I can do is leave it the way it is until I first work out where I stand in this situation and only then I can eventually address the issue with common sense, stripped from all emotions and feelings.

Both S. and I see a pattern here with A. A support chat that should have been the next step in the A’s process, has been postponed for several days now due to technical reasons. But not only; when asking A. if she wanted to do the chat earlier so it would not conflict with other activities she rigidly sticked to the late night time schedule and suggested to do it a day later. The longer it takes for the chat to be rescheduled, the more A. will get stuck in this pattern. To brake the pattern S. decided to continue with the assignments in A’s process independently from the fact she can have a support chat or not.
J. is in this pattern too but has a lesser urgent need to walk a specific process.

To me this episode is again an experience within real life and an occasion to observe, recognize and take care of this kind of situations with the tools provided by Desteni and the DIP course.

 

Paralyzed by fear and by possession

I feel fucked, fucked-up, betrayed, nervous, possessed. What is going on? A lot of things that are at the end all related to each other…

The fact: A couple of nights ago I decided to monitor the activities of my daughter and the YM (young man) who’s sleeping over regularly for practical reasons related to work. My decision was triggered by a sum up of the many signals mainly given by my daughter during the day. What I found out was confirming my darkest suspicions and as a father I can tell you it has a blowing impact. While hearing sounds of intensive kissing (and who knows what other activities that produce the same sounds) I felt paralyzed. I knew I had to go into the room next door to stop that what was going on. I could have woken my partner, but I did not. I only managed to listen while my heart was racing. I did it for hours apparently, because when finally my daughter left the room to go to sleep it was 4:30 in the morning.

It took me hours to calm down and with no effective sleep I got up in early morning to do my things and to have some distraction. Only much later I managed to concentrate on my work, but I could not go around the consequences of what I lived that night.

Looking back I see that I had been fighting with many thoughts. I asked myself if I could make it to interrupt what was going on. I heard A. giggling and that somehow reassured me that she was OK and apparently having fun. No need to brutally interfere there and to create a negative situation of something that might have been positive. This actually was a justification for not coming into action since I was not able to move.

While having breakfast with my partner S. we actually started together talking about the same thing. I told S. what I experienced and heard that night while shaking wildly with my arms. It was again clear to me that the whole thing had a huge impact on me and S.

In the previous days I started paying more and more attention to my daughter’s and the YM’s behavior . Every time I entered A’s room she was clicking something away on her laptop. I decided to check this out and was able to trace google search terms that were used within our home network environment. Besides searches like “the 10 strangest things you can do with a condom” the one that triggered my alarms was “how does it feel to have your pussy licked” in Dutch. Teenage curiosity or preparing for some action for the next time our young man was in the house?

I am not against experimenting on sex but with all necessary precautions. A girl aged 14 and a man aged 20 is not a very happy combination. I saw my daughter being pulled into a situation that was far beyond her real way of life which is to me still very childish. Also I never experienced A. trying to be attractive sexually with attitude or clothing.

Many questions however remained unanswered. Since we are not sure to what level the two manage to stay responsible for their actions or be aware of the consequences we do not know. When S. checked the sheet that was on the sleeping couch she found two big stains. Here again we wanted to know for sure there had not been a situation in which A. risked to get pregnant.

At the end we had the full story from A. One thing emerges very clearly, she was afraid of the YM already for some time. His behavior grew slowly to a more obsessive way of acting. Very subtly he managed to have A. sitting close to him, not because A. was liking this so much but because he managed to pull her towards him all the time. The same for the so called chasing games that gave him the opportunity to touch her inappropriately.

We are very aware of the fact that A. might have giving encouraging signals that unfortunately were generated out of fear. It is amazing to see how fear can lead to actions that seen from the outside seem to be perfectly normal or even giving the exact opposite signal. This, however, is not justifying the YM’s behavior. He has not been able to sense or understand he was dealing with a girl that was not ready to answer his sexual needs.

Having put this part back into a manageable perspective we prepare for a proper wrap up of the whole situation. With the help of the Desteni tools we will work things out so we understand the starting points and the consequential outflows of our actions and lack of action.

We will work out a practical way to deal with this new situation in which we decided that for the safety in our family the YM, at least for a while, might better not be our guest anymore. He will have to understand first what happened to him, what he accepted and allowed to happen and what the extent of the consequences of his behavior are. Until now, despite of intensive coaching, he has not really showed progress on his practical day to day behavior, he improved only technical related matters that nevertheless allowed him to produce some nice work.

Until we are ready working out our points we will reduce collaboration to the minimal necessary to finish ongoing projects. For the next month there are no big projects to work on so there should be plenty of time for hm to work on some points.

Hijacked by Escherichia Coli

Since the earliest news items I’ve been kind of monitoring my reactions and thoughts in relation to the E. Coli bacteria. It is really fascinating to see all kind of mechanisms going off by specific triggers.

The first news items were to me a kind of warning. It was something to keep an eye on and take into consideration. Immediately my mind started the survival mode and checked my actual living situation. Very quickly I came to the conclusion I was not living in a situation that could be very prone to this bacteria.

A little later, with all kind of news items on the MSM I started to see a likeness with the H1N1 virus and started to lower my guard since I judged the whole thing as an exaggerated and blown up situation. With this opinion I went on with my daily tasks until the moment came I was again confronted with a news item on this subject.

While discussing the matter with my partner I kept on monitoring my thoughts and while S. decided to toke some measures like peeling the fruit we have for breakfast and washing thoroughly the salad I was still dealing with a mechanism in my mind that was playing down the whole issue because it was a threat far from us living in a small village in the middle of Italy. This same mind, strangely enough, kept on working out other issues clearly based on fear and survival. I started wondering if the water we use for drinking was going to remain safe. It is spring water that comes right from the big mountain in our back yard. Very little chance this E. Coli bacteria is going to be found there but the thought was persistent.

When I had a light cramp in my stomach (just before I had to go to the toilet for a normal ‘shit’) I was worried for a short moment. When I heard that a friend of us, while going home after a stay at our place for a couple of days had nasty cramps in his stomach I started to wonder if he was not having an E. Coli infection. I started to quickly work out scenario’s thinking of what we’ve been eating, what should have happened if the poor guy fell severely ill and eventually died. This even though I know this person has chronic stomach problems. “This is back chat man!” I thought. Potentially I could start giving energy to these thoughts causing them to manifest.

Fascinating to see how easy the mind is triggered into patterns in order to feed the needs of survival, the illusion of uniqueness, fears and so on. How to stop this? Common sense! Using common sense you can approach the situation in a practical way and deal with every issue that comes up in the moment you are faced with it. I am not free of the mind but much more aware of what kind of games the mind is playing with me.

Until so far the Desteni I Process course, the materials I’ve read and the video’s I’ve watched, assisted me in seeing things in commons sense, in the way they really are. This took care of a lot of fear that until then I was regularly experiencing and pushing away just because I did not know how to deal with this emotion. Want to get rid of fear? Join us at Desteni and start reading and watching. Discuss with us about your fears and other issues on the open forum where you will be welcomed and supported.

Beaten by the EGO

The last week I’ve been paying attention to my ego and I’ve had a couple of occasions where I’ve been clearly beaten by the ego. The freshest episode was this morning when A was showing pictures on my iPhone that trick the eye and reveal how our brain interprets specific patterns. At a certain point A showed me an photo and since I did not see the hidden image inside it she told me to look at the right side of the phone’s screen. Since I still did not see anything she pointed it out and to my perception she was aiming at the left side of the screen.

The result of this was a discussion in which I tried to explain why she should have said the left side and not the right side. Even after she, supported by S. showed me why she called it the right side by laying herself on the ground as if she was the phone asking me to tell her which was her right side I chocked in the tea I was drinking as a reaction to the whole. When A and S told me that I was acting out of my ego when trying to convince them to change their point of view I felt accused.

It is amazingly subtle and tricky not to let your ego speak in this kind of situations. In my attempt to explain my point of view I was doing it with an attitude of me knowing it better than they did. No way to repair it and I spoiled the possibility to explain the whole thing from the right perspective.  I see now how I should have been acting and what I should have done to understand A’s point of view and eventually explaining mine without a charge or an energy that is imposing to A the only way to see this.

While writing this there is a back chat going on that is still trying to seek revenge for this defeat (ego is strong and is constantly seeking for new ways to sneak in!) trying to find arguments that will make my (ego’s) point on the matter. Time to do some self forgiveness on the matter.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to let my ego direct the situation leading to an attempt to impose my point of view.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to ignore the other’s point of view on a specific matter.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to allow my ego to take over and cause me to choke in my tea because of a loss of control over my physical body.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have an ongoing back chat still seeking for revenge and getting my will in convincing A my point of view is the only right one.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself that I use a situation that triggers a “you’re not seeing this from the right perspective” as an occasion to let my ego boost up the situation instead of seeing it in the real perspective of the moment and dealing with it as is.

Beware of the EGO

Although I am very aware of what is happening in terms of the ego from my own perspective and the difficulties I already have in dealing with it myself, it becomes even more challenging when you have to deal with someone else’s ego.

A couple of days ago I had a meeting with my colleagues. The main point on the agenda was the feedback from the accountant on the business financial situation. We discussed the figures and saw a positive trend. We even talked about distribution of extra’s in November. This was clearly a polarity since within seconds, when the topic changed to the actual figures of customer conversions there was apparently an issue. We had very little conversions the last month and in order to keep the business running the way the accountant pointed out we needed to make more money.

The cause of the lack of conversions was quickly found. Me. Since I am the sales manager and responsible for the first contact with potential customers I had to be the cause why only five conversions were generated out of 88 registrations. I was surprised by this conclusion but as a system started to doubt myself immediately. Have I done everything I could to convert as much as possible? Did I spoil occasions to convert. Was I paying too little attention to potential customers? Have I been not convincing enough to talk new customers into our services?

All these questions where amplified by opinions about the way I do my job. My colleagues have no idea how I perform since we do not see each other very often since I work from home most of the time and tend to limit the calls to customers the few occasions I am in the office to dedicate my time to other issues we have to address as a team. We agreed that we should see each other more often and to analyse more in depth the reasons for the low conversion rate in April.

Only later I asked myself why we did not speak about the previous months. March had been the best month ever in terms of turnover. Apparently there is a reason why everything focuses on April. A day later I received a mail from the business owner proposing to take back partially the sales work alternating customer contacts with me. He proposed to see who was able to make the most conversions and if I managed to do 5 in May he will take back all the doubt he expressed about my performance as a sales manager.

Since I felt fucked by this and was not going to agree with the terms I had my back chat shooting all kind of possible discussions in high speed in my mind and my ego trying to suggest I should become angry and tell the fucker to shut up with his stupid allegations of me not doing my job properly. While writing this I still feel some adrenaline going through my veins… a typical reaction of me against unfair situations and feeling unable to do something about it.

Later on the day we discussed the whole matter again and reached an agreement that is kind of acceptable for all. The big challenge however, besides the real fact we need to address the low conversion rate, is to tackle the starting point that consequently manifested into this time consuming discussion instead of being just a fact we had to address professionally. My focus is now to bring the whole back to just the fact and to separately deal with the ego and back chat part since this is a perfect situation to analyse in order to understand myself better.

I also see I can be a living example in this and will discuss the situation with both colleagues to see if I can create some awareness on what really are the trigger points and the consequences of allegations, accusations and idea’s based on nothing else than thoughts that are expressed to another in words. Another interesting point is the polarity I saw clearly when talking about the business’ future. There is a growth (hurray) BUT in order to keep this growth we need to keep working hard (bummer) and not make any wrong decision (That is what the accountant said). This apparently caused some fear and consequently a quick analysis of the actual situation (and not the whole picture) causing some panic, a search for a cause to justify why the results are not what they are expected to be.

Back chats and justifications

Once you start checking out your back chat, it is amazing how often your mind is chatting about the things you are dealing with throughout the day. The most persistent back chat is caused by a point that is starting by myself, of course… S. is very busy with all her assignments, blogs and in between she squeezes her tasks as a mother in our household.

Nevertheless I have found myself in conflict with the fact S. is so busy, feeling I am the one that is taking care of all those small household things that come in between and eventually frustrating my efficiency regarding the way I manage my time during the day. But as long as I find myself doing things that are not the most important things, or just relaxing once in a while I truly should not have any reason to feel frustrated.

While my mind suggests I have to blame others for the fact I am feeling I am not managing my time as efficiently as I should throughout the day. The truth is I have to work on a balance between my regular work, my special assignments and all the tasks related to the house and in this period the veggy garden.

Analyzing the situation there is actually no real problem. I should be able to perform all my tasks in a constant but relaxed way. So, what is it that makes me think I am too busy and I have to do all these things alone? There is something in the mind that is always looking for something or someone to blame, just to make sure I can justify why I did not do all the things I could logically do in a day time.

While working behind a computer it is very easy to get distracted and to find yourself doing or reading something that you eventually could have done in another moment or not at all since it is not necessary. But of course the mind always tries to find a justification like “I might need this on another occasion”.

Even if the back chat is suggesting differently there is no big deal, life is going on and all that needs to be done gets done at the end. Just a matter of evaluating the priorities in the moment and execute my tasks in the moment and not already in the mind while still doing another thing risking to lose focus on the actual task and losing time on the task that when performed here and now will not be the same as the same task pre-runned in the mind.