Resistance

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January 24, 2012

How Failure Can Lead You To What Your Soul Yearns

Posted by Amyra under Disappointment, Fear of Failure, Gratitude, Injustice, Letting Go, Passion, Purpose, Regret, Resentment, Resistance, Vision, Worry | Tags: , , , |
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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?

 

April 12, 2010

“Accept The Unacceptable”

Posted by Amyra under Balance, Emotional Pain, Flexibility, Forgiveness, Grief, Injustice, Letting Go, Loss, Personal Power, Resistance, Spiritual Growth, Trust
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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.

 

March 18, 2010

Why People Are Driven To Destroy Themselves

Posted by Amyra under Addictions, Anger, Assertiveness, Emotional Pain, Guilt, Negativity, Obsession, Resistance, Sacred Self, Self-Destruction, Self-Worth, Shame, Spiritual Self, Unworthiness
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One of the themes that often come up when dealing with addictions is the tendency for self-destruction – when the drive to use drugs, alcohol or other compulsive activities renders a person unable to stop that behaviour but to spiral faster and faster into destroying himself.  Why do some people seem to have this need to destroy themselves?  What can they do to break out of this obsessive drive that seems to grip them so powerfully?

Whether a person is dealing with an obsession with drugs, alcohol, money, sex or food, the nature of this obsession is the same.  The greed for more (in quantity, frequency and intensity) escalates as the person breaks down more and more boundaries that have previously defined what kept him safe.  These boundaries may relate to the physical body (what is and isn’t acceptable for what we do to our body), social circle (who is and isn’t appropriate for us to hang out with), our moral codes (what behaviours we will and won’t accept from ourselves), and our dignity (what we will and won’t tolerate from others).  Deep in the throes of addiction, gripped by obsession, we cross that line again and again, pushing our boundaries further and further away from us.

These internal boundaries, which once prevented us from hurting ourselves and others, now can no longer keep our behaviours in check.  We’ve freed ourselves from our own protection and left the door wide open for careless indulgence in our drug, and we descend madder and madder into a tight, small hole of existence where the only thing that keeps us going is more drugs, even when it’s become obvious that we are destroying ourselves by continuing in that cycle.  Our mind directs this breaking-down of our boundaries, it has a life of its own and we can’t do anything to stop it from running our lives.

Or is it?  Are we really that powerless against our own mind?  If the mind is such a feared entity, then to conquer addiction we must find a more powerful adversary to fight the mind’s war of self-annihilation.  But before I get into that, let’s look at what makes the mind do what it does in promoting self-destruction.

A lack of self-worth, while cliché-sounding, is a good place to start.  If you had a total conviction of the true worth of yourself, you would not be driven to hurt yourself.  If, on the other hand, you have any doubt about your true worth, an inkling that you might not be worth much at all, that small seed of doubt can be massaged into a full-grown conviction of your unworthiness when the mind provides enough evidence for it.

When you are lacking self-worth, you’d tend to believe that you do not deserve to experience positive things and to sabotage the good that you do have.  This pattern might have been kept under wraps in normal circumstances but in the throes of addiction when the evidence stacks up with each episode of using, it becomes increasingly exaggerated until you are literally attempting to destroy yourself.

Guilt and shame about past or present behaviours can cloud a person’s view of herself.  They promote a self-punishing mindset.  Guilt makes you look for punishments, and when it is not apparently forthcoming from others, you tend to inflict that punishment on yourself.  This is especially prevalent in situations where you are keeping a secret – if only you are aware of what you have done, then that punishment can only come from yourself.  That guilt which only you are aware of can drive you to subconsciously inflict damage on yourself.  Like guilt, shame makes you want to punish yourself – if you feel that the person you are is unacceptable, then you would tend to seek punishment, or punish yourself.

Unresolved anger is another emotion that promotes a self-punishing mindset.  When you’re angry with someone, eventually you will take it out on yourself.  If you have a tendency to be passive or passive-aggressive (i.e. instead of asserting your feelings you keep them to yourself to avoid confrontation, but the feelings remain in you), your anger will likely build up until you explode in a fury against others.  A lot of times, however, you will seek ways to deal with that anger before you explode, and one of the easiest ways we know is to punish ourselves.  Sometimes, even when we have asserted ourselves, we are still left with the feeling that justice has not been restored.  In the absence of a way to right the wrong, we berate ourselves for not being able to ‘fix’ the situation.  Why can’t I handle this? you scream inside.  Your mind begins to find a list of reasons, usually about you being a failure, inadequate or stupid.  That anger is eventually turned against you.

These underlying beliefs and attitudes towards yourself give rise to a mentality of self-punishment, which if unexplored can drive you to destroy yourself.  Trapped in the cycle of self-destruction, you generate more emotional pain and mental anguish, until there seem to be no escape or respite.

Spirit is the true direction.  It is the true power.  The mind is nothing compared to spirit.  Spirit can befriend the mind to take away some of its power.  The mind can absorb the influence of the spirit’s magical pureness and transform itself to be outward expanding, taking us to a positive outlook.  Spirit can lift us from the mind’s manipulations and show us a better way of being, that there is a more worthwhile pursuit other than destroying ourselves.  Spirit can wipe out the mind’s ego trip.

There’s a hidden element in our path of self-annihilation – an attempt to find out what is left after we’ve destroyed ourselves.  It’s our unconscious search for spirit, guided by a belief that there must be something more than just this form of existence that we know of.  But we go about it the wrong way – we fight, we conquer, we destroy, when the way to spirit is to relax all resistance, give up all judgements and see what’s left there.  Spirit is found not by doing something but by undoing.  If you simply relax into being, you will see and feel spirit right here.  It has always been here.

Pick any scene you like.  Coming to in a drunken mess.  Stuffing yourself with food uncontrollably until your stomach aches.  Screaming at your loved ones when they try to show their love to you.  Locked in a compulsion to buy more and more to make you feel better about yourself.  In each of these scenarios, you’re bound to be left in a state of self-loathe and self-pity, with hopelessness draining the life out of you.

No matter how hopeless you feel, look for the tiny spark of light within you.  At first, you may only sense a vague, dim spot among the darkness.  Focus on it, until it grows bigger, and bigger, and it overwhelms your entire being.  This spark is your all-healing spirit.  Inside of us, there is a part of us that has remained pure and sacred no matter what kinds of trauma we’ve experienced in life.  I call it our Sacred Self.  In all our struggles and turmoils, we tend to see ourselves as damaged; to see that there is a part of us that is uncorrupted, unpolluted, untouched by it all can be very healing.  Once you acknowledge this part of you, it will expand, and very quickly, you’ll be able to see your situation more clearly, ideas will come to you as options to get yourself out of your situation, and you won’t feel so lost and forsaken anymore.

 

May 20, 2009

Being Honest About Your True Feelings

Posted by Amyra under Denial, Emotional Pain, Honesty, Letting Go, Resistance, Responsibility, Shame, Truth
[2] Comments 

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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