Tag: spirituality

Looking At Care Differently

Get Results: change perspective
Get Results: change perspective

Are you a nurse or carer emotionally overwhelmed with the current situation?  Or are you someone forced to stay at home and watching from the sidelines, struggling to deal with the pain, suffering and loss of others?

Just a slight digression for a moment, I’d like you to think about the following scenario…..

If you saw a person (male or female) keep head butting a wall then complaining they have a massive headache, what would you say to them? What advice would you give them?  Please consider this before reading on.

Back to your suffering and feelings of being emotionally overwhelmed, about the current situation.  You’re getting upset that people are struggling and even dying, not just because those things are happening, but largely because you believe that others shouldn’t have to suffer.  But this is not possible, death and illness are part of life, this is the way it has always been and will always be. None of us will escape the clutches of death, and will inevitably be ill at some point of our lives.

Holding onto the belief “people should not suffer”, creates an expectation/preference that can never be fulfilled, and will only bring suffering to the person that holds onto that way of thinking. It is metaphorically like banging your head against a wall.  Instead shift your mindset. If dealing with sick patients, be grateful you can ease their suffering to some degree or help their passing be more tolerable. Grateful you are well enough to do be able to care for them in some way. If you were not there for them, their situation would be so much worse.

One final point I need to make, the difference between you and the person head butting the wall is that your suffering comes out of caring about others, not just as a result of some mindless act of self-harm. The fact you care so much, is in itself, something to be immensely proud of. Caring people make for a better world to live and die in.  So keep caring, but don’t suffer for your caring. Take joy from your priceless assistance, we love you for it, and so do those you look after.

You’re Not Who You Think You Are

Get Results: self awareness
Get Results: self awareness

If you’re of adult age, you’ve probably experienced a fair amount in life.

You’ve probably fallen in love, and maybe out of love again, at least once.

You’ve probably been to school, witnessed or been the victim of bullying.

You’ve undoubtedly experienced  a loss of some kind, whether it be someone close to you, or loss of a valued possession.

You’ll have most certainly have experienced many different emotions; such as happiness, sadness, anger, embarrassment, longing etc.

Through all these experiences, what has been the one thing that has remained constant?

If you said your “thoughts”, then we know this isn’t true, your thoughts come and go like clouds. Sure you experience many thought over and over, these form beliefs that shape your life, but they do still come and go. You’re not thinking the same thing all the time.

If you said your “emotions”, then again these are constantly in flux.

If you said your “behaviours”, then again these have changed as you’ve grown and unless you do exactly the same thing all the time, they are constantly changing as you undertake different tasks.

So what is the one constant, that has shared every second of every day?

The answer to this is the “awareness” in which all experiences unfold. The “presence” that watches, listens and is.

This presence can be described as consciousness, awareness, or even space. It is the space into which all life unfolds, but it isn’t empty space. It isn’t a vacuum of nothing, but it a space of “NO THING”.

You can not view it in the same way you can your mind constructed self. The self you describe when someone asks you, who you are.

I am [whatever age you are],

I am a male or female

I am a professional whatever

I am a father, mother, daughter son, only child

Whatever you label yourself as being, is not really who you are.

This labelled self is your mind constructed identity, used to tell stories about, to describe, to understand, to point to, but it isn’t the real you.

You look at a flower and you call it a flower, you have a mind constructed idea of what as flower is, what it should look like, where you should find it.

In the same way you do with anything you’ve ever experienced.

You label it, so it can understand it, and your mind does the same with its version of you.

When you say I’m trying to find myself, this is a false way of thinking about it. The real you, can’t be observed,  or lost like an object because you can’t removed yourself from it. “You are it” and “it is you”. You can’t do anything other than “be who you are”.

It’s not about finding yourself, it’s about losing everything that mentally and emotionally blocks your realisation of the truth, that all the constructed versions of yourself are not you. The real you is what’s left when all the labels are stripped away.

You are awareness, presence, the space in which all experiences play out, without the layer of thought and interpretation getting in the way. The space that just is, without any need to add anything else. You are consciousness.

I love these two quotes that say it all…

“Thoughts are like clouds, you are the sky. ”

“You are the Universe, experiencing itself from infinite points of view. ”

That means you and I, and all life are connected because we are all a manifestation of the Universe experiencing itself.

As I Began To Love Myself Poem By Charlie Chaplin?

Get Results: Love and do what you will
Get Results: Love and do what you will

As I began to love myself
I found that anguish and emotional suffering
are only warning signs that I was living
against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is Authenticity.

As I began to love myself
I understood how much it can offend somebody
if I try to force my desires on this person,
even though I knew the time was not right
and the person was not ready for it,
and even though this person was me.
Today I call this Respect.

As I began to love myself
I stopped craving for a different life,
and I could see that everything
that surrounded me
was inviting me to grow.
Today I call this Maturity.

As I began to love myself
I understood that at any circumstance,
I am in the right place at the right time,
and everything happens at the exactly right moment.
So I could be calm.
Today I call this Self-Confidence.

As I began to love myself
I quit stealing my own time,
and I stopped designing huge projects
for the future.
Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness,
things I love to do and that make my heart cheer,
and I do them in my own way
and in my own rhythm.
Today I call this Simplicity.

As I began to love myself
I freed myself of anything
that is no good for my health –
food, people, things, situations,
and everything that drew me down
and away from myself.
At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism.
Today I know it is Love of Oneself.

As I began to love myself
I quit trying to always be right,
and ever since
I was wrong less of the time.
Today I discovered that is Modesty.

As I began to love myself
I refused to go on living in the past
and worrying about the future.
Now, I only live for the moment,
where everything is happening.
Today I live each day,
day by day,
and I call it Fulfillment.

As I began to love myself
I recognized
that my mind can disturb me
and it can make me sick.
But as I connected it to my heart,
my mind became a valuable ally.
Today I call this connection Wisdom of the Heart.

We no longer need to fear arguments,
confrontations or any kind of problems
with ourselves or others.
Even stars collide,
and out of their crashing, new worlds are born.
Today I know: This is Life!

Having done some research, we found that this poem“As I Began to Love Myself” was not actually written by Charlie Chaplin. As far as we can tell, the poem is actually an English translation of Portuguese translation of an English language book written by Kim and Alison McMillen in 2001 entitled “When I Loved Myself Enough.” That text was then altered even further into the shareable form it consists of today. 

 

Get Results: As I Began To Love Myself poem
Get Results: As I Began To Love Myself poem

The Ego Is Flawed

Get Results: The EGO is flawed
Get Results: The EGO is flawed

Use the Ego don’t be used by it.

Understand how it is calibrated so you can override it’s shortcomings and limitations and rise above them.

The Ego is well meaning but primitive.

Its fear based approach is self serving and survival driven but limiting and objectionable.

It prefers routine over exploration because it’s the safer approach. Routine is the enemy of innovation and creativity.

Thinking differently results in acting differently, acting differently results in experiencing differently, experiencing results in thinking differently. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Thinking without being invested in those thoughts is freedom from the EGO, because EGO is thought invested with your sense of self.

For more about spirituality, click here.

You Are More Than Enough!

Get Results: Love and do what you will
Get Results: Love and do what you will

We’re are bombarded with messages telling us to..

“Buy this [car/makeup…] you’ll get [girls/guys/success…]”

Marketers telling you “YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH!”, so that they can sell you their stuff

You can’t truly love others if you don’t love yourself

Self love is not to be feared
We’re told vanity and arrogance are bad
But it’s okay to feel good about yourself, it really is

You might ask yourself..

“I wonder how should I act?”

“How do I love myself?”

Some people are busy filling other people’s cup but are irresponsible with their own cup

Treat yourself like someone you love

Look through all your fear

know you are already enough!

For more, check out this inspirational video below

Desiderata

Get Results: Desiderata
Get Results: Desiderata

“Desiderata” is a 1927 poem by American writer Max Ehrmann. Largely unknown in the author’s lifetime, its use in devotional and spoken-word recordings in 1971 and 1972 called it to the attention of the world.

Liberal versus Conservative

Liberalconservative sign
Liberalconservative sign

Fear and Love are the main drivers for all human behaviour, and this fact is accurate for every person that has ever lived, but we differ greatly in how we believe to best achieve this.

We all have a mix of conservative and liberal views, we are positioned along a continuum which as liberal values at one end, and conservative views at the other. We appear along this continuum at different points from one another and also from ourselves with reference to different subjects, topics at at different time and in different situations.

I lean towards stability and responsibility in some situations while favoring innovation and a more carefree attitude in others. I feel reassured by politicians and celebrities that I am familiar with, and that I trust (there aren’t many of those to be honest), but also embrace change and uncertainty at times.

Conservative values come from beliefs that resist CHANGE, and carry the narrative that change equals uncertainty, risk, threat, and/or danger. Those with Conservative values that feel under threat crave the reassurance of something and someone familiar.

Research shows that people who identify as having liberal values often display conservative tendencies when they feel threatened, and  those that classify themselves as conservatives display liberal tendencies when they feel less inhibited.

I was recently researching Simon Baron-Cohen’s hypothesis Empathising-Systemising theory, which suggests that people may be classified on the basis of their scores along two dimensions: empathising and systemising.

It supposedly measures a person’s strength of interest in empathy (the ability to identify and understand the thoughts and feelings of others and to respond to these with appropriate emotions) and a person’s strength of interest in systems (in terms of the drive to analyse or construct them).

Well I consider systemising to be a conservatively based trait. The need to take things apart and figure out how they work, and to organise processes into routines, that are easy to understand and follow, I hypothesis, come from a desire to make us feel less threatened by our environment and more in control of our destiny.

Empathising could also be considered fear based trait, but its an alternative strategy to achieve the same thing as systemising, but in a more inclusive way. It could also be perceived as a way to spiritually connect with others, to get outside of ourselves. Empathisers figure that understanding others makes them less vulnerable to the world. It’s the same desire as the conservative, but employs a completely different strategy to achieve it.

Get Results: diffusion of innovation bell
Get Results: diffusion of innovation bell

Now let’s consider the diffusion of innovation bell. This attempts to explain why some people embrace innovation quicker than others. At one end of the scale you have the Early Adaptors and at the other, Laggards.

So why do Laggards resist change, because they crave the status quo, they like to keep things the same, because they fear change, which is a conservative trait. On the other hand Early Adapters focus on the new thing because it brings with it opportunities rather than risk and danger, which is a liberal trait.

So while you might consider yourself coming from a more conservative or liberal mindset, the underlying desire for pleasure and need to avoid pain are the same in everyone. We are more similar than we are different. We love and fear in the same way, but our beliefs shape our strategies for navigating the world so that we avoid pain and find pleasure.

We should embrace different views because they open our minds, and give us ideas for alternative strategies for achieving the same goals.

Until next time..

Power Corrupts And Absolute Power Absolutely Corrupts

Get Results: power corrupts
Get Results: power corrupts

“Power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts.”

It’s an interesting statement but is it accurate?

If you think about human nature we all have a tendency to gravitate towards inflating our sense of self, and avoiding situations that devalue it.

Evidence of this is all around us in everyday life. Arguments are engaged in to uphold ones sense of self. For instance, think about the reasons why you last argued, were you protecting something important to you? Something you’d invested yourself in. When you prefix “my…” to anything, such as“my idea”, “my thoughts”, “my opinion”, “my possessions”, “my kids” you make it part of your self-worth.

The mind believes, the more you HAVE the more you ARE, but the flip side of having more and being more, is that you also have more to lose.

When individuals gain more money, more power, more stature, it becomes more difficult to face loosing it, and so self interest and self preservation become even more important.

Those in power have more to lose by rocking the boat, by fighting again the very system they are benefiting from, so what do they do, they fight to preserve the status quo, because it serves them and after all, we are all designed to protect ourselves, it’s our survival instinct doing it’s job.

If you understand this trait of human nature, you come to realise that anyone in power is open to corruption, and is not going to drive through change that could potentially put them at risk.

You can’t defy human nature, we are what we are, but you can manage it, so that society is better for it, and so that those in power, serve society rather than themselves.

So how do we, the ordinary people, deal with the fact that people are self serving and power only increases this instinct?

Well, we start to actually hold politicians, businesses and powerful individuals to account, we make sure they deliver on the promises they benefited on the back of, and if they don’t they should know they have a great deal to lose.

Appreciate Your Now

Get Results: life is never not now
Get Results: life is never not now

I was recently talking to someone who was struggling to come to terms with a friend of hers leaving to join the army. The back story is that her best friend of 17 years had been living with an ex for 6 months due to financial constraints, and as a way out had decided to join the army and leave for 4 years with possible deployment oversees.

Apparently she would never have done this if she wasn’t stuck in this bad living situation, but has now become excited at the prospect of new beginnings.

The person I was talking to, let’s call her Elaine for the purposes of this post, was feeling angry and sad about her friend leaving, especially because she’d be leaving to potentially be part of a conflict and could find herself in great danger.

Although Elaine was being outwardly supportive of her friend, she was dreading her departure, and the thought of potentially losing their close friendship and had a lot of anger which was directed at her friends ex for putting her in this situation.

Elaine had a couple serious “are you sure?” conversations with her friend who had indicated that she was sure of her decision, and it being what she wanted.

If Elaine’s friend stays she will continue to work at her solid full time job, and will only have to keep living with her ex for another two months.

I told her the bottom line was she should let go of her attachment to their friendship and accept the situation as is, which involves both letting go, and surrendering to the present reality.

She shouldn’t resist the feelings she has. Instead examine her fear of loss by looking into it.

Bringing awareness to her story telling, by asking how much of it is speculation driven by fear, which is all of it, in reality. I told Elaine to be aware of this, and the fact that none of these thoughts are real, they are story telling embellishments out of control.

The truth is her friend is happy to go, so she should be happy for her. None of us know what the future holds, her friend could stay and get hit by a bus, and then Elaine would be thinking she should have let her friend go into the army after all, instead of talking her out of it. You can make stories up to either back her friends departure or for staying.

I advised Elaine to let go of the fear that is telling her that her friend is safer here rather than there. It’s her friends journey and she needs to go where she needs to go. We all have our own journey to travel.

We are all protective of those we love, we want them to be safe and secure, and when they are not with us we believe the danger is greater or that we may be left without them. This is of course a possibility, but we can drive ourselves crazy by running with these stories.

Loss is indeed part of life, all things are transient. Change is continuous and wishing for it not to be, does little to change the reality.

We should be grateful for the blessings we have, as they are happening, for the relationships, the places and the things we get to experience, in the moment we experience them. Instead of being completely absorbed by wanting, and chasing after more or better in the future, which many of us do, and are preoccupied with doing, only to realising what we had, but didn’t truly appreciate when we had them to enjoy. Nothing lasts forever, everything has it’s time and is subject to change, continually.

Accept the fact that change is part of life, be grateful for your blessings right now, and get used to the idea that the future is uncertain, but focus much more on the opportunities it can present, rather than the danger, and  risk that it may or may not pose.

The best solution is not to over think, but instead feel life in the moment it unfolds, in the present moment. Thinking is imagination, speculation, with no foundation in reality. It’s the creative story teller inside you, driven by fear. Love is now, fear is focused in the future. Appreciate all you have now. It’s fine to work towards a future goal, but prioritise NOW, and all that is in your now, because it might not be there tomorrow.

For more about spirituality click here.

For more about gratitude click here.

Enlightenment: Freeing Yourself From Thought

Get Results: Alan Watts Enlightenment quote
Get Results: Alan Watts Enlightenment quote

ENLIGHTENMENT comes from separation of AWARENESS and I INVESTED THOUGHT, particularly rigid thought forms such as BELIEFS. This realisation brings space to all situations, a gap to observe thought, but not be inside and part of thought.

It is impossible to go back fully to old thought habits once this shift takes place.

Thereafter the difficulty is dealiing with a society that is largely blind to this perspective and that continues to struggle along unconsciously, WANTING, ATTACHING and SEPARATING from it’s environment, seemingly insanely fighting over scarce resources, and desperately trying to be something different, better or somewhere else.

But that feeling too gets easier when you let go of EXPECTATIONS which after all are just thoughts.

It’s easy to forget, or fall asleep in some lazy moments and you risk becoming once again reactionary to your thinking, this is where some discipline and effort may be required.

It’s also tempting to try to over complicate enlightenment, because it seems too easy a process, to remove pain and suffering, but it is this easy if you remove your sense of self from your thoughts.

See the importance of the moments as they unfold, keep from wishing for the next moment to come or dwelling on your past.

Feel connected to and one with life itself.

Allow joy to flow into what you do, or at least accept the things you can’t enjoy as you do them.

Enthuse with all that is, right and wrong, front and back, up and down, black and white, for everything has it’s place, in the rich tapestry of life.

LIFE is about experiencing the good and bad moments, riding them like a wave, rather than fighting with all your might against them, being in those moments as experiencing energy, and following your bliss, wherever it takes you.

Find out more about spirituality and wellbeing here.