Image credit: Bob Prosser Continued from Play Small, or Rest in the Love That Always Is The ego gets high from inflations. It is as though the sweeping statements of “I am unloved” or “I am a failure” actually satisfy the ego. When the ego is inflated this way, it propels you away from the present moment. Why would you do this, when it only leaves you feeling more disconnected and unloved? You use the ego’s drama as a way to hide from something in this moment that you fear is too painful to deal with. Starting with an honest articulation of your uncomfortable feelings, as mentioned last week, helps to keep the ego from blowing them up into devastating absolutes. Such honesty brings with it the light of empowering clarity that fuels incredible personal growth and freedom. WILLINGNESS AND FREEDOM If you are truly willing to rest in the love that is here right now, you will find the courage to open and meet this moment with honesty. When you notice that your ego is triggered and starting to inflate a situation into devastating absolutes, you may wish to ask yourself, “What is so threatening or uncomfortable to my ego in this moment that I would rather blow it up than be just be present…
Image credit: Michael Korchia (Continued from The Gold in February Blues) Happy Valentine’s! My deepest wish for you is that you rest in knowing that the love you seek already exists in the depths of your being because your true nature is love. Though we share love with others throughout our lives, only our sincere connection to the love that we are will provide us with lasting love. Amidst the chocolates and flowers, Valentine’s can amplify feelings of loneliness, rather than deepen our experience of love. Taking place in the middle of a cold, dark winter, the Hallmark holiday can exacerbate any sense of current disconnection. It is hard to know that your true nature is love and that you are loved if you feel powerless by believing that life is happening to you. So to rest in the love that already is, you need to come to a place of sincere willingness to experience the possibility of love – even if you may not see or experience it yet. This requires being open to the notion that the way you perceive may not be completely accurate. It is, after all, only a passing, limited perception, tainted by your beliefs and biases. It is not absolute. When you are attached to the passing perception that life…
From Self-Betrayal To Self-Love: Steadiness and Gratitude On The Path Part 1: Beating Myself Black And Blue A couple of weeks ago, I watched myself react dramatically when I felt I had made a mistake. It was not a big thing, but I made it into one. The situation triggered me. I became so angry with myself and felt like a failure. I dove into the deep end of beating myself up, talking to myself with such aggressive criticism that inwardly, I was turning myself black and blue. I reached out to my partner for help. But he did not stand a chance to get through to me, faced with my attachment to auto-destruct. So then I reacted and blamed him for not giving me what I wanted. Ultimately, I was hell-bent on feeling that everything in this moment, including me, was not good enough. I was so attached to feeling this way that I even cleverly used my partner’s response to me to fuel how I was feeling. So I felt worse. Now I was not only feeling not good enough; I also felt alone. Then I remembered something my spiritual teacher Amma teaches. The words rang in my being as though a meditation bell had been struck within my soul: “Progress is being made when…
Dear Parvati, My life looks good on the surface – I’m intelligent, good looking, have a decent job, a good relationship – but I feel like a loser. I can’t seem to stop doing things I’m not proud of, like spending evenings playing World of Warcraft instead of working on my writing (I want to publish a novel), or letting the vegetables rot in the fridge while I eat chips for supper or order pizza… meanwhile I’m paying $100/month for a gym membership and not using it. I think most people who know me are really fooled and they think I have it so much more together than I really do. I’m afraid that if they found out the reality, they’d all get disgusted and drift away from me. My significant other has brought up the idea of living together, but I’m afraid I’ll lose her if she sees how I really live. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in shame for not being a better person. How do I fix this? Thank you for your question. Hiding is hard to do at any time, especially on an ongoing basis. Hiding our true self from our self and the world is extra hard, even painful. You may think you are the only one who does things…
(Continued from “An Apple in an Orange Grove”) Recently I was out with a friend in a mall. She was asking me a similar question, feeling a bit stuck with her attachments to her family. I said to her, look around. Beside us is not a 24 year old guy and a 35 year old woman but a two year old boy and a three year old girl. This mall is full of two and three year olds. Many of the fundamental decisions we make every day likely come from our unconscious mind, that is, the unresolved inner child that continues to rule our life until we give it the love and attention it needs and turn towards the Divine, the source of unconditional love. Anyone who has tried setting long term goals knows this to be true. We need to have our unconscious mind in alignment with our conscious mind, or else we inevitably meet an inner saboteur and fail. That is because our unconscious mind is ultimately in charge. Our primary commitments live in the depth of our unconscious, so we had best befriend these in order to evolve. Most of us live with a buried inner child, held captive by the grip of our ego that is committed to getting limited…
(Continued from Look Behind The Anger To Act Awake) THE IRONY OF ANGER “Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.” – Eckhart Tolle Anger is a hot emotion. As it courses through our veins, we feel the surge of adrenaline. We feel powerful! Blinded by that power, we feel we can leap buildings, take on an army, even conquer the world. Anger can be a tremendous motivator, providing raw energy to make big changes. As primitive man living in the wild, we needed that energy surge in order to survive because we lived in the fear of constant attack. But as we evolve, we understand that to live with the constant fear of attack comes at a great cost to our health and to our well-being. When we react in anger – blow up, yell, call names, slam doors, road rage – our primal circuitry is on overdrive. Unconsciously, we have convinced ourselves that we are displaying how terrifying and powerful we are. But when we look deeply into anger, we can hear in it a soulful cry for help. Anger shows us not that we feel powerful, but that we feel terrified, overwhelmed, out of control, incapable and powerless. Is it not true, that when we feel angry, immersed in a boiling, surging moment,…
LOOK BEHIND THE ANGER TO ACT AWAKE (Continued from Knowing What You Feel Gives You Power) We receive powerful information when we listen to our emotions. What we do with that information separates the wise from the foolish. The challenge with anger is that, like fire, it is quick, sharp and potentially destructive. When we feel angry, we must learn to take time to cool down before we act. We must learn to read the early signs of anger in our emotional landscape. Usually we first will feel uneasy, restless and tense. Then we may feel irritated. This leads to feeling annoyed, then angry. The movement towards feeling angry can be surprisingly slow, even over a long period of time. But once we become angry, our mood can quickly escalate into feeling irate, raging, wrathful, violent and hateful. Once we feel anger, we have awakened the beast within. We have become the lion that roars, the gorilla that thumps its chest, and the shark that attacks. All we see is the need to defend. Just like many animals, we instinctively attack when we feel attacked. But the difference between animals and humans is our ability to act with awakened consciousness. When we react in anger, we usually create pain for ourselves and for others. We…