December 2, 2009

Do Not Be Perplexed…. Be In Awe

Posted by Amyra under Addictions, Ego, Illusions, Spiritual Growth, Trust, Truth
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I consider myself very privileged to be in a position to facilitate spiritual awakenings for clients who are open to develop their spirituality.  It’s such an honour to be part of someone’s awakening process and so humbling to witness the growth of a soul.  A lot of our clients are highly-accomplished professionals and successful businesspeople who are left-brain dominant; whilst their structured, analytical minds have aided in their professional success, it’s an obstacle when it comes to emotional healing.  Hence, we often spend quite a lot of time breaking through their tendencies to intellectualise the process so that they can deepen into the realm where true healings can take place.

When you intellectualise the process, you do a number of things: trying to put ideas into clearly-labelled boxes; being sceptical of concepts that do not appeal to your logical brain; over-analysing your feelings; the inability to be open-minded about random, subjective matters; and being too structured and linear in planning how you want the outcomes to look like.

But spirituality does not conform to boxes, or necessarily fit into logic, or stand up to analyses.  It cannot be planned in structured and linear ways.  It may not even be possible to put into words.  What are these boxes anyway if not something constructed by our limited brain?  Spirituality is amorphous, unstructured, pliable, circular, often paradoxical, mysterious, and full of undiscovered potential.

Since I take a spiritual approach to treatment, I see addiction as a gateway to discovering one’s true, awakened self.  In that sense, I tend to see every individual who checks into our residential rehab as a soul on the cusp of finding a renewed sense of who they are.  The process often entails the breaking down of the illusions of their ego – seeing through what’s false and inauthentic so that they come back to a total appreciation of the beauty of their spirit.

The flowering of the soul when finding its way back home is a beautiful process that defies what the logical, rational mind can understand.  It can only be understood by experiencing it and letting go of the need to understand it conceptually.  Bring the level of understanding from the mind to the heart, for this is where growth happens.  The more you are willing to surrender, the faster you’ll get there.  Whenever I see clients struggling to make sense of it, I tell them, “Do not be perplexed, but be in awe of it.”  When you’re perplexed, you are attempting to find answers through your logical mind.  When you’re in awe, you simply surrender to the experience while retaining an open heart.  The former creates limitations while the latter allows you to flow with the process of change, resulting in quicker healings.

When clients come to us for help, they have become stuck in their self-imposed structures – either through their own limiting beliefs or allowing others’ agendas to mark the boundaries around their actions and behaviours. They’re unable to see their way out.  A lot of times, the solutions are found by mentally removing these structures and seeing what is possible when they’re no longer boxed in by those limitations.  This applies not just to one’s physical environment but also to the beliefs they rigidly hold on to.

But to let go of these structures, there needs to be some sense of a safe alternative presented.  Otherwise, it will truly feel like death – in letting go of your grip on what has kept you safe and falling into the chasm of nothingness.  A deep depression or hollowness can manifest temporarily as a symptom of the death of your ego – sometimes known as “the dark nights of the soul”.  This isn’t a bad thing, no matter how uncomfortable it may feel.  The pendulum will start swinging back to the opposite polarity, bringing you back into light, once you’ve reached the depth of despair.  In emerging out of darkness, you’ll pick up various aspects of your true, authentic self, until you arrive at a higher form of yourself – more alive and whole than ever.

The alternative that needs to be presented to encourage you to let go of rigidly-held beliefs will not form into convenient little structures.  But a trust that there is something else worth experiencing will enable you to let go of what isn’t working anymore.  And when you begin to feel the mysterious in-betweens, be in awe of your discovery and let yourself be brought home on a wondrous journey.

 

October 23, 2009

A Tribute To Personal Freedom

Posted by Amyra under Assertiveness, Choice, Empowerment, Freedom, Fulfilment, Self-Acceptance, Self-Actualisation, Values
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In my work as well as my personal growth, I often examine how our fears entrap us in a false sense of imprisonment.  We fear expressing ourselves, making courageous decisions, saying no to those who’re abusive to us, standing up for ourselves … because we might leave ourselves exposed to judgements and rejection.  The cost of asserting ourselves and exercising our freedom is the shame and embarassment of being shown that what we do is not acceptable to others.

What is it about being accepted by others that make it such a powerful drive that stop us from living a happy life?  Reading this, it may sound ridiculous that we short-change ourselves so readily to gain the approval of others, yet it happens more often than we’re comfortable admitting to.  This feared unacceptability can come in various forms – e.g. being told we’re not good enough, being persecuted, leaving someone unhappy.

The rules we learned as children followed by a lifetime of putting into practice those rules (often in inappropriate contexts) have convinced us that straying from what’s kept us safe will bring about the same outcomes we had feared as children.  Our logical minds (A will lead to B; C will lead to D) are influenced by fears that put an irrational spin on how we make decisions.  In other words, we are stuck in a world governed by a set of rules that we ourselves have chosen (whether influenced by others or not) when the reality is that in many circumstances as adults we have the freedom to act as we please – our actions governed only by our conscience.

And what of our conscience?  Our conscience should only be dictated by what we know to be our personal values, and we guide our actions by ensuring that we uphold those values.  What this means is that the clearer we are of what our values are, the more confident we are of making the decisions that are right for us.  Having a weak sense of our values, on the other hand, would make us waver in our decisions and more likely to yield to the desire to seek the acceptance of others at the cost of what we truly want or believe in.

Sometimes, it takes a traumatic experience to enable us to learn our true values.  Those who have gone through great hardships will tell you that having experienced the lack of something they now value that thing much more.  When we value something to the extent that we will do all we can to keep it intact in our lives, it becomes our guiding force in what we choose to do.  Although at times our choice will come at a cost, it enables us to act with certainty and to accept the consequences of our choice.  This is personal freedom at its essence – the ability to make our own empowered choices to shape our own lives.

What we must nurture is self-acceptance – having a respect for who we are and a belief for what we stand for.  Self-acceptance takes the focus away from others and towards ourselves.  Instead of focusing on how we are perceived and judged by others, we concentrate our care on what brings us happiness.  Here we get to sieve out the truth from a generalised belief that it hurts us to hurt others.  This is our bottomline fear.  Only when our personal boundaries are firmly intact can we know the difference between guarding our values and compromising our wellbeing.  Misplaced guilt and the fear of being punished are a result of having loose boundaries – it takes us away from acting from our empowered center and into giving away our sense of freedom.  We become our own persecutor when we’ve discovered that those who persecute us are merely boogey-men conjured up by fear – so real and familiar is that sense of being restricted about what we can do that we continue to restrict ourselves long after any real threat is gone.

An over-inflated and misplaced conscience is the culprit behind many failed dreams.  Who are we really afraid of hurting?  Is it worth protecting this hurt?  Is this protection still relevant in your life right now?  Knowing who the real target of our fear is, we can set ourselves free, so that we no longer spill over this over-protection to those we have no business protecting.

Discarding this mental baggage will lead you to a greater capacity to assert your powerful self.  In recovering from addiction and other dysfunctional behaviours, lapses and relapses (when we go back to our old behaviours) usually happen because we’re afraid of asserting our powerful selves.  That feeling of being weak is more likely to be due to this fear than to a shortage of inner resources to make the right choice.

Freedom to act as we choose is the most fundamental right we have and cannot be taken away unless we give it.  Step into your power and make empowered choices that bring you closer in line with what you desire and believe in.  There is, at the end of the day, only one litmus test which may be crudely spelt out: are you man enough or woman enough to stand up for what is deeply important to you?

Note the word ‘deeply’ – so often we confuse what’s superficially important with what can fill us up from within.  People have a tendency to spend years immersed in something that only satisfies them on a superficial level but that comes at a cost of endless chaos and stresses.  True freedom is when we make the decision to disengage from these superficially important matters and seek out the things that give us a warm feeling of fulfilment – calm, expansive, joyful and soothing.  In contrast to maintaining the superficial, there isn’t a sense that there’s ongoing price to pay – and that is a sign that what we’ve chosen, in exercising our personal freedom, is right for us.

 

October 8, 2009

The Power Of Saying “I Have Decided!”

Posted by Amyra under Change, Choice, Commitment, Empowerment, Spiritual Guidance, Trust
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I remember when I started exploring spirituality many years ago.  At that time, I’d been stuck in a space of self-sabotage, anger, control, rigidity and self-despise.  Exploring spirituality had enabled me to move out from that negative space and to see that life could be so much more.  It taught me great lessons in trust, surrender, abundance, true joy and empowerment – and I lapped up the new experience with great enthusiasm.

But whilst stepping into this new space was a freeing experience, it took many years before I truly understood how to apply those spiritual lessons in my life.  Today, I am still learning.  Striking a balance between walking in a spiritual world and applying great spiritual lessons in my daily life is a constant challenge that makes my life a stimulating experience.  I enjoy making a discovery of yet another level or dimension to a concept that further enriches my life.

In my earlier days of learning to trust in the Universe, I threw away all controls as I allowed myself to enjoy the freedom of being ‘a passenger of cosmic intelligence’, so to speak.  That was refreshing, after obsessively trying to control outcomes for years.  “When you trust, you will be taken to where you need to be,” was a well-known mantra in spiritual circles.  I still believe this (as is evident from my last posting about flowing with your intuition).

But trusting isn’t about being passive at all.  For self-expression, the ability to make empowered choices out of our free will, is a spiritual lesson too.  When we’re in tune with the energies of the Universe, the pathways before us are illuminated – though invisible to our naked eyes, we can sense those pathways.  As we trust in what we sense, we make choices and decisions to follow this guidance.  That choice to move along an illuminated pathway is still down to us.

This is the antithesis of remaining in a state of vagueness, ambiguity or ambivalence.  Being vague/ambiguous/ambivalent gives us the illusion that we have more freedom but actually it leaves us stuck, unable to move forward.  It’s fine if we had taken a year’s sabbatical to sit around to test out the truth of spiritual concepts, but in our practical world it’s just … well, not very practical.  When you want a certain outcome, supported by a strong feeling that it is going to be good for you, it is up to you to take the necessary steps to see the manifestation of that outcome.

I’ve seen many people take the ambiguous stance regarding giving up an unhealthy habit.  They justify it by saying, “I don’t want to commit to giving up completely because if I fail it would leave me totally discouraged.”  This is poor excuse and in fact nonsense, held on only by the fears of giving up a familiar pattern.  It does not stand up to logical examination since choosing not to commit to something we say we want is like allowing ourselves the space to fail.  In other words, we set ourselves up to fail.  Of course, committing to something does not guarantee that we will achieve it, but it maximises our chances of success.  Commitment is akin to covering up the energetic holes around our intention so that all our resources are channelled towards ensuring a desired outcome.

So much has been written, discussed and sold around the hot topic of manifestation.  People are desperate to acquire the secrets to manifesting their heart’s desires, and I can give you THE KEY to bringing in what you want to create in your life:

DECIDING that this is what is going to happen.

Whatever it is that you want to change in yourself and in your life, decide on the change.  Decide that you will change.  Decide this or that will happen.  And you will make it happen, despite obstacles along the way.  Unless you make this shift internally, unless you decide, you are setting yourself up for failure.  Ambivalence leaves you weak.  Make up your mind and move on in that direction whole-heartedly.

In your path towards what you want to achieve, you may draw in the right people to help you.  But nobody can make that decision to achieve it.  Only you can do it.  It cannot be done for you.  Without making this decision, your efforts will only be half-hearted, to match your half-hearted intention.

A simple yet powerful statement of “I have decided!” uttered with total conviction and determination will immediately pull together all your resources and bring them to the forefront of your consciousness, ready at your fingertips.  You allow no leeway for a different outcome and so your every action will be infused with this intention.  You may actually find a different outcome when you get there, but the process of moving determinedly towards what you desired as an outcome is such an empowering act of self-expression and self-actualisation that a differing outcome to what you desired would not feel like a failure when you get there but a delightful surprise.

What can you say “I have decided!” for today?

 

September 25, 2009

Trust Your Intuiton, Flow With It

Posted by Amyra under Intuition, Meanings/Associations, Spiritual Guidance, Trust
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I love it when I get powerful messages through friends.  There’s something about being able to sense our spirits while we’re engaged in human interactions – it’s that sense of suddenly knowing that we’re not just two people sitting in a little shop drinking coffee but that on a spiritual level we’ve been communicating with each other all the time despite the physical distance between us; and that what we’ve been communicating has been so wise that only in rare instances can we let in the depth of those messages.  When the depth of such messages are grasped and understood, it can have profound effects in transforming our lives.

My friend Gill whom I greatly admire for her tremendous courage in self-transformation shared one such message with me recently.  It seems she has streamlined her philosophy in life to this one piece of wisdom: We must trust our intuition and flow with it; it’s when we resist the strong messages of our heart/spirit that things go wrong.  In fact, she believes that things can only go wrong if we resist what we’ve been intuitively guided to do.

I reflected on some of my past experiences and found this to be true for myself.  How often had I stayed too long in pain because I had ignored what my gut feelings were telling me?  Conversely, how many times had I listened and trusted my instincts, acted on it and gained from it?

So the good news is, the answers we are seeking are here all the time.  We only need to tune in and listen with our hearts.  Beneath our humanly existence and all its ego-based struggles, we are an infinitely wise being.  A gigantic library of knowledge is stored right inside us – we hold the keys to this knowledge but the world around us also hold spare copies of these keys.  When emotional turmoils and mental conflicts become overwhelming, it may not be easy to open the door ourselves – this is when those spare keys come into work, through something someone said or a meaning you draw from observing something around you.

When a message is strong and clear, we will know it.  Spontaneity helps, as a lot of times the guidance is contradictory to what our logical mind says.  Yet it will feel right, no matter how wrong it seems.  The tricky part is when we can’t decide whether it’s intuitive guidance or a dysfunctional thought!  Sometimes it takes practice to develop our intuition – but we do our best anyway because our intention to follow our guidance will go on record that we’re moving forward, and we will begin to fine-tune our intuitive sense.  After some time, when you look back and recall your feelings you’ll be able to distinguish true guidance from self-defeating thoughts.

Guidance from within (or from greater spirit, which are ultimately the same thing) is a gift.  We only need to heed the message and flow with it.  Sometimes, we decide to create something different instead of flowing along with the guidance.  We think we (our ego self) know better when our divine self, with its infinite wisdom, is guiding us from a vantage point that spans all time and space.  Trusting in the infinite wisdom of our spiritual self is a lesson we must learn in order to transcend our low-level struggles and move into a higher existence where abundance and joy are ever-flowing.

When I trust and flow with my intuition, I can literally feel the supporting hand of the Universe gently prodding me from behind.  Try this.  Let go of control and surrender to what your intuition tells you, and feel the soft, warm, protective energy moving you along to that mysterious place.

 

September 10, 2009

How Good Can You Stand?

Posted by Amyra under Abundance, Addictions, Fear, Self-Sabotage
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Many of my clients with addiction problems have asked why they often drink or use drugs when things are going well for them.  “I can understand if I’d been feeling bad,” they say, “but why is it that when things are good I’d start using again?”  There are many reasons and I am going to offer my views focusing on the aspects which I find particularly interesting.

Sometimes, we use the excuse of wanting to celebrate to go on a binge and end up abusing ourselves.  This is not what I am addressing; here, the celebratory mood is likely to be forced just because we want an excuse to embark on our self-abusing behaviour.  What I am addressing is when your life genuinely starts to look good and you’re feeling good, and then you choose an unhealthy habit and you end up sabotaging yourself.

A typical description sounds like this:

They’ve stopped using.  They’ve been working out regularly, and their body is fitter and stronger.  People are commenting on how good they look.  They’ve learnt to take time out to relax and meditate.  They feel more balanced emotionally and less prone to anxiety.  They feel inspired and creative, perhaps picking up a project they had abandoned.  Overall, they’re feeling good, probably the best they’ve felt in years.  Their life is ripe with possibilities, all the things they’ve always wanted is within their reach…

Then all of a sudden, a thought comes into their head strong and clear: “I want to have a drink” or “I need to go on a hedonistic weekend.”  With that, they embark on the old road of addiction and find themselves in that awful, familiar place – sabotaging all the good they’ve achieved.  This happens not only for those addicted to substances; people also sabotage themselves this way in relationships and businesses.  What is it that makes feeling good so difficult to bear?

Most of us have been programmed to expect pain.  Therefore, when we find ourselves in the unfamiliar place of feeling good, we tend to sabotage it.  If you’ve been struggling in a painful place for a long time, experiencing abundance would be a new concept for you.  You’re simply not used to the feelings of having abundance.

This is similar to having ‘poverty consciousness’.  You might have read statistics of people who won the lottery only to lose all the money they’ve won within a very short time.  In wealth seminars, one of the things they get you to do is to raise your threshold for wealth – how much you believe you are worth deep down – so that you are driven to achieve more wealth and without sabotaging it.  But what I’m addressing is the feelings itself that come from having good things.  If feeling good is uncomfortable for you, you may need to raise your threshold for feeling good.  To make changes, we need to first know where we’re at – where is your current threshold?  How good can you stand?

If your self-concept does not fit into the concept of someone who experiences good, then you are likely to sabotage your situation so that it fits more into your concept of yourself as someone who is in pain – because no matter how good things have become, deep down it’s not what you’ve been programmed to achieve.

Perhaps you secretly believe that you deserve to be punished, and you’ve been dealing with deep-seated guilt and shame about who you are.  If this rings true for you, perhaps now is the time to take a real hard look at what you believe about yourself and work to change those beliefs.  Changing beliefs isn’t just about uttering positive statements to yourself over and over again – it involves the process of reconciling your relationship with yourself, making peace with yourself through forgiveness of yourself and/or others.

Another reason why we might sabotage ourselves is the fear of being disappointed – i.e. we believe that we won’t be able to sustain the good, so we preempt it being ended for us by ending it for ourselves.  One or even a series of disappointments in the past does not mean that it is the most probable outcome for you now, unless you choose to perpetuate that story.  It is fine to be cautious and learn from past mistakes,  but it is defeatist to expect disappointment all the time.

We do this in our heads long before we act on it – i.e. we note the possibility of a positive outcome but we quickly thrash it down just in case we jinx it.  There’s something almost superstitious about the way we think, as if the chance of us getting something good will be better if we don’t expect it.  Actually the reverse is true: if we don’t hold a sense of expectancy for something good to happen, there won’t be a space for it to happen, because when the good things start to come you’re likely to miss recognising it and continue on a self-defeating path.  Expectancy allows us to expand into the realm of positive outcomes, whereas expectation of disappointment closes off the door to this realm.

We fear the unknown.  The unknown is neither destructive nor expansive, but it stores the potential of both.  That’s why it’s so scary to think of stepping into the unknown.  Yet we must be brave to step into the unknown in order to claim the joyous.  We must allow ourselves to not know what form the positive outcome is going to look like and just expect to be able to experience joyousness that can come in any form.  The form is less important – what we can imagine right now is only limited, but the feelings of good can come from many, many different outcomes.

Every time you catch yourself taking a turn for the worse, through your own chosen behaviours, you mark that line that defines your feeling-good threshold.  In time, you’ll develop a definite sense of that threshold.  Next, you can stretch yourself to stay in the space of feeling good until it becomes more comfortable for you being in that space.  We can get used to anything if we stayed in it long enough – after a while, our tolerance will increase and what used to be uncomfortable will become less so.  With awareness that you’ve reached your threshold and that you are about to sabotage yourself but you’re choosing to stay in the space of feeling good, you can train yourself to stop reacting automatically and thus end up in a far better place for a prolonged period.  Life gets better for you as you learn to enjoy positive experiences.

 

July 15, 2009

Mission: Spiritual Joy At Every Moment

Posted by Amyra under Choice, Ego, Focus, Letting Go, Life Mission, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Joy, Truth
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Over the weekend, I was sharing with friends that I had just discovered a new life mission: to experience spiritual joy at every moment.  In the past, I had spent years figuring out my life mission, and in the end, I always came out with something to change the world or that involved making some unique contribution.  Those are all very well, but as I think about it now, they smacked of arrogance – which suggests that I had not reached beyond the ego in coming up with what I’m here to do.

Spiritual joy is, to me, the most sublime of human experience.  Some qualification is needed for the term, and I begin by making clear what it is not.  It is not about feeling happy all the time, or looking cheerful by putting on a big, smiley face.  Rather, spiritual joy is a deep emotional experience that takes you far into yourself and expands your sense of beingness in the Universe.  You can feel spiritual joy even when you are sad or undergoing some emotionally tough experience.  This type of joy is akin to opening a big book containing sacred knowledge about life; it is enlightening and it fills us with wonder.

If I focus my experience on feeling spiritual joy, then the roads and doors to spiritual joy must present themselves to me.  It might be through taking certain actions that are life-changing or world-changing.  But I am more interested in making use of every moment as an opportunity to experience spiritual joy – to sense the perpetual flow of movement in every moment, especially in my own growth.

What I’ve gained from learning to appreciate spiritual joy is that there really is so much to enjoy about life.  In focusing on spiritual joy, it’s taught me to transcend low-level struggles and to see the larger context.  Joy is a powerful, moving energy that can erase all self-doubts and inadequacies.  After all, we doubt ourselves and feel inadequate in reference to a limited world which we have constructed and which isn’t the whole picture at all.  When we immerse in spiritual joy, it takes us out of the box and into the space where everything is possible.  The more we experience spiritual joy, the more we break down the old programming that is hard-wired into our system and change our whole experience of life.

Paradoxically, indulging in spiritual joy does not make me all floaty and airy; it makes me feel more grounded.  Although it takes you ‘out there’, it does so by expanding your presence rather than by displacing your energy.  Meaning that your energy remains firmly rooted in the ground as your consciousness expands.  As your consciousness expands, you are filled with more presence.  As your presence becomes more solid, you are more aware of your earthly surroundings and the connectedness between all things.  Your existence isn’t displaced but enhanced.

This gives a new flavour to the term ‘life mission’.  For me, it is quite liberating to now look at my mission as simply to feel spiritual joy rather than to bring about some changes to my environment.  Regardless of my environment, I can still feel spiritual joy.  It teaches me to appreciate every moment and to exercise my power of choice in how I experience my world.

Having a ‘beingness’ as a life mission allows us to tap into the part of us that is in control – the part that makes the choice whether to experience something in one way or another.  When we focus on and look out for something that is readily there, we experience it.  This is true for most things in life, including feelings of abundance and excitement.

So, if the life mission or life purpose you have carefully crafted no longer inspires you, it may be worthwhile to reexamine your place in your world.  If you have evolved to a more freeing way of being but your ego is holding on to old attachments, it may be time to let go of them.  Only you have the power to let go of things, it cannot be done for you – and in so doing you will open up your world to greater joy.

 

July 6, 2009

Strange Is Good

Posted by Amyra under Change, Choice, Emotional Pain
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As a counsellor, I’m always fascinated by the choice of words that people use when describing the process of change that is taking place for them.  Fascinated, because any new variation I hear enriches my experience of working with people.  I’ve always been intensely interested in what motivates people and in learning about the complex human psyche.  One thing I’ve grown to appreciate is the availability of language in connecting one’s experience with one’s self-awareness.

In my work, I find that people don’t always have fluency in the emotional language.  Nowadays, largely due to the rise in popularity of self-help books, audio tapes, seminars and TV programmes, people are more exposed to emotion-speak.  But when it comes to speaking about one’s own emotions, people still tend to struggle.  In fact, the process of struggling to find the right words is very much a part of the therapeutic process.  There is, of course, a danger of labelling one’s experience with a general concept that has little to do with what one is actually experiencing, but a skilled therapist would be able to pick up on an inauthentic expression and explore with the client what they are actually experiencing.  A skilled therapist listens emotionally and intuitively to what is being expressed by a client – so a lack of emotional connection on the part of the client would seldom go unnoticed.

This week, I’ve heard a client who’d been struggling with connecting to their feelings use the word “strange” to describe how they felt.  I was interested because it told me that the client had now shifted into change.  Strange isn’t bad – it simply signifies a change taking place.  To change, you need to be out of your comfort zone, and that can feel very strange indeed.  You’re in new territory, after all.  Anything new that you do will take you to a place of feeling strange for a while until you familiarise with your new environment and make some sense out of it.

Strange is good.  A child exploring a world of magical fantasy would find that world strange.  It implies a level of acceptance of the reality of that world and a certain belief in something positive about it.  The strangeness is in the unsure footing the child has in a world that promises great things.  The way of the curious child is the way we adults should approach change – with a certain expectancy for our eyes to be opened to something wildly new and exciting.

We tend to view change as uncomfortable, and that we’re stuck in it.  It’s worth reminding ourselves that what is, no matter how painful it seems right now, can transition into something more comfortable, if we keep moving along with the fundamental energy that is ever changing.  A shift in your outlook about being in the realm of change can transition you quicker into the new phase where you can now enjoy the change that has taken place.

Being in the realm of change – the place of discomfort, of strangeness – is a powerful phase where creativity is ripe to express itself in any direction.  Paradoxically, the more you relax into the strangeness, the more control you have over the outcome of change.  When you’re relaxed, you stop fighting the process of change and allow a new truth to be revealed to you.  This new truth will enlighten your next move and clarify your actions from here on.

Some days, I wake up feeling strange, and I don’t have many words beyond that to describe how I am feeling.  I don’t like it or dislike it, I just know that I’m on the verge of a new experience.  It’s like wearing a thin nylon sock on one foot and a woolly sock on the other – something will happen to correct that misalignment and it may involve pushing everything else into misalignment as well.  I sometimes use the word “weird” but I will stick to “strange” from now on.  I like strange.  Strange is good.

 

June 10, 2009

The Power Of Dragonfly

Posted by Amyra under Illusions, Shamanism, Spirits, Symbols
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BODY RENEWLOGO

I am sitting by the rooftop pool in a hotel and watching a dragonfly trapped behind a glass wall.  Its wings are crimson and they reflect an iridescent shimmer as it flies.  I marvel at how powerfully the spirits are communicating with me today as I have come here with the intention to write about the symbolism of dragonfly, its significance in my life, and how it represents my work today.

When I was a kid, I loved being among nature.  I loved playing in the gardens – finding cool, shaded spots among bougainvillea shrubs and creating sanctuaries for myself.  I was a natural witch, spending lots of time collecting ingredients from various parts of plants, slicing up little roots, picking flower petals, extracting juices from leaves – and I’d pretend to make potions on a crudely assembled altar in the garden.  I was happiest when I was in nature – feeling an easy flow with the elements and an innate understanding of how energy worked.

I guess like any child, I had a vivid imagination and I believed in magical creatures.  I imagined what it was like befriend a mermaid or to come across water babies.  I was into unicorns, dragons, fairies.  I also loved dragonflies.  To me, they were almost mystical creatures, in the same league as unicorns.  There was a tree from my childhood that attracted lots of dragonflies in the early evenings and I used to play with them every day.  They seemed to dance rather than buzz or fly or any other words usually used to describe the movement of insects.  I didn’t think of dragonflies as insects, they were from a magical dimension, as far as I was concerned.

Today, the dragonfly is still very appealing to me.  In my spiritual path, learning to work with animal symbolism in the shamanic tradition has opened me up to establish stronger links with my spiritual self and has provided pragmatic tools for me to exercise my personal power.  In working with the Power of the Dragonfly, I’ve discovered that my work converges with this power: what the dragonfly stands for sums up neatly what my work is about.

The premise of my work is that we are seldom as trapped as we think we are.  It’s an illusion, and we have the power to not only see through this illusion but to change, transmute, transform what we saw as a helpless situation.  This is why my body movement system is called Body Renew – ‘body’ being our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies; and the concept of being able to renew ourselves on these different levels.

In Native American Shamanism, the dragonfly stands for Illusion.  As an insect, the dragonfly is remarkable in its ability to manoeuver its body and change directions during flight.  It can fly up to 30 mph and spot movement 40 feet away.  What this means is that the dragonfly can approach and see things from many different angles, rather than stuck with one viewpoint.  This is how we see through illusion.  Moreover, its ability to reflect and refract light give the impression of transforming colours – another way of showing us that things are never quite what it appears to be.

See the convergence?  That is why I have decided to use the dragonfly in my logo.  The logo is created by Adam George, a talented artist, shamanic facilitator, sailor and healer.  My heartfelt appreciation to Adam for his creative help and being so spot-on in ‘getting’ where I’m coming from.

Looking up, I see that the dragonfly is no longer behind the glass wall.  It has found a way out of its trappedness – a perfect illustration of its shamanic power.  I’m going to pay attention and watch its movements, knowing that such a perfect manifestation can only carry a powerful message for me…..

 

May 22, 2009

Diving Into The Inspiration Of Dream-Following

Posted by Amyra under Fear, Flexibility, Healing, Inspiration, Responsibility, Self-Actualisation, Self-Sabotage, Self-Worth
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Recently, I’ve been inspired by a couple of good friends who plunged into the adventure of pursuing their shared dream.  In doing so, they demonstrated their faith in staying true to their dreams.  They’ve reminded me of the value of following the internal compass of desire despite persisting fears.  Moreover, they’ve stirred up my own sense of ambition and adventure around some forgotten dreams which I’ve stored in the back burner as I buried myself in work in the past 13 months.

As I examined my own fears around pursuing my dreams, I realised that a lot of the fears are just excuses.  They aren’t that real once I put myself through an honesty test.  Whenever I spoke to my dream-following friends, I would get a spurt of inspiration to nurture my own dreams.  I knew that this inspiration would not last, so I dived into the energy of Inspiration to set forth some actions.

Inspiration is a powerful force that can turn dreams into reality.  It’s a feeling of being deeply-moved and of spirit dancing with joy.  It releases a flood of ideas and possibilities in our minds.  Dreams get a clearer tint when we’re inspired.  It seems and feels all so possible, so worth pursuing.

Great things can be achieved when we dive into Inspiration.  It supports us in our journey to making our dreams come true by elevating us from the level where fear operates.  What are some of the common fears that stop people from pursuing their dreams?

Dream Killers

Worthiness is a common issue – you may stop yourself from realising your dreams because you don’t really believe you are worthy of them.  Another way of saying this is, your dreams may appear to be too great for who you think you are.  While you want it, you’re not allowing yourself to get it, so your efforts often get cancelled out.  Before you can achieve what you want, you need to work on increasing your self-worth so that your dreams can match who you think you are.

The fear of not being good enough may block you from going after your dreams in case you fail.  Perhaps a history of being disappointed has created a nightmare of having positive expectations and then being let down, or putting effort into something and then failing, that continues to haunt you today.  You shy away from taking a leap into the unknown, feeling safe to step forward only if you’re assured of the outcome.  The downside to this is that you live a less-than-fulfilling life and your dreams remain unrealised because you may never feel safe enough to venture forth.

The way forward is to honour your dream while keeping an open mind about what the outcome may be.  This is the best mindset to adopt around dream-following.  It would not imply failure on your part should the outcome turn out to be different from your dream.  The gift may not be the outcome you envision but something you discover along the way of pursuing your dream; the dream may only be an illusion to drive you to what you really need.

Then there is the fear of being good (which is just as damaging as the fear of being not good enough).  If in the past you’ve been persecuted for being successful, you might think twice today about actualising your potential.  So you minimise your exposure and stay under the rock to avoid any chance of being judged for what you’re doing.  It’s likely that you have overblown the proportion of judgements against the encouragement and support you will get.  A change from focusing on the potential judges to focusing on those who will admire you for pursuing your dream will start to shift your view to a more balanced perspective.

Knowing that those who judge you will tend to be projecting their own inadequacies may help you to take their judgements less personally.  And knowing that people’s perception of you is not set in stone can help you to transcend your current feelings around certain people – sometimes, we stop ourselves from doing something because we anticipate critical reactions from only a few people in our life, not the whole world.  Know that these people may start to feel more respect for you or even find inspiration from you.

If the thought of leaving someone else in pain about their own inadequacies is a major deterrent to your own success, you’ve got to stop feeling pity for them.  The fact that the idea of this person suffering is deterring you from being happy means that you care about the person.  Feeling pity for someone is disempowering and degrading.  Elevate your view of that person.  Recognise their strengths and achievements.  In your mind, raise them to your level so that you can appreciate the existence of unique paths in life, rather than seeing it as a game field of winners and losers.

A lot of our emotional-mental blocks to self-actualisation are fears that are irrational.  They are leftovers from our childhood pains and are no longer valid.  As an adult, those fears are keeping us stuck.  We may need to heal the emotions that are imbedded in those experiences on which we base our current reality.  Then we can move on from that past reality to create a bright future for ourselves.

How Real Are Your Limitations?

There are many people who complain about not having any dreams to pursue.  I don’t know what it is that I want to do…  I don’t have something I am passionate about….  Life is dull and uninteresting…. The sad thing is that many of those who do have a dream that inspires them will then find it hard to move forward with that dream.

Often, what we perceive to be limitations that get in the way of our dreams aren’t that real.  Some of the common deterrents I keep hearing from people are the lack of resources (financial, contacts, market demand), geographical limitations, relationship considerations and work commitments.  If you put every one of those limitations to the test – with brutal honesty – you’re likely to find some creative ways around it.  Also, by stretching your internal resources, you’ll find that you can summon those qualities which you believe are important to pursuing and living your dream.

Staying true to what you hold as important to you is an admirable trait.  Yet sometimes in being too rigid about what we won’t compromise can result in us compromising ourselves.  In dream-following, having the flexibility to consider other options will open doors to being on our path to that dream.

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May 20, 2009

Being Honest About Your True Feelings

Posted by Amyra under Denial, Emotional Pain, Honesty, Letting Go, Resistance, Responsibility, Shame, Truth
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The Bangkok Post featured a two-page story about our centre last weekend.  In the interview with me, the first question I was asked was, “What’s it like to work with VIPs and stars?”  I was rather disappointed as I was hoping that the writer would want to know more about the therapeutic process for our clients.  Although I managed to bridge the question to some of what I’d wanted to convey, I was left feeling that I would have liked to be able to share more of what the internal processes entail in the road to recovery and self-growth.

It turned out to be a bit of a sensationalitic piece.  From a marketing perspective, it is great PR.  As a former marketing and media member, I appreciate the thought.  As a therapist, however, my primary focus is on helping people to reconcile their internal struggles.  I have a passionate drive to share what I’ve observed, and personally experienced, to be keys to liberating ourselves from our mental imprisonment.  Then I remembered, this is why I have created this blog!  Here, I am free to share to my heart’s content – without the constraints of news angles and deadlines.

What I really like to share today is something that sounds very simple, yet can be extremely difficult to put into practice.  If you do, it can bring you a powerful shift, heal long-held pains, and open up your world.  The technique is this: own up to how you are really feeling about a situation.  For any healing or self-development to take place, we must first be willing to be honest with ourselves.  Real change cannot occur if you hold back from admitting to yourself the feelings you are really feeling.

People can spend years working on a specific issue without breaking through to a real level of growth.  They profess to want change, yet are unable to see any real and lasting changes in their lives.  Often, you’ll find that there is something that the person has not been totally honest about.  Not even to themselves.  They expend a lot of energy trying to push away a feeling that keeps wanting to be acknowledged.  But the feeling only grows the more it is suppressed.

We tend to push away painful feelings, we try not to feel them fully, for several reasons.

  1. You’re afraid of the intensity of the feeling should you admit to it.  Trust me, the more you try to push it away, the more painful and prolonged it is going to be.  Admitting to your pain may make you feel the pain fully in the short term, but as long as you stay with it, without any resistance, it will ease off eventually.
  2. You’re afraid of losing something should you admit to it.  Usually it is tied to an egoistical motivation – the need to be validated, to feel superior, to have more, to hoard something or someone.  There’s a need to hold on to something or a belief around it, to the extent that you compromise your trust with yourself.  If you’re fighting against your truth, you no longer can trust yourself.
  3. You’re too embarassed to admit how you’re really feeling.  What if people knew this is how I feel? You project the shame of being judged, so you hide your truth.  If you deny it to yourself, you won’t have to face the possibility of your truth being out in the open where people can judge you.  You’ve jumped ahead of yourself.  Start with the step of being honest with yourself.  When you can feel the benefit of it, you can decide whether or not you want to share it with other people.  Things will change for you once you can be honest with yourself.

What happens when you admit to yourself how you’re really feeling?  You will be able to experience the emotion fully.  That’s all it is.  Experience it on the emotional level, even if it is tied to a thought, idea or belief.  You may experience it as a wave of pain, a prickling sensation or a rush of heat coursing through your body.  Completely let go of your resistance and allow yourself to feel the movement of pain.  Breathe in the truth of it.  Stay with the discomfort until it naturally subsides.

When you stop resisting, a lot of your energy will come back to you.  You may even feel an instant rush of energy, or you may experience the return of energy in some other way – such as a deep relief/inner relaxation or a noticeable change in vibes around you.

Truth cuts through the bullshit, creating a door out of your Prison Of Lies.  If it’s something you’ve been denying for a long time, being honest about your feelings will change your life.  Even if you choose to keep your truth from others, I recommend that you commit to being as honest as possible with yourself.  Hopefully, with practice, you will, like me, grow to enjoy the process and the results.

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