Flow

"The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy or - or attention - is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action. The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else. These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their
lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals can not help but grow into a more complex being. By stretching skills, reaching toward higher individual challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual."

Yes!!!
This is excellent. A perfect expression of something I had been trying to put to words.
This is excerpted from "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Empowered

I really and truly feel like I'm a much Stronger, much Wiser version of myself when compared to how I was a month ago. Moreso than 3. Much more than 6. Unimaginably so from an entire year.

Even though I haven't understood everything right away, or there have been times that I've given up for a little bit, I ALWAYS got up again. And it has made the difference.

I see now how empowering Discipline is. How empowering it is, to not need Comfort. It feels like a lie, a trap, a sandpit. It's something that can be adapted to be "comfortable"without, and defeats and drags down so many people everyday.
But with a Change in Perspective, a Paradigm Shift, the sense of Security in your own Agency is a far greater comfort than anything else could ever be.

I see now how doing what you 'should' be doing, even when you really don't want to, makes a HUGE difference. Every. Single. Time.
Even if not in that instant, or in the next few days. Though I've often seen the difference very quickly.


Your Body remembers.
Your Mind remembers.
Your Identity remembers.
"Shoulds Become Musts" is an appropriate Mantra.

Right now, I feel like the entire world is in the palm of my hand.
I Will Have Every. Single. Thing. That I want out of this Life.

Fractal Endeavors

For the longest time I was a horrible procrastinator because, if something was important, then I had to be prepared for it. I had to make sure I understood it in and out, and that the result was going to be what I thought the best result would be with the perspective I had. I would end up reading, researching, maybe getting distracted...and by the time I was satisfied I would often find that the situation had changed or I would decide that it wasn't nearly as important as I thought it was.

But after Exploring the Philosophies of all kinds of Life Coaches, after just Trying in all the different areas of my life that matter to me- even if I don't succeed... I find that's the best way to proceed.
The best way to get the best result, even if it isn't obvious and doesn't come right away, is to just Explore it.

As we Explore our world and every little Dimension in it, they gain depth and complexity in ways that you cannot impart to someone. Because it's Your Journey. Your life, your Experience.

Even when we truly Learn something from something outside of ourselves, it isn't because it put something inside of us that wasn't there before. It was because we followed it to a New Discovery.

Purpose

Have I just been messing around until now?

Has the hard work towards this or that and the benefits of it so far simply been at the end of Capricornian Whims, rather than a deeper vision? Hand-to-Mouth Endeavoring rather than building something of true, powerful substance?

As I confront serious questions about visions of my future, I can't help but wonder that.

If I could plan out every moment of every single day, doing whatever I want... I had an extremely foggy image of what that would be like. I know certain things that I want, certain things that I like, but even so...

This entire time I've been writing a High-Light Reel... rather than a complete Story.
Recent Experiences and this Revelation paint Intentionality as the Core of Discipline.

What I have had has been enough to get me this far down the path of Personal Development. With an increasingly Lucid vision, the compulsion for More should be far stronger than before.

Vicariously

“My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”

If this is a Collective product, then from where does it spring? Whose Collection of ideas and standards?

It seems to me that the Collective Unconscious, whatever it's roots, must evolve as we do.
Rather than being a relentless, unyielding inheritance, it must be as malleable as we- despite being much larger in scale.

And the more our Creative Faculties grow in all areas, the faster these "inherited" standards seem to change. Much to the bitter dissonance of those still on the old operating system and refusing an update...

These new ideas and new ways of being are constantly emerging; breaking boundaries, entirely up-heaving comfort zones, and steamrolling over old paradigms.

And despite the insistence of some... it has been that way for hundreds of years!!! Not obeying some guidelines of things staying the way they were because of arbitrary religious perspectives, but CHANGE! That is the natural order.

We all have doubts about our dreams, as much as we have our hopes. We all have ideas that run the gambit of judgement. Shameful, beautiful. Horrendous, noble. Right, wrong.
Yet why, as we may simply sit on these ideas, do they inevitably seem to manifest in the world?

All manner of obscure and bizarre ideas, to life that shits Gold (Bacteria recently discovered in the Amazon) to Humans with the features of Women and the function of Men.

No matter how disparate, or how far apart these ideas are on the planet, once borne into the Human consciousness our Creative musings seem to continue to grow until somehow, some way, somewhere in the world, they pop up in to real life.

How then, can all of that just happen if we aren't connected in some way deeper than we realize?

I don't know that whatever bond we all seem to share with each other is an Inheritance or Standards to refer to.

But I do know for certain that there is a Collective Unconscious, an Eternal Artist, that wants to explore every notion and play with every possibility.
As we live life, so too does life live us.

Blargh.

The more depth and complexity I try to give my blog drafts, the less I am happy with them, borderline disgusted honestly, so I'll try just keeping it simple for a bit.

There was a brief time recently where I thought I would be kicked out of my Mom's house for what I wanted to do with my life. And I would be living out of my Jeep...  and honestly I was really really excited for it.

It seemed fun, and adventurous, and like a real reason to hustle with all of my little entrepreneurial projects instead of just pushing them back because I "didn't really feel like it".

I had it all planned and budgeted out and was certain I could take care of myself. Get a sleeping bag and put it in the back, park over night at places like Wal-Mart, live off of Ezekiel Bread and Vitamins. Exercise, shower, and shave at the Gym. Spend my free time reading and writing, or out in a park mediating, or at the library researching and eBusinessing. Bust out the dusty Rocksmith Guitar and actually teach myself a few chords, acoustic, to maybe actually be able to play some music one day. Pay my Car Insurance, pay my Phone Bill (which I would have cancelled for Pre-Paid if not under contract), pay my Gym Membership, pay my Doctor's Bills.

I KNEW I could do it. I had that little voice in the back of my head, that always pushed me forward, that always guided me in the right direction, that always lead me to powerful growth, that was always right, tell me over and over that I could.

But my hours got cut at work to 2 days a week, because of a request I had made months ago. I had 3/5 of my paycheck left, my next biweekly paycheck would be for a 1 week of 5 days and one of 2, and in that time I would be able to keep up and find a new job, hopefully as a Waiter. They make great money given the hours, with the right time and place.

I came home about a week ago and found bills in the mail for me from my Health Insurance Provider, saying that I MAY be responsible for about $300 additional dollars of Lab Work. And that little voice still said "You CAN do it! You can!!!"
I checked later and found that I didn't owe that additional $300, that Anthem was mistaken, and that the Lab Work was covered in the initial Office Visit charges.

But I gave up. I talked to my Mom, threw away my HRT Medication in front of her, and told her I was going to wait like they all had asked me to.

And I really just hated myself for it. I hated myself for it. It's given way to compassion and understanding and hope since... New plans, more secure plans, steadier plans...

But I could have done it. It would have been hard and would have asked for a whole lot from me... but would that have been so bad? To have the chance to discover such a powerful inner strength, such a beautiful chance for rapid personal growth, when it was practically being handed to me?

I have mellowed a bit, but I still feel as though I have missed a wonderful, amazing opportunity.

Family Reaction Vent Post: Indignant and with Conviction

So after they made jokes about murdering me if I were to tell them I were Gay, I came out to my whole Conservative extended family over the past week as MtF.
I knew they would throw a fit, but they've passed Fundamentalist-tier and gone full cray.

They're those Pseudo-Christian types you find in America who constantly demonize everything outside of the "Traditional" far-right wing beliefs, have no idea what the Bible actually says, and just follow "Christianity" and ''God" based on assumed and loosely inferred cultural expectations.

They're largely ignorant of LGBT things, and especially Trans things. They mixed up Transvestite, Transsexual, and Transgender and used the word "self-mutilation" a lot. But I GUESS you could say they got the gist of what I was saying.

They flipped the fuck out, a couple burst in to tears and left the room saying that they just "didn't want to lose me". My Older brother said he would have to disown me because all LGBT behavior represents the decline of civilizations and that I was being manipulated by Liberal propaganda. While he just goes through his day to day trucking job, before coming home, playing CoD, and collecting guns, not living by example or even interacting with anyone outside of this family. Jokes were made about me making an ugly girl. One Aunt who is like a second mother to me (A supporter of Gay rights, something she has taught to her daughter) said she would have to cut me off from my 10 year old Cousin/Sister to "protect her".
And my irrational Mom is thoroughly convinced that I'm entering into a seedy underworld of sexual fetishism and debauchery, and is emotionally puking all manner of circular logic and broad strokes at me to try and convince me not to do it.
Every single one of them has said it doesn't fit me at all, that it isn't 'me' and that didn't see it coming at all.

All of them keep telling me that this can't be right, can't be me, and that I need to "put the brakes on". I tell them that the longer I wait is the harder it will be for me to pass, they ignore it. They brush it off when I tell them that I've felt this way my entire life, and since finally accepting it about myself 2 years ago I have spent every single day thinking about it, meditating on it, laying awake at night over it. Going to local group meetings, reading literature, seeing the stories of other Transitioners on YouTube, considering what I would lose and what challenges I would face. Every. Single. Day. Often for hours. And now I've finally gone through seeing a Therapist and Endo and have been on AAs for a week.

It's funny.
For the whole past two years since accepting my feelings, I've had doubts. Wondering if I would pass well enough for it to be worth it, wondering if it would be worth life becoming more challenging like it looks like it's about to. Wondering if I really felt the way I thought I did.

But now that this has happened, I am more sure than ever that this is what I have to do. What's right for me. I have an extremely powerful burning conviction now that I didn't before.