There are many releasing techniques available. They're relatively similar though, so I'll discuss the two key ones I've found so far.

If you're interested, both of these stem from discoveries made by a guy called Lester Levenson about 40 years ago. Anything he's written is worth reading, & there are many great videos of him on YouTube.

Sedona Method

This is a relatively brain-centred approach. You ask the following question about any issue X.

1. Can you let go of X?
2. Will you let go of X?
3. When?

And, well, that's it. I've met several people for whom this technique works incredibly well. For me, if something is really bothering me, I can find it hard to detach emotionally enough to answer the questions clearly.

I do like the gradual loosening of your attachment to the issue, along with the final "When" question. The implication being, of course, that if you can, and will, why not just let go of it now? A lot of times it's just never occurs that we're the ones in control, & that we always have a choice about whether or not we focus on or attach to something.

RELEASE TECHNIQUE

This is more of a feeling based, rather than mind based approach (ie kinaesthetic, not intellectual):

1. Become aware of the feeling
2. Feel the feeling
3. Identify the feeling
4. Relax into the feeling
5. Release the feeling

By identify, I don't think they mean "oh, that's the pain from being sworn at by my sister when I was 3" (although you may get those kinds of realisations), rather "oh, it's just below my bottom rib, about an inch in."

This method is more or less what I've found useful to do, except I just instinctively stay relaxed, and aware/feel/identify all kinda blend into one smooth "oh, I have a dark blue pain about there" sort of understanding.

It's also helpful that you don't need to even know what the feeling is about. It's just an 'it', so you just let 'it' go. A lot of times our subconscious will protect us by hiding certain details from our conscious mind.

The release technique guys have a couple of other variants too:

1. Take each feeling/issue/thought back to its underlying core: Is it an issue about wanting (or lacking) control, safety or approval/love. Once you know then let go of that wanting/lacking control, safety or approval.

This is super helpful since letting go of wanting (say) approval in one area of your life, you then let go of a little bit of it from every area of your life, so your entire life benefits.

2. Instead of pushing the bad feeling etc down, by saying 'no' to it, or avoiding it.. do the opposite! Say yes to it, welcome the bad feeling/thought up, then just let it go as it comes up.

3. If things are crazily overwhelming, just say "not so bad" to the issue, letting it go as you do. This is surprisingly effective at detaching & releasing things.

Of course, this is just a brief overview. There are subtleties to both these variants. The important thing is to find one approach that resonates and works well for you.

amazing pic by just k

How to find a feeling (if it hasn't already popped up)

First, calm yourself down ("not so bad" helps a lot). Try to sit or stand still, and take 3 regular breaths without thinking anything at all.

Next, look downwards (which triggers the kinaesthetic part of the brain & helps you focus on physical feelings). I also find it helpful to tap the karate chop point (ie, the side of your hand between little finger & wrist) with the fingers of the other hand. This helps "tune you in".

Finally, say 3–4 times (for example) "Wanting approval from Pepe". If this is an issue for you, you will often feel unexpected feelings arising. They could be sharp pains in odd places in your body, or a rushing sensation, or, as happened when I did the Vipassana course and was very calm/aware, you'll feel like your head is on fire and your eyeballs are going to explode. Hehe.

The important thing is — it's just a sensation. Don't become attached to it. Don't react to it. It'll pass if you let it go, as all sensations do. The less you react to it, the easier the letting go is. Just try to locate the feeling internally, as accurately as you can. If you don't feel something no matter what you try, either it's not a problem for you, or just keep practising. Like all things, the more you do it, the better you'll get and the more subtle the feelings you'll be able to detect.

The great thing about this is you can then systematically clear every aspect of your life, without having to actually be in that situation. Anything you think you might have an issue with you can think about, feel, bring to the surface & let go.

A great starting point is to look for wanting (or lacking) approval, control, or safety, in any situation or towards every person in your life.

How To Let Go

As well as the Sedona/Releasing approaches above, here are the other methods I've tried:

• Imagining myself detaching from the feeling/problem, and it floating off
• Imagine a tube coming out of your chest or stomach (wherever the feeling is located), & the feeling sucking out into it
• Turning my grounding tube into a vacuum and letting that help me remove it
• Creating a rose (neutral object), grounding that, then sending the feeling/problem to that
• Imagining the feeling/problem in my hand, and dropping it
• Creating a rose around the feeling, sending it out over nearby water, and blowing it up

For a while I struggled a bit with "letting go", or "releasing". A big part of this is, of course, just my brain/ego making things more difficult (after all, our ego feeds on this kind of nonsense). The whole thing, as with life, is only as drawn out & complicated as I choose to make it.

It's really just about practice though. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. After a while, you stop needing any kind of visual imagery, it just becomes "something you do", as simple & easy as dropping something to the floor.

pic by kyle muraca

What it's all about

Given that the mind and body are intrinsically linked, what I'm starting to realise is that by paying close attention to my body, what I'm actually releasing aren't necessarily physical issues at all. They're negative thoughts, behaviours, patterns, reactions. These pains that appear and disappear are my body/mind trying to communicate with me, in the best way it knows how — through feeling.

The great thing about this is you really don't have to rationalise anything or figure out what any underlying cause is. Just being in a situation, feeling the feelings and releasing them will automatically clear out massive amounts of junk. From my own experience, just going to a place with a large number of unpleasant memories, or interacting with people that typically bring about aversive reactions can result in literally hundreds or thousands of these feelings coming up in a single day. All of them you simply drop.

The beauty is, once you starting doing this everywhere, next time you're exposed to similar stimulus you can watch yourself barely reacting, if at all.

An Example

Oh, & if this sounds like a whole load of hokum? Try checking this vid. It's a bit slow to start with (the first 20secs is just intro — but I can't seem to skip it with an embedded vid), but well worth perservering with:

I see so many smaller examples every single day, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Recently I found myself feeling rejected, in various ways, in 6 or 7 different situations over the span of a week or so.

Typically it would go something like this:

1. I'm looking to make a connection with somebody — to spend time, or go see a movie, say.
2. I get enthusiastic & excited, looking forward to this situation.
3. They then deny me that connection.
4. I feel rejected, & disappointed that it's not happening.
5. I then react badly (get grumpy, upset, or act coldly towards them, etc)

So then we have two people feeling crappy, instead of one.. that can't be good!

pic by lady vervaine

I've taken to going for monster 3 hour walks while listening to various soothing podcasts. It's a wonderful way to get exercise and get things clear in my head.

On one of these recent long walks, I had the following realisations:

The key issue with rejection is this — said person is not behaving the way I want them to. I.e., I'm trying to control them.

If you stop and think about it, wanting to control anyone is the height of arrogance. It's taking away their own free will, not to mention assuming we know better than they do what's right for them — and how would we feel if someone else tried to do it to us?

So, when that control fails (as, of course, it will — we can't ever really control anyone else), I then disapprove of them — ie, I withdraw my love.

pic by sephorah

Now, for a start this doesn't tie in well with my intention of unconditional love always.

Secondly, my not feeling rejected is entirely predicated on my control of them succeeding (which, of course, it won't).

I'd been tying how I loving I feel towards them to whether or not they behaved the way I wanted them to. So, sooner or later I'm going to end up being 'not loving' towards them (and as a side issue, feeling crappy myself).

To shortcut the whole rejection thing, I need to let go of the expectation that they will always behave exactly the way I want, or indeed that I have any control over them at all.

Once I let go of wanting to control them, I can choose to love them regardless of their behaviour.

Oh, and voila, since their behaviour makes no difference to this choice I'm never going to feel rejected by anything they do. Sometimes they'll behave in a way I might enjoy more (which is great), sometimes they won't (in which case, who cares, it's their life to do with as they wish).

Of course, I'm always free to remove them from my life if what they're doing is particularly deleterious to myself — but that's a whole other conversation.

Dogs never try to control, always just love. pic by ingrid0804

In summary:

Wanting to control others leads to feeling rejected when this control fails.

Choosing to love (have positive regard towards) them regardless of their behaviour means never feeling rejected again.

If there's one thing I'm learning in spades, life really can be very, very simple.

In case you don't know the show, here's the back story. Tara is a woman with dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personalities). For the sake of TV, they are 5 (or 6) very distinct & endlessly trouble making identities. A key part of the show, of course, is the actual woman herself (played by the incredibly talented Toni Collette) trying desperately to keep her life together despite the chaos sown by her sub personalities.

In the episode I watched, she'd been taking her drugs regularly, & all her sub-identities had disappeared for several months. The family declared her life permanently changed, and everything was wonderful… for the first 15 minutes of the 22 minute show.

I sat there through this wondering why my entire body was tense. As far as everything on the screen, the family was getting on well, things were humming along, and life was normal.

So why was I stressed?

pic by james good

Then I realised. I was waiting for something to go wrong. Which eventually, of course, it did.

Stepping back from this particular show, I realised a deeper (yet in hindsight obvious) truth: TV Drama thrives on.. well.. drama.

If something isn't going wrong, there's no story.

Stepping back again, this applies to comedy, horror, thriller, reality TV… in fact, every genre other than educational or documentary TV.

Why? Because drama of some form is a critical part of telling a story, any story.

If the hero/protagonist doesn't have something to overcome, how can they prove they are (or become) a hero?

Jack Bauer of 24 is the perfect (& thus oft caricatured) example of this, of course.

In other words, something must necessarily always go wrong. No matter how great things seem, something bad is always about to happen.

pic by rock creek

The real issue here is this. Time watching TV is, in a very real sense, time spent training our brains to operate in a certain way.

For example, we take it for granted, but when multiple camera TV first appeared, people had to retrain their brains to understand that shots from different angles were all telling the same story, & how to piece it all together into one linear narrative. Seeing things from multiple angles at once isn't something that happens to our brains normally (let alone fades, swipes, crabbing, zooms, etc).

Why is this suddenly all so clear to me? Because I have been wondering recently why my entire life I've always been expecting things to go wrong.

Thanks TV!

At this point, I am undecided about movies — their one-off nature & longer running times have more opportunity for  flexibility & depth in story telling (eg, starting with something bad having already happened & climbing out of it from there — eg Shipping News), but I think it's safe to say my days of watching a lot of TV are over (except maybe Doctor Who, heh).

Wouldn't it be useful to know in advance if something was going to be pointless? Or how about just at the time? Even cutting that wasted 6 months back to a day or two would be a huge win.

How the hell would we go about that?

Well, an obvious way is to get more present (eg this excellent video tutorial on 'Falling Still' by my good friend @Dhrumil). The more aware we are, the more attention we'll pay to warning signs that perhaps we're wasting our time (aka, not being in the flow of the universe).

Getting more present is well covered territory, so how about just ensuring we're not massively out of sync with the world in some huge way?

How do we spot when we are really, really nowhere the hell near what's best for us? Or when we're exhibiting akrasia, and actively going against our own best judgement?

In other words, how do we identify (so we can correct) when we're  making life unbearably difficult for ourselves?

Turns out, this is easier to spot than it might seem. The bad news is, it's usually easiest to see about ten years after we've stopped doing it. It's also typically accompanied by enlightened self-observations such as "dipshit" & other such beating ourselves up.

pic by rob, rich & tim

So what are typical head-bashing symptoms?

Very simply: pouring massive amounts of time, energy & effort into a situation (or person).. and getting disproportionately little in return.

What are the warning signs?

• Are you always the one to initiate contact?
• Is it always a massive effort to cheer them up (or them you)?
• Do you put way more effort into communication than they do (as I discussed recently, asymmetrical communication)?
• Does it feel like you have to "chase" them, but they're never chasing you in return?
• Do you come away from them feeling drained?
• Is there a mis-match between your communication tones? (eg, you're generally positive towards them; they're generally negative towards you)
• Do you compromise way more often than them?
• Do you feel you need to 'convince' them of things that are obvious & reasonable in every other similar relationship you have?
• Do you dread seeing them?

Seeing these signs isn't enough by themselves, of course, you need to allow for context. Everyone goes through difficulties, & every relationship in your life will show some of these at some point or other.  One symptom by itself may tell you nothing more than that person desperately needs your support.

If you're seeing a large number of them though? That's a pretty good sign you're just wasting a ton of time & energy for no good reason.

One obvious solution is just to remove those people from your life — or at the very least minimize contact as much as possible.

pic by eventhestreets

Of course, people always change, & in time they may well end up being your closest friend ever. Right now though? They're not.

However it's always a mistake (& one I've learned the hard way, repeatedly) to fall in love, or spend time & energy on someone based on who they might become — instead of who they actually are right now.

I've had relationships I've bailed out of because I eventually realised I'd been hanging on (for years in some cases), solely in the hope they might one day become the person I could see they were capable of being.

If you abstract this conversation up a level, you'll also see you have relationships with companies — those who give you money (your employer, your customers), and those you give money to (your utilities, local cafe). The same rules apply.

Why waste your time, your energy, your life on any relationship that is non-reciprocal & not adding value to your existence?

Similarly, & in the interests of balance, it's worth reassessing how you are to those around you. Are you "take take take"? Could you enrich the lives of those who love you by putting just a little more effort in?

Trust me, it is always going to be worth your time to do so. Really it's simply a case of showing them the love & respect that they are showing you.

These small (though occasionally scary) observations & steps can help save years of your life, untold misery, & free you up to truly get in the flow of the universe.

Life is supposed to be easy. Not without effort, but certainly not a perpetual struggle. Believing otherwise simply leads us to create these walls & spend years, as I've done, bashing our heads against them.

There are some very real problems with communicating by text.

pic by alex guerra

Asymmetry

Unless both parties are typing an equal amount, any text based conversation is going to seem very one sided very quickly. In fact, not just a roughly equal amount of text, but an equal amount of thought, energy & attention (eg, not just blathering for the sake of word count)

This isn't how regular conversations work though. If you're face-to-face and actively listening, you are communicating back, a lot: with body language, intonation (even if you're just saying "go on"), energy, presence, being, even touching. There's a lot going on that isn't spoken.

Particularly being an active listener (where you're really paying attention to the person you're listening to) you're communicating a hell of a lot. With zero words.

Depending on who you ask, as much as 93% of communication is non verbal. Of course, all of that is lost via text.

If someone doesn't reply to you at all, you get exactly zero information  — unless of course you're able to deduce something from what they didn't reply to.

With so much of how we normally communicate unavailable to us, imbalances occur very easily.

pic by naunau

Context

The other thing that text loses completely is context. In person, it's possible to see if the other person is distracted, tired, stressed or has just spilt coffee on themselves. Via text, you have none of this, unless they explicitly tell you.

In the days of writing letters this may not have been such a big deal. Writing a letter a week is low volume enough that whatever is immediately happening in your day will have negligible effect on the words that are sent. However, these days so much of communcation is via text — email, im, twitter, facebook, texting, you name it. There's so much, & it's all day every day.

It's quite possible that something you took to be incredibly serious & upsetting just happened to be right after they got scratched by their cat, or spilt coffee in their lap.

Now that's environmental context — there may be tone coming through the message that is actually utterly irrelevant to the conversation.

The other thing that's very easy to lose commonly occurs in formats that allow for multiple overlapping conversations at once — twitter, irc, im etc. It's quite common for conversational context to be lost. A statement may be made, but because of the overlapping, it becomes unclear what it's in reply to. We need to stop, reconnect the threads again & then continue. Or, worse yet, we don't realise there's been the loss of context & instead get completely the wrong message.

A third difficulty is how hard it can be to both accurately convey and interpret such nuances as sarcasm.  People typically over-estimate their ability to convey sarcasm and their ability to correctly identify it. Online this can be deadly.

pic by krazy dad/jbum

Building Relationships

The combination of the above two — asymmetrical & contextual difficulties, mean that text communication is frightfully prone to misunderstandings. Some studies say that as much as 50% of text communication is misunderstood.

In terms of building a relationship then, while it is possible to do this over text, you're making life a lot harder for yourself. Missing out on many subtle sub-cues, making it harder than ever to communicate clearly, and so on.

Additionally unless you love text, you're immediately disadvantaged. If you express yourself better verbally, or physically, you're just plain out of luck.

The worst situation is if one of you is someone that enjoys & is good at text communication, & the other isn't (or primarily communicates through another modality).

I've met some people for example who can't write an email to save themselves, and yet in person are an utter delight, like a sunbeam dancing on a rainbow. Obviously the only solution here is to make sure you always live in the same city, so you get to fully enjoy the wonderfulness that is them.

pic by abhi

With all these limitations, difficulties & complications, how many otherwise potentially wonderful friendships are lost to text? Who really knows.

All I can recommend is this:

1. Understand, be aware & compensate for the limitations & distortions of communicating via text
2. Get the hell out of it into a much richer medium as soon as you possibly can

No no, I'm not making this up. Really. Check it out for yourself.

Anyway, they didn't seem very talkative — although I suspect they made roughly as much progress as the regular UN would have if they'd been plonked in a Melbourne park for an hour one brisk winter afternoon.

Some Key points:

• Russia, as always, looking for new territory (sorry Kyrgyzstan!)
• Who the hell knows where Gabon is?
• Bolivia obviously sniffing something.
• Italy having a siesta.
• Djibouti checking its booty.

A Frankfurter wiener?

It was, as they say, a sausage fest.

Needless to say, cuteness per square metre pretty much hit an all time global maxima. Good to wear bright shoes too, give the dogs something to talk about.

On the way home I saw a few other things:

This building rocks! (ha! See what I did there?)



These pots utterly captivated me, although I can't put my finger on why, exactly.



I spent 10 minutes standing here, utterly transfixed. Rooted to the spot by the majesty, the beauty of this vista.



Weirdest garden ornament ever. Yes, that is smoke. On the water. The rim is almost, but not quite, deep purple.

It's the glorious thing about life. There's beauty & wonder around every corner. All you have to do is look

So, I've had a lot of time to think about the intricacies & common pitfalls of meeting someone online.

The first thing to do is let go of the idea that there's anything particularly special about "meeting someone on the net."

The internet is just a way of communicating. It's no different from meeting someone face to face, via the telephone (don't laugh, I ended up dating someone for years that I first talked to over the phone), or even really old school — by writing, aka pen pals. The only difference is the bandwidth of the medium.

The Importance Of Bandwidth

What do I mean by bandwidth? Simply put, how much information is transmitted while you're communicating.

How do you figure that out? Just think about how much you can tell someone and then how much delay there is during that conversation.

If I can only type one word at a time and there's ten minute delay between words, that's not a lot of bandwidth. Compare that with being face-to-face, being able to see, hear, touch someone. That's super high bandwith.

In terms of bandwidth, there's a definite hierarchy:

1. Twitter/SMS (140/160 chars at a time, slow back-and-forth)
2. IRC/IM (short message, but less delay)
3. Email (can go into much more depth, nested conversations etc)
4. Voice
5. Skype (video)
6. Face-to-face

& once you're face-to-face of course, there's a further hierarchy.

1. Formal situation (eg work place).
2. Informal, but physically distant.
3. Informal, but physically close (within a foot or two)
4. Naked, close
5. Naked, touching
6. Energetically entwined/internal

The key with physical distance is — the space around us is not empty. There's information there. This is one reason you can feel if someone is standing "too close" to you, or why you feel uncomfortable. It's not just about the physical, it's their energy interacting & interfering with ours.

So why is this even relevant? Because all human interaction is about communication, & the higher the bandwidth, the better the communication.

The critical point here: When getting to know someone, more bandwidth is better.

How We Make Friends

Making friends is a pretty straight forward process. This is similar regardless of the depth of the relationship we're building towards (acquaintenances, buddies, friends, emotional support network, intimate partners). The only difference is how far we take the process, & the level of discrimination we apply.

1. Similar interests? (easy to determine, low invasiveness)
2. Similar world view? (takes more time, but critical for mutual approval & understanding)
3. Do we like them? (although it is possible to be friends, eg with people we dislike but respect, it is harder)
4. Do we trust them? (this'll determine how much deeper we let the relationship go)

With low grade friendships (eg guys we hang out & watch football with) we typically only need to go as far as stage 1. With a healthy intimate partner, we'd need to go all the way to level 4.

Once we're ok at one level, we can choose to investigate the next.

Of course, there is a lot more complexity here, I'm simplifying for the sake of clarity.

How Do We Get To Know Someone?

Fundamentally, we progress through the above process in direct proportion to how much bandwidth (ie, information) has been shared between us.

Spend a week in close proximity to someone, you'll get to know them a lot faster than a week spent texting. This is why you can spend years getting to know someone at a distance, but the relationship really doesn't start in earnest until you're both in the same physical space.

So if you want to get to know someone, become friends with them, the trick is simple: Increase the bandwith as quickly and as much as possible.

The longer we spend at the low bandwidth end of things (twitter, sms, facebook etc) the more likely we are to fundamentally misunderstand or misjudge someone we might otherwise become excellent friends with.

If we want to build a quality relationship with someone, we need information before we can make a qualitative judgement. This is the "I thought you were awesome, but you're actually a complete dick!" problem.

If we want to know how far or how deep to take the relationship, we need information. This is the "You looked hot with the lights out, but now they're on.. ARGH!" problem.

If we want to know whether to trust someone, we need information. This is the "I told you my secret, but you blabbed it to everyone!" problem.

How do we get the information we need? By communicating, of course — regardless of the medium (telephone, text, email, voice, face-to-face). The more communicating you do, the better you'll know someone. The higher the bandwidth you're able to achieve between each other, the more you can communicate.

Really, getting to know someone on the internet is exactly the same as getting to know someone off — except you have  significantly more varieties & amounts of bandwidth to communicate over. It's still not as great as spending time face-to-face, but it does enable the chance to get to know someone even if you're not able to regularly spend time in the same physical space.

Some Advanced Tips

Communicating over the net has some surprising benefits that face to face doesn't. Often people will tell you far more by what they don't say than what they do.

1. If someone regularly doesn't respond to certain types of conversation — this is usually a sign they're avoiding something. This sounds obvious, but it's very easy for messages to fall through the cracks. It's worth paying attention to whether the other person is just sloppy replying in general, or whether it's always the same subject. Is it taboo in their culture/upbringing, are they shy, or is this going to be a point of contention in trying to progress the relationship any further?
2. Are you both putting in similar amounts of effort? If one of you is initiating contact a lot more, or writing in more detail & only receiving off-the-cuff responses, a reasonable interpretation would be "they're just not that into you".
3. Do you communicate at a similar level? Differences in grammar or spelling are obvious, but if one of you is only interested in talking about football, but the other would prefer to discuss the philosophical motivations that encourage societies to perpetuate acceptable proxies for inter-tribal violence, this difference may be worth paying attention to.
4. Is communication frequency similar? Some people are happy emailing or texting once a day, or once every few weeks. Some prefer longer missives. Some prefer short bursts but more often. If there's a mismatch, that can spell difficulties down the line. Communication is difficult enough, without the added frustration of feeling that someone is always down your throat, or never responds when you try to connect with them.
5. Does the person show as much interest in you, your family, the things you care about, as you do in them?
6. Are you genuinely excited to hear from them? If not, that may be telling you you'd be better off spending your time and energy on someone who does.

None of these things are foolproof, of course, any more than body language is an exact science. However, if you look at them together, they will typically tell you far, far faster than you would otherwise know whether someone is worth pursuing any kind of friendship with. This, of course, then frees you up to spend your time & energy on those who are excited to see you, will love you as deeply as you love them, & where you will both enrich each others lives.

Communicating over the net is no substitute for time spent in each others presence, but it truly is a wonderful way to meet & get to know people faster & more effectively than ever before.

I saw on them on ebay for, I dunno, maybe 30 bucks. I'm thinking ok, I'll be there ten nights, I want really good earplugs, since people running around with airhorns at 7am is a relatively common occurrence. 3 bucks a night for decent sleep? So worth it. So, I bought 'em.

And a pack of 40 sets turned up.

Uhh, well, ok then.

So, this meant I had a ton to give away at Burning Man (gifting is a huge thing there), so that worked out pretty well.

Anyway, these are industrial earplugs. They have 3 baffles on them. You reach over your head with your opposite hand & pull the top of your ear up to straighten the ear canal, then push them super deep so as many baffles as possible as in action., like this:

& here's a pdf of full instructions, you know, just in case you've ever been curious about how to put ear plugs in.

So, you see, these are serious ear plugs, not your nickel & dime jobbies. It does take a bit of getting used to, shoving them that deep inside your ear — but that's where the ear straightening comes in. If you don't get all three baffles into your ear canal, then they're average-ok (like foam earplugs, for example), but not super-great.

Ok, so that's all well & good. I learned how to put ear plugs in properly, la la la.

Last year, I went to a thing called Con Fest (a hippie festival, stands for conference-festival. worst naming ever), here in Australia. Took my earplugs, and an eye mask. Found a great little spot in the forest. Super convenient, isolated & wonderful.

Then four cars drove up, & these farm hands up from up north came and camped, literally, on top of me. I was surrounded on all sides, with my tent right in the middle of their dining area. So much for getting away from civilization.

Ok, fast forward a few days. I do my usual going to bed routine. Crawl into my sleeping bag (my "beeping slag," hehe), listen to some David Bowie, then put on my eye mask, insert earplugs & drift off.

The next morning I get up around 10, get out of my tent, stretch & go about my business. Weird thing — everyone is saying things like "Oh man, we feel really sorry for you" and "Oh wow, how are you feeling?" to which I'm responding "Why?" and "Awesome, why?"

Turns out one of the guys in the camp-around-me, who'd been dropping acid every four hours around the clock for four days, had been screaming at the top of his lungs. All night. Every single campsite for two blocks in every direction had been shouting at him to shut up.. & he'd been shouting back. & flashing his torches all over my tent etc etc.Everyone else in the area hadn't slept a wink & were utterly wrecked.

I hadn't noticed a thing and slept like a baby. Through it all.

I like my earplugs.

Here are my results & thoughts:

1. The first week or so is the worst. My body was obviously flushing something out. I don't know what, but it smelt pretty bad. I had a lot of showers per day.
2. The first couple of weeks I also got quite a few blocked pores, but they went away too.
3. Even with a very active lifestyle, it's actually quite manageable. I started by using no deoderant (I wanted to know what was going on), but ended up using an eau de toilette under my arms. There wasn't a strong negative smell, I just preferred it to myself. Oh, I hate my body smell, quelle horror. Not really, just a minor preference.
4. Interestingly, my (very slight) eczema flared up a bit when my body was detoxing, initially, then calmed right down, went away & hasn't come back at all.
5. When I get out of the shower I'm actually drier. As with the toxin flushing, I suspect that even using a very light soap & rinsing well leaves enough of a film that a) toxins can't naturally flush & b) water gets trapped on the surface rather than naturally being absorbed
6. I've also stopped using shampoo. Hair feels fine. There's a little grease when I run my hand through my hair, but I figure that's just healthy natural oils. It's certainly never been too oily, not like when I was using shampoo. My scalp is great.
7. It's really easy to be lazy & just stand under the shower, but it's important to rub your hands over your body, same as if you're using soap — particularly on high sweat areas — thighs, chest, armpits, back.
8. Ears. Ears are weird. In ears & behind ears? Couldn't keep those clean without soap. I don't think I have particularly dirty ears (unless they're running off while I'm asleep), I suspect it's just a function of the way ears are (you know, waxy & all)

pic by jciv

By the end of the month, I'd settled on using soap in the following circumstances:

1. Before preparing food (duh)
2. After bathroom (see? not a complete philistine)
3. To wash extreme amounts of grease/grime/etc off my hands, or, for example, after vigorously rubbing my scalp to keep my hair/scalp clean
4. In high sweat areas if there was strong smell or I felt compelled to (after super heavy exercise) — so, that'd be arse, groin, armpits, oh, & the ever magical ear. Even then, I'm using the lightest amounts possible, and very rarely, maybe once a week

Given that my skin is my largest organ (ooerr), & obviously there was something unhealthy being blocked by using soap, I'm very happy to continue with the above plan. That pretty much works for me.

Oh, & for bubble baths? All rules are off :)

[earlier post: The No Soap Experiment]

Ahh yes.

I've noticed a few patterns in my life recently.

In general, I've spent the last few years on a bit of a spiritual journey. Clearing out, well, pretty much everything.

The downside to this is, as I've got clearer, what remaining crap is there has echoed stronger & more powerfully through my life. Ahh, I wish I'd been told that when I started. Actually, probably best I wasn't.

The bad news is, there are parts of my life that still suck. Like you wouldn't believe. Well, ok, I'm human. The good news is, they stand out like nobody's business. Also, it's much easier to see when they're repeating.

So, here I am, looking at my life "Wtf? Didn't that same crappy situation happen 6mo ago? What's going on?"

Then, the other day, it hit me.

They've all been things I hate.

Now, of course, very early on, I went through all the core 'negative' (if there is such a thing) emotions, assessing all the places in my life they affected, healing them etc.

Of course, my life drastically improved. Quelle surprise.

When I looked at hate, I came up blank though. "Huh? I don't hate anyone." My Mum brought me up way to well for that nonsense. I've gotta say, there have been a few people I probably should (according to society) hate for the roles they've played in my life, but I still don't (thanks Mum).

What I realised lately though is — there's a lot of things I hate.

Guess what's recurring?

Situations, behaviours in those around me, limitations, frustrations, ongoing problems.

Yep, no frickin' surprise.

Hate is resistance.

I'm resisting this nonsense, so of course, I'm just drawing it into me. However you want to explain that (law of attraction, reticular activating system, self sabotage) is largely irrelevant.

The empirical evidence is this: Stuff I hate I just see more of in my life.

The big (& incredibly obvious) lesson? STOP IT.

Ok, so I like to keep things vaguely useful/practical around here. Bob has great advice above, but really, how do you stop hating something?

I've shared lots of ways of doing this kind of thing before, so here's a real simple way that's been helping me lately:

1. Give the issue a percentage, 0–100% where 0=Hate It, 100%=I'm 100% ok with this thing happening.
2. Ask yourself, can I increase that percentage? Say "Yes", out loud & as emphatically as possible.

Maybe it's just my analytical math brain, but that really resonates for me. I typically get a number in my head instantly. Uhh, 20%, or 3%. Whatever. It doesn't matter. It's just a starting point.

To work with this, there's a core realisation. You're the boss. You, the real You. Not your physical body, not your mind, not even your ego. The large, spiritual you. The essence of you. Your consciousness.

For example, if you decide to stop thinking about something, who makes that decision? You do. Not your brain. Your brain is just the tool. That's the real you making that decision. The core of your being.

Soooo. Once you realise that you're the boss, then everything is really just a decision. Including the decision to actually be ok with something you used to hate.

How/Why Does It Work?
1. Saying 'yes' puts you in a positive mindframe rather than negative (ie, resistant, hating). Salesmen have known this for eons, of course. Nothing new there.

2. Saying 'yes' releases resistance to the issue. Even just accepting it a little can help shift things, open you up & let go of that hate (or secret shame, as is often the case with deep hatred) and thus resistance. Once the floodgates open, voila, you're on your way.

I know, sounds crazy, but give it a bit of a go, be patient & watch what happens.

Of course, if you feel like using EFT, releasing, reiki, NPA or anything else at the same time, so much the better. Whatever helps.

When you do finally get up to 100% you'll realise. You just don't hate it any more, in fact, you couldn't care less. Know what? You'll stop seeing it in your life too.

For me, I got a piece of paper, on the left wrote "Things I f'n Hate", on the right "% Ok with it" then just made a list. Going down, even just saying "YES, I hate …" it's the craziest thing, but I could feel the hate lifting off & that percentage rising.

Another interesting side effect? All this saying yes. I've had inner tension (that my sensei can feel, but is hard for me to pinpoint) for, well, probably my entire life. With this? I can actually feel it easing. Don't know how, or even what it is, but it's definitely lifting.

Whoever thought being positive would be beneficial? *grin*