2014 From Escapism to Self-Responsibility - Using Gaming as A Platform of Self-Change

 2014 From Escapism to Self-Responsibility - Using Gaming as A Platform of Self-Change

Changing Escapism in Real-Time

I started playing a game called 'banished' on my computer recently after years of not playing games, which was actually a decision that I made at some point because I was seeing how immersed I get into the game when I am playing. I would just play for days on end in this zoned-out, spaced-out state and not doing much else. I mean, I would then go into an absolute procrastination and abdication of any other tasks that I had set out for myself to do - like looking for a job or doing something to develop my skills  or even basic stuff like taking a shower, taking care of my physical body and home -- which I eventually realized was quite detrimental in relation to my physical life and living and also my process of growing and developing into a self-responsible and self-directive individual.

So now, I initially made an agreement with myself that I would play only on Sunday, which would be my day off from doing and tending to other responsibilities - and I would thus give myself some 'leisure time' to just relax and 'take my mind off things'. However as I played a first game in Banished, where I had to build a town and make it operational, I wanted to play more because my first and second town were a failure and I had learned some new tips on how to better manage my town, which I now wanted to apply. So I started to try and find ways to integrate playing Banished during the rest of the weekdays - by for instance using a second screen next to my laptop, which I thought I could use to play Banished on while doing other things -- because often in the game you have to give instructions and then wait a while for the instructions to be executed. But then it turned out that I couldn't actually do anything on my laptop while the game was running on the second screen - it just wouldn't work that way - which meant that I had to do one thing at a time and that I ended up spending more time on playing than on getting any work done.

Then this situation got to a point where, whenever there was someone walking in the room or when I would hear someone approaching the room, I would react in my mind with an experience of fear that they would see that I am more playing games than I am working and then the idea of 'hiding' what I am doing so that I could continue playing the game without anyone knowing about it came up within my mind. Also while I was playing the game, I noticed that my mind was moving very fast, as though I was running and hiding from my own awareness of what I was doing -- just so that I could continue playing. Because, in the back of my mind I knew that I have more important things to spend my time on and I am essentially starting to waste a lot of my time on this game and creating physical consequences of for instance not getting the necessary work done in time or not moving as fast as I could and should be. So, to in a way circumvent and 'bypass' actually facing and acting on this awareness, I found that my mind does something very interesting - it 'moves' my awareness away from the actual physical facts of the consequences that my actions are having and going to have on my physical life and reality  and from the realization that I must simply stop playing this game and focus on doing other things, through creating excuses and justifications to talk myself into allowing myself to continue doing what I am doing.

And, the fascinating thing about this was that, I could already see and recognize within my awareness that each and every justification and excuse that my mind was bringing up in relation to justifying why I am playing this game now instead of tending to my responsibilities was in fact false because I have been at this point before and I knew exactly how this will play out and how there really is no excuse to not do what I need to be doing with my time. So, the excuses and justifications in itself was not the reason why I just continued playing rather than simply in the moment, stopping the game and moving on to other tasks -- it was rather what this 'construct' of excuses and justifications was doing in my mind with my awareness, in that it was 'shifting' my awareness from here to there and back and forth very fast within this 'box'/'containment' type structure, basically doing nothing but preoccupying and holding/containing my awareness for a moment, while in physical reality I could just continue doing something purely for the sake of having some energetic 'fix' without taking any responsibility for it because, as I mentioned, my awareness was too busy allowing itself to be entrapped and preoccupied by the irrelevant and irrational excuses and justifications that the mind was bringing up.

I mean, I am writing about 'my awareness' and 'my mind' as apparently two separate things that exist separately from each other and from myself - but in fact in reality, if I look at who I am within all of this in self-honesty, I can see that it is ME within and as the mind distracting MYSELF within and as my Awareness - and it is ME within and as my Awareness, allowing myself to be distracted and preoccupied by MYSELF within and as the Mind. And it is because this 'ME-factor' was missing in this entire equation, meaning that I was accepting and allowing myself to exist in separation from 'my mind' and 'my awareness' by not seeing, realizing and understanding that both are in fact parts of me as how I exist within and as my physical body - that this situation was able to play itself out in the way that I described here.

So, in terms of how I practically applied myself in stopping this self-sabotaging, possessive behavioural pattern that I was busy accessing - and breaking out of that 'boxed-in' mind-state that I found myself in -- the first thing that I realized was that it seemed very difficult to actually get myself to that point of physically stopping myself while I was playing the game.  And this because of the energy that was involved in playing this game - because, the entire reason why I was playing the game and why it was starting to become the centre of my world, is not because of the game itself, no, it is because of the energy that I have connected to playing this game within my mind. And it is that energy that the mind then tries to protect through for instance, in the moment that there is any inkling of an awareness coming up in my mind that it's best if I stop playing and go do something else, bring up that specific 'excuses and justification'-construct that for a moment captures and preoccupies my awareness.

I found that when I was in that specific state, it seemed very difficult if not impossible to actually get myself to make the physical decision and movement to stop doing what I was doing - because each time that I tried to move within my awareness towards making that decision, the mind would give me the run-around into the construct of reasons, excuses and justifications for why I should continue playing and why I shouldn't stop playing.

The technique that I used to get myself out of that specific all-encompassing and -consuming energetic experience in relation to the game that I was playing and to for a moment 'snap myself out of it', was by placing myself within and as the 'ME-factor', meaning the point of self-responsibility within and as the realization that the entire situation and specifically the self-deceiving game that I was playing between my mind and my awareness, was my own creation. And how I did this, was through an application of spoken Self-Forgiveness in the moment.

This means that within the moment where I saw and realized that I was accessing the energetic and physical behavioural pattern connected to playing this computer game wherein I was feeling as though I was 'stuck' within the experience and the behaviour and I wasn't able to actually stop myself from what I was doing - I took a breath and I started speaking Self-Forgiveness aloud.

Specifically:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try and hide what I am doing from myself by going into my mind and participate in thinking processes where I am deliberately trying to distract myself from my physical reality and from what I am physically doing just so that I could continue to generate and hold on to a specific energy experience within myself

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself within and as the energy experience that I have connected in my mind with playing this computergame and therefore not want to let go of this energy experience and so not want to stop playing - because I actually believe that I need this energy to experience 'me'

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realize and understand that while I believe that this energy that I experience within myself connected with playing this computergame, is somehow giving me 'more' value -- in reality, I am giving myself away to the mind and inferiorizing myself to my own mind and to my physical reality by accepting and allowing an energy experience within the mind to have complete power over who I am and what I do and how I express myself within and as physical reality -- because I have accepted and allowed myself to actually believe that I have to experience and obtain this energy/feeling within myself so that I can feel 'alive', wherein I don't even see how I am giving away my 'life' as my physical presence, awareness,  expression and directive principle to the mind

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realize and understand how I have created an energetic polarity within myself by connecting a positive energy experience of excitement with playing this computergame - where then, I have connected a negative energy experience and value to the thought and image of 'not playing this computergame' and doing other things in physical reality within my mind

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give away my directive principle to the thought that comes up in my mind that says that 'I want to play this computergame now', accompanied by an energy experience of excitement as desire -- by having accepted and allowed myself to simply follow this thought and experience and so therein abdicate my responsibility in relation to what I do and who I am in physical reality, by allowing an energetic experience to be at the 'steering wheel' of myself within my physical actions, rather than me within and as absolute awareness directing myself within my physical actions and expression --- wherein I do not allow an energy, triggered by a thought, to move or direct me

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to hide what I am doing from others so that I can hide what I am accepting and allowing myself to participate within in my mind from myself -- and to therein use the thought and idea that 'as long as other people don't see what I am doing and who I am within what I am doing - then it doesn't matter what I do' as an excuse and reason to continue playing computergames without in any way taking responsibility  for myself within and as my physical actions --- instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that this thought is an illusion that I have copied and learned and conditioned into myself during my childhood years in relation to and interaction with the people in my environment, and that in fact, I am entirely responsible for my actions in physical space-time reality

I forgive myself that I have never accepted and allowed myself to see and realize my responsibility for my actions in physical space-time reality by hiding myself within and as the preprogrammed belief in my mind that I can do what I want as long as other people don't see it

Self-Correction

When and as I see a reaction of wanting to hide what I am doing when I am playing a computer game come up within myself - I stop and breathe - and I see, realize and understand that the fact that I fear another judging me as doing something wrong, implies that I don't fully understand what I am actually doing and I have not actually taken responsibility for my actions because I am defining my actions within and as my relationship with other people and a desire to receive recognition and approval from others

So here I commit myself to actually look into and investigate in self-honesty what I am actually doing and who I actually am within and as my physical actions because I see, realize and understand that if and when I accept and allow myself to be moved in physical reality by an energy within myself, that I am expressing myself from the starting point of the mind and I see, realize and understand that the mind is a system that exists within and as 'layers' and dimensions and that this energy experience, connected to this one thought, is just one dimension of a much greater system - and that essentially if and when I accept and allow myself to be defined within and as my actions and expression in physical reality and within and as myself by this onedimensional energetic experience and thought, I am lying to myself about who I am and what is real and I am existing and living in an illusion and thus I am essentially not even real as a being

So, when and as I see the energetic movement come up within myself connected with a thought that I want to play a computergame - I stop and breathe - and I see, realize and understand that if and when I accept and allow myself to be guided and directed in my physical expression and actions by this energetic movement within myself, I am giving my power and creative directive away to the mind wherein I do not take responsibility for the consequences of my actions and for my future in this world and reality

Thus, I commit myself to breathe when and as the energy comes up within myself, because I see, realize and understand that it is only energy -- and that I have created this energy through participating within polarities, where if I accept and allow myself to continue participating in these polarities, I am fuelling the experience of desire to play a computergame and thus conditioning myself to experience myself as a slave to these experiences within and of the mind

I commit myself to walk the process of manifesting myself as the directive principle within and as myself where I do not accept and allow an energetic movement to move  and direct me in physical reality -- but rather I assist and support myself to understand who I am within and as the mind completely - so that I can see who I am and what I am doing and what the consequences are of my actions in every moment

And, I see, realize and understand that the consequences of accepting and allowing myself to allow myself to be directed and defined by an energy of desire in relation to playing a computer game - is that I am simultaneously creating the negative energy of resistance in relation to doing other things in my life

    

Wherein, I see, realize and understand that I am sabotaging myself within my life by connecting an experience of resistance to doing my responsibilities in physical reality and thus by playing computergames from the starting point of energy

And so I take responsibility for this energy polarity that I have created within myself  by firstly changing my expression within and as my physical world and reality - and from there changing who I am internally because I see, realize and understand that through my physical movement and expression I prove to myself who I am as a living statement


After and during this application of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Corrective statements in the moment, i had stabilized a lot internally - because i was seeing the points of common sense that were coming up while i was speaking in relation what it is that i was actually doing and participating within. so, from that point, it was easy for me to make the choice to stop playing the game and direct my attention to other things. And this without any judgment or any emotional reactions to and towards the whole thing - it was a simple internal choice and physical movement based on common sense insight and understanding.

This though doesn't now mean that this pattern is completely corrected and that i have changed myself within and as it entirely - not at all. i have ingrained and conditioned this specific pattern of internal reactions and experiences and external behavior all throughout the course of my life and so it will require a step-by step process of physical integration of the new pattern that i am setting myself out to live -- where, within this first step, i have only become aware of how the pattern works and operates in the mind and i have found and developed a way to in a real-time moment, change it within myself. Now i must still prove to myself that i am consistent within my application of real-time change so that, through a constant application of this real-time change, i can condition myself internally and externally to be and become a being that doesn't so easily give its power away to energetic reactions to external stimuli anymore but can remain stable within and as its relationship to for instance entertainment.

2013 Changing a Fear Reaction towards a Person in Real-Time -- Part 1

In this blog I will walk through how I approached and am in the process of approaching the process of Writing, Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction in Practical Application - and thus, what Practical Application in the context of walking process entails.This to make process and so 'Self-Change' as real and practically lived and realized as possible.

So, in this application I specifically had a look at a general experience of Fear that I had identified within myself and that I was having trouble walking through - namely a Fear of People. I had walked this fear in writing and speaking self-forgiveness before and yes, I had accumulated some insights around it, yet it would still come up when I am in a large group of people or just talking to someone that I've just met or even have known for a little while.

And so, in this new practical approach, I went into the specifics of my practical physical every day reality, and looked at just One point within it where the fear would come up. I took the person in my everyday environment that triggers the most reactions of fear and anxiety within me when I am in their proximity and/or talking to them - and on a Word Doc on my computer I wrote out various points/dimensions of and within my experience of/around them - I looked at:

1. How do I experience the reaction to them when I see them on a physical level? Here, I had a look at my physical reaction when I see the specific person - which, for me was a constriction in my chest and stomach area. This will be a point of reference for me when I am walking the practical application of releasing the point - in seeing whether or not the physical experience of constriction in stomach/chest area will go down and/or disappear
2. Where/how in my memories have I created an Idea about Who this person is within my mind where I have made her 'more' than who she is, that I am now allowing to stand in the way of me getting to know who she really is as a being? And so here I wrote down all of my memories where I interpreted specific information about her, I reacted to her and/or I had backchat about her in my mind, that contributed to this image/idea that I now have of 'who she is' in my mind. For instance, I found, in looking into these memories and the specific information that i reacted to, was where I saw her living something that I secretly desired to 'have' and 'experience' within myself, such as a relationship or getting attention from males, where, in those moments, my backchat went like "Look at her, she thinks she's so much better than everyone because she's getting attention from that guy", and the energy attached to that backchat was jealousy, anger and spitefulness. Here then, I further investigated where this backchat, connected with the experience of jealousy/anger/spitefulness was coming from, applying self-honesty, and I saw that within my mind I was feeling inferior to her because I had defined myself within the idea that 'to have a relationship is more valuable and superior than not having a relationship', wherein I had compared myself with her and judged/defined myself as being 'inferior' to her because I did not have a relationship and she did.
   This point of investigating the memories first was quite cool, as it seemed to allow me to see more clearly what is really going on in my mind when I now see her, as all the hidden backchat and reactions within myself that I had been building up within my mind over time. Where, within this, I could also see how the experience of Fear and Anxiety when/within facing or seeing her in fact serves to hide all this backchat behind, as the 'truth'/'reality' of who I really am within my mind that I did not want to see or realize about myself

So, with these points written down, the next day I would go over to immediate practical application of applying self-forgiveness in the moment that I am seeing her and I see/experience the reactions of fear/anxiety, with the physical experience of constriction in chest/stomach area, come up. Writing out the Self-Forgiveness and Self-Corrective statements on the memories, I can do at a later time - what I am focusing on here is the practical application of actually Stopping the Energy/Reaction/Experience in the moment, in Real-Time.

The next day, I was walking outside heading out to do my morning duties, I saw her (X) in the distance. As I was approaching her, and I saw the automatic reaction of Fear and Anxiety within myself, I started speaking self-forgiveness silently to myself, specifically:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to experience fear and anxiety when seeing X

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to use the experience of fear and anxiety to hide my backchat about X behind

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not be honest with myself about the fact that I am Judging X within my backchat by hiding myself behind fear

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to not be honest with myself about the fact that I actually feel jealous of X because of how I have allowed myself to judge her appearance as what I am seeing with my eyes

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from X by judging her from the starting point of the desire for a relationship that I have allowed to exist within myself, and therein judging her as superior to myself because she has a relationship and because i have allowed myself to give value to 'having a relationship'

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame X in my backchat for the experience of inferiority that I experience within myself in relation to her by thinking that 'she thinks she is better than me because she has a relationship and I don't', connected with the experience of anger and resentment --- instead of taking responsibility for what I have accepted and allowed to exist within myself as preprogrammed value-systems wherein I am judging her on her appearance, according to what I have allowed myself to assign value to within my mind, rather than getting to know her as who she is as a being, equal and one with myself

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to get to know who X is as a being, by reacting to her within and as preconceived ideas and judgments that I have created within my mind about 'who she is' according to the value-systems that I have allowed myself to copy from my parents and have allowed myself to define myself within

Etc...


Within this application in the moment, I could already see and experience the energy becoming a lot less, where, as I then was standing close to her, doing my work, I felt much more comfortable. And, within that, I realized how all that fear and anxiety that I had been experiencing towards her, was all based on an idea within my mind that I had created and manifested there myself, and was all just not real, as was showing within the fact that, by/within speaking the self-forgiveness statements, it just, for the large part, 'disappeared'.

Each time I saw her again, I would check myself to see if there is any fear and/or anxiety coming up within myself, and I would again speak Self-Forgiveness on the thoughts, backchat and reactions that I could identify within myself towards her in that moment.

So now, when I am in her presence, most of the reactions of Fear and Anxiety are gone - though, upon investigating the point again, I found there was still some points of reaction where I am for instance not quite completely comfortable enough to go up to her and just casually start a conversation.

The next step within walking this process of practical application will thus be to further investigate the energy that is still there and the thoughts and backchat connected to it, and so walk the process as described in this blog again, until there are no more reactions.

In the next blog I will be writing out how I walked through the Next phase/step.

Also, watch my vlog where I expand more on how I have walked this process:

            

2012 I Fear being a bad mother

"bad mother" is obviously a judgment that only exist 'in the eyes of others', that is built upon comparison with specific stories that we've read in the news papers or heard somewhere about apparently 'bad mothers' that apparently 'don't raise their child in the right way' - according to all sorts of theories and books that apparently 'have the answer to good motherhood' to which we all simply adapt in our combined fear of being judged by each other as a 'bad mother'.

The fear of being a bad mother actually has got nothing to do with the baby/child - in experiencing this fear, we don't actually consider the baby/child at all, as we are only thinking about our ego within thoughts such as 'what will the other mothers think of me', 'I don't want to be rejected', 'I want them to respect and accept me', 'what if they think I am a bad mother and talk badly about me in the news papers like they do about all the other 'bad mothers' ', 'I don't want to lose face - I want them to like me and support me in my idea that I am a good mother', etc.

So this fear symbolizes the fear of 'going to hell' through being judged. And the fact that this fear of being judged as 'bad' and then going to hell, wherein I will for ever exist in guilt and shame, exist within myself implies that I actually already judge myself as 'bad' because otherwise I would simply trust myself and not even fear going to hell (=feeling guilty and ashamed), as I would realize that there is no reason why I should have to go to hell, because I am 'OK' as who I naturally am.

So, there exist the idea within myself that I am not OK as who I 'naturally am', that I am 'inherently bad/evil' and thus I must 'stick to the rules' within for instance taking care of a baby, and copy other people to make sure that I will always 'do the right thing' in the eyes of others.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear being a bad mother

i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear the judgment 'bad mother'

i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect the words 'bad mother' with fear and thus i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear

i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I cannot trust myself when taking care of a baby by believing that i am 'inherently bad' and that I thus have to 'follow the rules' and 'copy other people' to make sure that i am 'good', in the eyes of other people

i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel terrified and petrified of being judged as 'bad' by other people

i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect petrification to the word 'bad' and thus i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear petrification

i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from the emotional experience of petrification by fearing it

i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear judgments

i forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in judgments by judging other people as being for instance a 'bad mother' by copying the opinions and judgments of what I read in the news papers and hear from other people as they tell stories about apparent 'bad mothers' who apparently don't raise their child in the 'right way' - and to therefore also fear being judged as how I judge others within my mind

i forgive myself that i have allowed and accepted myself to participate in judgments and allow judgments to exist within myself - instead of realizing that all judgments that exist within myself is what i had heard from my environment at one point or another, and that i simply copied from other people, tacitly accepting these judgments about reality as 'other people' as 'the truth', never investigating reality for myself and literally 'never looking further than my nose is long' and realizing that life as who i am as oneness and equality is neither good nor bad, it is no judgment, it is life and me as life am always what is best for life because I am life - to judge myself or to believe that i am judgments is to already state that i separate myself from life, no matter if i judge myself as 'good' or 'bad'


i realize that i am not judgments - and i realize that the judgment of 'bad mother' is in fact a 'scare tactics' as a 'fear label' that the system of humanity uses to keep every human being enslaved to and within judgments as separation, continuously overlooking reality as what is truly best for all - as we get lost within our desire to 'do good' in the eyes of 'God', wherein we don't ever take responsibility for our actions and consequently create a fuck up.

when and as I see judgments such as 'bad mother' coming up within myself when I am with a baby - i stop within myself and i breathe and i stand and remain constant and stable within myself within and as the realization that who i am as the natural, simplistic expression of myself here, is life itself as oneness and equality - I am one and equal with this child as me and I stand within myself within and as the realization that i do not need rules, regulations or judgments to get me to 'do the right thing' as i realize that within what is best for all, there is no 'right or wrong', there is only 'best for all as me' within and as oneness and equality which is who i naturally am here. Thus, i do not allow myself to go into fear of 'not doing it right' or fear of 'being wrong' - as i realize that that is a selfish fear wherein i don't consider the child that is here with me or any other being besides myself and my personal desires of feeling accepted and noticed by other people as the desire to feel good about myself.

thus i breathe through this fear of being judged as 'bad' - within and as the realization that this fear is not really me as i am not a judgment - I am life as the living expression of myself and i do not allow myself to be any less than who i really am as life. I do not allow myself to be scared into diminishing myself through fear of judgments.

Fear of being Ugly

Hey there,


I'd like to share a fear that has always existed within me (maybe not ALWAYS, but definitely since I was around 12) - the fear of being 'ugly'.

This fear specifically was with regards to being judged by (back then) the other kids on the playground and from my class as being 'ugly' and 'unattractive', which also had a lot to do with 'there being something wrong with me'.

'Something wrong' would then be like not looking like how a 'normal girl' would/should look like, because I started to notice that the boys and girls were judging each other, and I of course went along with it. The boys would often even be really mean when they were describing a girl, especially about certain aspects of that girl that were apparently 'undesirable' and 'not good' - they would completely bash this person in their words and 'laugh at them' among each other, confirming just how 'not good' this girl was in their eyes.

And the girls would do pretty much the same amongst themselves about the other girls and boys - and the judgments were always basically about whether or not a girl was deemed 'feminine' enough and a boy was deemed 'masculine' enough according to certain standards and qualities/properties that apparently defined 'a woman' and 'a man'. Thus boys that had feminine aspects/qualities about their appearance and mannerism would be negatively judged and basically put down and rejected in the words we'd speak to describe them among ourselves and the girls that had masculine qualities and mannerism would be judged and rejected in the same way. For instance I remember overhearing a group of boys talking about a girl that had a 'mustache' (she had a little bit darker hair on her upper lip) - which then initiated my fear of 'having a mustache' because apparently boys actually notice, judge and reject this. So based on this particular memory, I would walk around my entire life with an immense fear of 'having a mustache' and especially of boys/men seeing it, thinking of various ways to effectively get rid of any dark hair that I may have on my upper lip.

And what is interesting is that eventually I would even physically manifest this fear, because I would notice some darker hair on my upper lip (not even that noticeable really) and immediately I'd start pulling it out, because I felt this absolute panic of being judged about it by boys/men - so obviously what happened is that the hair grew back, only darker, which caused me to panic even more and start pulling it out more fervently. And eventually now I have to continuously remove the hair on my upper lip because it tends to grow longer and darker than on the rest of my face. So this just shows how extensively this fear has been messing with my head


So, this 'fear of being ugly' is really a fear of being 'unattractive', of being 'rejected' by boys/men as a fear of not being able to have a relationship - which means to not be able to 'play the sex-game' wherein we all seem to be players and the girls that are deemed to be 'feminine' and the men that are deemed to be 'masculine', are glorified and get all the 'attention'/'prizes' and the ones who apparently 'don't fit the part' don't get to play and are then the 'social outcasts'. This is a seriously sad and messed up game that we're playing here within and as humanity!