Category Archives: Choice

How To Be Free & Spontaneous – Without Hurting Yourself

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One of our greatest desires is to be free and spontaneous.  If you look at most personal and social problems, you will see that somewhere along the way we were striving to be free from our physical, emotional and mental constraints.  To be able to express ourselves freely and spontaneously, to be freed from our fearful beliefs and the emotional pains that grip us – these desires are what sprouted the whole self-help and human potential movement. 

But the desire to be free and spontaneous can become a trap.  In our efforts to get unstuck, we can lead ourselves to a place of even greater stuckness.  This does not mean, however, that we shouldn’t strive to be free, for I believe that freeing ourselves from feeling trapped is our spiritual purpose.  The journey of unshackling ourselves is both exciting and rewarding, to be savoured throughout our lives, as every bit more freedom we gain moves us closer to becoming our ultimate self.    

How is it that we trap ourselves when we want to be free?  There are four aspects in the dynamics of freedom and imprisonment which I want to explore:

FREEDOM                                                     RESPONSIBILITY  

                                               VS

SPONTANEITY                                            COMMITMENT

On a conscious level, we aim to be free and spontaneous.  But our fear of being trapped may be so intense that we end up creating the very thing we fear.  It may come in the form of an accident that leaves you bedridden; getting into trouble with the law and consequently ending up in prison; indulging in mood-altering substances to the point of being addicted; being in a relationship with a highly controlling person; or running into financial problems. 

For a balanced person, responsibility and commitment aren’t bad things.  In fact, having a healthy sense of responsibility and commitment helps us to be in touch with our personal power.  But for those with an exaggerated fear of being trapped, the idea of responsibility and commitment can trigger this sense of fear, so they tend to avoid them at all costs.  When we disown these aspects of our power, we create an imbalance within ourselves that drives our psyche to bring back some balance by overcompensating with the other extreme. 

So if you lack responsibility or commitment, you might end up in a trapped and limited situation even as you embark on creating a situation that makes you feel free and spontaneous.  An example of this is when you leave things to the last minute and end up creating chaos around you.  That chaos puts you in stress which limits your resourcefulness.  Your world shrinks tighter and tighter, and you become more and more trapped. 

Another example is when you want to enjoy feeling free and spontaneous by getting into your car, driving too fast without putting on the safety belt and getting into an accident.  You might suffer the consequence of being seriously hurt and ending up in hospital, or having hurt others and being persecuted for it.  In your pursuit of freedom and spontaneity, you have ended up in a situation of being trapped and limited. 

If you find yourself in such a situation, where you’ve created your own prison, consider working on your attitude towards responsibility and commitment (especially if the idea of it makes you recoil).  Responsibility means taking something into your realm of control.  Trust in your capability to effect changes in your world, the power of your field of influence.  Bring in that which you have been pushing out of your field.  See the force in your field as vibrant and dynamic as you step up to own your power in it. 

Commitment means making a pledge to be fully engaged with something instead of having one foot in and one foot out.  Bringing both your feet in to stand firm and solidly in one place will give you the power to reach forward into a place of joyousness.  Both of these power aspects enable us to consolidate our resources and maximise our accomplishments.  Exercised in a balanced and healthy way, they help ensure our freedom rather than limit our freedom. 

Healing the Source

Most of us, when we find ourselves in a trapped and limited situation, tend to focus on changing the symptoms – e.g. how to get more money, how to get out of a controlling relationship, or how to make the bathroom floor less slippery to prevent accidents.  While these strategies are helpful for your immediate security, unless you also work on the source of the pattern, you will recreate the same symptom in one form or another, over and over. 

If you’re aware of having a pattern of getting into a similar type of situations that make you feel trapped, it’s likely that you have a mentality of being trapped.  This means that you consistently see yourself as a person who is trapped; even when you’re out of your ‘down cycle’, deep down you still see yourself as a person whose fate is to be trapped.  It is so entrenched in your psyche that it’s become a part of your self-identity.  This self-fulfilling prophecy will lead you to recreate the pattern.  Until you change your mentality, you will probably end up in the same place again. 

Changing your mentality requires more work than just visualising yourself to be free when your circumstances show you otherwise.  Not only is this level of work ineffective on its own, it is bloody difficult!  You need to go deeper, and confront, address and heal the source of what made you feel you are trapped.    

To truly undo this pattern, you must escape your prison – not your current symptoms of trappedness but your original prison.  It can come from cultural, social or family dynamics.  Where across these dimensions do you experience a strong emotional charge about being trapped?  Make peace with it through forgiveness and changing your perception of your place in it. 

Examine your battle in your original imprisonment.  Even if you are no longer in this context, you are still engageed in an emotional battle.  Whether your battle is taking place in a real or mental place, you can free yourself by finding the little doors that lead you out of your imprisonment.  Where could you be receiving of useful, positive energy that supports you to thrive as a person?  Where could you say no to being belittled, abused, limited, controlled?  How could you assert your individual rights? 

You can take steps now, no matter how long this situation has been around, to reconcile the emotions you have about this situation.  True freedom is when you feel free within you, and this inner freedom will lead you to create more situations that reflect it. 

With the irrational fear of being trapped gone, you will no longer reject responsibility and commitment to gain freedom and spontaneity and end up destroying yourself.  Responsibility no longer means a loss of spontaneity but a way of enhancing it.  You no longer fear commitment because you know how to use it to pull you further into a productive future and make things happen for you (read The Power Of Saying “I Have Decided!” ).  As you stop resisting these previously feared concepts, you gain more freedom, relaxation and creativity.  Life flows, and good things can come to you, because your efforts are no longer being cancelled out by something hidden from your awareness.  

Lying In The Bed You’ve Made

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The other day, someone was telling me about an undesirable situation he was in and I asked him why he was choosing to remain in it.  He said he has made his bed and now he has to lie in it.  This brings to mind something that I often come across when looking at the complexities about being in a state of suffering: how we can trap ourselves in suffering by doing nothing to reconcile the conflicts that give rise to the suffering.

We might try to change things superficially within the situation, hoping it will bring improvement, but that may not be enough or effective.  And if what you’re doing to try to change or improve things brings no real and lasting results, you may end up feeling frustrated with yourself and make your suffering even more immediate to you.

Pain and suffering comes when there is conflict within you, and this conflict can come from a gap between (a) what is and what you want; (b) what you’re doing and who you want to be; (c) what you want and what another part of you wants.  In this article, I will focus on the conflict between what is and what you want.

With any type of conflict, the way to ease your suffering is to reconcile that conflict – which means narrowing the gap between what is and what you want.  So if you find yourself in a situation that is far from where you want to be, you can either work to accept the situation or change the situation entirely by getting out of it.

Acceptance goes a long way in reconciling this conflict.  When you accept the situation, you shorten the gap between what is and what you want.  Similarly, when you move yourself closer to where you want to be, that conflict is reconciled.  As the gap narrows, you move towards inner peace, which is the opposite of suffering.  There is no longer unmet desire in your situation, and thus there is only peace.  There is no gap between what is and what you want.

Of course, we seldom come to a place of neutrality where the conflict has been totally reconciled within you.  But the closer you move towards that reconciliation, the more peace you have.

The saying, I’ve made my bed and now I have to lie in it has a self-punishing connotation.  It is defeatist, as it makes you resign to being defeated by your circumstance.  It does not transform the way you look at your circumstance, it just shuts you down in bleakness and depression.

Thus, lying in the bed you’ve made is not accepting it nor are you anywhere closer to where you want to be.  The mere fact that you are staying in that situation does not make you in acceptance of it.  This is where a lot of people get stuck – thinking that since they’re still in it, they’ve accepted it.  Nothing could be further from the truth – when you stay in a situation you do not desire, you widen the gap between what you want and where you are.  This causes greater conflict, and greater conflict means more suffering.

But moving into acceptance may require you to remain in that situation you’re in.  The problem comes when you simply stay in it without working on reconciling it within yourself.  So if you are choosing to work on acceptance to reconcile your conflict, you can’t just stay in the same emotional space within that situation.

How do you work on accepting where you are?  It starts by fully acknowledging to yourself the reality of the situation.  Notice your resistance to open up to the truth of where you’ve found yourself to be.  State what you like and dislike about it.  What do you find difficult to accept?  It’s not about lying to yourself or trying to convince yourself that you like it when you don’t.  Rather it’s about relaxing your defenses against what you are judging to be bad.  Be open, stay open.  The thing about relaxing your defenses is that you will see your truth clearly for the first time, and your truth will inform you of your best direction.

If working on acceptance does not work out for you, then (in most cases) you still have another option to reconcile your conflict.  This is also where people tend to get stuck: they don’t see that they have a choice.  What gets in the way of seeing you have a choice might be issues of guilt – i.e. you made a decision in the past and it is wrong to get out of it.  Staying in the situation then breeds resentment in you and towards the parties involved in the situation.  In other words, everybody suffers in the buildup of tension.

I think lying in the bed you’ve made was coined as a way to let us learn certain life lessons like humility and responsibility.  It allows you to stay put while you mature and develop your character through remorse and self-reflection.  These are valuable lessons, but the problem is that after you have learnt these lessons you still may not like being in the situation you are in.

Parents whose marriage has reached an irreparable stage and who choose to stay together for the sake of their children is an example of the destructive effects of not choosing to move out of the situation.  They think that by staying together they would help their children be happier but the kind of unhappiness that the children have to go through living in a household where the adults are constantly in conflict with each other is often more damaging than dealing with their parents divorcing.

It might be a job, a relationship, that has gone stale and uninspiring, or so filled with hostilities that it is taxing to remain in it.  Staying put in a situation that is taking a toll on you emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually is an act of self-punishment.  But it doesn’t get you anywhere.  You may think that you are repaying for something you owe someone or a choice you made that involved giving up something else for this.  But you may never reach a sufficient level of repayment by simply staying in it, because you are ‘repaying’ with negative energy.  Thus, you are increasing the size of what you feel you owe rather than working off the ‘debt’.

On the other hand, doing the work to release yourself from the hold of guilt, from whatever you deem you have done, will not only free you to live again but also liberate the parties involved in the situation.  Try taking the opposite direction.  A solution that works out for everyone might be found when you look in another direction.

Misplaced responsibility may prevent you from leaving a situation that no longer works for you.  This is usually relevant when someone else has vested interest in you being in the situation and frequently expresses their displeasure in the idea of you bailing out – which may involve manipulation, threats and guilt-tripping.  It then makes it seem as though it is not a choice that you can make, for there are apparent costs and consequences laid out for you.  When this happens, it can muddle your truth.

So what can you do to leave the situation you are in so that you are closer to what you want?  You can use the philosophy of Presence, Power, Passion to guide you towards that destination.

Presence
Take stock of your resources and decide how you are going to mobilise them to gain your freedom.  This can include (a) practical resources such as monetary savings, assets, investments; (b) people resources such as supportive friends and useful contacts.  Deal with your fear/guilt and decide not to let it get in the way of your happiness.

Power
Appreciate the fact that you have a choice to get out of your situation.  Celebrate it.  Connect to your personal power and honour your legitimate right to be happy and free.  Use the energy of fear/guilt to drive you forward to change; there’s a tremendous amount of power stored in your fear/guilt.  Separate the story from the emotion and simply use the power behind the emotion to propel you forward.

Passion
Keep expanding into the change until you are completely filled up with an intense aliveness – which may feel like excitement but deeper, or like arousal but more encompassing.  Appreciate the movement of energies in you as you step into the change.  Ground yourself in the new situation and feel what it inspires in you.

As you lie in your new bed, rejoice!  Be present to the freshness and freedom.  Feel your power strongly within your hold, the power you have taken back when you transitioned into this new situation.  Give yourself permission to be happy, to be deserving of this gift, as you let go of the last vestiges of guilt and free fall into blissfulness.

The Twisted Side Of Things

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About two months ago, I was sitting in a therapy group facilitated by my co-workers. The group explored the theme of self-image and in an exercise clients were asked to write down a list of their strongest attributes. I decided to join in and write my list. One of my co-workers chuckled when he saw my list – in particular at the word ‘twisted’ which I had included as one of my attributes. He and another co-worker, both often subjected to my twisted taste in entertainment and sense of humour, concurred that twisted I am indeed. The clients, who became intrigued by this seemingly dark attribute which I’d so openly declared as an aspect of me, wanted to know more. My colleagues wanted me to explain myself, to reveal the deeper layers of my psyche….

I’ve often been asked why I love horror movies. There are many layers to it. First of all, I love watching horror movies because I get to test the boundary of fear. Fear tells us, “Don’t go there.” I like to stretch my level of tolerance by exposing myself to that experience. I know many drug addicts who are driven by a desire to go beyond healthy boundaries into what they know is dangerous territory. It is a common human motivation to test boundaries, whether they are good or bad. For me, watching a scary movie is a safe way to test boundaries within my psyche.

Secondly, I find horror movies very entertaining. I define “being entertained” as having a wide spectrum of emotions invoked in me by something that is made up. Just like being on a roller-coaster where we choose to be terrified, thrilled and in awe, I often select a horror movie if I were asked to pick a movie because I enjoy being terrified, thrilled and in awe. Entertainment is meant to stimulate us and make us feel alive, and feeling different kinds of emotions makes us feel alive.

Thirdly, I don’t really ‘get off’ on the blood and guts. I am, however, drawn in by the psychologically twisted elements in the movies, either personified in the characters in the story or that reflected the twistedness of the minds behind the creation of the story. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by what motivates people: what drives people to think of unimaginable things, to commit atrocities or destroy themselves.

In later years, I realised that my curiosity for such answers was a search for the elusive qualities in humanity that make people seek redemption, choose joy over pain, forgive the unforgiveable, sacrifice for the greater good, believe in themselves in the face of adversity. If I can get to the depth of where the movitation to mangle somebody lurks, then maybe there too I can find humanity’s motivation to forgive an abuser.

Dark and light are two sides of a coin. Where there is dark, there is light; where there is light, there is also dark. I spent many years trying to deny my dark side and believing that I must only be nice, angelic, selfless and radiate love all the time. Little did I know, I was actually creating an unbalance in me. By denying a whole side of me, I was rejecting myself. It was hard work, and no matter how hard I tried to be “a nice person” I always ended up feeling false. It had to feel false, because I was over-compensating for something I was denying in me. My dark side, meanwhile, was struggling to get out and the more I denied it the more it wanted to be honoured.

I remember the relief and freedom I felt when I finally accepted the darker aspects of my psyche. I felt more authentic, and my psyche more balanced as a whole. Accepting myself for who I am, no matter what my mind may judge it to be, is a lesson I am still learning. Every time I reach a new level of self-acceptance, it releases more energy back to me, and I celebrate the bliss of coming home to me.

One of the things that have allowed me to embrace my darker aspects was having the understanding that I too am capable of committing the worst crimes. At first, I thought that I could never, ever do what a sadistic murderer or a pedophile does. But when I really asked myself, I realised that yes, I can imagine myself being in a state where I could commit those crimes.

The potential to commit any act exists within us; where we stand in our moral compass is determined by how far we go in crossing the line that defines behaviours of low morality. So, having a bad thought about someone isn’t the same as actually doing something bad to that person. By correcting your course before the idea is actualised, you preserve your morality. But that potential for us to actualise the idea exists in you and me. The choices we make in any situation is governed by our moral boundaries as well as the boundaries of the environment. For instance, it’s a well-known fact that many men who come to Thailand would choose to cross their sexual boundaries of discernment, fidelity and orientation. In other words, they do things they would not do in their own countries, such as sleeping with prostitutes or transvestites. But the potential to do these things must exist in them long before they came to Thailand.

When I owned the darker aspects in me, I felt instantly enlightened. There was no horror in me anymore when I stopped denying the horror-filled world of my psyche. Contrary to what a lot of people fear – i.e. by acknowledging that somewhere inside them there is a part that is capable of committing atrocities, they would be likely to act out those capabilities – accepting it all as parts of our complete make-up will make us balanced and wholesome people.

I’ve seen the look of shock and horror in some people whenever it’s even suggested that they explore discussing the dark and macabre. These are the same people who screw up their faces and ask, “Why would you watch something like that?” as if they are saying, “What kind of a person are you?” But what they are essentially saying is, “What kind of a person do you think I am?” Judging another is a sure sign of rejecting the same thing in yourself – it helps take the sting out of acknowledging that you are not accepting yourself fully. When you find yourself vehemently protesting someone’s actions, there is a gift in it for you that will allow you to see who you are in all your beauty and glory. It’s like raising yourself to a higher perspective, step by step, seeing more and more of the proverbial forest that paints your true beauty.

Being twisted takes me to deep corners of my mind. I am more creative because of my twistedness. My ‘exposure training’ in horror movies and sick jokes has yielded an incredible flexibility of thought and imagination, and it helps me to become a more compassionate person, as strange as it may sound. I don’t flaunt being twisted, friends who know me long enough will find out sooner or later – delighted or horrified – depending on their own level of self-acceptance.

A few days after that group, one of the clients came up to me and showed me a book she’d been reading, Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner.  She said that literally right after our group she read the chapter called ‘The World of Demons’ which says exactly what I was describing about twistedness. Here’s some of Warner’s writing:

The biggest, ugliest, most damaging lie that religions spread is that truly moral people never have immoral thoughts. What a dangerous, damaging load of crap. It’s not that a “good person” has only moral thoughts. It’s that they act only upon the moral thoughts and not the immoral ones… People who pretend they have no impure thoughts are seeking to get fat on the guilt of others.

All of us have nasty antisocial tendencies. Every last one of us. It ain’t just the Nazis, al-Qaeda, and the people on the registry of sex offenders – or whatever enemy-of-the-week the media is pushing. All those evil-doers are you. And me too. They’re every single human being in the world without exception. Maybe you don’t have whatever specific urges the media is telling you are the very worst (you tell yourself you don’t, anyway), but you have others and they’re just as nasty and disgusting. Every human being does. That’s part of the nature of being human.

Recognising your suppressed desires certainly does not mean you have to act on them. But you have to know that they’re there. Pretending only abnormal people have certain desires is extremely unhealthy and extremely dangerous.

Every one of us is Charles Manson, Saddam Hussein, and Adolf Hitler… You can only do good when you know what bad really is and where it comes from…  Far from being the dangerous loosening of morals so many warn us about, this kind of thing is actually human society’s awakening to a new sense of real morality, a morality that is much more powerful than any which could be maintained through the fear of a God whose existence most of us question.

Why We Stay In Abusive Situations

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When working with clients, I see a common theme that crops up all the time, no matter what life issues they are struggling with at the time.  It is the feeling of being trapped, unable to find a way out of a situation.  Whether it is in a relationship, a job situation, or their home life, there is a huge emotional need to create change but also a daunting prospect of what taking steps towards change could entail.  These problems manifest as stresses, confusions, frustrations, worries and conflicts.  The word ‘stuck’ is very apt in these situations, as they struggle internally with wanting things to be different and yet are crippled by thoughts of negative consequences of change.

You may know of a friend or family member who complains about being in an emotionally abusive relationship.  Or a former colleague who still hates his job but can’t seem to find the resources to leave the job.  Or someone who continues to invest in the same business after repeatedly running into disappointments.  Perhaps they are hoping that things will be different this time, while continuing to stay in the same behaviours, or that things will improve on their own.  I call these and similar types of situation ‘abusive situations’ because you are in a position of being abused by others or by yourself (self-abusive).

If you find yourself stuck in an emotionally unhealthy situation, it may be time to honestly examine your motivations and begin breaking apart the energy of stuckness.  This will begin freeing you to move in a more fulfilling direction.  The first step is to commit to looking at your situation with total honesty.  That means owning up to the pain being in this situation is causing you.  What are you sacrificing or not honouring in yourself by being in this situation?

It also means acknowledging that it’s a choice you have made to stay in this situation.  Granted, it may seem that staying is the only option, at least for now.  That may or may not be true.  But the power comes from acknowledging the truth of why you are staying in this situation.  We tend to make excuses to justify a choice or behaviour – in short, we lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better.  By looking at the real reasons you are still in this situation, you take your power back.  Honesty gives you power, even if the thought of being honest makes you feel weak at the moment.

Start by listing the external factors (e.g. money,  social obligation, a promise made to someone).  Then list the emotional factors (i.e. what are your fears?).  You’re likely to find that listing the emotional factors is more challenging than listing the practical reasons.  In fact, practical reasons are often used to cover up deeper, emotional motivations.  So let’s explore some of these motivations together.

Fear Of Being Judged

Perhaps you’re afraid that others might judge you for having made a mistake.  Again.  If you have an emotional history of having failed before, you may refrain from coming clean with others that things aren’t going all that well for you in the same department.  What transpires then is a painful need to hide what is really going on for you.  In time, you may even be driven to isolate yourself.

The thought of telling someone is too embarassing.  Or maybe you’re afraid that people might worry about you (after all, you’ve worked hard to change your life around after the last ‘failure’).  Were there sceptics around when you had first gone into this situation?  People whom you imagine are dying to find a chance to say to each other, “Well, that’s hardly surprising, is it?”

As real as it may seem, all these things are taking place in your imagination.  The mind has a tendency to blow things out of proportion.  We tend to believe that we are judged by more people and more harshly than in reality.  Accept that some people will judge you, but also acknowledge that some people will be supportive of you.  How we tend to focus entirely on one aspect and magnify it until it is the only thing we see in our reality!  Seek out those who support you rather than those who run you down just because you are about to take a courageous leap.

I’ve found that too few people can admit to having made a mistake.  There is nothing wrong with saying, “Looks like I made a mistake.”  It is honest, simple and humble.  Very few people would be able to pass negative judgements on that for long.

Punishing Yourself

How much of you staying in an abusive situation a way for you to punish yourself?  Perhaps you are harbouring feelings of guilt from your past, and you are now motivated by a need to allay your guilt by putting yourself through pain.  If this rings true for you, look at where this guilt is really coming from.  The true source of this guilt is seldom from a person involved in the current situation; rather, it’s likely to be displaced guilt projected onto the current situation, so that you feel compelled to ‘make up’ for whatever pain you perceive you are causing the person involved now.  A kind of displaced or misplaced loyalty.

In self-destructive acts, this person you are punishing yourself for might be you.  You are perpetrating abusive acts on yourself because you are punishing yourself for something you feel guilty about.  If you did or are doing something that conflicts with your ethical principles, you may take it upon yourself to correct that imbalance by punishing yourself.

Give yourself permission to forgive yourself by reflecting on the lessons you can learn from your mistakes.  How can you become a better person because of the experience?  By focusing on how more whole you are when you incorporate those lessons into who you are from now on, you can stop the self-beating and change your actions from self-abusing to self-loving.  Consciously choose self-loving acts to reinforce moving towards healing and forgiveness.  Ask yourself, “Is this act or thought self-loving or self-abusive?”

Disempowerment & The Fear Of Responsibility

Making empowered choices can be scary.  We fear stepping into our power because we fear the responsibility that comes from exercising our freedom.  If we allowed other people to make decisions for us, we won’t have to be responsible for making a wrong decision.  There may be a link to some deep-seated guilt from your past (see above), which may have made it feel safer for you to take a back seat in life.  Yet if this conflicts with your desire to be in control of your life, it will cause you to be resentful of who you leave the decisions to, as well as yourself for choosing not to honour your power.

We choose the route of disempowerment because we see getting empowered as hard work, that it’s too far a destination for us to reach.  Truth is, empowerment is our natural state.  It takes more resources to move away from empowerment than it does to move away from disempowerment.  We have to sacrifice our integrity, dishonour ourselves, compromise our values to become disempowered – and we suffer the pain of moving in such an unnatural direction away from our authentic self.  By reversing all those choices – by staying in integrity, honouring our truth, living in line with our values – we immediately return to an empowered state.

Low Self-Worth

Perhaps you suffer from low self-worth and you believe that being in abusive situations is what you deserve.  Even though you profess to want to change things, deep down you don’t believe that you deserve better than the situation you are in right now.  If you don’t work on improving your self-worth, you may forever devalue yourself in an attempt to fit in with your perception of yourself.

Holding yourself in poor light makes you feel unworthy of a better job, career, relationship, home, lifestyle, etc.  You may wonder at times why you still choose to move back to this and similar situations, thus perpetuating a cycle of self-abuse.  Raise the value of yourself in your eyes.  That is the only way out of this cycle.  If you don’t heal your relationship with yourself, you will eventually find yourself in the same situation.  Even if you take conscious actions to move into healthier situations, if the source of your low self-worth is not examined and healed, the results will only be fleeting.

If this seems too big a task for you to go through on your own, seek the help of a therapist.  There are also lots of effective techniques available in the self-help sector.  The technique is less important than your willingness and openness to healing and growing.  It may takes years of healing but every step is a progress in healing.  That journey can be a joyful adventure as you discover more and more beautiful aspects of yourself.

The Allure Of Staying Imprisoned

Sometimes, we choose to stay in helpless situations because we carry unresolved anger from our past.  Staying in abusive situations gives us an excuse to be angry.  It provides us with an outlet to express our sense of injustice.  Our past indignation becomes an unfinished business which allows us to feel justified in voicing that anger about being mistreated.  So we stay trapped by choosing to imprison ourselves, even when we really do have the resources to get out of it.  We focus on why we can’t get out of it, instead of why we can and must.

Sift through what’s right and wrong in this situation: same anger, rightful anger, but wrong context.  Put the anger back to where it belongs and deal with the anger in its appropriate context.  Knowing that you might have been motivated by a need to feel angry by putting yourself in this situation gives you the power to choose something better.

Along with the need to feel angry is the need to show others that you are being mistreated.  You may be waiting for a saviour because your saviour never came to your rescue last time and you still feel the unfairness of it.  By staying helpless, you ‘prove’ to others how wrong it all is – for someone to say, “Yes, this is unfair,” and maybe extend their love and support to you.

The saviour is you.  This time, there will be no saviour outside of you.  That is not to say that you should close the door to people who offer love and support to you.  It simply means that you take it upon yourself to step into your power and own up to your deeper, emotional motivation in this situation.  When you call it for what it is and deal with your emotions in their appropriate contexts, you relate to your world differently – a world where people are kind, compassionate, loving and supportive.

The Illusion Of Scarcity

If you’re buying into the illusion that the world is a place of scarcity – that resources and opportunities are in short supply – you would feel more fearful about getting out of your situation or “rocking the boat” in any way.  Fear of losing what you have, even if it’s shit.

The fear of running out of resources is such an intense emotional investment that it traps a person in awful situations.  It is a crippling fear that renders you stunned, incapacitated as your spirit withers away.  For all the awfulness that you go through by being in that situation, you put up with it because it is better than nothing.

Are you certain that you’ll be left with nothing?  What is nothing?  Money, house, friends?  How depleted is it really?  Is it really down to nothing?  Tell the truth about it.  Some money to last you a month is not nothing.  A less luxurious house is not nothing.  Two supportive friends is not nothing.  What about the things you will gain?  Having more integrity, self-honour, freedom, happiness, joy, peace is not nothing.  Where you lose out, you will gain in other aspects.  This is a given is you’re being true to yourself.

Trusting that the Right Thing Will Be Delivered

If being in this situation is causing you huge conflicts, start exploring whether you can make any changes while preserving the relationship, job, business, etc.  In other words, is it salvageable?  It may be a case of you learning to stand up for yourself and saying no to abusive people.  Do you have a pattern of people-pleasing?  How might you assert yourself and draw your boundaries to protect yourself from being abused?  Even if you invite unpleasant reactions when you say, “No more!” you come out of it with more dignity and self-respect.

If you are trying to preserve what isn’t working anymore, you risk running into great mental turmoils and eventually destroying yourself.  Maybe you have already been racking your brains and found very little hope for improvement within that context.  Walk away from the situation.  At least you get to clear your conscience with yourself.  What about the fear of leaving someone feeling hurt, abandoned, betrayed?  If you can’t stay in the same situation without removing the resentment, then your choice to stay is a continued choice to be resentful to others.  Your self-sacrifice, your voluntary imprisonment in that situation, will continue to generate anger and resentment and renders both of you joyless.

Things rarely improve on their own under these circumstances.  By staying in the situation, you will become stagnant or things will get worse.  When you cut your ties with that situation and break an unhealthy pattern of allowing yourself to be abused, you trust that in time things will move in your favour.  When you do the right thing by you, your direction will be revealed to you.  I have witnessed many times how giving up something brings in something better which we never imagined before.  This is the gift when we open up to trust.

Simplicity Is The Way To Go

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I’ve been asked what my resolution is for 2010, so I will share it here.  For the record, I have stopped making new year resolutions some years ago.  I had found that the long list I tended to come up with too depressing after a while.  Too much unnecessary pressure, as if life did not present enough on my plate already!  I’ve since taken the route of flowing with whatever life presents, whatever time of the year it is.  This year, if I were to come up with one resolution, it would be to keep every area of my life as simple as possible.

Simplicity is my current buzzword.  It really appeals to me where I am at this stage of my life.  The idea of lightening my load gives me an immediate sense of peace as it creates more room for my creative expression.  Here’s my take on it:

Simplicity cuts out all the frivolous stuff that depletes our energy by taking up too much of our attention.  It frees us up so that we can focus on the things that matter most to us without being pulled in different directions.  When our attention is focused on fewer things, we retain our power to create the fabulous life we deserve.  Simplicity enables us to nurture our own path and to ensure our emotional wellbeing.  Instead of being bombarded by critical thoughts as a result of trying to fulfill everyone’s expectations, we are able to manage the areas towards which we have chosen to channel our energies.  Our load becomes lighter and we’re able to give more to what’s really important to us.

Culprit #1:  People-pleasing

One of the first steps in creating more space for our own pursuits is by drawing our boundaries with people.  I have decided to spend my free time with people I really care for and who supports my growth as I support theirs.  That also means spending less or no time with those who are stuck in perpetual mental poverty and all the behavioural symptoms that come from it – i.e. being manipulative, unreliable, unprofessional, under-handed, lazy, abusive, controlling, etc.

When we try to become all things to everyone, we become overloaded with responsibilities.  These responsibilities drain us mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.  Mentally, we become harsh on ourselves as we struggle to make everyone happy, and we suffer emotionally.  Our spirit is depleted because we neglect our self-growth.  In the end, our health suffers.  Compromising ourselves this way isn’t healthy for any relationship as the imbalance will catch up with us eventually.

Self-nurturance should be everyone’s priority.  Without people-pleasing, you will be able to create a healing space for yourself without feeling guilty about leaving other people behind or neglecting obligations that are borne out of guilt.

Culprit #2:  Over-analysing

Stop trying to figure things out too much.  The mental drain from needing to work out, comprehend and label everything leaves us with little resources to get clarity on the things that really matter to us.  Learn to be okay with not knowing.  What if your mind resists letting go of knowing?  Consciously relax that resistance and allow the discomfort to move through you without further resisting it until you find yourself in the space of not knowing.  After some practice, you will get better at it and eventually master the art of letting go.

Sometimes, we tend to read too much into other people’s behaviours and take them personally.  We generate negative feelings from the stories we create out of what we think other people’s motives are towards us.  To simplify your life, give up the need to interpret other people’s actions and accept that all of us are doing the best we can given our circumstances.

Culprit #3:  Starting too many projects

I have a habit of working on too many projects at a time and end up not completing any of them.  This year, I will focus my energy on completing not more than two projects at a time.  Having one or two pet projects is more inspiring, without the daunting prospect of having to move ahead with so many different projects.

Also in this category, I will finish reading one book before starting another.  Seeing five unfinished books on my bedside table (a few with cobwebs) gives me a certain amount of stress.  For books that I cannot get past certain pages, I will abandon the need to finish reading them.  One book only at a time.

Culprit #4:  Being indecisive

When we can’t make up our minds about something, guess where our attention is.  Everywhere.  And each subject gets only a watered-down version of our attention.  People can’t decide because they’re afraid that what they choose will turn out to be not such a good choice and that what they’ve not chosen turns out to be better.  Sometimes, even after making a decision, people are still wondering if they’ve made a good choice.  Guess where their attention is.  Neither here nor there.

I have a reputation of being rather indecisive when ordering meals.  I love food, and the more variety is presented to me the more indecisive I get.  I’ve been practising being quicker when ordering food.  I’m also learning to be happy with what I pick out of the menu and to enjoy it fully without wishing I had ordered something else.  Sometimes, if I can’t decide between two items, the solution I take is to order both, which leads me to ask you:

What if you wanted more than one thing?  In the spirit of simplicity, I will say that it is okay to choose two but more than that is a sign of greed and distaste, not to mention it will pass the point of being simple!

Culprit #5:  Forcing things to happen

In one of my previous posts, I talked about the power of deciding and taking actions (The Power Of Saying “I Have Decided!”).  Now, there’s a difference between being proactive and being too forceful in manifesting an outcome.  When you’re being forceful, you risk crossing the line into being desperate and manipulative.  The harshness of this energy will repel rather than support the manifestation of something you desire.

Give it over to trust.  Trust will relieve you of worrying too much and forcing things to happen.  Worrying is not going to help bring about a different outcome, it will make you feel smaller and smaller.  With trust, you will enter the space of infinite possibilities where all the abundance in the world can bring whatever you want into manifestation.

Culprit #6:  Needing to be perfect

This is a killer energy-drainer for so many people.  Needing to be perfect means that you will always be judging yourself against other people and feeling inadequate.  How do we rate perfection anyway?  Whatever you think perfection is, the bar will be raised as soon as you get close to it.  So you’ll be caught up in a cycle of striving for something that doesn’t exist (for more on this subject, read The Perfection Of Imperfection).

When you strive to be perfect, you are in essence saying to yourself that you are not good enough right now.  So your well-meaning projects get abandoned until the day when you feel you have reached perfection.  The question I’d like to ask you is, when will you ever be good enough?

You don’t have to make yourself believe you are perfect now if you don’t feel you are.  Just work on recognising that you are good enough to do whatever it is you are waiting to do.  Focus on your accomplishments so far and know that you are capable of accomplishing more – but only if you get on with it.  Let go of wanting to be the best.  It is better to do a little than not at all while you wait for perfection.

Culprit #7:  Neglecting yourself

Sometimes, choosing to take time out for ourselves may seem counter-intuitive.  We tend to find it easier to carry on with writing that report, making those phone-calls, tending to somebody else’s needs, etc. and end up over-stretching ourselves.  We need to choose to do the things that help reduce our stress levels even in the midst of trying to reach a deadline.  It may seem as if by taking time out we would slow our progress, but a dedicated half an hour of being in our own space would allow us to reenergise and be more productive in the long run.

If you work from home or if domestic chores become overwhelming, taking a relaxing bath or meditating in a quiet corner will clear your head and leave you recharged.  When you’re in front of your computer, you may come across a nurturing article but delete it without reading because you’re afraid of wasting precious time.  Yet the article may contain soul-nourishing messages or give you insights for where you are heading in your life.  The point is, we sometimes make poor choices, thinking that the things that are going to do us good are a waste of time.

Operating on adrenaline may help push you forward when you lack motivation, but one can’t live healthily like that.  That chaotic way of living will lead you to create more madness in your life.  In contrast, a calm, focused, present mindset will help you to make clear choices and make the management of your daily life simpler.

Culprit #8:  Over-promising

This is a behavioural outcome of people-pleasing but deserves its own category because it is such a stress-building pattern.  Overpromising generates guilty feelings when you find yourself unable to deliver on your promises.  Guilty feelings lead you to beat yourself up and feeling lousy about yourself.  Very quickly, it turns into the worst kind of mental self-abuse and creates a massive entanglement of conflicts within yourself.

Forcing yourself to stop the habit of over-promising is not enough.  You need to examine what motivates you to do it.  Some of the common issues behind over-promising include insecurity about who you are perceived to be, fear of rejection, and unresolved guilt around something that happened in the past.  There’s a big, juicy story in your head; explore that story, own up to your feelings associated with that story, and challenge how real it is.  In the process, you chart your way out of being held imprisoned by that story and liberate yourself forever.

Culprit #9:  Wanting to get your way all the time

Most of the people who visit this blog have probably been working on transcending this for a while, but you would remember what it was like struggling from your ego in your dealings with other people.  The inability to let go of being right and getting your way all the time is a massive drain on our resources.  The constant fight to prove a point or win an argument or get the upper-hand in a situation or one-upmanship is a waste of energy.  When you come out the end of it, the price you get is an inflation of your ego, but it might have cost you a few friendships or respect from your peers.

It takes maturity to be able to concede to another person’s viewpoint, to withdraw from an argument, to accept that someone else is better than you, and to be gracious about receiving less than you’ve given.  We can learn to be comfortable with not getting our way by simply accepting it.

Simplicity surrounds you with a sparkling, clean energy.  It allows you to respect the powers of your gifts and in so doing strengthens your sense of yourself as a powerful, magnificent being.

So simple.

A Tribute To Personal Freedom

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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.

The Power Of Saying “I Have Decided!”

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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?

Mission: Spiritual Joy At Every Moment

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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.

Strange Is Good

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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.

Relaxing The Ego To Make Empowered Choices

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In my previous posting, I stated that change is an ongoing process.  The acceptance that life is meant to be a voyage of discovering more authentic parts of ourselves, rather than a pursuit of a state of perfection we expect to achieve overnight, will make us much happier.  As long as we remain present in life, we would be able to take on the signs that are shown to us to keep us moving forward in our growth.  The quickest way to accelerate our growth is to observe how we respond from our ego and then make more empowered choices from a higher perspective. 

Observing how we respond and how much hold our ego has on us which determines our response can point us to where work needs to be done.  It’s one of those sticky paradoxes though: our ego prevents us from admitting to our weaknesses, yet to get to know that part of us requires us to pay attention to it. 

The function of our ego is to protect us from being hurt.  Unfortunately, it operates from a primal fear of how we can be hurt that what it perceives as threats to us is over-extended, outside of the appropriate context.  Hence, we tend to react to what others do or don’t do, say or don’t say, from a place of fear that we’d be damaged in some way or deprived of something we hold as valuable to us.  This fear is not real, in the sense that it is misplaced.  When we protect ourselves from this level of fear, we act in ways that cause us more hurt.  This is distinct from protecting our personal values and against true violations of what we stand for at our core. 

Problems in relationships arise when two people react from their egos.  Rather than act in ways that further the relationships and that allow them to grow as individuals, they trap themselves in a low level struggle of pettiness and one-upmanship.  When we work on freeing ourselves from the hold of our ego, a lot of our tensions would dissipate. 

How do we free ourselves from our ego? 

Step 1:  Notice your feelings

Begin by taking notice when your ego is pulling you to act in ways which perpetuate your struggles.  Observe your internal reactions to a situation.  You will feel a tightening – an uncomfortable feeling – as if your inner space is contracting to put up a defensive wall around you in response to feeling angry, resentful, jealous or short-changed.  You will recognise this as a defensive feeling. 

Mentally, your mind will construct thoughts that are tantrum-like, such as “Who does she think she is?” or “I’m going to show that bastard!”  or “He’s going to be sorry!”  It speaks in themes of hoarding, revenge and braggadocio.  Our automatic response is to impress, lie, manipulate, rob or cause suffering to another – because we feel we’re about to lose out on something.  Such response, should we act on it, can be subtle and insidious, with an agenda behind it. 

Step 2:  Delay taking action

Once you recognise that you’re driven to respond to a particular situation from your ego, refrain from acting on it.  This momentary pause in acting on your automatic impulse will give you the space to consider options that don’t result in instant gratifications but in advancing you in your personal growth. 

See, we grow by taking risks.  Ego-free responses carry a bigger risk than ego-driven actions.  The risk I am talking about is the risk of our getting hurt (actually, it’s our ego that is at risk of getting hurt).  We take that risk, holding an intention that is higher than the mere protection of our egos – the intention to conserve some core part of us.  We take that risk by fully accepting and being willing to put up with temporary discomfort, and in the process our ego heals from our having moved through the false pain it carries. 

Step 3:  Clear your inner space

When our ego has a strong hold on us, however, it can be quite difficult for us to choose a more loving option.  Let’s look at freeing ourselves from our ego from an energetic view. 

When you know you’re reacting from your ego, get a sense of where the tightness is located in your body.  Next, get a sense of the energetic strands that hold this tightness to your body.  You may be able to visualise or perceive in some other way these strands. 

Now relax the hold of your ego by mentally dissolving those strands until you feel freed from the strong hold that pulls you to act towards preserving your ego.  Once freed, your inner space will expand, allowing more options to appear.  In this calmer space, you’ll be more able to choose and take more loving steps that make you grow. 

Step 4:  Give it away

As you relax your ego’s hold on you and your inner space expands, the energy that is freed from the tension produced by the fear of your ego goes back to you and you’re reconnected to your resources within.  You gain a new perspective – rather than perceiving the situation as desperate which drives you to act desperately, you’re able to see other possibilities and consider new options. 

At this point, you may choose any action that counters the direction your ego wants you to go.  But you can go one step further by giving away some of the energy that’s been returned to you – a loving, altruistic action that may not have anything to do with the situation. 

The way to counter ego-pulled actions is to go the opposite way and act as if you are abundant and thus cannot be diminished.  The effect of acting big is it leaves you feeling big-hearted – you derive fulfilment from knowing that you’ve contributed to another and not from scoring petty points which leaves a trace of bitterness in your heart.  Thus, you turn what had been uncomfortable into an empowering experience.   

 

Often, we fail to grow because we don’t give ourselves that chance.  The little actions that we take in response to other people’s actions, when we choose to act contrary to what our ego dictates, we break out of being stuck with a set of patterns that cause us and others pain.  As you practise countering your ego’s pull and act in ways that further your growth, you’ll find that a lot of your tensions in life will lessen.