Category Archives: Fear

How To Let Go Of Being Wronged – Finally

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People sometimes ask me, “What is the deepest, most important healing that must occur for me to break through my blocks?”  For the serious seeker, one of the most powerful places to go in your healing is where you still hold resentment towards those who did you wrong.

I’m not talking about recent events but the most highly-charged incident in your earliest memory about being wronged.  This is not a place that most people would deliberately choose to go unless it becomes utterly clear to them that certain patterns that bring unhappiness and that keep unfolding in their lives have something to do with the hurts they still carry from this event.

Whether or not you have come to a point in your life where you’re experiencing this awareness, you can clear a great deal of toxicity that holds you back from the different areas of your life by visiting that place where you first encountered being betrayed, unfairly accused, shamed, humiliated, bullied, coerced or deprived.

Life has a way of bringing you circumstances where you have an opportunity to heal those hurts from your past.  If you aren’t aware of it as an opportunity, it may seem to you that life keeps punishing you by giving you the same emotional experiences.  Just as you come out of one disempowering circumstance, you find yourself in another one, and then another.  You may feel frustrated and scream inside your head, “What am I missing?  What’s the lesson I’m supposed to learn from all this?”

If you relate to this, it may be time to work on finally letting go of a your resentment about being wronged.  Here are the steps:

1.  Go to the Scene of the Crime.

It may take a fair amount of courage for you to mentally visit the scene that took place early in your life.  If you know in your heart that healing is needed from that place, trying to blur the truth is just going to remove power from you.  You can only run so far before it catches up with you, and in the course of your running away you may lose even more power by succumbing to numbing-out tactics that end up hurting you even more.

Removing the veil so you can see clearly what needs to be dealt with brings your power back to you.  Who is the person or persons whom you perceive to have wronged you?  What did they do to you that you feel is wrong?  How has what they did costed you?  Acknowledge your true feelings and beliefs about your experience with these individuals.

2.  Make a Surprising Change.

You started off as a victim and now you will emerge as a hero.

Usually, we choose to remain a victim long after the incident is over – replaying over and over again the story of injustice in our heads, unable to let go of the last traces of our resentment and the unfairness about being a victim.  We protest, “But I didn’t do anything wrong to provoke it.”  No, you didn’t, but now you have a chance to respond to it in a different way that will heal the whole experience for you.  The only healing that needs to happen is in yourself.

If you insist on seeing justice done to those people before you can heal, you may never free yourself from the one thing that causes you to recreate unpleasant situations in your life.

If you’re having half-fantasies at the back of your mind about someone coming into some kind of misfortune because they deserve it, you are building up bitterness inside you.  Even as you relish in the glee of imagining someone “getting their due”, sending nasty thoughts about someone leaves a toxic feeling inside you which will make you unhappy in the long run.  This tit-for-tat approach traps you in a cycle of unforgiveness – where you are doing the same thing (even if only in your mind) as what you see the other person to have done to you and for which you can’t forgive, and as such at a core level you’re unable to forgive yourself.

3.  See Through the Behaviours.

I believe that harsh, exaggerated behaviours come out of fear and inadequacy.  Meaning, the person who did you wrong had only acted that way because they felt afraid or inadequate in some way – just as those who act in violence often do so because they have a hatred towards themselves.  This step requires you to see through to that person’s fear and inadequacy, and have compassion for where they were at.

At this point, your mind may protest, “So what?  I don’t care what she went through, she shouldn’t have treated me that way.”

Chances are that person did not set out to deliberately harm you.  Maybe you were her chosen victim, or scapegoat, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t personal.  What I mean is that even if you were the person chosen to be on the receiving end of the unfair treatment, there was something bigger that drove her to act out the way she did.  De-personalising it this way can help you to gather a sense of compassion that will help you to free yourself eventually.

Where we get stuck is by continually focusing on the unfairness of why we were chosen as the victim of such treatment.  I invite you to let go of your investment into this focus.  The fact is that you were the chosen victim or scapegoat.  Get over it.  By taking a step out of it, you can begin to move towards freedom and peace.  There’s a gift in it for you; finding that gift is what will set you free, so it is your choice to remain stuck or be freed from it.

4.  Do the Unthinkable.

There are some resources that ask, if you could go back in time what you would do to change the events in a particular incident.  Usually, they prescribe a way of lashing out at the perpetrator, so that you turn your victimhood into empowerment.  For instance, if you passively allowed yourself to be bullied, you are encouraged to imagine getting angry and fighting back.  Whilst this can give you an immediate sense of gaining control of the situation and being less victimised, it isn’t true empowerment since you are still responding from a place of false power.

I believe that a higher kind of healing can take place when we transcend our anger and desire for vengeance, and do what is unthinkable to our mind.

Remember I said the person’s actions had got to have come out of fear and inadequacy.  That person was not connected to his heart when he did what he did.  Fear does that to you.  If, in that moment, somehow, love was given to him in a way that they were able to receive the full vibration of it, he would melt back into his heart and the behaviour would stop in that instant.  The events in the incident would change and your pain of suffering from the injustice can heal.

So imagine you are back in the scene of the crime.  Now instead of seeing yourself as a victim, imagine you are a higher being whose heart is totally awakened.  As they start to do what they were going to do, see them melting into their hearts as your light touches them.  Perhaps a light touch on someone’s arm, or a few sincere, calm words that speak the truth to the person and open his heart – you see whoever is around you dropping into their heart space, returning to their innocence where they operate from love and radiant joy.  In the absence of fear, of their inadequacy, there is no need for them to treat you the way they had; the drive just isn’t there.  See all of them becoming higher beings themselves – conntected to their hearts, their innocence.

At the end of the day, this is the healing we all need: to return to this awakened heart space and back to our innoncence where hatred, jealousy has no place in it.  Your compassion, to see through someone’s illusions of fear, inadequacy and hatred, is what heals you ultimately.  You heal yourself by freeing them from their roles as abusers and thereby your role as victim.  There is no abuser or victim anymore.  You are free to be who you truly are with your full powers intact, poised to create another life that truly honours you.

Elephant Medicine: Healing My Relationship With The World

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Only three months into the year, and 2012 is already looking to be a widly adventurous and creative year for me.  I am driven by a great enthusiasm to create – inspired by a curiosity to move into unknown territories.  In the material sense, it has translated into me taking up projects that test the boundaries of conventional thoughts/methods – allowing me to explore insights, knowledge, wisdom that may yield more exciting ways for people to experience the world.  It also allows me on a personal level to challenge my own beliefs and expand my perception of life.  All of this coincides with a deepening of my spiritual connection that has significantly raised my awareness in the last couple of months.

One of the projects I’m most excited about is the development of the first “elephant-assisted therapy” in the world for addictions.  For several years, I have felt a calling to connect more with animals and work with shamanism – both in my personal life and in my work.  So when I came upon this project, I had an inspiration to help develop it further, in a no-question, no-doubt-about-it, moment.  I was filled with an instinctual knowledge, a deep knowing, of what this modality could do for people recovering from trauma and addictions.

I sat with this knowledge and inspiration for six weeks – eager to connect it to an actual experience.  I was excited to see what would unfold when inspired knowledge and physical experience came together.  To my frustration, week after week, my planned outing with the elephants got cancelled.  I now understand that sitting with my instinctual knowledge was an important part of the process.  The wisdom had to come from that direction first, to be confirmed and expanded through an actual experience, at the right time.

Two days ago, I found myself in the elephant conservation centre where I was introduced to the animal that was to be my ‘healing partner’.  Jum-Pui is a 41 year-old male elephant with the longest tusks in the sanctuary.  What I had signed up for was a day of training with the animal’s mahout and learning to interact with it.

Part 1: Entering into a Strange World

I approached Jum-Pui with some trepidation.  The first thing that struck me was not only the size of the animal, but his impressive white tusks that curved upwards at the ends made him look more like a mammoth than an elephant.  That, and amidst the wide space it was walking through, lent the whole vision before me a surreal quality – as though I’d been beamed into a forest of millions of years ago.  By then, I’d been given the safety rules and taught a list of commands which the elephant could respond to.  But at that point, they were only mental concepts and I wondered clumsily how many mistakes I’d have to make.

How many times had I found myself with that same feeling – in a crowded shopping centre, a social event I didn’t want to go to, being forced to leave the comfort of my isolation cave?  I remembered the brutal contrast between being in my safety zone and being exposed in a world that didn’t seem to offer any safety railings to hold on to.  A world I didn’t care to know…

Part 2: The Habit of Conjuring Up Distress

As much as I looked forward to the process of getting to know and bond with Jum-Pui, it seemed a long way away.  I was nervous at the prospect of having to climb on top of the mammoth-like beast and riding it without one of those seats secured on an elephant’s back.

Rather unelegantly, I managed to climb up to his back, at the tallest point just behind his ears.  It was only then that I remembered my fear of heights.  I had trouble bringing myself to sit upright.  After a few moments of being frightened to death, I reminded myself that it was too late to back out; this wasn’t just a recreational ride, I had a mission to accomplish and a commitment to fulfill.  With that, I forced myself to sit up.  It felt wobbly; I didn’t feel safe.  There was nothing to hold on to apart from a few bristles on his head.

Then the animal moved, slowly and to a short distance to drink.  I was close to panic.  Certain that I wasn’t safe on top of the elephant without any contraption or harness, I began to imagine falling off the animal.  I imagined having my legs broken and my head cracked open.  I imagined a whole production out of it – the dramas that would ensue, each scene that played itself out in my mind progressively more chaotic and intense.

Suddenly, I had an awareness of how my mind would often go into fearful scenarios.  My tendency to create distress in situations and expecting bad things to happen was being played out in an exaggerated way for me to see.  In that moment, I decided to counteract that pattern.

I scaled down the level of catastrophy in my mind.  I expanded my fear into exhiliration.  I got myself to act as if I believed I was safe.  I relaxed my body a bit and trusted a little more.  I breathed calmly.  My fear lessened.  But I still felt rather vulnerable, exposed and insecure.

Part 3: A Desperate Need to Control

Then the animal started to walk across the open space, and I was thrown into a frightful state again.  Guided by the mahout, I tested out some of the commands I’d been taught.  Go forward, turn left, right, lay down, stop, move backwards, etc.  But my commands did not seem to work immediately.  I wanted to manoever him the way I could make a car move: instantly.  Jum-Pui was very good at responding to commands but there was a period of delay between my command and his response.  That delay would fill me with a feeling of being out of control.

I wanted instant result.  I wanted to feel like I had full control of the situation.  I wanted to close the gap and eradicate any feeling of not-knowing.

After some time, I began to get used to the rhythm of command-and-response.  Instead of expecting instant result, I allowed more time for him to respond.  It highlighted to me another pattern I’m familiar with: the desperation to seek control in situations that make us feel insecure.  In trying to regain a sense of control, we may act out in ways that can lead to bigger problems, such as addictions or destructive behaviours.

Behind addictive and destructive behaviours, there’s usually a lack of tolerance for discomfort.  Part of the process of recovery is building our tolerance for discomfort by examining how we might have exaggerated the intensity of the discomfort we feel and changing the way we perceive our discomfort.

We learn to stay with these feelings instead of trying to escape from them.  We learn that allowing ourselves to have these feelings doesn’t kill us.  By letting these feelings be there, we allow them to evolve and move through our bodies.  We learn to accept and embrace the myriad of emotions that give us depth as human beings.

Out of this, we acquire the qualities of patience and trust.  Rather than trying to close the gap, we see it as a window that opens up to new beauty.  We begin to notice the quality of grace in our world.

Part  4: Taking the Focus Away from Me (Selfishness vs Altruism)

I was feeling more confident being on top of the elephant, until the mahout allowed it to wander off to feed itself.  I grew worried when Jum-Pui found the juiciest leaves near a ditch.  I imagined being thrown headlong into the ditch.  My pleas for the mahout to come and stay close were ignored.  I felt annoyed and it aroused the part of me that felt injustice.  Inside, I screamed, what about my safety?  I tried to get the elephant to move away from the ditch, but it kept on tearing off branches of leaves.

Then I heard someone saying that the elephant must be hungry.  Suddenly, I realised that I had been focusing so much on my own safety that I completely did not pay attention to the elephant’s needs.  It was supposed to be a two-way communication, yet I’d focused solely on getting my own needs met.

This kind of selfishness occurs more often than not in relationships when one party takes the other for granted – requests turn into barking orders, uncommunicated needs become expectations, unfulfilled expectations become a source of outrage.  We can be so taken over by our own drive for survival that we forget we are in partnership with another person, whether it’s in a personal or professional context.

Feeling guilty about my selfishness, I focused my attention on feeling Jum-Pui as a living and breathing creature, and not simply as a vehicle.  Slowing down my breathing, I connected to the life force that emanated from him.  A tiny fraction of my consciousness dropped into his massive body, and I felt his pulse synching with my heartbeat.  The noise in my head subsided.  Rather than nurturing my own fears, I now nurtured the creature’s need for self-nourishment.  Fear gave way to humility.  There was two of us now… and we were partners.

Part 5: Bonding and Caring For Another

By the time my partner and I moved into the lake, the tension and rigidity I had felt earlier had left my body.  I felt bigger.  Aligning in partnerships can do that to you.  Resources are doubled, and areas of insecurity are made secure through the strengths of another.

As I felt more secure, I relaxed into playfulness and fun.  Fear puts a shield in front of us that blocks the expression of who we really are.  When it is stripped away, we begin to come from a more authentic part of us that is capable of responding with spontaneity, much like a child who knows no fear.

In playing and having fun, we naturally bond with others because the shield around our hearts are kept down, allowing our true feelings to flow.  Jum-Pui liked spraying water with his trunk, which delighted me since I’ve always liked the sensations of water dropping onto my skin.

In between the water sprays, the mahout guided me to wash the elephant in the water.  I only managed a few tentative moments of doing this before choking back tears as I was moved by the act of giving love.  The fear of love is something I hear expressed in one way or another by the majority of the clients I work with.  Recalling this, I felt a deep sadness for the loss of what the world can potentially gain from the greater connectedness that comes from us feeling freer in our capacities to give and receive love from one another.  A simple act of love, carried out with devotion, with an undefended heart, may begin to heal the way we relate to the world.

Part 6: Surrendering to Uncertainties

As we emerged from the lake, I noticed a certain calmness in myself.  The atmosphere around me seemed to be imbued with a softness.  Everything seemed to move at a slower pace, whereas previously everything seemed to be moving dangerously fast and I was rendered out-of-control within it.  The harshness of trying to survive in a world that wasn’t safe had fallen away, and I was fully present with all my senses.  Jum-Pui’s legs felt like an extension of my own legs, moving forward in one unhurried, certain step after another.  I didn’t care where it was taking me nor worry about what would happen to me.

I stopped wanting to control.  In that act of surrender, I felt liberated from the mental weight of trying to fix, achieve, resolve, understand, compartmentalise.  As my body relaxed, I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the elephant’s head.  It gave me a different view of the experience – one where I could appreciate how high up I was above the ground.

Suddenly, I was able to transcend everything around me.  From my higher perspective, I was acutely aware of my own livingness and my connectedness with the elements.  Below me, I could hear the voices of people talking, shouting, laughing – but it was just noise.  I was aware but unattached to anything that was taking place.

In that moment, I saw the difference between choosing to get sucked into our stories and rising above these stories.  There’s always a choice, if only we slowed ourselves down to see that.  It doesn’t mean trying to ignore what’s going on (a fearful act) but to make an empowered choice to not engage on an emotional level whatever it is we know is happening.

Part 7: Total Trust is Earned

Eventually, I felt comfortable enough to lean forward until my body lay on the elephant’s head.  I learned something new then – that total trust is earned through the act of surrender.  When we surrender, we come out the other side with total trust.

Total trust is the state of being in absolute abundance.  When we trust completely, we experience no limitations, restrictions or scarcity.  We’re in a state of infinite possibilities and freedom of creativity.

I felt I could fly if I wanted to.  I could make the clouds form any shape I wanted.  I could do a back-flip and land perfectly.

Part 8: Merging with Divinity

Yet I descended the elephant the same way I had climbed up (but without the drama).  I felt a little sad that our journey together had come to an end.  I felt a deep bonding with the animal and a desire to come back to see him again in the near future.  I asked the mahout how long he had been with Jum-Pui, knowing that a mahout looks after only one elephant and throughout the elephant’s life.  Twenty years, he said.

“Just imagine,” he said, looking at me.  “And you’ve only had one day with him.”

I went up to Jum-Pui and looked up at him, marvelling at how incredible an opportunity it’d been to interact so closely with this majestic animal.  Then as I looked into his eye, I saw Ganesha, the Hindu elephant deity.  Prior to the journey, we had prayed to Ganesha at an altar in the conservation centre.  Now, looking up at my ‘healing partner’, I felt Ganesha’s presence.  I got a sense that the deity had been guiding, facilitating and overseeing my journey all that time.

In my spiritual belief, all deities are aspects of the greater divine spirit.  As I connected the dots all the way to the intelligent force that created us and that governs all life, I knew there was nothing unsafe about my world.

I walked away richer and fuller – infused not only with the shamanic properties of the elephant and what Ganesha brings to a devotee, but the lessons learnt about trust, surrender, love, selflessness, courage, vulnerability, spontaneity, making empowered choices, and transcendence.  I carried with me these lessons and an impression that was to last for days, reminding me to look out for divinity amidst the turbulence in life.

Are You Afraid To Step Out And Do Your Thing?

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If given a choice, I could spend a lot of time focusing on my own growth.  Since I rate spiritual growth as my top personal value, it’s easy for me to devote lots of time to psycho-analysing myself, processing my issues and healing my pains.  Admittedly, it can get close to the level of self-indulgence if I don’t watch myself!  From time to time, I’m jolted to awareness of how self-centered I have been, to be focusing on my own inadequacies when I could be looking at how to help more people.  I then get redirected internally to make it less about me and more about others. 

This, of course, tends to happen when I’m in a period of having more free time than usual.  I think it’s healthy to focus on our own wellbeing first and foremost, but it’s also easy to cross the line of being excessive and self-indulgent. 

I see this in many others too.  Usually, it happens during a period of growth – perhaps following a disastrous event when you’re well into the recovery stages of picking up your pieces, and you’ve connected to a project that inspires you.  By your reckoning, this project will launch you into the world again, as your new, improved self.  It will mark your rebirth, of having survived and grown through an exceptionally tough time. 

The thing is, more often than not, people don’t end up launching themselves this way.  They get scared and stuck in this stage of feeling they’re not ready yet – there’s always more to work on, more to heal, more to improve about themselves, more skills to acquire, more this or that. 

As the years go by, they continue to wallow in how they’re still unpolished, imperfect, undeserving.  The groundwork gets worked on, edited, tweaked, improved, updated, upgraded, added on, simplified, expanded.  Meanwhile, they are still talking about some day being actually out there doing their thing. 

Their project has become more of a fantasy, a source of motivation that keeps their hopes alive via the promises it holds.  As long as it hasn’t been tested out there, it will remain a powerful potential, and God knows we hate to have our fantasies destroyed. 

But the price for this is the guilt you suffer from knowing you have procrastinated yet again.  Since there’s a part of you that truly wants to step out there and actualise your vision, whenever you stop yourself from doing so, you suffer the discomfort of knowing you have not been true to yourself. 

Every time we make an excuse not to step out, we add more guilt to our emotional baggage.  Every time we judge themselves as being not good enough yet, we die a little more inside.  The self-herating that accompanies such judgements can be very damaging to our self-esteem. 

It can be many years before someone actually takes the first step of stepping out into the arena, and sadly, many never make it to this stage.  Do you have a project you can’t seem to get off the ground because you’ve been stuck in a stage where you know you need to step out but feel you aren’t quite ready?  The good news is, no matter how long you’ve been sitting on your project, the point of power is now.  You can make empowered choices now to step out into the world and live in the glory of being you.      

1.  Shift Your Focus Onto Other People

Sometimes, focusing on our own inadequacies, or how we’re still not good enough, is actually the easy way out.  As much as I admire someone who is committed and dedicated to her own growth, I admire even more someone who stretches herself to have the courage to get out there and do her thing – whether it’s to facilitate that workshop, teach a yoga class, write that book, start dating again or start that business.  Sometimes, we need to stop working on ourselves internally and take our growth out there.  If you’re serious about growing, then demonstrate this to yourself by stepping out there.  There is where you’ll be stretched to grow optimally and achieve the most self-improvement.    

Shifting your focus onto others will bring you two benefits.  One, focusing on others can make your own problems seem less serious.  When you focus excessively on your own problems, your perception of your world will shrink until it seems as though there’s just you and your problems, within a constricted world.  When you take your focus away from yourself and to other people, it changes your perspective.  It allows you to see that there are others who are struggling with problems and to sympathise with their plight.  Knowing that you’re not alone in your suffering can be very healing.  Your empathy may even help alleviate their plight, and knowing you have contributed positively to another can connect you to your personal power which opens up a whole new world for you. 

Two, focusing on others will enable you to sharpen your vision and shape your role.  Make it less about you and more about others.  Focus on what you can do to help, support and benefit others.  Start to take notice of what the world around you needs and how you can contribute to make a difference. 

Stepping out of the place in which you’ve been struggling to find a solution may be just the thing you need to get unstuck.    

2.  Turn On Your Excuse Buster!

Decide to bust all your excuses from now on.  Everytime you catch yourself giving an excuse about how it’s not time yet to step out, expose your dishonesty.  Be ruthless and brutal in shredding all the excuses you give yourself to stay safe. 

Is it really true that you’re not good enough to step out yet?  Could you be finding the excuse to not be good enough?  Are you sabotaging the realisation of your project by using your excuses to channel your resources elsewhere rather than to your project?    

You might not be totally aware of how you’re sabotaging yourself with your excuses.  By exposing your dishonesty, you elevate your behaviours to a conscious level so that you can be more in control of the choices you make. 

What’s left in the absence of your excuses?  I want you to stay with the discomfort of thinking you’re going to step out there.  The fear you feel is different from the gut-level fear that protects you from real danger – it’s a mixture of fear and excitement.  Stay with the discomfort until it expands into feelings of excitement. 

Most of the time, we react as soon as we feel uncomfortable.  By staying with the feeling long enough for it to evolve, you change your reference of the idea of being out there doing your thing. 

3.  Step Out As Your Imperfect Self

You may be holding back because you feel you need to be perfect before you share yourself with others.  Understandably, you want to present the best version of yourself to the world.  But the best way to improve yourself is by stepping out as your imperfect self. 

That place you want to be?  You’ll never get there unless you step out now.  When you’re chasing perfection, you’re pursuing something that doesn’t exist.  It’s a fact that as humans we never stop growing and having opportunities to work on ourselves.  If you’re invested in the idea of being perfect someday and holding yourself back before that day comes, you’ll never reach your dreams. 

Most of the time, our fears get blown out of proportion.  We magnify our flaws, imagining others will do the same.  Yet others would probably give it 1% of the attention we give it. 

Furthermore, your flaws make you more human in the eyes of others.  They make you seem more reachable, relatable, and they give you more depth, colour and character.  You can improve and grow in front of an audience.  The energy with which you invest to hide your flaws can translate to a sense of tightness around you and emotional unavailability.  Letting go of wanting to be perfect can make you seem more authentic and sincere, allowing you to form more genuine relations with those you interact with.   

4.  Play Big, Don’t Stay Small

Another reason you may be holding back is the fear of being judged as not good enough.  It comes from believing that what you have to give isn’t good enough.  Whilst striving for high standards is an admirable quality, it can also stop us from taking the emotional risk to step forward into the playing field.  Sometimes, we reconcile this by playing it safe: we stay small instead of playing full-on, hoping we won’t attract any untoward attention that would crush our dreams. 

If you’re true to your dream, it cannot be destroyed.  This means continuing to believe in your dream and not allowing yourself to be defeated or give up too soon, even when you’re getting negative feedback.  It means having the maturity to understand that rejection is part and parcel of taking the risk to present yourself to the world; instead of being discouraged by rejections, you use them to point you to where you need to grow.  You become interested in the response you generate, instead of dreading the outcome.  Accept that there will likely be negative as well as positive response – if you insist on not getting any negative response at all, you may never take the step to actualise your dream.   

As the saying goes, good enough is good enough.  It pays to put in lots of time and energy to work on creating and honing your idea before you launch yourself, but after a certain point, you just got to get it out there. 

And when you do step out, step out fully.  Not in the sense of giving a first-time performance to a thousand people or nothing at all.  If you’re an aspiring singer, you could start as small as inviting five of your friends to a free performance at a house.  Stepping out fully is about being committed to what you’re doing.  Sing your heart out in front of your five friends.  Give your best.  When you step out, you’re either in or you’re out. 

It’s better to be there 100 percent for a small crowd than to be ‘kind of’ there for a thousand people.  But playing big does involve increasing the scale of what you do when you’ve mastered the level you started at.  To stay at this level is to resist stretching beyond your comfort zone and stop growing. 

5.  Use the Power Of Comparison

As scary as it may seem, stepping out is probably not the scariest thing for you to do.  The trouble is, we tend to compare it with what’s less scary to us – e.g. it’s less scary to not have to step out because we imagine the vulnerability we would feel if we did.  Of course, we’re bound to choose the less scary option.  But suppose you compared it with what’s scarier to you. 

Think of something that absolutely horrifies you if you were in that situation – something that is scarier than stepping out.  It could be something totally unrelated, such as a phobia.  Now notice how by comparison the idea of stepping out is significantly less scary. 

What this does is it puts your fear into perspective and gets you to think of it rationally.  It short-circuits your automatic response that is based on irrational fear and puts a different kind of energy around it.  

6.  Let Go of Regret

No matter how long you’ve procrastinated on your project, decide to let go of all regrets about not having done it earlier.  If you have a habit of keeping score of how much time you’ve wasted and generating guilty feelings, it becomes a block to taking action now.  We mistakenly believe that by beating ourselves up, we can redeem ourselves and feel less badly about ourselves.  But all it does is add to the guilt we  already feel. 

The most nourishing thing you can do is to cleanse yourself of all the negativity you hold around it.  Imagine releasing this toxic energy into the earth as the force of gravity draws it away from your body.  Release the critical, self-limiting thoughts you have and replace them with ideas about strength, hope and beauty.  Let go of your grip on guilt, hurt and regret – give them up to gravity.  Feel your entire system cleansed of all the should’s and shouldn’t’s.  From now on, you’re erased of the past, the history of how you’ve let yourself down.  Only the present matters.

Stepping out and doing our thing is such a deep, personal thing that it’s bound to come with a lot of resistance on our part.  But the greatest reward that comes from it is so sweet: the fulfilment that comes from giving of yourself.  You can be proud of the fact that you’ve stretched yourself to step out even when you felt you weren’t ready yet.  It’s like the advice parents often give to aspiring parents: “You’re never ready.” 

But you do it anyway. 

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.

Unleashing Creativity Without Using Drugs

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There is a belief among many whose profession lies in churning out creative works that drugs enable them to tap into their creative well, that without drugs they could never produce the works that have earned them their professional recognition.  Writers, musicians, artists whose lifestyles involve indulging in too much drugs and alcohol usually find it a huge struggle to give up the substance they’ve become addicted to when they embark on stopping their subtance abuse.  This is the main challenge for every ‘creative type’ individual I have worked with in addiction.

On a lesser level, even those who are not dependent on creative output for a living also struggle with the idea that their creativity may be dampened when they stop using.  By the time someone comes to rehab, their substance abuse usually has become so deeply entrenched and intertwined in every facet of their lives that they have relied on the substance to see them through every task that requires effort.  Even when under the influence of the substance their cognition may be impaired and their senses dulled, they have come to belief that they can get through their day-to-day activities quicker and easier.  Without the substance, they fear, life would be boring and flat, as the substance has enabled them to go to certain places they otherwise would not (or be able to) go – mainly related to their self-expressions.

Creativity isn’t just for the ‘creative types’ or those with too much time sitting in front of a piece of paper or canvas trying to produce creative works.  It is a much needed quality in every aspect of our lives.  What is creativity?  Creativity is, to me, simply the ability to put ideas together in new ways.  It may be expressed in the form of visual artwork (combining shapes, colours, textures, media in new ways), writing (combining words, concepts, storylines in new ways), or musical pieces (combining notes, rhythm, melodies, sounds, genres in new ways).  We may also express creativity when finding solutions to tricky problems, and this may be expressed in the form of a unique business plan, a clever PR or lobbying campaign, a win-win action in a personal relationship issue, or a fantastic vacation trip.  Therefore, without creativity, life would be pretty dull and mundane.

In fact, the sense of deep fulfilment that comes from being creative is similar to life force itself.  When we are being creative, we are in a flow of experiencing Passion and Inspiration – a kind of hypnotic feeling that takes us to the part of us that is divinely powerful.

I strongly believe it is a myth that we need drugs to reach our highest creative potential.  Drugs do not contain a magical property that makes us creative.  Rather, they remove our inhibition towards self-expression – i.e. the mental/emotional block which gets in the way of our creativity flowing is removed for us so that we are able to express ourselves without censoring.  With our inhibition removed, we become more daring in expressing ourselves, bypassing any fear of rejection and inadequacies that usually cause us to close the door to our inner creative source.  As we continue to keep that door opened, our creative energy is able to flow freely, and we are able to sense the deep fulfilment that comes from being creative.

Whether we use drugs or not, our creativity will flow with the absence of that block.  Therefore, the underlying issues behind the block need to be addressed and alternative ways of removing the block explored in the treatment of substance abuse for those who strongly depend on their substance of choice to boost their creative output.

In the same way that people consume alcohol or drugs to boost their social confidence – believing that they need that substance to take away the discomfort of interacting with others and to allow them to feel free in expressing themselves – drugs and alcohol have become a quick way, a short cut, to reach our space of creativity.  The function of the substance in both cases is the same: to remove the layer of fear which prevents us from freely expressing ourselves.

Fear of Embarassment & Shame

You may fear being rejected because you’re afraid that what you produce isn’t going to be good enough in the eyes of other people; or a fear of embarassment, shame or humiliation when others judge you for your expression.  The crux of which is the belief that you are somehow flawed or inadequate.  Relying on substance to make us feel more comfortable in expressing ourselves allows us to escape taking responsibility for ourselves: somewhere in our mind, we are aware that a drug has been consumed and somehow it is this powerful substance that is doing the expression for us.  Because it is the drug, and not us, that is deemed to be doing the work, we have an excuse for when the rejection comes – i.e. that we are not fully responsible for this expression and therefore whatever we are being judged for isn’t entirely a reflection of who we are.  Hence, the drugs serve as an escape clause for being told that we are flawed.

When I was suffering from depression, I often found it easier to write creatively.  At times, I would harness feelings of pathos and tragedy to deepen my emotional pain.  Through the depth of pain, I was able to reach into my creative source and express my truth from that space.  Like drugs, depression is sometimes used as a tool to unleash our creativity.  ‘Creative types’ like poets and artists have a hard time giving up their melancholy as they believe it helps maintain their connection to their creative genius.  In a sense, depression and melancholy are altered states which allows us to momentarily suspend our ‘ordinary’ identity to justify our creative output.  Like drugs, depression gives us the reason, the excuse, to express ourselves freely.

Fear of Having Little Creativity

Another fear that prevents us from freely expressing ourselves may be a belief that we are not naturally creative.  That only certain people are born with extraordinary creative abilities, whilst the rest of us need special assistance to force out of us whatever latent creative potential we may have.  This is not true.  Even those who are ‘creative types’ have periods when their creativity is blocked, supporting the premise that it is not that some of us are born more creative than others.  I believe that everyone has the same creative abilities and potential, the only dfference is how freely we can express our creativity.

If the channel from our source of creativity, through our expressiveness, into our space of creation, is unblocked, then creative energy flows.  The source of creativity is constant; it always holds its infinite potential.  What is being created depends on how freely and easily we express ourselves.  Understanding this point is vital to addressing what impedes our creativity.  Once we recognise that our source of creativity is infinite, that we do not have to be ‘special people’ in order to be creative, we can work on relaxing those mind-directed fears that narrow our channel of expression.  Allowing ourselves to freely expressing ourselves is what unblocks our creativity.

Removing Blocks to Creativity

You’ve probably heard of the saying, “Your external world is a reflection of your inner world.”  Meaning, you can look at what is happening in your world and examine where it might be a metaphor for what is going on inside of you.  Similarly, your actions and behaviours, as well as the people and things around you, can have direct influence on shaping your internal world.  That is why, changing your external world must involve the changing of your inner world, and vice-versa.  To ease the flow of your self-expression as a channel for creativity, it helps to look at how you might be holding yourself back in some area of your life.  Where in your life are you stuck?

By ‘stuck’, I refer to a state of being unhappy yet unable to get out of the situation.  The staleness and stagnation becomes a dense energy that blocks creativity from being expressed.  Creating movement will encourage that energy to flow.  An effective way to unblock creativity is to change your environment or to make yourself do something new, thereby injecting freshness that can dissipate the block.  The idea is to move the energy of stuckness.  Sometimes, the stuckness shows up as rigidity in your physical body.  Move the energy of stuckness by physically moving.  Many people have reported being more creative immediately after exercise or massage.  I have found that most of my creative ideas come when I’m travelling in a bus or airplane.  You can also create movement by moving projects along, doing something different or differently, and being spontaneous.  Movement breaks down the blocks to creativity.

The way I see it, drugs work because it creates movement on a more micro level.  It changes the bio-chemicals in our body and puts us in a different state.  Rather than attributing any increased creativity to the actual bio-chemical changes, I attribute it to the fact that there has been movement.  The movement itself, not the nature of the changes, is what triggers creativity.  There is a psychological factor of expecting drugs to do certain magic which promotes a bigger expectation of change, which in turn encourages more actual change.  Yet it is this expectation that results in bigger or more movement, which breaks down the block.

Another way of creating movement is by reaching deeper into your creative source.  If you’ve been used to having drugs in your system, the absence of drugs will leave you vulnerable to raw emotions.  Staying in that space of vulnerability and being honest about what is there will allow you to reach places deep within yourself and bring out more authentic expressions.  As a result, your creative output will tend to have a more personal, authentic flavour.  It may take time to get to this place as it takes courage to remain vulnerable and look at yourself honestly.  But the rewards are worth the trust and patience it takes.  With time, you will find that the works you produce will be better than ever.

In the course of reaching this space, you may feel flat at times – as if there is nothing there.  Where there appears to be nothing, there is silence.  Drop into the space of silence.  It is the realm where everything is found.  It’s a free fall into your creative source.  Without trying to conjure up anything, ideas will flow naturally.  Immersing yourself in silence is like standing before the very point of creation – where the infinite potential of creativity is about to explode into manifestation.

Two weeks ago, I was inside an abandoned tunnel that was totally devoid of light and sound, where I had a cool experience of being simultaneously at the beginning and the end of Creation.  I was the Creator standing in infinite space – a blank canvas for my creativity.  Yet the nothingness contained an infinity of everything that is possible.  The silence within us can lead us to that space.

How Good Can You Stand?

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

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

A typical description sounds like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diving Into The Inspiration Of Dream-Following

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

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

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

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

Dream Killers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Real Are Your Limitations?

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

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

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

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Lessons On Fear From Bug-Eating

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I finally ate bugs!  Since discovering that bugs are a culinary specialty in Thailand, I’d been wanting to one day taste them.  I had my first experience of eating an assortment of deep-fried bugs today.  My verdict: they are quite chewy and well-seasoned, slightly buttery in taste.  Not bad. 

Several clients at our centre had been talking about trying bugs and I asked the kitchen staff to buy a variety of them from the market so we could all eat them together (it’s always easier to do something challenging in a group than alone).  A few hours later, I was called to join the bug fest.  On my way there, I felt a tinge of regret and fright – there was no getting out of it since it had been my idea!  I had to just get on with it, with as little drama as possible. 

The experience of just-doing-it-despite-fears-threatening-to-creep-in-and-making-a-big-mental-mess-that-stops-you-from-proceeding reminded me of a great lesson in managing our fears. 

In another context, I could have easily made a big drama out of it.  In this environment, where I am constantly helping people to manage their fears, there’s no room for copping out or indulging in silly dramas.  This was my first reminder: it is within our power to decide the state we will be in.  Different environments, and our response to a certain degree depends on what’s and who’s in the environment, but I am a constant in these environments. 

I looked at the platter of bugs on the table.  There was no way I was going to start with a big creature, so I chose, out of the smaller ones, the crispiest, most well-fried and least buggy-looking one.  Once I started chewing, all the nasty associations were gone.  I was just eating.  I felt glad that I had gotten over the hurdle.  I ate three other varieties of bugs.  Second reminder about fear: once you’ve made the first jump, the rest is easy.  You wonder why it took you so long to take that first step.  Bug-eating is probably a once-off experience for me but so often in other instances our fears hold us back from advancing forward, from beginning a chain of actions that allow us to accomplish great things. 

After munching on several of the smaller bugs, I found myself challenging the others to eat the big, more intimidating ones.  I gulped inwardly as the others started to meet my challenge.  It was my turn.  I looked at a bug that looked like a cross between a big grasshopper and a fat cricket, and I recoiled.  Actually, it looked like an alien in hibernation – a big head, eyes perfectly intact, legs like they were arms folded across the body.  With a shudder, I put it back on the plate.  My normally lovely clients turned to cruelty as they said, “If you don’t do it, we will lose all respect for you as a therapist.”  

With that, I popped the big guy into my mouth.  All my senses were screaming, “This is wrong,” as I fought where my mind was going.  I had to stop my mind from going any further in making more and more associations to what I was eating.  With a mouthful of insect, I oscillated between transcending my fears and moving towards a full-fledged terror.  My third reminder on fear: the meanings we attach to things can make a huge difference in whether we move forward positively or stay stuck. 

I was associating the bug in my mouth with a wriggly, dirty cockroach… or worse.  A few days ago, I had watched ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’ in which there was a scene where the girl picks up a spider from the floor and eats it.  I have a fear of spiders.  If I had allowed myself to make an association between the bug in my mouth and a spider, I might not have been able to finish eating it.  In reality, the bug was a good protein source, probably packed with goodness and cleaner than other meats.  I was disturbed by the fact that it had been a living creature with legs, but it’s not that different from eating say, a shrimp.  In fact, I was just chewing a piece of cooked meat. 

Halfway through chewing the thing, I blurted out, “The head is good.”  It came out spontaneously and the others chuckled.  From then on, all fears were gone.  Fourth reminder about fear: humour is a good distraction.  It interrupts the progression of fear and breaks up the tension of fear.  It changes the energy or mood of the experiencer such that they are free from the grip of fear. 

The next time I eat bugs, the occasion will be devoid of fanfare.  I will simply pick one up and eat it, if I feel like it.  If eating bugs does not appeal to me, I will simply walk away.  There will be no issue and no drama.  Fifth reminder: the action we take to confront a fear and get to the other side of it breaks up the tension we hold around it.  The breaking-up of that tension frees us to get on with our lives and create many wonderful things. 

But the absence of this tension may feel uncomfortable at first, and we may be tempted to hold on to it or to re-create that tension to give us a sense of false security.  The greatest lesson about fear is that when we are free from it, it presents us with the freedom to create a life that gives us true joy.  Most of the time, however, our tendency is to retreat into the chaos-filled world of fear and anguish.  It takes courage to step into the joyful unknown and to stay there until a new reality takes form, reassuring our minds that what’s there is safe.  It is a realm in which our spirits can flourish and grow. 

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