Hi everybody, as you are obviously aware I have neglected the blog for some time, I have returned now much more informed and with more crystal clarity of focus of mind on what I would like to achieve in my goals in life. I think and feel we should all should take time out to find ourselves, our purpose in life, our soul calling, this is easier said than done due to the heavy demands and stresses of modern day living, both on a personal and professional level.
Through brutal self introspection and peeling away of all the emotional layers till I got to the central kernal of my being, so I was in a position to answer questions I had going around like spinters in my mind, Who am I, What is my purpose/soul calling, etc just like Steve Jobs said in his iconic speech at Stanford University "Look back at your Life and join up the Dots...", then you will see your life pattern emerge on how you arrived to where you are today in this present moment. I have been sufferring from imposter syndrome whereby I felt the feeling of negative judgement, ridicule and being ostracised which stems from suffering from mental health all these years, and I would even say when you look at humanity the witches that were burnt alive ostricised through the lack of education where society & humanity were living in ignorence, and the stigma and ridicule is still prevalent today. One of the perceptions I have now approaching the ripe old age of 53 is seeing my own mortality, in fact I am on 'borrowed time', as when I was 17 years old I was shot with an airgun pellet which penetrated my right eye leaving me with blindness in that eye, had the pellet gone an inch the other way in the brain, the injury could have been fatal.
Now I plan to try and keep a simplistic and minimalistic lifestyle and focus on the things that truely matter, which according to Miyamoto Musashi's 5 rings are Health, Wealth, Relationships, Experience and Spirituality.
After starting this blog and then going through the self finding/awareness phase I tried to identify my strengths and weaknesses and in the process used a variety of different tools.
One tool that I came across that enlightened me was the discovery and understanding of the Japanese principle of IKIGAI.
As you can see from the above Ikigai diagram, and there are many variations, but fundamentally they all boil down to the same concept of "Purposeful Living", i.e What gets you out of bed in the morning !!! The diagram explains all the seperate components of the Ikigai philosophy, but when the different sections of the diagram are worked on and the 'sweet spot' in the middle is identified, then action needs to be taken this is when the magic happens, when work & play become indistinguishable. The Ikigai diagram is fundamentally a dynamic document in that it can change over time as just like the cycle of Nature, Birth, Decay and Death, we as human beings are Nature therefore follow the same laws & principles.
When studying the Ikigai diagram one of the main questions you can ask yourself to start thinking about is "What can I not stop doing, or What do I keep going back to"....For me it was THINKING !!! I think a lot about pretty much everything, it has been pointed in the past by a number of people including one of my Psychiatrists who said that "I look too deep into things....", and so writing ( and Mind Maps, more on that in later posts... ) would be a natural medium for thought to be transferred and relayed to other humans to critique and hopefully benefit in some way shape or form.
From a mental illness perspective and as one way of self therapy I have been journaling for a number of years now but as mentioned earlier due to imposter syndrome lacked self-confidence and procrastinated due to perfectionism one of the symptoms of Imposter Syndrome, but now I have the "I have nothing to lose Mindset" and I will be sharing my Journalling and benefit of my wide life experiences both on a personal level and professional level, to Cyber Space and also more importantly about my battle with Psychosis.
What is to be, is meant to be, we are all bound by destiny, but as I understand Karmic Law, it is a Hybrid Spiritual Law in that " We decide, but Destiny Guides....". The eternal struggle between Head & Heart, one thing I know EQ (Emotional Quotient) is more powerful than IQ (Intelligence Quotient), in the movie "Enter The Dragon", much psychospiritual teaching can be learnt from the (Unedited version) of the opening scene, " You need Emotional Content, Don't Think, FEEL" Bruce Lee. Samurai are spiritual warriors who are taught to 'Get in touch with there feelings, to Still the Mind'. The heart and brain are transmitters of the bodies pietzo electric radio frequency system, out of both the heart transmits the furthest, the human heart is also made up of 70% of the same cells as the brain, this ratio (70%-30%) can be applied to the landmass to water ratio of the Earth and also to the Human body 70% water, 30% solid.
However when emotion starts to rise and turn into anger, cognition is cut off. In Zen it is said "Anger Clouds The Mind", that is why it is necessary to keep emotions in check, especially in a professional work setting, easier said than done as another one of my labels is "Emotionally Unstable". Now a Psychiatrist I had the pleasure of meeting said, which I thought was quite a profound statement "Do not ask the question what is wrong with you, but instead ask, What happened to you.....", in future posts I will attempt to apply root-cause-analysis to a number of issues facing the community and society at large including but not limited to how to reform the criminal justice system according to Neuroscience research, as I believe the reason that humanity at large faces so many external & internal conflicts is that the Systems, Institutions and Organisations that have been created are NOT IN TUNE WITH HUMAN NATURE, therefore anything that is man-made is prone not to be perfect, while Humans are apart of Nature.
In future I will be writing the blog posts as a way of streaming consciousness of thoughts, a sort of channelling of freewriting, this I find to be very self-therapeutic an emotional and mental vent of sorts.
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