LESS EGO / MORE SOUL

Acknowledge the state of your physical body (the sacred vessel of your spirit) as a symbolic sculpture of the life you lead.

If you love your life then why not worship your body – whatever its size, whatever its shape?

Regardless of where it fits in cotrast to society’s view of beauty and ideals, if life feels good then change your perceptions to embrace its unique perfection.

And, if life feels bad change your existence – not to meet the expectations of others, or emulate what is sold as a valuable depiction of “success”.

No, change it to meet your soul’s yearning for love, for connection, for joy, for contentment, for exploration, for thrills and  for memories of delicious moments well spent.

Because life is supposed to feel good and who could ever definitively judge what a feeling looks like?

We tell ourselves lies: “if only I was ______, then I could be happy.”

Recognise that your quality of life would actually be no better; albeit perhaps a little less weighed down by your crying consciousness and the judgement that governs these lies.

When you were a child you never thought this way.

You’ve been conditioned to believe that you are not enough and after so many years you’re now using these lies as excuses; because you would find it too uncomfortable to actually cross the finish line.

What would you do with all that power; with all that responsibility?

Ignore the lies and focus on being happy first. Then decide if what you wanted was really ever that important.

Surrender your soul to the waters of time

The truth that all is transient

Floating freely down the canal to rebirth

Cling to nothing; but delight in the ride

The truth is discovered now

Naked and bare

Raw to the eyes of the blind

The discovery

Of what it feels to be free

Unburdened

Not wet yet nor dry

Exist in this space

As you dwell in this place

Let feelings guide your reactions

For nothing is right

And nothing is wrong

Spare the truth of your own moral compass

Remember now

What you knew all along

The truth

Your soul

Is now opened

And with no remorse

Abandon your thoughts

And live freely

On instinct and feeling.

I’m learning to embrace anger – particularly in relationships.

During a sound healing at ConFest, I began to feel something foreign bubble up. It felt uncomfortable and icky.

Turns out, it was years of suppressed anger – the ancient resentment I’d hid within the depths of me as I’d somehow come to believe that such emotions were unworthy of expression.

This left me confused and shocked – I’d turned up to the sound healing to relax and to meditate. Where were these feelings coming from?

‘I’m not an angry person’ I told myself in my confusion. It wasn’t until some wise guy posed the question:

‘Really? Or is it that you don’t want to be an “angry person” because you don’t think that anger is a useful emotion?’

That stopped me in my tracks and flipped my world on its head.

‘Ooh…yeah. Maybe.’ I replied, albeit a little perplexed.

Since, I’ve been exploring the value of anger and how to express it in a healthy way.

Forgiveness is divine, yes. But to forgive fully, we must first acknowledge our anger.

I cringe at the thought of all those times I am guilty in suppressing my anger in the name of peace. I guess I hated the idea of being seen as ‘that angry bitch’.

But contrary to my own stereotype of what expressing anger looks like – it’s not about yelling, kicking, screaming or throwing a tantrum.

Rather,

It’s about feeling what you feel, without judgment.

It’s about asserting to others what you need from them (and rarely does someone get angry unreasonably).

And, it’s also about self-love: recognizing that you are worthy of more and rising above any fear of rejection – that the other will leave you for being less than compliant.

There is no excuse for other people’s bad behaviour and if we fail to express our pain, hurt, frustration or fury we fail to provide others with the feedback they need to grow.

When you express your anger in a healthy way, you’re essentially providing the other with insight – and, should they choose to listen, an opportunity for them to grow into a better person.

So embrace anger with passion. Declare your truth. Ask for what you need.

“Of this I am certain: something happens every time I stop fighting with the way things are. Something happens to every one of my students when they stop running their familiar programs about fear and deficiency and emptiness. I don’t know what to call this turn of events or the freshness that follows it, but I know what it feels like: It feels like relief. It feels like infinite good-ness. Like a distillation of every sweet fragrance, every hearstopping beauty, every haunting melody you’ve ever heard. It feels like the essence of tenderness, compassion, joy, peace. Like love itself. And in the moment you feel you recognize that you are it and that you’ve been here all along, waiting for your return.

When you forget, which you always do, you suddenly understand that kindness to anyone – a plant, an animal, a stranger, a partner – brings you closer to this. That taking care of your body is taking care of this. That taking care of the earth is taking car of this. And that you’d turn away from anything or anyone that asked you to leave this because this is what you’ve wanted, this is what you’ve longed for, this is what you’ve loved for eons.

You know without knowing how you know that every step you’ve ever taken, every person you’ve ever loved, every task you’ve ever accomplished has been This meeting This. You returning to yourself. And that hell is nothing more than leaving this. Heaven is already here on earth.”

- From Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth

A valuable lesson I have learnt over the course of my journey is that there is no need to have an excuse or a reason to heal.

Looking back over my life, I can see how I have created problems for myself, to fit in and to justify my ‘need’ for healing. Blinded by this, I closed myself off from love – my parents love particularly – and invited dis-ease into my life as I subconsciously sought to compensate for this suppression in other ways.

A symptom of this became evident when I realised that when I was sick I felt more comfortable in letting others fuss over me, nurture me, love me and so I would subconsciously attract sickness, when what I needed most was nurturing love.

Now I realise that in order to expand, I really need to let go of these attention-seeking behaviours and embrace the psychological femininity that allows one to process those raw emotions like pain, fear and sorrow in a healthy way.

When we create problems in our lives – consciously or unconsciously – we are creating our experience from a lack mentality, seeking to justify why we “deserve” to be healed; why we deserve love and attention.

This stems from the fear that there is not enough healing energy (unconditional love) to go around.

There is.

And wounded or not, we are all equal in our deservedness to receive such healing energy. We don’t even need to fully understand why we feel we need to heal for the healing to be justified. One just has to be motivated to expand and be the carefree person that they would like to be.

“It is very important to know that I have scattered parts of my body across the world. I cut my nails in Rome, my hair in Holland and Germany. I saw my blood moisten the asphalt of New York and often my sperm fell on French soil in a field of vines near Tours. I have expelled my faeces into rivers on three continents, watered some trees in Spain with my urine and spat in the English Channel and a fjord in Oslo. Once I grazed my face and left some cells attached to a fence in Budapest. These small things – created by me and which I shall never see again – give me a pleasant feeling of omnipresence. I am a small part of the places I have visited, of the landscapes I have seen and that moved me. Besides this, my scattered  parts have a practical use: in my next incarnation I am not going to feel alone or unprotected because something familiar – a hair, a piece of nail, some old, dried spit – will always be close by . I have sown my seed in several places on this earth because I don’t know where I will one day be reborn.” - Paulo Coelho

“I wish I could tell the young people in my life to not waste any time. To be happy now. Don’t waste time making anybody else feel guilty or otherwise manipulating other people’s emotions. (You always have to destroy your own emotions in order to get any results!)You can’t make someone feel guilty without first making yourself miserable. To free yourself from misery, you must not want anything from anybody. Your happiness must come from within. Not from your friends, family, or partners. You don’t need any one of them for your happiness. You have it within you right now. All you have to do is claim it. Recognize it. Give thanks for it. And thus you’ll be cultivating it. And it will grow!”

- Jinjee Talifero, The Garden Diet

Being happy can sometimes be a wild card. We all want to be happy, but happiness can be a difficult feeling to hold on to.

My Mum (a psychologist) has recently introduced be to the philosophy of ACT therapy, which I’ve adopted and found it to be a really helpful technique in being happier on a day to day basis.

ACT points out that those who measure the pleasure they derive from life by their goals are doomed to being unhappier because once one goal is achieved their brains instantly push them to aim for another. There is no breathing space to just “be” and acknowledge what they have already achieved. This is a really important factor if one is to lead a happy and fulfilling life.

So, instead of measuring life by goals, ACT therapy encourages one to live life by your values.

Let me illustrate this concept with a personal and example:

In the past I thought I could be productive in my days by setting goals. If I managed to achieve most of those goals that day I allowed myself to feel happy. But if I did not get much done I would not feel so good about myself – feeling as if I had wasted the day.

In adopting the ACT technique, rather than planning my day around achieving these goals e.g. clean room, revise french, spend some time meditating, exercise etc. I base my daily activities around what I value in life.

And so it is:

• I choose to clean my room because I value a clean space
• I choose to revise my french because I value learning
• I choose to meditate because I value my spiritual development
• I choose to exercise because I value the feeling of stretching and being alive

Living by values helps me to stay present and live life more mindfully. If I don’t get something I meant to get done done, it does not mean that the day is a failure. Rather, I can still be happy as I know that I have lived out the day to the best of my ability as I chose to do things that reflected my core values.

This gives me more freedom to be present. Today for example, I spent a whole hour just sitting outside, sipping on tea. In the past that would not seem productive to me. But as I change my perspective, acknowledging that I found that activity very enjoyable, it becomes a valuable and worthy way of spending my time and I can be happy.

“Many of our rituals of celebration and relaxation involve moving away from being with what is—numbing out, if only a little, with drugs and alcohol. We don’t seem to know very much about how to lighten up without numbing out. Music and dance are obvious exceptions to this, but in our culture we are too often only spectators and not participants in creating and moving to the sound of celebration.” - The Ivitation, O.M.D.

I should dance more.

Just for fun. For joy. Because I can. Because I have a body that works. Because I am alive. And being alive is all about moving, feeling and experiencing the incredible lightness of being. Not blocking it out because sometimes that involves feeling pain and exhaustion.

1. Stop saying “just”. Value yourself and your experiences. You are more than ‘just a secretary’ or ‘just a student’. You are incredible and have the potential to be and do anything. Believe in yourself. You deserve it.
2. Use adjectives sparingly (sometimes they get in the way of the truth).
3. Understand that you don’t have to ‘do’ or ‘be’ anything. You have complete freedom and complete responsibility for your own experience. What do you want? Chase it with passion. Be relentless. Be liberated.
4. If it feels right at the time, then it’s fine. Life is meant to be lived. There is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to live it. But consider what you want on all three dimensions – mind, body and soul.
5. Recognize the creative powerful being that you are and own it. Heck, you can manifest the weather!
6. Nothing matters. Laugh.
7. You are everything – the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly. The aim is to choose the most magnificent aspects on offer and make them a part of your reality – that is the highest choice.
8. Learn to say “No”. “Maybe later” is not the same. You are not being respectful of yourself or others when you neglect to say “No” firmly when you mean to. Learn to say it charmingly. Learn to be comfortable with it.
9. Speak to and treat others as equal souls, for they too are human like you.
10. Be honest.

‘Just after the sun burned out
and all who were left
realized this was “it”
things finally got back to normal…
sleeping in the grass,
eating with your hands,
killing your enemies,
and sex at all hours for no damn good reason
right out in the open!’

- Unknown