Day 167: Researching my feeling of deep sadness

Recently I have been listening to some support audio and watched a video of a certain social event that triggered a feeling of deep sadness within me. The audio has been talking about how someone that I know could actually be desiring the ability to experience laughter and the video also showed people that I have known very good and were engaged in happy gathering while playing an instrument and singing together. I also wanted to attend that event that took place far away, however, I was not able to due to my current financial situation. And the audio that was talking about my friend could also be talking about me since I obviously have a similar issue. I have been writing about such feeling of sadness in my blog before however, I think that I have to face it by going even deeper into it.

Firstly I want to explain that I am the oldest of two sons and usually if you are the first born child, parents expect from you to be a responsible role model for your younger siblings. I was no exemption and especially my father wanted to be proud of me so he pushed me to develop my abilities in order to brag towards others how great his elder son is. I wrote in previous blogs about how I got burned out while working in his family business and that is why I moved out of his house and started my own business. However, I did not consider the pressure that I felt to be very extensive and that I thought that I would be able to deal with it very easily. Now I see that I might have been suppressed much stronger than I believed before and that this is something that I do not want to admit to myself. Because as a male I have also been raised up not to express my emotions especially not sadness and never to cry.

Generally, I defined the situation in our family as high above average meaning that I had a roof over my head, enough food, both parents worked and earned enough, I do not remember being abused very much so I definitely had it much better than many who suffer great scarcity and pain in this world. However what I did not pay much attention to is the subtle emotional abuse that I obviously endured during my upbringing. I later found out that my father had a hard experience since his father died while he was just a small kid and then he started living with his stepsister and his stepfather who was a butcher. My father did not talk about his childhood experiences much and he has always been hiding any kind of pain, including any kind of physical body discomfort. I guess he decided to live a life of a martyr by ignoring any pain of his own and assisting others to live better. 

In terms of experiencing happiness and laughter, I do not remember him expressing his positive emotions much and what I found very odd is that he did not like to be even hugged by others, including by myself. I saw him cry only once and that was when we had a conversation at a family dinner where I expressed my feelings of being suppressed and then he burst out with tears about how he felt that he was more than a good provider for me and my brother. That was actually the first event that made me understand that he is also suffering a lot and that he is not having is as easy as he has been portraying himself towards others. I remember only two occasions where he was being nasty towards me. The first was when I did something wrong and he made me kneel on grains of rice for quite a long time. And I remember him making fun of me once which was related to me growing pubic hair or something related to that.

Oddly I have no much remembrance about how I experienced myself in early childhood and how was my relationship towards my brother. I know that he was able to express himself emotionally to a much greater extent that I was. Actually, he developed the polar opposite personality of being extremely extroverted, making fun of things and forcing others to laugh by making jokes and pushing their buttons in all sorts of ways. I did not like his behavior since in case of serious conversations he always quickly fled away and did not want to equally take responsibility. His philosophy was basically that every problem can be solved by making others laugh. Thus I have started to connect being happy and laughing with a diversion tactic and wanting to be irresponsible. Consequently I also hardly ever laughed since I wanted to be a responsible oldest son which was my personal survival tactic and also a form of me manipulating other to get what I want.

I do not remember any member of our family playing any instrument or singing any song. Although I did hear a testimony of my mother how in her childhood she started to learn to play the violin and then her mother forced her to play any time someone came for a visit. This is the reason why she then started to hate playing the violin or any other instrument. And possibly this is also the reason why my brother and I were also never encouraged to play any instrument. I remembered my mother telling me the story about how I was in a choir in the 1st or 2nd grade of primary school and how after we started to sing I soon broke into tears and was crying so intensely like never before. I am still wondering why was that and I suspect that my father envied and thus bullied me any time I wanted to express myself via singing. Consequently, due to all such suppressions, I did not practice to memorize any lyrics nor jokes.

The way how I was raised up made me uncomfortable in some social situations. For example in the last years of primary school. Someone had an idea to during a class break organize a quick performance when each classmate would step on top of the desk before the blackboard and sing one song. When it was my turn I told everyone that I do not know any lyric by heart and no one believed that such a case can exist. They pushed me to step on the desk and believed that eventually, I will remember some song. However, even after standing there for quite some time I was not able to and felt embarrassed in front of the class. Similarly, I feel very uncomfortable if I was invited to an event where someone would play guitar for example and others would sing popular songs since it was expected that everyone knows their lyrics by heart.

Around the age of 25 when I started to live in my own apartment, I decided to take a guitar class. Most of the music schools only accepted children however I managed to find a school for adults where they taught dancing and how to play guitar. I practiced at home how to play some popular songs using chords and how to sing along. Then I also played once when one of my young female neighbors had a birthday, however, some of the guys there made fun of me and I did not feel very happy about that. Eventually, I stopped playing guitar. One of the reasons was not feeling comfortable physically since besides already sitting for many hours working with computers playing guitar meant additional time where I was forced to sit. Also pressing the strings was painful for my fingers, they left a nasty metal smell and taste on my fingers and made the skin on top of my fingers to thicken.

A much nicer experience, however, was when I joined Hare Krishna movement years ago when we played simple instruments and repeatedly sung mostly only a simple mantra that was easy to learn. But there were other things that bothered me there so I left that group after a couple of years. In recent years I pushed myself to visit some music concerts. It is great to see how many people from the audience sing along and have fun. However, I am also critical about repeating lyrics since I believe that by repetition of statements within the lyrics of the song one is programming and conditioning itself. And I definitely do not want to join singing out loud lyrics that I find limiting and creating a feeling of self-pity or similar to that. I also do not like to visit live music events since people there usually drink or even smoke and thrash and spill the drinks on the floor.

I think that expressing yourself with making music and singing is great when certain conditions are met. In some cultures dancing and singing is practiced in a sacred form where it is mostly performed in small groups without any audience as a way of spiritual or religious practice. They perform with the intent to express gratitude towards the creator and do not care for the appraisal of the audience. Music can also share deep messages and change society. I was happy to see that also in our Desteni group where we transform mind patterns with writing like what I am currently doing some are also creating supportive music. Like the Robot Virgin, Anna and Viktor, Viktor Persson and MFM Radio for example. And I have also been thinking about writing and creating some music with deep messages however there are other things that attract me more at this moment. There are many options in this life, however, each one has a limited amount of time and every one of us must decide about priorities and what they want to focus to until further.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that others do not like how I play or sing just because of who I am as a being and want to suppress me because they are evil. I realize that my parents did not support my singing and playing because of their own history of not developing or being allowed much to develop musical skills. And in the case of my mother, she obviously projected her own frustration and wanted to protect me from the same experience of having been forced to perform in front of others without my will. Thus I commit myself when and as I play or sing and my parents make an unflattering comment about my performance and my mind produces thoughts like: “They are pure evil and I hate them for that!” to stop and breathe. Within the realization that what others say is more a reflection of who they are and not about me I then continue to play with the intent of my self-expression and my own personal enjoyment. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to in case of someone is being critical towards my musical performance to blame it all on them. I realize that when I have been playing guitar at the birthday party of my neighbor I have not been very skilled and I wanted to impress others in order to be prised and to feel good. Thus I commit myself to when and as I am invited to a gathering and my mind is producing thoughts like: “Take your instrument and perform some songs in order to show others how good you are!” to stop and breathe. I then rather consider the nature of the event, the appropriability of me playing there, the level of my current musical skill and my starting point. I ask the organizers of the event if they would like me to perform and explain the level of my skill to them. In case if they allow me to perform, I then play with the starting point of self-expression and allow any constructive criticism and understand also the nature of any criticism that is a result of projected envy. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel sadness when and as I am being in a group where people are playing instruments and singing. I realize that such feelings are a form of self-manipulation where I want to blame others for my past experiences by acting out the personality of a victim. Thus I commit myself to when and as I am in a musical gathering and my mind is producing thoughts like: “Your musical expression has been suppressed in the past and it is my right to be sad about that!” to stop and breathe. I then within the understanding that my experience of suppression has been a projected experience of my parents, I decided to break this pattern of abuse and manipulation and become an example of how I want to be treated by treating musical performers with respect and by expressing my full support for their performance. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel frustrated when and as someone pushes me to play an instrument or sing a song and I fail to perform like they hoped I would. I realize that other people have different family and educational backgrounds where some may consider the ability to play at least one instrument and to sing at least a couple of songs something normal. Some of them may not be able to comprehend that there are also people in this world that can play no instruments and do not know even one musical lyric by heart. However, this is their problem and lesson to understand and accept that life shaped a lot of people in this world that can perform very differently than themselves. Thus I commit myself to when and as someone expects me to play an instrument or to sing some song and my mind produces thoughts like: “You should be ashamed of yourself for not having developed even basic musical skills!” to stop and breathe. I then within emotional stability simply explain to others that producing music is not something that I have been developing much and that best for them is to fully and completely accept this fact.

In relation to this blog post, I invite you to assist also yourself with awesome self-perfecting tools within free online DIP Lite course and to listen to educational audios from Eqafe web store with hundreds of extremely supportive educational items that hold answers to any imaginable question about life and this existence. Here are links to audios that are relevant to this blog post:

Sadness: Understanding Sadness

Sadness: When Relationships End

Sadness: Seeing the Gift

Sadness: Sounding Self Forgiveness

Self Forgiveness on the Experience of Sadness & Loss

Why Do I Feel Left Out?

Day 141: Cold Feet Symptoms, Causes and Treatments

This is my 5th consecutive blog post about cold feed or cold legs symptom that I have been experiencing for about last 10 years. I will be here showing you a way of treatment that addresses the root psychological or spiritual cause as the accumulated traumatic memories from the past. For you to understand the full context of this process, I invite you to firstly read my four related blog posts titled (1) The cause for cold legs, (2) Home remedy for cold feet, (3) Solution for perpetually cold feet and (4) Why are my legs always freezing cold. In this blog post I will be walking the next major memory imprint that attributed for me to lose my footing and grounding which manifested my cold feed. The event is me not being accepted to the graphic design middle school that I applied for and thus decided to rather attend machine engineer middle school where I experienced many traumatic experiences as described in my previous blog post. So instead of walking the next event in the timeline I am here taking one step back since I feel that this event is also very much related to me becoming disappointed about my life and creating a personality of suppression.

When I had to decide what middle school to enrol in, my primary option was the Design & Photography Middle School in Ljubljana city. Soon after I applied, I received a notice from that school that they received much more applications than there were available seats. I had to take qualification test which I to my great disappointment failed to pass. I was faced with decision if I am to wait for one year and try applying again at the same school or to immediately start studying at any other middle school where they had enough seats and I would be thus accepted without having to take any qualification tests. I think it was my parents to finally convinced me that enrolling into Mechanical Engineer class at Jesenice Middle School would be the best option since it is also a kind of design process which includes a lot of drawing. It seems to also be a good decision since my father couple of years ago started with our family business where we started to produce metal constructions for industrial air purification systems and other small products from metal for the Jesenice Steel Factory where most of the people who lived in the city were employed from.

Being turned down at design school was very depressing for me since I considered it as an escape from my parents who started to suppress me more and more. I was not allowed to go out in the evenings or at weekends and I was constantly needed to assist others in our metal shop. I did not like the smell and feel of the metal since there was a lot of dust and paint vapours that were created in the manufacturing process and the materials were very cold. I had no opportunity to express myself creatively during the production process and there were constantly short deadlines so I had a very little free time. Consequently I was not able to develop my drawing and design skills so that I would have a chance when competing with other kids who also applied for design school. Many had much better background since at least one of the parents was professional painter, designer, architect or photographer and my parents were none of such kind. I had to teach myself how to draw and paint without and family assistance and support. Deeply inside me I felt that this was the correct profession for me.

Several years after my father stated with metal related family business, he once visited innovation fair in United States as representative of Jesenice Steel Factory and decided to import computer controlled self-adhesive foil sign-making machine. I was very excited about that and during my middle school I started to experiment with this revolutionary technology that almost totally replaced manual sign-writing profession. This was a kind of graphic design process however instead of drawing with hands, I used computer, software and the mouse that very limited my creative expression and also influenced my mind in becoming very restless and stressed. Due to international recession in metal industry that soon followed, my parents decided to completely transform our family business and we completely switched to sign-making and screen-printing services. Since my parents knew nothing about computers and graphics, my brother and I became the main producers and my parents managed the business from perspective of providing clients, materials and performing accounting. However even here I was not able to express myself creatively since my father did not understand design and cherished only the speed of sign-making and screen-printing.

Such environment created big frustration within me, I started to loose my mind and had to visit psychologist for the first time in my life. When I met my first girlfriend we decided to move together to an apartment quite far away from our family business in order to escape from the tyranny of my father. But he continued to press on me that resulted in breakup of my girlfriend and me couple of years later. I then decided to completely stop working for my father and work only as graphic design and photography freelancer. That finally enabled me freedom of creative expression and I enjoyed it very much. However I still used only computer tools for creative process and was not comfortable with hand-drawing. Internally I felt restless, my mind pressed me and also due to incredible shock when my girlfriend decided to break up with me, my passion switched from creating designs to discovering how human mind works and what is the meaning of life. Even though I still enjoy graphic design to this very day, I feel that I am lacking the basics of colour and design theory and core drawing skills that prevent me from excelling as a graphic designer. Thus I am thinking about how completely different my life would be if I would be accepted into design school in distant Ljubljana city where I would be safe from oppression of my father, probably also prevented from being bullied from classmates and definitely immensely supported in developing my deep design passion. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to compromise myself by taking the easy way and decided to study machine engineering instead of persisting and making sure that I study what I actually want. I realise that there are always the quick and the right options in life. Our minds tend to prefer shortcuts that create undesired consequences and time-loops while if we listen to ourselves/being the path might be longer and more challenging but also more fulfilling and satisfying. I commit myself whenever I find myself at the juncture where there are two or more option and my mind produces thoughts like: “Take the easy and fast way since why waste time and suffer!” to stop and breathe. At such moments I rather look within myself and see what I truly want and move towards that that goal no matter how long it will take and what obstacles I will have to face.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to blame my parent for influencing my decision about what middle school to attend instead of realising that at the end it was me and no one else who made the final decision about that. I realise that my parents tried to be responsible and did consider all the options that they saw however since I was not passionate enough about attending design school, they directed me towards decision that they considered to be best for me and at the same time also best for the future projected family business. I commit myself to when and as I am in conversation with someone about what direction to move myself considering the mutual plans and my mind produces thoughts like: “Your personal desires do not really matter since it is more important to fit in and do what others want from you.” to stop and breathe. I then communicate clearly and directly about what I feel is my life vision and mission with others and stand firmly on my principles.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel regret about me not immediately deciding to study at design school, believing that it would save me many years of troubles and assisting me in developing myself into much better and satisfied graphic designer. I realise that my imagination about how my life path would be and what experiences I would have if I would take middle school for design might be very different from what they would actually be. While design school should be supportive to develop design skills, I might still be experiencing there influences from authoritative teachers and bullies since no school is perfect and all in a way limit self in regards to full self-expression. When and as I look back to my options that I decided not to take in the past and my mind produces imagination about how my life would look like if I would take those paths, I stop and breathe. I then rather consider my current options and learn from actual past experiences to make better decisions that would compromise me as little as possible, where I would be able to express myself fully and where I would at the same time also be able to support all life as one and equal.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that he best way to lear something is to enrol in some public school instead of realising that most public schools are based on the military way of disciplining and shaping of individual into obedient follower. I realise that best way to excel in something is to learn from the masters as apprentice and from their books and courses where they have shared their knowledge and realisations. When and as I want to learn something and my mind is telling me: “Look for the closest public school or university and apply there since you will get a certificate of completion that will enable you to get a good paying job very fast.” I stop and breathe. Within realisation that quality of public schooling is very low, diplomas do these days not mean much, permanent employments are thing of the past, I rather decide to be self-taught and study from many better and easier available sources of knowledge that would enable me to excel in my profession and thus enable me to take care for myself much more effectively.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that my core passion is becoming a designer and that this is what I absolutely must focus to develop myself towards in my current life. I realise that definition of a designer is very limiting and that I as a living being have many more potentials to express myself and to perform much more tasks that to only do graphic designs. I must consider that my desire to become a designer could not actually be my life mission but only a preprogrammed idea based on how I have been influenced by my parents and environment that they have created for me where creating with Lego bricks was for example one of things that I was given the opportunity to play with. When and as someone asks me what my life passion is and my mind would serve me a thought like: “Tell them that you are a graphic designer!” to stop and breathe. I then rather expand and explain what are all the things that I am interested in and how actually I am not limiting myself to any specific profession since I want to express myself in a myriad of different ways.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to resent public schooling system and teachers for influencing me in a way where I feel that I have been abused, limited and suppressed. I realise that also the public schooling system has many historical influences from governments to ideologies and individuals. People who become teachers have different starting points and abilities and combining all together, each class, school and national education system is a bit different and provides different experience to an individual pupil. When and as I think about my educational experiences and my mind produces thoughts like: “Those nasty teachers have abused and harmed me thus I have the right to hate them!” to stop and breathe. I then put myself in the shoes of every teacher that I have met and see that I would probably act no different that they had. So instead of wasting time by thinking about the past and feeling sorry for what I have become, I rather bring myself back here into reality and see how I can invest time into perfecting myself since this is where I have the power of making any real change.

In relation to this blog post, I invite you to assist also yourself with awesome self-assisting tools within DIP Lite course and to listen to educational audio titled The Natural Learning Ability from the Life Review series at Eqafe web store with hundreds of extremely supportive educational items that hold answer to any imaginable question about life and this existence.

Day 71: Resistance to learning by hearth

I am taking a class where we are to learn some text by hearth. Firstly we are to learn some key phrases and then we learn some expanded text as addition to the key phrases. As long as I remembers, I have had a resistance to learning by hearth, especially numbers, like years and dates or PIN codes. It is not that I did not find myself incapable of remembering information but I lacked the motivation to remember.

For example at history class we were to remember a lot of year and dates in relation to some major world events. The resistance to learning such information was there since firstly I was not given any example how memorizing this kind of information will benefit my life and how I would be practically be able to use this information in my future years of life, and secondly because I was aware that basically everything that is taught in schools is a lie as the history is written by winners in wars, thus it shows only limited perspective on what happend and the whole school curriculum is used to create certain mentality of the citizens so that they are in sort of hypnosis, not being aware and thus also not caring about what currently exists in this world.

So now I am studying information that is from more reliable source and is in best interest of all the humanity but I still have this resistance and lack of motivation. The first fact that creates resistance in me is that we are learning information in English but later I will be mostly or only be using this information in our national Slovenian language. Thus I will have to then firstly translate the texts and then learn the Slovenian text by hearth. I don't know if I will later even again be practically using the English memorized information in real life so I find it kind a waste of time to lear it in English. 

The second point is that we are to learn and memorize text by hearth where every single word is very specific and important. I always had a resistance towards memorizing information by hearth, like poems in the primary school and mathematical equations and it was also due to lack of motivation. And generally, as many other peers experience, I had problems with learning due to ineffective schooling system where there were too much children in one class, the method of teaching was ineffective and we were all terrorized and threatened with low grades and punishments, so the whole schooling experience was very unpleasant and stressful.

Where I now have to learn new information, the learning environment is much more kind and supportive, however there is still a time pressure, conditioning and money pressure. It would be cool to learn if there would be no deadline and if I would live in a system where my survival would be unconditionally guaranteed. However I am taking this class due to money motivation and fear motivation and my success in the class will also result in my succes of being able to earn money and thus guarantee my survival in this system.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed my past experiences of schooling to influence my new experience of learning instead of effectively breathing, staying here, focusing on the material and integrating it successfully. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to be angry at class organizers who demand from me to learn information in English and not my local Slovenian language, instead of realizing that at this stage the learning of the knowledge involves participants from all parts of the world who also have different native languages and we all have to use the most used language which is English in order to communicate effectively.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to loose motivation to learn the information in English due to believing that I will not be able to apply it in my everyday life, instead of realizing that also if I learn something in foreign language, I can explain and translate information to anybody in real time and that learning this way is the only way where I can be supported and given experience of structured learning that I will then be able to share with others in the future.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to fear that I will in the future forget the information that I will be spending hours to learn and that there must be more effective way of use of my time, instead of trusting myself and pushing through the resistance as I am at this time not able to motivate and direct myself effectively.

Day 69: Fear of forgetfulness

Today I will start attending a seminar which will be quite intense. My biggest fear is that I will not be able to keep up with the peers, that I will not be able to commit all the information to memory and that I will forget the knowledge quickly.

I fear that I will be judged by the educator, that I will be evaluated and found not good enough and thus removed from the group. I am question what is the best method of learning and what works best for me. Ever since high school I have not been involved and any serous study. I researched a lot on my own, I am basically learning every day, but the learning has not been structured and automatized as the course that I will be attending. 

I do not like the pressure and being forced into learning certain information in certain time span equally with my other peers. I want freedom, feeling relaxed and having fun. However this kind of approach is also not very effective in terms of best use of my time. Self-motivation to learn is very difficult to build up so I am looking forwards to the systematic approach where I will learn more in less time.