Hi everyone that reads this. I hope things are going well with you. I just wanted to add a quick update to this journal. I’ve been feeling good for most of the time lately.
The problem I was trying to resolve was the fact that I thought too much about myself all the time. These thoughts were mostly about the future, so they were basically just worrying about the future. It’s hard to experience the present moment when you are lost in thoughts…
I realized that most people in this forum had past experiences with spirituality and found out it was not the answer, but maybe it was a necessary step for them in the journey. I always dismissed in my life everything that was about spiritual experiences, but this time I ended up doing some very basic meditation for the first time in my life. Just sitting and seeing what happens, and it seems the problem is the lack of attention. After a month I finally internalized what I think people mean by “you are not your thoughts”. I’m not my thoughts in the sense that I don’t seem to consciously create them. They appear out of the blue and there’s nothing I have to do about it. And by internalizing this now I know I don’t need to engage with them. They show up and… here they are… and then I can pay attention to them and let them go. This not only gives me a lot of peace and relief but my bad moods now also start and end a lot quicker. Because these negative feelings seem to always be a consequence of these thoughts, which I now am able to dismiss. I can’t prevent them from showing up, but I don’t have to entertain them. So I still feel anger, fear, etc. but I return to a state of feeling good and in peace more quickly.
One thing however is that during the day, I feel a lot better but it doesn’t feel like a PCE, because I’m “aware that I’m aware”, if that makes sense? I’m not absorbed in the moment – I consciously choose to be engaged with the moment. In PCEs everything happens automatically without me intervening. At the end of a PCE, it feels like I didn’t choose anything consciously — things happened without consciously thinking? I wonder if with time, it will become “natural” to be present in the moment without putting any conscious effort into it.
As usual I write this and don’t edit or sit on it too much so I can be a bit more honest with myself…