Mainly what I’m processing at the moment is how immensely grateful I am. The thoughtful, insightful remarks that get shared by everyone who reads this blog are so inspiring.

There are so many of these online mini-communities where the conversation is either not very nice or not very interesting. The level of compassion and thinking that happens here (in what I think of as the orbit of the Fluent Self work) just blows me away.

Some day we really will have to all have a deeper version of this conversation in real time with an enormous pot of tea, but right now am just enjoying listening to all of you being smart and interesting! Mwah!

I tend to be a very internal, introspective person. That’s good in that I can figure out pretty quickly why I’m doing things. But it’s bad in that I tend to crawl inside myself and shut the rest of the world out. Not that I don’t like the rest of the world. Heck, right now, I like the rest of the world better than I like myself…but that’s why we do this whole introspection thing, isn’t it?

My focus lately has been on balance. That really hit home, Havi. I need to be social and involved in activities outside my own head. But I also need to work on loving myself and being more “in the moment.” My goal is to be a happy, healthy, compassionate soul.

You are a huge help in that process, Havi. Thank you.

I think it is so so interesting, that you were meditating for such a long time and now found the balance in your daily life. I like this very much. Many people I know go the other way round.

About the “keeping the perspective”: I think there is a natural security thing inside us (sorry, my English -I am German) which protects us from getting too deep on our own, if we are not ready for it. Which is a big gift. I did and helped with family constellations (role play) and I found out that there are things which wants to be seen but wait for such a safe environment. Otherwise it would be too big. It is one of the most effective ways to remove blockages to your true Self as it goes to the root of the problem. Once the stuff is seen it doesn’t have to cause trouble anymore, it dissolves and is gone, the whole energy shifts.

But also, if you are doing some process work, it doesn’t matter what, if you are doing it with a friend or with a group of good minded people the healing energy is so immense, it is such a joy. The good intentions of everyone helping are a healing in itself.

The people I know engaged in conscious process work, who take responsibility for themselves (!!!!) are so so very happy people, and can enjoy life so much!!!!!

I like your point of doing whatever form of introspection you like with a trusted friend. It sure helps keep a perspective sometimes.

What I take from this — and tell me if I’m wrong — is that it is okay, and in fact perfectly healthy to be introspective, as long as you don’t foist your introspection on other people. Sort of like dream analysis: try to understand what your dreams mean, but don’t bother giving your friends a blow-by-blow account of what happened in your dream…

And, of course, you can’t love others until you love yourself.

I think creative types are by nature introspective. There is no real way to avoid it. There are dangers to it, and you touched on a few: triggering self-doubt, etc. Perhaps the trick is to find effective methods of introspection, so that you get the benefits without triggering the down side.

Perhaps yoga is that trick.

I find that a night alone with a bottle (or two) of wine and a few good movies does the trick too. Lately though I’ve also found it is hard to shake off the after-effects of that “introspection” the next day…

~Graham

your blog post is great, I love it! You summed it up perfectly and so clearly!

Three things come into my mind:

(1) The thing about BEING PATIENT. Stuff comes up and wants to be seen. It caused trouble BECAUSE I didn’t look at it. So now the stuff is happy I looked at it by going deeper, shining light on it. If I am impatient and want to push it right away again, saying, “I am over it now already”, my stuff maybe doesn’t get as much intention as it wants to have and will cause trouble in some other way again. Also being IMPATIENT is a sign of not TRUSTING the process. Then TRUST is maybe the next thing I want to work on….

(2) Start with the small things, too. Don’t go for the big stuff always. Do little stuff-steps, one at a time, and probably you will reduce the big-stuff-thing already! Small, daily stuff now often relates to bigger more scary stuff in the past. So by working on the small things now, bigger stuff is healed already in small steps.

(3) If you want to make the whole process a little bit more playfull and fun, you can do parts of it together with a trusted friend. I have a really good friend, and instead of telling us over and over problems (do I have any? ;-) we do direktly some nice techniques together. So an idea is to work through the small stuff things over a coffee in your favorite restaurant. She is an “The Work” expert of Byron Katie, and we do it in the cafe, posing us the 4 questions. I am practicing another technique “Chinese Quantum Method” for a while now (energy work), which I am doing for her. So it becomes fun to do it and to help each other. Also doing the process work for someone else – I am learning so much of it. But this is a different topic. And really, it becomes less scary to pose questions over a cup of tea in your favorite restaurant. And it is better then talking again and again about stuff that bothers you, it draws down the relationship with your friend. When you work on it, you lift the spirits of the friendship as well!

Love
Sandra

Sandras last blog post..The two frogs

I think what’s important about going deep inside is not to get lost or stuck. When you’re looking at emotions and fears and beliefs, really looking at them honestly, they can suck you in – and all of a sudden, there you are in the whirlwind again.

There’s this subtle shift sideways that lets you look at them more objectively; that asks what it is the feelings have to tell you; that questions whether the beliefs are true. You’re still going deep, but you’re holding it all much more lightly, much less intensely – you’re not (as I tend to do, so please note this is written from a great deal of personal experience as well as from helping others with it!) squashing the life out of it all, pulling up the personal-growth plant to see if its roots have developed since the last time (five minutes ago?) you looked.

As you say, Havi, it’s so important to keep grounded, keep an external perspective at the same time as you’re looking inward – keep remembering who and what we all really are.

Thanks for the question, Ankesh, and thanks for the answer, Havi!

This post is brilliant and wonderful and makes me happy every time I read it. (I’m up to about 6 so far.)

Each time, I try to think of something constructive to say, but all I’ve got is SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Sixth time’s the charm, here goes.

It’s like we’re all dancing around this big thing, this big thing of introspection and self-work and self-love and Love and oneness and connection with self and others, and we (and NVC) come at it from the communication side, and you come at it from the habits side, and other people come at it from a law of attraction side, and other people come at it from a business side, and still other people come at it from a health and wellness side, but we’re all dancing around the same big thing. And that thing is that you have to know yourself before you can do awesome stuff.

More power to ya. More power to us all. (:

Paces last blog post..becoming an expert (part one)

So true. It’s not like you reach this one perfect point and boom, you’re balanced. It’s something you’re always coming back to and readjusting or even altering completely.

@Ankesh – Right on. I was just reading about lean manufacturing because we talked about it so much at Michael Port’s Beyond Booked Solid seminar this week.

Love the idea about koans being ambivalent to require depth. It’s also a bit like the talmudic way of circling around a question and generating more questions, operating under the assumption that there is never the “one right answer”, just more ways to interact with the learning.