The Amyra Records

I am in a shopping mall, browsing the shelves on a vendor stand lined with beauty products.  I’m intrigued and fascinated by some of the products for sale.  Each product I pick up seems to scream its promise at me:

Lighten Your Nipples!

Flatten Your Tummy! 

Curl/Extend Your Eyelashes! 

Enlarge Your Breasts! 

Slim Your Face! 

I note how I am absorbing this with a detachment that eluded me in the past.  As I recall how in the past I would easily fall victim to such beauty standards and be made to feel inferior, I shudder at what this could do to so many other women who are still struggling with a negative body image.  Being reminded that I wasn’t perfect would’ve gotten me into an obsessive loop of buying hope in bottles, tubes and jars while beating myself up for not being good enough. 

My mind wanders to the role of the media in all this ….

The standard of beauty set by the media has brought a lot of harm to women’s sense of self.  That kind of beauty is not only unrealistic to aspire to, it is ridiculous to say that one form of beauty is superior to another.  Take a good look at what is considered to be beautiful today – how long will these remain desirable?  Come next year, they may all be replaced by the opposites of what are considered to be desirable today. 

Remember when rounded, gravity-defying silicon breasts were considered a beauty ideal in the early ‘90s?  Nowadays, women are going for more natural-looking implants that mimic the natural movement of breasts.  ‘Perfectly’ shaped breasts have given way to natural-looking breasts.  Back in the ‘70s, small breasts were considered attractive, and it’s likely we will see that ideal return in the near future. 

Ideals change, and it’s silly to obsess about changing your looks to fit into a current ideal.  It is much better to accept what you’ve got (who knows, you may have everything that fits into next year’s ideals!).  Set your own standards and ideals.  See yourself as already beautiful without waiting for the rest of the world to validate it.  What you have is uniquely your own beauty. 

The media has such a responsibility in shaping women’s image of themselves.  I don’t know if writers, editors and publishers are really aware of this.  It is just as appalling to consider that they aren’t aware as that they are aware but don’t care enough to do something to change their influence. 

I’m sure you have at some point come across an unflattering photo of a female celebrity featured humiliatingly in a magazine.  The more unflattering the photo against the subject’s usual presentation, the more newsworthy it is (newsworthiness is partly dependent on how far a news item strays from what is usually expected).  Now, this is where the media misuse their power. 

Usually, the caption or headline that accompanies the photo plays up the negative aspects and paints an exaggerated picture of the randomly-shot photo.  Remember, the bigger the gap between what is shown and what is usually expected of the person, the bigger the news and the more money they can make.  To blow up that difference, the writer has to step into his or her lowest, most bitchy self and make the person as far from her usual attractive self as possible.  That action may have destroyed one woman’s sense of self and delivered the subliminal message to maybe millions of other women that failing to fit into what we’ve been programmed to believe is beautiful is disdainful and worthy of humiliation. 

Sure, on the surface, some of us may feel better knowing that the most beautiful celebrities turn out to be just like us after all – but that acknowledgment only anchors our belief that fitting into what is considered to be beautiful by the media’s standard is so important.  In celebrating the humiliating news, we are being taught to judge a woman harshly for failing to fit into the ideals set by the media.  A complimentary caption that celebrates unusual beauty would have a more positive effect on women’s psyche about their bodies. 

Writers, editors, publishers: if a photo of a woman with unplucked eyebrows is published, do you write a complimentary or derogatory caption?  Not only do you have the power to determine what will be considered to be beautiful tomorrow, you have the power to heal the collective females’ perception of themselves.  Imagine that.  Beyond the immediate bottom-line sales of your publication, can you find that place in you where your heart connects to your conscience and make your choice from there.    

The more I think about it, the more incensed I feel about how we’ve allowed the media to dictate what is supposed to be beautiful and what is not.  It triggers a sense of rebelliousness in me to break through the mass programming. 

So I’m walking around with new eyes today, asking myself what is beautiful, really. 

Then something strange happens: I begin to see beauty in those who are considered by society to be unattractive.  The woman with a slightly bulging tummy, the schoolgirl with unplucked eyebrows and flat eye-lashes, the skinny lady with flat chests and bottom, various faces with broad noses, squinty eyes, jutty chins and toothy smiles.  As I see these features as possible beauty ideals, something shifts in me.  I had only judged them to be unattractive because an institution had said so.  It is not the truth! 

By now, I am moving through the shopping mall feeling slightly dazed yet clear and present, as if time has slowed somewhat and I’m able to perceive certain things that I wasn’t able to before. 

A young woman who looks as if she’s just stepped out of a magazine cover walks past me.  Instead of feeling intimidated or inferior, I see a certain cakiness about her looks, as if she’s trying too hard to fit into a set of ideals that have been imposed upon all of us and she does so with great competitiveness which unfortunately is taking a toll on her.  It’s as if the glue under her mask has peeled off, raising the mask several inches above her skin.  That illusion – the illusion of beauty embodied by this walking covergirl – is starting to crack.

I am struck by a realisation that my previous sense of what’s beautiful and what’s not – the way it’s all been programmed into us to judge beauty in a woman – had been so limited and even distorted.  For a moment, I am unable to keep walking.  The profoundness of it washes over me.  I have broken through the mass programming that permeates our society, and I can perceive people without the lens constructed by the media.  My vision, free from this programming, is more far-reaching, and as I see more possibilities for beauty, my world becomes filled with more beauty. 

Every now and then, I hear of someone who’s on a diet and refuses to eat out with her friends because she’s afraid of yielding to temptation.  Or the ex-smoker or drinker who no longer socialises with his buddies to stay away from temptation. 

While I agree that the best environment for kicking an addiction is one that is removed from temptation (and probably essential in the early stages), that temptation must eventually be dealt with too, for the addiction to be completely healed.

The objects of addiction – drugs, alchohol, TV, internet, porn, food – will always be around, somewhere in our world.  We can’t control their whereabouts nor wipe out their existence.  If your abstinence is dependent on the absence of these things, then it follows that if they surfaced you would fall back to your addiction. 

We may be able to avoid the addicted object by staying away from certain places and people, but true freedom is when that bottle is three feet away from you and you feel fine with being where you are.  Even if it is causing you some discomfort which challenges your resolve, you are not angry or bitter about it.  You take note of the responses in your body, move through your feelings, and emerge from that ‘contact’ stronger and wiser. 

When I say “dealing with the temptation”, I mean reconciling the energy of tension between you and the addicted object.  If you’ve been abstaining from an addiction, at some point it’d be good to also work on the tension of temptation. 

Most conventional therapies for addiction do not go near the object of addiction and work instead from an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach.  I believe that when we put aside our fears and step closer to that energy, a deeper kind of healing can occur – a healing that will leave the person more whole and self-sufficient. 

In psycho-energetic terms, there is a huge amount of energy that is being pulled into existence and built overtime when we play out the internal dynamics of alternately reaching out obsessively for that addiction and resisting it.  This creates a tension, which causes a great deal of discomfort whenever you come close to or think about the addicted object.  This tension is what pulls you to indulge in your addiction.  Without addressing this tension, you may be able to control your addiction to a certain extent by avoiding it but you are more likely to yield to temptation as soon as you are exposed to it again. 

How do you reconcile the energies between you and the addicted object?  Focus on your addiction until you feel the tension.  You can do this by either thinking about it or actually having it within your field of vision.  You can start off by just thinking about it and progress to having it in front of you and then having it closer to you.  The shorter the distance to you, the greater the tension.      

Focus on it until you feel the tension building up.  As the tension increases, you’ll feel more pull towards it.  After some time, it will not be able to hold itself, until it breaks apart.  As the tension breaks, it releases a huge amount of energy; some of it will flow back to the addicted object and some will flow back to you. 

We give out a lot of energy to keep our addictions alive.  This is the energy that is being released as the tension breaks.  When some of this energy flows back to the addicted item, it neutralises the pull from the object, while the rest of the energy that flows back to you will neutralise the force of your yielding to the item.  You can help build the energy faster towards breaking point by intending that outcome. 

As the tension increases, it may draw out symptoms of withdrawal (most symptoms are psychologically induced).  These symptoms are part of the tension – the more intense the symptoms, the greater the tension; the greater the tension, the more potential power it can yield when it breaks.  Keep focusing on it and resist yielding to it until the energies are reconciled. 

I believe that reconciling the energies of temptation is an important component in the process of overcoming addiction holistically.  The other components are:

1. Reconciling the Parts Of You that Are In Conflict. Basically, a part of you wants to stop but can’t, and a part of you doesn’t want to stop but can. The aim is to switch them around so that the part of you that wants to stop can stop.

2. Active Reconciliation. Change the balance between indulging and not indulging in the addiction by increasing your sense of joy during your non-indulgence moments. Replace it with other activities that give you real fulfilment. Deepen into the moment and expand yourself to a state of pure, undiluted joy – hence, changing your associations (i.e. pleasure with indulgence and pain with non-indulgence).

3. Dealing with Withdrawal Symptoms. Begin by accepting that there may be temporary feelings of discomfort and overcoming your fear of what you expect to be unpleasant. Change your association – instead of seeing the symptoms as bad, see them as positive effects of you winning over your addiction.

4. Cleaning Up Your Beliefs. Examine and challenge the beliefs you’ve created to justify your habit. Look honestly at the price you’re paying for your addiction, the negative consequences. Consider how giving it up will enrich your life. What is your deeper purpose, your true motivation for your addiction?

5. Changing Your Environment. Change your routines and schedules to break the energetic structure that mirrors your previous behaviours, or move to a new environment to displace the negative energies associated with your addiction. Once you’ve successfully ended your addiction, you’ll be able to move in and out of the old environment without it being a big deal. This is the true test of whether you have successfully given up your addiction.

I will expand on these other components in future postings.    

Last night, I had “one of those” dreams.  It wasn’t a recurring dream, but the visual and emotional tones were familiar.  It had an ‘epic’ feel about it – stretched out in time and storyline.  There was a certain greyness about it, something macabre even, a bit reminiscent of the movie The Mist. 

Firstly, there were spiders.  Lots of them.  I am fearful of spiders.  I was standing in a kind of courtyard in a house.  From where I was, I could see the top of the trees in front of the house, beyond the roof.  Somebody was talking to me.  This person was what I call The Wise One in one of these dreams – usually faceless, gender undefinable, a voice of wisdom imparting a deep and often cryptic message.  I am going to refer to a ‘he’.  He said, “Take a close look at the trees,” although I received it as a fully-formed concept, not in words. 

As my vision zoomed into one of the trees, I saw that there were thousands of spiders leaping out of it in all directions.  I shuddered and uttered something like, “Ooooohhhh…..,” feeling a dread growing in me as I understood the path I had to go through.  This was a shamanic initiation dream. 

Many years ago, a psychic psychotherapist (yes, they do exist) told me that dreaming of spiders is a sign of an impending spiritual awakening.  The spider symbolises spiritual power.  They tend to invoke fear and repulse in us because we are ultimately fearful of our own power. 

I’ve had a phobia of spiders for as long as I can remember.  In recent years, I have worked through many aspects of this fear and now the intensity of that fear has lessened a lot, though I’m still more fearful of them than the average person. 

In the dream, my test was to go out the front door and walk (run!) between the trees until I got to a safe ground.  I felt unusually brave and willing in the dream as I did not even argue with The Wise One.  As I stepped out the front door, I manifested a green umbrella for protection.  “No,” he said, and the umbrella disappeared.  I tried again.  Stepping out the door, I manifested a silver raincoat.  “Take it off,” he said, and the coat disappeared.  I wondered how many chances I had left. 

From the side, two sets of hands reached out to me and dragged me out of the house.  Just as I started to panic, I saw that while it was raining big brown spiders all around me, none of them actually touched me.  They seemed to fall onto me and then disappeared at about six inches from contact with me, as if I was wearing an invisible spider-vaporising suit.  

I had never seen or come so close to so many spiders before.  Yet I began to feel less and less fearful.  My gait began to slow to a relaxed stroll.  Raining spiders?  No big deal.  My face relaxed into a smile, and I felt myself expanding.  Eventually, the hands that had been gripping my arms pulled away. 

I turned back to see that the house was now way behind me, with the trees of leaping spiders dotting along the front of it.  From where I stood, the house looked like a prison guarded by the spiders.  I was out of the prison, and a cooling sensation breezed through me, like a sigh of relief. 

The ground seemed softer yet firmer without the harshness on my soles.  My feet sprang from every step, making me feel lighter and more mobile.  It didn’t register in me that I had passed the test until I woke up from the dream. 

After my daily movement and meditation practice, I applied the principle of presence, power and passion to decipher my dream. 

Presence

With my energetic presence firmly anchored in my body, I took stock of what my truth was around the dream. 

The house represented my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies – the place where I resided.  I was trapped in a body programmed with fear – it had become my prison.  I had ventured out of my prison of fear into freedom. 

The trees represented my foundation, which drew sustenance from a centralised source, the earth.  I had failed to spot the spiders at first, suggesting that I was unaware of my true spiritual power. 

The leaping movement of the spiders suggested aliveness, the ripeness for action.  That my foundation was churning out more and more spiders indicated an abundant supply of whatever powers were behind my fears. 

Power

What aspects of my power did I tap into to deal with the task? 

Manifesting a green umbrella.  Putting something green over my head signified an attempt to neutralise my spiritual power – blocking the flow of energy from my crown chakra (spiritual energy center) with a grounding energy (green).  This suggests a strong connection to what grounds me but that I might have been too focused on the physical plane.  A willingness to open up more spiritually seems to be called for. 

Manifesting a silver raincoat.  Attempting to protect myself by putting up a strong auric shield.  This demonstrated that I am skilled at protecting myself psychically from my environment but because I was told that this action was redundant, perhaps I might have been too protective of myself. 

Changing the outcome of an expected fear.  I had expected to be horrified when the spiders hit me but they ‘vaporised’ before touching me.  I was prepared to face my fear full-on when I stepped out the door.  That willingness and trust of the unknown had saved me from a horrifying experience which was no longer necessary in my learning. 

Passion

What movement of energies could I relate to in myself? 

The most active movement was the leaping spiders.  I am fearful of spiders, so there’s a lot of movement in my fear – i.e. my fear is ripe to burst to reveal its power.  When we break down our fears, we can extract from them our power.  My power is waiting to burst forth to be reclaimed.    

As I made my journey from the courtyard to outside the house, my fear transformed into exhiliration.  I held this exhiliration until my being expanded.  This seems to be the great lesson – transforming fear into exhiliration and in the process changing my perception of fear. 

The springiness/bounciness of my steps symbolised mobility.  Movements in my outer reality mirroring movements within me.  I am to reinforce this mirroring of outer-inner movements to create movement in general – the more movements within and without, the more I open up to living with Passion running through me.     

Yesterday, I was sitting in an ice-cream shop with a friend, sipping a smoothie, when he looked puzzlingly at me and said, “We need to do something about your face.” 

“What, like plastic surgery?” I asked.

“No, nothing that serious… I don’t know, there’s something not quite right about your face.”  Then he asked what I would do if I had gone to a plastic surgeon.  I couldn’t think of anything.  He was sceptical.  “Come on,” he pressed, “you know.”  I told him that I’d wanted a boob job in my 20′s, but not anymore.  He tried to help: “Maybe your nose?” 

That short exchange was a powerful confirmation and reminder of how far I have come in healing my body image issues.  Had he asked me the same question 10 years ago, I would have come up with a dozen things that I would want to change about my appearance: my eyes are too droopy, my nose is too broad, my mouth is too big …… and this is not counting from my neck down. 

I remember when I hated almost every part of my body, and by extension my whole self.  Had that conversation taken place 10 years ago, I would have immediately plunged into depression and locked myself in my house for weeks, even months, replaying that ‘criticism’ over and again, spiralling into a dark hole of self-loathe.  In contrast, I felt no self-judgement or negativity yesterday.  Ah, what freedom to be so at peace with my body now, that I can’t think of anything I would want to change about it. 

Oh, I still have little judgements about my appearance.  On ‘bad hair days’ (hair = any part of the body) my self-confidence can be compromised.  Yet there’s a general serenity about my relationship with my body these days which makes it not such a big deal.  These days, looking good for me is an expanded, celebratory energy – a respectful attitude towards my body as I enhance my beauty.  In the past, every time I thought about my body I would contract into a self-hating obsession to change the way I looked. 

If you’ve ever suffered from a negative body image, you might relate to the anguish of judging yourself harshly and finding various ways to abuse yourself to punish who you judge yourself to be.  When I look back at my history of self-abuse, it’s almost as if I was systematically hacking myself to death, this detested body which represented what must be a despicable person. 

The years of wrecking my body with diet pills, tranquilisers (painkillers, sleeping pills, hypnotics), alchohol etc – dangerously combined, at times to the point of convulsing and being rushed to hospital – each act of abuse confirming in me how despicable I was, believing that abuse was the only thing I deserved.  Yet it was the endless stream of mental self-abuse, which preceded and accompanied these acts of abuse, that delivered the most poison, locking me in a state of perpetual disdain for myself. 

I share this not to indulge in self-pity or wear my past pain as a badge of honour but to let those of you, who are still tormented with a negative image of your body, know that freeing yourself from the grips of such self-judgements is not only possible but can be easily reached. 

Healing your body image requires substantial work.  You’re unlikely to wake up one day and start loving your body if you’d spent the past 30 years hating it.  Yet the process of facing yourself full-on and honestly to heal the way you see yourself is such a dignified act of honouring yourself that you’ll be rewarded with a sense of peace and comfort within yourself, leaving no place or desire for anymore self-abusive acts and thoughts.  In this freedom from self-judgement, you are free to express yourself authentically and the world becomes a richer place because of that.   

One way to start healing your body image is by observing the general movement of your energy.  Being trapped in mental torment of constantly judging yourself harshly and needing to punish yourself is a contractive movement.  It sucks you downward into a deteriorating sense of self until you feel powerless against your own self-created hell.  In contrast, having a healthy body image – seeing yourself as beautiful, radiant and sacred – is an expansive movement.  It opens you up to expressing more of your true, magnificent self as you recognise your beauty and worth.  

Observe the general movement of your energy to see if you are contracting or expanding. 

Take a prolonged breath to slow yourself down and get more present in your body. 

Get clear of what is taking place in your head.  Are your thoughts causing you to contract or expand?  What is the tone of your thoughts?  Is it loving, nurturing, supportive, inspiring?  Or is it berating, disparaging, punishing? 

How are they making you feel? 

How is your body, and face, reflecting your internal dialogue? 

Now, how can you change the direction of your general movement of energy from being contractive to expansive?  Are your thoughts making you grow, expand outwards? 

Where can you spot the resistance?  Which thoughts can’t you carry through to completion?  Which thoughts trigger fear and pain? 

The practice of observing the general movement of your energy will train you to be more aware of what you are telling yourself about you.  It may feel unnatural to deliberately make your energy expansive when you’ve been in a contracted state for a long time.  Yet taking that step can tell you so much about yourself.  See, we are naturally-expansive beings.  Fear makes us contract.  When we make ourselves expand, we come face-to-face with the fear that stops us.  Isolating your fear has the effect of energetically drawing a border around it and making it easier to tackle. 

For now, relax into the knowledge of whatever you’ve found in this small exercise.  Even if it is more pain you’ve found, you are one step closer to healing your relationship with your body – one notch above the level of your struggles.  The course of things has been changed.  Keep moving, keep trying new ideas to shake yourself out of your body image hell.  Plant the seed of doubt in your mind about how you’re seeing yourself.  What if …..?