Category Archives: Letting Go

The Day When Suffering Stopped

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I was in a session with a client at my centre the other day when I witnessed the precise moment when suffering ended.  It was breathtaking.  In that moment, I saw the endless grasping –  the controlling, fixing, righting what’s not right, perfecting what’s imperfect, knowing what’s not known, searching for answers – STOP.

In my work as an addiction therapist, my job is to lead people to the edge of the door beyond which lies their heart waiting to awaken, and guide them to travel through that door and emerge the other side as their authentic self.

For most people, recovery from addiction is a long journey, since the addictive behaviour is the outermost expression of many layers of imbalance and conventional treatment for addictions tend to focus on the most apparent symptoms first.  As a result, people can spend years in therapy and never really get to the deepest source of their imbalance.  Some might manage to stay on track for years, slowly working off the drive towards addiction as they re-educate themselves to a new way of coping with life – yet never really doing the deep healing that would set them free and tolerating a life of being an addict.  For some luckier ones, they might reach a stage at some point when the latent drive towards addictions eases off.

What drives addictive behaviours is a deep feeling of not having enough of something or other.  This feeling can come from unresolved emotions, unhealed traumas and losses, giving rise to a state of unwholeness in the pit of an individual.  In our attempt to cope with this feeling, we reach out to all kinds of things to make us feel better.  When we do this excessively and we’re unable to stop, we’re said to be addicted.

Almost everybody suffers from this unwholeness.  Almost everybody is addicted to something.  Addiction is not confined to drug and alcohol taking; just in the dimension of computers and internet alone, you can be addicted to checking emails, Skyping, Facebook, playing Free Cell, etc.

Addiction is a behaviour that is acted out excessively and you feel as though you can’t stop that behaviour.  You can also be addicted to being in pain and anxiety – where your thoughts are continually generating those states of being.  The thoughts which you have trained yourself to run in a repeated loop are what you can’t stop, trapping you in pain and anxiety.

Therefore, addiction and suffering are synonymous.  Suffering is when you try to get out of something or towards something, and feeling as though you can’t change the situation.

Like many people, my client had spent most of his life being in suffering.  A painful past and an addiction to feeling bad were the sources of his long-term suffering.  He had undergone treatment for addictions a number of times throughout his life but the deepest source of his discomfort within himself was still plaguing him.

Through our guidance, he had gone to the deepest, darkest places which he’d been too scared to go in the past.  Armed with admirable courage and complete trust in our guidance, he had forayed into the depths and reclaimed parts of himself by stretching the capacity of his heart to love and forgive those who’d wronged him.

The power that came back to him was so palpable that it imbued the room with an electrifying presence.  As the sense of separation dissolved, replaced by a merging with the light that was revealed to him beneath the human dramas, he said:

“I am full, filled with the most incredible energy…. and it is all mine, it comes from me.”

This, to me, is the heart of addiction work.  That emptiness, hollowness, void, deep loneliness or whatever it is called, must be filled from within in order for addiction to stop.  Otherwise, the drug is only going to be replaced by another drug.  Maybe it’s alcohol, pills, relationships, exercising, Tweeting or anything that seems to be a lesser evil but is nonetheless a drug in disguise.

It is not so much that the addiction is bad for you.  It is that the gem it can point you to lays forever buried.  Like a pebble in your shoe it pokes at you to get your attention but you spend the rest of your life trying to ignore it, yet putting up with the discomfort.  If you stopped walking and examined the pebble you might find out what wondrous gifts it contains.

How to End Suffering

Stop running from your pain.

You can’t stop your suffering while you continue to run from your pain.  When it feels counter-intuitive to stop, take a deep breath and make an about-turn and face your pain.  Stay there, face-to-face with it, for just a few more moments.  Resist the urge to run away.  Feel the power, disguised as fear.  Stretch your capacity to remain there.  You’re there… and you’re still there…

Let the truth of what you’re facing cleanse you.  For the longest time, you’ve probably been covering it up with a number of defensive behaviours which have manufactured a false self.  You’ve probably been secretly yearning to return to your authentic self – freely expressing who you truly are.  With self-honesty, you are on your way to reclaiming yourself.

Change the direction in all levels.    

You can’t stop physically acting out a behaviour for long unless you also change the direction in your emotional, mental and spiritual self.  Just as the first tip above tells you to stop and change direction in your emotional reality, you should also explore what’s keeping you in suffering mode in your mental-cognitive realm – stopping the kind of thinking, self-talk, beliefs and attitude that perpetuate suffering, and adopting new ones.  Equally, look at what you’re doing spiritually; if you’ve been keeping your energy small and self-punitive, reach out and connect to concepts that give you a sense of expansiveness.

Let go of the past.

Do you hold on to your past way too much?  This can provide a great distraction for you and generate a lot of conflict with yourself – such that when you’re moving towards the things that make you happy, you sabotage your own happiness.  You might do this by shutting down emotionally and further confusing yourself – as a kind of blurring-it-up mechanism to avoid facing your problems.  If you aren’t aware of it, you might even seem to be hitting a wall wherever you look and end up having your focus all over the place.

We hold on to the past because we believe we might lose an essential part of us if we cut ties with it.  But letting go of our past does not mean wiping it off our memory.  Whatever painful experiences you’ve gone through have made you who you are today.  It simply means deciding that you no longer want to be governed by the sense of guilt, loss, disappointments and tragedy of the past, and move forward in your life.

Even if you think you’re not choosing it, I invite you to take a deeper exploration to see if there’s a part of you that might need to make a clear decision to let go of what’s been pulling you back from happiness.

Notice what is already good.

In the throes of suffering, you may be focusing only on the bad stuff.  Without dismissing that the bad stuff is there, turn your head around and see what else you notice.  Physically look up and around you, taking your attention away from you for a moment.

Do you notice a certain heaviness at the thought of doing this, or even as you’re doing it?  A kind of sticky web that glues you to your preoccupation with the bad stuff?  This is the energy that traps you in suffering mode.  It also contains a lot of your power which you’ve put into it every time you perpetuate the cycle of addiction/suffering.  When you break out of the cycle, even if temporarily, you break that strand of web and free up a pocket of power.  This pocket of power will return to you as you move forward in a direction of higher vibration.

Maybe you notice a certain colour in a painting that is your favourite shade.  As you focus on it, you notice the same shade jumping out from a few other places and catching your attention.  You may start to feel a sense of richness evoked in you as you admire the shade, and you feel a certain openness in you – as though the world seems a little less bleak now.

As you do this, you still battle with the sticky web that tells you that you haven’t finished with your suffering, that there’s more suffering to be done.  At this point, you can yield to the sticky web or you can push through to move into an increasingly expansive state.  By staying with the opened feeling, you will start to notice other things that can give you more positive feelings.  You may remember that you have people who are loving and supportive in your life, or the opportunities you do have to create happiness.

Give something of yourself.

One of the most powerful ways to turn suffering into empowerment is by turning your attention to someone else.  It doesn’t mean you have to solve someone else’s problem; just by engaging with someone you may gain a different perspective on your own problem and a renewed sense of self – which might turn out to be the very thing that sets you on a different direction towards greater happiness.

No matter how depleted you may think you are, you do have something of yourself to give.  Even a quick phone-call to a friend can stop the cycle of self-beating and put you on a different path.  The sense of fulfilment when you feel as if you’ve contributed to someone else’s happiness can even heal you of the pain that made suffering a prefered choice.

 

Ending your suffering can be easier than you might imagine.  The state of non-suffering can be yours with just a slight shift in your focus.  It doesn’t mean that you will forever be free of difficulties as you go through life.  What it means is that a type of situation that tended to provoke an intense and emotionally charged reaction in you will stop having that kind of effect on you.

If certain people’s behaviours tended to provoke anger or irritation in you, you’ll find that you no longer have such reactions.  If the idea of people laughing at the ideas of your project embarasses you, you stop having the constant feeling of wanting to hide aspects of what you do and find it easy to share it with others.  If someone criticising you would make you feel so bad about yourself that you’d automatically consume a substance to numb you of that pain, you now find that it doesn’t bother you that much and you can cope with it calmly.

At the end of the day, what it means is that you are free.  Free from all these torments that make you feel uneasy within yourself.  Free from the constant need to right an injustice because you can’t bear the deeper feelings inside you which you’re afraid to face when you give up your personal crusade.

Freed from all these low-level struggles, bullshit, pretenses and dramas, you can allow the full force of your highest self to embody you.  Who you are, is not who you think you are… and that is very good news.

Ohmee

How Failure Can Lead You To What Your Soul Yearns

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In the horror film ‘Vanishing On 7th Street’ there is a scene where John Leguizamo’s character Paul is led into a tunnel.  As he follows to the end of the tunnel, he finds himself facing a dead-end.  He turns around and sees the light furthest to him black out.  Then the next furthest light dims, and the next….  What struck me most was not the sensations the producers of the movie must have wanted to evoke in the audience, ie. to feel Paul’s increasing terror as darkness inches closer and closer.  Rather, it was how the remaining light becomes increasingly brighter as the light dims one by one.

It reminded me of how our missed opportunities in life can highlight what we’re really meant to do from a spiritual viewpoint.  And Paul’s increasing fear can be likened to how we might feel as we get closer to our true passion.

Sometimes, the thing we’re most passionate about, the thing that holds most meaning to us, is not obvious to us right from the start.  Initially, it may even appear as something we hate, have an aversion to, or stubbornly resist.  So much so that we won’t naturally be looking at the right places when we’re searching for the thing that gives us purpose in life.  We may spend many years pursuing in other directions, the fulfilment of a sense of purpose still eluding us.

Imagine a greater intelligence is watching over your soul’s progress on the physical plane.  It sees you going after one false dream after another in pursuit of finding your way home to doing the thing that makes you feel like *you* in a deeper sense.  Maybe it’s been providing signs to guide you to the right place but you ignored or missed them.  So it decides to intervene by dimming the lights out of the things that take you away from your true calling.

After the first light is dimmed, you may become aware of your true calling.  If not, another light is dimmed.  This can go on for a while and can explain why we sometimes find ourselves facing one ‘failure’ after another – when it seems that whatever we pursue turns out to be a failure.  We may even start to suspect we are cursed by a spell of bad luck.

Being in the middle of a series of failures can be mentally and emotionally exhausting.  It seems to test our resolve and how much resources we can pull out of us.  If you’re in one of these challenging times, it may help to shift your thinking from one where the world is out to get you or God is punishing you, to one where you are being divinely nudged towards your special, beautiful place.

That job you badly want, the relationship you’re sacrificing so much to salvage, the business you just can’t give up, the contract that means the life to you, etc.  Most of us have experienced losing one of these things which we’ve invested so much of our energy into.  It seemed so unfair that they were taken away from us.

Some of us will even focus on the unfairness of it forever, and this is what stops us from healing from the pain and discovering something greater.  That childish stubborness to hold on to what we didn’t get will kill off any chance of us finding happiness again.  If you focus on it as a missed opportunity, you can turn it into a life-long regret.  What it means is that you will continue to invest mental and emotional energy to your loss, keeping your pain around it alive and dilluting your success in all other areas of your life.

The moment you let go of your sense of unfairness around it, you stop giving it energy.  You are effectively taking back your power from it.  When you turn your perspective of it around and see it as a gift rather than a missed opportunity, you start to heal from all those feelings of loss and regret.  This healing will spread across to every part of your life and you’ll notice how much more opened you are to new opportunities for success.

Thus, healing comes from having an openness to consider how that loss might be a gift.  As you take this step, you can become clearer about what’s really important to you.  In time, you can appreciate how that experience had led you closer to your heart’s desire, what your soul is yearning.  But without taking the step, you’re simply stuck in the misery generated by continuing to focus on what didn’t happen for you the way you wanted it to.

It is my belief that the Universe will support you in fulfilling your true calling, even if the road to it may be littered with obstacles.  Those obstacles may serve to sharpen your focus, intent and vision of your true calling.

Failure can lead you closer to the thing you truly want, deep down, on a soul level.  When all other options are being taken away, you are forced to move to the one thing that stands out.  Sometimes, it presents itself as a light-bulb moment, when it suddenly becomes obvious.  But sometimes, it seems as though we’re left with a lesser choice, and it’s not until we’ve moved into that option that we discover what a gift it really is.

Because it is not an obvious choice, we would not be moving towards it if other options had not been removed from the picture.  Like Paul in the tunnel, we’re pushed to the place where there’s nowhere for us to run, no more room for excuses.  We’re forced to turn to the only option available in front of us.  That’s why it has to come from that direction sometimes – we are scared of it and won’t choose it if it was one among other options available.

Why are we scared of the thing we’re meant to do, if it’s good for our soul?  Not because it’s bad for us but because it’s good for us in ways we’ve never known good to be.  The newness of goodness – our capacity to be bigger, more expansive – is what scares us.  It’s still an unknown even if it’s good for us.

The wall at the end of the tunnel is not a dead-end.  If your resources are dwindling, it can be terrifying.  But it also forces you to look in places you’ve never looked or thought to look before.  One of these places is where you’re being divinely guided to go – a door which when opened will allow you to meet a stronger aspect of you.  It may not be the easiest place to visit since we tend to avoid parts of ourselves, but our soul knows it is where we need to go to find true freedom.

If you’re suffering from a series of failures, adopting these attitudes and practices will ensure you’re moving in the direction you are being nudged towards.

“This is a good thing.” 

Allow yourself to consider it may be a good thing.  If you’re struggling with the anger, resentment, bitterness, disappointment, worry and anxiety from not getting what you want or losing something you had, changing your perception of it can shift you to a more balanced mental-emotional space.  Often, we generate even more of these difficult feelings by continuing to focus on the unfairness of it.  The sooner you let go of your sense of injustice, the sooner you’ll see where the light really shines.

Be grateful for this gift. 

The failures you’re experiencing may serve to be a kind of ‘process of elimination’ to help highlight what you’re meant to pursue.  Changing your attitude to being grateful will enable you to spot the star platform of your life quicker.

Being grateful also means giving attention to what you’re being shown.  Sometimes, we simply refuse to give energy to anything else, even if we recognise that the loss is a good thing.  It could be that we’re still recovering from the effects of the loss and this can be a valid reason to not pursue something else for a while.  But it could also be fear-based: we might be afraid of being disappointed again should our next project become another failure.  If so, know that it is okay to invest cautiously this time.  Proceeding calmly, without drama or desperation, will ensure a well-balanced outcome whichever way it goes.

Let go of old beliefs. 

Take some time to get clear about what you’re saying to yourself about your losses.  You may find statements like these in your head:

“He’s so out of integrity!”

“She’s going to pay back for this.”

“How can he do this to me!”

“It’s all my fault!  I should’ve said yes right away!”

“Oh no, what am I going to do now?”

“Can’t believe I’m being reduced to this!”

“There’ll never be another opportunity like that…”

“Damn, I was so close….”

If you look closely, you’ll find that these statements are supported by the beliefs you hold about people and the world.  For example, “He’s so out of integrity!” may be supported by a belief that everyone should act in integrity at all times.  I’m sure you can see how a belief like this can be a source of stress – there will always be people who won’t act in integrity and it’s not always within your control.  If you insist that people should always be in integrity, then you’re just setting yourself up to feel upset.  A healthier belief might be, “I prefer people to act in integrity.”  Here, you allow the space for people to act contrary to what you’d like them to, and you benefit from this increased flexibility.

Look for the lesson. 

The force that is supporting you to respond to your soul’s yearning will continue to dim the lights until you get the message.  But you can do your part by opening your senses to what it’s trying to show you.  Every failure contains a piece of wisdom that can point you to where you need to go.  It’s your job to look for it.

Start by seeing it as a gift, and then ask yourself how you can do the next thing differently.  If you keep doing the same thing, in the same way, you’re not getting your message yet.  Listen with your whole body as you tune into this question.  Your bodily signals, emotional cues, perceptive skills and intuition will combine to give you an overall gut feeling to steer you in the right direction.

Sometimes, the failures were needed to teach you certain values or to enable you to develop certain qualities like humility, generosity, forgiveness and compassion.  Ironically, the quickest way to learn these qualities is through experiencing failure and loss.  In the depth of misery, it’s easy to forget to look at how it can make us stronger or a better person.  But it’s precisely what every failure has the potential to do, if we choose to see it.

Relax into it. 

Stop resisting the sensations arising from your experience of failure or loss.  Acknowledge that they are just a form of energy wanting to pass through your body as part of the process of constant growth.  Most of the discomforts we feel is due to our resistance; when we stop resisting, we allow the energy to move through and out of us.  We move from being constricted to being expansive.  It requires us to relax into the whole sensation of it – to be opened to the feelings as tightness unravels itself inside us – and staying with it long enough for us to move into the expansive stage.

After writing this article, I decided to revisit the scene of Paul in the tunnel.  This time, I paused after every dimming of light.  At every pause, I imagined that Paul, given the time to let it sink in, would look around him and marvel at how much brighter it’s grown around him.  What might he have noticed instead of the fear?

What might you notice?  What’s been illuminated for you?

“Accept The Unacceptable”

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I was watching an animated movie about Doctor Strange, the Marvel Comics creation.  It was my first introduction to the character and I was fascinated by the world of sorcery portrayed in the story.  The movie depicts how Dr Stephen Strange, a successful surgeon, who after injuring his hands in an accident finds his way to a monastery in Tibet where he is trained by The Ancient One to be a powerful sorcerer.  Lots of spiritual lessons reflected in the movie, especially in the doctor’s early training when he has to move past the pain of his loss, guilt and shame to recover a sense of purpose in his life.

Embittered by the loss of the use of his hands as he knew it, Doctor Strange destroys his life by wallowing in self-pity and anger.  By the time he reaches Tibet, he has lost his career, reputation, wealth and home.  The Ancient One shows him all kinds of supernatural tricks, and eventually he learns that he can still heal people and do other marvelous things even without his hands.  To reach this stage, however, he has to learn to “accept the unacceptable”.

In the midst of having lost everything he valued, as well as his identity which was formed around all that is lost, The Ancient One’s constant call for him to “accept the unacceptable” only triggers anger and confusion.  How does one accept something that is so painful?  Even if he wanted to, how does one actually do it?

The energy that gets in the way of accepting the unacceptable is resistance.  It comes from there being conflict between what you desire (an attachment to a certain outcome) and what is.  When you resist what is happening, you refuse to see any other way.  You are unable to see that there are possibilities out of your pain.  Your perception is closed off to something else that is more positive – a gift that is revealed only when you have let go of your desire.

Accepting the reality of something can be very painful.  Yet the pain is prolonged and kept in place by your reluctance to ease your grip on wanting to right the wrong.  The outrage of injustice is what keeps us stuck.  Accepting doesn’t necessarily mean that we must accept the injustice, but to allow that feeling of injustice to flow freely through you.  In other words, do not resist the pain of it.  Once you allow the feeling to flow freely, you begin to see doors out of that pain, whereas by resisting it you can only see one path – the path of loss and hopelessness.

Accepting means allowing what is happening to happen.  Whilst it may feel as though you are stuck in that outcome, no outcome is ever the end.  Life is ever flowing, evolving and changing all the time.  This outcome you find yourself faced with is only the outcome for now.  It has the potential to change into something else, even if our minds cannot see what that change can be or how it may look in the future.  That is to say, do not give up – not in the sense of wanting it to change to a specific outcome we want but in maintaining hope for something different out of the present outcome.  But you need to accept that this is what it is for now, with the potential for your life to evolve into new experiences.  What these new experiences are, you have to accept that right now you do not know.

One of the greatest paradoxes in spiritual learning is the art of remaining hopeful while accepting a present situation that does not fit into what you desire.  The very act of allowing a situation to be can kill off any sense of hope for a bright future, as the loss of something we hold dear means losing what has made our life worth living.  This is especially true for those who tend to invest all their resources into one single thing, whether it is a business, a relationship, an idea, a belief, etc. to the exclusion of everything else.  Since there is no such thing as guaranteed security, everything we have is at risk of being taken away from us.  To invest all our resources into one thing puts us at risk of some day finding ourselves with nothing when that thing is gone.

Of course, it is an illusion that we have nothing apart from this thing on which we’d placed so much importance.  We have simply turned a blind eye to what else there is in our process of putting everything into one basket.  Putting energy into a cause, project or relationship can yield great results but when we do so with obsession and fixatedly, it becomes unhealthy as our lives become unbalanced.  Before Dr Strange’s hands were crushed, he had placed his entire emphasis on his career and neglected having people close to him.  What happens when he finds himself no longer able to perform as a surgeon is, he has no one to turn to for support.  Eventually, he turns to his ex-girlfriend to ask for money to travel to Tibet to find a cure for his hands – a rather humiliating thing since he had treated her badly in the past.

So as a preemptive measure, examine your life right now to see if you are putting all your energy into one single thing and neglecting other things that are important to you (but perhaps you take for granted).  Vary your interests, your social life, your investment of time and attention.

Returning to the lesson of accepting the unacceptable, is there anything in your past which you find difficult to accept?  Look for bodily signals of refusal to let things be – e.g. a feeling of contraction somewhere in your body or a sick feeling as you think about an event.  Is there something which you think is unacceptable?

Forgiveness has the power to liberate you from your pain once and for all.  Decide to forgive everyone who has ever wronged you, no matter what they have done.  We never really know what another person is going through, just as no one can really know what you are going through.  Opening your mind to consider a different perspective will break up the energy of hatred stored in your heart.  It elevates you from the place of being stuck in your angry judgements, churning out its poison against you as long as you are in that place, to a higher place where you can gain a greater understanding of what has happened.  That greater understanding will heal you and free you from the illusion of being trapped in your pain.

Sometimes, forgiving yourself is even more difficult than forgiving others.  Accept that what’s happened has happened.  Focus on how it has made you a better person now because you have recognised the ill-effects of certain actions you used to take and you are aware of having new choices, not on beating yourself up.  Learn to grow from it.  Forgiveness is a step towards being able to accept what you saw as unacceptable.

The idea of accepting the unacceptable may fill us with dread and horror, as if by allowing that energy to come closer we may go mad.  Yet that energy is made more intense by our efforts to push it away.  Once we’ve let go of resisting and allow ourselves to receive the flush of energy, the intensity will lessen as an even, free flow of energy is restored.  Without our resistance, that intense energy which passes through us can awaken us to a new level of truth about who we are.  Allowing and accepting that which had been too painful to allow and accept will expand you to a new level of being – one where you are more in touch with your true personal power.  In the world of sorcery, you would open doors to the realm of magical powers, when your mind has relieved itself of its scepticism about what is possible.

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.

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.

Being Honest About Your True Feelings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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