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 post, 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? 

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. 

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

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

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

FREEDOM                                                     RESPONSIBILITY  

                                               VS

SPONTANEITY                                            COMMITMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

Healing the Source

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A common scenario when I’m working with a client – whether they are dealing with addictions, eating disorder, weight issues or relationship problems – is listening to how their life has gotten out-of-control and the resulting stress and anxiety they battle with.  They want to get rid of these uncomfortable symptoms, and I understand that.  But sometimes, I notice that the client does not actually want to give up their dramas.  “I just want to have a peaceful life,” they say with a  heavy sigh.  Yet I may sense in them an attachment to living a highly-strung, chaotic life. 

In this article, I want to explore why and how in certain cases we might be addicted to stress, anxiety or human dramas.    

It is true that some people thrive on chaos (although ‘thriving’ is more of an illusion than true accomplishments, if you were to investigate closer).  In the absence of drama, they feel lost and the idea of structure scares them.  This can come from a fear of responsibility and accountability.  So they strive for vagueness and ambiguity to blur the lines, so that dramas can always seep through and they don’t feel contained. 

To some people, that space where drama has been made absent is deemed to be starkly empty and a scary place to be in.  So they fill this void with food, drugs, sex… or stress.  Stress and anxiety may be uncomfortable, but it is somehow more bearable than feeling the void.  So what happens is they set up their circumstances (usually unconsciously) to create dramas to generate the stress and anxiety that take their attention away from the greater discomfort. 

For others, it is not a void but a place teeming with unresolved conflicts.  Creating dramas becomes a form of escapism from self – where you’re always engaged, busy with something outside of you so that you don’t feel the deeper turmoils inside you.    

Sometimes people do this as a form of attention-seeking behaviour.  Underlying this motivation may be a fear of being ignored, neglected, trapped in loneliness and a craving for connection. 

Not only is this pattern of creating stress, anxiety and dramas damaging to yourself, it has toxic effects on those around you.  It harms relationships because those around you will feel drained by being in your presence; after being around you, they usually report being in a state of confusion and feeling spun around. 

I invite you to take a good, hard look at yourself.  Do you really want to be free of your anxiety or do you secretly crave it?  What would it be like if your life was devoid of stress, anxiety and dramas?  Will you miss it?  Be honest now. 

If you recognise this pattern in yourself, it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person.  Owning up to a destructive pattern of behaviour is very powerful and deserving of respect, even if you choose not to do anything to change it for now.  Because you can now stop lying to yourself that you wish it to go away.  You can truly breathe a sigh of relief as you can at least live your own truth.  You can simply continue with what you’re doing, only with full awareness.  See where it takes you. 

On the other hand, if having this awareness makes you realise how self-destructive you are being and you’re inspired to move forward from it, take these three easy steps:

Step I: Take Back Your Power

Look at what is causing you stress or anxiety and move it into your realm of control.  Instead of saying, “Things happen which are beyond my control are causing me stress,” say, “I have made or am making certain choices that are causing me stress.” 

If you continue to blame your stress on what’s happening outside of you, you’re admitting defeat to your circumstances because you’re stating that you are powerless to do anything about it.  Note that this is a common excuse being used by those who crave stress and anxiety – there is a secret agenda to staying in a state of stress and anxiety. 

Granted, on the surface, it may appear that what’s happened is outside your control.  But I want you to break it down into smaller units.  Do not look at the bigger picture!  This is one instance where you’ll benefit from looking at the individual trees that make up the forest.  What has led to this current situation?  Where did you have power to make certain choices that led to this?  Don’t dismiss it offhandedly, really examine where your power lies, because it’s the same power that will get you out of it. 

Did you agree to something that led to this?  Did you hold back on speaking out, against what your instincts told you?  Did you give in to something you disapproved of?  Did you act dishonestly in any way?  Did you let your pride, ego or fear get in the way of your actions? 

Try answering these questions without any sense of self-berating.  We’re not trying to push the blame onto you but to give you a sense of where your power has gone to.  The more honest you are, the more power you can retrieve that is going to help you move forward to a happier life. 

Write down your answers.   

Step II: Consolidate Your Power

As you look at your list of answers, try to locate the pockets of power within each choice you made.  I know, you may not feel powerful looking at each statement, because chances are you did not exercise your power when making those decisions.  But that is exactly why there is power contained in them!  Or you might have thought you were exercising your power when making certain decisions but you’re realising now that the power was misused.  In any case, you’ve located some sources of your power. 

If you did not speak up about your reservations with someone, you’ve located your power to speak up.  If you were too proud to express your doubts about your ability to accept a position, you now have at your fingertips the power to be more honest and vulnerable, and to hone your skills.  If you agreed to let your partner take care of you financially, you can now reclaim your power to be self-reliant.  If you let your fear of losing your status get in the way of your happiness, you have the power of making a stand for what makes you happy. 

Step III: Exercise Your Power

As you can see, there’s more than one way in which you can exercise your power in each instance.  You’re not trapped with one option.  The key is to recognise that your power is an energy of unlimited potential.  Even if you can only see a limited number of options, know that the potential exists for many, many more ways to exercise this power than you can currently see.  Decide how you are going to exercise your power given what you know at this stage. 

Just taking one pocket of power you have located, whether it was previously unused or misused, can give you a sense of empowerment.  By turning this potential energy into a tangible form, you will show yourself just how much power you really do have. 

Then keep exercising your power by making different choices than you are used to making, acting and behaving in new ways.  Notice how the dramas fall away from your life and how you’re reacting to this new way of being.  If you find yourself initially resisting this, tell yourself that it is uncomfortable because it’s a new sensation, not because it’s bad for you.  Allow yourself to get used to a new sense of peace and how much more fulfilling it is.  In time, you will reverse your pattern of creating stress, anxiety and dramas… and begin to look forward to creating more peace, balance and harmony in your life. 

I’ve encountered, through my work, many professionally successful women who struggle with immensely stressful lives.  It seems that they are pulled in so many directions that they’re breaking under the strain of their responsibilities.  They feel trapped in a life of unhappiness where every day is just about making it through the day with what little’s left of their energy reserve.  Having a successful career seems to come at a price, and this is especially true if you’re a woman. 

Whilst a lot of men’s issues can be traced to an unwillingness to grow up and be responsible, many women suffer from feeling overly responsible for those in their lives.  For one thing, women are naturally nurturing.  We have an inbuilt sense of needing to nurture the emotional needs of others.  Men, on the other hand, tend to act on a need to provide materially for their family and friends.  This is one of the ways the genders are wired differently and it is this kind of difference that make men and women complement each other so beautifully in relationships.  But while these different tendencies are our innate gifts that help foster closer relationships with one another, they can cause a great deal of confusion in certain contexts.   

Feeling emotionally responsible can be a curse, it can generate guilty feelings.  As I’ve written in previous posts, guilt is a corrosive energy that eats you up from the inside and quickly erodes your sense of worth.

Typically, a woman who holds a highly-demanding job and also has a family to look after can feel overwhelmed by responsibilities that go beyond her duties.  It is not just about juggling a career and family – often, a woman running a business will feel responsible towards her employees who have become like her extended family members, and she feels a level of responsibility for their welfare that exceeds that of an employer’s.  Thus, even when outwardly she is capable of making hard business decisions that affect her employees, the stress that builds up from guilty feelings can accumulate overtime.  For instance, making the decision to terminate the employment of someone is never easy, but for someone who feels guilty about not fulfilling her role as multiple nurturer, her guilt can reach damaging levels.   

This stress will tend to spill over to her family life and make her more distant with her family as she struggles with these uncomfortable feelings which are made worse by her sense of failure as chief nurturer for her spouse and children.  Concurrently, she may also feel she has failed as a friend as she judges herself to be doing insufficiently to support her friends or to fulfil her various roles in her social and community circles. 

If this sounds a bit like your life, try these suggestions: 

#1  Time-Off, Get Away

Find a time away from your environment.  Remove yourself from all sources of guilt, i.e. what triggers you to feel guilty (family, work, etc).  Even if you can only find half a day, it will give you back so much in terms of clarity of thought and energy.  It will also allow you to connect to your true self again, get to know your own needs and give you a chance to nurture your needs for a change.  Bringing back some balance this way will allow you to go back to your environment with a fuller tank and better ability to nurture others.     

For this reason, it is imperative to make it a priority to put aside some time for yourself every day.  Asking someone who is caught in a life of over-responsibility and guilt to take time out for herself on a daily basis is often met with resistance, as she is convinced it is impossible to find any free time from her busy schedule.  But it’s essential to find that time or you risk becoming even more unhealthy and unhappy.  Challenge yourself if you think you can’t possibly sacrifice anything from your schedule to create a slot for yourself.  Think of the consequences of burning out if you didn’t do something to correct that imbalance now.  

#2  Give Up Being Control Freak

Those close to you might have joked about you being a control freak.  Even if you tend to laiugh it off, ask yourself honestly if you might be just a bit too attached to your roles.  If so, you are putting in too much effort trying to control outcomes.  Most women are resistant to give up this control because it makes them feel like they’re not being a responsible mother/wife/boss.  But if you’re too controlling as a mother/wife/boss, giving up some of this control will make you a more responsible mother/wife/boss.  This is because when you’re stressed out from the crazy need to control, you will express your frustrations to those around you and end up doing the opposite of nurturing the emotions of those you love. 

One of the symptoms of being too controlling is depression.  I believe that depression is caused by an excess of giving or efforting.  When we focus all our energy on controlling, our energetic system becomes blocked: there is no flow of creative energy or life-force – and we feel drained, discouraged, uninspired.  In this state, you are useless as a nurturer.  Magic happens when you let go of this illusional control.  It opens up avenues, options, ways out – and you find your power again. 

#3  Take Risks, Delegate

In your efforts to control outcomes, you leave no room for mistakes.  Striving for high standards may be a good thing but it can cross the line of being healthy when it becomes an obsession.  A lot of the stresses of a ‘high-powered’ career woman can be alleviated by a willingness to delegate.  Yet she imagines that the consequences of not doing the work herself will add to her burdens.  Nobody can do it better than I can, is a common protestation.  If this is you, let go of perfectionism.  What you deem to be perfect is only one way of looking at things, and giving up your idea of what is perfect will relieve you of so many of the unecessary burdens you’ve chosen to carry.  Accept that mistakes may be made by those to whom you delegate the work.  Allow room for mistakes to be made, knowing that it will correct itself in time. 

#4  Create Distance From Your Critical Voice

Take a moment to notice that critical voice in you.  Pay attention to what it’s saying to you:  You’re a bad mother.  You’re a heartless bitch.  You’re not good enough.  You stupid woman.  You’ve done it again, haven’t you!  

This is the voice of your inner critic.  But you have adopted it as your own voice and you are totally convinced about what it is saying to you.  Reclaim your power from your inner critic by acknowledging that you are not your inner critic and it is not you.  It is just a voice that has taken on the messages from certain authorative figures in your life.  Creating a distance from your inner critic and its beratings will allow you to assess yourself in every situation more rationally instead of automatically buying into what it is saying. 

As strange as it may sound, your inner critic’s role is to protect you from being hurt.  Quite likely, as a child, you had learnt that certain behaviours brought on painful consequences.  For instance, you learned that after school when you went outside to play instead of doing your homework, your mother would scold you for being lazy and punished you.  To prevent you from being punished again, your inner critic serves to remind you what not to do again, over and over.  Acknowledge its intention but know that it is operating in the wrong context. 

#5  Learn To Say No

When you’re feeling like you have a thousand things to do, the only way out is to say no.  Saying no does not mean having a confrontation; you can be firm but polite, and firm does not mean hard or harsh.  Be gentle yet unwavering.  When you state what you want without any guilt or apology, people will likely accept it without drama.

Notice how your inner critic is making it difficult for you to say no.  Again, acknowledge why it is saying what it’s saying, and go ahead and do it anyway.  Notice the screechy and exaggerated tone of its warnings, designed to scare you off.  Refuse to be scared off from your efforts to nurture yourself.  Feel the satisfaction and excitement as you make your own choice, independent of what your critical voice is saying. 

#6  Celebrate Your Compassionate Nature

Turn your attention for a moment to acknowledge the part of you that is compassionate.  Sure, if you worry yourself sick over too many people’s welfare, you’re being overly responsible.  But it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is based on a positive quality.  Now strip it down back to its basic quality which is love.  Recognising that there is love at the heart of your problem can motivate you to see yourself in a more positive light.  After years of listening to your inner critic, it’s easy to believe that you’re a highly flawed human being.  It comes from focusing too much on how you’re not delivering, which will actually take you further away from love.  On the other hand, focusing on the aspect of love behind your intention can bring you closer to fulfilling your role as nurturer, to yourself as well as to others. 

#7  Learn To Nurture Yourself

It is interesting how women are natural nurturers but often we don’t know how to nurture ourselves.  There’s an almost self-sacrificing nature in us.  It is imperative that you learn to nurture yourself or else you’ll be driven to manipulate others to get their love and approval.  Nobody but you can give you what you need.  When you learn to nurture your own needs, you keep your relationships clean without acting out any unfinished business you may have with your parents in the context of your relationships.  Look at your unmet needs and think about how you can provide for yourself emotionally. 

Bear in mind that self-nurturance is an attitude rather than a list of things to do.  How might you change the way you relate to yourself?  Could you see yourself through a different lens, or modify the way you think about yourself?  Turn that compassion towards yourself and forgive yourself for the little things you beat yourself about. 

#8  Strengthen Your Sense of Self

When you have a strong sense of yourself, you’re less likely to burn out from the demands of your roles.  It’s valuable to spend some time to get clear about who you are, beyond your roles as mother, wife, boss.  These roles have shaped your identity and you have adopted this identity as your immediate reference of who you are.  Yet who you are goes deeper than your ability to fulfil these roles.  What inspires you?  What drives you to become more than who you are being now? 

Pay attention to your emotions; they give you clues about your inner self.  Notice and acknowledge what is going on in your emotional world.  Explore your inner world – the dark and the light in you, the weak and the strong, the good and bad.  Observe the spectrum of emotions in you and what motivates you.  What makes you special?  Who are you, without your identity? 

#9  What Are Your Hiding?

Work, business, and your sense of responsibility for others, may be an escape – a way for you to mask unprocessed emotions.  Ask yourself what you might be afraid to face if you took away your identity as the boss or whatever your job title is, the reliable friend, the supportive wife, etc.  In other words, you may be creating dramas to distract you from your inner turmoils.  These dramas, including the generated anxiety, may act as your drug and you are addicted to it (see my next post on this subject).

Working on your personal issues will give you back some control and sanity when you realise that a bulk of your stresses are unconsciously created by you yourself.  You can then make an empowered choice to let go of this pattern and create a calmer, more fulfilling lifestyle.  

I wrote this article not to highlight the weaknesses of the female gender or to diminish the sense of nurturance in women.  Rather, it’s to show you a more empowered way to embrace the beauty of being a woman in the context of operating in the business world where our sense of responsibility can sometimes be overdriven and cause us problems.  When you turn that nurturing quality to yourself, your perception of how much work there is outside of you will change.  That old adage, “You need to be selfish in order to be selfless,” is never truer.  You need to take care of yourself first before you can take good care of others.       

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was really inspired by a friend who told me that his goal is to be ‘Ultimate’. I did not ask him to define what it means, as I immediately felt the uplifting energy and understood what it meant for me. Being Ultimate for me means living my life as joyously as I possibly can. It includes being the best that I can be, without compromising myself and my values, and actualising my highest potential in my human experience.

Having this kind of personal vision can be very empowering and can inspire you to show yourself just how great your potential as a human being is – to do, feel, create, express, heal, change and expand. There is no universal “best”. My best can look very different from your best. But to be your best regardless of what it looks like so that you live your life being your Ultimate Self, there are four things that you can do.

1.  Honour Yourself

Self-honouring is a spiritual practice that gets you to see the truth in yourself. As you become aware and get honest about your feelings, you begin to tap into what your true desires are and what is important to you. The first step in honouring yourself is by fully acknowledging the bits in you that want to be recognised. It’s quite common for us to push away painful truths (or what appears to be painful to us) and the more we try to suppress them the more insistent (and hence more painful) they become. The act of acknowledging them takes courage, and courage yields comfort in the end. Acknowledging your truth will bring you a sense of relief and freedom.

The second step in honouring yourself is to act on your truth. That means committing to having your actions reflect what you have acknowledged as your truth. For instance, in your meditation you may have recognised and acknowledged the truth that your relationship with your mother is causing you unhappiness, and that you truly desire to have a more harmonious relationship with her. How can you honour this part of you? If you now know that this is important to you, and you still act in ways that take you further away from what you desire, then you are not honouring yourself. But if you start acting in ways that bring you closer to harmony with your mother, then you are honouring yourself. Even if the result may not be more harmony, you have honoured your truth by acting towards your truth.

2.  Overcome Your Fears and Do It!

Fears get in the way of us doing the things we’ve always wanted to do. Things that are in line with our truth – what is important to you to uphold and to express. If you know that it is important for you to create certain experiences but hold yourself back from creating those experiences, then you are not honouring yourself. You are left with a sense of limiting yourself and settling for second best, which has the effect of dampening your spirit. Being Ultimate is a feeling. It makes you feel alive and radiant because you are being the best you can be.

Being Ultimate is not about striving to a standard imposed by someone else – e.g. “You must have at least $100,000 in disposable cash in order to be financially secure,” or “You must sky-dive at least once in your life.” For you, having the feeling of financial security may not require $100,000, and experiencing an adrenaline rush by jumping off a plane may not be important to you. For you, being Ultimate may be to draw a monthly income of $5,000, or creating a meditation sanctuary in your home.

Yet it is not even about striving to your own standards. You can be Ultimate before you achieve any of those things, because you can experience the feelings of being Ultimate while being in creativity towards those ends – when you know on a profound level that you have absolutely every potential to achieve them and you are enjoying the ride to that destination.

Sometimes, the idea of achieving something feels intimidating because we focus on the long road ahead. Understanding that the end is in every step of the way on that road can eradicate a lot of the fears about not reaching that destination or what might happen when you finally reach it. The road isn’t long when you know that every step along the way is worth celebrating. Every step is already a success, and so you needn’t be fearful about not succeeding. Knowing that every step on the road is worth celebrating allows you to perceive the journey as a joyful ride rather than a dreaded task that you must endure before reaching the final destination. By removing the stark contrast between journey and destination (sudden change from a constricted state to an expanded state), it removes the natural fears we have about change. Small victories must be celebrated in the present time, as you are experiencing it, not as an accumulation in the future. The expansive feelings that come from it is what makes you feel Ultimate.

3.  Stretch Yourself

Staying in your comfort zone will not make you Ultimate. When you can sense your true potential and crave to see that potential actualised, there is a build-up of creative tension that seems to pull you away from your comfort zone. You then choose to do one of two things.

(i)  You fight to stay in your comfort zone, and that means having to fight against your inner truth. You try to ignore or minimise the feelings in you that guide you to a better place, not trusting yourself to follow that guidance. This may make you feel more comfortable superficially, but your soul yearns to grow and it can give you deeper feelings of discontent with yourself.

(ii) You stretch yourself by moving away from your comfort zone and following the pull of the creative tension. You allow yourself to feel the discomfort of being outside your comfort zone and you relish the fulfilment that comes from having stretched yourself.

Staying in your comfort zone consists of doing the same things that don’t work for you anymore. Getting out of your comfort zone means doing something new or doing the same thing differently. There’s an old shamanic technique to cultivate the habit of stretching yourself where you consciously choose to do the opposite of what you normally do, for every activity within a day. It may include walking backwards out of your apartment! (or choosing not to leave your apartment if that is a habit)

4.  Believe In Yourself

When you have an unwavering conviction of who you are, you can believe in yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses, and accept them. This gives you a strong sense of yourself, without which you cannot feel secure about the person you are expressing. It dillutes the energy you are expressing, because when you doubt yourself you hold back from expressing yourself fully and freely. The upshot is you shortchange or compromise yourself, leaving you with less-than feelings (not Ultimate).

The way out of doubting yourself is to hold on to something you believe in yourself, no matter how small that is right now. As you continue to hold on to it, you can experience it growing. At the same time, allow your actions to reflect this part of you, as if you have complete trust in it. With every expression, you increase your sense of belief about this part of you and by extension your whole self. Keep doing this until you build your self-belief to the level of Ultimate.

Your Ultimate Self isn’t you in the future. You can be your Ultimate Self now, no matter how ‘imperfect’ your external world is right now. Allow yourself to be Ultimate now and watch your world change to give you more opportunities to feel Ultimate. You don’t need to accomplish more or do more healing to be deserving of being Ultimate. You have a better chance of accomplishing and healing more when you are being your Ultimate Self.

Most likely, you have an idea of what your Ultimate Self looks like and how it would feel if you were Ultimate. Imagine being your best self and step into this person. Experience all the feelings of being your Ultimate Self – the feelings of power, abundance, beauty, joy, connectedness, freedom, radiance, vibrancy and peace. Simply enjoy the fulfilment of being Ultimate.

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.

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.

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.