Listen man, I’m going to be as respectful as possible right now. I don’t have the energy or desire to debate this. So I’m going to ask you straight up. What are you trying to do by asking me all these questions? Are you trying to help me? Are you trying to pick apart my own feelings on this matter? Get me to see a different perspective? Playing devils advocate? You’re not transparent at all with what you’re doing right now. If it’s debate for the sake of debate I’m definitely not your guy.
No, I am not trying to help you.
I am trying to get you to help yourself.
Ok I appreciate that. And I’m sorry if I come off as confrontational. I’m going through a lot of shit right now and part of that involves setting strong boundaries so people don’t manipulate me. So I’m more defensive than usual.
I am helping myself. I’m doing what’s in my own best interest. I have my opinions like other’s have theirs and I’m gonna leave it at that. But my opinions don’t potentially harm people. That’s the main point I’m talking about.
1 Like
Have you made any progress since Jun18?
Glad to hear that you were able to successfully negotiate for the conditions you needed. I definitely read this as a win. Good for you! Seems like in the past you would have sat on this and it would have bothered you for a longer time. So many things work like that.
One piece of wisdom I’m getting from my sister (and myself too, I guess) is the idea that training our behavioral and mental/emotional capacities is very much like training muscles. People often talk about principles or insights in analytical or intellectual terms. The implication is that ‘If you can just grasp this concept, the problem will be solved’. But in real-life, you often need to train and grow capacities over time by exercising them. And once you get a given capacity to one level, you will soon be confronted by challenges that invite you to develop it even further. (Development is potentially endless. Another reason that it’s important to recognize and celebrate the process along the way. If you’re postponing the celebration for ‘the big finish’, well, there may not be one. haha.)
I’m similar. This is said to be a general characteristic of HSPs. Some of these things hit really deep. And some of them linger for very long amounts of time afterwards, while my mind continues to process and ‘extract’ insight from them.
I’m going to check out Life Is Strange. As with most things, I’ve got pretty idiosyncratic taste in games. As with music, it’s not about a particular genre, but about a specific feel. I know it when I feel it, and it’s sometimes challenging to put it into words. With music that could be anything from Debussy’s En Bateau or Des Pas Sur La Neige to De La Soul’s original version of Plug Tunin’ or Potholes in My Lawn, to Jon Hopkins Singularity or Sting’s Soul Cages album. With games, it’s the Submachine games by Mateusz Skutznik, Botanicula by Amanita Design, Waking Mars by Tiger Style, and Room Escape games by Tesshi-e.
I’m pretty sure that all of those things have something to do with atmosphere. And I suspect that most of what I like is influenced by being Highly Sensitive.
Well, anyway, I remember something that this therapist said. Hmm…actually, the link is here:
Somebody put this on Youtube for free for now.
It’s a documentary on the clinical application of mindfulness and mindfulness-related practices. Follows several vets with PTSD and one young boy as they make their clinical/healing journeys.
Close to the end, one therapist says, ‘You know guys? Just live.’
Simple enough statement, but it hits with some depth. Especially when you see it in context.
We’re out here and in here in the trenches of the world and of ourselves. You’re not effing alone, man.
The biggest change may be the capacity to treat yourself with greater compassion. It just reframes everything. For me, personally, what pushed me over the edge to compassion was being treated quite shitilly by someone over a long period of time. Eventually that forced me to look and see that ‘wait a minute! I’m not that bad. I actually quite like myself.’ I’d just internalized a lot of habits of viewing and treating myself poorly due to my socialization experiences. The usual suspects. That shit stays with you. And it’s based on very little that truly matters. Turns out that doesn’t make one whit of difference.
Your mind (and consequently, life) can be totally fucked up by things that have no meaning or importance at all. In fact, that’s probably usually what fucks up most people’s lives. And the irony is that we do most of the work for those meaningless things. We basically say, ‘I’m in such pain right now, there must be a reason for it’. And then we actually go out and create those reasons, and then keep repeating them until we believe them. Crazy, right? Well, anyway. C’est la vie. C’est la homme.
I have. It’s been a lot of setbacks. But I’ve made progress.
Big win for me for sure. And you’re 100% correct, it would have torn me up inside in the past and I would have blamed myself and them with no resolution.
I’ve gotten way better over the years, but that’s definitely a shortcoming of mine. But I believe it was a consequence of how debilitating my own mental/emotional stuff could be. There’s really not a lot you can do sometimes when you’re deep in a hole. Practice compassion and kindness, yeah. But again if that muscle hasn’t been trained enough it’s not gonna happen. But I definitely agree, I guess I missed out on a lot of stepping stones to build myself up and now as an adult I’m not all there.
It’s an older game and I’ve had it for a bit but never played it. I swear this game was designed for INFPs lol. It’s got a shoegaze style soundtrack, deals with a lot of values and morals, friendships, family, nature of reality, endless decisions and how they play out(that Ne function). I got sucked into it and I haven’t had a game do that to me in a long time. The best way I can describe it is it’s exactly like listening to a song that makes you feel like you’re at home or where you’re supposed to be. It’s just got a feel to it that resonates with me.
If I had a dollar for every time I told myself to practice more compassion… It’s tough. But I understand what you mean here. I’ve gone from “I’m a terrible waste of space”, to “I’m not that bad and I have some good things about me”. It’s no longer outright hatred for myself, but it does still manifest in subtle ways that consequently cuts me off from people. One thing I realized today is I pretty much reject myself before anyone else can. If someone actually likes me or considers me a cool person my first reaction is to deny it. That’s probably like what you said with the whole socialization thing. I was an outsider as a kid. Anything besides that is incredibly foreign to me and makes me deeply uncomfortable.
Oh and I’ll definitely be checking that documentary out.
1 Like
Man full processing mode this morning. Still don’t fully know how to deal with these days. It’s like having neverending thought loops running around in my head. Like when you get a song stuck in your head, except I can’t consciously perceive what those thought loops are. As someone who’s brain is always overactive, days like today tend to just wear me out even more because there’s too much mental stimulation going on there.
I was about to write about this; because I was noticing it again today.
This is not a recommendation. But here is an excerpt from the description of Alchemist Stage 2:
The Refinery will rapidly develop your energetics and the silence of your mind, allowing you to meditate like you have never meditated before.
4 weeks into Alchemist Stage 2, I’m actually experiencing this. It feels natural but it’s also undeniable.
It’s not a recommendation because the decision to start a given program is very personal and should be guided by your own intuition and judgment. Anyway, there it is.
3 Likes
There’s an idea for an Ultima. An hour dedicated to just calming your mind. Maybe that’s Sanguine though? I should listen to Sanguine more actually.
Anyway, I’ll keep that in mind though. Is the silence true silence? Like not actually hearing these thoughts and such? Mine isn’t so much the content I get hung up on, it’s the quantity. Like a CPU having to deal with too much of a heavy load. My brain gets choked.
I haven’t thought about it in great detail. It’s just something I’ve been noticing lately.
I’m noticing it most in two contexts.
-
In meditation, I used to often use some sort of mental device to support attention and focus. Like counting the breaths or repeating a mantra, that type of thing. Some weeks ago, I noticed a transition happening where I started doing that less and just sat in open attention. That’s often how it is now.
-
On my walks, part of what I enjoy is keeping an audio journal. I’ll just speak out my thoughts as I’m walking and process whatever I want to process. Again, increasingly I’ve noticed that my mind is so quiet as I’m walking that the first 40 minutes or so may just pass without my really saying much at all. I can tell that it’s an extension of the same thing I’m observing in meditations.
I’ve never really cared much about trying to ‘stop thoughts’ in meditation because some time ago I updated my definition of ‘thought’. As I see it now thought is not only discursive, mental narrative, it is any and all neural activity, irrespective of whatever the subjective experience of that activity may happen to be. So, a healthy brain is always thinking.
But what’s decreasing is the flow of narrative, I guess. That particular form of neural activity that people conventionally sometimes refer to as ‘thinking’.
1 Like
Definitely reconsidering my 2 loops of my custom. I want to grow more and I want to keep making sure I’m not backing out of things. But today was rough. I pretty much lost today with the exception of finishing a song I was working on. The whole day felt stressful, except I wasn’t doing anything? Like pretty much one part of my day was me going into my bathroom and just sitting in there staring at the ground. Why the bathroom? I don’t know, maybe because there’s nothing in there that reminds me I had trouble doing much of anything?
Anyway that was my lighter custom for music production. So if 2 loops of that was enough to completely overwhelm me like that, my full custom can probably be cut back to 1 loop. I think I really need to get it through my head that more loops doesn’t equal faster change. Faster change is when I decide to change things. If I’m not ready to tackle it on one loop, saturating my head with another one is just going overload me.
Decided to cut back to 1 loop per day and wait till late afternoon vs midday to assess if I should run another. One thing I’ve noticed with my customs are how incredibly delayed they are. So I can go from “I can totally handle another loop” to “Wait I’m doing some intense processing right now”.
All in all my serious pressuring and pushing isn’t conducive to change in a sustainable way. It all stems from my beliefs that I should be able to handle something more when I can’t. I’ve been trying to be more mindful of my limits. In the long term I aim to break past all these limiting beliefs. But in the short term I have to acknowledge that there is a cut off point and beyond that I only hurt myself.
I read through the modules again of my custom to refresh me on what I put in it and to get me excited again. Looking forward to running it this week.
Will be running elixirU tonight as well. Last time I ran it I had some major emotional shifts inside me. I’ve had a major aversion to running it for some reason. Best guess is I have a long history of doing emotional healing and growing but outwardly my life didn’t change as much. But it’s really because I had to keep digging. I stopped because I got really self conscious that I was wasting time in my life and not being proactive enough. But my mindset has switched to long term growth and I no longer feel like I have to heal everything by a certain point.
It’s tough sometimes when you try to explain your situation to others in your life but they don’t get it. All the outward steps and suggestions they make can seem more like a bandaid than a true alignment with life itself. That’s because people are different and I’m getting better at reminding myself to do what works for me given my circumstances. Not the ideal shoulds compared to everyone else. And I don’t have to explain myself to people who have no desire to see things from any other perspective than their own. I used to feel like I had to prove myself to these kinds of people but I’ve been feeling better about myself lately and understanding where real confidence comes from.
1 loop today and man was I raging hard at work. Got my answer that 1 loop is more than enough for me. Not sure if I’ll even hit up an ultima tonight. I can’t even give you the specifics, I was just irritated as fuck at everything. I think it’s just a lot of built up resentment for how this job has been making me feel. And I can’t tell if the workload is unreasonable or I just can’t keep up with it and it’s my fault. But what I realized today is that not all jobs have to be like this. I’m just so tired of being in this high pressure workaholic company. It made me realize two things. 1. I’m not looking for internal fulfillment with this career field, I have my music for that. And 2. I’m not gonna tolerate people who want to manipulate you with guilt and shame for not working myself beyond my limits.
And now I’m sitting here after work. Too tired to do shit and actually enjoy my free time and it just pisses me off again. Trying to break this cycle.
1 Like
1 Like
I gave SanguineU a listen yesterday after I felt my head calmed down a bit. I think out of all the ultimas this one is the least demanding for me. I’m trying not to go overboard with the healing stuff, so I think for now I’m going to listen to SanguineU every day.
The feeling I get from this Ultima is like when I go for a hike and leave all the societal crap behind and it’s just me. For me it really helps with my anxiety and I’m kicking myself because I haven’t been more consistent with it. But that calmness and feeling like things will work out is invaluable. It’s not just me trying to tell myself that to feel better, but it actually feels like it. And that’s a feeling I’ve been missing in my life a lot. Ive always felt like I’m one step away from having my whole life fall apart.
So custom subs to keep pushing for growth and SanguineU to help me deal with the current obstacles I face and to not get overwhelmed by them. I think that’s my plan of action for now. As much as I want to dig deeper and heal, I feel as if i have to put that on hold otherwise I’ll get stuck where I am now.
1 Like
Been holding steady with one loop. Had an epiphany that the amount of listening should leave space for me to do things. Obvious yeah, but I was trying to hammer my head with exposure and change fast. On one loop I’m making smaller changes, it doesn’t feel super profound but I know it’s more sustainable and it will help me grow. Basically I’ve stopped seeking out that pain and discomfort as evidence that there’s a lot of growth happening. The subs really shouldn’t put you on your ass and make you borderline catatonic.
But anyway I started watching a music theory video again I’ve been putting off. I got through one or two lessons but then I started to fall asleep. But I didn’t have to force myself to do it which is a good sign.
Met a girl online I’ve been talking to and she’s been really chill. Not only does she listen to a bunch of the same music as me, but she also creates it. She actually has shown me a ton of stuff I’ve never heard from other artists. So that’s been cool, just hoping she doesn’t ghost me because it’s rare I meet someone like this. I mean I know they are out there, but for me personally to find them I don’t have much luck.
Alright I had a whole bunch of stuff typed out. But long story short is I had a girl want to hookup with me and my anxious ass didn’t follow through. And I’m sick of shooting myself in the foot when opportunities present themselves. That should be fun and enjoyable, not nerve wracking and stressful.
Having said that. I want to focus on my music. I want to get my life together a lot more and just feel ok. But I don’t want to wait until I’m better to enjoy the company of women. I’ve put this off in my life for too long waiting until I felt ready to get into it. And I’m 29 now and still never had sex. Which I don’t feel like a loser for, but it’s one more anxiety when I interact with women and it’ll have to come up eventually.
This was my 10 module custom light build I created. I’m thinking about reworking this to combine the goals of ultimate artist and my relationship/sex life using AM. I’m gonna add modules as needed vs shooting for 20 like I did last time.
Ultimate Music Producer
The Spotlight
Trailblazer
Ultimate Writer
Ascended Mogul Q Core
Rogue
Omnidimensional
Unlimiter
Joie de Vivre
Current Invoker
So I’ve determined that StarkQ is too much for me. Too ambitious, too much fame, just too lofty. Meanwhile I’m a guy that’s just barely getting by. There’s way too much of a disconnect there. So I don’t really want to wait to build up a foundation with just AM, so I’m pairing it with UA so I can hit my music goals as well. But I think this will be good for me. Starting back and building myself up. You might say “oh it’s just limiting beliefs, keep using starkQ and just work through it”. I’ve tried, it just doesn’t work. From now on my sub selection is based on working on stuff that I feel is already within my realm of possibility and building on it later. Maybe one day I’ll come back to my super dense custom, but for now I have to rebuid myself more.
Funny thing? This was my original stack when I started here lol. Came right back around to it. I know this seems like reconciliation but it’s definitely not. Everyone on here can see how consistent I’ve been with my custom from the start. And I absolutely got results, but my mind fought every step of the way. There was very clearly something not calibrated right in that custom for me personally.
Now I feel like an utter dumbass for how bloated and ill thought out my first custom was. Note to everyone don’t build your customs out as “one day I’ll have this” customs. Build them from the perspective of what you can take action on and what you can reasonably work with. Otherwise you’re going to generate too much reconciliation, try and fight through it, get upset that you aren’t growing, and enter a tug of war with your subconscious who isn’t even the enemy. It doesn’t matter how positive or determined you are consciously, trust me you can only make it so far before you hit a wall.
2 Likes