focus - the easiest fix is the hardest

I stood on the beach today watching people fly past on wind and kite surfers, the water had some movement in it too, just the way I like it for paddle-boarding. My wife and I rent out some of the water toys on that beach, I have time, but I do not join my friends, I just watch and try to hide that I feel like shit. I have not been on the water for nearly 2 months.

At first it was fun to explore psychology and anthropology, but it is hard to stay with the questions and return to the sensations of being present. After awhile I started to stay with my answers and they become less flexible and more resentful. It is hard to watch what we have done with our habitats and accept that there is no wilderness to return to. We have more comfort and are less exposed to the elements, disease and predators, but money is the currency of life now.

Depression is a strange beast, we know how to break it, we know that exercise, breathing, acceptance, laughing can all break the loop of negative thoughts feeding the tightness, numbness and chemicals of sadness.

I mention this because, it is so hard to break out of an emotional state when we are within it. Now if I can not do it, I have no right at all to keep writing about how easy and wonderful life is when we allow ourselves to feel all of it.

I wonder if depression is not so much the feeling of sadness, but the lost space I find myself in, somewhere between the feelings I am too afraid to have and the pure sensation of my surroundings that have lost their vibrancy.

Thats the thing, I am pretty sure that all addictions are the strategies we use to avoid feelings we are not ready to have.

I don't have many vices left, and I am only on one cup of coffee a day now. I could hit the ocean, but part of me does not want to let the depression escape, It has a comfortable familiarity to it. Like an old T shirt or pair of sneakers that are too worn out and dirty to use.

When we suppress uncomfortable feelings, we suppress the good stuff also, that leaves us floating in a nowhere land without the motivation to or desire to break free

Well anyway, this blog post is about focus. So I will put it to the test and come back to you.

I am pretty sure that all emotions arise from either:

1. resonating - allowing (this is where all the rich contrast and vibrancy of life is found)
   or
2. contraction - not allowing (this is where I found myself)

Not allowing falls into two further categories

2a. functional relevant tension - skills (sports, arts, technical skills, combat, even love making) in this case tension is pulsed and used "wisely" so that we remain in a feedback loop with reality.

or

2b. dysfunctional non relevant tension - fear and clinging (this can be also be a "shut down" from mild to catatonic) - in this case we stay in relationship only with the story of our own value and values. It normally leads to anger and shame, which can deepen the spiral and increase the sense of isolation and low self worth. You can imagine how addictions accelerate and complicate this spiral.

When we use skills we remain aware and deeply interested in our surroundings and our senses are heightened

If we remain in fear state without any action that could make use of the chemicals and tensions created,
we stay deeply in mind, we may see and hear etc. but our senses are dulled.

The most direct and powerful way back to sensation and relevant tension, (out of fear) is through shifting focus

It would be great if we could find the deeper beliefs,(stories and opinions) that trigger the non relevant contraction, withdrawal, and examine their validity. They are not always accessible, without help and training.
Focus is always available.

So I am going to turn of Netflix, stop typing, save the crappy eagle picture as it is (even though I can't get the body right).
I am going to sit quietly, close my eyes and allow myself to feel deeply whatever it is that I am feeling.
Not going to change it, not trying to get rid of it, not waiting for it to leave. I am going to respect my biology and the sensation that it is having. When my mind wonders, I will bring it back to slowly scanning and simply being - allowing.

That is the opposite of contraction and resistance, but I am not aiming for relaxation, I am aiming for feeling.
No more stories...

About 40 minutes or more of meditation and then some stretching and moving with my eyes closed, I feel more peaceful, I have edited the above text so no need to add any more. (ok just a little)

I guess this is a pretty strange blog, but its where I am, its just me, how I am.

Its just psychobiology - how our minds and bodies respond to our habitats and our fellow inhabitants.
There is the real and the un real. (our habitats are real, guess where the un real arises from - yes, but only when we buy into it)

It is nearly always the un real that hurts us most, simply because our biology can not protect us from that which is not real.
only we can do that, if we are honest enough to distinguish between what we want to believe and what simply is evident right now.

deep thinking, probably needs to be balanced with action, (preferably the graceful type lol)

=8-P