Monthly Archives: December 2011

EXPLORE

The Ego trips

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How interesting the reaction one person can make upon their feelings being hurt. They lash out in some futile manner trying not to heal but instead to harm. They want to take what was taken from them. What is it about an eye for an eye that is so consuming? The ego or personality is a place of immense power and control in our lives. It is thought to exist as personality and contains all the programs necessary to exist in the world. The same way that the muscles around our spine have learnt to compensate for injury in order to keep us standing tall so too does our ego implement behavioral programs in order to protect us. Often though we protect ourselves at the detriment of ourselves because are we really trying to protect ourselves or our ego. Because if our ego fails our world feels like it will all come tumbling down.

Our ego deliciously forms early in life. Some say from before the time of birth, but I like think to about it from the perspective of the rule of 7. The rule of 7 states that approximately every 7 years we move into a new stage of being. The first (0-7) is about learning the social norms and about how we exist in the world. The second (7-14) is our learning of control in the world. This means we understand ourselves relative to another and the power we exert of others. We start to learn about relationships with things and people. The next seven (14-21) further identifies our purpose and inclinations in this world for who we want to be. We can can begin to look at the development of the ego in each of these stages. Our parents and guardians in the first 7 years help guide how we handle mistakes and understand who we are. The ways that we need to act in this world. As we progress we learn from our now friends and family how we are to relate to people and what we get from them. By gaining these wisdoms we define who we are. We ultimately learn to understand ourselves through the actions that we have attained to operate in the world. And when these lines of controlling the world are violated we lash out in order to invalidate the people who are highlighting the way that we know how to live is faulty.

This is the reason why people who subscribe to religion are so vehemently opposed to criticism, because religion explains the meaning of life. The way to operate in life. It explains the finer purpose and gives a definable construct about life and existence in a way that enables a person to feel like they have control. Science does exactly the same thing. It gives us a verifiable way in which to understand life so that we may feel that there are rules that we can follow to survive. That there are lines and objects that we can give definitions to so that we can know what things are and feel safe about them. When we lose that control we lash out. When we feel unsafe we feel alone and vulnerable. That we don’t have a connection to anything or anyone. We want to take the power back in order to provide that stability again to our understanding of life. It is the behavioral programs that provide the feeling of stability and control. But ultimately when we implement the programs we are left feeling more hurt. More empty. a greater level of dissatisfaction. We have maintained the status quo. Our ego is still intact, but at what cost? How do we handle our life in a win-win manner? So what to do?

Well there might be a way. What if the norm wasn’t “an eye for an eye” but instead “human to err, divine to forgive”. We must surely heal and move through the hurt so much smoother if we were to easily be able to forgive. But our ego steps in and asks for it to be recognized. Acknowledge me. See me. Hear me. Tell me that I matter. Tell me that I am real. Well there is another place that we can hear all that and it doesn’t rely on any connection to a person or group it relies on your connection to you and you’re giving to something bigger than yourself. You exist whether someone sees you or not. Whether someone shows you affection or not. It is from that space of connecting to something bigger that we can hold conviction. That we can hold integrity. It relies on trust and faith. In ourselves. In our dreams. I trust in the future and I hope you do too? Thank you.

ELEVATE

Calculating the Love Connection

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Isn’t it wonderful that there is someone in life to think sweet thoughts about, whether or not you are in a relationship with them. I was at my best-friend’s wedding, and in his speech I gained an amazing insight into what the feeling of love really is. He helped me understand that this person you are focussed on is a person that inspires you to want to be the best person that you see yourself becoming. It is that feeling of inspiration, of wanting to be the best that you can be for this person and the world that we call “In-Love”. But it is equally important for you to realize that it is not the person themselves, it is the connection between the two of you. You are the person that feels the love “IN” you. Love is not given to you, it is conjured within, and is up to you to accept and acknowledge that experience of it within. You recognize love from your connection with another person. This is because whatever you put out you always get back.

The Love Equation
Newton’s third law of motion and force states “Every action always has an opposite and equal reaction”. Love is an e-motion or a force that motivates us. This means that the only way you can experience love is by giving love. It is reflected back to you. Therefore the more love you give, the more it will reflect back.

The Love Mirror
The amount reflected back to you depends on the reflective surface onto which you are shining. The person that you are sending your love to needs to be able to accept the love within themselves in order to be able to reflect it back. You will only be able to receive the amount of love reflected back to you as the person is able to absorb. It is the same as saying “you can only love another as much as you love yourself”. For example, let us say that you are providing a stadium light worth of love but the person only has a mirror the size of you palm. You wont actually receive that much back. Furthermore their mirror might actually be directed at someone else so that even more will be lost. Therefore it is important to make sure you are always giving to yourself as much as you are giving to your partner.

Give without Expectation
Here is one trick to ensuring you will get love back though. Give without expectation. If you give love without expectation of receiving back, you will always walk away with a smile in your heart because you have not limited yourself to the single connection but given for the sake of the whole universe, of something much bigger than the both of you. When you give for something bigger than yourself you will always and truly receive that which is equal to that which you have given” You can use this love equation for anything, for a connection with a person, for a connection with a thing, for a connection with an action, for a connection with a thought, for a connection with anything and everything. Lets say you love playing guitar. By giving to the action of playing you are getting a much richer love for yourself and the music than if you merely listened to it on the radio. You will find new understandings about where the music can go and where it can take you. This is all because of the millions of different variables that exist between the player and the music: The tone, the pitch, the timbre, the rhythm, your emotion, your content. So many different ways that these variables can come together that you will be able to create such a rich and fulfilling experience. Now think about this connection and all the variables that exist between two people and you can times the richness of connection by infinity. Which is why I might add it is so difficult to define “Love”, because there are literally infinite ways for it to be experienced and it is the same for wisdom.

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The Love Connection
When we think of romantic love between partners, we can see how the love connection is developed from your experiences and interactions, your support and intimacy, your absorption and your teachings, from anything and everything that bounces between you two between each of you individually and the outside world and between both of you together and the outside world around you. All these things add up and build the love connection. I like to think of it like an internet connection. The more experiences you share, the more intimately you get to learn about yourself, your partner, what they want and what you want. And as we know more information you have access to, the more bandwidth you have built into that connection. The greater the connection the richer the experience and the more mature the love that you will feel.

Equating your Love Connection
Upon deciding on our partner, we take into considerations the things that have worked for us in the past that we have built and we ask for those things to be equally present. We also acknowledge those things that haven’t worked for us and it is when we have shone the light on these things that we can then better help understand what we need to build a connection this next time to better serve us in creating a richer love connection. Sometimes we aren’t always aware of what does and doesn’t serve us and other times we believe we want things built from a reactive state. The only place you create your life from is your present not your past. Therefore build your love connection from this moment. (For more on this see Shifting paths – Shifting lives). When you have found this someone that your unconscious has calculated as matching the requirements that you need to satisfy the building of the love connection you are looking for, you will begin to feel stirrings of wanting to connect with this person. This feeling is so exhilarating and profound that we naturally feel it is the person that is causing such feelings. Please remember, that they are merely the conduit, the mediator the mirror. Treat it kindly and shine the light of love on it and you will feel the experience of love. Build the connection by learning about each other and you will have ever-richer experiences of love.

The Love Connector
The best way to create and connect to an experience of finding the person that can satisfy the personality variables you are looking for is through a love poem. Write a love poem about the perfect partner. Imagine this perfect partner is on their way over to your house and you want to give it to them as a sign of love and gratitude. Do not have any one person in mind but simply write about how grateful you are for them. Write about the way they make you feel. Write about what things you adore about them. Write about the things you do, say and share with each other. Write about how you communicate and how you support each other. Write it so that you feel it as the Truth within you. When you have finished writing you will be one step closer to your partner. Whether it is a person you have your heart set on or another unknown in the Universe that you know you will attract, because you will be clear in what you want. Your subconscious will have revealed to you what is meaningful and what makes up your current love connection. When you are clear on what you want, you won’t fall into pitfalls of connecting with people that don’t make up the values you are looking for and so you will save yourself time and heartache. When you finally connect with your partner it doesn’t hurt to rewrite the poem of what new love connections you are building at the moment so that you are clear within yourself as to how you want it to grow. The fun part here is that you actually get to give it to the person that you love!

So remember your love exists within you. You build a love connection between you but the love always exists within. The trick is to build a big enough connection that the sharing is quick, easy and inspiring. Give and be open to receive. This goes for anything you do. Walk into any situation by giving without expectation to receive and you will always walk out with a mile on your face. Live from a force of love and you can create anything. Just write exactly what you want and why as if it’s on its way to your door and you will open up to your dream life.

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How to Make a Mistake

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Often we feel overwhelmed by a situation. We have done everything right but still our plans go awry. We look around us and blame it on the world. This person screwed me; the conditions were not right; etc. And saying this is fine. Sometimes it might be smarter to drop something and forget about it. But sometimes it may be worth stopping for a moment and looking at the situation, and asking yourself whether you can take responsibility for what happened?

Taking responsibility reveals the lesson

It is only when we take responsibility for something do we provide ourselves the opportunity to change the outcome. If you refuse to look at the outcome and say it was someone else’s fault you will never be able to properly see what went wrong and understand how to solve the problem and learn the lesson. It has been said that “What we resist persists, and what we look at goes away”. So maybe you can see that as you open yourself to something rather resisting it, the problem might fall away when you realize that maybe it wasn’t a problem. Maybe what happened was exactly what needed to occur in order for you to move forward and grow into the person that you dreamed of becoming. We live in a society where we have been taught that to make a mistake is “bad”. We spend our whole lives trying to be right but here is something we all need to learn, being right all the time is actually “bad” and learning how to make a mistake in a constructive way is actually so right you wouldn’t believe.

Mistakes you want to make

It has been shown that taking yourself to the limit where you make mistakes is the greatest way to learn, if you deal with the lesson appropriately. Instead of reacting, slow down. Don’t take the mistake as a failure, as a personal attack on your sense of self-worth, but realize that this is one step closer to reaching your goal. This mistake is not an error but instead an opportunity to learn. The more our minds and bodies create impulses that experience and overcome difficulties, the better we will be able to handle these problems in the future. The better we handle problems, the faster we can deal with them to the point where they are no longer problems but a momentary challenge, just like the way a baby learnt to walk. At first even crawling was a serious problem but eventually the baby learnt how to crawl, and then how to steps. Walking suddenly became only a challenge and ultimately it was so automatic that not only did the baby not have to even think about walking, but as the child grew up it could do things like running and surfing as easily as breathing. Without these mistakes the baby would have never made it past the first step.

Outside of now

So ask yourself could this problem be a part of your lesson in order to reach your goals. Try looking at the situation from a higher perspective, one that is outside of only the present moment. Instead think about what this experience means to you in a year’s time or five years time. Now look back and look at how relevant this problem in the scheme of your life that has been. By looking at the problem at hand as a lesson to learn rather than a mistake, you create your space as the actor not the reactor of your life.

Acting or reacting

When you react, you are reacting from an emotional space. There is a difference between feelings and emotions. You actively generate your feelings. Feelings guide your actions powerfully and are the best space to make decisions from as they come from a place of control and clarity. Feelings can take form when you practice gratitude. Give thanks for what you have and where you are in your life and give thanks for your dream and what you are trying to create. Even try and appreciate yourself. Name five things you are thankful for about yourself. (Learn more about gratitude in “Gratitude gets you Zen Continue reading How to Make a Mistake →