Tag Archives: Understanding

Doing today better than yesterday (or tomorrow better than today)

Jordan PetersonLately I have been listening quite a lot to talks and interviews from and with Jordan Peterson. And lately I have been pretty desperate about what to do next, as I don’t really have goals anymore it seems. And one of the things Jordan Peterson teaches is to set a goal, some goal, some life goal. And I don’t have anymore it seems. Yes, I wanted a lot, as I am very ambitious, but then life happened and life has hit me pretty hard in my experience. So I kind of gave up on some things, including life goals. And I changed a lot, a lot in a direction I don’t like, especially related to love life. As until like half a yea ago or so to me I wanted sex to be related to love, to relationship, to things like that. But recently it seems I am mainly looking for sex, not for love anymore, even though I somehow try to stay faithful to someone. But the last doesn’t feel good and another thing Jordan Peterson is teaching is to be truthful. Ah, and I used to be truthful and some kind of good guy, but also that got lost in the way how my life turned out.

So then, why write this post? Well, it seems one thing Jordan Peterson is teaching has been making sens for a few days now: make sure or try to make today better than yesterday. Or try to make tomorrow better than today, no matter in what small increment, even one percent or even a part of a percent would do, as per his teaching. So somehow I picked up on that and somehow that seems to work, at least for one or two days now. And I don’t fully know how I did it, but somehow I picked something up from what Jordan Peterson is teaching. Arf's paw healingAs for a few weeks already my dog Arf has a very nasty wound, a very nasty infection on his paw, on his toe. And no matter how much I did my best to treat it and prevent him from licking it open, until yesterday he was able to lick it open again and again, even after one or a few days of healing. But yesterday I kind of decided to just make Arf, make (the healing of) his wound my priority. So I did. And I kind of decided I wanted to do better today than yesterday. Or make tomorrow better than today, no matter in what small amount.

And amazingly, somehow it seems to have worked, as today his wound seems to have started to close and it seems I was able to somehow control his licking. Or he just realized I was dead serious on dealing with this issue, so he was less likely to lick.

The RecruitAnd what made me start writing was watching the end of the movie The Recruit. I never realized before how the movie really ended and today I saw some more intriguing details in the end. One of the things that struck me today that the character James Clayton doesn’t want the character Walter Burke to die, no matter what had happened. And yes, I guess we can  mostly or always understand people or movie characters, even if they do wrong, and yes, I guess we don’t want people to die, no matter what they did wrong, although there may be some exceptions to that. Ah and strange to see that today is the birthday of Al Pacino, the actor who plays the role of Walter Burke.

And no, I am not Jordan Peterson. I am not that conscientious, finishing a text fully, checking a text fully, until it cannot be improved further. I just post, so this is just it for now, even though of course I would like to improve this post and many other posts and pages in this site. But it seems just not to be me to do that, at least not now.

But today was better than yesterday for me, in many aspects, and it feels like more than one percent, maybe even ten percent. As I also did some cleaning up, no matter how little.

The God Of My Understanding

Now

I was not satisfied yesterday, as I usually am not satisfied with any post, or sometimes page, I write. One reason is that I could not find, or actually did not make the time, to find an image for this post, this ‘page’, and it seems I am, or my ego is, compelled with finding or putting an image on every post or page I write here. And yes, of course the reason is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as Google is said to rank internet pages lower if there is no image or if there are no images. And if there is no image, no page image, I cannot properly share this post in Facebook, as of course if I share something there must be an image, otherwise people won’t like my post so much, or not click on the link, not ‘see me’.

So yes, it seems all those rules I set for myself seem to be related to ‘be seen’, to be recognized. And as I know now, that is the ego that wants to be seen and recognized.

And right now I am not satisfied either, as this text, this chapter, probably belongs to another post, another page, not this page with the title “The God Of My Understanding”.

And strange, the image I found when searching for ‘ego’ in AllTheFreeStock.

.Alter Ego

And right now my ego is causing me a lot of stress as the image is not uploading fast enough to my liking. Ah, and that is what I wanted to share, that I am trying to learn a lot recently from the teachings of Eckhart Tolle. I was just starting to listen to his book of which a spoken version is available on YouTube.

And weird, right now the complete opposite is happening to me as to what is being taught by Eckhart Tolle: my ego seems to have taken over completely and I am trying to do many things at the same time instead of staying in the now, what would give me peace, what would give peace, what is the only thing that probably is important: staying in the now.

Yesterday

For quite a while I have been very angry with God. Or at least I am very much struggling with the issue of “God’s will (for me”. As I have the feeling God’s will for me is completely opposite to what I want. I have the feeling God is completely against what I want and wants me to do something else than what I want. And this goes so far that I have virtually completely given up wanting anything, as God is against it anyway. So why would I want something and even do effort for it if God is against it anyhow. As also in my belief system is that God is all powerful and that nothing that God does not want will happen. And what God wants will happen.

So today I found myself verbalizing what I believe God wants from me, what God’s will for me is in my understanding. And I found myself writing something that God wants me to go to the US working in some kind of ‘simple’ job like cleaning in order to pay for my livelihood, for my food and such. And  what God wants from me would imply I would need to leave my house and the dogs behind, and basically leave everything behind and start anew somewhere else, somewhere in a strange place I have no connection with, don’t know anybody and things like that. He would also want me to leave my computer systems behind, a computer system that holds all my data, including a lot of history and photos and web development stuff and such, a computer system I have put an awful lot of effort in building, even though I can’t fully maintain it the way I want it at the moment and was even confronted with a disk crash yesterday where part of my data was kind of lost. A pretty ‘impossible’ situation, as normally I keep almost everything in duplicate and next to that keep backups of my most important data that cannot be replaced or cannot easily be replaced.

Actually that disk crash was the starting point of a pretty bad mood in which I started writing down those thoughts about God’s will for me. And that might actually be a good thing, as it made me verbalize, realize what I believe God’s will is for me and what keeps me trapped in virtually doing ‘nothing’.

The strange things about my belief in what God’s will for me is, is that He always answers my prayers related to the dogs. As Ulla died at home, for which I prayed very hard and serious and Arf survived a very bad situation and Iwa’s tumors are gone. And with Ulla I even got more than I asked for, as I only asked for her to come home and die at home. God gave her even half a year more to live. And Arf’s tumor appeared not to be a real tumor and he survived as I was guided to the vet at the very last minute. And Iwa’s tumors disappearing recently is a real miracle. I could have never believed that really as it appeared to me she would die very soon as the tumors started to spread very quickly. And suddenly they just disappeared.

So God answering my prayers about the dogs is kind of contradictory to me for leaving them behind. And God wanting me to do a simple cleaning job or something is kind of contradictory to having a more than higher IQ than average and even having a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering. And don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong with any job, whether simple or complicated or whether requiring intelligence or not. But it just doesn’t make sense to me God gave me a more than average intelligence and not wanting me to use it (in a job). And I have a back injury, so not very convenient for me to do a lot of physical work. And having this pretty advanced computer network at home and giving it up also doesn’t make much sense to me, even though I don’t really need it anymore. But just letting it go is just too much to me and doesn’t make much sense, which is why I am still kind of keeping it alive.

So thinking further it appears to me that the God of my understanding is (still) completely against anything I want, except maybe when I pray for something with the health of the dogs. And thinking further a God who is completely against everything I want sounds more like a (the) devil to me than a (loving) God. As to me ‘loving’ implies helping and supporting the thing or person one loves. And being against everything I want and blocking it feels more like torture than like love to me.

Related to ‘love’ I often compare God’s relation with me with the relation I have with my dog Arf as I indeed want Arf doing what I want and not what he wants, regardless the fact that I love him very much. And that hurts me often, as I want to give him so much more freedom, but I don’t want him to fight with YokYok, which is why I keep him on a leash, and I don’t want him to get hurt in an accident, which is why I don’t want him to go out of the compound, out of the garden.

Anyhow, it is still weird to me that God does not seem to want to help me with restoring my relationship and with my career, with my business, the two things I want most, as my (ex-)partner still does not want to be my lover and partner again and I am still alone with my DoctorsConnect business, without clients or beta-testers even.

And yes, I understand God would not want to change my (ex-)partner as He gave us, humans, free will and He wouldn’t want to mess with that, even though I read many stories in the bible where God changed the mindset or thinking of human beings. I don’t understand why He didn’t let me meet the right people to either build a team or to find clients or beta-testers. I strongly believe God is capable of arranging something like that, and after more than three years that still did not happen. And I think “I did my part”, even though a few months I kind of gave up and decided to “let God” make my project happen as I think I did enough and have no clue what else to do (if God is so much against my project).

Enough for now I guess. And I hope you won’t consider this as a ‘negative’ post, as it kind of helped me writing down the truth about my thoughts and feelings about “God’s will”, love, and what I really want.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin

I recently decided to do something with Bitcoin and I thought it might be a good idea to share my experiences here. And many things in my mind now, as I can’t exactly remember why I wanted to start with Bitcoin and while writing here now I realized quite some people must have made quite some money with Bitcoin as the rate has shot up exponentially the last years. And yes, while I started, a few weeks ago, the rate was pretty unstable and (had) dropped quite a bit, as far as I know because China closed down Bitcoin exchanges, but I still believe Bitcoin has a future, even though I don’t fully get the (technical) concept yet.

Bitcoin wallet

Well, I understood I needed a Bitcoin wallet, so I searched a bit and found Bitcoin Core, so I decided to install that on my computer. Kind of a mistake, as Bitcoin Core seems to be part of the Bitcoin network that maintains the transactions, so it started downloading more than 100 Gb of data (and that is still not finished). And I can’t use my Bitcoin wallet until the download is complete, so I was not able to get Bitcoin yet with that.


Slow progress with Bitcoin Core

Anyhow, I normally don’t give up easily if I want something so I started looking for other ways to get Bitcoin, which was much harder than I thought, as I needed to sign up to some site that would exchange Euro or USD for Bitcoin. And being a Dutch citizen living in The Philippines it took me a few sites I found in Google I was able to sign up for. And again, I ended up with something I did not really want, namely the Kraken Bitcoin Exchange, which is more of a currency trading account than a way to just buy Bitcoin. Like I found the charge to get my Euro back would be USD 60.00 or more, which does not make sense as I just put EUR 100.00 in the account to buy Bitcoin.

Power greater than myself

Last night I kind of hit bottom as I really didn’t know anymore what to do or even why I am here. I feel so powerless and my life has become so unmanageable. I hardly do anything, especially in the morning as I just feel so weak, so powerless, so overwhelmed by that indescribable feeling. Or maybe empty indeed, the ‘hole in the soul’ type of feeling. And I keep thinking of the times where life was just normal, where I just worked, had a relationship, income, money, savings, a house, holidays, visits to friends and family. And it is all gone, it seems there is nothing but emptiness and drudgery, not even goals. So yes, I often think of just getting out, just killing myself, hanging myself. And I could (easily?) do now I guess, as two weeks ago I bought a long, pretty strong rope for one of my dog training sessions.

Power on my desk

And no, no friends to go to, or family, or whatever, as I know they also don’t have the answer. It is really up to me what to do with my life, or up to the will of my Higher Power.

And that is what I got last night, as it seems I finally kind of got to Step 2, came to believe a Power Greater than myself could restore me to sanity. As yes, I feel sick now. I never felt sick, but I really feel sick now, emotionally, spiritually sick. So last night was one of the first times I guess I really cried out loud my pain, my helplessness, my despair. It was the first time I think I really felt powerlessness as I think is meant in Step 1. And amazingly it gave room for something else, surrendering like that somehow opened a door to ‘coming to believe in a Power Greater than myself’. As I just can’t do it alone anymore, I just don’t know what to do anymore.

And I am not sure in what order things happened, but I was listening to Steps videos on YouTube, and heard a story about someone mentioning someone having a large rock in his garden as his Higher Power. And while kind of joking he replaced “Higher Power” with “rock” in the texts, and somehow that opened a door to me to a concept of a Higher Power that would work for me. As I could admit my shortcomings to a ‘rock’ or anything else, I could read my Step 4 work to a ‘rock’ or something, I could write a letter to a ‘rock’, as I realized I just needed something outside of me to address, something more powerful in some kind of way, like rocks are not easy to destroy, they are pretty stable and sound. I also remembered one day, long time ago, I tried to destroy plywood with a hammer as kind of a healing method, but I was stunned and disappointed how touch the plywood was, not easy to destroy, it would not even break. It was just tough. And believe me, I had a very big hammer.

So I started searching for some kind of Higher Power, a rock or stone or something else that is not easy to destroy, that is like iron or, indeed, rock. And I found some old piece of pipe and some small stones and also thought of the gold necklace I am wearing lately, but couldn’t really find something strong like a stone, like a rock. And the necklace is too vulnerable to me to represent the kind of Power I am looking for. So well, I took that old piece of steel water pipe with some rubber on it and put it on my desk, as that was the best I could find at that moment. And went to bed again and slept I think.

Power Greater Than Myself

So this morning I started searching for something ‘power’, like a stone or rock, or maybe the big Acacia tree in the garden, but nothing really seemed suitable. Until I saw a small stone/rock lying on a bigger rock, just on the top. And it felt just right for me, like a miracle, as how could such a small rock end up on top of this big rock. And later I realized someone could have just put it there, but that doesn’t really matter. It was just there and it caught my attention and it suits my purpose for now: something outside of myself that is ‘hard’, that is strong. And yes, I am starting to realize it doesn’t really matter what I choose as my Higher Power, as long as it suits the purpose of ‘Higher Power’. As yes, I was thinking a rock like this could be lost or broken or even pulverized or whatever. But that doesn’t matter, as I can always replace it, always find a new Higher Power, as long as I make a choice. And yes, that is what I wanted to add. It felt very important that I made a choice, that I just made ‘some choice’ for ‘some Higher Power’, right now, just for today, or this week, or this month, or this year, or yes, this lifetime, but that doesn’t seem to really matter now. The main decision to make was making a choice, which I did.

My ideal (loving) Higher Power

Struggle

I am still struggling with the idea of ‘God‘ and ‘Higher Power‘, especially related to LOVING Higher Power or Loving God. And yes, while writing, I am also struggling why in the Twelve Steps in Step 2 there is a mention of Higher Power and in Step 3 it is about God. As if God and Higher Power are the same. But maybe they are not.

Photo


Photo that appealed to me related
to Higher Power right now (found on oalifeline,
I have no rights for this photo)

I just put the photo, based on my feeling, which did not make sense to me. But later I saw the clouds, the sky behind the dog, representing The Universe, Higher Power to me. And I just realized that my dogs, including two Rottweilers, like on the photo, support me so much recently, seeming to feel what I feel, feeling so bad, and still wanting to be me, as close as possible. That is such a great feeling, such a great gift.

A (loving?) Higher Power of my understanding

I wrote below the characteristics of what a loving Higher Power would be to me, like when a Higher Power would be loving. And I realized I ended up writing my definition of a Higher Power, which I realized could be interpreted as ‘playing God’.

Then I thought further and defining ‘loving Higher Power’ or ‘love’ in my understanding would indeed be something like defining like I did. As if a loving Higher Power would not match my definition it would not be a loving Higher Power in my understanding. Then it could still be a Higher Power, but not ‘loving’.

And looking at the things I wrote I expect from a loving Higher Power implies that Higher Power would have unlimited power, be able to do ‘anything’ in my life, in the world, in The Universe. And of course that goes back to my understanding of ‘God’, the God I know from the bible, the God that is all powerful. And that God is also like the God of Islam and such.

So if a/my Higher Power is loving in my understanding and all powerful, then why does He or She not give me what I want and think I need? Well, i guess those things go back to understanding life, to the dilemma of life, the dilemma I guess we all struggle with.

Characteristics I relate to loving Higher Power

Anyhow, I was thinking I could at least write down what to me the characteristics of a Loving Higher Power would be. So here we go:

  • A loving Higher Power would give me what I want, no matter what, or would at least help me get what I want.
  • One of the things I would expect a loving Higher Power to do right now is to give me enough money to do the things I want to do, or at least enough money to provide in my current needs, provide enough money ‘to pay the bills’ so to speak.
  • I would expect a loving Higher Power also to take away my current suffering, especially that terrible feeling I mostly, or lately always, wake up with.
  • I also would expect a loving Higher Power to help me use my talents in a way, yes, that I want, like use my talents to make some decent income, or at least make sure I have enough money so I could share my talents for free. As I love to work, use my talents, yes, provided that my work is somehow appreciated, which I feel it is not right now.
  • I would also expect a loving Higher Power to give me the love life that I want, the love life I think I need and deserve, like sleeping together and yes, making love, having sex, preferably with who I consider and want to be my lifetime partner, preferably with Lee.
  • I would expect a loving Higher Power also to find a way so I could visit my mom at least one more time before she dies, or before I die, as she would love so much to see me and I would also like to see her.
  • And yeah, I would expect a loving Higher Power to help me restore The Malasag House, renovate it, make it beautiful again, hopefully with the same spirit in which Lee and me occupied it long time ago, in 2006.
  • And yeah, I would like my Higher Power to take away the burden of my loan away, just pay it, just let it go, just leave it in the past. And I am not sure how much I learned from that experience, of how that loan all came to be, but it was not only my fault, my mistake, there were also others involved in that.
  • Ah, yes, I would also want my Higher Power to help get YokYok and Arf together, so we can be a family again, together with all the dogs in one place, happy together.
  • He or She would certainly not want me to do things I don’t want to do or don’t like to do.
  • Communicate often, show my love often, let Him or Her know I am here/there.

My part

Next to thinking about what a loving Higher Power would be to me I was also thinking to add what a loving Higher Power would want from me. And what comes to mind now, maybe also what a loving Higher Power would want to give me:

  • A loving Higher Power would want me to be happy and enjoy life, enjoy all the things there are in the world, all the things there are in ‘creation’.
  • A loving Higher Power would want me to be careful with everything in His creation.
  • A loving Higher Power would want me to love Him or Her back: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, Is just to love and be loved in return”.
  • A loving Higher Power would want me to do the things I love to do, do the things He created me for.
  • A loving Higher Power would want me to communicate often with Him or Her often.

What next?

So what is next? While writing it came to me that I can at least do my part. As by the nature, the definition of Higher Power I cannot control my/a Higher Power, whether of my understanding or not.

And then indeed, it is up to my Higher Power to do His or Her part. At least now He or She now knows more about what I would expect from a loving Higher Power, how I look at ‘love’ or ‘loving’. Maybe He or She could consider my thoughts on that.

So my part would be:

  • be happy and enjoy life;
  • be careful with anything in this/His/Her creation;
  • love Him or Her as I want or expect to be loved;
  • do the things I love to do and/or He or She created me for;
  • communicate often, show my love often, let Him or Her know I am here/there.

Sounds pretty simple, so let’s start from here.

Preliminary result

Writing this page, the above, a few days ago has had some kind of positive influence on me, as it gave me a way to focus on my part whenever I am angry or confused or whatever. Like I just found myself chatting to a friend “I hate God for …” and that brought me back to the fact that my part does say to “love my Higher Power”, not “hate my Higher Power”. It also made me realize that I can maybe only love someone or something if I can also hate him or her or it. Somehow anything also relates to its opposite, like there is no love if there is no such thing as hate.

It also helped me leave the things I expect from a loving Higher Power with my loving Higher Power, so I don’t need to ‘work so hard’ to achieve those things.