Attention attention! I´d love to share some

What a weekend I had! In life there are times when you just seem to be waiting for something real to happen, and BUM! then it happens. The experience fills you with so much joy that words are nothing to describe it. And the magical word here is:

attention

During the weekend I was surrounded by lots of people. What made it different for me was that I felt I was getting lots of attention all the time from so many people. And the attention was positive! It was respectful and joyful. The interesting part of the story is that attention is something that I have been and still am a little cautious about. Since I am able to read people quite like an open book, I know that other people can do the same for me. The only way to protect myself and keep my secrets and thoughts my own (and not show my weaknesses), is to avoid attention or limit it to the minimum. Be invisible. This time, I was nothing but invisible.

It feels like I´ve been burning the whole weekend inside. I let myself be observed. And what I realized is that it opens up many doors to genuine interaction with people. Being open yourself will help other people become so too. And, oh boy, opening was really happening!

For the first time after the retreat I experienced great things happening to other people through me. All I had to do was to pay attention. (Some may recognize this as ET in work here!) When you pay attention and stay open, you are present in the moment. It welcomes life. And the joy you feel when something like that happens is truly overwhelming. You feel grateful for witnessing something so beautiful. You feel joy and you feel that you have found life itself. Paying attention makes life beautiful, and attention in the sense of staying open, is something I plan to share more.

But in order to connect and experience it the walls need to fall down. All the fears and all the things you think you need to do or be. Opposite to the tripping song below, I see now that in order to find the real thing you need to break everything that can be broken - including your heart and everything protecting it.

So today, my heart has been pounding like crazy and shows no signs of calming down. I´m ecstatic and excited. There is something going on, man.

Broken birds / angry birds

The following morning after the previous post, I saw another bird (both after a night a intense thunderstorm!). It was not a Canadian goose with a broken leg this time, but a pretty little baby bird that was about to die. The poor bird was injured on the road after probably being hit by a car. She was struggling so hard for her life. One moment hoping and believing for a moment that she was OK and the next twitching uncontrollably.

The past week has been very similar to me - struggling between being fine and definitely NOT being so. For small moments my mind has gotten excited about work. Only to be followed by an overwhelming feeling of anger, frustration and fury rising from underneath. At the same time I have been given the perfect opportunity to study the anatomy of anger. 

The first thing I noticed was how anger started to affect my body. Instead of relaxation and free flow there was tension and blockages. My muscles started to ache and I got headaches. I felt simply terrible with my shoulders up to my ears and the constant tension everywhere. I tried to relax, but it only helped as long as I focused on it. Full body blockage, that´s how it feels. 

As a result my body started craving for things that are not good for me but gave me some energy to replace all that has been lost in the blockages. I started drinking caffeine. First it was very innocent with taking a little bit of black tea. Soon I found myself drinking coffee, and right after feeling very sick. Coffee is not good for me. And still, I´d really love to drink some right now in the hope of feeling better. Logic has no place in my anger.

The third feels the worst. Isolation. Carrying anger within you isolates you from other people. It makes you want to defend yourself everywhere, all the time, even when you don´t notice it. The funniest part is that when you isolate yourself from others, it makes you feel even worse and increases your anger.

You also lose your patience. Everything annoys you and everything should be exactly like you want it exactly when you want it. And this is not even the worst part. When you hold on to your anger long enough, it starts to act like an infection. Other people get annoyed and angry too. Then you end up a flock of angry angry beings, fighting the green pigs they see everywhere.

I truly hope this is just some kind of a reaction to my overall increased calmness. Every change has a counter reaction. I hope this is mine and with time it will pass. This too shall pass is what I keep telling to myself these days. Since the cause of my anger is something I can not change under the current situation, I can do nothing but see it thunder in me. I´m not used to feeling this. Me, probably the calmest person on earth, is walking around like a quiet thunderstorm trying not to bolt or flash or anything.

Break a leg

This morning when I was walking to work I was thinking about my knee and how or why it seems to be something that I just can´t seem to fix. I have had problems with my knee ever since I was a teenager and even though I´ve had surgery, training and everything - nothing seems to fix it. I was wondering why I was supposed to suffer for that when most of the people I know are capable of moving around with no pain. And then I saw the bird.

At the time I was walking by a lake in the center of Helsinki and there was a flock of Canada gooses next to me. At first I felt so much joy just watching them wobbling together. Then I noticed one of them. He was jumping on one leg and clearly had broken the other one. He moved to an opposite direction from the other birds, and not one from the flock noticed him.

It was a clear reminder for me of how alone and how disabled we really are here. I have my own problems, were they physical or mental, and they are no one else´s in the end.

This week has been torture for me. The questioning of everything has transformed into disappointment. I had expected more from my life. I´m bad at chess and now it´s checkmate, baby. Everything I think about ends up being a problem of which was first: the egg or the chicken? I´m going nowhere, and I´m turning my only precious thing into waste. My life truly is waste of time.

Time is the only thing I seem to value at the moment. Being present now is the only thing I really have, and I spend it working. Hours and hours every day I spend in the office making money for the company. Money doesn´t last. Nor does the apartment which is really the only reason why I keep coming to work everyday. I wouldn´t mind taking the risk, but it would be too cruel for my boyfriend to stop paying my share for the rent. Plus I have noticed that even that even though money can not make you happy, it can prevent you from unnecessary pain. I´ve been there, getting no money for months, using my visa to the extreme. Such things have the tendency to destroy your ability to live.

In addition I´ve been thinking that even if I quit my job and spent my days in the park, I would still have the same problems. Either you are happy where you are, or you are not. It doesn´t really matter where you are. What happens in your mind follows you wherever you go. There is no escape.

So here I am, stuck.

Not being able to function properly with my knee is just a physical form of a deeper incapability that I suffer. And the funny thing is that I´m reaching the point where it doesn´t seem to matter any more do I suffer or not. Nothing seems to be making a difference anyway. I might as well just sit here where I am, and watch myself suffer.

Sometimes life seems like a cruel joke. As an ex-performer I know that I never want to hear to words "break a leg" again. Or maybe it doesn´t matter. One functioning leg or none. It doesn´t really seem to matter.

I guess it´s time for me to give up.

Are you sure?

Yesterday I had an experience that took me off my guards (guess I usually have them then). I was having a dinner with my boyfriend when the conversation suddenly jumped into the deep deep seas of existence. I found myself stating facts that I "knew" while he was questioning everything I said.

"Are you sure?" he kept asking me.
And the answer is no.

It was such a contrast to my Saturday night experience. I watched Cloud Atlas, the movie. The movie is a story about how different souls intertwine and learn together during several lifetimes on Earth. I felt quite strongly about the movie. Especially because during the retreat I felt connections with other participants screaming that I´ve known them for a long time.

One day later I´m asking are those experiences and perceptions real or just an illusion. Just to give you the highlights of my inner discussion on the subject, I was questioning the present moment (which is just another opposite to the past and the future) and the whole concept of having a soul. Are there really any experiences? Is there anyone or anything to experience anything? Is there enlightenment? Yeah, deep seas baby, deep seas...

In the evening had a melt down after which I fell into some kind of a state where I wouldn´t hold on to anything. It wasn´t bad nor was it nice. I´m not even sure that it was. I guess I also fell asleep or into something similar. It was huge, and then it was not. I even cried a little, since I felt that someone or something that I have known for a long time now passed away. It felt like something died and at the same time gave me freedom. It was interesting to give up everything. It was something that I didn´t do myself, it was something that just happened.

I have a feeling that this experience was connected to another experience I had earlier. Last week (once again after watching a movie again!) I watched the sunset while sitting in a bus. It triggered something that later in the evening resulted to an experience that my vision is a lie. It felt like I was looking at the world through a looking glass. It made me think about the process how the information goes from eyes to the brain and thus everything I see is actually something that my mind feeds me. Talking about loosing your trust in your senses! What is left if I my sensory experiences were taken away from me? Maybe something similar to last night?

As Metallica put it, at the moment I feel like nothing really matters, and I don´t really mind. (Including these experiences.)

Four treats of a retreat

On February I got a strong urge to participate on a spiritual summer retreat. I had never done that before so, of course, that´s what I did.  The months preceding and the experience itself changed me. It´s been now almost three weeks since the retreat, but I know that things will never go back to the way they were before. And I love it. So here are the four things I´ve noticed happening around the retreat making a difference in my life - this far:

1. Nutrition improvement

On April I gave up completely using alcohol and caffeine, plus I changed my diet to include more fruit and vegetables. Meat I haven´t really eaten for 10 years, so no biggies there. I expected that this preparation for the retreat would put a wine-lover and coffee-drinker through a hard time and would result on a payback right after the retreat. However, after the retreat I have been surprised to find out that I have no need whatsoever to go back to the old habits. I have even found out that my old fruit, vegetable and nut allergies are gone. 

2. Getting clean-clean-clean!

Two months before the retreat I got sick. Having a flu, getting allergic reactions, breathing problems, broke my knee and so on. I spent almost four weeks on a sick leave, counting clouds passing by and sleeping. My body was cleansing itself for the retreat, and I did my own part for it. The first two days on the retreat I slept most of the time and literally shat my pants. After the retreat I felt cleaner and clearer. I can now feel five major meridians going to my fingers and toes, and how different they each feel. Cleansing myself is definitely something I´ll keep on doing. You never know your dirty you are (mentally, physically, energetically) before you experience the cleanliness.

3. Anthropophobia be gone!

This means fear of people. I realized I had this while preparing myself to the retreat. I then started to face the fear little by little as well as trying to recognize the worst case scenario patterns that my mind produces all the time. After retreat I realized that I kept on staring at people, making them a little uncomfortable. My fear was gone. But not so unexpectedly one week afterwards the old energies started to creep up on me again. So now I find myself trying to hide again from people, avoiding long eye contacts and now showing my real self to them. But now I`m aware of it, and I can break the pattern. It is only a matter of time that the old energies get tired of trying. 

4. Supernatural empowerment 

During the retreat I volunteered to a practice I was so uncomfortable with. It was about communicating with another person while everyone else was watching us. But the urge to volunteer was so strong, that I knew I would regret if I did not go for it. What happened during the exercise was quite interesting. I felt an energy trying to emerge and rise up through me but it was blocked around my heart area. During the exercise I felt the channel opening up and felt the energy come through into my expression. Afterwards I heard that energy had made a noticeable difference. Once again I forgot about it afterwards, until after the retreat. The energy is now back and it is definitely something that needs to work through me. People react to it, when I let it flow. The energy is something very personal, it´s me, my own power. It´s work in progress to learn about it, but I think I have definitely found something essential. It has something to do with my life´s mission, of which I also got lots of clues during the retreat. I´m quite excited...

Well here are four very practical things to start with. I might write another post soon about the changes in perception that has happened to me. The retreat changed the way I view things, but that is such a huge issues to discuss so... until the next post! *kiss*

Presenting myself

Well, this is the first. I have started a blog. Not about fashion, not about business, not about cartoons, but about the most personal topic I could imagine. I will be sharing here my own thoughts and experiences while trying to grow as a human being. And how do I plan to grow and when will I know I have grown up? I´ll get back to that.

Before I run away with my most intimate, I probably should present myself. I´m a 27 years old marketing professional working in the money-loving corporate world. I´m very goal oriented, eager to get promoted and I love to have lots of responsibility and plan strategies. I have a boyfriend, an apartment I like and hobbies that doctors told me are too dangerous. You can call me Tira, but even though you know my age and some idle stuff about my life - I´m afraid you have no idea who or what I really am.

How I plan to grow up is simply by getting to know myself. Not the persona with a name, history, personality traits or status. I´m trying to find the real "me" that I have been searching for ever since I was a small child. It all started from the aphorisms in tea bag labels. They spoke of things that opened up new worlds for me, new ways to see and think. I haven´t stopped since, though the labels turned into books, people, internet and experiences.

I recently realized that as a child I had this idea that all adults would be wise. Now I know that I expected them to be enlightened. This expectation was simply something that I was born with. You can imagine how my world crashed into ashes when I realized that was not the case. I saw adults behaving like children: being selfish, angry, teasing others, getting drunk, making wars and hurting not only others but also themselves. This made no sense. It still doesn´t make any sense.

This brings me to the definition of how I will know when I have grown up. As far as I know, enlightened means grown up for me. At least for now. I have had strong feelings that becoming enlightened is something I´ll do during this lifetime. That is more important to me now than anything else. Trying to juggle between financial dependency on work and spiritual freedom & independence is something I´ll probably write a lot about. I know leaving your ordinary life and society is something all the enlightenment stories have in common, but I feel different. Since I see enlightenment as a natural next step for an adult, I tend to believe the process towards it has to be natural including living in the society and having a more or less normal life (whatever that is anyway).

The reason why I´m bringing my  life here publicly open for everyone, is that I am a very private and timid to share myself. Putting myself out there has two benefits that I can not ignore. First, I will put myself in the position I have feared my whole life. I have been very private and kept my real thoughts away from others. This means that my mind/ego has gotten a strong hold on me, preventing genuine interaction with other people. What a better way to get rid of that hold than doing the worst possible! However, I have kept from telling my real name this far - for security reasons. The spiritual world is full of fucked up people, and I have no need to invite them into my home address. Secondly, I hope that if ever I do get enlightened, or even if I don´t, my thoughts might trigger spiritual growth in other people. Every person who makes even one step towards mental balance does change the world to the direction I as a child hoped to find it.

You are free to comment on my posts. But I warn you, I tend to coil away from fanatic thinking and question everything I can.

Bless you.