self reflection Meditation without reflection is like gardening without watering. This is a personal reflection, although I publish it, it's for me, for my own sanity and evolution. It will probably be boring so feel free to pass it, I'll get back to 'normal' pholing in my next post. I spent the last 24 hours completely alone at my house. Woke up at 12, had a nap. Checked my email, fix a site. I watch Venus War, an old anime, I liked the animation quite a lot, although the story wasn't great. I had a good swim then a nap in the hammock. My leg were swollen a bit from water retention. I figure that the water retention is really what is at the foundation of my blood clothing in my leg, and I need to care for that as much as a I can, so it doesn't become a bigger problem, yet again. I feel a bit weak and tired now. I have a hard time sitting up. Ready for bed. There was a big festival in the community, everyone were there, wife, daugther and her friend. I feel I don't have much time to work on my business. Life seems so busy all the time. I barely can get to the work that makes money. I had started to account for all the hours I spend working so that at the end of the month I can tally them up and invoice all my client accordingly. I think I stopped counting my hours mid July, now I have to make up some of the invoice, and I always put less hours that I really work, so my end of the month invoice will be quite small. I want to practice starting a new online community. I am not sure I'll even be able to set it up, server side that is, but I feel that will be a nice practice, we'll see where it will go. Something minimal self hosted, irc, http, gopher and some sort of bbs in ssh. Can I build something that will be easy enough for the less technical people to use? I feel it's hard to build something minimal that can be access with some less technical people. I like the SDF anonradio community and gopher, but I'd like to see if there is any interest from the more artist / activist / wiccan / yogi side of reality, a bit of a pipe dream, but I'll follow the momentum. I've been wasting a lot of my energy lately and I can feel its effect on my mind now. I would like to gather more energy and rebuild that storage, but there will be more energy to be used this week and in the coming few weeks. It's not a good time to be low on energy. Today was good though, lot of time for myself, lots of sleep, not too much screen time... apart for movies. My mother is coming at the end of the week and that can sometime be challenging. With our 'adopted' girl, it will be different. I will also move out of the studio for the next little while. I'll see how that will work. There is also a retreat in the tippi also happening on Wednesday, so I'll also be moving out of the tippi, which has been my own retreat place for the last month. I want to make a list of everything that is needed to free up the mind, so it can become calmer. - No social network - No surface web - Less movies / shows / music - Less technologies - Less reminder of everything that needs to be done. - Less technolgies that invade our life - Open source so you are in control - De-googlelized / de-appleize stuff - Less consumering (buying for entertainment) - Healthy food away from the process food - Natural clothing, less chemical - Pure water, pure air - Re-use and reduce - De-clutter - Dance, move and sweat - Deal with emotional past problem - Emotional intelligence practices - Shadow work... - Daily work that is not damaging - Make money in a sane way - Cultivate positive communities And this is even before meditating and doing yoga! I was thinking today maybe I should just move to a different country. But is there a country that focus on well being and personal development? Moving into the jungle! My daughter will love that! My study of Butoh is going well, I really like what Rhizome Lee had to write about his own research. He calls it a revolution in itself, where Butoh can be a way to connect to the different dimension we used to connect before the industrial revolution. Connecting to our ancestors and our past powers, tough the body trough movement. I will be teaching my first class of the Elemental Yoga Dance this Tuesday if everything goes accordingly. I'll see if there is interest, I would like to continue on that exploration for a while if the meditation group enjoy the practice. I'd like to spend 15 to 20 minutes, so that we can have a sitting meditation after that. Butoh classes are starting back this monday. Learning with Juju has been such a guilty pleasure for some reason. I just have so much fun, as if, if it's not hard it might not be worth it?? Not sure what is being that. With our 'adopted' (for a month) daughter I revisit a lot of my shadow self. It's been quite a positive exploration and a lot of healing is coming out of it. She is leaving in a month, and I am not sure how I feel about it. Her presence trigger so many thing from my past, it's awesome to have here, but it also become a major focus in my day. I didn't realized that when I accepted to have her here! But then as far as shadow work is concerned I don't see that there is so much more work to be done. I've had a few big chunk of self hatered and crooked concept about love falling to the way side in the last year. I feel it will be a bit of a rest once that's done. It will also make the void even wider. When living trough my 'shit' it keeps me busy to not look into the void. If there are no more 'shit' then it's only one direction. I wonder what it will look like then. I wonder what my winter will look like. I haven't seen my wife for almost 50 hours now even if we live in the same house! She left early on Friday morning so I didn't see her in the morning. Last time I saw her was Thursday evening and I went to bed earlier, going to be soon, I'll only see her tomorrow am if she doesn't leave too early! It's almost like I had a small reatreat by myself :D But I feel drained. It's interested to see the similarity between my wife and our adopted daugther. She is also broken by parent that didn't know how to love. My wife has a hard time expressing her love. I cleaned up the whole house, how else do you want me to express my love? I am not sure what I need, what I want. I want to be comforted, hugged, massaged. When I hug my wife, there is a timer, it's okay for a few second, but after that she has something else to do. I am teaching a friend of my daugther to play the violin. She got in a fight with her sisters, and left the room crying I went to see her, ask her if she want to play a bit of violin. She said yes, I asked her if she needed a hug as she was crying, she said yes with her head. I gave her a hug and she didn't want to let go. I was suprised I wanted out at first, but then realized that she wanted to hold on. I was touched by this need to be cared for, this hug that was needed. Maybe I also needed it, I shed some tears and we played violin together. I don't know if I need a hug, or I need someone who needs a hug. Maybe we both needed a hug at that time. Can I learn to share that to my wife? I tend to not care for myself as long as other are cared for. I can suffer if everyones is doing well. This is probably some shadow work that needs to happen. It's easier to deal with the shadows which include others in the deal. Like the fear of others' love or the desire of others, the fantasy about others. But the work with the self, the self love, or the lack of, it's harder to put in action. How can I heal this habit of not loving myself? What is the shadow character behind that? Can I heal that by being alone? My mother and father comes to mind when I write about this. Do I need to heal these archetype in order to start loving myself? It's also part of the Elemental Yoga Dance, creating a relationship between the mind and the body, how can the mind have emotion toward our body? What are these emotions and how can these be changed? There is so much work (paying job work) on the table, but I wasn't able to get to it today! I hope to get my ass in gear tomorrow and get some shit done. But I also know that if I need the rest, I should get the rest as that make the work so much easier. If you are still reading, you know what a mind dump looks like! This is all stuff that runs in my head all day but doesn't have much place to go. Putting it down in writing doesn't resolve anything but it helps me not have to think about it so much. I also see where emotions are triggered which helps understand where I am going or where I need to go to untangle other parts of my life. I've been told a couple time this week that my phlog was sad. It made me think a bit about what I want to share... but then realized, that's ok, if this trigger sadness in my reader, an emotions has been generated, and that's good.