Video diary - 2017, How to give praise without objectification, intimacy vs intensity, sex addiction

A video log about a few things, bits and pieces coming into the new year and how to use Non Violent communication to give somebody praise without objectifying them in the positive (the other side of the same coin when we objectify people in the negative). It felt important to learn how to give praise in a way it can be fully received, instead of telling people what they are (brilliant, horrible etc) we tell them;

1. The behaviour they did.

2. How we felt when we observed it.

3. The needs that their behaviour met for us.

Praise/punishment end up being the same thing in the long run as one creates the other and a cycle begins. Learning to give gratitude non violently helps us eliminate the need to punish ourselves and others, and connects us directly to what we're feeling and needing in the heart.

Reality

There are so many reasons I could cite for not posting about what’s quite frankly been an extraordinary 6 months, I mean the bottom line is I didn’t feel like it, but what’s interesting to look at is why. Apathy and anxiety around this self perpetuating idea that what I’m offering is nowhere near good enough, poor little me! Falling into traps of having to produce something profound so other people would hold an image of me that I want them to believe in, is something I had unconsciously honed into a fine art, disguising it from myself in so many ways. Until it all cracked open recently in a spate of self destructive illumination. Nobody is looking for anything but the truth. They don’t give a shit about your convoluted self indulgent ramblings or attempts at elevating yourself with to an imaginary plateau of people that aren’t folly to human situations and painful feelings. Cut the bullshit, no more pain avoiding, here’s truth, I’m just as messed up as you, and probably an even bigger freak.

My life is weird, and very wonderful, beyond measure almost, sometimes I remember that, and gawk at how lucky I am, and sometimes I just wallow in a sludge of self pity berating myself to tears. Last year I decided to live retrospectively, giving up the idea that I knew what the fuck I was doing by going somewhere, like, we have these ideas, I’m going to this place to do such and such and visit here and have a jolly nice time. No. Here’s more truth; nobody knows why anybody is going anywhere or doing anything or why things happen, everybody’s winging it, and nobody knows what the fuck is going on. Kind of a relief to feel that isn’t it? No more pressure, no more expectation. But it brings a lot of anxiety, the idea that you’ll just go somewhere without a plan to see what wants to happen, so usually I’d mask that by pretending to know what I was doing and why. But getting real, WTAF (what the actual fuck) do I know about anything? Spirituals band around the idea of trust and surrender, I mean yea, its a great idea, but what about the truth? Forget the graceful majestic surrender of my dreams where I float gently into a wavy utopia of dancing quantum particles, how about a clinging, clutching, scrambling surrender that leaves you flailing and defecating in terror while it pounds you into submission, ripping what you think you know from your bleeding white knuckles?

A surrender to an actual reality. It never lets you down.

Going somewhere to listen, feel and follow has been an fascinating way to allow life to put me places, deliver me to situations that all seem to be slapping me toward the same direction in hyper real time. Wake up! Pull your head out of the bags! (An expression etched into my brain from a formidable medicine ceremony in San Francisco) Remember who you are.

The last 6 months has been an incredible journey that has delivered some extremely beautiful and extremely painful lessons on self love. Hitting the blind spots and shaking them awake through a fiery illumination.

It has seen a cooking of my soul in the black rock desert at the infamous burning man, exploring the underbelly of my own sexuality in San Francisco, helping put a Burmese pagoda thing on the roof of the California Vipassana Centre, touring my parents around my old Asian stomping ground of Taiwan and Hong Kong, diving into one of the most beautiful, painfully tangled and revealing relationships of my life with a soul sister, revisiting the Philippines Eco-village and retreat centre for inner dancing and general high conscious weirdness, learn some permaculture, build a few compost toilets and tree houses, live on top of a mountain in a tent for two months, converge with 80 plus people in the jungle sans plan, throw myself into a tailspin of excruciating childhood emotional conditioning by ending the beautiful relationship with my partner, and being caught by Bali, which is where I find myself now, drinking juice, dancing, doing yoga and simplifying life.

I couldn’t begin to detail the adventures along the way that brought me here, actually I could but I probably wont, maybe I’ll reference them in future posts. And they haven’t been all fun, some of them have been a straight up kick in the nuts - painful and depressing. Reality checks about yourself can feel that way sometimes, And despite the chipper nature of the post, you catch me on a good day, when I'm not berating myself for a medley of if only's that exist exclusively in the private hell of my own skull.

But its funny how crisis forces us to to do what works, because it works. I don’t always know what that is, but sometimes I do, and I still don’t do it because I’d rather seek the comfort of the story. Human shit. I hit a place where I didn't know how much longer I could grip my narrative. Maybe I've been wrong about me, maybe I'm not half the prick I thought I was. Or maybe it doesn't matter because maybe everyone else is too.

Hello reality, old friend, I’m sorry I ignored you for so long, thank you for being consistent in my life, staying here to watch me stumble around with a bag on my head colliding with you again and again, waiting patiently until the stubbornness subsides and I fall gracelessly back into your arms. I hereby vow to not be as much of a dick, most of the time. hold me to it. show me how I falter, and pull my strings when I get lost, as I inevitably will again. It’s good to be home.

#reality #personal #journal