January 2021

I feel robbed.

I don’t know where the time has gone. In fact, the time has lost its meaning altogether.

It feels like yesterday when we met my nephew for the first time. I was too scared to hold him because he was so tiny. We welcomed him to the world, we couldn’t wait for him to wake up, to be able to understand us. Although, at the same time, we didn’t want him to grow up too fast.

Now, suddenly, the time that we expected has come, he is standing up, he is awake most of the time, he understands us, and it’s “too late”, he is almost 1 year old now. 

While we are living day by day in uncertainty, being stuck in routines, feeding on hopes, and conquering occasional depression, he is the only thing that reminds us of the time. Him, and my mom’s hair, that I noticed is getting grayer. 

I used to wonder if anyone else felt the same way, that the concept of time is unfair, that there are just too many other depressing things in this world. Now I know for sure that I’m not alone, but somehow it gets scarier. Being on the same boat with the majority of people in the world makes it more and more real. 

I feel stuck. I feel confused. I feel like life is punishing me for some reason. They said I might be gifted, that I was one of the chosen ones, to be able to feel, think, and process things more deeply than the others. 

Could it be because I’m waiting for something big and sudden? Like one magic hand from the sky to save and rescue me.. or maybe a relationship, big money, or an event?

Could it be because I think I’m so special that I should have been something big by now? Maybe I think I’m too good or too special to experience the ups and downs that life brings, that I’m too special to not being praised and noticed. That I’m too special to make efforts, even for myself. 

Could it be because I haven’t forgiven and accepted what is not meant for me? I have experienced good things, life, and relationships, and I refuse to live unless I get those things back. Even though the fact is, I won’t be aware of the good things unless they are not here anymore. I will always look back and hope I can go back to one point. Because now I know what they were. Because now they are familiar. 

Could it be because I’m too scared of the unknown? Because again, if things don’t work out, I will compare them to those that once worked out, that I will think I’m going back to square one, or falling off the cliff. And that, once again, is because I’m still attached to my past and the loss I haven’t accepted and forgiven.

Or maybe it’s because I tie my worth and the success of my days to superficial things, like money. If I’m not making money, my day doesn’t count. Or if I’m not experiencing anything big or life-changing, then my life is boring. Or if I’m back to feeling stuck, then there was no point in living the previous days.

Maybe, it is all of the above. Maybe it’s time for me to reflect, to evaluate the things that brought me here. Not the experience, the place, or the time, but the feeling. 

I have been resenting life because I feel punished. I’m feeling like time is an unfair illusion while at the same time accepting that it is too real to torture me. 

I think the key to life is adjusting expectations whenever needed. Like, we need to occasionally inspect our standards and the real situations, and make sure the gap between them is not hurting us in any way. We need to know that every chapter needs a different version of us since every chapter comes with a different set of lessons and characters too. My life is just like a TV show where every season is not exactly related to the previous ones. 

There are some flashbacks, some backstory to everything I say and do, but then again, they are meant to be acknowledged and forgiven. Every season will turn out different, and me sticking to what I know, the only patterns I have been holding on to for so long, is not helpful. 

I have told myself repeatedly, that even though I feel robbed by the concept of time, by how stuck I have been feeling, I have lived a few different lives in a lifetime. Wouldn’t I feel more stagnant and stuck if I were to live one predictable life? 

I just thought of one more thing, add this to the list; maybe I feel confused and stuck because I expect every chapter to be predictable, to be familiar and comfortable, but somehow I perceive predictable as boring. Like, I have experienced this, I should be experiencing something new. I want full control when I know that wanting control was probably the reason why I was not going anywhere. Wanting control turned into fear, anger, resentment, and disappointment toward life. I became afraid of embracing the unknown. 

And what does stuck mean exactly? If not staying in one place and not being able to move anywhere? Did I voluntarily stay in one place, then keep bitching about it?

Okay, this is me overthinking things. But now I know that if I want to live without attachment and live freely, I need to understand all of those things above. Consistently and fully. I need to stop perceiving time as a threat, and money as a rope that ties me up. I need to move on and be open to every new experience, without looking for a similar pattern from the past, without wanting to control everything. Every day is a new day, and thinking they are just another day is what makes me feel stuck. That, and waiting for that one day where my life flips over in one second. 

An Update From the Cocoon

This stage of awakening is no joke. The dark night of the soul indeed.

Some days, I feel like I have everything figured out. I can understand why everything happens and surrender to whatever-this-is. Then there are days where I feel so lost, confused, and angry. I have written about this so many times in my journals because somehow it became a pattern. One day of binge-watching and listening about spirituality and enlightenment, feeling clear and peaceful, followed by a day of chaos in my head.

In the past, I could run to my therapist and ask for pills, or if I decided to drown in an irresponsible lifestyle, I could blame that false label; “bipolar disorder”.

But this time, I have nothing to blame. I have nothing to grasp. Every time I have questions, they get answered the next day in uncanny ways. When I have doubts, things happen to prove that I’m on the right track. Whenever I thought I was crazy, I just happened to find videos or books that proved I was not. Sometimes the Universe was not being so subtle and this very sentence popped up on my screen (Evan/Bruce Almighty much?)

 

Well, I got an allergy and was just looking for an explanation for my itching skin!

Some email from a website I forgot I had subscribed to

Ah, youtube home. The modern day medium

Seriously, even though I never literally saw or heard supernatural things through my five senses (and I hope not!), the synchronicity has been insanely uncanny. This is kind of beautiful but also hard to wrap my head around. This is probably why my ego is acting out, like a child who is too scared to be taken home.

It is running around, grabbing everything it could find from the past to play with. My exes, my old habits, even the guy whose name I don’t even remember.. it is trying to hold on to any idea from the past. If it didn’t work out, the ego would create an image of a hopeless future, or the idea of a perfect future, which is nothing more than recycled ideas from the past. It is all over the place.

It’s like I can see my ego freaking out, screaming nonsense, proposing extreme ideas, and crying at the same time, begging me to stay. I feel like grabbing my ego by the shoulders and scream, “STOP AND LISTEN TO ME!”, but then I realize that is also a part of the ego.

(Honestly, I know this is a good sign because now I’m an observer of its behaviors and I’m not it. However, to be honest, it is still overwhelming. I have learned not to identify with it so much, and yet I still feel paralyzed whenever it proposes ridiculous thoughts and ideas.)

I need to constantly remind myself of all the progress I have been making, only to deal with more doubts the next morning. Sometimes, my ego managed to make me obsessed with games, TV shows, celebrities, or people, but the feelings and attachments were so short-lived however intense.

Sometimes I feel extremely lonely, but I know I don’t really have the energy to be around people, let alone be in a relationship with anyone. Every time I was around people, I could feel their problems and energies, now stronger than ever. I got anxious and suddenly forgot how to interact with people. Well, at this point I also don’t know what to talk about and how to explain this journey, so I prefer to be alone. But loneliness and guilt from being unproductive are not exactly the best feelings in the world.

Yes, that was another thing. Most of the time, I really enjoy this “retreat” I created for myself, like, words can’t explain the ecstasy, the contentment, the bliss. But then there are days where that voice in my head just starts beating me up, saying I’m too passive, I’m wasting my time, or that this is just an excuse for me to be lazy. Now, I have learned to ignore most of the passing thoughts, but this one totally gets me.

I would like to believe that this is just a phase, and according to so many videos, books, and articles from people with similar experiences, this is just a phase. Even the letters I automatically wrote said so. But why is it so hard to accept that all I need right now is rest, compassion toward myself, and more rest? Why is my ego trying to drag me and making me feel bad for not doing anything? Is that even the ego, or was it the soul reminding me I missed a turn?

I honestly don’t know which one is which anymore. I kind of have a sense that I need to rest, but I don’t know if that’s just another form of ego holding me back. The ego is everywhere, in so many forms, masks, and disguises.

God, it is a rollercoaster.

To Hear What’s Being Said

One of my goals to be fully healed is to hear what is being said. Without judgment, without attachment, and most importantly, without the need to be defensive. I have lived with unhealed wounds for so long that people opening their mouth is a sign to hold my shield as they are about to get me triggered. I lived in a defensive state, I became alert all the time because I perceived any human encounter as an attack; to my ego, to my past, to my identity, to my opinion, and everything I was attached to.

I mainly noticed this in some romantic relationships, where every neutral discussion turned into a fight because we triggered each other’s wounds, or in Eckhart Tolle’s term: pain bodies.

I also lost some human connections because of this pattern, not only of mine but also of theirs. We live in a social media era, where we can express our feelings, our (mostly unwanted) opinions, and our values. People can openly read them and feel attacked right in their unhealed wounds and identification with things. This is no longer the era where you need to approach someone and stab them in the chest, this is where you are busy in your backyard, working with technology with high radiation, and harm people you don’t even know about, or people you actually care about, unintentionally.

We have different perspectives, and often our tendency to be attached and identify with them creates the urge to express them on social media without people asking. Then some people, with the same pattern, perceive our expression as an attack to their personal being. This is mostly caused by attachment and identification with their opinions, religions, lifestyles, or even the products they use. They create their identity based on their activities or the things they purchased, so when other people separately say they are not doing the same thing, it’s equal to attacking them personally. A war begins, or a cold war if it’s between two friends. Things get weird the next time they see each other, they don’t know how, they don’t know why, all happened without direct interaction and even intention.

This is the pattern I want to get out of.

I still live with this state even after I notice it and intend to heal, mostly when my parents talk to me. When I was younger, there were certain patterns where every conversation left me with guilt, surely just typical parent-kid interactions, but they created some sort of defense mechanism where I need to defend myself all the time. I need to explain myself, I need to prove that the other party is wrong and not me.

I wonder what it feels like to actually listen, without anticipating my turn to answer, without feeling attacked, without figuring out how to fix the problems. I also wonder how it feels to be listened, without feeling like I’m attacking them, and without triggering an unnecessary conflict. My homework now is to unpack the attachments and identifications with anything that leaves me feeling overproud.

What a journey.

Quarter Life Crisis

I remember lying down in an apartment in Perth, in 2019, thinking that a lot had changed in just one year. I remember thinking that time was an illusion because I felt like I was abducted by aliens; living in a different timeline, not at all connected to the world, and knowing that nothing would be the same when I’m back.

I was right. Until 6 months ago, whenever I introduced myself as a 24-year-old, people would look at me as if I’m the luckiest person in the universe, followed by, “Oh! I wish I were 24.”, or “God! You’re still a baby. So many things in this world waiting for you.”

Then I’m back on “earth”, or in my case, Bali, and everyone had aged so much. Suddenly, I’m too old, too late, or too slow. Suddenly, all the jealous looks I got when I mentioned my age, turned into pity looks.

“Oh, you’re almost 25. When are you getting married? Do you even have a boyfriend?”

“Are you going to continue your study so you can work?”

“What’s your plan?”

Here is the truth: I don’t have any. Here I am now, one month into turning 25 and deciding to stay home a bit longer due to a pandemic, which most people think is over. “Wasting” my youth, “not knowing” what I want to do with my life, and feeling “lost”.

One thing that people don’t understand, and I sometimes forgot, is that I chose to get lost. I just knew that I wanted my early 20s, or maybe even my whole 20s, to be about exploring, crossing things off the list, and being confused. I want to ask as many questions as possible and seek for answers.

 

Some people regret things they did, some people regret things they didn’t do.

Some people regret their mistakes, some people regret not finding out.

Some people regret wasting time, some people regret making hasty decisions.

I fall into the second groups, and that’s only one of the reasons.

 

Sometimes, we choose something only because we have been considering the options for too long.

We often say “yes” only because we have said “no” four times in a row.

We think we have to do something only because we haven’t done anything in a while and we make commitments only because we think we are running out of time.

We think we are too late, so we stop considering options just to get it over with.

But, what if we are supposed to rest? What if we are supposed to say no again, and again, because the thing that’s meant for us isn’t here, among the choices?

What if we are not meant to choose at all at this moment?

We were told that getting to know ourselves, pattern, and timing is a waste of time.

What if we were told to observe, wait patiently, and make a wise decision when it’s clear enough for us?

What if we stop taking other people’s standard and illusion about timing, and try to find our truth, our path, and our purpose?

This illusion called time and timing had done nothing but damages in people’s lives. We rush into things to fit society’s standards, ignoring our own timing. So many wounds are left unhealed and are passed for generations because everyone thinks they have no time to sit and recognize them. So many gifts and talents are left buried because we were told to do certain things at certain ages to define success. And there are just too many what-ifs.

I might not know what exactly I want, but every single day, I know more things that I don’t want.

I don’t want to be 45 and wondering what it feels like to kiss a girl when you’re 17, or almost fell into the idea of marrying a guy because it made sense at the moment, and get the chance to realize it was a silly idea. I don’t want to pass my unhealed wounds and patterns to my future kids, partner, or friends.

I have been feeling not ready for a long time, so I will definitely know what ready feels like.

Do I experience quarter-life-crisis? Well, my whole life has been an existential crisis, so I’m used to it. But yes, of course. Sometimes I look at people my age and they are either traveling, studying, living their wildest life, married, or becoming super spiritual. I once thought I had to choose one of those and live according to the list that comes with the label.

But the more I walk, the more I realize that life is not like choosing an extracurricular.

Maybe I’m not doing any of those right now, but have I tried at least one thing from other people’s life choices? Yes.

Have I found something that makes me want to settle? Not yet, and I hope not anytime soon.

I gain and change perspectives all the time, I’m progressing every day, I’m learning something new every single moment, I’m healing, and I’m finding my own truth, path, and purpose.

To my future self, whenever a question like, “why didn’t I do this sooner?” pops up in your mind, this is your answer.

Tentang Diri #2

Saya mau berbagi tentang cara menemukan diri sendiri setelah melewati perjalanan yang mengalihkan perhatian. Saya pernah berjanji mau menulis tentang ini bertahun-tahun lalu, tapi kemudian saya merasa tidak perlu, karena merasa diri sendiri sudah terselamatkan.

 

Beberapa tahun belakangan, saya percaya bahwa perjalanan yang sejati adalah perjalanan menemukan diri sendiri, dan apa-apa yang kita temukan selama perjalanan hanyalah bonus dan pelajaran.

Setiap kali ada yang bercerita soal bagaimana hubungannya baru berakhir dan tidak tau harus ke mana, saya merasa tidak relate lagi dan cuma saya temani sebisanya.

Tetapi, akhir-akhir ini saya menemukan satu pola lama yang terulang, di mana saya memulai obsesi-obsesi baru setiap harinya. Tipikal diri saya ketika ada stres atau isu-isu yang belum diproses dan dijamah untuk disembuhkan. Di satu sesi meditasi, saya menemukan bahwa saya merasa stres sejak mendengar berita yang mengatakan bahwa Indonesia akan segera kembali normal. Masuk akal, tentu saja. Tapi anehnya, sesi itu tidak menghentikan usaha saya mengalihkan perhatian, bermain game sampai pagi, melupakan rutinitas-rutinitas sehat yang baru saya kembangkan, dan menyiksa diri sendiri dengan tidak tidur berhari-hari.

 

Singkat cerita, setelah saya gali lagi, saya menemukan bahwa akar masalahnya bukan ketakutan akan virus, atau rasa ingin menjaga keluarga seperti yang saya temukan di sesi sebelumnya. Ternyata, saya takut jika dunia ini kembali normal, orang-orang akan menemukan kembali hidup mereka, dan takut jika itu adalah sesuatu yang tidak saya punya. Saya baru menyelesaikan satu bab di buku kehidupan saya dan saya tidak tau bab mana yang harus dilanjutkan setelah periode ini. Saya kebingungan tentang “normal” yang mana yang harus saya tuju jika harus “kembali”.

 

Ini mengingatkan saya tentang kesah orang-orang yang bertanya tentang harus kembali ke mana setelah satu hubungan berakhir. Perasaan, “sampai di mana tadi?” yang membuat kita merasa kosong dan bingung ketika kembali ke realita.

 

Ternyata, jawabannya sederhana, saya tidak perlu bingung bab yang mana yang harus dituju karena saya tidak akan melanjutkan salah satunya. Periode ini juga salah satu dari bab-bab di buku kehidupan saya. Jika ini berakhir, yang harus saya lakukan adalah memulai bab selanjutnya.

 

Sesederhana itu.

 

Masa depan saya terlihat buram dan berkabut, itu semua hanya karena saya sibuk melihat ke belakang dan memikirkan bab mana yang terakhir saya baca. Singkatnya, yang perlu saya lakukan cuma berbalik badan.

 

Ini dia jawaban yang seharusnya saya berikan. Jangan mencari ke mana harus kembali, karena hubungan, atau pun bentuk-bentuk lain dari kehilangan, juga salah satu dari bab dalam buku kehidupan. Kita di saat ini adalah kita yang berbeda sebelum hubungan atau perjalanan yang baru saja berakhir. Kenali diri yang ini, duduk bersama lukanya, obati, dan jika sudah siap, kita akan memulai bab berikutnya.

 

 

 

Omong-omong, mungkin kamu perlu mendengar ini..

 

Jika kamu saat ini sedang patah hati dan berusaha menemukan diri sendiri lagi, selamat.

Ada bagian dari dirimu yang rindu. Ada pesan-pesan yang mau dia sampaikan. Karena patah hati adalah cara diri mengingatkan untuk tetap berjalan ke tujuan, dan kita mungkin akan salah jalan jika dilanjutkan.

 

Dalam perjalanan, kita bertemu orang-orang dengan kecepatan dan arah yang sama, dan hanya selama itu pula kita akan berjalan berdampingan. Suatu saat akan ada persimpangan, akan ada yang langkahnya melambat, atau semakin cepat. Ketika kita tidak lagi berjalan dengan kecepatan dan arah yang sama, kita hanya perlu melambaikan tangan dan berterima kasih pada mereka yang pernah berjalan bersama kita. Tidak perlu menyesuaikan langkah, memaksa mereka berhenti, atau mengubah arah cuma karna takut sendiri.

 

Jika kamu bingung harus ke mana setelah ini, mungkin karena perjalanan selanjutnya bukan tempat nyata yang bisa dituju dengan kaki. Mungkin yang selanjutnya ada di peta adalah perjalanan ke dalam diri.

I Am New but I Am Not

This journey has been a roller-coaster, a crash course of everything.

I remember every part of my life where I got to experience the wildest, weirdest things, and when I experienced intense pains and feelings. But most importantly, I got to experience different kinds of lives in a lifetime.

They were all so intense, but short-lived and relatively fast. Like, a crash course.

When things ended, I was so disappointed and convinced that it would be really hard for me to move on.

Surprisingly, I was wrong.

I quickly learned the lessons they brought, healed, and transformed into a new person to the point where I forgot about the pain of endings.

Everything was like a ladder that brought me to a higher place.

As I wrote before, after I decided to surrender, I’m going through some purging. Mentally, spiritually, socially.

I felt crazy, I lost people, unresolved traumas and wounds came up to the surface.

Now, only months after, even though I’m still in a transition, I’m slowly integrating.

I feel less dissociated, and now I have only two different modes. One is the ego, who seeks only easy things, who wants to play games mindlessly, thinks only about itself, and overcompensates the extremities.

It’s unbelievable how resistant my ego was (and still is).

I feel like an imposter, I constantly doubt myself. Even when my life has been like I’m in the movie Evan Almighty, my brain always comes up with different reasons to deny everything.

..and the other one is the real me, that had been buried for so long.

Every time I start meditating, I feel like I’m there instantly.

See, after one of my LSD trips told me about this journey, I started keeping journals. Every time I meditated, or when I felt like I was in a higher state of consciousness, or of course, tripped, I automatically wrote.

There are so many pages and different topics covered, and they are not as awkward as my conscious, rusty writings in this blog. In fact, they are nothing like how I write here. They are all so articulate and full of wisdom.

Of course, my ego convinced me not to take them seriously and that I sounded too deluded.

This year, I finally began to do more research, to hear about other people’s spiritual journeys, to learn from spiritual coaches, and to confirm every uncanny thing that I experience.

I, someone who would do anything to avoid sounding unscientific, felt every word that they were saying, resonated with me. It’s like we are speaking the same language.

Somehow, their words didn’t sound new or unfamiliar. In fact, most of the topics were also written in my automatic writings (that I wrote when I was completely clueless). Some of them came up in some contemplations when I tried to make sense of things, or were questions that bothered me when I was younger.

It’s like my whole life, I just forgot about this state and now I’m starting to remember.

---

Anyway, after purging mentally, spiritually, and socially, this one is relatively new.

Years ago, whenever someone asked me what kind of pizza I would have, I would say without a doubt, “meat lovers”. 

Although at the same time, I always joked about how by the time I’m 25, I’ll stop eating meats.

Why 25? I had no idea. Especially when 5 months into turning 25, I was still chewing pork ribs and beef meatballs.

But one morning, my body just started rejecting meats, out of nowhere.

I’m not avoiding them, it just happened without me even trying. Just like how it started rejecting alcohol 1,5 years ago, which was also weird remembering the way I lived right before that.

But again, strangely, it feels so natural. I feel like I’m entering a house that I’ve never been in, and yet it feels so familiar and homey.

It feels like I’m new here, but I’m not.

To Accept or To Accept A Bit Later

It’s a really lonely journey.

I constantly feel like I don’t belong anywhere, that I don’t fit in.

Honestly, I have been feeling this way since I was a little kid. I felt like I was different, but not in a good, superior way. Just.. different, as in I was feeling lonely and nobody could really understand me.

Now it gets even lonelier, I lost so many people that I loved so much, I have to let go of someone that I thought was the one. I had, and have to grieve, a lot.

The good news is, I felt okay as soon as I accepted the loss, I was healed as soon as I surrendered to the process. I let go as soon as I let myself grieve.

The bad news? I have to go through the Kübler-Ross cycle of grief at least twice a day.

I’m in the process of accepting the whole journey, obviously. 14 months ago, when my higher-self explained everything about this journey, how it has always been, how it was that time, and how it is going to be, I didn’t understand a thing about it. I thought it was just a hippie-dippy thought that I picked up somewhere and came up during the LSD trip. Or maybe, I was being in denial.

Now, I have walked quite far into this, I have been trying to accept it, I have been following the breadcrumbs and I was led to everything that I needed to know. All in uncanny ways.

Now I know that the hardest part of a spiritual awakening process is not losing people, it’s not losing (what you thought was) yourself, it’s not the feeling of not knowing yourself anymore. The hardest part is meeting your true self, knowing who you truly are, and accepting it. It’s extremely hard.

When the memories you didn’t know you had, came back to you, bringing up all the repressed traumas to the surface.

When your wounds are finally noticeable, demanding you to feel them and take care of them, all by yourself.

When you have to sit face-to-face in a room with your deepest fear, knowing that nobody will come and save you.

When you finally see that you are way more than who you thought you were, and realize you have been treating yourself less than it deserves.

Everything is so intense that my ego wants to cling to my old habits, now more than ever. My ego wants me to develop new obsessions, new addictions, anything to keep me from doing the inner work.

Sometimes my ego acts like a kid who is too scared of seeing something, trying to close its eyes and run across the room. It constantly tries to distract itself because that something is too unfamiliar. It doesn’t even know why that something is scary, it doesn’t even know if that something is, in fact, scary.

Sometimes it’s just like an adult who is too scared to be proven wrong and trying to trick me into thinking that this thing is crazy.

Sometimes it throws tantrum and refuses to say anything other than “Ugh I wish I were dead.”

However, there is no way back, I can only go forward or rest for too long that it confuses me even more. I only have two choices; to accept it, or to accept it a bit later. 

My ego keeps saying it’s unfair.

…and Here I Am

Now I know why people stay in toxic relationships. Both the pain and loneliness are unbearable.

If I’m being insensitive, I would say a toxic relationship is like cancer. You can only rely on prevention because once you have it, it is either you surrender to death or you fight 100% until you are free. There is no in-between.

…and like cancer, you need support and willingness to be free. You need purpose and reasons to live.

Sadly, it’s hard to get out of the whirlpool when you don’t have any of those or anything else, or at least when you feel like you don’t. You treat the relationship as the only root you are holding on to when you’re about to fall off a cliff. You don’t even know if getting up is going to be better than falling off. You just can’t let go.

You are too scared of falling, you want to make sure that something will be there to catch you when you actually fall. Here, you don’t believe in fate anymore. You want control.

Here, it’s not death that you’re so scared of, you’re worried if you survive with broken legs. You’re scared if you let go, you’ll struggle to move on. You’re scared of being hurt and lonely. Holding onto a root seems like the only thing that makes sense to you, even if it also hurts, but at least you have hope.

Here, hanging with your hand bleeding seems better than darkness and uncertainty.

Here, you think about the bridges and other roots that you’ve burned. Here, you blame yourself for ending up here. But there is no use, you’re confused, you’re desperate.

Here, you realize you don’t wanna fall because you forgot how to take care of your own wounds. You don’t want to take care of your own wounds. It will be so painful, not only from the wounds, but also from loneliness, from guilt after leaving yourself, losing yourself, and letting yourself hurt.

Here, you realize that you won’t fall into darkness and uncertainty if you let go. You will fall into yourself.

and I can see why it’s scary.

Random Tutorial: How to Control iPhone With Broken/Mostly Unresponsive Screen

Since I let go of my iPhone X and downgraded to my old iPhone 6, which is way smaller, I dropped my phone at least 4 times a day. After a few months of constant abuse, my phone had finally given up. The screen was smashed, some small screws came out of I-don’t-know-where. It is still on, but the screen is unresponsive and I can only touch some parts near the bottom of the screen.

I have been okay with it since I’m using WhatsApp web and as long as my phone is connected to a wifi it ever connected, I’m good.

However, I had to deal with it anyway. I flew back to Perth with another phone (which is also shitty) but I had to back up, restore, and blablabla, but the backups are encrypted and I don’t know the password blablabla. Everything needs to send verification code to my old number which I had lost, and I couldn’t connect to any network so I bought $50 worth of data, but my cellular data was turned off, and many more. It was hell, I tried everything and came up with some ideas but there was always something. I STILL NEED TO TOUCH THE SCREEN.

After 6 hours of struggling, googling, desperately downloading random apps that I’m sure are malicious, I found a way to control an iPhone with just one part of your screen working. I’ve Googled it and almost everyone said it’s impossible, but it is possible.

So, here we go:

You just need iTunes, USB, and a little part of your bottom/middle screen that’s still responsive (just enough to make 3-finger-gestures).

1. Connect your phone to iTunes
2. Click the little phone icon to open your phone settings
3. On the “Summary” tab, scroll down until you see “Configure Accessibility…”, click and turn on the VoiceOver. It will allow you to control your phone with simple gestures.
4. Learn how to use the gestures here: https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph3e2e2281/ios
5. On your phone, see the text that is now highlighted (inside a black square), you can navigate through the whole screen by just swiping left and right or tapping anywhere, you can also do more gestures as on the guide above.

It worked like magic! I managed to change my phone number on WhatsApp, configure my network, and did everything I needed with just swipe left-swipe right-double tap-repeat. It requires patience, but it’s way better than nothing!

P.S you can ask Siri to turn on the VoiceOver if your case is you’re connected to the internet but unable to click on “Trust” when you connect to iTunes.

It’s A Spiritual Awakening (damn it!)

I want to start writing about my journey, but I don’t know how to start. Well, honestly, I wrote about it on my Instagram captions, but I totally had no idea what was happening. It’s like a big puzzle whose pieces surprise me every time I find them. 

I had never heard about a spiritual awakening before, even though I came from a really religious and spiritual family, even though I had manifested so many things in my life with my mind, even though I could do lucid dream quite easily.

Well, I have to admit that at some level, I knew that I am some sort of spiritual. I had countless arguments with my parents about religion and questioned so many things about the universe, religions, religiosity, and God since I was 8 years old, but not even once I denied that I felt connected to a ‘higher power’. So, to minimize confusion, I said I ‘created’ my own ‘God’, something that is different to the God that I heard from other people, and to temporarily ease my cognitive dissonance and inner-debate because I haven’t figured my own belief.

I thought I was just lucky. Every time I thought about something I really wanted, it actually happened and I always got what I wanted. I can’t mention them, but they were more than just a new phone, new stuff, or good grades. I manifested the weirdest things people could ask for. Now that I think about it, I should’ve known I was either so blessed or the law of attraction worked for me so strongly. I enjoyed my easy life and I have been bragging about it my entire life. Although, now it has changed, I mean, my perspective has changed and things start to make sense.

It wasn’t until my first LSD trip that I still thought my journey was just a regular journey of a lucky girl with a mild mental illness. Well, technically it was my third LSD trip, but the first two were pure recreational with other people. It was also weird because I had lost the blotter for months. I had been working 7 days a week for 10 months AND I had moved twice since I lost it. It appeared quite magically one day before my first day off and my first time being alone in a share house I was living in.

I was tripping by myself, not expecting anything other than just a ‘break’ since I was stuck in an isolated town during the Christmas period and everyone was gone for holidays. The trip was quite strong, but I didn’t experience much of visuals. Instead, my fingers started typing a 9-page-letter to myself. I got chills every time I read it, it was extremely articulate, it contains answers about my past, my present, and my future, it contains some advice and most importantly, it tells me to meditate, something I had never thought I would do. It’s also full of spiritual terms that I didn’t even know about.

The next day, I started doing research about psychedelics, spiritual stuff, and the things written in the letter. I even thought about the term “higher self” that I swear I had never heard of. I was surprised because I found out, from other people’s writings and journals, that my acid trip was highly spiritual, so I started meditating and the journey continued… for a month. I was too afraid. I was in denial.

At the beginning of the year, I moved to Perth even though I swore I’m not a city person, and for a whole year in the city, I felt like I was running on a long travelator… to the other direction. I experienced constant failures (really, it was like every door I tried to open, slammed in my face), I was oddly miserable in a perfectly good life, my vibration and energy were extremely low, I felt confused all the time, I started doing some long-gone habits, every day felt the same and yet somehow so different and not connected to the previous day. My subconscious mind did everything it could to make me feel like myself again.

During that year, I had so many vivid dreams about my childhood, sometimes it wasn’t even a dream. I could be busy cooking and I got glimpses of memories that I didn’t even know I had. I got triggered by some neutral events and acted like a lunatic. One day, I found out, again, from the internet, that it was my wounded inner child that is ready to begin the healing process. Does it sound crazy to you? It does to me too, I swear. I feel crazy!

But I confirmed the memories, they actually happened. I confirmed the experience by looking up on the internet, and again, it was something that so many people experienced during their spiritual awakening, apparently. (Damn it, even when I’m writing this I still can’t accept it.)

The End of December 2019

A whole year had passed after the acid trip, or as it turned out, was called “chemical enlightenment”. In the middle of my desperation, I started meditating again, this time it was just an attempt to get myself together. But instead, I get more and more confused and every single day, I think I am going crazy. I feel so disconnected and alienated. I feel like I have some new beliefs and faith that my logic is still fighting against. When I write this, I’m back in Bali, my hometown, and have been staying at home for 3 weeks. I have no desire to connect to my old life, or my old activities, or even my friends.

I sometimes think it’s my mental illness that is playing with me. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 22, but again, (damn it), as I watched so many Youtube videos and blogs of people who are now “spiritually awakened”, they too had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, ADHD, depression, and they experienced almost exactly what I experienced. Every symptom on every list that I found was exactly me, and according to them, the whole experience is not a mental illness, they were just signs of awakening.

If someone asks me how I’m doing now, I still feel crazy. I feel more confused than ever. I feel more disconnected and disoriented, but at the same time feel more connected to something (I want to say the Universe, but it sounds so hippie-dippy). I made fun of my friends by calling them hippies when they were into this kind of stuff. I don’t even know why I thought it was funny, I was so young and they were in their 20s. That’s also one of the reasons why I’m being so resistant and in denial, if I start telling my friends about my journey and how uncanny it is, I’m sure they will call me “hippie” or think I’m just a ‘bipolar’ girl who develops psychotic symptoms.

There are so many missing pieces that I didn’t tell in this story because they were so uncanny and I’m still processing everything. However, I know that the journey didn’t start on the day I found the LSD, it started since I was so young because every single piece of my journey was connected to the next one and led me to this day. Wow, so weird. Damn it.