Breaking Down the Walls

Journals - Custom Subliminals
#61

Is it just me or are rest days actually more exhausting than listening days? I had to go into the office today and I was walking up the stairs and what I can only describe as my feet not functioning correctly. It’s like I poorly misjudged how high I had to raise my foot and did the bare minimum and paid for it. Ate shit up the steps this morning. Great way to start the day lol. But you know if this happened in the past it would trigger a bad mood for most of my day. I felt incredibly dumb for a few minutes then brushed it off.

So yeah, lots of processing going on this morning. Seems to have calmed down a bit now that it’s later. Got my new audio interface, going to try to finish up a track I’ve been working on. Hit a point where it feels like it reached its potential and now just needs to be let go of.

2 Likes
#62

Damn, I shouldnt have read this…:see_no_evil:

1 Like
#63

Rest day 2. After these 2 days I’m moving up to 3 loops.

My subconscious is really digging now. It’s hard. I’ve never known true freedom my whole life. I’ve always had anxiety around people. This unease or feeling like they are a threat. It’s taken such a toll on my mental health and my ability to just live my own life. It basically feels like I have to hype myself up to do stuff and I’m sick of feeling like I’m burning energy on tiny human interactions.

I’ve had it so long it just hums away in the background. I’ve worked around it, but it’s not a long term solution. When I live my life like this it’s hard to even enjoy other things because there’s always a thought that I have to go back into the world soon. I don’t like that. When I have anxiety and I’m not even in a situation that causes it, that’s bad.

Basically I built my life around this. At the time it’s all I had and I did what I could do. But it’s never been an optimal solution. Avoidance was my primary coping mechanism. Then the past year it shifted to anger, which also wasn’t great. And now I’m coming back around to the fact that I have to really get to the root of this and stop with the bandaid solutions.

It’s hard for me because the common advice of more exposure didn’t work all that great for me. I just learned to compartmentalize things better. I mean yeah I became more functional on the outside, but not without a tremendous amount of willpower and effort to maintain it. And a lot of that was probably fueled by insecurity, rather than wanting to grow. Because if I was more understanding I would have realized it’s more important to work with myself and make changes for the sake of my own growth vs being self conscious about how I stack up to other more functional people.

I don’t consider myself damaged or messed up anymore like I did in the past. I just see myself as a person that was given some challenges in life. Challenges that unfortunately a lot of people in my life didn’t understand growing up. So it’s never been fair to constantly berate myself for stuff I’ve had to take on and figure out on my own. It’s been tricky prioritizing my own needs based on the difficulties I’ve faced because society doesn’t really take into account people who struggle. They just expect you to be the same like everyone else.

#64

Was planning on working on music today, but it started stressing me out. So I’m just gonna dig in to the documentation for my modular synth.

Up to 3 loops today. Will see how that goes. One thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a part of me that wants to be expressed out in the world, but I hold back. It’s that holding back that causes a lot of the psychological discomfort I experience because it’s not natural.

There’s this block or fear I can feel, that pushes it down. Controls it. And by it, I mean my most authentic self. I can feel it manifest as tension in my body, literally tensing up to prevent something from escaping out into the world.

When I really think about my sticking points and what’s holding me back, it doesn’t seem to be the work itself. The more I think about it, hard work for me is from the frame of dealing with all these negative self beliefs and doubts about myself and battling those. But if I didn’t have that, I truly wonder what putting in hard work would feel like. Would I actually be energized by it? Would it be easy? It’s weird how something as simple as “I can’t do this” or “I’ll never be good at this” can hold so much emotional weight and stop me dead in my tracks at times. Or carrying the frame around constantly of always struggling in life.

I’m trying to really get to these core issues now. Quite honestly what I see in my reality is a projection of these beliefs and then me fighting to overcome the situations that happen because of them. But it’s basically a cycle of misery I put myself in. I won’t solve anything by spinning in this cycle. I have to step out of it and live from a different perspective. I guess for me that’s always been difficult because I can’t think of a single time in my life in the past where I thought to myself “things are going well”. And I most definitely had self worth issues given the abusive situations I’d find myself in. It’s just a really bad combination that probably really planted the seeds for everything in my life I’m experiencing right now. But it does feel like lately that’s shifting, the momentum of those past beliefs don’t have as much force and it feels like I’m shifting onto a track in life where good things can happen for me.

1 Like
#65

One good exercise, I’m about to return to it, is to ask yourself, ‘What would my awesome life ACTUALLY look like? What would be happening?’

I’ve found that this is a 5-year kind of question for me. As in it’s a question I need to keep returning to again and again over time. Sometimes the vision gets really clear in some aspects, other times it’s vague and unclear.

The really telling moments are when I notice that I don’t even really feel like asking the question. That’s a trip, and happens pretty frequently. Pretty revealing probably.

1 Like
#66

Had a really bad day yesterday. A lot of my hope went out the window, felt sick of trying all the time and getting nowhere. Felt no passion for music or anything in my life. Felt like giving up on it all.

The track I was working on seemed finished, but I went into a tailspin when I realized how it was just repeated sections and I don’t dedicate enough time to it. I’ve identified that sometimes I finish songs because they start giving me anxiety and I want to be done with them. I don’t like that. In general the whole structure of music is a pain for me, I hate it. Maybe it’s the way I’m writing. But I hear all these interviews with artists who have overarching themes and things planned out. And it feels like I have a lot of trouble doing that. Just writing complete songs.

I was listening to one interview with Grimes and she was saying how she just started making music for fun and she didn’t think it would take off. And whenever I hear that about an artist I get so internally pissed. Because I feel like it’s so damn difficult for me to just write anything. Like just give me this one thing in my life please because it’s the only thing that ever kept me going. Everything else has been crap.

Had a small get together with friends outside. But that kind of sucked. I felt like I couldn’t get “in” with the group. That one hurt. I wanted to interact with everyone, but just couldn’t. It just brought me back to experiences I’ve had in the past with depression and the whole outside looking in feeling that’s isolating.

Going to try again with three loops today. If my mood does a nosedive I think my cap is probably 2. I’m having all these thoughts and feelings, but I know it’s just me being in a bad place. Still there is some truth to them given what I’ve experienced in the past and at times experience in the present as well. Hurts a lot though and it’s like running into a brick wall.

1 Like
#67

On my third loop right now. Honestly feels like a full on breakdown of my life. I’ve realized the pressure I’ve been putting on myself to make music a viable financially supportive option has been causing me immense stress. I haven’t developed a backup plan which is bad because I currently feel as if I’m just getting by doing what I do now in IT. So I get stressed about making music, which kills the music, and then that makes me more stressed because now I’m not putting in enough work or writing good enough stuff to turn it into a career of some sort.

I didn’t want to admit this to myself because honestly it made me feel like a failure. Like I didn’t push hard enough, grind it out enough, or I wasn’t a “real musician”. And also I had this sick obsession with getting validation through my music or “being someone”. I mean don’t get me wrong having fame would be cool. But I don’t want to have a need to have fame. I don’t want to have a need for anything to feel good about myself. Money, women, skills, achievements, etc. They can be enjoyable or enhance my life. But I don’t want them to feel like a hunger or thirst like my life depends on it.

As it stands right now. I’m really not enjoying my life. I mean the whole covid thing sucks, but honestly even before it I was stuck in a rut and on autopilot just dragging out the days. I’m just sick of living like this. I thought music was the way out or the way to freedom, but I think it was just another trap. The real issue is and always has been my own mindset. I can change a bunch of stuff in the external, but if I don’t change myself I’ll continue to do the same stuff that just makes me feel like I’m wasting away in life.

In short. Still don’t know what I’m doing with my life. And I can’t really plan when I don’t have a solid goal. I think there’s just a lot of restructuring of priorities going on now to help me live my best life. But I have to let go of old ways based in validation and self worth seeking to get to real core motivating forces in alignment with myself. Right now my vision is obscured by these things and I can’t see a future except through the frame of them.

1 Like
#68

It’s good that you’re conscious of all of this.

Check out Mastery by Robert Greene if you havent already.

2 Likes
#69

Have not read that yet. But I’ll definitely give it a read.

#70

Here’s one take:

Aim, first, for experiencing just one moment of joy and enjoyment.

In other words, aim not yet for establishing the entire life course and fundamental life direction of joy.

Happily or unhappily, your deep questioning search is a habit of thought that is related to your intelligence and your personality. As you point out, it is as much about you as it is about your external circumstances.

The bad news: you may never find an eternally satisfying and final answer to this question.

The good news: you absolutely do not need to find an answer to this question.

The function, for you, of your Search is similar to that of the Sun vis-à-vis a plant. It inspires growth and movement in the right direction. It inspires a full unfolding of your potential.

The plant does not have to actually reach the Sun. And what do you think would happen if a plant actually did manage to grow all 93 million miles and actually reach the Sun? I think we can all answer that question.

In the meantime, see if you can somehow conspire to experience just 1 minute of joy or joyful engagement on a particular day. Then see if you can have two such experiences. And then …you get the idea.

This is one take on it.

EDIT: Better yet, look for those moments, however fleeting, in which you are unexpectedly already experiencing joy. Let that be your quarry.

2 Likes
#71

Thanks. I like this. It’s putting me first, something that I often don’t do enough. And you’re right, finding joy in the smallest of moments is so important and to build off that. Compared to making it about one huge life path that I have to get on to be happy.

Related to that I realized I need to find a new job. One that pays more and offers me valuable experience in an environment that respects and appreciates me. I may not be able to go full tilt with the music thing at the moment, but I know I’d be able to find more joy in my life if I found a job that didn’t leave me feeling drained and exhausted. So that’s where my focus is at right now. Music is on pause for a bit and I’m going to shift priorities for my own well being.

1 Like
#72

If we wait for anything outside of us to make us happy, then we are not following the quantum law. We are relying on the outer to change the inner. If we are thinking that once we have the wealth to buy more things, then we will be overjoyed, we’ve got it backwards. True happiness has nothing to do with pleasure because the reliance on feeling good from such intensely stimulating things only moves us further away from real joy.:heart: - Dr Joe Dispenza

Thought you might find this helpful based on what you said above.

3 Likes
#73

Good reminder. I still fell into this trap, but because it was music it felt like a more virtuous sacrifice. But I was really no different than the guy chasing the big high ranking/status job out in the rat race of the world

1 Like
#74

Now you’re aware of it and you have the power to change your circumstances. That’s what matters.

#75

navel-gazey post:
There’s this somewhat misleading thing that can happen where, because someone is kind of openly and transparently communicating about their process and challenges, they somehow appear to be ‘worse off’ than others who are not. The reality is often that those others are either out of touch with their own processes or are unwilling to be equally transparent about it.

Advice-giving should thus be viewed skeptically. Sometimes advice is in fact someone else coming to, basically, be close to the authenticity of a person who is in touch with real things. Sometimes, the advice-giver doesn’t know any way other than advice to interact around these things, but it somehow feels good to be in touch with something realer than usual. It’s like going to see a really good independent film or something. The advice-giver may be a bit like a moth that is attracted to the light of genuinely-expressed feeling (even an uncomfortable feeling).

Other advice involves someone trying to repress your experiences the same way that they typically repress their own. Basically, the rhetorical equivalent of ‘here take this. it’ll make everything feel better.’

I don’t know, man. It kind of feels to me that you’re just on your journey. Learning, growing, making adjustments so that life can fit better (like an expertly-tailored outfit). You just happen to prefer being incisive and emotionally honest in your narratives about that journey. There’s this cultural trope of ‘fixing that which is broken’. I guess that that is sometimes legitimate. But I’m not always convinced. I don’t know. It’s not that we are never broken. It’s that nature always seems to be broken in different ways.

I think that it can take time for us to 1) learn what does and does not fit, 2) learn that we have the right to try to get things that fit (though success is not guaranteed and mistakes along the way are basically guaranteed), and 3) learn the skills of effectively negotiating and securing what fits.

Add on top of that learning process the second-guessing of oneself that often goes on through the whole thing and it can get pretty hairy and circuitous.

3 Likes
#76

practical post:
Getting another job sounds like a really good idea!

May you find a whole string of good ones.

1 Like
#77

Navel-gazey posts are always enjoyable lol. It’s definitely a journey. One I expected to be fairly linear, but I’m learning that’s hardly ever the case. There’s definitely something to be said about having solid goals. But nobody ever seems to talk about flexibility or teach you about that. I guess it gets kind of spiritual in that regard. It’s like going after one thing but along the path another thing could have been even better. But if you’ve got tunnel vision and are entirely convinced in an egoic way that you know what’s best you can miss those opportunities.

Actually, that was discussed in Reality Transurfing. I should read it again. But basically you have “doors” in life. Sometimes the doors you approach aren’t meant for you and it’s better to be open to the ones that will bring you happiness vs stubbornly insisting that it’s that one particular door.

But all in all, I’ve just put way too much pressure on myself and I see that now. I guess it’s a consequence of coming from a really low state and wanting to finally break free from it. But sometimes it takes time and it’s important that I learn to acknowledge my achievements no matter how small.

2 Likes
#78

Everyone is gonna see me be wildly inconsistent in these journal entries as I change. What seemed correct one day will be different another.

Anyway, 3 loops seems to really be hitting me hard. That was my worst bout of reconciliation yet. Don’t know if I should tone it down or keep going. But I feel like I should keep going and see how much I can handle. I learned some valuable lessons, but I have to make sure I don’t lose sight of the real goals. Flexibility is good, but it’s flexibility on the path to a desire. Not altering the desire itself and letting it go. I’ve used letting go and suppressing desire in the past to deal with the fact that I felt I could never reach what I wanted. So it was easier to convince myself I didn’t really want it anymore.

On that note. I was exhausted today and passed out after work. But I felt myself digging. Asking myself. What do you really want out of life? And when I gave bs answers or excuses or settled my mind was like no. I felt a connection with a deeper part of me, a part that didn’t care how the world works or what’s considered in the realm of possibilities by most people.And it’s absolutely still music, I know that in my heart. Since running this custom, that conviction has only grown and it feels dishonest to focus on anything else. But it’s different this time because the focus is on pure expression, doing what I love every day of my life, and living in a reality in alignment with who I am as a person. Not the persistent negative thoughts of being good enough at it, struggling to express myself, having people dislike it, struggling to make it part of my life, etc. This is essentially my end goal and I’m going to hold onto it every day and meditate on it every night and never let anyone take it away from me.

Neville Goddard says to persist and live in the end. I’ve never committed fully to that before. I’d always go back to what was “realistic” for life and work from within that limited construct. So of course I struggled to manifest anything or stay consistent because it was always based on something I didn’t truly want. But now I see my real desires have been suppressed behind doubts and fears. It’s not that I didn’t know, it’s that they were obscured from me. And I always saw the whole “living in the end” having to be a solid idea or concept within the world. But I understand now how it’s a state, a feeling for me. And letting go of how it’s going to happen is going to liberate me and move me forward as I trust more that it will happen. And it will happen in a way that will result in the most happiness for me because I’m not confining it to some rigid standards.

It’s hard letting go of old realities. Even harder to not get sucked back into them. But I know this custom is breaking it down and helping me. For me there’s a huge difference between trying and knowing. Trying implies you don’t really believe and you’re forcing something to happen and consequently reinforcing old ways as you struggle to change. Knowing is this feeling that it will happen, it may not be overnight, but there’s a momentum there that won’t stop. To know is comforting and peaceful because you understand it will all work out.

#79

ggYFCkz.jpg1280×720 65.5 KB

1 Like
#80

Not sure what part of my sub resulted in this, but I’m thankful for it.

At my job there’s too much for one person. Meaning me. I stopped killing myself trying to get to everyone and just focused on handling whoever I could or random tasks to the best of my ability without burning myself out. If people start complaining that they aren’t getting help or something isnt done yet, well too bad. I’m only one person. I’m not gonna cover the work of two people while we’re out one guy, that’s not my responsibility. I do my job, but I’m not going to put my mental health in the meat grinder for you.

Along with that one of our servers, main production server, became unresponsive this morning. Couldn’t remote into it or anything. Got slammed with help desk tickets and I was just chill. I told myself you’ve got this, no need to worry. And then I had this intuition that it was a program running hogging memory causing the slowdown. I was right, which was cool because I pulled it from a task list of about 50 other processes running. Guess that was a starkQ moment for me lol.

4 Likes