Gabriel Mohr

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What Is Self-Integration, and Why Is It Meaningful?

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Quick Facts

-Self-integration is the process of integrating every part of your personality into one, whole self!

-Resistance, created by ourselves or picked up from others, often keeps us from being our whole selves. Self-integration is the “cure” for this. It is also the cure for ignoring and/or suppressing yourself.

-Participating in self-integration makes you a whole human being since you’re conscious of your entire personality!

-Self-integration can be painful and scary, but it’s more than worth it!

-Going through self-integration gives you more self-control and more enjoyment of your life the more you do it.

-Asking yourself questions about yourself speeds up the process and makes it easier!

Intro

Self-integration is the process of consciously disidentifying from your subconscious processes, seeing/feeling them completely, and consciously integrating them into your personality. This is a way to go about psychological healing as it helps you bring up and properly process trauma/unwanted thought patterns so that you can “face your fears” and release them into the ether!

What I’m about to tell you may seem like it’s all sunshine and rainbows – and some of it is! But some of it requires looking deep into yourself and shining a flashlight on the parts that want to stay hidden within your psyche. These parts (the psychic processes that exist within our individual subconscious minds) are usually the “nasty feelings” we feel if we’re going about our daily lives and we say something that we’re “not supposed” to say, or if we’re sitting in our home and suddenly thoughts start racing through your head that you don’t want to think about, or if you become angry while you’re at work, or if you’re anxious because you’re about to go out on a date.

The good news is every problem you have is your own and, therefore, solvable! From what I’ve observed, the most effective way to solve these problems is by consciously integrating all of your psychic processes so that you may form a complete perspective of life (perspective is everything, after all), experience an abundance of mental health, and much more!

The Decision to Integrate

Integrating yourself is no easy task unless you choose otherwise. Once you decide to go down the path of integration there will be a fair amount of suffering and a fair amount of pleasure – however, both experiences will be meaningful and will lead to a responsible, healthy lifestyle that will draw other people toward you like a magnet (in a good way)! If you haven’t made the choice then it’s ultimately your decision – you can decide to live your life the same as you always have, or you can choose to see all of your personal subconscious (even unconscious) processes you’ve suppressed and/or see the collective subconscious mind and the meaning therein! I will not persuade you in one direction or another since both kinds of people (the integrated and non-integrated) will find their lives to be meaningful, albeit in very different ways.

I will, however, speak the truth; needing/wishing to realize yourself will ultimately lead to you realizing yourself in one way or another, and integrating your subconscious psychic processes into your conscious personality will help you realize yourself! It is one of many paths but I speak of it because it has personally aided me immensely and because I’ve come to understand that integration will help anyone who is willing to undertake the process, you included! It’s also important to note that if you make this decision you won’t be able to turn back; that is, you normally cannot fit back into your old personality once you’ve gained the wisdom and knowledge that comes with integration until you are very advanced in this area of life!

It’s Important To Have An Open Mind

When integrating yourself it’s extremely important to know that you’ll come across psychic processes that will appear to be one thing and really be something different. Here’s an example:

“An image comes up from the depths of your mind. You are on the street, but nobody else is. It’s dark, misty, and smells faintly of homeless cats. Out of nowhere a man jumps out of the bushes and rushes towards you.”

At this point, most people would block this image out since they have a strong fear of death! They would dismiss the image as “a nightmare” or a “terrible thought” (depending on if they’re awake or asleep). However, in this hypothetical scenario, the person experiencing the subconscious image has decided to have an open mind and see what it really is they need to see, and so the story ends as such:

“As he rushes towards you you remain calm. Frighteningly calm. When he’s just about to tackle you, you move to the side and he falls through the ground into a bottomless void, lost but not forgotten.”

When you ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way” you will (likely) tend to answer yourself through what I like to call “mental videos,” and these “mental videos” are going to feel unpleasant until they are truly realized (in other words, until the video ends without any prompting from yourself). It will feel even more unpleasant to ask yourself this question and then proceed to consciously suppress the image as it comes to your attention, although this is quite common when you’re first starting out.

If you’re reading this post then you (probably) have an open mind! However, it is always important to consciously open your mind by saying something to the extent of “I choose to have an open mind” as often as possible so that the integration process isn’t unnecessarily painful! If you do this enough some of these subconscious processes may approach you without the need to search for them, and this is the ideal state to be in – a state of complete acceptance and trust in your self (your thoughts, mental videos, images, beliefs, feelings, etc)!

Societal Boundaries

Some of our repressed qualities come from accepting or denying parts of life that other people accept or deny. When we’re born we’re told what we can and cannot do, and then we grow up and tell other people what they can and cannot do. This has led to a society that (as a whole) accepts certain things (such as football) and (as a whole) rejects/doesn’t know much about other things (like spirituality).

Unfortunately for us Americans, many of us do not live in a society that values (or is even knowledgeable about) mental health, so following the crowd will almost always lead to compliance and suffering, but most of us have followed the crowd enough to be psychologically damaged and in need of integration.

We have the church, for example. One of the biggest rules of the church is to refrain from sexuality until you are married and to only have sex with your partner. However, if there’s one thing you don’t want to do it’s repressing a desire that you feel. This doesn’t only apply to sexual desire – it can manifest as a desire to see a movie, travel, hang out with a certain group of people, etc etc. The reason for this is that repression always leads to an increase in neuroticism (the personality trait). Invariably. All the time.

However, the church isn’t the only social construction that has the potential to rob us of our mental health – almost all social constructions exist to turn a profit (politics, government, most corporations, etc) and/or are misguided in their ways. Some of them (like the church and the government) are even interested in asserting and maintaining control over our minds, and this is a big part of the “social awakening” that you could be going through right now. I won’t get into this much further (I’ll cover it in a future post) but watch for any organization that imposes boundaries on other people in one form or another, and ask yourself if they have imposed such a boundary onto you, as this may contribute to your need for integration.

We also have these deadly things called social norms, and they (usually) don’t explicitly tell us what we can and cannot do (like the law does) but people who follow these norms live by an assumption that looks something like this: “If you do this a certain way, we’ll accept and respect you. If you decide to do it a different way we’ll have to pretend we don’t know you, we may even treat you with disgust, and we certainly won’t be able to accept you as you are.” Many, many people fall into the trap of following social norms since most of us have the need to feel accepted, but what they don’t realize is that they’re rejecting certain parts of themselves when they conform to society’s standards, which in turn creates neuroticism inside the individual’s psyche that needs to be healed.

In order to move outside of “the circle of society,” we must become aware of our society’s customs, norms, dos and don’ts, and what’s acceptable and what isn’t. It’s also important to be aware of the norms and dos and don’ts of the community (whether that be your church, your school, etc) you grew up in and the community you’re living in now (provided you’ve moved at one point or another). Being aware of these rules will help you understand the people who live(d) by them, and particularly how the people in your community treated you while growing up as a child. Once you know the dos and don’ts of your community, then you can get a pretty good idea of which parts of you you were taught to suppress, and these are the parts that are asking to consciously be integrated into your personality.

It should be noted that time is mostly wasted by mourning the past; that is to say, we can blame other people for the problems we have, but the hurt we feel comes from the expectation that such people were supposed to do better and treat us better than they did. In reality, we are the ones who control ourselves, even if someone has convinced us that we should control ourselves in a certain way. If you didn’t know that before, you know it now, and now you have the choice to ignore this fact or to keep it in mind as we move forward to the next section!

Personal Experiences

There is another kind of neuroticism that can take place, but this is more of a personal nature than what I’ve described above. Let’s say you’re a small child, and you’re about to go on your first airplane flight. You may be excited because you’re going to do a big grownup thing that you’ve only heard about up until this point. Your parents give you a window seat, the captain announces take off, and before you know it you’re soaring 40,000 feet above the ground! You decide to look down to see what it’s like and suddenly you’re stricken with a stifling fear that makes you quickly look away, and this fear (albeit unconsciously) stays with you until adulthood as a somewhat common “fear of flying.”

Obviously, the possibilities are infinite, but I will point out that personal neuroticism is usually much more meaningful to overcome than social neuroticism. It is usually the case that one awakens to the state of their community before awakening to their own personal trauma within. It’s also easier and better to heal personal trauma since by doing this, you (usually) skip the step of being angry at society for causing all of your problems anyway!

Subconscious Repression

Whether suggested by society or simply because of personal preference, repression is done by ourselves to ourselves. This fact can be easily conceptualized, but it can be very difficult to fully realize since most of us are very used to repressing the parts of life we don’t agree with. But this is good news in the sense that we have the ability to find the parts of ourselves that are repressed and integrate them into our conscious lives!

It will become apparent that healing your repression gives more meaning than healing socially encouraged repression, however, both sources of repression must be addressed by you and it can be found to be one or the other by your own judgment, and both can be healed through your own power.

Here is the process:

1. Sit in a quiet environment, away from others. The reason for this is so that you can observe the thoughts/feelings running through your mind, heart, soul, and body.

2. Feel the feelings and think the thoughts that you deem uncomfortable. There is no need to do anything except breathe during this stage, and I recommend that you attempt to see the pictures and/or mental videos that are associated with such thoughts/feelings in your mind.

3. It may go down in intensity on its own, or it may not. Either way, it’s best to consciously accept these repressed/unintegrated parts of you and see anything they have to show you in your mind’s eye. This can simply be done by saying “I choose to accept these parts of me and treat them with love and compassion.”

4. Disidentify from it by saying, “I choose to disidentify from this belief/feeling.” Then, ask yourself, “Why do I think or feel this way?” The answer you receive is an intuitive answer (I.E. it will be from yourself to yourself) that may lead to more questions. Answering these follow-up questions until no more questions are asked is the doorway to realizing the next subconscious process that is asking to be integrated.

5. Repeat as needed!

It’s important to note that you aren’t trying to get rid of these parts of yourself; instead, you’re trying to accept them, knowing that they are a part of you (you can even choose to mature these parts of yourself)! This can either be depressing or liberating, depending on where you are in your development, but if you find this depressing then it is most important to ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way?” And this is where I start the next section.

Asking Questions

Asking yourself, “Why do I feel what I feel?” is the most important step after realizing what you feel. If you simply feel your subconscious pain you will see the images that accompany it, and that may be enough, but if the “problem” still lingers then the next step is to ask questions. If, for example, I’m feeling depressed then I can say, “I wish to feel this depression and accept it for what it is.” However, then I can ask, “Why do I feel depressed?” and come up with an answer; “Because I feel lonely.” Then I ask myself, “Why do I feel lonely?” only to find that I don’t have any real friends in my life. I can go even further and ask, “Why do I lack real friends?” and answer myself with, “Because I’m not a real friend myself.” So then I ask why that is, and I can answer myself by saying that I stay too busy to spend any quality time with genuinely good people.

The more you question your current state the more answers you will receive. Some of these answers will be welcome and some will be painful, but if you wish to integrate yourself then it’s best to find the root of an issue by consciously accepting the thought/feeling and then asking questions regarding it so that you may travel deeper into the root or find another issue altogether (both are possible).

Asking questions about your dreams will help you in this regard as well, and it’s easy – it simply involves asking yourself the significance of the dream that you remember from the previous night. If someone is particularly notable in your dream you may ask, “Why do I remember that person?” or “What was so interesting about that box?” The answers you receive will eventually point to a part of yourself that would like to be recognized, accepted, and integrated, but it’s time to end this quite lengthy post.

Conclusion

The steps and conceptualization are documented here but the experiences you have will make one of the greatest adventures of your life. Paying attention to your inner life is the first step towards healing yourself, and cultivating a loving attitude towards yourself (and life in general) is a very meaningful (and adventurous) path to take if you so choose to! If you enjoyed this post, you’ll probably enjoy the post I’ve written about emotional suppression as well!

Hey – do you feel like you need an abundance of love? Check out the surprise hiding behind this link! Have a wonderful day! 

What Judgment Is, And How To Handle It

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Quick Facts

-Judgment is the process of gathering information and coming to a conclusion or decision, and usually, the end result is based on commonly accepted law and/or morality. 

-The fear of judgment goes back to our primal days – if we were negatively judged we were thrown out of the tribe, and back then, we couldn’t survive the harsh elements on our own.

-Some judgments are grounded, which means they are based on physical evidence that is obvious to others. Some judgments are ungrounded, which means they’re either false or of things that are subtle and/or the evidence is not obvious to others.

-Becoming a stellar judge yourself (not necessarily in the legal sense) is a great idea if you’d like to counteract the bad judges that are out there!

Intro

Today we’re going to dissect judgment and see it for what it really is! We’ll also be taking a look at the fear of judgment, since this is what plagues many of us today, and we’ll figure out how to resolve it! Enjoy the read!

The Beginning

Negative judgment (especially when it is subconsciously acted out) is one person (or a group of people) acknowledging another person (or a group of people) and rejecting them for one reason or another. This can be extremely hurtful for everybody involved, the judger and the judged alike, and it’s driven many people into isolation, anxious states of mind, and sometimes even suicide.

Positive judgment has some underlying problems as well; if we judge something in a positive manner that means we automatically (and often subconsciously) negatively judge its opposite. This is the same for negative judgment; if someone negatively judges something in a negative manner they automatically positively judge the opposite. With the duality exposed, we can begin to realize the truth about judgment, but it’s required to go far more in-depth than I have so far.

What Is Judgment, Exactly?

The first thing that’s important to note is that it used to have a major impact on the life of an individual when humanity was in a much earlier stage in its development. If an individual did something that was against the tribe’s well-being the tribe would judge him/her and forge a punishment for them based on whether or not they felt like they should. If an individual was exiled from their tribe they would eventually die since you needed your tribe in order to survive the harshness of the times. This fear of rejection (aka being negatively judged) seems to have carried over into the modern-day seeing as we take both happenings very seriously, more seriously than most other life events.

While the word “judgment” seems to point to a feeling that’s felt when we see the word “rejection,” and since “judgment” also doubles as an abstract concept that describes the process of one person or group of people accepting or denying another person or another group of people based on their requirements for acceptance, we already have the second thing to know about judgment; people accept or deny based on their own requirements for acceptance. You can go into an interview and absolutely crush it, but as long as the interviewer sees that you don’t meet their expectations (even if they’re hidden or unknown) you won’t get the job. This is the same with a mate, a friend, a business comrade, a family member, etc etc. 

The third thing to know about judgment is that it shouldn’t just be brushed aside. If someone rejects you or judges you in a passive or openly harsh manner that probably means there is something about you that’s negatively affecting everybody else around you. This may not be the case (we’ll talk about that in more detail below) but it’s always best to ask yourself if what they’re saying is true and to answer yourself honestly. If you find it difficult to answer yourself honestly then that may be (at least part of) the problem.

Grounded Judgment vs. Ungrounded Judgment

You may remember a previous post that discusses the differences between grounded and ungrounded anxiety/confidence. Judgment works the same way; the act of judgment itself can be either grounded or ungrounded and the feeling of rejection can also be grounded or ungrounded. Distinguishing between the two kinds of judgment is crucial if we’re going to learn how to deal with harsh judgment.

Let’s say that a couple is having a fight and one of them is sensing “defeat” coming around the corner. If the individual is immature they may throw out a random insult that has nothing to do with the subject they’re fighting about; “you know, my ex was better than you. Maybe I’ll go back to them.” This is a harsh blow to the face; Person A just made a general judgment on Person B about their entire being summed up in one single sentence. The fight would probably continue with something like that going unnoticed but this is ungrounded judgment at its finest. 

We can spot ungrounded judgment by placing any judgment we come across with this particular filter; the more a judgment is meant to serve the judger and not the judged the more of an ungrounded judgment it is. Obversely, the more a judgment is meant to serve the judged and not the judger the more grounded in reality the judgment is. 

This is where it gets tricky. Everybody is selfish and has selfish intentions (whether the intentions are realized or not), so one might be tempted to say that all judgments are ungrounded and that judgment itself is something to “awaken” from. It is important to note, however, that our long-ago ancestors were properly able to survive based on a series of judgments that distinguished poisonous from healthy, safe from dangerous, hot from cold, etc etc, and so I argue that grounded judgments in the modern day are just as important as they were when we were simply surviving as a species. Let’s take a look at this example below to see what I mean.

We have John, Linda, and Thomas, three fictional characters in a fictional scenario. John and Linda have been dating for just over a year when Linda starts noticing something strange about John; he’s becoming more aggressive, more paranoid, more controlling, and more uncaring as the relationship moves forward. She starts to become concerned with this so she goes into his room and tries to find out what’s wrong; maybe she’s expecting a prescribed medication, or maybe a booze bottle hiding in a drawer somewhere, but she didn’t expect him to be looming over the doorway when she turned around because she didn’t know that he was coming home from work early that day.

Starting to become frightened she hires a private investigator named Thomas to help her find out why John has been acting this way. Thomas looks into his life away from home and reports that John has started going to the stripper clubs in the musty part of their town. This includes sex (which he aptly pays for), drugs, (which are normally given to him for free), and lots of promises that he’ll get a lot more if he comes back next weekend. John confesses to these faults and now Linda has the capability to make a grounded judgment as to what should happen between them as a couple.

She begins by thinking that it’s over between her and John, but she suddenly remembers something about John’s past; the last time she went to visit his parents for the holidays, she noticed that his dad was an overbearing, overly strict alcoholic who could loosen up a little bit. When she asked John about it in private he said that his father was always like this and that he never gave his children any respect unless they brought him a beer.

Then she remembers the time when John broke down crying and admitted his feelings for another woman who was in his life at the time. He never went with her but the implication that Linda wasn’t enough for him stuck with her for a long time.

Finally, she remembers a time when she found a bag of cocaine in his drawer. When she brought the bag to his attention he admitted that he had been taking the drug two weeks before she found the bag and that he’ll stop using it immediately.

Each memory Linda has let her become more and more capable of a grounded judgment for the situation at hand. She decides that John obviously has a core issue with his self-worth based on what happened in the past; she decides that he’s in a lot of emotional pain and that he is somebody who needs to be helped, not hurt. Instead of a nasty breakup that has the potential to hurt John even more than she decides to break apart from John with the promise that she will help him in any possible way she can while he gets himself together as an individual.

While this may not be the best decision it certainly wasn’t the worst decision, and the reason for this is because she made it based on real-life events that happened between them while keeping John’s own well-being in mind instead of making a snap judgment that could have proven hurtful instead of helpful. 

How To Handle Judgment Properly

Now that we’re aware of the two types of judgment it’s important to note that no judgment is completely grounded and no judgment is completely ungrounded. Most judgments will be a mixture of the two, and it’s our job to take a judgment that has been thrown our way and decide if it’s more grounded than ungrounded or vice versa. In other words, learning how to handle judgment is the same as being a good judge as to whether or not the judgment was accurate or inaccurate and then taking action based on your decision. Since this is the case it’s vital to learn how to judge people/situations properly, we do this by being aware of the reality in which we live.

We don’t need to be aware of every single grain of sand on the entire planet in order to be a sound judge, but we do need to be aware of what’s happening in the situation at hand and be willing to consider the well-being of everyone involved if we’re going to be a grounded judge.

I’m certainly far from perfect in this area of life; I find myself making snap judgments and ungrounded accusations about the people around me throughout the day, and it’s something I’m in the process of changing. For those plagued by the judgment of their friends/family/acquaintances, however, it’s important to become a grounded judge and you can do this by asking the question, “Why do these people keep saying or doing the things they do? Don’t they know it’s hurting me and probably everyone else around us?”

When this question is followed through (which may require some proper investigation into your judger’s past depending on who they are) you will then have enough information and confidence to make a grounded judgment about the individual/group in question and you will have an easier time deciding if their judgment is grounded or ungrounded.

The more you are able to distinguish between grounded and ungrounded judgments (I.E., which judgments are hurtful and which judgments are helpful) the more your confidence grows. The more your confidence grows the more negative judgments tend to become “swallowed” by your confidence. The more negative judgment that’s “swallowed” by your confidence, the less you will be negatively affected by it. Then you’ll feel better about yourself in general and you’ll have an increased capacity to help others get to the same place as well.

Conclusion

Judgment can be harsh, and the solution probably wasn’t what you were expecting (I sure didn’t expect it to be like this), however it is a relatively simple solution to a pressing issue in American society. I hope this post helped you answer your question, have a great day!

On Disidentifying From Thoughts and Feelings

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Quick Facts

-We can ‘disidentify’ from thoughts and feelings! This helps us take control of and change the subconscious parts of ourselves that aren’t good for us.

-Doing this for every thought and feeling that controls us gives us a kind of peace, enjoyment, and self-control that is unrivaled!

Intro

Sometimes our thoughts and emotions get the better of us, and we don’t know why we think and feel the way we do. Disidentifying from these thoughts and emotions is an amazing way to analyze and control them so that they work for us instead of the other way around. Read on to find out more! Enjoy the article!

The Basic Info!

It’s very common to have an image that we like to have for ourselves and put out to the world. Some of us identify with our favorite sports teams, some of us with the state we’re from, some of us with certain phrases that stuck with us from childhood, some of us with the things we own, some of us with our bodies, our minds, our friends, our family… The list of possibilities is infinite.

When we say that “so-and-so has a big ego” we’re pointing out that so-and-so identifies with their set of particular thoughts and feelings very closely, and if you say anything that sounds like you might be devaluing any of their favorites they’ll defend themselves as if you personally attacked them with the intent to hurt them (depending on how closely they’re identified with such thoughts/feelings).

Of course, if you’re identified with something you can always disidentify from it. It can be difficult to fully disidentify from some of the things you’ve identified with over the years (especially if you brought them on as a child) but we’ll go through why you should disidentify and how you can disidentify.

It’s important to note that disidentifying from thoughts and feelings, in particular, doesn’t mean you’re suddenly free from feeling these thoughts and thinking these feelings. The opposite is the case; disidentifying from a thought or a feeling will often increase its intensity for a short while, but instead of this thought/feeling happening in the background without your conscious knowledge of it, it can be fully observed and seen/felt for what it is. Once a subconscious process is seen for what it really is it no longer has any control over your thoughts or feelings, and every subconscious process disidentified from is one step closer to peace. It’s also important to note that you can only disidentify from thoughts and feelings – attachment to physical objects, people, and activities aren’t possible, it’s only possible to identify with and disidentify from the thoughts/feelings that are produced by such people/things/perspectives/activities. 

How To Disidentify From Your Thoughts and Beliefs

From what I can tell there are three ways to approach this. The first and easiest way is to disidentify from something when it pops into your mind, even if you didn’t consciously search for it. This can be anything from a thought (“boy I hate it when so and so doesn’t do the dishes”) to a physical object that produces an emotional reaction (“that gun looks scary”) to an entire perspective that provokes a bothersome feeling (“what’s the point of life anyway?”). How you disidentify from the subject in question is you form a coherent sentence (“I hate it when such and such doesn’t vacuum the carpet”) and you think of a coherent sentence that is meant to separate your conscious self from whatever you’re disidentifying with (“I choose to disidentify from that thought”).

Sometimes an emotion or a thought may pop up that you have trouble putting into words; if/when this happens it’s important to stop what you’re doing and focus your energy into putting the feeling/thought into a sentence. Once you’re able to fully articulate the feeling/thought it will be much easier to see it for what it is, and therefore it will be much easier to disidentify from it. Again, the point is to feel the feeling and/or think thoughtfully, not turn away from it.

The second way is by consciously searching for things that bother you and disidentifying from them. This can be tricky since you cannot find what you’re looking for by thinking in a linear, direct path; if you wish to search for subconscious forces you’ll have to let your mind take you wherever it wants to go, and the thought/feeling you end up with may not be the one you set out to find, but it will probably still need to be disidentified from nonetheless. For example, you might set out to find the root of your anxiety but your mind may take you to the root of some unexpected sadness instead, and it’s best to go along with it and feel what your mind takes you to instead of resisting it with your conscious intention.

The third (and possibly best) way is by utilizing your dreams to clearly see the parts of you that you need to separate from. I had this happen just last night – I had finished eating pizza before I went to sleep, and in my dream, I was in the car with a very fat man who was eating everything he was given by other people in the car (mainly donuts). What I learned is that there’s a part of me that likes to eat without caring about the consequences, and since I didn’t disidentify from it had more or less controlled me up until the next morning when I woke up and properly disidentified from it.

Either path you take, any thought/perspective you want to disidentify from must be done consciously. After you’ve expressed conscious intention to disidentify from xyz there will probably be resistance in the form of thought and/or feeling – after all, you’ve kept this part of you for a long time and it’s served you well, why should you give it up? However, staying awake and aware will allow you to fully process the subconscious thought/feeling, and you’ll either feel worse (which simply means there’s more work to do) or you’ll feel better (which means your job is done, at least at the moment). Both results are fantastic, and doing this even once in your life will bring you one step closer to genuine peace.

This is also known as “integration.” Disidentifying from and fully processing thoughts or feelings is the same as consciously acknowledging the parts of yourself that you neglect and integrating them into your life.

Why Is Disidentification Important?

Chances are you get angry and anxious. Everybody gets angry and anxious at one point or another, but there is something we can do to help this. If you’re a clinically healthy person (in other words if you haven’t been clinically diagnosed with general anxiety disorder or any of its variants) chances are you get angry and/or anxious because, somewhere down the line, someone has threatened a part of you that you’re identified with and you feel the need to defend it/yourself. If you have been clinically diagnosed then you’re probably going to need more help than I can provide in this post; however, it’s possible this may help you (the clinically diagnosed) as well, I’m not entirely sure.

Disidentifying will also help you find your bliss (some might say “source” or your “center”). Imagine what it would be like if you disidentified from everything you’ve identified with along the way? If you did this you wouldn’t be afraid of death, and if you aren’t afraid of death you are truly free. As a side note, try disidentifying from the fear of death; it’s very hard, but the benefits are endless.

Lastly, disidentifying from your “favorites” helps open your mind so that you can see the psychic processes that go on within you. This is part of finding your bliss but I put it as a separate benefit because it’s an entire journey in and of itself, one that’s certainly worth completing due to the massive amounts of meaning felt while discovering such things.

Becoming less angry and anxious? Becoming blissful? Opening your mind to the reality inside of yourself? If you want all of these things, you can buy my overpriced book that beats around the bush for 3/4s of the time and gives you a useless solution at the very end! Only $49.99! Buy now!

What Should You Disidentify From?

Everything that bothers you, and everything that’s detrimental to you. If you feel dull, sad, angry, anxious, etc and you don’t know why there’s usually something you haven’t fully realized that’s trying to come into conscious attention, and that is what you disidentify from. You shouldn’t worry about disidentifying from the “wrong” things because anything you feel the need to disidentify from is worth disidentifying from for one reason or another, and you’ll know exactly what they are once you begin the process for yourself.

Is There Anything Else?

I’ve done my best to provide the concept of disidentification in this post, but the felt reality of it can only be experienced if you try it out for yourself. And so I close with the promise that this path does eventually lead to bliss even though it is the path less traveled, and even along the way you will begin to feel complete and realized as a true individual. Have a wonderful day! 

Confidence and Anxiety are Polar Opposites, and Why It’s Important to Balance the Two

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Quick Fact

-Just like light and day, confidence and anxiety are total opposites on the emotional scale!

Intro

I’m making a bold claim by saying that confidence and anxiety are polar opposites, just like black and white, masculine and feminine, light and dark. However, we’ll look at the definition of these two words and we’ll see what I mean!

The Definitions

Confidence is described as, “a feeling or consciousness of one’s powers or of reliance on one’s circumstances,” or as “faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way.”

Already, we can see an upside and a downside to confidence. It’s important to be aware of the power and ability you actually possess since it helps give you a sense of self (aka ego), which is a very healthy feeling if it stays at this level.

The real trouble comes from taking the second definition too far; overestimating our own abilities or potential leads to too much ego, which is really where it gets its negative connotation from. If we have too much ungrounded faith or belief in ourselves, especially if we’re trying something new, or if we’re out of our element in any given situation, then we come off as brash, arrogant, egotistical, unapproachable… You know the type.

The definition of anxiety is “Apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill,” or the medical definition, “an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physical signs (such as tension, sweating, and increased pulse rate), by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one’s capacity to cope with it.”

In other words, there are situations involving certain things, thoughts, or people that we aren’t confident enough to move through; sometimes we don’t believe in our own abilities and that produces a feeling that we call ‘anxiety.’

‘Grounded’/’Ungrounded’ Anxiety and ‘Grounded’/ ‘Ungrounded’ Confidence

Sometimes, however, we feel anxious because we really don’t possess the knowledge, skillset, or capability to work through a situation properly. If someone decides to learn construction as a trade then they won’t feel so great if they switch their career and become a chef simply because they don’t possess the skillset to work in such an industry and make money. (He might have learned to cook beforehand of course but let’s say he didn’t for the sake of time.)

This kind of anxiety isn’t something that goes away from him just because he reads a blog article; it slowly transforms into confidence as he learns the skillsets needed to be able to work and thrive in a kitchen.

It’s important to know whether your confidence and anxiety are grounded in reality or not. If you’re like me and you feel a pang of anxiety because you’re about to go to work, then the anxiety isn’t very grounded in reality because I’ve been doing the same kind of work for a year and a half now, and I’ve been through enough to know I’ll make it through the day. If, though, I’m hanging off the edge of a cliff about to die and an avalanche starts to shoot down towards my face… Well, that’s a shot of adrenaline I’ll actually need to find a hidey-hole somewhere!

I mention this because I see a lot of people (especially young men) who are very, very anxious for no apparent reason whatsoever. Sure, most of the time I don’t know anything about their personal life, but what I do know is that they’re in a safe place at that moment with thoughts and/or feelings bothering them about either past or foreseen future situations. I call that ‘ungrounded anxiety’ simply because they aren’t confident in their actual capabilities to make the situation happen as they want it to.

If you are capable of doing something and/or making it turn out the way you want (whatever “it” might be) then there’s no reason to feel anxious about that particular circumstance. If you’re feeling anxious about something and you really don’t have the skillset to overcome it then I call that “grounded anxiety.”

Instead of running away from it (by medicating yourself or otherwise), it’s best to find the skill set you need to build and build it up enough to take care of the situation properly. Slowly, over time, grounded anxiety turns into grounded confidence whether we’re conscious of it or not.

“Grounded confidence” is confidence based on actual ability. If someone is confident in their ability to build a house because they’ve been building houses for 40 years then they have grounded confidence when it comes to building houses.

“Ungrounded confidence” is when someone creates confidence with their mind, out of nowhere!

For example, if someone tells you they can build a house but don’t have any actual experience building a house then it’s very possible that they’re operating from a place of ungrounded confidence. These kinds of people can seem egotistical, arrogant, etc, even though this isn’t a fundamentally unhealthy aspect of life – ungrounded confidence can be an amazing thing to manifest!

What About Medical Disorders?

If someone is diagnosed with something like GAD (General Anxiety Disorder) chances are it can be linked back to a traumatic event(s) that happened early on in that person’s life. I should mention I’m not a licensed professional and that if you feel anxious all of the time you should try more conventional methods of helping yourself (like seeing a therapist/psychiatrist) before reading the rest of this post.

If you have been medically diagnosed with any kind of anxiety then it’s important to know that you are the one who’s producing it. You may be thinking, “That’s not very fair, I was born with a chemical imbalance in my brain that has to be regulated with medication” or something along those lines, but you are the one who is keeping your reality the way it is, even if you’re using your subconscious mind to do it.

This kind of thinking might be confusing to most so I’ll explain further; I am merely pointing out that the part of you that circulates your blood, grows your bones, pumps your heart and digests your food isn’t something that is beyond your control, it is exactly what you are doing at this moment!

This means that if you have a genuine medical disorder that cannot be transcended by introspective questioning and intuitive back-tracking, it is still a part of you and it is keeping the medical disorder the way it is. This means that it is your responsibility to help yourself in the best way that you can, although this is certainly easier said than done.

To end this relatively short post, I’ll say that grounded anxiety and grounded confidence are both healthy when experienced in their due amounts; we do enjoy learning new things and perspectives after all! However ungrounded anxiety should be identified as such and changed into its grounded version, or disidentified with and healed/changed into another feeling.

Why? Because if we find out where our ungrounded anxieties lie then we can realize that we don’t need to worry about them, which will provide more energy to build the skillsets to turn grounded anxiety into grounded or ungrounded confidence!

Also, if we are lacking in confidence we can produce it with our mind and have it that way!

Conclusion

Thank you for reading! I’m truly grateful for your presence, and I’ll see you in the next article!

What If We Used Social Media… The Right Way?

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Quick Fact

-We can use social media to be entertained, enhance our lives, or both!

Intro

In this post, I’m going to outline the positives and negatives of social media. I’m also going to encourage you to use social media for good instead of letting it undeservingly consume your life. Enjoy the article!

Social Media

I go outside into Austin, TX and I see people on their phones. All day. Every day. Without exception.

Not to bash Austin or anything… It’s the same everywhere. Dallas, Fort Worth, LA, San Jose, New York, Little Rock, Idaho Falls…

People like to be on their phones checking their latest social media updates, watching the game, texting their friends and family, and making sure it isn’t going to rain tomorrow. All of these things are great, but is there a better way to spend time on social media? That’s a question I asked myself two years ago… Here’s what I found.

The Decision 

When I was younger I spent a lot of time playing video games, listening to music, and watching YouTube videos. Granted, it was a very different time and place for me, but nonetheless, I loved listening to Nightcore remakes (or the Drunken Peasants Podcast), watching Minecraft playthroughs, and playing games like Mario Kart, RuneScape, and PUBG.

I thought I was the outcast in this part of life since not very many people were like me in my stretch of the neighborhood.

But when I started to travel I looked around and saw it for myself; California, Utah, Wyoming, Texas, Florida, it didn’t matter where I was, people really liked to play their video games, scroll through social media, and watch their YouTube videos, just like I did when I was younger and still living with my parents.

After a while, it almost seemed like my hometown was one of the rare exceptions in the entire US. Almost everyone everywhere else had picked up some kind of gadget and fully integrated it into their life.

With this realization in mind, I started to get a little ballsy. Every chance I got I would look over at somebody’s computer screen, or look over their shoulder to see what they were doing on their phone/tablet, and I would always see the same thing (with few exceptions); Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Gmail.

Sometimes they weren’t even paying attention to what they were looking at. These people were just “going through the motions” and I could see why social media isn’t looked upon with much favor by our elders.

I started to wonder, ” What if I cut out everything I felt to be toxic and only use social media in a constructive way? What if I got out of the mindless drone I see other people in and try to make my life better using social media?” Until I asked that question I had always assumed that screens and social media were nothing but bad and that I shouldn’t do it at all, and I decided I was going to prove my ungrounded assumption wrong by using social media as a tool instead of the other way around.

A Double-Edged Sword

I soon began to realize that social media is America’s main medium for obtaining intellectual enlightenment.

It sounds silly as I sit here and write it out, but back then I was very grateful to study Jungian psychology, astrology, alchemy, to read all kinds of books written by brilliant and amazing people, to watch many kinds of lectures, workshops ran by notable philosophers, intellectuals, spiritual leaders, to study the different kinds of law and where they’re applied, to listen to all kinds of lost and hidden texts that were fairly enlightening but that no-one was talking about… The list goes on and on.

It’s been roughly two years since I decided to use social media for my own betterment and I’ve gone from being a hot mess to being a completely content human being who’s writing this post – I couldn’t ask for more if I tried!

And so I’ve realized that social media is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, advertisers are targeting us with useless information that seems to stick with the general public (McDonald’s commercials, energy drink commercials, social media commercials, etc). On the other hand, there’s a treasure trove of information on the other side of the advertisers that has the potential to contribute to your intellectual enlightenment with Jung’s books transformed into audiobooks on YouTube being some of my personal favorite findings.

I say it’s very important to make the conscious decision to use social media for our own benefit. If we decide what we’re seeing before we see it then we can be prepared for our challenges, whatever they happen to be. How you may ask? Simple – pay attention to what you’re looking at and ask yourself, “Do I want to look at this, or do I want to look at something else?”

If you feel toxicity when you look at a certain Facebook post, scroll past it. If you feel enlightened, you know you’re on the right path; in this case, it’s all about self-referencing and sticking with what (or who) you think or feel like you should stick with!