Day 26 - Fear of Conflict

Growing up I remember feeling bad for people who were feeling bad or for those who were in some kind of argument.

I thought that I ‘knew’ what this person is going through, because ‘this Must be how they are are feeling, how could they feel anything else?’. This led me to occasionally ‘play the fool’ or to remove myself from the situation because of the sheer discomfort I felt at being in that situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in ‘feeling bad’ for people who are apparently going through some argument with somebody in front of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I know what this person on ‘the receiving end’ is ‘going through’.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that the two people arguing in front of me can be polarised into ‘attacker’ and ‘attacked’.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of the attacker, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be defined by the belief that ‘there is no way that I can tell them that they are being unfair - because otherwise they will attack me’.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect telling the apparent attacker that they are ‘being unreasonable/not seeing all the different perspectives’ and thus being attacked myself - to fear, thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as the belief that ‘what is happening within in me’ in terms of my emotional movements is also happening within this person that is being attacked, not seeing, realising, or understanding that I can never know for certain what is happening inside the mind of these people who I believe are unjustly being attacked - and that In fact what I am doing is overlaying my own reactions onto this other person and believing that they are experiencing what I am experiencing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that the attacker is always wrong.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as the belief that the person being attacked is always right.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become discomforted by the presence of two people who are engaged in an energetic conflict with one another.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realise, and understand that I am creating my own discomfort and discord in this moment, within myself,

I forgive myself for turning this fear of other people arguing into an excitement, where I would believe that ‘because it is not happening to me...I can at least gain some excitement from seeing these two other people fight with each other’.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the self protection mechanism of trying to avoid arguments and confrontations, fearing who I will become within arguing and confronting someone. Fearing that I will become this mess of angry emotions, fearing that I will cry, fearing that I will look weak, or uncontrolled, fearing being laughed at if I am on the losing side of a confrontation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect arguments and confrontations - and who I am within them - to fear, thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I am comfortable, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define comfort as a state of non-conflict.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of conflict, I forgive myself for allowing myself to connect conflict to fear, thus I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as the belief that I wish to keep things comfortable for myself, not seeing, realising, or understanding that what I mean by this is that I want to stay out of fights.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of fights.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of  fights,  I forgive myself that I have accepted I'm allowed myself to connect fighting to fear -   thus I forgive myself for allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realise, and understand that who I am within conflict is fear, fear of loss/losing, fear of being embarrassed, fear of not being ‘right’. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself  to connect conflict with fear of loss, embarrassment, and fear of being labelled as ‘wrong’, Thus I forgive myself allowing myself to fear my own fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I must always be right, and that being wrong is ‘wrong’. Not seeing, realising, or understanding how I have formulated these patterns from my early life.

I remember always being right in school and feeling awesome because of this, always having the right answer, and when I got things wrong I did not know how to take it - I felt quite bad. I became less enthused with things, with the process of learning as a whole. It was as if being right was the only reason there was for learning. Funnily enough these two memory points of ‘feeling bad’ for people who were arguing and also not reacting well to getting things wrong occurred at around the same point in my early life. The primary years of schooling.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that there is no point to learning anything, unless I am always ‘getting it right’ - not seeing, realising, or understanding that learning is not defined by ‘getting things right’, and that from a simple base viewpoint it is about expanding one’s horizons in the world, allowing me to engage with the world.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that learning is about being better than everyone else. That learning and getting things ‘right’ is about differentiating myself from others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that the ‘process of learning’ is a process of being ‘rewarded’ via a process of specialisation, in which I become special.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as the statement ‘I must be better than others’ - not seeing, realising, or understanding how this statement was never in fact a statement of who I was, but rather a statement of what others expected of me and what they believed to be ‘right’.

When and as I see myself moving into this sense of discomfort at the thought of seeing two or more people engaged in a heated/emotional/energetic/turbulent exchange - I stop and I breathe. I will myself to see, realise, and understand that this discomfort has been borne out of my own judgement on what I apparently ‘see’ as ‘happening’. Thus I forgive myself for any judgements that I may be creating or holding onto when I see this ‘exchange’ happening in my reality, not allowing myself to create a good/bad polarity, no longer allowing myself to create my own internal narrative which I project onto others, instead staying still within myself and viewing the situation with a common sense borne out of silence.

When and as I see myself in a moment where I am about to get into a ‘confrontation’ with another person, I stop, and I breathe, and I will myself to understand that there can be no confrontation if I am not allowing myself to go into a confrontation ‘mode’. Thus I will myself to notice that moment where I start speeding and racing within myself in a wild rush to ‘defend’ my apparent position that I am holding onto, rather allowing myself to find my own position within myself physically, to find my breath and to slow down - not allowing myself to go into a race, not to become emotionally flustered, not to allow judgement to enter my mind, but to instead listen and respond, in common sense and consideration.

I will myself to see, realise, and understand that learning is a truly satisfying process that allows me the gift of being able to ‘do’ ‘more’ in this world.

Day 24 - Coming Home

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I must 'come home to something'.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as the belief that 'when one comes home from work, one must 'play'. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to thus participate in the belief that I must come home to drugs, alcohol or excessive eating.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that without these things my life will not be 'fun'.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that I must have something interesting to do in my 'down time'. Secretly comparing and contrasting myself to my ideas of what I believe other human beings are like. 'I gotta go out drinking, smoking , I gotta be with people, I have to be laughing, I have to look as if I have a 'life'.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to entertain myself with movies and tv shows that I find on the internet, not seeing, realising, or understanding how I am using these things as I used to use drugs and alcohol, as a way to not have to deal with what is really here.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realise, and understand that I have addicted myself to movies and entertainment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that these things are 'fun' and that they can 'bring' me fun. Not seeing, realising, or understanding that they are tools of my own self-suppression and methods by which I ignore myself.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realise, and understand that no matter how much I delve into these things, I am always eventually left with myself, the drugs wear off, it is too much of a hassle to have more, the movies do not entertain as much, there is no point of watching anything else, the friends and social circles become less fulfilling, I don't see them as much. And I have to come back to myself.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see, realise, and understand that I am not actually present while I am working, I wish to be somewhere else, I think of all the stuff I will do when I get home, I am not really here.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see, realise, and understand that being here is being cool with myself, not wanting for more, not needing to be anywhere else but here.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see, realise, and understand that even if I were to in these moments within my day, desire to be somewhere else, someone else, if I was to magically find myself in that place, as that person - I would still be looking to the next place to get too, there isn't really an end .

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be defined by the belief that 'there is somewhere to get too...some objective to be found' - not seeing or realising that I have programmed this belief into myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the belief that in life I must be a success, in this case defining success as being the ability to show to others that I have accomplished in life, that I have money and prestige and that I am not poor and unimportant.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in a fear of being poor and unimportant. I forgive myself for connecting poor and unimportant to fear, thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my own fear.

And because of this I do not really appreciate just being here with myself, whether it is at work, at home, or anywhere else in the world.

I will myself to see, realise, and understand that coming home is a physical movement of myself from one place to another, I am only moving places physically; there isn't a need to 'do' anything, there is no 'special action' that I need to take to make this movement meaningful. There is no meaning in it, hence no need to seek out 'play'.

When and as I see myself participating in the belief that I must do something interesting in my 'downtime' because it is the time I am not 'working' I stop and I breathe, and I realise that there is no 'off time' and 'on time', there is only time and what I choose to do within it. Thus I do not have to limit myself to this belief that I 'must do something'.

I will myself to see that there are other things besides intoxication and entertainment that I can discover. I see that I am enjoying planting and discovering new locations where I live, realising that there are a variety of physical hobbies that I can take up.

I will myself to see, realise, and understand that I have been using movies and entertainment in the same manner that I have been using drugs, as an intoxicating escape from the here and now. I will myself to see and realise that at the end of the jaunt I am still left with myself, that no matter how much I try to entertain myself away, the entertainment becomes less entertaining, and I need more and more to get a ‘fix’.

I thus will myself to practice and explore what being present with myself means in reality, what working in breath means for me and what the effects are of being ‘here’ wherever I go.