Archive for the ‘Personal Awareness’ Category
The New Year is a traditional time of making resolutions and commitments to things we would like to achieve. Most of us in the past have made lists of resolutions, be it to give up smoking, lose weight or find new love. Of course we start off with some initial surge of enthusiasm and determination, then the days and weeks pass the commitment wears thin and often the underlying issues that created the initial obstacles reveal themselves and draw us back into our old habits. Of course, there are some people who succeed. These lucky few posses an iron will, who when needed, can commit to whatever they want and get the job done.
Given the amount of people in the Western world who are trapped in one form of addiction or another, from alcohol, illegal and legal drugs, coffee, sugar, sex, TV, video games, fitness, work or any other of the numerous things that we can be addicted to. This of course isn’t even talking about the less obvious or less measurable addictions, such as thoughts and feelings that many people could be deemed addicted to. All this it would seem to indicate that the “iron will” it not something the vast majority of us possess. We have a picture of a society made of individuals who struggle to change and transform into who they want to be.
If each person in the UK had to make a list of things they wanted to change about themselves, I would guess it would be largely made of things they would like to “stop doing”, habits to kick, and patterns to dissolve. We now have thousands of industries, products and services all assuring and promising the fulfilment of these wishes. The most obvious example is the weight loss industry; figures show in the USA alone in 2006 55 billon dollars was spent on weight loss. With this huge investment people are making the results are astounding, surprise surprise, obesity in the USA is on the rise and predicted to be the main cause of death in the next fifty years. Each person of course wants to be believe, and is told to believe that even though diets do not work for most (95% the figures show long term) they will be different, their pride and fear drives them to invest in a system that has a history of failure. If it was a medicine that you were told would cost you $100 but only ever worked on 5% of the people would you buy it? The clincher and the hook the weight loss industry has is the success of the program, diet or whatever is being sold depends on the will power of the person. If you are strong enough, disciplined enough then it can work. What people fail to see metaphorically speaking, the company who owns the diet shop also owns the sweet shop across the street. Each desire is being played off each other.
Posted by
Ewan Nicholson on 05 Dec 2010 under
Personal Awareness,
Personal Growth,
Poems |
0 CommentsWe will see
I can not weep for these places I have yet to see.
There contours wrap around me and invite me to descend inward and soar outward.
I am here in the hollow of my processes, in this turning sphere of trying to understand.
I am kept in a radius that can be felt with walls that I visit and touch only in my dreams.
I peer with vivid attention to what may await.
This maybe truth works to posses me, to hold me, to drown me in the glory of all it could be.
I know that I will miss the day’s sun, the all that surrounds.
Yet this lure that evades capture can only keeps growing, continuing to entrance me.
So I wait, I seek its gentle passage and heed its wordless prayer.
The reach
The coil tightened, as my breath tried to remember.
All this running, from misgivings that I conjured and disguised.
For my amour was a sign post ,that pointed to your reflection .
I escaped my lack of movement, from the clamour that was my story.
Unseen cracks and little moments buried under by vanity of my fathers.
It weighed heavy on my faces, as it seduced me into forgetting
Yet whosever kismet it may detain, there is a certainty that stops it spinning.
It is carved in the fire of my body.
It ignites my life’s eclipse.
It reaches me when I cease to be touched.
So I take this love, this love I have for you and hold it to the sky.
I listen to its voice.
I trust it with my soul.
This, my love for you.
Born into the Sun
Here I stand.
Before me a turning clock wired to a tomorrow that can not arrive, a place that is never here.
Through my window I gaze at a future, at a beginning.
I bear witness to a day, a day of circles.
I know I invited this towards us.
I watched as we fall freely and gently into our fate.
My tension melts, I accept and I land.
I am on this other side of my anxious gasps, my disguised panic.
Revealed is an ending that I have seen before.
I can feel it, even reach with my breath and hold to my heart
In it we are free, together, unencumbered by the weight of answers.
At home, no wanting of thoughts and things
I think it’s safe to assume if you were to ask the average Joe on the street what they want in life one way or another you would get the answer “To be happy”. Even if it wasn’t directly that, such as I want fame , money and power as your questions probed further that person may assume that all these other thing will lead them to being happy. So it makes sense if this is what most of us wants to ask the question “What is it that prevents us from getting it?” What causes us the pain that prevents us from being happy?
Will getting what we want make us happy?
Through my own personal experience, as well as trying to help others, I see much of our pain and suffering come from us all the time wanting to change things we have very little control over. This applies not just with people and circumstance but with ourselves. You might be startled to note how many times through the course of a day you find yourself fighting “something” or “someone” in our minds .From the minor like “He should have indicated when pulled out in front of my car” or “The waiter should have at least apologised when they brought out my lunch order forty minutes late” or, to the major ones of “I want my partner to more affectionate” ,”It’s unfair I didn’nt get the promotion” “I hate myself or being this overweight” .We are constantly evaluating our life interactions in terms do they give us what we want or what we expect.A good dayis made up of successfully getting what we want, a bad day is usually consistent of events and outcomes that far removed from what we want. Yet within this mindset most of us possess, we often fail to truly examine two pertinent questions
1)Is getting what want really the source of lasting happiness?
2) Why is it we huff and puff over things we have little or no control of?
No fighting, just accepting…
An alternative to this fighting is the practice of acceptance or non-resistance. When you imagine non-resistance you could envision just passively just “accepting” whatever comes your way. Kind of being a spiritual doormat. Yet we you really take a look its more the art of understanding what is you can’t and can control and not exerting energy and effort in pointless directions. This takes great trust in life and the “way of the universe” as just accepting goes hand in hand with letting go of our minds coveted outcomes, we are manoeuvring towards all the time.
There comes a point when writing articles about relationships and personal development where I get stuck. It’s hard not to feel that you just end up writing different version of  the same topics. The truth is this is the case but it’s more of a honest reflection of the way life and relationship themselves unfold. Often we are dealing with the same things over and over, the same themes, the same issues, the same conflicts, the same dilemmas. Each time we go through a cycle we hope for a better understanding or more insight and awareness of what’s happening .
If only they called more…..
Life ends up feeling like a spiral more than a  straight line. One of the themes I have talked about before is how relationships are our mirrors to ourselves, how we view others, tells us more about ourselves than the people we are judging or forming opinions on. This is almost an instinctual habit in us that it’s hard at times to really gain distance from, due to how frequently we go about this. In psychic readings the most common occurrence of this is when a person wants other person to be another way in order to make them feel more safe, secure or reassured. For instance someone we are in love with or involved with, becomes emotionally distant and stops communicating. This can then trigger a anxiety or feeling of unease that compels the person to want the other person to go back to the way they were before, to keep loving them or keep giving them the feeling that made them feel so good before. It  is within the midst of these moments we have a golden opportunity to shift our perceptive, to bring to ourselves more happiness and more contentment.
Its our “thoughts” not the other person that is the problem..
The thought “They should call more often†when we are faced with a reality that they don’t and it appears they are not going to, creates a high level of stress and frustration .We put our focus into hoping and wishing they would do what we want. We want our internal discomfort to ease by an external reality that we have no say or no control over. We set ourselves up to feel stressed and unhappy just by the thought “They should call more often†which really translate “They should do what I want ,to make me feel what I wantâ€. If we are able to examine this thought and put our focus not shifting reality but shifting the thought.
I have an imaginary bird that sits on my shoulder that I call the “should-do birdâ€. Like my crazy monkey of crystal meth, it is one of the other voices in my head. Before you shout “crazy person†I remind you that we all have voices in our heads, that we commonly refer to as thoughts. A persistent and repetitive pattern of thoughts, I choose to call a voice and give that voice a name. It’s not exactly a psychological breakthrough, as the use of, or analogy of our “internal voices†is common in certain approaches of psychology. I personally find it helps to indentify these voices with names and clear understanding of what they have to say and contribute to my life.
The endless commands of my “should do†bird
As the various voices I live with go the “should do bird” is one I end up listening to a lot. It’s been there perched on my shoulder for as long as I can remember. Its role and function in my life is pretty simple and straight forward. It reminds me of all the things I should be doing, saying, thinking , choosing or taking action on. It’s the indefatigable and unwavering voice that write and re writes endless lists of what I should be doing. The should do bird honestly never, ever shuts up. Its orders range from basic house hold duties such as emptying the bins, to work related task like sending an email, moving on to creative objective such as writing an Oscar winning screenplay, next relationship issue concerning being more direct in how I communicate, then on to amendments to my personality like being more organised, to wider more global issue such as making a difference in the world, then the spiritual dimension has to be covered with is have a direct experience of the oneness of the whole universe and these are the ones that have been chirped out before I,m out of bed.
It’s orders never stop..
In addition to ordering me to do these things , the “should do bird’ also has the duty of reminding me of when I haven’t and lets me know overall how bad that is. As you can imagine my “should do bird” is pretty much ticked off at me most of the time as I rarely get to achieve all of what’s on my daily list of things to “do†and “beâ€. We also have to be clear, its not the should do birds job to praise or acknowledge when I have accomplished things. Its job is to tell me what to do or be and then remind me when I haven’t. Even when I am having a break or trying to take it easy , the “should do bird” is there telling me I should try and relax, thank you should do bird for that reminder.
It is often stated that we have more in common as people than what separates us. One very obvious example of this is the experience of pain and suffering. It seems to be an inescapable part of being human. The measure of how happy or great a life might be could be measured by how much pain and suffering you end up experiencing and how you dealt with it. Some of our pain comes from our choices and other pain can be unexpected, that we have no control over. This type of pain can be the hardest, as it feels at times so unfair or uncalled for .In my own life I have had my share of hardships and difficulty. I know for sure when I look towards my future I can confidently expect some more. Here are four perspectives that can offer some comfort. I know how I approach and view my pain can have a big difference in the severity of the impact .
1) Accepting as a fundamental premise that I have a limited amount of control over people and situations, this ensures my expectations are more aligned with the reality of life.
2) If my suffering, or the suffering of people I care for is just a consequence of random and meaningless universe then for me it’s harder to accept. Knowing that behind all things in life there is a cosmic or divine force that is loving and meaningful can help put into perspectives some of the pain that feels so cruel and unjust.
3) Everything that happens, no matter how tough in some way can help me learn something. Something about others, something about myself, my pain can be my teacher.
4) Sometimes the greater the pain, the greater the sense of reward and gratitude you feel when you breakthrough. Suffering allows our joy to be intense.
Having an outlook that that gives one perspective doesn’t make the pain any less but at least it gives it a context that makes it meaningful. One of my favourite writers is Kahlil Gibran. When friends close to me having gone through tough times I have sent them this is passage from his book “The Prophetâ€. It’s both inspiring and true. So if you are going through a painful moment take comfort in the fact you not alone and that buried in the suffering is some kind of treasure waiting to be found.
Finding clarity in life can be a daunting task at times. We live in a world where our attention and focus is being vied for constantly. We are bombarded with information that tells us what we should want, how we should feel and where we should be in our lives. Not so long ago in human history our only benchmark were the people surrounding us in villages. Now I have over six billion to compare my lot with. I don’t see this as good or bad, I guess it is just what it is.
The issue I face day to day is how all this choice and information impacts the quality of my day and how I see myself in relation to the world I live. We are swimming in sea of choice (or maybe drowning would be a better metaphor) from which I am meant to be making choices that by and large make me happier, work choices, relationship choices, purchase choices , lifestyle choices. The assumption is, if I want to be happy I make choices that move me closer to that happiness. So my compass is pointed towards happiness and my choices are meant to guide me in that direction .Simply put, good choices bring me happiness, bad choices unhappiness.
How do I determine what is going to give me happiness via my choices? I am lucky enough to have numerous companies, religions, organisations, people, family friends and any old Joe Blo willing to give me there take on what are good choices. Yet I find in the midst of all this choice and opinion at times I find it difficult to get a strong sense of what is best or right for me. I find I end up moving and swaying, bending and turning, this way and that way, gravitating to one direction and then pull away from another. All the time trying to work out what works and what doesn’t, what is true and what is false. In all of this whole process is easy to feel overwhelmed to a point of just shutting off and just going along or alternatively anxiously grabbing and grasping in the hope it’s right. The vacillation between these two becomes my Modus operandi and can end up being the sum of my day, week, month year or lifetime.
Is there such a things as a formula to happiness? There is movement called positive psychology that attempts to answer that question. It works out what you need to do, to be happy. Positive psychology studies not our problems, trauma and wounds, rather the mechanics of what makes us happy and contented. The focus is on how to be happy rather than how not to be sad. I have read a number of books in these areas that I have found both helpful and fascinating. There some links at the bottom of the post to the ones I have read.
Although I liked these books, there is a danger for me, at least when it comes to reading, not just these books but any book on improving oneself. This issue is illustrated a by true story what happened to me last summer. Picture lovely warm summer’s day in Malta. Lucky for me I only live a walk away from the beach. Although I live in the part of the island that has sandy beach, I prefer more secluded rocky part of the coast, that is quieter and nice to swim in. So there I was about to head out to the beach and spotted on our book shelf a book I didn’t realise we had .I has been meaning to order it after reading an article of the author but I just hadn’t got around to .Little did I know my partner Susana had already bought book and had just recently unpacked on our book self. The book is called “Happiness: Lesson in a new science†by Richards Layman .On the front over it has little star that says inside the “ 7 Causes of being happyâ€. Wow! I thought I will grab the book and was filled with that sense of satisfaction when you find something you really want to read. My morning was now mapped out, have swim, lay out my towel and discover the 7 causes of being happy, hoping of course I immediately cause them there and then.
So far so good, I get to the beach, I have my lovely swim, I lay out my towel, I get out my water, if put on my sunglasses, I pull the book from my back pack and then like a true Frank Spencer , I kind of did this weird losing of balance thing and the book came flying out of my hands .The place I was I actually high up from the sea and the book fell from my hands and into the sea. Too far down and impossible to get to, I just had to watch my book, actually Susana’s book ,float off into the Mediterranean . So the moral of the story ,according to Susana it was to never ever leave the house with book that’s hers. Ok I got that one. Second moral a Freudian slip, accuse the pun, or subconscious message to myself. Maybe I should stop reading, researching, listening and taking in how to be happy, maybe it was time to give being happy ago? Of all the books to plummet in the sea, particularly when I was so looking forward to reading it, one on “How to Happy”. This can’t just a coincidence it’s a sign for sure.
Keeping up to date with global news it’s hard not to get cynical and feel anger about how so much injustice goes so on so blatantly. The more you read, the more you know that one way or the other the “bad guys†so to speak, win and go unpunished. Tony Blair’s recent testimony the Chilcot enquiry illustrates this. Blair took the Britain to a war in Iraq that has resulted in the death of over 600,000 Iraqi and over 179 British soldiers all on false information. He recently was asked at the Chilcot inquiry if he had any regrets, he openly stated he has none in front of the families whose children died in this pointless war. You don’t have to be a professor in international law to know that invading a sovereign nation solely because its leader is a “buy guy†is not legitimate. It’s obvious the UK and the US sanction bad guys they like and vilify the ones they don’t .So this chapter of Iraq is just another chapter in the ongoing saga of injustice and brutality that seem common place in our history as people. Now with the media, more than ever we witnesses it, we observe, we watch it. We passively absorb the diluted version via our flat screen TV. I have no doubt ten years from now there will an other war rolled out some other place , inflicting more uncalled for pain and suffering to thousands.
Also just as predictable I will be prattling to my friends or anyone else unlucky enough to have to listen about how immoral these injustices are. Given the chance I will vent my moral and righteous anger on the decimating impact of neo liberalism on the developing economies. Like I am somehow enchanted and hypnotised with the sound of my voice, I will talks for hours to anyone who will listen when it comes to these kinds of topics of conversation. So here I am faced with full awareness of the world and all its injustice, I read the books, I subscribe to the email newsletter, I furrow my brow with moral supremacy at Tony Blair’s arrogance. Yet I am faced with basic and simple question, what can I do to make it better? To right these wrongs,to make a lasting difference to this so called “unjust worldâ€. Well for all my talk it may appear very little. I don’t think I make it massively worse, I am not an arms dealer or I don’t club harp seals. At the end of the day like most people my day ends up being about my day. My life is made of up the things that affect me, my work, my relationship my own day to day drama. my life is dedicated to the fulfilment of responsibilities , my wants and needs. I like most people I am not a statesman making choices that have global ramifications, I am not billionaire philanthropist , whose charities feed and educate the poor. I am phone psychic , living in Malta. My circle of influence and impact on global issues has a very limited and narrow reach, actually limited and narrow is being generous, the truth is there more closer almost nothing.
I read once that pain in life is unavoidable but suffering is. I interpreted that to mean that suffering is more a mental and emotional attitude to something, whereas pain just is. In my life I have had my fair share of both pain and suffering. Feeling negative seems a natural and normal part of living it would seem, sadness, hurt, despair and despondence all seem to be common experiences for most of us at one time or another. There is a balance on the one hand allowing yourself to feel and experience your pain in a healthy, unrepressed manner, then on the other hand there is the capacity of get entangled, caught and imprisoned by negativity.
How do we know when we positively acknowledging our pain or when we have become victims of self inflicted self pity? For me unless you have reached a certain level of Buddhahood there is a place for pain and suffering. From a theoretical point of view suffering only comes from a conditioned and false set of thinking and reacting, even if that is the case, we have to work with where we are, not where we could or should be.
The first step for this is about being emotionally honest with oneself. Maybe you have been asked “Are you ok?†With either a sad or angry expression reply “I’m fine!†when every inch of your tone and body language says otherwise. We can’t work through or go beyond something we are pretending not even to have, unless we are being truthful towards ourselves.
Our emotions have a reason for being there. They tell a lot about ourselves and where we are at inside ourselves.
So a second step can be to try observe how we feel from a non judging point of view, to be a witness to how we feel rather than a critic. We often have conflict that relates to voices inside our head arguing how we should or shouldn’t feel. This is a big part of how negative feelings take root as we don’t truly allow ourselves the right to have them. This starts at early age when as kids we are told by parents how we should feel as opposed to how actually we feel, this is later re-enforced by our society and culture.
For me I would say the hardest part that I face inside myself when it comes to transcending the negative feelings I have about myself or others, is the ability to view how I’m feeling from a point of compassion and kindness. So I first pretend I don’t have the feelings I have, then if it’s so obvious its undeniable I dismiss these feelings or justify them but what I don’t do is view them from a loving and compassionate perspective. This would be the norm, yet what I can say is I have had times that for whatever reason I have managed to step back, even just a fraction and look at my negative feelings with a feeling of compassion towards myself. When I have done this, these feelings seem to dissolve. It’s like when they have been acknowledged and allowed to be, they seem them to gently and effortlessly dissipate. Not only that but I have been able to see their value and gain some better insight to myself.
The things I have found helpful in eliminating negative feelings is more consistent practice of mediation and prayer, talking openly to others about how I am feeling, spending more time outside in direct contact with nature, how can one feel negative looking at the night sky or a field of wildflowers. Nurture a more loving attitude towards oneself which I genuinely believe is the key to so much of what we need in today’s world. So next time you find yourself in a negative place, try being honest, being open, and most of all be happy.
