Category Archives: Trust

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.

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.

“Accept The Unacceptable”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simplicity Is The Way To Go

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

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

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

Culprit #1:  People-pleasing

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

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

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

Culprit #2:  Over-analysing

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

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

Culprit #3:  Starting too many projects

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

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

Culprit #4:  Being indecisive

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

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

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

Culprit #5:  Forcing things to happen

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

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

Culprit #6:  Needing to be perfect

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

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

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

Culprit #7:  Neglecting yourself

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

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

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

Culprit #8:  Over-promising

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

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

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

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

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

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

So simple.

Do Not Be Perplexed…. Be In Awe

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I consider myself very privileged to be in a position to facilitate spiritual awakenings for clients who are open to develop their spirituality.  It’s such an honour to be part of someone’s awakening process and so humbling to witness the growth of a soul.  A lot of our clients are highly-accomplished professionals and successful businesspeople who are left-brain dominant; whilst their structured, analytical minds have aided in their professional success, it’s an obstacle when it comes to emotional healing.  Hence, we often spend quite a lot of time breaking through their tendencies to intellectualise the process so that they can deepen into the realm where true healings can take place.

When you intellectualise the process, you do a number of things: trying to put ideas into clearly-labelled boxes; being sceptical of concepts that do not appeal to your logical brain; over-analysing your feelings; the inability to be open-minded about random, subjective matters; and being too structured and linear in planning how you want the outcomes to look like.

But spirituality does not conform to boxes, or necessarily fit into logic, or stand up to analyses.  It cannot be planned in structured and linear ways.  It may not even be possible to put into words.  What are these boxes anyway if not something constructed by our limited brain?  Spirituality is amorphous, unstructured, pliable, circular, often paradoxical, mysterious, and full of undiscovered potential.

Since I take a spiritual approach to treatment, I see addiction as a gateway to discovering one’s true, awakened self.  In that sense, I tend to see every individual who checks into our residential rehab as a soul on the cusp of finding a renewed sense of who they are.  The process often entails the breaking down of the illusions of their ego – seeing through what’s false and inauthentic so that they come back to a total appreciation of the beauty of their spirit.

The flowering of the soul when finding its way back home is a beautiful process that defies what the logical, rational mind can understand.  It can only be understood by experiencing it and letting go of the need to understand it conceptually.  Bring the level of understanding from the mind to the heart, for this is where growth happens.  The more you are willing to surrender, the faster you’ll get there.  Whenever I see clients struggling to make sense of it, I tell them, “Do not be perplexed, but be in awe of it.”  When you’re perplexed, you are attempting to find answers through your logical mind.  When you’re in awe, you simply surrender to the experience while retaining an open heart.  The former creates limitations while the latter allows you to flow with the process of change, resulting in quicker healings.

When clients come to us for help, they have become stuck in their self-imposed structures – either through their own limiting beliefs or allowing others’ agendas to mark the boundaries around their actions and behaviours. They’re unable to see their way out.  A lot of times, the solutions are found by mentally removing these structures and seeing what is possible when they’re no longer boxed in by those limitations.  This applies not just to one’s physical environment but also to the beliefs they rigidly hold on to.

But to let go of these structures, there needs to be some sense of a safe alternative presented.  Otherwise, it will truly feel like death – in letting go of your grip on what has kept you safe and falling into the chasm of nothingness.  A deep depression or hollowness can manifest temporarily as a symptom of the death of your ego – sometimes known as “the dark nights of the soul”.  This isn’t a bad thing, no matter how uncomfortable it may feel.  The pendulum will start swinging back to the opposite polarity, bringing you back into light, once you’ve reached the depth of despair.  In emerging out of darkness, you’ll pick up various aspects of your true, authentic self, until you arrive at a higher form of yourself – more alive and whole than ever.

The alternative that needs to be presented to encourage you to let go of rigidly-held beliefs will not form into convenient little structures.  But a trust that there is something else worth experiencing will enable you to let go of what isn’t working anymore.  And when you begin to feel the mysterious in-betweens, be in awe of your discovery and let yourself be brought home on a wondrous journey.

The Power Of Saying “I Have Decided!”

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I remember when I started exploring spirituality many years ago.  At that time, I’d been stuck in a space of self-sabotage, anger, control, rigidity and self-despise.  Exploring spirituality had enabled me to move out from that negative space and to see that life could be so much more.  It taught me great lessons in trust, surrender, abundance, true joy and empowerment – and I lapped up the new experience with great enthusiasm.

But whilst stepping into this new space was a freeing experience, it took many years before I truly understood how to apply those spiritual lessons in my life.  Today, I am still learning.  Striking a balance between walking in a spiritual world and applying great spiritual lessons in my daily life is a constant challenge that makes my life a stimulating experience.  I enjoy making a discovery of yet another level or dimension to a concept that further enriches my life.

In my earlier days of learning to trust in the Universe, I threw away all controls as I allowed myself to enjoy the freedom of being ‘a passenger of cosmic intelligence’, so to speak.  That was refreshing, after obsessively trying to control outcomes for years.  “When you trust, you will be taken to where you need to be,” was a well-known mantra in spiritual circles.  I still believe this (as is evident from my last posting about flowing with your intuition).

But trusting isn’t about being passive at all.  For self-expression, the ability to make empowered choices out of our free will, is a spiritual lesson too.  When we’re in tune with the energies of the Universe, the pathways before us are illuminated – though invisible to our naked eyes, we can sense those pathways.  As we trust in what we sense, we make choices and decisions to follow this guidance.  That choice to move along an illuminated pathway is still down to us.

This is the antithesis of remaining in a state of vagueness, ambiguity or ambivalence.  Being vague/ambiguous/ambivalent gives us the illusion that we have more freedom but actually it leaves us stuck, unable to move forward.  It’s fine if we had taken a year’s sabbatical to sit around to test out the truth of spiritual concepts, but in our practical world it’s just … well, not very practical.  When you want a certain outcome, supported by a strong feeling that it is going to be good for you, it is up to you to take the necessary steps to see the manifestation of that outcome.

I’ve seen many people take the ambiguous stance regarding giving up an unhealthy habit.  They justify it by saying, “I don’t want to commit to giving up completely because if I fail it would leave me totally discouraged.”  This is poor excuse and in fact nonsense, held on only by the fears of giving up a familiar pattern.  It does not stand up to logical examination since choosing not to commit to something we say we want is like allowing ourselves the space to fail.  In other words, we set ourselves up to fail.  Of course, committing to something does not guarantee that we will achieve it, but it maximises our chances of success.  Commitment is akin to covering up the energetic holes around our intention so that all our resources are channelled towards ensuring a desired outcome.

So much has been written, discussed and sold around the hot topic of manifestation.  People are desperate to acquire the secrets to manifesting their heart’s desires, and I can give you THE KEY to bringing in what you want to create in your life:

DECIDING that this is what is going to happen.

Whatever it is that you want to change in yourself and in your life, decide on the change.  Decide that you will change.  Decide this or that will happen.  And you will make it happen, despite obstacles along the way.  Unless you make this shift internally, unless you decide, you are setting yourself up for failure.  Ambivalence leaves you weak.  Make up your mind and move on in that direction whole-heartedly.

In your path towards what you want to achieve, you may draw in the right people to help you.  But nobody can make that decision to achieve it.  Only you can do it.  It cannot be done for you.  Without making this decision, your efforts will only be half-hearted, to match your half-hearted intention.

A simple yet powerful statement of “I have decided!” uttered with total conviction and determination will immediately pull together all your resources and bring them to the forefront of your consciousness, ready at your fingertips.  You allow no leeway for a different outcome and so your every action will be infused with this intention.  You may actually find a different outcome when you get there, but the process of moving determinedly towards what you desired as an outcome is such an empowering act of self-expression and self-actualisation that a differing outcome to what you desired would not feel like a failure when you get there but a delightful surprise.

What can you say “I have decided!” for today?

Trust Your Intuiton, Flow With It

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I love it when I get powerful messages through friends.  There’s something about being able to sense our spirits while we’re engaged in human interactions – it’s that sense of suddenly knowing that we’re not just two people sitting in a little shop drinking coffee but that on a spiritual level we’ve been communicating with each other all the time despite the physical distance between us; and that what we’ve been communicating has been so wise that only in rare instances can we let in the depth of those messages.  When the depth of such messages are grasped and understood, it can have profound effects in transforming our lives.

My friend Gill whom I greatly admire for her tremendous courage in self-transformation shared one such message with me recently.  It seems she has streamlined her philosophy in life to this one piece of wisdom: We must trust our intuition and flow with it; it’s when we resist the strong messages of our heart/spirit that things go wrong.  In fact, she believes that things can only go wrong if we resist what we’ve been intuitively guided to do.

I reflected on some of my past experiences and found this to be true for myself.  How often had I stayed too long in pain because I had ignored what my gut feelings were telling me?  Conversely, how many times had I listened and trusted my instincts, acted on it and gained from it?

So the good news is, the answers we are seeking are here all the time.  We only need to tune in and listen with our hearts.  Beneath our humanly existence and all its ego-based struggles, we are an infinitely wise being.  A gigantic library of knowledge is stored right inside us – we hold the keys to this knowledge but the world around us also hold spare copies of these keys.  When emotional turmoils and mental conflicts become overwhelming, it may not be easy to open the door ourselves – this is when those spare keys come into work, through something someone said or a meaning you draw from observing something around you.

When a message is strong and clear, we will know it.  Spontaneity helps, as a lot of times the guidance is contradictory to what our logical mind says.  Yet it will feel right, no matter how wrong it seems.  The tricky part is when we can’t decide whether it’s intuitive guidance or a dysfunctional thought!  Sometimes it takes practice to develop our intuition – but we do our best anyway because our intention to follow our guidance will go on record that we’re moving forward, and we will begin to fine-tune our intuitive sense.  After some time, when you look back and recall your feelings you’ll be able to distinguish true guidance from self-defeating thoughts.

Guidance from within (or from greater spirit, which are ultimately the same thing) is a gift.  We only need to heed the message and flow with it.  Sometimes, we decide to create something different instead of flowing along with the guidance.  We think we (our ego self) know better when our divine self, with its infinite wisdom, is guiding us from a vantage point that spans all time and space.  Trusting in the infinite wisdom of our spiritual self is a lesson we must learn in order to transcend our low-level struggles and move into a higher existence where abundance and joy are ever-flowing.

When I trust and flow with my intuition, I can literally feel the supporting hand of the Universe gently prodding me from behind.  Try this.  Let go of control and surrender to what your intuition tells you, and feel the soft, warm, protective energy moving you along to that mysterious place.