Day 205: Dangers of the Martyr Complex

The natural process in life is expanding, pushing the envelope, increasing our awareness, abilities, and capacities. Sometimes one can push themselves too much and from the starting point of the ego which then reflects in form of pain and whatnot. And this has also been my recent experience where I allowed myself to be enveloped by the Martyr Complex. Doing best for all is a trick mission that can quickly slip into a self-victimization character. When being in a group where the vision is to remove all points of separation from existence, the task can feel daunting, human life-span short and that then translates into great urgency and time pressure. Taking self-responsibility of all of the existence requires a decision about how to make the best use of available time to manifest the change out there while maintaining a balance in personal life so that personal power is not being compromised.

I am glad to be part of a group with the vision of improving the living situation on this planet for all living beings equally. And that I am a distributor of new educational technology that has the potential of empowering its users and making them more aware and capable of responsible living here in harmony and abundance. It is a great satisfaction to be part of individuals that impact society positively. At the weekly online meeting, our leaders motivate us with mission statements, visions, and executions plans. The objective is to create urgency and make us move towards at least reaching a minimum weekly goal. Some individuals are capable of moving themselves effectively since they have transcended the resistance to a sufficient level. However many are still in the beginning stage of the process and still influenced by emotions. So it is not easy to come with a universal approach that would be effective for all group members at their different location points.

I have been conditioned in the past by living and working in the environment of my parents into being someone that requires to be moved by others using emotions. However, I have been walking not the path towards achieving self-movement for many years and made significant progress. Nevertheless, I have to be careful about the emotional pressures of others in order not to sacrifice myself too much and fall and consequently fall out of balance. I learned that one is able to help others effectively only if one has helped itself first and gained proper stability and capacity. A balance in personal life on all levels is suggested to be achieved and maintained at all times before one attempts to engage in the transformation of the global system. That includes establishing sufficient and regular money income, developing their own vocabulary, increasing processing speed, and gaining emotional stability. 

While working myself on these points I have noticed many resistances to change. In terms of sleeping duration, I learned that humans require only 4-6 hours of sleep per night. With that information, I have started to go to bed with a self-commitment to go out of bed immediately when I wake up naturally or after no more than 6 hours of sleep. I have experienced waking up after sleeping only 4 hours and recently I woke up after just one and a half hours. Yet whenever I would wake up and see how much time it only passed since I fell into sleep, my mind would immediately start creating doubt that I am rested enough. It created thought of fear that this can not be and that brain damage could develop if I allow myself to sleep so little. I do additional 15-minute naps during the day however my mind would calculate all the naps and add it to the total time of a daily sleep in order to reach the sum of 8-hour daily norm. During every nap, it created intense dreams that resulted in mental tiredness and decisions to continue with snoozing several times in a row. And I have become deeply disappointed about that.

Additionally, I also relapsed into watching short videos before I decided to take a nap. For example, after I would work with a computer for a couple of hours, I would go to my bed to take a rest. However, instead of just setting a timer on my smartphone for the alarm to wake me after 15 minutes, I got enticed with watching short movie clips. My mind has been justifying that I would relax even more if I watch some comedy gags or movie trailers that are no more than 3 minutes long. However, after I would watch the first one, I would not get enough kick out of it, and since YouTube is a master of offering clips that would interest you the most, I would continue with watching the second one, and then the third one and so one. So instead of only 15 minutes of planned rest, I would spend up to half an hour, sometimes even more, before the actual nap. And there would even be cases when I would watch some clips after the nap. It is like the mind would drive me into spending an equal amount of time that I saved by sleeping less with indulging in entertainment and thus showing me that sleeping less does not pay off. This is of course also something that I want to fix in order to decrease the wasting of time.

Now besides the pain in the neck and in the lower back, there is also a third pain that started to occur. It felt like it originated in the middle of the back and branched very narrowly across the left side of my back. It would shoot whenever I would work with the vocabulary building software that I am a distributor of in cases where I would make a mistake at typing the word from a default integrated word list wrongly. So it was a very specific pain connected to a very specific action which I found very interesting. I concluded that this was a consequence of self-judgment within anger, connected to the character of self-perfectionist. And shortly after I realized that and became aware of this point of limitations, the pain started to decrease and does not come up anymore.

I am now also in the process of listening to the supportive Eqafe audios that I listed at the end of my previous last two posts of this blog. I was able to relate to the explanation of a stiff neck to be a consequence of feeling trapped in a situation where I do not see any exit from and that I do not see any way back from where I currently am. From one perspective this actually is an existential fact since we all currently are experiencing a manifested consequence of our previous decisions and we can not go back into the past to manifest a different present reality. However, what we are able to start making better decisions at this moment that will manifest a better world in the future. And also after realizing that fact one can not go back to not realizing it. So from one point there actually is no way back and the only direction we are able to move is forward and in terms of awareness towards increasing its size.

I see the need to change how I handle mind resistances and the application of breaks. Napping seems to be the activity where I give power to the mind. So I am looking to reduce or replace them with some other activity. I learned that mental tiredness is best remediated by some kind of physical activity. So I will be experimenting with walking, running, exercising, and some other activities in order to make the most of each day.

Related educational audios from Eqafe to listen to:
Stuck
Unlocking Yourself
From Overwhelmed to Breakthrough
A Martyr for my Brother
Stuck in Absolutes
Bringing Yourself Down when Others are Down
Compromise and Commitment
Routine Sets me Free
Space, Environment, Routine, & Self Definition

Day 204: Directing myself to do what matters

There has been a major shift in my starting point, priorities, and focus. What I realized is that so far I have been doing activities where I would in the eyes of others look busy, diligent, and organized. That means that I have been doing a lot of documentary photos of all the events that I attended and other things that happened in my life. I would then spend a lot of time to download the photos from my phone, edit them in the most professional way, renamed and organized the files, and then upload them to my Facebook profile. I found great pleasure in taking pictures, making them perfect and sharing them with others so that they can also get some useful information and for them to have a reference for what I have been doing. Years ago when I worked as a professional photographer others paid me to do the shooting and editing, however in recent years I took pictures only for my personal interest. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that continuing the old habit like this is something that I am wasting my potentials by and that I am not adding much value to this world. It was mostly about presenting myself to others in order to play a certain character and to receive recognition from them. Now I have changed this point in terms of restraining myself from taking photos of every single thing that attracts my attention. And if I take some photos for the sake of documenting some event for the possibility of having to prove to others that it happened, I simply download the photos to my computer and keep them in a raw unedited form.

The next point that I looked at was the time I spend on social media, attending hangouts, participating in some groups, and watching movies. I noticed how quickly I get drawn to watching something, especially in form of moving pictures which creates a certain feeling of satisfaction by discovering something new. And how participation in social groups makes me feel noticed, accepted, valued, and part of something that will make a difference in this world. Yet the amount of digital content and online groups is increasing every second so I had to prioritize my involvement in order to make the best use of my limited time. I decided to increase the focus on my business of distributing new learning technology and using it also myself on a daily basis to increase my capacity for processing information and increasing the quality and quantity of my vocabulary. So I defined my mission to perfect myself by developing the skills of communication and influencing others and also showing others how they can do the same in order for as many people in this word to become highly capable and responsible in order to bring forth a world that is best for all life.

In recent weeks after using the said learning technology regularly for at least 2 hours per day, I noticed a substantial increase in my focus, clarity, determination, will, and bravery. What also started to happen is that I would wake up naturally after sleeping only around 4 hours. Initially, my mind would immediately produce a thought convincing me that humans need around 8 hours of sleep so I made myself continue sleeping for the additional 4 hours. However, I learned before that the human physical body requires only around 4 hours to rest, and the additional time of sleeping only results in the mind regenerating itself and thus gaining more power to distract and suppress us. And I also learned how the words leaders and the most successful people sleep very little, some even just 2 hours and then doing short naps during the day. So I decided also to get out of the bed immediately after I would wake up naturally, no matter what duration of my sleep has been. I have been experimenting with different ways of taking charge of my physical body and to actually get out of bed and fully wake up. It has been challenging to get out of such an appealing comfort zone like a warm cozy bed and I was not always fully successful. However, I am pushing myself to cut down the time of my sleep to as little as possible in order to have more time in a day to be productive.

What I also noticed is how often I check the time and to what extent I allow it to influence me. When doing business and collaborating with others time certainly is a factor that needs to be considered. We do measure time in days which are then sliced into hours and minutes. Thus some consider time as their most valuable asset since each of our lives only so many years and we can achieve in one lifetime only so much. Many successful people use the time management system where every single activity is being scheduled in slots as small as a couple of minutes. While I was doing creative work time was not so much of an issue since the deadlines were quite long and the main objective was to come with a unique creative solution that was not so much valued in the time spend to produce it but in effect that it produced. And this is why I had resistance to organize my life based on time. Even with sleeping, I noticed how by just looking at a clock I am already giving my mind the information in order to calculate the duration of my sleep and based on then create a feeling of being rested enough or needing some more sleep instead of me communicating with my physical body and directly seeing it had rested sufficiently. So in the morning I now refrain from checking the time immediately. And when I create my first daily log entry I am careful about my mind not to create any comparison and estimation if I have slept enough or not.

An additional point was developing a habit and support system of following up with people and directing them in the long-term in order to achieve a specific objective. Previously I defined myself as an introvert, I did creative jobs where I needed a quiet and peaceful environment in order to concentrate on designing and programming with computers uninterrupted for hours. And now my mission is to influence and change others which means frequent and persistent communication with many individuals which is the exact opposite of what I have been used to do. This again pushes me intensely out of my comfort zone and creates a lot of resistance. It makes me have to decide about many more things that are far less predictable since every mind of other humans is a world of its own. I have to evaluate every individual on many levels and then decide when in by which means, using what word and exposing them to which information would result in directing them towards increasing their awareness, self-responsibility, and capacity. Each person is with a unique history of experience that shapes them and on at different location points. And it takes many years for everyone to grow and expand into an exemplary human being. So I am developing and applying a system of making a lot of notes in regards to every individual that I communicate with and then to follow-up with them on a regular basis.

Now what I have to be careful about all of this is to maintain a balance of self-care and care for others in order not to lose my personal power. The manifestation of pain at points in my spine is a reminder that I have gone too far from the track. Recently some pain has manifested in my lower back. And even a more prominent pain manifested in my neck. The contributing factors for this can be the increased time spent calling people on the phone in a standing position where the weight of my hands creates much more pull comparing to my usual way of working in a sitting or partially lying position. However, I am familiar also with the back neck point structural resonance. It explains how the pain in that area is connected to the ability to change things and stand up for yourself. And I am able to track back the start of pain developing in that area especially when some older lady that just became my Facebook friend called me via Messenger video and started to engage in an extensive and long conversation without consideration of my time and what I was doing. I find a direct unannounced video call not very considerate and intrusive and it was a new experience that I had to respond to.

While my objective is to increase communication with other people I am making sure to be as considerate as possible. So when I call somebody on the phone, I immediately ask them how they are, where they are, and what they are doing. This gives them the opportunity to explain if it is a good time to speak and enables me to decide if I should continue the conversation and for how long. Other people usually do not call me with exception of my father who calls me on the phone a few times per month. And usually, he wants me to immediately or very soon to do some design work for him end eventually pays me for that. However, when others call me I can not tell so sure what they want from me, for how long they want to speak to me, and what would be the result of communication. I see how I prefer for any call to be scheduled with me in advance by firstly contacting me via social media or text messaging which is less intrusive and does not disturb my own schedule. While previously I had my phone turned on all the time, I am now also turning it off completely when I need to focus on something like writing this blog post.

Here are some related suggested educational Eqafe audios for listening:
Stiff Neck
Stiff Neck Practical Support
Pain and Process
The History and Purpose of Sleep
Do Beings on the Other Side Sleep
Mental Tiredness vs. Physical Tiredness
Mind Asleep, Mind Awake
Why do I Wake Up in a Mood?
Do You Only Rest When You Sleep?
Mind Feeding Routines Feeding Mind

Day 79: Blogging resistance backchat

Since I committed myself to write each day a blog post, I am throughout day thinking about when shall I write it. Would it be best to write it in the morning or in the evening or some time in between? And then there is also a question about what to write about and what language to write in.

I understand that there are many point that I need to transform but it is not very fun to do this process. I would rather do other things, like watching a movie or sleeping or taking a walk in the woods. There are many event in the day where I subconsciously emotionally react but the reactions are so small and so quick that I am not able to register. Meaning, I am at that time occupied with doing some activity where I do not feel like stopping it and writing down a not what I have reacted upon. But I will have to do that if I want to stop the reactions and be able to stay here all the time.

When I would want to do some writing, also my eyes become tired and I become sleepy. I noticed that there is a video interview about tired eyes in the Eqafe store and I plan to purchase it when my credit card will be functional again in order to learn what is the cause of that and how to prevent this. I admire some people that I have been talking with lately who are able to work and direct themselves and do not need a lot of sleep. I could reduce my sleep extensively but I need to motivate myself more. If one is motivate, it can hardly wait to wake up in the morning and continue the projects, however I am not very glad waking up in the morning and doing the activities I planned to execute. I will dig more in order to find out how to be more motivated and productive.

Day 58: First night in the new apartment

Today will be the first night that I will spend in the new apartment. I am physically exhausted and I will still need a couple of days to clean the old apartment and to put all the thing int place in the new apartment.

Day 12: Sleeping habits self-correction

1. I commit myself to when and as I notice that I am tired, I go to bed and take a nap without indulging in watching movies that just entertain my mind and function as distraction.
   
   
2. I commit myself to when and as I go to sleep, I set the alarm clock to the latest time when I have to get up and if I wake up earlier, I go out of the bed without checking the clock and start my daily routine.
   
   
3. I commit myself to when and as I look at the watch or clock during the day, I do this purely in order to estimate how much time I have to the next meeting and do not allow to be influenced about how I feel by the time indicator.
   
   
4. I commit myself to when and as I read or hear some information in regards to sleep, I put in on practical test and see if it really work.
   
   
5. I commit myself to research what the act of sleeping really represent from perspective of life and align my sleeping pattern in order to best support my life and be as much effective as possible in regards to agenda of making this world a better place for all.
   
   

Day 11: Sleeping habits self-forgiveness

1. I forgive myself that I have accepting and allowed myself for information in regards sleeping that I read in the magazines, books and heard from other people to create my believes about how much sleep do I actually need.
   
   
   
   
   
2. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to check what time is it when I go to the bed and what time is it when I wake up and then calculate in my mind how many hours I have been sleeping and then creating a belief if I am rested enough or if I need to continue sleeping.
   
   
3. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the digits on the watch and the clock hands to create my perception about time and how one day is sliced into hours and minutes and how I have to feel in regards to what time this measuring devices display instead of simply being here and moving myself in this moment.
   
   
4. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to perceive each day as the same due to the the same amount of time displayed on the clock instead of focusing on my breath and observing my surrounding and working with what is here in this present moment.
   
   
5. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to when I go to bed in the evening to observe the clock and then decide how much I still have time for fun time and watching movies instead of observing how my physical body feel and if it needs rest and if not rather read a supportive book to develop my potentials.
   
   
6. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the nice feeling of softness and warmth in the bed in the morning to bring me in the state of procrastination instead of jumping up from the bed and looking forward to many new adventures that each day brings.

Day 10: My sleeping sensations and perceptions

Post for Day 9 is in my Slovenian blog

In the couple of previous blog posts I analysed my sleeping habits and believes. Today my girlfriend shared another information or belief that each hour of sleep before midnight counts double comparing to each hour of slee after midnight. So for example if one goes to sleep at 10 pm, the first two hours of sleep count as four hours of sleep or as much as sleeping from 12 pm to 4 am. I don't know if this is a fact or if this really is true, but this motivated me in considering that I should also try getting to bed earlier and also waking up earlier. Thus today I will go to sleep at about 10 pm and see what will be the effect.

But now I want to write also abut my sleeping sensations. It was about 6 years ago when I started to notice a moving sensation when falling into sleep. When I firstly encountered this, I believed that I am experiencing an earthquake and I became frightened. After couple of similar experiences I became used to this sensation and began to understood what was really going on. The fact is that physical body is constantly shaking and vibrating or pulsating, but we somehow do not register that. The shaking is due to pulsation of the hearth or pumping blood throughout the entire body.

Think about this! Human body is quite large comparing to most of animal species and all the cells in every part of the body need a flow of fresh blood. It is about 2 meters from toes to top of the head and each part needs to be reached. It takes a massive force to pump the blood and hearth is doing this action by contracting and expanding approximately once or twice every single second. Every time when blood is pushed through the veins, the shockwave is created that shakes entire body. So couple of years ago, when I laid down into bed, within the process of falling into sleep I slowly started to feel this vibrations. And now this has become a standard sensation basically every time I go to bed or even lay down just for a short rest.

The next perception in regards sleeping is even more strange and somehow frustrating. It is about perception of time. The experience of time is very different and relative to motivation and also physical movement through the space. It is also very different to being awake and being asleep or unconscious. What bugs me the most is that sometimes when I go to bed for my famous 20 minute midday nap, I set the clock to ring after 20 minutes. Then I relax and wait for the clock to ring. Sometimes when it rings, I perceive it like just 3 second have past since I went to bed and not 20 minutes! So the time duration of sleep somehow does not really matte.

What basically creates the effect of being rested is very specific event that happens during the rest. I observed it for many times and it is like this. Firstly I lay down and totally relax every all the muscles on my body. Then I usually start to feel shaking of the body, like a gentle earthquake. Then after certain time, a transitions occurs where I feel like a weight would be lifted from within my body or my body would become lighter and also my mind clearer. From stage of mind activity and thinking, I would transfer in a stage of no thought but just awareness and presence.

So during my midday nap, the main objective is to experience this sensation of transition from heaviness to lightness where I would become refreshed or reset and ready for a new action. But during the night sleep I guess there is a bit different process going on. But it makes sense that sleeping habits can be improved and thus maximum relaxation and regeneration achieved by using as little of sleeping time possible. This will be my challenge to research and implement in order to make more of my daily potentials.