Author: Zol

[Jan 2013] Meditation and Acceptance

I think I just found something important in my meditation practice. Kabat-Zinn had a metaphor in his book, that I really liked but then I completely forgot about it. He said that meditation is like sitting out to the banks of the river of our thoughts for a while, instead of flowing with the river. Just watching and listening to the river and its constant flow, without letting it carry us away. Whatever happens inside the river, it is nothing more than a thought, not the absolute truth. When we feel something, it is not more than just a feeling. When we think something, it is not more than a thought, generated by our mind. And it really is possible to look at thoughts as mere thoughts, feelings as mere feelings, just watching them, accepting them just the way they are, and not letting them have too much power on us.

Continue reading [Jan 2013] Meditation and Acceptance

[Dec 2012] Year-Closing

When I look back, it’s been a long and painful year. Now that the most painful point of my life – my relationship with my family – is solved and really wonderful in my consideration, and I’ve found a new view and way of life with discovering the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the two most important challenge in my life is to understand and love women better, and start an own venture. These are the things that I want the most now. I am trying to learn and grow, with all my strenght. To learn working and immersing myself in something, without losing balance, which I’ve lost a few times during the year. I can get so sucked in things that I am doing, that everything around me seems to cease, as if someone was controlled by some addiction, like drugs, gambling or video-games.

I have to develop myself quite a lot in order to be successful and reliably successful in the long run. But God can see my soul, I really work and try hard, very hard!

[Nov 2012] Bad News

The long unwanted meeting just happened today. I talked with my father’s oncologist privately today morning, discussing the results of his latest CT scan. I asked a few really (to me) unpleasant questions, and I finally got some painfully straight and concrete answers, that I only assumed before. So let’s see those answers and facts.

Continue reading [Nov 2012] Bad News

[Nov 2012] Temporary Relief

I’ve had a wonderful week. The first full 5-workday week, since I came back from my holiday. The beginning of it was very difficult, because I felt that my tolerance-level was still very low. I struggled very hard through Tuesday, when I had to visit a new customer, where I was introduced as the new project manager. That day was very difficult for me. On Wednesday I went to work with the thought “just get over it” in my head. Then I realized, that the day is over, it went very well, I could accomplish quite a lot, and I am full of energy. Thursday evening I felt that I was so full of passion, that I have to slow down, not to get sucked in and overwhelmed by work again.

Continue reading [Nov 2012] Temporary Relief

[Oct 2012] Heart Condition

I don’t know where to start. With the facts maybe. Yesterday evening I played a 40-minutes-long soccer match in freezing cold. Then I came home with my girlfriend, and a few hours after the match I was doing the dishes, when my heart made a few consecutive strange palpitatations. I ran out into the bathroom to wash my dirty hands. By the time I got back to the room, I was already in sheer panic. I laid down on my bed and tried to calm myself. It seemed like it worked, but my palpitations continued, and didn’t seem to ever stop. I sat up on the bed, but my pulse rate was already around 120-150 per minute, and my heartbeat was really strange, shallow and irregular. I started trembling with fear. With fear of death. Then I jumped up, because I couldn’t just sit still, and started to walk up and down the apartment. I started feeling stiffness in my arms. This was the point when I told my girlfriend – who just stared at me frightened – to call an ambulance.

Continue reading [Oct 2012] Heart Condition

[Oct 2012] Difficulties Getting Permanent

Another horrible day is over, or rather horrible days, since I returned to work after my days off. My father fainted in the hospital two days ago, when he was on a blood test. The nurses panicked, and I almost passed out myself seeing all this. After he had regained consciousness, he was as pale as he would have been dead for weeks. I had to push his lean and weak body to the chemotherapy department in a wheelchair. Yesterday the whole situation repeated, only I was lucky enought not to be there. It was a horrible experience for me, that made me cry yesterday evening, which is good news to me, because I haven’t been able to cry for a very long time. After that I wasn’t able to sleep, and at 5 am I woke up in panic, because someone was heavily knocking on the door of my apartment with a metal-sounding tool. I was scared as hell. My girlfriend was in complete shock. By the time I got to the door and looked through the hole, nobody was there. I have no idea who that might have been and what he might have wanted. I tossed and turned for another hour and a half, and when I could finally sleep again, my alarm started ringing.

Continue reading [Oct 2012] Difficulties Getting Permanent

[Sept 2012] Fears, Thoughts and Writing

Just like I realized it years ago, I am unable to honestly recall and experience feelings much after I experienced them. That’s why I think it is important to write them down when I am right in the middle of them, or at least as soon as possible. Because if I don’t do that, later I won’t be able to recall and describe them half as genuinly as before. On the other hand I have a strong tendency to forget or minimize them, just as if they weren’t serious at all. A totally hopeless and desperate situation can seem completely different and harmless to me the next day. Sometimes I can’t even take my own feelings seriously after one day, except if I am able to read my painful thoughts and feelings from the previous day. That’s why it is important for me to write of my thoughts as much as possible these days, because I feel like there are wars going on inside me, and I am going through the most important transformation of my life, day by day, week by week.

Continue reading [Sept 2012] Fears, Thoughts and Writing

[Sept 2012] Meditation and Me

I hadn’t known much about Buddhism and meditation, not more than people usually in the Western world: it is some strange, distant, abstract religious kind of thing, that is very different from mainstream western religions. Oh yes, and when someone meditates, he is sitting still for a longer time, and becomes very calm, and won’t be worried and bothered and interested in anything. And that it is not that much about some kind of God, but it is about something else, whatever it is. Oh, and there is reincarnation as well, which I think is complete nonsense. I think this was all I knew about it.

Still, somehow, for some misterious reason, I’ve always felt that meditation and Buddhism is not something stupid. It always made some sense to me, although I had barely known anything about it, and although there are lots of other misterious things, like astrology or esoteria, that doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Buddhism has always been attractive to me, I had this secret voice in my head that told me I should get to know more about it, because it holds precious jewels for me.

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[Sept 2012] Limits, Symptoms, and Panic

I feel that I have difficulties handling stress, mostly the stress that I experience at my work. Actually I don’t know it sometimes if I have difficulties handling it, or there are just so many sources of stress and pressure in my life, that would break anyone. Sometimes I can’t decide if stress is too much or I handle it badly, or I just don’t spend enough time to rest and regenerate. Whatever the problem is, or whatever combination of these, something is wrong in my life, I am pretty sure of that. I am sure, because there are clear signs of it. I experience strange and weird things, more and more often lately. Just like a couple of years ago, when I started having heart arrhythmias more frequently, and I started to worry about it so much after a while, that it manifested itself in panic attacks. And I was naive enough to make myself examined, because I thought it must be diabetes or something else, until I realized, that these were only my heavy fears because of my heart condition. Now I experience something similar again and again.

Continue reading [Sept 2012] Limits, Symptoms, and Panic

[Aug 2012] Cancer or Heart Attack Please?

Last weekend I broke down. My body sent me a serious signal, that I should decrease my pace, because it is killing me. It was a very difficult and demanding week, not the first in a row. Then on Saturday morning we went down to some village with my girlfriend and my friends, to celebrate the wedding of a friend of mine. That was where the problems started.

Continue reading [Aug 2012] Cancer or Heart Attack Please?