The Living Word: 'Routine'

I have recently been working with the word 'routine'. It is a word I've judged as boring, mundane, lifeless, robotic and underwhelming due having lived most of my life within routines that I did not enjoy, and having them imposed upon me. Breaking free from the routine was like finally living, getting to the fun part of Life.

Due to this past history and the baggage the word was carrying with it in my mind I have struggled with implementing any kind of routine into my life. But when I opened the word up and found the solution for myself, I realized that a routine is necessary for the cumulative effect: that process of accumulating small steps to reach or attain big goals - and this is actually necessary for any and all goals of any and all sizes!

A routine is a path, or a 'route' towards any goal, and the process one must walk is the moment-to-moment, the small stuff, the teeny tiny little movements and decisions that come together to produce actions as a step-by-step process of learning, growing, trial and error, and then eventually moving those proverbial 'mountains'.

When I started looking at redefining my own Living Definition the Word 'Routine', what I saw that worked best for me was to clarify my goal for myself, because a 'routine' is a cumulative process, so it's important to be clear with oneself in terms of what one is accumulating towards ,and what will the end result be! And then I will 'let it go', so to speak, where 'the END GOAL' no longer becomes the focus of my daily participation.

What I focus on daily is breaking the goal down to the smallest possible steps, the teeny steps (routTINE/teeny), so the the route I am taking is seen not as that loooong and arduous struggle, but more like simple daily steps that I can celebrate!

ROUTINE: The Route of Teeny Steps.

How and where I am applying this in my life currently, is towards the goal of physical health and fitness, something I have been struggling with keeping consistent with. I started a routine of drinking water in the morning for three consecutive days. Once accomplished, I added a healthy breakfast for three days, and then 8 minutes of light exercise (with the help of an app for reminders and structure!). I kept the steps 'teeny'. Tiny goals that I can integrate over time until they become routine, and then I can add, grow, expand upon them. But for now, I focus on the task at hand, the daily route, the tiny steps it takes to walk a process, no rush, no pressure, no time, just Here in the moments of my Life, taking steps to honour me!

Daily Osho Card Reading: 'THE DREAM' - Day 9 of 21

Today the intention I held within me as I pulled an Osho card for self-support was to help me identify what is the problem I face when I sit in front of my computer to work, and I become tense, easily distracted and participate in shifty focus, where I am drawn away from the task I set out to do, and do many other cool, yet un-planned things instead or additionally. This draws out the task at hand, and causes inefficiency in my work, as well as reactions towards not getting the things done as I had planned.

Card pulled: THE DREAM

Description:

"Some enchanted evening you're going to meet your soulmate, the perfect person who will meet all your needs and fulfill all your dreams. Right? Wrong! This fantasy that songwriters and poets are so fond of perpetuating has its roots in memories of the womb, where we were so secure and "at one" with our mothers; it's no wonder we have hankered to return to that place all our lives. But, to put it quite brutally, it is a childish dream. And it's amazing we hang on to it so stubbornly in the face of reality. Nobody, whether it's your current mate or some dreamed-of partner in the future, has any obligation to deliver your happiness on a platter--nor could they even if they wanted to. Real love comes not from trying to solve our neediness by depending on another, but by developing our own inner richness and maturity. Then we have so much love to give that we naturally draw lovers towards us."

This card's description reminds me of a quote from Bernard Poolman, that "work is love made visible".

I pulled this card in relation to 'work'. And surprisingly, the card is quite appropriate in what it mentions and neglects to mention.

I think what the card neglects to mention is the work it takes to "develop our own inner richness and maturity". It takes experience, meaning, actually walking through challenges, falling and getting up again, pushing self through resistances to get to the other side of them in order to develop these things, and seeing through commitments to actually know from living experience what that entails.

It is challenging, but I personally have mostly experienced fulfillment after having overcome a challenge.

 But in reading the description, I am also led to wonder: have I developed a romantic relationship with some potential work out there that I am waiting for to fulfill and complete me?  Where I will love the work so much that it will easily flow, never posing a challenge, never a resistance, never bringing forth a part of me that I will have to face and overcome?

This is the point that comes up when I apply this card in my life in relation to the support I had asked regarding my difficulty while working.

I have set myself up and walked a process where i am in the exact position I have always wanted to be. I absolutely love it and am so incredibly grateful to be here. But yes, I am still facing the same challenges that I was facing back at all the jobs I had labelled as 'meaningless to me', jobs that were not what I was passionate about, or were not what I wanted to be doing with my time. So, obviously it was never the job, it has always been me that is/was the 'problem'. Which is cool, because it means I am also the solution, and if I am the solution, then I can apply myself in any and all work that I do, as this too shall pass, and there is no saying what will come next or where I may end up at this point in my life.

What I can see when I bring the point up in me, is that there are certain parts of the work that I am doing that i have labelled as 'work' in terms of it not being exciting or fun or 'positive'. I will have a project with a final goal, and a lot of the work involved in getting there IS fun and enjoyable to me. But then there is 'the other stuff'. The research, the learning, the coursework, the 'serious stuff' that I have to go through to get to my final goal. And sometimes I don't know how to go about a certain step, in which case I go into a helplessness that I identified in my last blog, and that helplessness creates frustration and in this case avoidance and distraction.

This is cool to see as it is another dimension opening up about a point that I had just opened up yesterday. The thing about facing such points is that they are multi-dimensional in this way, and too often we will open up only one, maybe two dimensions of a point, never really getting the full picture of how it is playing out in our lives.

So, here I can see I have a romantic expectation of the job I am doing, an expectation that is unrealistic and thus, the starting point of the work is already problematic in that it will create consequences in my work when that expectation is not met. The correction here is to drop that starting point - to let go of any and all conscious or subconscious beliefs that such  perfect, easy and flowing work will come naturally, and end up making me feel fulfilled and complete automatically.

This does not mean I will accept and allow working to be a laborious struggle. It simply means I still need to re-define what work is to me, and look at who I am within it.

This brings up the point of the way I handle the more difficult or challenging, yet necessary steps towards my goals. I have come to program myself to see this scenario as a laborious struggle. These include the obstacles I face that I must figure out as I go, not already knowing how to handle them. These are unlike the obstacles I have faced many times and are now easier to see my way through, as I had already paved the way for myself.

Paving the way for oneself does not mean creating a life of paved roads, one that you can easily coast through till the end. That would mean only always sticking to what you know, what you have already done, and that is limiting. Paving the way means making space for oneself to expand - meaning, once you have one road paved, it becomes easier, so the time and effort you had put into paving it is now freed up to start another, new road. This way, there is no coasting, there is only constant expansion.

 I will continue in my next blog!

Day 49- Wasting Time Cause Life is Hard (redefining 'work')

This is a continuation of days 46, 47 and 48 wherein I am now redefining the word ‘work’ to a living word, one which has a definition that I can live in fact, and that, if lived, will support me and support what is best for all.

            My current allocation of the word ‘work’ is within and as the polarity opposite of Life, an allocation within which, having lived throughout my life has led me to live a certain amount of waiting. Waiting for work to end, waiting for life, placing Life and Living in categories as positively charged words which could not take place at the same time as ‘work’- a negatively charged word. I’ve also defined ‘work’ as taking responsibility, thus making taking responsibility for myself seem like it is something different than life and living, when in fact, Life requires self-responsibility in every moment. Thus, my current allocation for ‘work’ is as follows:

Work (negative value)

Hard

Responsibility

Toil

Struggle

Waste of Time

Boring

Labour

Stagnant

Limited

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to charge the word ‘work’ with a negative value.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge the word ‘work’ as bad/wrong/negative.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word ‘work’ by judging the word ‘work’ as bad/wrong/negative.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the word ‘work’ to the word ‘hard.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the word ‘work’ within the word ‘hard.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word ‘work’ and from the word ‘hard’ by defining the word ‘work’ within the word ‘hard’ in separation of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the word ‘work’ with the word ‘responsibility.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the word ‘work’ within the word ‘responsibility.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word ‘work’ and from the word ‘responsibility’ by defining the word ‘work within the word ‘responsibility in separation of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the word ‘work’ with the word ‘toil.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the word work within the word ‘toil.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word ‘work’ and from the word ‘toil’ by defining the word ‘work’ within the word ‘’toil’ in separation of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the word ‘work’ to the word ‘struggle.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the word ‘work’ within the word ‘struggle.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word ‘work’ and from the word ‘struggle’ by defining the word ‘work’ within the word ‘struggle’ in separation of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the word ‘work’ with ‘a waste of time.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the word ‘work’ within ‘a waste of time.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word work, and from ‘a waste of time’ by defining the word ‘work’ within ‘a waste of time’ in separation of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the word ‘work’ to the word ‘boring.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the word ‘work’ within the word ‘boring.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word ‘work’ and from the word ‘boring’ by defining the word ‘work’ within the word ‘boring’ in separation of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the word ‘work’ to the word ‘labour.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the word ‘work’ within the word ‘labour.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word ‘work’ and from the word ‘labour’ by defining the word ‘work’ within the word ‘labour’ in separation of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the word ‘work’ to the word ‘stagnant.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the word ‘work’ within the word ‘stagnant.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word ‘work’ and from the word ‘stagnant’ by defining the word ‘work’ within the word ‘stagnant’ in separation of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the word ‘work’ to the word ‘limited.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the word ‘work’ within the word ‘limited.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the word ‘work’ and from the word ‘limited’ by defining the word ‘work’ within the word ‘limited’ in separation of myself.

Dictionarydefinition:

Noun: Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.

Verb: be engaged in physical or mental activity in order to achieve a purpose or result.

Sounding the word:

Wholly Operational Reality checK

New definition:

To be Wholly Operational within Reality, as well as the Reality check that Life requires work as an applied effort to bring about and maintain what’s best for all. Being Wholly Operational within Reality requires one to check oneself in every moment within and as self-awareness, wherein one checks oneself in self-honesty in every moment, to ensure that one is in fact living what's best for all.

Day 46- Wasting Time Cause Life is Hard

          It’s interesting to see the difference in my life pre and post Desteni. Before, it was repeating cycles, entertainment and sort of idleness, whereas now it is more a building, self-expansive doing and being. Before, I used to think living is what happened after I got home from work, in my spare time or time off, in which I would usually find ways to entertain myself and pass the time until I had to work again. Now I realize Life happens in every moment, no matter what one is doing. But what I find is that, I still hang on to this idea that “Life happens when work is done,” wherein, I end up waiting to be done things that I consider to be ‘work,’ which can be anything that requires me to apply myself, focus on, direct myself through or concentrate on. I find I’ve been catching myself wasting time in these moments of unawareness, where I have justified it somewhere at some time in my mind as a little ‘break,’ and that this moment is ‘for me.’ It’s totally acceptable and necessary to take breaks and take time for myself throughout the day. What I want to adjust is the proportion of that time, I want it to be directive wherein I make the directive decision to take a break or give myself some time, based on the practical situation, and not because I’m doing something to occupy myself when I should be doing something responsible- because then it’s like taking a break from life, which implies I have defined life as work, instead of defining Life as Life, work as Life, and time for myself as Life. It is all Life when self is Life, thus I see the main point as defining myself as Life and then actually living that definition of Life where Life is who I am as the living word.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ‘waste time,’ in the sense that I have passed time in complete unawareness and entertainment within the justification that I am ‘having a break’ or ‘taking time for myself,’ when I am really avoiding facing/moving me in the moment and up in the mind running through a million random useless thoughts/picture/ideas/perceptions/beliefs/backchats.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define Life as ‘that which happens after work,’ instead of realizing that Life is every moment no matter what one is doing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define work as not life (work being any time I apply myself, focus on, direct myself through or concentrate on something), instead of realizing that  work is a necessary part of Life, it must take place within one’s Life, and thus as one walks the process to birthing life, one’s work will at the same time become Life as one with self.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define Life as ‘work’, instead of realizing that Life is as simple as breathing, and anything that makes it seem harder is of the mind, unless of course, one is starving or forced to slave labour etc…

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to, based on my definition of Life as ‘work,’ tried to escape Life, similar to ‘getting out of work,’ or ‘avoiding hard work,’ wherein I steal little breaks for myself, which is really myself as my mind stealing me from myself, instead of facing me, taking myself back and actually Living.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify stealing ‘little breaks’ for myself as my mind, within the definition of ‘Life as work,’ wherein I manipulate myself to think/believe/perceive that I am doing it ‘for myself,’ instead of realizing that I am taking time from myself, and wasting it, thus wasting myself and missing Life and missing myself within self-sabotage.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to waste time, avoid me, and dilly-dally within unawareness and indulgence of the mind instead of walking my process toward realizing myself.

To be continued…