Day 213: Arguments of Convenience

This blog is in continuation to: 
Day 211: Don't Be So Ridiculous!
Day 212: Time is Money

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to go into an experience of ridiculousness and futility whenever I am doing something which could be perceived/labelled as 'non-productive' within a monetary sense

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to generate an experience of guilt whenever I am doing something / participating within something which could be perceived as 'non-productive' within a monetary sense and thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I must at all times be productive

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have turned the concept of 'unproductivity' into an excuse -- where I have accepted and allowed myself to bring it up as a reason as to why doing something or investigating a point which is in relation to developing self-intimacy and self-understanding is not 'what I should do now' and manipulate myself into skipping / postponing the activity under the guise that 'it's not productive', while I am merely just resisting the point of exploring and developing self-intimacy

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sabotage myself within not doing things which require me to work on myself as a being, where I use the reason / excuse that 'it is not productive' to make myself feel 'okay' with not doing it

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that if I don't take the time out for myself to work on myself then I cannot expect others to do the same and thus cannot expect this world to change any time soon -- as the very system of 'productivity' and 'infinite economic growth' is merely the result/outcome/consequence of our human nature which we accepted and allowed collectively and thus unless we do something about our nature, the system will remain the same as an equal and one reflection of who we are -- and thus as long as I allow myself to postpone self-change I am postponing the change of the system and will always find myself in a 'productivity trap'

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to downplay the importance of self-investigation and self-exploration within the belief that it 'doesn't help anyone else' -- not seeing and realising that change starts with self and that if no-one takes out the time to change themselves we will always believe that we are unable to change and remain victims of our own stupidity

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use my 'productivity' argument at times when I don't want to do a point of self-intimacy / working on myself and then at other times use the 'I need time for myself' argument when I don't feel like doing something which could be categorized as 'productive'-- where these arguments conveniently pop up according to what I want to do instead of what needs to be done / what would be best for all -- where I allow energy to determine the 'reasoning applicable in the moment' to manipulate my way into always 'doing what I want' instead of using practical common sense within 'doing what needs to be done', where my preferences only come secondary

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to swing from one side to the other where I will either focus too much on productivity and too little on self-development, or too much on self-development and too little of productivity -- where I do not allow myself to line out a practical balance because obviously both points require to be addressed

Related articles

• Day 212: Time is Money
• I am Insecure, What do you think of me - Day 346
• Day 345 - Prioritizing my Time.
• Day 203: My Head is like a Broken Record
• Day 357 - Writing about who I am within Writing Part 2
• Day 353 - Less Play more Time, then where is my time.

Day 186: Baggage from the Past – when is an ED really over?

I’ll be going through my day and everything is normal and then I would for instance open the fridge and want to eat a particular food and then a thought quickly flashed by that goes “No, don’t do that – don’t you know how many calories is in that??” Like randomly, out of nowhere, completely out of context. And then I actually go “hmmm – good point there” and then “what no! what am I doing?!” and then have to snap myself out of it.

Or I’m busy doing some exercises just because its fun and supportive and then there will be a small moment where I go “I wonder how many calories you burn doing this” – like a sneaky little thought that crawls up from the back of your head and then I actually start shifting my perspective/approach on the exercise I’m doing and go “hmm yes interesting how many calories am I actually burning hmmm I wonder if its more or less than that exercise – oh maybe eating that piece of chocolate earlier is being cancelled out right now…” and then if I don’t stop myself it just goes round and round and round and I start looking at everything in terms of losing wait and calories and fat and how to cancel things out and making plans for the future of what I am and not going to eat because if I eat this then I cannot eat that but then maybe later if I do that then it’s okay and and and… – it just spirals out really quickly. Just from following that one thought – where I go ‘ok thought, I give you permission to exist’ and then after I give it the ‘okay’ it starts bringing in all its friends and they bring their friends and before I know it there’s a full blown party in my head and it’s like I’m having an ED episode all over again.

So every day I see there are still little temptations, little points that if I allow myself to go there, the whole ED thing comes falling right back from the sky and then boom – I’m in it. Because it only takes that one thought, that one point where you kind of start looking at something in distorted way, kind of tilting your head into a different angle – and then that’s enough to screw yourself over. That one point of acceptance and allowance of ‘one little thought’ literally floods the gate for shit to come pouring in. If you allow that ONE point, you allow ALL of it.

So it’s quite interesting to see how I go through my day because it’s really a matter of ‘all or nothing’ where I either don’t participate in this type of stuff or where when I do I can just see how it just kind of start seeping in from all the corners of my day, like it literally starts to frame my day from this one perspective only until I go ‘Uh oh, what am I doing – stop!’

Earlier I was going through some checklists to see how people are ‘diagnosed’ with Eating Disorders as usually these type of things contain a list of disorder behaviour and the more you click ‘yes’ the more likely you have this or that disorder and I wanted to see what was considered normal and what not. So now in one of these lists, most of the points consisted of points/thoughts that most people have like: not wanting to be fat, wanting to be thin, feeling guilty after eating a lot, exercising to lose weight, caring about how you look, etc, etc – and then you also have the extreme points like starving yourself and binging and puking and flooding yourself with meds and laxatives. Yet if you only tick the ones I mentioned first, you don’t have an eating disorder and if you tick the points I mentioned last: you do.

Which is weird because from my perspective, it’s all disordered. Starving, binging, puking, meds and excessive exercise are just the outflow / extreme end of those other seemingly ‘innocent’ points that everyone has where you’re ‘conscious of how you look and what you eat’. I mean, I’ve been there – I had the ‘innocent thoughts’ and I followed them and you end up in a pretty screwed up situation. As long as we allow any form of distortion towards food and our bodies there will always be serious eating disorders like anorexia en bulimia – because those ‘innocent thoughts’ are merely the key to a door with a very long hallway with destination Eating Disorder. You may not go all the way down the hall but you’re still in the same building. It’s not just people who are seriously underweight and physically deteriorating that require ‘treatment’ for their disorder – because they’re just on the far end of the construct – and it’s a construct everyone participates in.

Related articles

• Day 183: Anorexia - Lifestyle or Disease?
• Day 170: Starving and Binging - Two Sides of the Same Coin
• Day 166: From Anorexia to Bulimia
• Day 185: When Food is no longer just Food - Part 2
• Day 167: The Big Fall
• Day 274: Eating Disorders and Desteni
• Day 159: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Writing - Part 3
• Day 165: Eating Disorders and Real Self-Perfection
• Day 162: Eating Disorders and Unforetold Consequences
• Day 172: My Dirty Little Secret

Day 183: Anorexia – Lifestyle or Disease?

When I was browsing through the internet on Eating Disorder related websites, the topic of ‘Lifestyle or Disease’ would always pop up over and over again.

On the one side you have the people who believe they are suffering from a disease and require to be cured – and that this disease is involuntary.

On the other side you have people who believe that they are following a lifestyle which should be respected by others and that you have a choice to participate within Eating Disorders or not.

The first group is considered to be ‘authentic’ within having a mental disorder, while the second group is considered by the first group to be ‘wannabes’.

The thing is that they’re both right and they’re both wrong.

Is anorexia or any other Eating Disorder really a ‘disease’? And is it really ‘involuntary’ like ‘catching the flu’ and having ‘eating disorder genes’? It’s a nice side to take because if you’re ‘sick’ and you’re ‘suffering’ and you didn’t have ‘any choice’ within it – then you are left in a position of zero responsibility because ‘you had nothing to do with it’. I find that to be unacceptable with regards to Eating Disorders or even other mental disorders like ‘Depression’ which are portrayed to be ‘diseases’. These mental disorders don’t just manifest overnight. Things like anorexia, bulimia and depression are manifestations which develop through time. You have to actively think about your body in a particular way, you have to actively take comments personal, you have to actively compare yourself to others, you have to actively, obsessively go through fashion magazines while being hypnotised by the ‘thinness’ you perceive, you have to actively put yourself in front of a mirror and remind yourself why you are not good enough, you have to actively not eat and hide your eating patterns, you have to actively put your finger down your throat and puke. There’s no ‘disease’ making you do those things: it’s all you!

Now, people don’t want to hear this because they immediately take it personal and believe that there is something wrong with them and that it makes them ‘look bad’ – because obviously they and everyone knows that this type of behaviour is quite disturbing. So if the behaviour is ‘out of your control’ you can wash your hands clean and just kind of shrug your shoulders at it. The problem with saying that you have a ‘disease’ and that it’s ‘involuntary’ is that you are placing the Eating Disorder separate from yourself, where it’s some sort of ‘Alien invader’ where you have no say. How are you supposed to cure/recover from that? You can’t, because you only have the ability to bring about change within yourself, you only have the power to change you. So if you see your eating disorder behaviour as ‘not you’, then all you can do is stare at it and be completely powerless – you’re placing yourself in victimization mode. On the other hand, if you realise and acknowledge that you are the one acting out this Eating Disorder and bringing it ‘to life’ – where you are the one driving it = you have the power to change it, because you know it’s you. You might not like it because it means that all these disturbing behaviours are indeed coming from you and your decisions and choices to participate within non-supportive thought patterns and actions – but at least you are then placing yourself in a position of self-responsibility and can actually make a difference within your Life.

This does not mean that I agree that ‘anorexia is a lifestyle’ – because obviously, there is a missing link between ‘Starving Yourself’ on the one side, and ‘Life’ on the other side. It’s more of a ‘abusing myself style’ than anything else and should in no way whatsoever be ‘respected’ or ‘recognized’ as a ‘formal lifestyle’ as ‘one of the many ways one can choose to live their life’. Eating disorders are harmful and damaging and you’re basically squeezing the Life out of yourself for the sake of your appearance matching some picture presentation. There’s nothing ‘Life’ about that, you might as well be a plastic doll or an image in a magazine. Though what people from this side do get, is the point that you are the creator and maintainer of your Eating Disorder and so it will be easier for them to stop – but of course only if they want to. Obviously if you see starving yourself as a lifestyle then there’s some serious mental disorder existent within you and as such you might not want to give this up at all as a result of that.

So No, Anorexia is not a Disease and No Anorexia is not a Lifestyle.

It is what it is = it’s mental disorder. And not in the sense of a ‘disease ’ or ‘condition’ of which you are the victim. It’s a mental disorder because you’re actively disordering yourself, and a long with it your body as well (and your body is really the real victim here). Anorexia or any other eating disorder can only exist as long as you fuel/participate within it. You have to in every moment decide whether you are going to act upon the thought that ‘you’re so fat and shouldn’t eat’.

Sure, there may have been events and circumstances which would make someone participate within an Eating Disorder more likely – but in the end it’s still up to self whether you make that decision to harm yourself this way or not.

The whole Pro-Anna (or ‘wannabes’) movement is merely an extreme form of what Eating Disorders actually stand for. They’re direct and straightforward about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it – and are only able to do this due to the vast level of acceptance and value that has been placed on one’s appearance over one’s physical well-being. I mean, is it a coincidence that with the advent of mass-media where we are bombarded with images from billboards, magazines, tv, internet over the last decade – that there has been an 80% rise in Anorexia cases? And where children are being diagnosed with eating disorders from an earlier and earlier age? I mean, there’s FIVE YEAR OLDS that have eating disorders! This is not normal, this is the direct result of our society’s values falling further and further away from valuing life and actual well-being over appearances and fake happiness. Our world is becoming more and more superficial and our bodies are the one’s suffering just like the Earth is suffering more and more under our unhealthy ideologies which do not promote actual well-being.

Check out the Desteni I Process Lite – a free course – to assist and support yourself in getting to know yourself and your mental disorders and assist yourself to a sound mind.

Check out the Equal Money Website as an alternative economic system that actually values Life and actual well-being over unsustainable economic growth.

Related articles

• Day 169: Turning my Back on Anorexia, Anorexia turning its Back on Me
• Day 172: My Dirty Little Secret
• Day 166: From Anorexia to Bulimia
• Day 171: Hiding behind Anorexia
• Day 170: Starving and Binging - Two Sides of the Same Coin
• The Internal War Of Anorexia - Day 296
• Day 274: Eating Disorders and Desteni
• Day 162: Eating Disorders and Unforetold Consequences
• Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder - Part 1

Day 162: Eating Disorders and Unforetold Consequences

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 155: Introduction – Starving Myself
Day 156: Wanting Passion and Purpose in Life
Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Thought - Part 1
Day 158: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Images - Part 2
Day 159: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Writing – Part 3
Day 160: Eating Disorders and Contradictions
Day 161: Become an Image and be Treated as an Image

I was 'lucky' to have two friends who also had eating disorders – although it was never specifically states as such, their behaviour and attitude towards food, eating and gossip about other people and themselves made pretty clear what was going on.


I would spend my days around them if I could, since we supported each other's state of mind and would not ask questions about the other not eating - quite the opposite, we cheered it lol.


Something unexpected happened though. I would still hang out with my 'bigger group' of friends with one of the two people who also had the ED -- and after they had noticed our behaviour and how much weight we had lost - they started doing the same thing.


Oh oh


I did not prepare for that.
I did not want them to go through what we were doing, because even though we were doing it, we knew it wasn't 'right' and it's something that starts consuming and controlling your whole life.


I always believed that what I was doing was 'innocent' from the sense that it was only affecting my life, my reality. But now through my acceptance and allowance of adopting an Eating Disorder, and the fact that 'no man is an island'-- I was having a direct, negative impact on the life of others. Not only did I aid in supporting my two friends their eating disorder, but was also part of the cause of other people going down the same road.


This is an example of 'living as an example' and a bad one at that -- where other people see you change, and start doing the same. This is where I realised that whatever I do and however I decide to behave either actively or passively through my acceptance and allowance, will have an impact, an influence on others -- through better or for worse.


Now, this was just what was happening within my small little circle of friends, but you could see the same pattern occur in the school in its entirety. It was an art school, so everyone's very much visual/image based and very much pre-occupied looking all 'cool' and 'artsy'-- and being a 'pretty skinny girl' was kind of part of that whole scene.


A lot of girls were unnaturally skinny, and each year as new people would join the school, you could see them 'turn', see them adopt the same destructive life-style as those who were already there, those who were functioning as an example of 'what it means to be someone in this school'. And I mean, it was scary -- but none of the teachers or other staff members seemed to notice. It was this whole secret, hidden, hush-hush subculture that existed and no-one talked about it.


Like I said before, with my friends who had EDs, we never acknowledged to one another what it is we were doing (because then also we'd be admitting to one another that we're 'superficial'). So it was more of a silent acceptance, a silent agreement.


So now, this is one group of friends, one school -- you can only IMAGINE what goes on, on a society/world scale. We are constantly being bombarded by bad examples, by unsustainable life-styles where we promote compromising our human physical bodies to attain some freaking image -- which most of the time is not even possible to attain because it's been manipulated and modified with make-up, specific lighting, specific clothing and photoshop and what not. So you end up compromising into infinity, chasing a reality which has never even been in your reach, it's such a trap.


I mean, is this what it means to live in the 21st century? Is this what it means to live in 'modern times', is this what it means to be 'evolved'? Sure, we have some nice gadgets and technologies which made our life more comfy (and even that, only for a minority) -- in the meantime you have the majority of the world living in physical suffering because we've been unable to overcome our selfishness and then those who do have material comfort live a life of complete unprecedented mental disorder. All in all - we're a very destructive race and are the worst example for future generations.


We really have to reconsider and re-evaluate our whole way of doing things and the way we live our lives, because it's simply not worth it.

Related articles

• Day 161: Become an Image and be Treated as an Image
• Day 159: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Writing - Part 3
• Day 160: Eating Disorders and Contradictions
• Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder - Part 1
• Day 158: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Images - Part 2
• Day 156: Wanting Passion and Purpose in Life

Day 154: Cutting the Strings

This blog is a continuation to:

Day 130: Holding Myself Back
Day 131: Timidity
Day 132: How we Bring Personality Traits into Being
Day 133: Managing vs. Correcting My Inner Reality
Day 134: Living by the Rule of Fear
Day 135: Stopping the Pattern
Day 136: Walking Back in Time
Day 137: Re-Acting Reactive Reactions
Day 138: Move or Be Moved
Day 139: Taking things Personal is Self-Interest
Day 140: Opting for Avoidance over Change
Day 141: Why are you so Mean to Me?
Day 142: Respecting Beliefs
Day 143: Busted!
Day 144: Moving Beyond Self
Day 145: From Reaction to Self-Reflection
Day 146: Death of a Horse
Day 147 & 148: Aftermath - Death of a Horse
Day 149: Interpretation vs Seeing & Correcting
Day 150: How Dare you make me Feel Bad?
Day 151: My Way or the Highway
Day 152: Things are Not Always what they Seem
Day 153: Body – Marionette of the Mind
Day 154: Cutting the Strings

When and as I see myself participating within movements which just seemingly seem to ‘happen’ where these movements just come about without me actively directing and moving myself within awareness – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that if I am not the directive principle something else is and so I commit myself to stop, breathe and identify what program is directing my physical movement and work through it within Self Forgiveness and Self Corrective Statements and Application

When and as I see myself moving my hand over my mouth within conversations/activities – I stop and I breathe -- I see and realise that I am accessing my ‘holding back’ programming and so I commit myself to stop, breathe, ground myself as my human physical body and participate unconditionally and to investigate what fear point triggered the program and to work through it within writing and self-correction

When and as I see myself pick up my scarf and move towards my mouth / place it over my mouth – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that unless my face is cold there is no logical explanation as to why I would be placing my scarf over my mouth and so I must be accessing the ‘holding back’ program within and as me and so I commit myself to stop, breathe, remove the scarf and participate unconditionally

When and as I see myself move my hand in front of my mouth, move my scarf in front of my mouth, start mumbling or experience a movement of ‘holding back’ within my chest – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise I am accessing a program in support of ‘holding back’ indicating to me that I am reacting to a fear point and so I commit myself to correct these movements as removing my hand/scarf away from my mouth and start speaking clearly to assist and support myself to get out of my programmed response pattern to particular triggers and I commit myself to identify, trace, and pin-point the exact trigger that set the reaction into motion and work through it within Self Forgiveness and Self Corrective Statements

When and as I see myself experiencing emotions and feelings such as fear and anxiety upon which I respond with particular movements which get set in motion without really knowing ‘how’ or ‘why’ I am responding this way – I stop and I breathe -- I see and realise that I am playing out a programmed pattern designed to set off upon receiving particular triggers, where I have accepted and allowed such points/experiences/movements to a point of normalcy and so I commit myself to question every inner movement and outer movement as my human physical body within asking myself: where does this movement come from – am I the directive principle or not? And to accordingly assist and support myself to spot any patterns which I was not yet conscious of and to investigate them within self-reflective writing and write and apply myself to correction

I commit myself to identify/spot every moment where I go and access the ‘holding back’ program within myself and to correct myself each and every time until it is done

When and as I see myself experience resistance/difficulty in relation to stop the pattern of holding back within and as me and want to rather just ‘go with it’ as what I am used to / have allowed to become my ‘comfort zone’ – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that I can either continue compromising myself to the rest of my life or I can make an effort to change, which will take some time, discipline, diligence, consistency and patience – but where I will have actually changed and have a result that I can be happy/satisfied with and so I commit myself to change within honouring myself and the best I can be

Related articles

• Day 153: Body - Marionette of the Mind
• Day 136: Walking Back in Time
• Day 145: From Reaction to Self-Reflection
• Day 163: Birthing ourselves as life, as a partnership Part 21 - Suppression.
• Day 130: Holding Myself Back
• Day 137: Re-Acting Reactive Reactions

Day 74: What do I feel like doing? – Part 2

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 61:  Self-Disappointment
Day 73: What do I feel like doing?

Yesterday after horses I found myself heaving a massive headache. I started massaging myself and the pain started shooting in all these various directions, it was pretty painful. I was going to get Gian to massage me but then the pain got so bad that I went to lay down and sleep for a while. Most of the time I get headaches from working outside the sun/heat and then drinking lots of water and a little nap usually sort it out. So I wanted to see if a nap would sort out the headache, but when I woke up I was still in the same amount of pain so then I ended up sleeping until the next day.

Now when I woke up, I was still in pain LOL, so I had just slept most of my evening a way in the hope that my body would just sort out the headache, and then when I woke up it was still there. Some of us started waking up earlier because the sun comes out very early, to do some extra work in the nursery every day. So now today when I woke up, the first thought was “Noo, don’t wake up, go back to sleep, you still have this massive headache – just don’t go out and work today..rest….”

But then I looked at it, yes I still have a headache and I am still in pain and all this sleeping/resting didn’t work out for my headache. So I decided to get up and go work in the nursery – resting/sleeping didn’t assist so I didn’t have anything “to lose” by doing some work in the nursery.

The first 5 min were pretty hectic, and my head was feeling bouncy, but then as I got into it (I was pulling out weeds and moving bags around so the grass would be able to be cut), and forced myself to be here, breathe, be here as the movements of the picking up of the bags, placing it down, pushing the wheelbarrow – I could feel the headache starting to move, like something had been clogging up my flow inside my body and whatever clogged it now got loose and as it started to move/flow through the body it started crumbling down.

So this was cool to see, how in relation to my previous blog, I failed the test – where I allowed myself to ‘go with the pain’ as a negative energy – where just because the pain is pretty real in the sense that it is very noticeable (compared to just being in a particular mood) I didn’t pay attention to it as being an ‘energy’ and an ‘energy’ that I would base my decisions one – where I saw it as something ‘real’ and that I can’t just ‘go against it’ by staying up and working – so clearly I was wrong.

Self-Forgiveness and Self Corrective Statements to follow

Related articles

• Day 63: Keeping the Wheels Turning
• Day 42: Why?
• Day 61: Self-Disappointment
• Day 38: Being Sick is So BAD! Or is it?
• Day 45: Who am I as my Body?