2014 From Escapism to Self-Responsibility - Using Gaming as a Platform of Self Change -- Part 2

2014 From Escapism to Self-Responsibility - Using Gaming as a Platform of Self-Change -- Part 2

Changing Escapism in Real-Time

Within the following blog post I will be sharing a second step in a process that I have walked in relation to changing and transforming a tendency within myself to use entertainment within and as a pattern of 'Escapism' - where, in the first step, I had started to notice that within venturing into the realm of playing computer games, I had gone from wanting to do it only once in a while to relax and enjoy myself, to wanting to do it all the time -- indicating that my relationship with playing computer games inside of myself is of a problematic nature and that it requires to be investigated and changed. And I am sharing this process here so that it may serve as a blueprint and platform for others facing similar experiences within themselves in relation to entertainment to also change this self-sabotaging relationship within themselves and find their inner power to direct themselves in transforming their relationship to entertainment from being self-destructive and self-sabotaging to being self-supportive and self-contributory.

So on a second occasion now, after having walked the first step of real-time self-change in relation to having accepted and allowed a pattern of escapism to exist within myself in relation to participating in entertainment such as playing computergames, I found myself participating in a computergame, where it starts out 'innocent', like 'I deserve a bit of time for myself', 'I have worked enough'. And then I start playing and almost immediately I find myself in this energy of like a hastiness and impatience and stress, where like my eyes become big and I get this frown on my face and a tension in my forehead.

And then when I noticed that I was in this energy of like a 'possession', wherein I think 'no, I don't want to stop, just let me play a bit longer - I don't feel like stopping' -- I started applying self-forgiveness within myself in relation to the points that I found in the first step. Which was on placing the energy superior to my physical reality and losing track of my physical world and reality by giving more value to the energy that I am feeling in relation to the game.

I found this to be the point where, if I apply self-forgiveness from that perspective, I can actually see, while I am applying self-forgiveness and incorporating those realizations, how that positive energy that I am participating in while I am playing Banished is actually a 'lie' and an 'illusion' from the perspective that, while I feel 'energized' and 'positively charged' while  and when I am playing the game -- what is actually going on is that I am ALLOWING my attention to get swallowed up by and funnelled into an energy experience that just comes up within me of which  I actually have no real clue of where it comes from and why and how it exists within myself, which then creates an absolute resistance to and towards anything else in my life that is not that one point connected to the energy - aka playing Banished - it makes me isolate myself from my environment only to submerge myself in this onedimensional experience within myself which I now believe to be 'who I am' and 'all that I am', and so completely sabotage my relationships with the people in my world and reality.

So, that positive energy experience and feeling of excitement that makes me feel as though I am actually really doing something substantial is a lie and an illusion because in reality, all that I am doing is give away my power - the power that I have as a living being to direct physical reality. Instead, I allow a preprogrammed construct and relationship of energy within the mind to direct my physical actions and expression -- all because I have defined myself within and as the energy experience and I actually believe it to be 'who I am', rather than seeing, realizing and understanding that there are multiple dimensions and factors at play behind the scenes in relation to how and why I experience this specific energy when playing computer games - dimensions and factors that I don't see or consider if I don't slow myself down and investigate what is actually going on within and as myself.

While I was thus speaking the words of forgiveness in relation to accepting and allowing myself to give my power and self-directive potential away to this energy and placing this energy as the directive principle of myself and my life -- I actually was able to shift myself out of the experience for a moment to see clearly the absurd nature of what I was doing and what I was accepting and allowing within myself and my world and reality -- that I was trading in everything of who I am for an illusion, a preprogrammed Feeling - Wow.

Now, the fact that this experience came up within myself 'again' and that I accepted and allowed myself to sort of tumble into seemingly the same rabbit hole 'again', is a point that I would usually take as an opportunity for myself to go into self-judgment and feeling bad about myself and my process and thus an opportunity for myself to eventually even end up considering to just give up on my Process of walking out of the mind altogether.

However this time, as I was observing these thoughts creeping into my mind at that moment when I realized within myself that I am participating in energy whilst playing the game and that I have thus not yet corrected this point within myself of defining 'gaming' and 'entertainment' within and as escapism and addiction - where the thoughts went like 'I am STILL not getting it', 'I failed', 'I am a failure', etcetera - I did not allow myself to actually access the emotional experience of feeling guilty and ashamed and bad about myself that I have learned to connect to those thoughts in my mind, because I realized that mind patterns such as the pattern of escapism and the specific experiences and behavior connected to it are things that have been existent within my beingness throughout my entire life as a pattern that I continuously and constantly accessed and, if I am honest with myself, I am not really as of yet fully aware of exactly how and when and where I have created this pattern within myself or how it really functions and exist within and as my mind - so, obviously correcting and changing this pattern will take practice and patience.

So, here, I breathed and, instead of accepting and allowing myself to go into a 'low' and a 'negative' experience within myself, connected with thoughts of myself somehow being a 'failure' for apparently not being able to live up to my own expectations - I breathed, and stabilized myself within and as the realization that changing any pattern is a process of constant and continuous application and that 'slipping back' into the pattern is not a bad thing, it is actually a necessity and requirement for me to be able to reassess who I am in relation to the pattern and investigate the deeper layers of how the pattern exist within myself so that I can, with each layer that I face and walk through, more and more start to develop my directive power within myself in relation to this pattern as I more and more start to understand and see and realize how it functions within myself.

Where then, at this point I started applying self-forgiveness and from the self-forgiveness I realized what I was doing to myself by giving my directive power away to this energy in my mind connected to playing the game, and then it became easy to direct myself in physical reality to for instance stop playing the game - whereas in the past I would have allowed myself to go into the emotional low and just continued playing within and as a mind-set of 'it's too late for me, I have failed anyways - so why bother even trying to correct myself' as a point of giving up.

So the point that was an essential realization within this practical process that I have walked of changing and transforming Escapism in Real-Time, is that if there is a point existing within myself that is similar to an 'addiction', where for instance I am addicted to a specific energy that I have connected with a specific action, like gaming or other types of entertainment - then actually changing and correcting that point of addiction to the extent that I am no longer moved by this energy within myself and so no longer 'give in' to the 'experience' will take a process of constant and continuous application of the tools of self-investigation, self-forgiveness and real-time self-correction where I keep reassessing in self-honesty who I am within myself in relation to the energy and to the application of gaming and entertainment. In Self-Honesty meaning that I must not have any expectations or ideas in my mind in relation to how I must stop and change this addiction or about how this process of real-time self-change is going to unfold - I must apply patience with myself and an openness in terms of being willing to really look at and investigate each and every point that comes up within myself each time that this energetic experience of desire and excitement comes up within my mind in relation to playing a computer game or indulging in entertainment.