Meditation – The Way Out

[Nov 2013] Conceptual Fear

It is a Saturday evening. We went with Sophie to watch a movie in our favorite plaza. About Time. My friend Steve recommended it to me. I wanted to go out in the evening by all means. Going to the cinema was a step in my “social rehabilitation,” a process that I have to work on every day. Slowly, step by step. I was very nervous while I was driving to the plaza. My mood was fluctuating wildly. I was afraid of everything that might happen there. My mind was out there in the future. “What is waiting for me in there? What do I have to do? What situations will I drift into? How will I react? What difficulties do I have to solve?

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[Jun 2013] I Want Everything

I am restless. It is Monday evening, and I started this week at a frantic pace. I didn’t want to work on Sunday evening, I woke up early today instead. I arrived at the office at 9 am which is very unusual. I had planned, done, and arranged a lot already before the usual 10 am project management meeting. I stayed very active and motivated in the afternoon too. After work, I rushed through the city to the service with my car. As I arrived home, I didn’t feel like working more, so I started to read instead. I am reading five books at the same time, like a maniac. Then I decided to work a little, arranged some stuff for tomorrow, and kept on reading. It was already past 7 pm when I started feeling restless and uneasy again. I wanted to do everything, everything at the same time.

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[Jan 2013] Why do I Meditate?

Kabat-Zinn writes this in this book: try asking yourself why you meditate! Don’t believe your first answers. Just write a list of whatever comes to mind. Continue asking yourself. Make a list of what is really important to you. Ask yourself: what is my vision and my map for where I am and where I am going? Does this vision reflect my true values and intentions? Am I remembering to embody those values? Do I practice my intentions?

So, I asked myself, and contemplated this question quite a lot. Why do I meditate?

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[Jan 2013] Is Meditation for Everyone?

I was thinking about something today, that I had noticed several times before. Meditation and this conscious awareness makes my perceptions sharper and wider. I see, feel and observe more about the world and about myself. I am getting more aware. This is good on one side, but on the other side I notice more tensions, frustrations, heavy feelings, bad habits in myself, that I have just never seen before. I just haven’t felt it, haven’t seen it, haven’t have any clue about it, therefore it hasn’t bothered me at all. I often feel that meditation brought me many new problems, instead of solving current ones. My life might be better with meditation, maybe I don’t even realize the ways it made my life better and easier. Maybe meditation will help me in the long run, by helping see and solve problems that I am just getting to know now, because they have been burried deep down inside me. I don’t know. But meditation surely makes my life more difficult sometimes with these new-found problems.

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[Jan 2013] Mindfulness in Panic

I’m having these panic attacks sometimes, and meditation seems to teach me things that can be useful in those dark moments. The only thing is that most of the time I get so overwhelmed and frightened during a panic attack, that I lose sight of what to do and how to handle the situation in a mindful way. It is really not easy, even if I know I am in the middle of a panic attack, and I won’t die or something. It is still very scary and difficult, and I am also very confused about the right attitude.

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[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.

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[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] 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.

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[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.

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[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