00177 - Discovery Log
AI Summary: Reflections on criticism, setting boundaries, gratitude, balancing daily writing, fantasy world‑building, and community‑focused growth.
Aaaand we’re back. Boom!
Each day is becoming easier and that’s the way a training period goes. I’ve been making that connection to my past career, where the first few weeks of training were really intense. You’re taking in so many different aspects: new culture, new colleagues, new knowledge, new environment, etc. It’s basically just like that first day at school, except that you already know things and actually have to show that you’re capable of doing the job.
Funnily enough, I don’t feel too much pressure about showing that I’m capable here. But there’s still some peer pressure on Substack. I do still look up to some people who have more subscribers and cover similar topics. I do inadvertently study these people as I engage with their content. And then it hits that much harder when I have an interaction with one of them and they call my opinion out as ‘gobbledygook’. It’s a good word though to be ridiculed with, at least it makes the sender look a bit ridiculous as well. But it still sucks when you get a response like that when you’re just trying to relate to someone. I had to sit with that for a bit yesterday.
Before now this is when I would’ve shut down, closed the hatches, squared my jaw, and fallen into my cautious habits. Now I sat with the pain, because I wanted to know why I cared about his opinion, when I barely knew him. Which just brought me to my upbringing around two parents who were both academics. That environment caused me to close up, because my opinion was only deemed valuable or worthy of conversation, if it was clearly rooted in rational and intellectual wrapping paper. This is also the root cause for me to have had troubles with making decisions, since every decision I made as a child, was met with a cross examination to my feeling.
However, now I was able to sit with this experience, calm my nervous system and recognize that the reaction that I received, did not require my energy in return. In fact, I reminded myself that spending any more energy on the wounded reaction of someone, would only stall me in my own progress. The most loving way forward for me in that moment, was to detach myself from this person: I’m worth more respect than someone ridiculing my opinion. That’s the behavior of a bully and bully’s will only reflect on their own actions, if their energy is reflected back to them without addition. Obviously, the response I gave to close the connection I resulted in another reaction of the counterparty – but I set a clear boundary: I would no longer interact with this person. Silence brings me my tranquility.
What was the conflict about? Just if ‘absolute truth’ existed or not. It’s a test question for me, because in my experience the people that believe in absolute truths, have a closed mind. Which isn’t my vibe, I like to explore all perspectives, before I create a guideline to live by. However, that guideline will always be malleable to adapt to new situations. It’s how I survived in my life. On top of that, the people that have the ‘absolute truth’ mindset, tend to be more aggressive as well in defending their standpoint. Which makes sense, I’m not saying that I’ve never had absolute points of view. The reason that they get defended so deeply, is because otherwise your reality crumbles. It’s the stuff that rocks the foundation of your world if it would be shifted. Some people appreciate it when an unstable foundation gets highlighted; others don’t.
Anyway, now I did ‘waste’ a whole page on this topic. But that just shows how much a single interaction can affect you and why it’s so necessary to be aware of your own energy at any moment. I could have had a lengthy debate with this person, which would probably have left both of us deeply unsatisfied and annoyed. Instead, I now own my part of the interaction and leave the rest with him. For me this is an act of transmutation as well; one where we take a negative experience and see it for what it is: neutral energy. Once we do, we can use that energy constructively, by for example writing out the process for our community’s benefit ;)
In order to do this, I needed to really step out of the need to prove myself intellectually. Because my mind had a thousand ways of reacting, but none of them aligned with my heart. So I switched to pleasure, because that’s the closest alignment with this particular energy: I went to explore the possibility to spend money on getting a Lego set that I’ve been desiring.
Not that I’m rich or anything, a few weeks ago I was stealing fruit from neighbors fruit trees, with deep remorse in my heart. All because I didn’t have the money and was desperate for food. Since then, I’ve managed to sell some of my things and therefore now have enough money to last me for about 2-3 months. Needless to say, this isn’t the best time to spend nearly a month’s worth of money on Lego, but that’s the thing. I never said that I would take action on it, I just allowed myself to ‘act out’ by looking around. Because in the end, bickering is kinda childish isn’t it? It just comes from a place of wanting validation. And I can provide my own validation now.
Therefore the moment that I was truly contemplating on getting the Lego set, I realized that I had watched a TikTok video of someone who was on the verge of suicide and needed money. I knew that I would feel much better if I would give some money to this person, rather than spend all of the money I had in my mind on a thing. So I reached out to this creator and asked for their PayPal details. I sent the donation this morning and felt good :) I would’ve loved it if someone had done that for me when I was planning my fruit raids and… you never know where you end up in the future. The flow of energy comes back to us in some way, the intent we put out finds its way back to us. As such, I gave this money without conditions; because I wouldn’t want conditions to be placed on me receiving money.
Alright that’s enough gratification now for my ego and how awesomely mature I managed this. I’m very amazing, but let’s talk about the other areas that I’m discovering as well…
When I got the negative reaction, it shook my newly built structure as well. It really made me wonder if I wanted to continue writing: the old negative spiral was coming back up to the surface. And it was a gift, although it didn’t feel like that in the moment. I thought I had yet again to change my approach of getting an income and this is far from my first iteration. The creative process doesn’t happen without falling on your face a few times and I’ve really needed to embrace that in these past couple of months. The amount of projects that I started with the idea of “this is going to be the one!” only to realize shortly after: “this was just an impulsive moment where I was led too much by emotions” have been too many. It has broken me time after time after time, until nothing else was left, but me. The true me. It’s why I’m a bit childlike now, instead of being childish. I reconnected with that kid, gave him the love that he needed, and told him he was part of the decision making process now. He’s been doing a terrific job so far obviously :)
I also realized that there were parts during my mental rebuilding that I had discarded too quickly. Or had to, in order to survive the moment that I was in. One of them is the 9 year long obsession that I’ve had with building a science-fantasy world and writing a book series. Now… this was a truly tricky one for me, because I’m already having trouble with writing a discovery log every day and setting up the surrounding enterprise for this. It feels overwhelming, until I separate the concept of time from my ambition and honor the process again. It’s why I mentioned that I’m in my training period right now. There’s just a lot of stuff that I need to integrate and it seems everything goes too slow. I want to write my essays, I want to write my fantasy series, I want to build up my humanitarian startups, I want to explore poetry further, I want to live in an actual house before the winter hits and I’m stuck with sitting in the mud here again…
Dreaming is important, but it should serve you, rather than debilitate you. Which is why becoming aware of the present moment is so crucial. The mind isn’t supposed to be busy with planning anything outside of a day. What happens in the next day is a mystery. Even within a day, we need to be fluid enough to switch when a moment alters our course. Equally dreaming has its place, but it’s outside of linear time. It falls in the realms of co-creation with our environment, one of which is our imagination. The one thing that ties it all together is the heart.
Which finally brings me to that I am grateful, not because of some manifestation technique, but truthfully. I’m grateful that I have so much to look forward to and that I know how to achieve that now. I’m grateful for that I have the money to make a donation, when it wasn’t that long ago that I thought I would be homeless. I’m grateful for having found my community, even though this community also has wounded people that act out.
There’s much more that I’m grateful for and it’s this gratitude that shows me that life is worth living. That’s why gratitude matters. Not because you’re trying to brainwash yourself, but rather because you’re trying to clean your brain from the stuff that gets you stuck in a fixed mindset. One where you could for example… call someone’s opinion ‘balderdash’ or something similar ;)
That said, I’m still feeling uncertain and afraid because of the unknown. However, at least this is a true experience. I understand now that I desperately want to write my science-fantasy world, while also writing my essays, poems and discovery log. It seems like a lot, but that’s not a fixed reality. I’m in an adjustment period and it’s actually pretty cool that I’ve maintained writing publicly for this amount of time. Especially with my background. So I trust myself that I will honor my wish of writing my imaginary worlds into being. I also trust that the mysteries of the universe will unfold for my benefit as long as I hold true to taking care of myself and my environment. In other words: as long as I do no harm.
That faith didn’t come out of nowhere, it’s a long story for another day. All I’ll say now, is that the recurrence of palindromic numbers and other hints in my reality, show me that I’m not alone in forming my world.
We never are alone, we never have been.
We are one.
See you tomorrow!