Day 3 - My Family. My Cult. My Design SF and SCS

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate within the belief that I must be a slave to my family.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I must do everything for my family because they did everything for me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I am indebted to my family for all the things they have ‘done’ for me in terms of my existence and survival.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in fear for my parents survival while growing up, connecting my parents survival to fear, and thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of not listening to my mother for fear of causing her stress and her dying, connecting her dying through stress to fear, thus I forgive myself for allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to the words ‘do you want me to die?’ With fear. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the words ‘do you want me to die’ to fear, and thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear not being able to do things for myself, like cook, make money, go out and buy necessities, etc. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect independence to fear, thus I forgive myself for allowing myself to fear my own fear. Not seeing, realising, or understanding that not knowing something is not a permanent state, and that anything can be learnt through dedicated practice and application of oneself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to belief that I owe them for bringing me up - that I have a debt to pay to them.

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I ‘must’ pay the bills and ‘look after things’, not seeing, realising, or understanding that these are simply responsibilities that everyone needs to face within the current system.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take these responsibilities personally.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as competition towards and within my family structure, believing that I must show that I am better in all ways to those who are within my family as well as my world, as the I see that I have not allowed the competition to simply end at the family boundary, but that I have extended to everyone else in my world.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be angry at being compared to other people in my family or world by my parents. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be angry at my parents for placing me against other people, and showing disappointment when I do not pass the mark.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in anger towards my parents when I see them respond in jubilation when I have passed or exceeded their expectations.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up the race within myself because I could see everyone else passing me, not seeing, realising, or understanding that I do not have to race for the sake of others, and that everything I do, I can do for myself, not allowing myself to be concerned with how others perceive my progress but only focusing on me and on who I am within what I do. Asking myself the question, am I doing this for others sakes? Or am I doing this for myself? To further myself and expand myself within this world.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate within the belief that I must be in a rageful rebellion against the world and all those who have surpassed me not seeing, realising, or understanding that I am in a rageful rebellion against myself in the truest sense of the words, as I am fighting with my own self, setting up my own limitations and own pass marks, and bullying myself when I do not live up to the standards that I have made within myself.

Thus I forgive myself for allowing myself to set myself up to fail, because when one compares themselves to another in this sense and in this way, then failure is the only outcome, as one will always find something better in the other that makes one feel low and inferior, and eventually angry and rageful, and then one does not want to do anything that could further their own potential because ‘what’s the point?’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sit on the fence about most things that happen in my family because I believe it is all based on emotional nonsense. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge my parents as stupid for having participated in the dramas of life to the extent to which they have done.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that it is my right to be able to abstain from family matters as long as I keep bringing in money.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of talking to them on any real level because I fear being dragged into their world of what is right and wrong, what is holy and unholy, what should and should not be done. Not seeing, realising, nor understanding that I can still talk to them in a real way, not just automatically - without emotionally involving myself. I forgive myself for connecting becoming emotionally involved to fear, and thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of my parents not being able to look after themselves at all, connecting my parents not being able to look after themselves to fear, thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear being the sole provider for my family, connecting being the sole provider to fear, thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear for my family's survival, allowing myself to connect my family's survival to fear, thus I forgive myself for allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of and for my family. Allowing myself to connect the whole idea of my family to fear, thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear. Not seeing, realising, or understanding how everything that I do within my family structure is based upon a fear of something, and that these fears are not real but also considering that they have taken much time to manifest and so will take time to walk out of breath by breath, always remaining here.

I will myself to see, realise, and understand that everything I do, I do for myself, I breathe, I write, I forgive myself. I work, I eat, I speak, I sleep. I direct myself live the realisation and understanding that I am not a slave to my family unless I allow myself to be trapped in the fear of family. Thus when and as I see myself as fearing for the sake of my family, I stop and I breathe and I see and realise and understand that This is what makes me a slave to them, a slave to the family construct.

And so I will myself to stop, forgive, and correct the fear for/of family in all its forms until it is done and finished and they are no more.

I will myself to see, realise, and understand how everything can be learnt, and that I need not fear not knowing something.

When and as I see myself as faced with a new responsibility, I stop and I breathe,l and I allow myself a  moment to take in this new point and see whether or not it is something that I can take on in self honesty, to not allow myself to simply take it on because ‘that is how it has always been’ but to look and assess, and then decide and act. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear what others will think of me if I say ‘no’ to some responsibility, connecting what other people think of me when I say ‘no’ to fear, and thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

When and as I see myself comparing myself to other human being either in my family or world, I stop and I breathe. I will myself to see, realise, and understand that we are all equal through substance, and that when I allow myself to go into jealousy or anger when I see that someone has ‘more’ than me, I am saying to myself that I have given myself permission to limit my horizons within this world. Because within this statement of comparison I am giving up my ability to expand myself further, allowing myself to go into the belief that I can never reach that point that this other being is at, just because I am not there right now. Hence I see and realise that within these moments I am sabotaging myself, where I could have expanded myself and begun a new process of self development..

When and as I see myself talking to my family from a starting point of automation and thinking that it would be weird to stop and take a step back and take a breath - I stop and I breathe, I will myself to see, realise, and understand that the weirdness I feel is all me, it is me being concerned with how I appear in the eyes of others and as such it is just another fear that serves to keep me inside a severely limited realm of validation.

I will myself to expose to myself the extent to which fear dominates me on a moment to moment basis, to investigate and expunge through self forgiveness, and to correct myself in the best way possible, living the best version of me that is free from fear and limitations.

Day 3 - My Family, My Cult, My Design

I am a slave to my family, this is how I have set it up within me - everything I do, I do for family.

The use of fear as a tool to manipulate me was used extensively when growing up, whenever I would not listen to my mother for instance, when not desiring to do something like eat, pray, go to mosque, she would become visibly stressed, saying to me ‘do you want me to die?!’ This whole concept of death as emotional blackmail is somewhat amusing now, but back then it was very serious, it put me in a life or death mode. In those moments I would internally say something along the lines of ‘holy shit, she is right! Who will cook for me? Who will clothe me? I’ll die without these people around me, paying the bills, doing this and that for me - I don’t know how to do any of that for myself!’.

And so the situation now is that I am the one paying the bills, ‘being the man’...’looking after shit’...’sorting shit out’. And this is because I feel I owe them, owe them for all those years of ‘hard work’ that they ‘put in’.

Within my family structure there was also a strong tendency towards competition in immediate and mostly extended family, as children we were always being compared to each other in terms of who got the best results in their exams and studies. It was like ‘who could show off their kids the most?!’ This made me very angry when I was younger, when my parents would show disappointment in me for not standing up to another member of the family, how they would pretend like they ‘still loved me all the same’ when in fact their faces and their words were showing incredible disappointment at ‘not making the grade’ (this all happened at a time when I was not able to verbalise exactly what it was happening, and so I just became more angry). For a time I kept up, and then I gave up, seeing the other cousins surpass me is something that depressed me and made me very jealous. So this was part of my rebellion; ‘If I cannot beat them in studies, I will beat them by going completely the other way, I will be everything that they cannot be outside of religion, I will drink and smoke and do drugs and have experiences that they will not be able too’. This was my revenge clause that I stated to myself throughout the years and that I still state now when I am reminded of their now successful positions in life. I quietly utter to myself ‘but I am still better’.

So as is stands currently within my family I see myself as taking the bench on most things, I try my utmost to not become involved in their matters and am only concerned with things of a financial and practical nature. For the most part I do not really communicate with any of them on a real level and my words are all just surface level expressions, like ‘how are you? … What are you doing today?’ Never really meaning anything I say.

I see that I am very fearful for my parents now, fearing soon that they will not be able to provide for themselves, and that I will have to be some sort of sole provider. Everything within my family structure as it stands is based on fear. Everything. It is like there has never been a moment where I am not in some way fearing for the existence of my family, whether is was money fears, family interpersonal relationship fears, cultural fears, fears of not living up to the ‘standard’.

I am beginning to see and understand the extent to which fear has played developmental role in my unfolding as a being, and how this was passed down from my parents (and subsequently cycled within myself), from one generation to the next, from one family member to the next, ad nauseum.

Day 2 - The Good Guy Syndrome SF and SCS

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of hell.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect hell to fear, and thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that if I do not do something correctly then I will be punished.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of punishment, connecting being punished to fear, thus I forgive myself for allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blindly believe what my parents and teachers have told me without any sort of self investigation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a rebellion against my parents and the faith that they are a part of. Not seeing, realising, or understanding that the rebellion came from my acceptance of faith, heaven, and hell.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I am going in the opposite direction to faith by going into eastern mystical philosophies believing that they are my ‘way out’ of my faith - not seeing, realising, or understanding that I am just using them as an excuse to believe what I want to believe, creating my own faith instead, and believing in my own heaven and hell.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realise, and understand that though I say to myself ‘I do not believe in hell anymore’ - I have created my own interpretation of what it means to be in hell i.e. to not be in heaven, samadhi, enlightenment, to fall into my mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I must be a good person, not seeing, realising, or understanding that the idea of good is something that I have created in my head without any awareness of what it actually means to be ‘good’.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realise, and understand that to be ‘good’ is to ‘do’ what is best for all life within a principle of equality and oneness. Seeing, realising, and understanding that being good in my own bubble does very little to affect the rest of existence, and in this way nothing ‘good’ can really be done.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see, realise, and understand that I can live according to principles of what is best for all as the living of my ideal self where I take everything into consideration, and not just my myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect with people on basis of trying emulate goodness, not seeing, realising, or understanding how I am not really living as a real person but as a fabrication of a person.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realise, and understand that this fabrication effort takes energy and resources away from me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I must use this fabrication of self to get through the day so that I do not offend people’s sensibilities or get into conflicts.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that the world is a jungle and that I have allowed myself to fear this jungle, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the world to fear, and thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in an attempt to try to protect people from being offended by me, not saying what I really want to say to them, not telling them the truth of a matter but rather lying to them because I am scared of what might happen.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to the need to protect people from being hurt emotionally, not seeing, or realising that I cannot protect people from themselves, I can only focus on who I am within myself in each moment of breath, making sure that I am operating living up to my principles, living as my ideal version of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to protect people from themselves, not seeing, realising, or understanding that I cannot do this, it is not possible. Furthermore not seeing, realising, or understanding that I must live my utmost potential in each and every breath moment before I can common sensically help people in seeing and living common sense in a way that gets them to take responsibility for themselves.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge others when I see them going through their own polarities of hard work and reward, believing them to be stupid, backchatting to myself ‘do they not know that they are stuck in a cycle?’ Not seeing, realising, or understanding how I can instead focus myself to that very polarity that I myself participate in terms of the construct of ‘hard’ work and ‘justified reward’.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to buy things I don’t need and eat food when I am not hungry.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in excess because I secretly feel I have been doing a lot of hard work, or that I am shouldering big responsibilities.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I am shouldering big responsibilities when in fact they are just responsibilities and I am the one making them bigger than they actually are.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make things bigger than they are, not seeing, realising, and understanding that the problems I face in my life, are problems of my own making, that I have made up - molehills I have made into mountains.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of getting into conflict with people, connecting getting into conflict with people to fear, thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to the need to not upset other people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give attention to what other people think of me, instead of giving myself self attention as a genuine and real act of self caring and self compassion, as a real moment where I do something good for myself and choose to live myself instead of limit myself.

When and as I see myself as needing to rebel against my parents I stop and I breathe and I write down what it is that is bugging me in that moment that is making me need to want to rebel against them, what am I defining myself by in this moment? I will myself to forgive, let go, breath and move on through these moments.

When and as I see myself participating in a desire to seek some other state of being, some heavenly existence, I stop and I breathe and I will myself to see, realise, and understand that these states of being that I seek are not real. I will myself to understand that these are the very mind states that I must let go of to find who I am beyond imaginary mind constructs.

When and as I see myself as stepping into the Good Guy Character I stop and I breathe. I bring myself back to my breathing and to the nucleus of my being and I live the understanding that this is not the ideal version of me, and as such must be done away with. I will myself to see, realise, and understand how this fabricated character is played out within myself and that it is based on fear of upsetting, fear of conflict, as fear of not being seen the way I want to be seen in the eyes of others.

I will myself to see that my fear of the world is my own fear that I have connected to it through and from past experiences. I will myself to see that these experiences and projections do not define me unless I give my permission.

I will myself to see how protecting people from their own emotions is actually me trying to protect myself from having to deal with their emotions that I take personally.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take other people’s emotions personally, seeing, realising, and now understanding that I only ever make it personal for myself, by myself.

When and as I see myself participating in the belief that I have big responsibilities to shoulder I stop and I breathe and I see the pattern that I am participating in, which here is ‘work and reward’, I will myself to breathe through and forgive myself for believing that my responsibilities are especially big, seeing that I have actually made them out to be bigger than they are, and how they in actual fact, just day to day responsibilities that every human being on the planet is subject to. No one can escape these fundamental responsibilities. And in fact they are nothing that needs to be escaped from, only understood, in the context of the wider picture.

I will myself to stop worrying about what other people think of me, how I am seen in the eyes of others, and I also will myself to stop making mountains out of molehills, creating problems and obstacle where there are none to be found. I will myself to when faced with an actual real problem that needs to be solved, to slow down and to breathe, and to realise and understand that problem solving need not be a difficult process.

Day 2 - The Good Guy Syndrome

Hell was a topic that was talked about a lot to me  from an early age; ‘you’re gonna go to hell if you don’t do this or that’ is what I would hear from my parents and my teachers and most of everyone who was around in my early life. it was something that I initially felt very scared of.

When early adolescence came, so did my rebellion, I rejected traditional faith and went in search of meaning elsewhere in other eastern philosophies, those that did not have a notion of heaven or hell, but rather samadhi or enlightenment. So in my head I was saying to myself ‘I don’t believe in hell anymore’.

The idea that I had to be a ‘Good Guy’ still stuck though, that whatever I did in my life I had to be the image and embodiment of Goodness, that was the prime directive - no matter what I do, it must be GOOD.

And so today in my life I see myself as the walking, talking thing that attempts to emulate Goodness in every unreal gesture, facial expression, voice tone, and word that I use to get through the jungle of the world. I would say I have become very good at it.

It is very tiring however, I did not realise how much hard work it is to be in what is essentially an acting role every single moment of nearly every day, from the moment I wake, to the moment I fall asleep. Around parents, friends, colleagues, and the rest of the world, it’s all just a show that I put on. And with the tiredness comes the need to relax, to be bad, to go into a drunken or drug induced stupor because ‘life is such hard work’.

We only have to sit on a park bench to hear how people are going to reward themselves for having been ‘really good’ when they get home, that they will treat themselves to unnecessary food intake, or buy things that they don’t need, or gorge on their favourite chocolates because they’ve just done that 10k run.

So who am I putting this show on for?

I would say it was for other people, so that my life is easier with them, so that I do not ruffle any feathers, so that I die a good person and get into my personal vision of heaven. There is the point that I am very afraid of upsetting other people, of getting into conflict, of ‘being in a fight’ - of generally upsetting people’s sensibilities. It as if to say my life is entirely about not upsetting other people.

What would happen to me if I stopped caring about other people in this way - stopping the attention that I give to what other people think of me, if I actually started Caring for Real? If I Stopped the Show.

Day 1 - Self Forgiveness and Self Corrective statements

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of Desteni.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect Desteni to fear, thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of sharing myself openly.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect sharing myself to fear, thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of being connected to Desteni, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect being connected to Desteni to fear, and so I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that Desteni is weird, not seeing, realising, and understanding that this is really just a cover for my own fear of being seeing as weird for ascribing to the practice of self investigation, self forgiveness, and self correction.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of being laughed at, I forgive give myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect being laughed at to fear, thus I forgive myself that I have accepted to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a search for  enlightenment because i believe this to be the solution for all the problems I perceive myself as having in my life,  as if this apparent enlightenment would be the solution to all my lacks, wants, and desires,  not seeing realising or understanding where these constructs have come from.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see realise and understand that the only way of actually dealing with myself is by dealing with myself -  and here the tools of self forgiveness and writing  come  into play.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that writing and self forgiveness are hard.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see realise and understand that I am the one who is making this process hard for myself by believing that the tools which are designed to liberate me are hard to apply.  I am making it hard for myself in each moment that I   allow myself to believe that this is hard work.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of posting my writing online for everyone to see. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect posting my writing online for everyone to see to fear and that I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make my fear out to be more than it actually is.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to  fear the self judgement I have  of myself to the point where I do not openly want to  share myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exist only within the shadows- not allowing myself to step into the open.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be defined by the  fear of what I think others will think of me, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect what others think of me to fear and thus  I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to  fear my own fear

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify not investigating myself through self forgiveness or self correction by saying to myself ‘I am on the DIP course, so I don’t have to do as much of those things as I used too’. I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see, realise, and understand that within this I allowed myself to move at the bare minimum pace and ‘be ok with it’ - only really moving myself when things got really ‘bad’ for me or when life was not going ‘as expected’.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in an ignoring of my process when things were on the up and up,when I was apparently happy or when things were going well - not seeing, realising, or understanding how this was part of a polarity of highs and lows and that I was allowing myself to be defined by the ‘highs’ and only in coming back down hard was did I force myself into remembering myself and my process.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use marijuana as a door to these ‘high’ experiences, as a way of making myself feel better for a period of time, not seeing, realising, or understanding how I was just suppressing everything and trying to ignore myself.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I was not addicted to marijuana, and that I could stop at any time - even though the evidence was there that I did not do this and that I reverted back to it all the time.

When and as I see myself participating in a search outside of myself for some sort of solution to my problems I stop and I breathe - and I will myself to see that I already have the tool available to me of writing and self forgiveness/correction, and that I can use these tools at any time to sort myself out and piece myself back together.

I will myself to live my ideal self as someone who is able to deal with himself in writing and not be afraid to ask for support when it is needed.

I will myself to remember that any feelings of difficulty that arise around writing and self forgiveness/correction are from me and that I am the one who is purposefully and willfully making it difficult for myself, I will myself the realisation that I am making mountains out of molehills.

When and as I see myself within an upturn in myself and in my life, I stop and I breathe - and I realise that this too must be investigated, forgiven and released as it is also based in energy plays and mind constructs that I have not corrected.Thus I will myself to the understanding that every high moment I have in my life is a moment which must be investigated so that I may bring myself back to myself.

I will myself to investigate all my dependencies on things and substances outside of myself so that I can stand clear as the embodiment of independance and self trust.

Hello, my name is Zakaria. I am living and working in the UK and have a job within the education sector.

I first came across Desteni in 2007 and since then I have participated on and off, here and there, never really committing myself fully. Why?

Fear.

When I look back I can see that there was a lot of fear around openly sharing myself and openly participating within the various things that go on here, there was also a lot of fear around being associated to Desteni, there was fear around Everything. Firstly, the big point for me was how weird everything was, all the various things that were being done and said - and so it took some time to even introduce myself to the group and start mingling with some of the people here. I did so because when I started to talk to and get to know some of these people something stuck out, they seemed to be trustworthy, and they offered solutions that actually worked for me.

I initially came from a place of ‘spirituality’ - from meditation and ‘energy work’ - I was trying to become enlightened, it was my attempt at getting away from the world, from all the ‘evil’ that I apparently saw. It was a way of dealing with myself and my emotions and my ups and downs and my thoughts and backchats and memories, etc. For a while it seemed to work wonderfully. I thought that this type of ‘spirituality’ was the answer to life - that it would allow me to enter into some form of eternally bliss.

And then reality hit me, it wasn’t actually working for me, nothing was really happening, I wasn’t changing in the way that I wanted to change. And so I started to investigate writing and self forgiveness - because there was really nothing to lose. These two things were really ‘hard’, it was work that I actually had to ‘do’ - the solution was no longer going to be meditation or something energy based, I would actually have to put some effort in to get something out.

And so I started writing and self forgiving and self committing myself. I did this for a while, and then slowly I began to hit myself with paranoia, ‘these people are actually getting to know me … I don’t want them to get to know me, I don’t want them to see me like this’. ‘What if my colleagues of friends or family come across my writings?! What if they judge me? What if they see what a complete and utter ego I am, what if they don’t want to know me anymore?’.

I should say now that while I was sharing myself openly with the community, there was a great sense of release, a relaxation, every time I posted something about myself for everyone to see. I remember this experience, and it is still with me in some ways. But I allowed my fear of letting people in to disuade me from writing anymore, from participating anymore. Only existing within the shadows as a name that people kind of knew once upon a time.

I started doing the DIP courses, this was my way of saying to myself ‘hey atleast I am still doing something eh?’. But even within this I was slow and non committed. I allowed the laziness that came from fear to fester within myself until eventually I was hardly moving in my course at all, or only moving the bare minimum.

But even doing it like this seemed to work, albeit very very slowly, I started seeing through the fears, where they came from, I started changing in how I dealt with situations in work and life, with people and family, and even with friends. I overcame a near lifelong marijuana habit, it took ages to stop this - and I never really thought I would give up that dependance - but I did, and paranoia is stopping, and things are moving at a nice pace.

So I am taking my first step again, will be taking more steps in the future, and will not be willing to back down. Pushing myself out of my comfort zones, getting to know reality better, and getting to redefine myself in this life that I have.