EIP and Max learning, achieving some goals

[mat422]

Made a realization these past few days. I've been detaching from my emotions, but not in a healthy way. This is one habit I find incredibly difficult to break. It seems like every few months I fall into this bad habit and completely forget that I need to stop it.

I can't tell if it's reluctance to feel the emotions themselves or it's shame attached to them. I'm very guarded with my inner self, there's so much I keep hidden away from my friends and family. I realize now all that holding back is what causes a lot of the distress in my life. I need to open up more with other people and be more accepting of how I feel.

Emotions are complicated things. I was never a fan of categorizing them because to me what I felt was just a spectrum of feelings. Things I couldn't put into words so I'd make music. And even then sometimes the music wasn't enough.

Being myself is one of those things that's easy in concept, but very difficult in execution. A part of me still doesn't have a strong belief in myself, a baseline level of confidence or self esteem I guess. And that's why whenever I come across anything that challenges my self worth, I tend to fall apart. It's because there's no safety net so to speak, and I'd be a liar if I said I could brush off others negativity. So when I fall, I fall hard. But I'm doing my best to change that and one of the most important feelings I've had over these past few months is the fact that even if I feel like I have low self worth, I don't have to settle for that. I may not have complete control over these things, but I can definitely stop feeding the negative and making it more of a problem than it actually is.

[mat422]

I have to say that the one thing that bothers me the most in this world is how common it is for people to be stuck in jobs they hate. Since I've struggled with depression for a while I've realized I have a very low tolerance for anything that makes me feel worse. What I really hate though is the "that's life" attitude some people give you or tell you to get over it. In my heart and my gut, I know it's not right. Life is not meant to be trudged through with regret and bitterness like so many people do. I used to think I should take what I could get and tough it out, to demonstrate strength. I think that's pretty dumb now actually. There's no glory in sticking with a crappy job to prove myself. My energy should go towards finding something I'd like to do, not learning to settle for something that sucks.

But these past few days I've been going through a lot of emotions. My house is going up for sale so I've been packing my stuff. I stumbled upon an old high school graduation card with my parents well wishes and hope for everything to be great in my life. It made me really sad. In some ways I feel that I've improved so much and in others I just feel like a complete mess. I wish that my life was together, just for the sake of my parents. They're both amazing and I always feel bad that they are always worrying about me.

I'm 24 now and it fills me with anxiety when I think how fast this happened. I can't wake up 10 years from now dealing with the same problems and struggling. The world is a beautiful place at times, but it also can be hell. I don't know how most people go about their lives without feeling this way. Is it because they distract themselves with fancy toys, sex, and media? I always feel burdened by this sense of unhappiness. I don't know if it's just me or if it's a reaction to the world around me.

Something I've been thinking about is people all have higher states of consciousness. Sort of like guidelines for happiness. But some people are disconnected and stuck in a lower level. The soul knows what it wants, but sometimes it's too ahead. Sometimes the world around it hasn't caught up to its level and there's a friction between this inner knowing and what reality is at that moment in time. If I strip away a lot of the nonsense society seems to imprint on me, my immediate reaction is I don't want to live in this world. Not in a suicidal way, just a profound realization that there's so much negativity and garbage you have to deal with just to exist. Maybe that's because I haven't reached a point where I'm above it and unaffected by it. I could see how once you're completely detached from any of that influence you truly are free to live your life without those marionette strings pulling you around like a puppet.

[SargeMaximus]

Yeah I feel you dude. Been like that for me lately too. I was laying in bed last night thinking "it's so easy to just give up and die, there's literally nothing to look forward to when I can't figure out how to get there". It's like my desires exceed my ability to attain them.

But hey, you're 24 and have your own house? That's a major plus dude! Wish I had that money myself.

[mat422]

Yeah I feel you dude. Been like that for me lately too. I was laying in bed last night thinking "it's so easy to just give up and die, there's literally nothing to look forward to when I can't figure out how to get there". It's like my desires exceed my ability to attain them.

But hey, you're 24 and have your own house? That's a major plus dude! Wish I had that money myself.

Hopefully it's just a stage. I've realized that this kind of stuff always seems way worse in the moment, then little by little I can chip away at it. Anyway, good to know I'm not the only one. Feelings like this can make me feel so isolated from everyone else around me. And I'm a firm believer in acknowledging the darker thoughts, even if most people see them as "negative". It's the first step to changing them anyway, too many people live in ignorance.

I wish I had my own house, when I said my house I meant the house I grew up in. I'm still living at home unfortunately. I'm working on getting my own place, but it hasn't been smooth sailing.

[SargeMaximus]

Well at least you've got a 'base' to fall back on. Some of us don't even have that.

[mat422]

Well at least you've got a 'base' to fall back on. Some of us don't even have that.

Very true. I'm incredibly grateful for having that.

[mat422]

You know I'm still trying to shake my habit of black and white thinking, my perfectionism. I just realized my obsession with being positive and how it causes resistance to anything negative. Lately when I've been feeling really down I've been trying to switch it around to the positive. But what I've learned is if deep down you really don't believe what you're saying, it only makes things worse. It's better to acknowledge the feelings and then do what I can to feel better, but it doesn't have to be a complete 180. And most of all stop beating myself up because I don't have the best self worth. Having low self worth isn't that great to begin with, but beating yourself up because you can't make yourself have higher self worth is even worse. Everything comes with time and I can't rush this stuff.

As an example I was working on a track the other day and thought it sounded good, then went to listen to one of my favorite producers. Mine couldn't really compare. Normally I'd try to make myself feel better by telling myself my track was good, it was just different. But I realized that was just me avoiding the painful feelings of not being good enough. So I just sat with those feelings instead and allowed them, then I looked at what I could improve on instead of feeling like a failure. No trying to hype myself up or cheer myself up, just acceptance and being objective instead of being overly attached to my work.

I'm just finding more and more that I should be more, instead of doing more. I'm always obsessed with micromanaging my thoughts in an effort to achieve some state of mind that I honestly don't know if it even exists outside of my imagination. In addition to that I've realized my fear of failure leads me to avoid taking action and I have this mistaken notion that if I just get everything right, one day it'll come to me. But it's just procrastination in a different disguise. There's a fine line between getting your mindset right vs waiting for things to get better by avoiding the troubling stuff. Avoidance only make things worse because then I'm giving more power to the things I fear, which consequently alters my life in a direction I don't want.

I think a lot of my rumination comes from a sort of free floating anxiety. Since my life feels like a mess I have this subtle kind of panic. I keep thinking that if I just practice relaxation techniques and meditate, then I can relieve it. But the solution is really just to change my circumstances so my life isn't a mess. It's daunting because I feel like I have so much to do and I'm so behind, but I know that's where the answer lies to remove this anxiety. The anxiety is telling me something, it's more like a symptom of a larger problem. So instead of expending energy being anxious about not having a job, I should spend that energy visualizing having one and working towards getting one I like.

[mat422]

Lately I've been finding things in my life that answer the questions I'm always thinking of or pondering. It's like a weird synchronicity. Anyway after reading more of Reality Transurfing the author brought up self worth issues. This was right after I had finished making my post the other day. One of the things he emphasized was that building up your self worth is a trap, and it's better to not put importance on self worth to begin with. The less you see it as a problem, the more it fades away on it's own.

In a way I agree with him. Trying to convince yourself of your self worth is an exercise in futility. All the times I've tried have backfired pretty badly and made me feel worse. It's usually when I stop seeing it as such a huge problem I'm feeling my best. But I've also realized that simply telling myself self worth doesn't matter doesn't necessarily change my behavior. There are small reminders throughout the day that I'm mindful of that point towards internalized issues.

This is where it gets philosophical for me. Are we living day to day, in charge of our actions and as long as we focus on what we want and desire that's all that matters? Some psychologists believe that behaviors are merely patterns that can be broken or altered, with no meaningful connection to the past and they exist on the surface level of the mind. Or does the subconscious mind hold a lot of power and subtly dictate our actions, sometimes not even being aware of it. And it goes deep, very deep. Sometimes enough where only hypnosis or subliminals can make a meaningful impact.

I thought of this because in the book Reality Transurfing the author outlines the thoughts you should hold and what behaviors to change to allow you to live the life you want. But to me he took a mindset which starts in the subconscious and put that into words. While his words have value and have some impact on mindset, it seems like it's almost backwards. I've met people who have the mindset right off the bat and they just flow through life with minimal obstacles. They didn't learn anything. No doubt you've encountered these people in your life too.

It's like taking a really complex object and describing it to someone without them seeing it and then having to draw it or create a mental picture of it. You might get it, but if it's really complex the odds are against you. This is all the self help books people read. Whereas taking that complex object and actually showing it to the other person so they understand the minute detail of it is like subliminals. It's the direct path to understanding. I've always found that anything self help related never really sticks. There's a huge difference between intellectually understanding something vs embodying those beliefs and intuitive knowledge. Maybe it's just me and this doesn't apply to everyone, but I find that I'm not easily changed by anything from the conscious approach. Perhaps it's my personality type. In a way I'm not easily manipulated, but at the same time I find it incredibly difficult to make changes.

[mat422]

I've recently come to the conclusion that my desire to be better in the face of my issues is nothing more than resistance to how things actually are. Accepting things isn't always easy, especially when it has such a heavy emotional burden attached to it. There's nothing wrong with change or improvement, but I think if it's out of fear it leads to a lot of problems.

My biggest issue is when things like depression or anxiety pop up, I want them gone. There's so many techniques out there to relieve this stuff, but I've found none of it can really outright eliminate it in the moment. Instead I should have been working on accepting it and continuing on with my life instead of getting sucked down in an endless spiral of trying to fix something. The only thing more disheartening than dealing with anxiety and depression is when individuals claim they have relief for it if you just do x, y, and z and you find it doesn't really work. It's not really a surprise that I have trouble accepting a lot of stuff considering I always seem to be at war with how I feel.

I'm not saying I shouldn't give attention to these problems and hope they magically go away. But I am saying that sometimes things don't resolve in a day, sometimes it takes a month or longer. If I dwell on things still not being better, I'll only feel worse.

Sometimes life just sucks. I was hanging out with a group of friends the other day and felt like I couldn't get into the conversation. Everyone was having a good time except me. The more I forced myself to have a good time, the worse I felt. The more I beat myself up for not being able to have a good time or talk more, the worse I felt. I'm always focusing way too much on what I should be feeling or doing instead of accepting how I actually feel and going from there.

[mat422]

I think I've made some progress. After coming to the realization that I'm not comfortable with my emotions I've been very dedicated to feeling them lately and letting them play out. One of my worst fears is getting swept away in the emotions and losing control, but I've realized that's just a fear and not true. I can allow my emotions to play out naturally, but also reevaluate what I'm feeling and change it. It didn't occur to me how poor my acceptance towards my own emotions was.

For example, lately my job search has been pretty crappy. I inevitably get into a somewhat dark place if I spend too much time searching and not getting anywhere. In the past when negative thoughts that it was hopeless would pop up I'd label it a negative thought and try to push it away because everything I've ever read online emphasizes the benefits of not thinking negatively. But that doesn't diffuse the energy of the negative thoughts. Instead I allow it as much as possible, I'll even encourage myself to go to the darkest parts of my mind and let it all out. I'll completely remove resistance to the idea of "being negative". After, I sit with the feeling for a while and let it go. I recognize that it's only emotions in my body and I ultimately can decide to take them as the truth or look for something better.

All in all I'm realizing that there's a lot I ignored emotionally. It's built up over the years and every time I sat down with it, it was so overwhelming and painful it would cause me to close up again. I went through a very rough week of just staying open no matter what and telling myself it would pass and this wasn't a state of permanence.

Also I realized there's never going to be an epiphany that solves every one of my problems. Even these realizations are no guarantee that I'll keep having good days. But as long as I hold the intention of letting things pass and striving for being better it's pretty much inevitable that I'll keep moving that way. The greatest skill I'm learning is letting go of resistance because resistance is what usually causes the pain, not the emotions themselves. As a former "positive thinker" I've found that most of my thoughts weren't truly positive. They were just obsessive to the point of running away from the negative.

[mat422]

Kind of realized my aversion to emotions is pretty much rooted in my fear of what others think of me or of them invalidating such a vulnerable state. I got that a lot when I was younger I think. Struggling with social anxiety and depression I felt like nobody ever really got it and even if I opened up it resulted in this feeling of being messed up beyond repair. I guess when it comes down to it, I'm still very much affected by other people no matter how hard I try to tell myself it doesn't get to me. But all I can really do is keep looking forward and moving on ahead.

Lately I've been having the urge to run AM 5.0 again. Maybe it's because I keep seeing AM posts around here and the success guys are getting. But I'm gonna be sticking with EPRHA. I've been making some decent progress lately.

Also I went to a party recently and noticed some really conflicting feelings around some of the girls there. Part of me wanted them to be interested in me and talk to me, but another part of me wanted them to leave me alone. That's been a constant thing in my life, it's like I give out mixed signals to people. There was a ton of neediness going on inside me which I recognized and decided acting on wasn't in my best interest. Of course there were plenty of other guys there who didn't really care and just pestered some of them to no end. Heard all about that from some of the girls the next day. Kind of funny how some guys have no consideration for others feelings. Anyway, I suck with girls and fully acknowledge that. But to be honest there's not much desire to get better with them aside from the neediness I feel. And I think that neediness is pretty much due to my lack of interaction or relationships when I was younger. Maybe it's too idealistic, but I want to get to a place where I can give more than take from a relationship. I don't want a relationship where I'm using her to fill some incomplete void inside of me because that's unfair.

[mat422]

After reading reality transurfing I wasn't completely convinced about the idea of pendulums. But I see now that the whole idea of an energy construct is very possible. In a way it's the only thing that makes sense to me.

If people collectively as a group think in a certain manner and have beliefs that resonate and create a strong energetic construct, then this construct would have an incredible amount of influence. Of course you have to believe in the concept of energy and a plane of existence besides the material one we readily perceive.

But that's besides the point. Where I'm going with this is maybe resistance from these subliminals or any self change doesn't solely exist within ourselves. In his book he says that pendulums seek balance and they will utilize their energy to make this happen.

I've noticed with successful people they absolutely do not follow what other people do. They follow their gut and their intuition. Also they generally don't fear doing something different. That's important, because if they had fear that would mean they were still connected to the pendulum that dictates people's actions and it would seek balance and ruin their success.

Here's the thing, what if fear is really just a result of influence from one of those energetic constructs? We seek to make a change, that change isn't in line with the energy construct. The energy construct pushes back and we feel that on a subconscious energetic level. We interpret it as fear by our conscious mind, but it really didn't originate within us. It's outside us.

Doesn't have to be fear either. You ever get that feeling like you should do something? A subtle pressure inside you that pushes you towards doing something or following a certain path and you feel as if you should go along with it? But at the same time there's a part inside you that feels it's not right? It's almost like the more you go against the status quo, the more resistance you'll be met with.

I don't know, just some stuff to ponder. Sometimes awareness is a very powerful ally.

[mat422]

Just realized there might be two separate issues going on here with my struggles. While EPRHA is a great subliminal, there's definitely some beliefs having to do with scarcity and lack of abundance in my life. Growing up I always saw my parents struggling. I didn't want that to be me, but at the same time I was getting the message that that's what reality was all about and anything else was just a fantasy world. My parents always told me I could do anything in life, but the problem is I don't think they believed it themselves. I've always been in tune to the energy of other people, so it's not what they say but how they say it.

I think that's the big fear in my life. Living a life that makes me feel like a slave to some system. But I only have that fear because deep down I don't think I see myself able to live life in any other way. And that's been further strengthened by my struggles with social anxiety and depression throughout the years.

So there's the deeper stuff, like anxiety and depression and all the beliefs that go along with self worth. And then there are the beliefs that were created about life being a miserable existence and an endless struggle.

EPHRA is taking care of the anxiety and depression. But I realized I need to work on my beliefs surrounding life a lot more. The more I tell myself a life of pain and struggle is inevitable, the more likely that's what I'll attract in my life. The opposite of that doesn't seem as real, but I think that's just because I haven't lived that kind of reality enough to know that it's possible.

[mat422]

Had a moment of clarity today. I've realized a lot of my posts are largely me going in circles and ruminating. Some insights here and there, but mostly all of them just show my resistance to change.

Here's the thing, I'm reluctant to give up control. My subconscious mind has been programmed with all these great improvements and I've been resisting every step of the way. I've been trying to understand from a conscious perspective how to allow these things, how to change my behavior, to understand so I can control it. But the realm of the subconscious is largely something that's instinct/feeling based. It can't really be analyzed the same way the conscious mind can be. The process of the subconscious and how it works can be, but I'm talking about the actual moments in time where your subconscious operates. Those moments are acts of being and the conscious has little to no control over that.

Anyway my subconscious has been cleaning up house. If you imagine different rooms as different memories/beliefs in the mind, the subconscious has been rearranging cleaning and doing all this hard work. Then my conscious mind(me) has been going back into these rooms and making an absolute mess because I lack trust in what's going on. On top of that it's constantly telling me "dude, move on we are done here" but my conscious mind is stubborn and has to be dragged out of that room. If I just trust my subconscious/higher mind to do what needs to be done and stop interfering I'll make improvements. But my mistake was thinking I knew better.

I think in society there's a lot of emphasis on logic and rational thinking as the highest form of decision making. This leads a lot of people to doubt their own intuition. In reality transurfing the author talks about the alternative space. Basically it's just a massive grid of information/possibilities and everyone is connected to this. But it's our higher mind that taps into this, if you try to understand it from a lower conscious perspective you'll probably just dismiss it as nonsense or be unable to connect to it. I'm pretty sure the sublliminals tap into this grid and provide us with the answers and changes we seek, we just have to let it work. And that requires some amount of trust. And if you have issues with control, like I do, you'll put up a wall or barrier to that very powerful asset.