When is it their stuff?

I am a person of self-reflection. I am aware enough to know when something about someone else triggers me or I dislike a quality of theirs, I go within and I ask the question....is this a shadow part of me? I have learned a great deal about myself by doing this practice for the better part of 10 years. I'm not afraid to look at my shadow parts. I'm not afraid to learn and grow from them. I also learn from listening to how others perceive me. Where I struggle is knowing when what they are saying about me is truth and when it is simply them projecting their shadow self onto me. When to know this is their deal, not mine. And actually, to be real with myself it's not a matter of knowing when this occurs because your spirit/soul/inner being always knows the truth; it's being strong enough to hand it back to them and say "here, this is yours, I will not take it on." You take a risk when you do this. You may lose people you love. But I know deep from my spirit to live authentically, this is a very necessary step...and I am at peace.

Maintaining friendships

I was listening to Marianne Williamson's radio program yesterday and her topic was friendship. Her guest was Farrah Fawcett's best friend who helped Farrah document her journey through cancer and also wrote a book about it. Something Marianne said struck me. She had received an email from a friend but hadn't responded for a few days...life happens. When she did respond the friend was grateful as she had become worried that something had happened to Marrianne or that perhaps Marianne was angry with her. Now I realize it's typically only women who let their minds go to those thoughts...men typically think nothing of it. Marianne's point was she hadn't been a very good friend by not taking the time to respond to her friend...that we often don't take the time to communicate or spend time with friends because we get caught up in everything else going on in our world. I personally have found it hard to keep connected to friends either because my life is busy, their life is busy, or both. I don't foresee a lot of people's lives slowing down any time soon. We live in a society that says you're not living a productive life if you aren't always on the go, doing something, accomplishing this goal, finishing up that project. So perhaps the best way to stay connected is through simple email communication saying "hey, I was thinking about you." Facebook has helped people reconnect and stay connected...is this enough to sustain friendships? To a degree yes...but I still think it's wonderful when friends make the time to spend time in each other's presence.

Emotional addiction

We have all heard of addiction to drugs, addiction to gambling, addictions to food, but emotional addiction? I recently watched a movie called “What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit Hole.” The movie is a narrative story along with interviews with scientists (mostly physicists) and spiritual scholars and the premise is how physicists are beginning to bridge the gap between science and spirituality. So what does this have to do with emotional addiction? Because it all has to do with our thoughts, and just how powerful our thoughts are.

It has been known for some time that our thoughts create our emotions, and if you give that some thought you will likely agree. Think a sad thought and you feel sad. Think a happy thought and you feel happy. The thoughts create a chemical reaction in our brain. Our brain produces a peptide based on the thought we have, this peptide is released into the body and our cells have receptors that these peptides lock in to. The more often our cells receive a certain peptide, the more it wants to receive that peptide. So when we continue to think the same negative thoughts about ourselves, we are conditioning our body to want more of that chemical peptide. Our thoughts also create or destroy neurological pathways in the brain. The more a person thinks about and experiences the emotion of love, the stronger those pathways become...so those people that always seem happy and you can’t believe someone could always be that happy...well maybe they have created an environment in their body that allows for that! The danger is we can also destroy good pathways in the brain through out negative thinking and create new pathways that perpetuate the negative thinking.

So the answer is to just change your thoughts, right? Yes and no. Yes, ultimately that is what is needed; however, as it took time for you to become addicted to the chemical releases and creating the negative thinking pathways, it will take time to reverse the process. The good news is it is totally reversible. You start where you are, and begin to reach for better feeling thoughts. It could be difficult at first because your body is craving the chemicals it is used to getting from your negative thinking. But as with a drug addict, you wean yourself off the negative thinking.

I had mentioned to a person I know I thought he might be addicted to drama. It had been my experience he was quick to respond to an email or phone call that had a lot of drama involved, he liked to get in the middle of family drama that had nothing to do with him, he liked to rehash old family drama. I sent this email message on a Saturday morning. This person rarely, if ever, checks his email on a Saturday morning/afternoon, and even more rare would it be for him to respond right away. Imagine my surprise, or not, when he did respond as soon as he read it that Saturday afternoon. For someone who had to defend he was not addicted to drama, he sure was quick to create a little by reading and responding right away. Of course he probably wouldn’t see it that way nor did I try to point that out to him...that would be me creating more drama :-) And I don’t live in his body, so do I even really know for sure? Take a look in your own life and see what your emotional addictions might be. Do you like to push other people’s buttons? Why, what do you get out of it? Do you beat yourself up about something you did or said? Do you have to get that last word in or can you walk away and let it go? When you feel a negative emotion strongly, what thought created that emotion? If it was a negative emotion, can you change that thought, even slightly, so you feel a little better? These negative emotional addictions is what Eckhart Tolle would call your ego painbody...that part of you that feeds on past hurts by bringing them to the surface again and again. Consciousness...raising your awareness to the present moment and the feelings inside is what begins to release this negative energy from within. So it’s not a bad thing to feel negative emotion, it’s actually a very good teacher for you...if you are aware. As always, I want to say I know I have my own emotional addictions and am a work-in-progress. I’m happy I am more aware now than ever so that I can begin to turn the tides, create new neurological pathways and begin to live more of my life in joy and harmony.

What is Love?

Love...we all want it in our lives, right? What is the definition of Love? Is it a feeling? An action? A way of being? Does anyone really know? Is it different for each person? In the last year and a half, I’ve found myself questioning what exactly love is. Religion would tell us we are to love all people...how’s that workin’ for ya? Did you love that guy on the freeway this morning who cut in front of you? What the heck does that mean anyway...love all people? Well, from a spiritual perspective we are all created from the same Divine Source, or God....call it whatever you like. We are all connected...even science is beginning to prove that through quantum physics. And that Divine Source is pure love, so we must be pure love right? Do you feel like pure love? Or are you like a lot of people constantly criticizing yourself and judging yourself and others? Do you look in the mirror and only see what you don’t like? Or can you get to a place where you begin to see what you do like both inside and out? That is self-love. I’ve begun to think that while love can be a feeling, an emotion that stirs from deep within, to truly love means to unconditionally accept another Being just as they are and it begins with the self. When we begin to love our self, we begin to see our self and others in a new way. We begin to live empathetically. We begin to put ourselves in another’s shoes as best we can. We see a mother have an angry outburst towards her child and rather than judge her as a bad mother, we acknowledge we’ve been where she is and our hearts open with compassion rather than close with judgment. Rather than curse the guy who cut us off in traffic, we know we’ve been in a hurry like that before and cut someone off in order to reach our destination faster and we hope he makes it where he needs to be...perhaps he just learned his loved one was taken to the emergency room. We have no idea what another person is experiencing, so truly, who are we to judge? So now I’ve moved from love, to unconditional acceptance, to empathy, to compassion...seems I’m all over the board...but maybe not. Maybe they are all tied together.

Here’s a challenge. Begin to work on self-unconditional acceptance. I think this will naturally flow into you beginning to unconditionally accept your family, your husband or partner, your children, your co-worker, the stranger at the grocery store. It’s a process, just start with a little awareness. I promise if you continue, the awareness continues to grow.

So I think love is a feeling, a deep emotional stirring, and an action. Questioning this all started about a year and half ago while I was on a quest for love from a man and I read a book called A New Earth. The book really made me question what love is, it actually turned me off of love for a short while because I thought if everything in creation is love, what’s the point of “special” relationships? Thankfully I did not completely give up on love, really that is impossible for me. But I did have to get love from myself first. I still want to share love with one man, but I now know he must love himself first, then he can let it flow to me and others. No amount of love from me can change that fact. When you get to a place where you love yourself, everything else in your life balances out and you can then fully receive love from others. And as always, I remain a work in progress...

Appreciation and self-love

Live every day in appreciation....appreciate everything about yourself and everything in your life...even the difficult stuff, for it is here to teach you and grow you into who you are meant to be. When you are living in appreciation of everything, you will notice a good feeling inside. That good feeling is you being in alignment with your higher self, that which connects you to God or Source Energy, the Universe (whatever you want to call it). When you are in appreciation of the difficult times, you begin to seek the lesson to be learned. When you get the lesson, you feel even more appreciation. It's a remarkable feeling. I can tell you this every day, but it's experiential as is everything on the spiritual path. Live it and you will know this to be true. Self-love is knowing you are connected to Source Energy, to God, and that God is pure love so how could you not be? Sit with this thought, it will begin to transform your view of yourself and then transform your life. Again, I know this to be true but it is experiential.
Namaste

Limiting beliefs

I've experienced enough relationships in my life to begin to have a clear vision of what I want in a man and from a relationship. One of the key qualities that became a requirement for me is emotional availability. I want someone who can express openly, honestly, yet compassionately how he feels and what he thinks...another term might be emotionally mature. I had learned through the course of relationships and through much of my own self-growth work that I had been emotionally unavailable in my life and relationships. I won't go into specifics as to why (at least not in this writing), but will just say it was the result of environment and conditioning. It is well written in psychological self-improvement books that you often attract in another those qualities in yourself that you dislike, but unless you are aware of yourself you think it's just something wrong with the other person. I personally don't like to use the word wrong when referring to someone else, but to speak in general terms, that's what humans think...there is something wrong with other people. So I became aware of this characteristic in myself. I had a difficult time truly expressing my feelings, allowing myself to be open and vulnerable to others. I've worked hard at changing that about myself and I think I've come a long way. Even with my friends I feel I'm much more open in telling them how I feel about them and our friendship. Given all the self-work I've done and continue to do, I thought now I would find that man who was emotionally available. And in the beginning of this last relationship, I thought John (not his real name) was. However, it did not take me long to figure out I mistook affection for emotional availability. This would be no revelation to him. I spoke to him about it and he agreed. Now I had to look at why, yet again, did I attract an emotionally unavailable man? I had been clear on my desire and I had done the self-work, what's the deal? The answer came to me the other day. I had a limiting belief that men are emotionally unavailable and it is not possible to find a man who possesses all the qualities I want. This speaks to what many call the law of attraction....your thoughts create your reality... I believe that is true. However, so do your beliefs. Beliefs are thoughts you thought over and over again and they became a core belief. If it's a belief of lack, then it is a limiting belief. I am grateful I came to this realization so that I can now begin to change my thinking and my core belief on men...I can and will have a man who possesses all the qualities I want.

Namaste

Nothing to fear....

You have nothing to fear but fear itself -- very famous and profound words. Also very true words. Many spiritual teaches say there are only two true emotions, love and fear. I have come to know through my own life experience this is true. Whenever there is an emotion of anger, hurt, anxiety, hostility, judgment...what we perceive as negative...dig underneath the surface emotion and you will find fear. Fear of being hurt, fear of being judged, fear of losing something, someone, or yourself. Rid yourself of fear and you come to know no matter what happens in life, you will be all right. This is easier said than done in this human experience, but just begin to try and see for yourself.

I am dealing with a personal challenge right now...the ending of a love relationship. I have moments of anxiety, moments of fear that I will not find someone else with the good qualities this person who is leaving has; fear that I will live my life alone and not have someone "special" to give my love to who openly receives it and gives his love back; someone to share my life with; moments of anger because he chose not to talk with me about his feelings and gave me no voice; angry because I was committed to the relationship and he clearly was not...dig under the anger and I find feelings of hurt and feelings of not being worthy of the effort to work through whatever the challenge was...in another word, fear. I am grateful I have grown in my awareness enough to recognize when the fear rises. I then focus on my breathing, and reconnect to my soul and know I will be okay. I know not only from previous life experience, but also because I know the creative life source I call God is loving, only loving and that life will give me the experiences I need for my highest good. I learned many lessons through this relationship, lessons I can take with me on the rest of my journey. Lessons that will make my next love relationship that much more gentler, that much more flowing. Yes, I am sad when I think about not having this person in my life. He is truly an amazing man. My ego would like to think he chose fear over love and that he will regret this decision. But I know his soul has it's own path to take, perhaps it learned all it could from our relationship and now that relationship is complete. If our soul's were meant to continue on in this lifetime together, he would have made a different choice. Perhaps he would have chose to tell me what he was feeling and why. Perhaps he would have looked for other options than completely closing the door on love. I continue on my soul's journey looking for the lessons in every experience to achieve my highest good in this lifetime. All is a blessing.

Anger - helpful or hurtful

I'm listening the CDs of Abraham-Hicks and I heard an interesting perspective on anger. Anger is a step above depression, despair, apathy on the emotional scale, so rejoice in the feeling and the fact you are moving up the scale. However, it is important to not get stuck in anger and continue moving up the emotional scale. As someone on a spiritual journey, I thought I had to get myself to a place where I never got angry about anything. And aren't we often taught as children that anger is "bad?" I realize now that is far off the spiritual path. The spiritual path includes allowing and acceptance...allowing oneself to feel whatever it is in that moment and unconditional acceptance of what is. Anger is a teacher. Anger is a trigger to figure out what is underlying fear or hurt under the anger. Whenever I find myself angry, I know there is hurt there and I ask myself "what is this really about?" I've been practicing this for years now and so answers come to me quickly. It offers a release from the anger and an awareness of an inner wound that can now be healed.