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matthew54çš„ä¸»é http://hk.zorpia.com/matthew54 Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:11 EST Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:11 EST Zorpia.com Buddha http://hk.zorpia.com/matthew54/journal/1948815 The Buddha means one who is awake.  I could imagine myself sitting down trying to strain to block out my thoughts whilst getting frustated and angry that I am not acheiving the state of consciencesnes.  But I asked someone who said basically it's not about that it's like watching thoughts as clouds in the sky.  It was a relief as a meditator I thought I was useful as a array of feelings and thoughts came up during my times of meditation.  It is interesting how many thoughts were in my mind, and I was surprised to find after some meditation how so many thoughts were crashing in and out of my mind, it actually made me feel worse.  This awareness made me feel more overloaded. It was like a burn out of thoughts, I was so tired.  For me Buddha is about getting in touch with your true nature.  These images of a person straining to block out thoughts getting disappointed and angry only really mean someone who is cut off more from there essential nature, and certainly is not in terms with unconditional self acceptance.  It's about letting go of that need to be perfect not adding to it with dogma, well anyhow I think that doesn't help.  I went though different rituals for getting rid of negative karma, and after one I felt different.  The idea of meditation to block out thoughts remind me of a certain king who tried to stop the sea, it seems so silly in some respects to do, how could he do that but he thought he could.  Or the story of the Empire's clothes when actually he had no clothes, and was tricked.  All this said I think meditation can be very relaxing.  Is meditation boring, I think it shouldn't be doring if you vary your meditation practices. Yoga, I started doing yoga years ago, and recently have found I can't do it, I heard people talk about yoga being spiritually dangerous or unchristian.  My body seems to tense and stiff to do the asanas, and I feel nervous when getting into them.  I had a DVD for doing yoga, and on this I couldn't see the scene when I was practicing I thought this isn't helpful I really need another class and a teacher to explain the asanas.  However I did find it hard to find a suitable class with a suitable teacher. Yoga aside, Buddhahood is also about relationships, the way that you relate to the way, with the Noble Truths which are rather pragmatic, in there approach and the Eight Fold Path it is possible to overcome all if not much of the suffering in life.  Some people get angry about Buddhism but I think the Four Noble Truths do to some extend explain suffering and they are not pesmistic, because in the eight fold path it explains how to overcome suffering.  So they are interesting.  I didn't realise there were different branches or types of Buddhism, I found out about some of the different branches, this was interesting, I am glad and I have enjoyed learning about meditation and buddhism. Personal http://hk.zorpia.com/matthew54/journal/1948815 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:10 EST It's just "nerves" http://hk.zorpia.com/matthew54/journal/1948806 I have co-morbitity, obsessive-complusive disorder and generalised anxiety disorder, and phobic tedancies.  But what does generalised anxiety mean?  For me it is an inability to relax, I can't relax with my family or other people, I also suffer from social anxiety.  This makes it hard for me to form relationship. A doctor told me that everyone gets anxious and tense, I realised that, and it didn't help me, but I think I was hung up on elimating anxiety.  The doctor said there was some anxiety.  I wasn't happy about this and I was referred for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, but sadly before we started to challenge the thoughts I had to move from the other.  It was rather hit and miss, with the system, I had to wait on the psychology waiting list and by the time I got to see someone it was a student actually that was ok, but I had to move.  It wasn't an ideal situation. The psychologist talked about how I create the anxiety for myself, it didn't really help me although I had created situations where I become anxious I didn't do this by choice, it didn't make much sense to me, and the psychologist said as your doing this I don't see how we can help you.  In a sense it was true, because on one hand I tried so many relaxation techniques and theorically should have been the most relaxed person in the world, but I was actually so anxious and tense.  I was not happy, I had created massive amounts of anxiety for myself to the point I was overwealm.  Even though I did reiki, meditation and hypnotherapy, and yoga.  In the hypnotherapy they take you take to you past life, and tell you who you were, personally I don't think this helps, and certainly didn't help me to relax.  Whilst the reiki I found sometimes relaxing. I went for a review meeting with someone, from a job agency, and I said "I can't get a job because of my nerves".  or something like that, it seemed to me that I had suffered a lot from my nerves.  I latched on to the word anxiety, and used it more often than the word nervous which had a less clinical sense, anxiety especially anxiety disorder has more of a clinical feel, rather than I am nervous.  I suppose either words could have been used. However I don't like it when people say it's all in your mind, because it's not really, my breathing, and body where affected, my heat, and my hands sweating, and these terrfying feelings in my mind.  I suppose they mean the feelings are in the mind, but they do affect your body, so it's not fair to say it's all in your mind.  I searched for so much knowledge to cure my anxiety, I didn't find a "cure", I looked into Christianity and Buddhism.  I don't think that a "cure" is a thing to try and find and this itself becomes an obsession.  Someone told me if I wanted peace to pray but this didn't work for me.  There was some talk about homeopathy, this didn't work for me either, neither did herbal remedies, anxiety is really crippling for me, and has damaged my self-esteem and confidence.  I felt like I am very weird and strange with all the massive amount of anxieties that I have had I have felt like a freak.  That lead me to further feelings of anxiety, it is interesting how anxiety seems to feed more anxiety. Personal http://hk.zorpia.com/matthew54/journal/1948806 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:46 EST A Sea of Sadness http://hk.zorpia.com/matthew54/journal/1948557 Having just dealt with another blow, the death of a friend, and the illness of a relative.  I was really rather upset, someone said to me that it is natural I broke down at work and was feeling like crying.  I am not being cynical and I knew that crying relieved tension but I didn't want to show my emotions like this in the workplace.  But the funeral itself wasn't as traumatic as I had thought, I did feel emotional but somehow felt blocked I think it was embarrasement so I held back the tears.  At work I went upstairs to the kitchen and made a drink, I couldn't keepm my emotions under control and I felt vunerable and exposed.  I have really been under a great deal of stress and found that I had little coping stratergies and inner resources to deal with such times of stress.  Considering I am a holistic therapist and I have studied stress and anger management I think it is an irony that I couldn't deal with these anxieties.  But then I thought I am being too hard on myself and started to relax.  I had recently brought a programme of self hypnosis for overcoming anxiety, I listened to one of the CD's and it was by a psychologist who had himself suffered from panic attacks.  Panic attacks are so terrible my first real panic attack though I feel started as a younger child happened at school after being bullied.  I felt as if I lost my breath, (hyperventilation).  I started crying I thought I was dying or having a heart attack or astma attack.  I went to my doctor and started to hyperventilate at the doctors, I could explain what was happening and I got so stressed I started to hyperventilate.  It was rather a strange, new and scarey experience.  I think I was advised to breath into a brown paper bag, the old classic, and in some respect this did help, although on occasion I blew into the bag with so much force it bursted.  Panic attacks are so scarey, later I started to gain more control over my panics, I started to recognise tension in my body.  I learnt something called progressive muscle relaxation, and visualisation.  I could practice these relaxation techniques on a regular basis so that the stress that contributed to the panic attacks would not build up.  It wasn't just the attacks that scared me the depression was horrifying as well, my sense of emptiness and sadness didn't leave me it was always there.  I was told by a psychiatrist that he suspected I had obsessive complusive disorder, this is an anxiety disorder.  It was nice to have a name to explain some of my difficulties.  I had co-morbitity, with more than one anxiety disorder, having suffered from panic attacks, and Generalised Anxiety Disorder.  You could say I was scared of living and scared of dying, fear was consuming me.  The O.C.D. was treated with anti-depressants but they made me feel sick and I started to grind my teeth, but worse than that they seemed to increase my nervous energy.  I already had excessive nervous energy and it was so much I went out and started jogging, but in my tummy I felt so nervous.  I realised I could take these medicines.  However I took some antipsychotics and they calms me but didn't seem to contribute to an increase in nervous energy, they actually seemed to reduce the nervous energy.  I started getting twitches in my face a lot and considered this a nervous thing or to do with the medication.  However I stopped taking medication and it continued so I fairly certainly say it was a nervous thing.  There's plently of people worse of than you I heard someone say, but I thought that maybe true, but it doesn't help me.  I started to go to a gym, but I had on the wrong clothes, it was rather a silly thing to do but I forgot to get a change of clothes from working, and was asked to leave the gym.  I felt so embarrased I didn't go back to the gym and lost money on the personal training sessions that I had.  All in all, I think that it was a bad experience and didn't add to my confidence, even though I had booked personal training sessions, I tried so hard to increase my self esteem and confidence, but everything I tried to do went wrong.  My depression got worse, when I moved I was crying regularly, I really went into a state of self-pity.  I wanted to release all my stuff, and started training in reflexology, I was nervous about starting the course, but where I did voluntary work they encouraged me and let me use the phone to call the college.  Later I became a qualifield reflexologist, and also learnt reiki.  I was an acheivement, I was so happy to have succesfully completed the course and gained a qualification, for a long time I had felt like a failure.  I know the cliche you aren't a failure as long as you tried, but in seemed it didn't help.  So I was happy to have completed the course.  My sadness I came to think of as like a blanket protecting me, and keeping me safe, it certainly kept other people away from me.  I felt very lonely and isolated.  That lead to more sadness, and despair, I was desperate to meet a friend to come a resue me from my depression and crisis, but this person never came, I learnt that I could be a friend to myself.  Nothing attracts misery like misery is an expression, and for me it was true, I always seemed to attract nasty, or miserable people.  I didn't ever seem to attract positive people, it made me keep resentful and angry, and I didn't like that so I learnt about cutting people off from myself which I used meditation to help me with.  I think that depression has a reason, it is a mental pain, but it like other pain is a sensation that tells you something is wrong, or your not facing something, for me in a sense I am grateful for my sadness not because it hurts so much but because it has given me a signal that I need to take some action. Personal http://hk.zorpia.com/matthew54/journal/1948557 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:05 EST internet dating http://hk.zorpia.com/matthew54/journal/1948264 Having spent a great deal of time "chasing" after people in real life, although getting nowhere, with that, I thought I needed to change the things I was doing.  Once I got internet connection, and had heard about internet dating, it's a new way of meeting people, and many people get married from there.  Or so the advertising cliches go.  In fairness I actually knew a couple who met online so I was more inspired to look into this.  But to me honest internet dating hasn't only caused me heartache, but lost me money and time as well.  About 3 years ago I went on a dating site, and I found someone's photograph I couldn't join the site as a full member, so I emailed the person the photograph on the site.  I received an email back and we chatted on a messenger service.  I wrote for the dating sites magazine and earned points so I could send messages through the site, the messages through the site where not replied to, but I had this person on my contact list.  The person told me as it were on messenger they wanted to meet me, however I got scared, and things turned sour, then we started sending rather rude messages to each other.  I contacted this person friends on internet, and got really obsessive thoughts.  I caused me a lot of emotional pain.  I went to a reiki session and started crying during it because of the hurts it caused me.  I can remember walking out of the session and really more free, but I didn't realise before how much harm internet dating could have caused otherwise I would never have gone on any dating site. So things move on and I got an email from this person saying that I didn't have a chance and that I was rude.  As time progressed the pain eased, I started to feel resentment even hatred toward this person, and I did some meditation to relieve that and it worked.  Gradually my resentment faded, and I decided it was time to move on and meet someone else.  I had chatting with people on a messenger and they encouraged me to meet someone else, I saw another site, it was a Thai site.  I thought it would be nice to meet someone from Thailand.  One reason is that I had been drawn to Buddhism and meditation, as well as spirituality.  For me it was interesting, and I had done yoga for a number of years.  I was quite a spiritual guy, so I met some people through this site, one person I text nearly everyday, we met in London, for about a few minutes then this person walked away.  It's not very nice after travelling there not to meet longer, but there was an uncomfortable feeling between us, even though we had spoken on the phone and internet a lot it all wasn't real and seemed artifical, even though when I approached I knew who it was because we had seen each other on web cam.  Then I got a text telling me something like have a nice journey home.  Then I later got a brush off, in form of text.  To which I felt upset, and somewhat angry, more heartache I thought, more pain.  It seemed to go on and on from one person to another.  I suppose I had become addicted to searching for a partner on internet, I didn't just join internet dating sites, I also joined two dating agencies.  One there was mainly people older than me, who wanted someone older as well and there were a few but I didn't meet there requirements.  I joined a traditional introduction agency for 3 months but received no interest.  That was somewhat disappointing.  But at the same time as joining this Thai agency I had joined another dating agency online that was UK based, I paid my money for 3 months, I received one email that gave me an email address, the person wasn't that far in the same county actually.  I thought we could meet up and who knows but after that I never got any further emails.  I thought it was more disappointment and a waste of time.  I joined another site for spiritually minded people, I did talk to someone but I wasn't interested and also wasn't in UK.  One of the problems with internet is distance doesn't come into account, so you can get on really well with someone online, and get rather attached even, but if they are thousands of miles away then it is hard to meet them.  I went to a counsellor and told her about internet, she essentially said I could go to another country or they could come here, and the world is a smaller place.  Fair enough but I didn't have the money to go abroad and supposing we didn't get along well, it would be a wasted trip, in some respects.  So for me that wasn't the answer, I tried to meet people in UK.  Someone told me that the only way your going to get romance is to find someone locally, in a way this is true, but maybe I have to reconsider things.  So anyway, my oppinion is that it is a waste of time and money.  Of course in my view it's better to meet someone in real life, of course internet dating can be depective if for example you are nervous, or lack confidence to chat people up in real life.  But really behind all the smiling happy couples on the dating sites, are business people that are making money from the lonely, vulnerable and sad. Personal http://hk.zorpia.com/matthew54/journal/1948264 Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:58 EST