si dawson

experiments in self-improvement
December 7, 2011

How to Clear a Ton of Crap Fast

Remember a while back, I wrote about a more effective version of the Map’n’Tap? Ie, a way to quickly deeply clear everything around any given issue. Well, here’s the fastest way I’ve found if you want to do a whole bunch of maps.

Since any mind map should ideally be about a single subject, if you want to clear a bunch of different subjects, each subject will require a different map.

So, unless we want to the spend the entire rest of our lives tapping frantically, instead of, well, living (*yawn* been there, done that. BORING), you need a fast way to hammer through these. Then you can head off happily to the pub (or wherever) with the freedom of knowing that whatever-it-was that had been bothering you is now a thing of the past.

OK. SO.

My general approach (as I outlined here) is to scribble out a map, then next to each item jot if it’s about wanting or lacking Approval, Control or Security (or all three). Finally, I flick on the video & tap along, saying “I love that I lack control (etc) about..” (whatever the item is).

So, here’s the trick to clearing a lot of these things quickly. First of all scribble out all your maps, one after the other. When you’ve finished that, then go through each item on each map & put it into a/c/s (or combos). Only when you’ve completely finished, go through & tap each map.

I find when I’m in that kind of flow, it’s super easy to just flick from one map to the next, with barely a pause in between. Doing them one at a time took forever!

There’s something about not needing to context switch (writing, assessing, tapping) back & forth that makes this way much, much faster than just doing each complete map one at a time.

Anyway, have fun clearing stuff out. I’ve been doing a ton of these over the last month or so & the difference it’s made in terms of inner peace is almost ridiculous.

Share:

    2 comments
    October 11, 2011

    The Subtlety of Posture

    I’ve talked about posture before and how strongly our mind & body are connected. How if we’re feeling crappy, we can adjust ourselves physically and our mind will follow. We can do this just with our face (in the west, often the most outwardly expressive part of us) or with our entire bodies.

    What I’ve learned recently is just how subtle this body/mind interaction is.

    After 20 odd years of Aikido, this shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did.

    In Aikido, we often sit in seiza. Basically, you kneel with your knees apart, your bum on your heels, back arched and head up.

    This posture is well known across the universe.

    Here’s Spock doing it

    (From this excellent site on Vulcan meditation. Ha ha, you think I’m kidding. Oh Internet, you have everything!)

    The most important part of all this? The arched back. (Spock does it well)

     

    If you prefer more beard, here’s how it looks from the front:

    Long white beard is optional. Grass, preferred. Katana, mandatory.

     

    The basic Aikido pin looks like this:

    Shake my hand would you, fool?

     

    No, wait, like this:

    No! You sit over *there*!

     

     

    Ok ok, I’m joking around. It’s actually like this:

    See? There’s that seiza again. And you thought we’d just been sitting like that coz we hated legs.

    (a few minor corrections – most importantly knees apart will drop her centre more, but that’s actually pretty good)

    Now here’s where the arched back comes in.

    When you’re on the receiving end (i.e. face down, eating grass) if the person doing the pins arches their back or not makes the difference between:

    “Someone’s leaning on my arm”

    and

    “My entire being is pinned to the centre of the earth by a large truck”

    What’s even more interesting is that when it’s done correctly, zero effort is expended, and the person is not just squashing you as hard as they can – that’s actually a weaker pin.

    Now, out of the dojo, and back to real life.

    Here’s what I’ve noticed: When I’m healing, or hell, doing anything sitting down, if I sit just that little bit straighter, and yes, arch my back, everything goes much better and becomes extraordinarily easier.

    Stuff that might have been tricky to drop or heal falls away instantly.

    I feel more in control of my code, my writing, my life. Things become… possible.

    Everything.

    The only thing I’m changing is maybe pushing my butt further back on the chair, and arching my back, very, very slightly. Of course, this pushes one’s shoulders back and also tends to raise the head slightly – but really, it’s just a little back arch.

    Such a subtle shift, such huge effect.

    Share:

      6 comments
      October 1, 2011

      Why it seems the crap is never ending

      When you first start on a growing or healing journey (aka life), everything seems amazing. Gigantic problems fall away with ease, life gets better, people notice the change in you and for a while it seems like all your worries are gone.

      After a while though you may start to notice, there’s always more crap.

      What’s going on?

      It’s easy to get discouraged, feel that whatever you’re using “doesn’t work like it used to”, or even convince yourself that it never worked in the first place (I’ve seen this a lot).

      What’s really happening though?

      Well, there’s a couple of things.

      First of all, our problems expand to fill our horizon.

      We have this thing called our Ego (aka the nasty little voice inside), that thrives on misery. So, however big our problems are in reality, if we’re not fully present they can seem to fill our universe.

      I used to live with a girl. Not very smart, but lovely. I would come home from work and she’d be worked up into a tizzy, almost in tears. It took a while before I eventually figured out what she was so upset about.

      Shortland Street. The New Zealand soap opera. “Something terrible” had happened on the show.

      The first couple of times this happened I couldn’t believe it. Eventually I realised, this girl was serious. To her, this was a very real crisis. To her, this was reality and yes, it filled her horizon.

      Important lesson there too: Always respect someone else’s pain. (One I’ve mostly learned, although I do still slip up from time to time in my enthusiasm to help people).

      The second thing to realise is that as we heal more and more of our lives, we go through stages:

      1. You work backwards through time, dealing with earlier & earlier events in your life (and past lives, if you’re into that)
      2. You heal more and more subtle issues. You may have started with major life traumas, but the next thing you know you’re letting go of anger when you knock your coffee over (it’s still non-loving, so you might as well chuck it out, right?)
      3. You deal with higher and higher emotions (aka moving up the vibrational scale). Abraham Hicks have their emotional guidance scale. The releasing guys talk about AGFLAP-CAP – Apathy, Grief, Fear, Lust, Anger, Pride, Courageousness, Acceptance, Peace. It’s all the same. You start by healing the lower, duller emotions, then work you way through the higher ones.

      These three sequences are all happening more or less at the same time. So, there’s always new ways to look at things, always room to improve.

      Compounding this, our roguish ego often makes every step seem enormous.

      A good example is relationships:

      • First you realise that it’s not ok for them to beat you
      • Then that it’s not ok for them to cheat on you
      • Then that it’s not ok for them to shout at you
      • Then that it’s not ok for them to emotionally abuse you
      • Then that it’s not ok for them to disrespect, dismiss, be condescending to you
      • Then that it’s ok to have someone who supports you
      • Then that it’s ok to have someone who loves you as much as you love them
      • Then that it’s ok to have someone who works at the relationship as much as you do
      • Then that it’s ok to have a loving, peaceful relationship
      • Then that it’s ok to be perfectly happy & growing together

      (there may be more, but this is about as far as I can see right now)

      At each stage, the thought of accepting something earlier would seem utterly ridiculous. If you’re at the point where you will only accept a relationship where you’re supported, the thought of being with someone who is physically abusive is ludicrous.

      At that point however (looking further down the list) the thought of being with someone you can be happy with all the time may seem like a pipe dream. Mr (or Ms) Perfect.

      Transitioning from each stage to the next can be a major life revelation – a huge jump forward in your personal growth.

      As you grow, heal and mature, you do move further down the list though, until eventually (hopefully) those later things will all seem reasonable, normal and expected.

      Sadly it often takes several major relationships, maybe a marriage or two, before we see these things clearly. C’est la vie. This is how we learn. Bad choices lead to experience leads to good choices.

      Still, we’re all on our own paths and everyone learns at their own pace. If I was a faster learner, I wouldn’t be over here talking to you. Why, I’d be over *there* talking to you (and it’s so much greener too).

      To see clarity along the way, keeping a journal is helpful. As is talking to old friends, or family – to remind ourselves how far we’ve come.

      The important thing is to remember it’s a journey. Everything you learn, heal and let go of is improving your life. No matter how troubling things seem today, it’s so much better than it used to be, and best of all, it’s going to be even better tomorrow.

      Share:

        5 comments
        July 25, 2011

        Snow!

        Today I woke up and there was honest to god, real life snow, just lying everywhere, being all lazy.

        Even though it’s winter, around these parts there hasn’t been snow since 1995.

        So, what better way to spend a Monday morning than to go for a walk up a local hill? (rhetorical question)

        Yes. A hill. With actual snow.

        This hill, unsurprisingly.

        Muppet gloves

        Mum brought her gloves, made from 100% genuine Muppet, and we were away!

        We passed a couple of ducks. One looked like this:

        Duck. One. Not to scale.

        The other looked different. Grumpier (I think).

        There were also some wild quail. They hopped away in that bizarre quailly manner, which can’t really be explained. They weren’t particularly scared of us, so I’m guessing there aren’t a whole lot of quail hunters in this suburb. As a side note, guns are rather damn difficult to get your hands on in New Zealand, so that probably helps. I’m not sure, exactly, how quail keep up with current gun legislation, but they did seem to have a   handle on it.

        New Zealand is also very green (you may have heard).

        Here's one of the green bits

        There’s plenty of green to go round. Lots of other bits look like this too.

        Mum got very excited by the first bit of snow we found (I did mention it’s rare here, right?)

        There was (spoiler alert!) more snow to come, but compared to zero snow, this was LOTS

        It was also crunchy under foot (always a nice sound).

        The first of many snowball fights

        I told Mum I was going to take a photo of myself throwing a snowball at her. Thus, this is blurry – as I’m frantically clicking with one hand & biffing with the other. However, note, just left of her left shoulder – voila! Snowball! In the air! I claim victory! (even if this one did miss her, dammit)

        We also saw lots of crazy gorse. Flowering (in winter), in the snow:

        Pesky Gorse

        Gorse is something of a huge pest here in NZ. This is similar to many innovative & brilliant ideas we gained from the British, who brought gorse over to use as hedges. They didn’t allow for the fact that NZ is on the other side of the planet (surprise!), thus has a completely different climate.. and voila! Gorse The (now) Noxious Pest took  over the country. See also: rabbits, and possums. Thanks England! (I’m signalling my disapproval with two thumbs up!)

        Gorse is, however, rather pretty (aww).

        We’re also pretty good at growing ferns over here:

        Mum loves ferns. Doubly so when covered in snow.

        Mum insisted I get this pic. The framing is crazy coz the ferns were so giant, and the track so small, the only way I could get the pic was by holding my camera over my head (ie, I really had no idea where it was pointing).

        When we got to the top, there were a ton of gums & pines (it’s forestry area, sorta), all looking as pretty as a picture:

        Ooh look, trees!

        So, you know, here’s a picture.

        I also made a snow man (I said I would!). Well, a snow alien:

        Snow Alien (I like his antenna the best)

        He was tiny but cute (kinda like me – at least some of the time).

        Mum reckoned he was starting to look like a rabbit, but No! He’s An Alien!

        Mum did her best to look like an alien too

        Mum did try to twizzle her hair up into antenna, but since everything was pretty wet by now (snow! it’s wet! who knew?) it didn’t work so well. I reckon she’s got the arms pretty much perfect though.

        Which was good timing, coz about a minute later one of the arms fell off the alien (who obviously didn’t have quite such a strong grasp on the whole arm/body concept).

        The view from the top was pretty spectacular:

        Look! Snow! Also, Wellington off in the distance

        You can just (if you tilt your head and squint) see the blue of the sea, right off in the distance between those two hills. Trick is, the river runs down into it. They do that sometimes, I’m told.

        I also took enough shots to get a panorama of sorts, but I need to figure out how to do that (without wasting hours of my life painstakingly aligning everything & adjusting brightnesses etc).

        Aww, pretty!

        Everything in general was pretty damn pretty.

        Also, we had coffee from a thermos, which made everything more awesome.

        This gum was quite beautiful too:

        Don't leave it stuck to your bedstead overnight

        I’ve always had a soft spot for gum trees, but I think five years in Australia has made me love them more than ever.

        Oh, and proof that the five or six snowball fights weren’t all one sided?

        Covered in snow. Thanks Mum!

        All that snow on me? That was after I’d brushed myself off. I was covered in it! All thanks to my Mum. Sheesh! I used to think she loved me! What a meanie.

        One reason I’m laughing so much was that she’d never used my camera before, so picked it up the wrong way. She was about to take a giant photo of her face – which of course I could see perfectly, since the screen was facing me. Oh Mum!

        On the way back down, we found a giant branch that had fallen onto the road, so we dragged it off to the side so no-one would come round the corner & drive their truck into it.

        We also found the perfect picnic spot:

        The perfect picnic spot!

        And that was in the middle of a snow storm! Now imagine how beautiful that’ll be in the summer!

        Wow.

        Share:

          10 comments
          July 17, 2011

          A Night Of Bad Dreams

          I had a bunch of bad dreams last night. This is very rare for me. Typically these days I might get a single mildly bad dream maybe once or twice a month, if that.

          But first let me wind back a bit.

          A few days ago I hung out with a friend of mine. This is someone I’ve known for a decade or longer, so there’s a lot of history there. Mostly pretty good, but some very dark times too. This guy has very strong energy. Historically, he’s affected me enormously.

          Now, he’s going through some shit at the moment (aren’t we all?) The catch is, within about 15 minutes of hanging out with him, I could feel his energy making me feel, quite literally, physically ill.

          Ok, so that’s not good. What to do, what to do?

          I tried putting up separation roses, to energetically divide us. They didn’t stick. Maybe we just have too much history, we’re too strongly connected. Maybe he’s just too energetically grasping. I don’t know.

          I could feel giant clumps of dark energy coming off him and coming towards me, as he was describing the various troubles in his life. Nothing I tried was helping, and things were quickly spiralling downwards.

          Interesting situation.

          Then I settled on the simplest possible solution.

          I focused on the clump of darkness, and simply said “I love you.”

          Yep, just that.

          The super cool thing was, the darkness immediately dissipated. My feeling of sickness left, and (very interesting) he perked up and started talking about something else altogether.

          For the rest of our time together, every time I felt negatively affected, or could sense dark globs of whatever appearing, I’d just address them, say “I love you” and watch them disappear again.

          Very. Interesting.

          Now, in Ho’oponopono (A Hawaiian healing technique), you cycle through four phrases:

          1. I love you
          2. I’m sorry
          3. Please forgive me
          4. Thank you

          But I’m starting to suspect, if there was one single prayer to say for the rest of your life, it should be “I love you.” The single most powerful thing you can say in any situation.

          Since then I have (of course, you know me!) been doing the exact same thing to anything that’s appeared – in myself, or those around me. Said “I love you” to it (in my mind) and let it go.

          So, to last night.

          pic by Cesar T Sanchez

          Ever since I started tapping out nightmares, the frequency with which I’ve experienced bad dreams has dropped precipitously. They’ve just stopped happening.

          So last night was pretty interesting. I had 10, maybe 15 distinct bad dreams in a row.

          Why? Who knows (and really, who cares?) Maybe I just unblocked something big enough that it was time to wash a bunch of related remnants out of me. It really doesn’t matter too much.

          Anyway, in each of these dreams, I settled back, said “I love you” to whatever was happening, and the dream disappeared. Sometimes I needed to repeat it a few times, but every single time the dream would dissolve, along with whatever it was that had been bothering me.

          Best of all? I woke up feeling like a million bucks. Now that is a first after a night of bad dreams.

          “I love you” – said calmly and with intention – it’s continuing to amaze me just how powerful that phrase really is.

          Share:

            8 comments
            Mastodon