It is a much healthier hypothesis to assume that you are fine, and that you simply haven't learned to work well with yourself yet. Society's homogenized program is not meant to be healthy, it is meant to spread itself through coercion. This means that if you don't feel like you fit inside the institutions or companies of our world, it's very likely that the problem resides in them, not in you.
This is not meant to be about passive resignation, this is about using energy in something that can actually matter. Fighting against yourself to do what other people expect you to can never work in the long term. It can be useful in the short term to get money for instance, but it could never be a viable way to live long term.
What does learning to work with yourself look like? Well there are many aspects, but I would say that the main one lies in being curious about yourself, instead of judging. As I've mentioned in the previous journal entry, as soon as you judge yourself you stop paying attention to what is actually going on. We judge ourselves because we constantly get judged by society, because this is how we get coerced into playing its games. But if you look at the whole thing, it is an incredibly ineffective strategy. Can you imagine a sports coach who, instead of giving precise observations and prompts to readjust your game, instead just yells at you every time you make mistakes? Because we are so indoctrinated into the whole judging mindset, some people might actually think there is nothing wrong with that! But in truth it just adds pain, it doesn't actually help become better.
Being curious about yourself is especially important with the parts that tend to resist your plans. It doesn't matter how sensible the plan or instruction is, if there is a lot of resistance, even something as plain as getting out of bed can feel difficult. The mind can yell all it wants about how easy it is to get out of bed and how good it is for you, if there is resistance, it won't happen.
I would call the part of myself that tends to resist the guardian of my inner fire. I used to call him my “inner rebel”, but I noticed that this label is already antagonistic. Instead, I want to understand what my guardian is defending against. He is intelligent in his own ways, so he sees something that I don't, and now it is a matter of establishing a dialogue. What I realized is that he doesn't want to give my energy, the fire, to anyone, because historically speaking it has been given to people who don't care about me, and what I want out of life. As a result my inner guardian started building a shell, a visceral no against plans, and which unfortunately also includes the plans of my mind.
I haven't come into a fully harmonious relationship with that part of me, but I have made a lot of progress. The main thing seems to be that I require activities that have a physical sense of feeling good, not just something that sounds good to my mind. Typically, exercising with light weights—not heavy weights because that feels overwhelming—is great because it gets my body moving and immediately feel the reward of doing things. This also means that I am more than okay to saying no to something that doesn't feel great either. It's either “fuck yes” or nothing at all for me. Reducing lukewarm commitments gives you more energy for the stuff you actually care about.
Another direction to go towards is to allow yourself to play, instead of being so anal about following up on rigid plans. I specifically worded it as allowing yourself to play, because it is not something you can force, and it is also something that comes up naturally with the right mindset and the right environment, since children do it all the time for instance. So for me it has been about removing expectations from my drawing practice, and making it easier and less structured in general. Playing with colors and lines, not trying to get anywhere. Drawing from references instead of trying to get a good result without any. 2
The takeaway is that playing is energizing, not draining. What I've suggested is ultimately about doing what is energizing for you, which can look very different based on who you are, what your environment is, what your skills are and what you need at a specific point in your life, but the visceral sense is rather simple when you tune into it: a deep fuck yes to what you're doing.
And finally, just to throw some wu wu stuff out there to conclude: the 3rd chakra is related to power and ego development, and is associated with the fire element. Most notably, it is located in the solar plexus, a place which I have felt a tremendous amount of tension throughout my life, and which I would describe as a belly knot. The book Eastern Body Western Mind is a great introduction to the chakra system in a way that is more approachable to western minded people.
And another system that describes the energy issues I've had is the generator type in human design. Generators are all about using energy in a way that feels satisfying, and at their best they are incredibly productive. But when the activity doesn't align with the visceral yes I’ve been discussing, then things feel stale and you feel like you have to force yourself to do anything. See more in this talk for instance.
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2024-08-05