Me, Myself and I

Working with myself and the ultimate reality for a while now, I can pretty much confirm that the ego and the self are not the same thing. I know it from experience, though this sounds a bit lofty, right?

Well, let's approach it from the point of love. (Hmmm love, what else? "Bad habit", I'm a buddhist. LOL) When we believe we love ourselves most of the time we just pamper our ego. I often get the advice: be a little bit nice to yourself, pamper yourself with a nice bath, a rejuvenating massage, some good food etc. That's easy! Only give a little space and time for yourself and done. And in the bathtub looking at my big stomach I call myself a fat slut, at the masseur I start longing after sex and at the same time I call myself a slut again, and guess how shameful I feel like after eating a nice dinner! Yes, I'm talking about these thoughts. If someone else said these things to me, it would be an insult. But when I do it, I don't even realize what I'm doing. Wonderful!

I was at Vivation course this weekend, and some of the masks of the ego fell down and suddenly - in a deep meditative state of mind - I was alone with myself. No ego buzzing around. Just me and myself. It was a bit scarry though, not often can I see myself this way. And the very first time in my life I was able to look at myself as I am, and even generate genuine love towards myself. It was scarry and at the same time very touching. Me as a wise and beautiful angel looking at a frightenered little girl the first time in this lifetime after 40 years of living next to each other speechless, most of the time ignorantly hovering around each other.

And do you know how I said hi to myself? I said: HELLO, KITTY! - and all this in damn serious deep meditation! Still makes me smile. HELLO, KITTY!

HELLO, KITTY! - I smiled at myself and took my hands and started hovering in the air with 2-3 more angels.

And this I would call unconditioned love, the realization of self(lessness). Precious moment. Because the ego is right away back like a guarddog which never sleeps. :-)

So to make love myself I don't really need anything but myself and a little bit of more practice of deep meditation. Very good, because it doesn't even depend on if I can afford a massage or a nice dinner!

;-)

After Vivation course

I have an aquintance in Gothenburg who works with Vivation.

According to Wikipedia:

Vivation is a feeling based meditation. The primary difference between Vivation and other types of meditation is its emphasis on maintaining awareness of the strongest feeling in the body on an ongoing basis. In this way, the experience itself guides and instructs the practitioner where to go next. In Vivation no distinction is made between emotions or sensations, as both are experienced kinesthetically. In Vivation, there is no requirement to quiet the mind. If the mind is overly active, the practitioner simply continues noticing what that feels like in the body. Because of its emphasis on feelings, there is no mental or cognitive component to Vivation. Vivation practitioners claim that by connecting directly to the physical feelings in the body, negative thoughts about those feelings are bypassed, resulting in a much more honest and pleasurable experience. From the perspective of Vivation, there is no such thing as negative feelings, only negative thoughts about those feelings. Feelings once experienced openly and honestly, are inherently positive and blissful. Practitioners claim that by relaxing the mind and body and paying attention to the feelings already present, any "make wrong" about those feelings is relaxed too. This results in a relaxation or "melting" of body armor (see Wilhelm Reich). When a feeling is integrated, the physiological energy keeping the emotion suppressed is now released, resulting in a feeling of bliss (see Sananda). According to Vivation everything integrates. Every integration is permanent and represents a step forward in the individuals autonomy, freedom and liberation. READ MORE

I can't say that I'm not still under the influence of the experience I have had. It was an intensive weekend-course held by my friend. Sometimes I thought it was way too boring because I didn't find anything new in it; sometimes I thought it was too much talk, but at the same time, I wouldn't have been able to ""vive" any more, because it was very intensive when we were "in action"; other times I just wanted to go away - the mind protesting against being reveiled and dethroned. Shaking emotions, mixed memories.

There is nothing new in it. It is a combination of many useful and wise elements yoga/tantra/spiritualism/psychology have ever found.

It's useful to listen to the coaching affirmations of the guide. I've never been praised this much in my life. It's a way to learn how you can and should praise yourself and be a honest support for yourself in any situation.

It's important to talk and share your experiences, even if we all know, noone has the same experience. But it helps us to unload what we've been carrying, and it wakes up compassion.

Facing your mind is the most difficult thing ever. Embracing and loving everything which we always considered negative is not fun, requires a brave heart and lots of patience. You can lie to yourself without being able to recognize you are covering something very stubbornly.

There is a very powerful exercise in Vivation which is called eyegazing. While doing Vivation: observing yourself, integrating everything which manifests itself in bodily sensation and turning to it with loving kindness - your eyes are wide open looking at another person doing Vivation. One can say after trying it: it is spooooooky! And at the same time for a person like me suffering from some grade of social phobia, paranoia and from low/no self-esteem it was liberating.

I've realized that I should allow myself to be tired without falling asleep. :-) Well, it is always difficult when meditating someone feels strong pain or falls asleep. What I was able to do this time was actually being able to observe and accept myself being tired and yawning like a lazy lion - without falling asleep or dozing off just for 5 secs. I also realized that besides having real reason for tiredness, it's often the excuse of the mind for not participating in activities. And this is not laziness, I'm talking about. This is real tiredness - can be measured. This is that annoying numbness depressed people usually experience, a sort of apathy and frozenness.


Pain, fear and tiredness. The summary of the weekend. It seems to come from outside, grabbing us and we experience it as suffering. But it's not something beyond us. It is very concretely in our mind manifesting itself very clearly in the body. But we never listen to it! We try to run away, to cover it, to put make-up, bandage on it, to dump it, replant it, numb it with pills...shut it down! You are supposed to be young, beautiful, painless and fresh - as if you didn't have a body. The body is a tool to understand yourself. If you shut it down, manipulate it and exploit it with dumping all the crap in your life into it, no wonder it gives up functioning! :-)

I practice Buddhism and regularly meditate (Vipassana). This made it easier maybe to understand Vivation. I'm sure I would have come to the same realizations during my meditation sessions, but Vivation's given a little kick to it. As I said, it's nothing new I've learnt. It's just the RIGHT COMBINATION of the already known moments.