Posted on

Sickness Within is Sickness Without

‘If you want to awaken all of humanity then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering of the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative within yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.’

Lao Tzu

Growth and self-discovery is an endless process composed of moments of honesty and vulnerability with oneself and others. Our culture demonizes giving ourselves attention as “selfish”, missing that we can only bring love into the world when we are overflowing within ourselves.

From my limited perspective, the “how can we fix this broken world” mentality is misguided. The world is not a machine with a broken cog. It is made of spirit. It is made of your spirit, and mine. Hatred and anger is a sickness that corrupts our souls. And real injustice is the greatest temptation towards hatred and rage.

MLK Jr. knew “darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” What we need is irrational forgiveness and compassion. We can’t wait for a reason to believe in love, we have to choose it. Reason will see our mistakes and the mistakes of others in the light of what is right and wrong. From this vantage point, it becomes easy to demonize ourselves and others.

We cannot love ourselves or others completely until we understand that we have acted from a place of ignorance and fear when we have caused pain. To forgive ourselves is to see our imperfections openly and compassionately, realizing that what we regret could instead become fuel to propel us towards the best versions of ourselves.

“Hurt people hurt people.” To recognize this will help bring patience and compassion into our hearts when we perform or witness wrongdoing. It can be especially difficult when we act in opposition to our own understanding of what is right. It is essential to realize that the process of integration is a long and challenging one. Even when we have insights about the nature of kindness and interconnectedness, destructive patterns of action and thought persist from the past, patterns of pain and trauma that has traveled across generations. We must remain patient in the midst of our confusion.

When people do harm to others, it’s because their pain is overflowing. All behavior that does harm comes from insecurity and fear. The only way to heal that in someone is to love them despite the hurt they cause. To recognize that we all have pain and fear in our hearts is the first step to cultivating compassion and forgiveness.

If we can feel that we have permission to take care of ourselves, we can heal. And when we heal we can bring our natural and radiant selves to the world. We are each a piece of this reality so to heal ourselves IS to heal the planet. We are not on the planet, we are of the planet, just like the birds and bees and clouds and trees. We are not other than nature and our sickness within is the sickness without.

Posted on

Social Pressure and Self-Judgement

‘I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.’

Bruce Lee

It is essential that we become familiar with the ways in which social pressures impact us. Our fellow humans project a monumental force that will wash over us like a tsunami if we allow tensions to build up and erupt in an earthquake of emotion. In reality, the power that social pressures have over us is projected and represents an externalization of our internal power to create. We generate the expectations that we expect others to have for us, then crumble under the weight.

It is essential to recognize that, ultimately, only self-judgement can throw us off our center. When others judge us, it will only penetrate us if we give it our belief. Because we lack confidence in ourselves, because we have not found our own ground to stand on, when others cast doubts towards us it triggers our own insecurity.

In contrast, for one who has explored themselves, their fears, desires, shortcomings and incredible potential, doubt applied from others loses its power to destabilize. Furthermore, if I am judging others, I am also judging myself. When we judge others, we tend to position ourselves as superior or inferior. In either case, we are placing self worth on a sliding scale and making comparisons between what we observe and our (often poorly defined) ideals.

By placing other people on this scale of “doing it right” vs “doing it wrong”, we frame reality in a way that ends up controlling the way we see ourselves. As a result, we limit our ability to express ourselves with trust and confidence. “Already enough” is the healing spell you can cast here. Speak it out loud and fill it with the power of your belief. “I am already enough!”, “he or she is already enough”.

Look deeply at your worldview. Where do you think your human life came from? Do you feel you were dropped into this world? Popped out of nothingness onto a planet in a vast cosmos of unknowability? No wonder we feel ungrounded. We MUST learn to shift our perspective to belonging. “I belong here, on this earth, living this life. I am a child of mother earth just as much as the animals and plants. I am nature. I am a small piece of this vast ocean of life, of Isness.”

Have you noticed how you feel that you don’t belong, that you have to prove yourself to qualify as a successful life? I went to meditate in the forest and as I sat there, working really quite hard to keep my attention focused, posture erect, to give off good vibes, to be worthy of sharing my presence with this patch of nature, a lizard scurried up a tree in front of me.

I remember being stunned by the ease and elegance with which this creature thrust the full weight of its body straight up the slick trunk of a mighty tree. In that moment it really clicked for me that we try so hard, but for what? So much of the effort with which we trudge our way though life is spent trying to justify ourselves. To prove that we are worthy of love, from our family, our friends, from ourselves.

That lizard taught me that if we relax into our own self-expression, we can achieve great feats without pushing so hard. We can manifest our most beautiful selves by realizing that we are already enough,  we are already a perfect expression of ourselves, there is nothing we must do to prove ourselves.

Now, this would be a really dangerous perspective for a society to take on, you might think. After all, without a sense of responsibility, how would anything get done!? I mean, look around at all the problems we need to fix, if people felt they were enough just as they are, nothing would get done! … Nonsense. When people are released from their inhibitions, they all have the desire to create something, to express something, to share something. The foundation of this universe, and therefore all of us, is creation. All expression is creation and all creation, expression. There is no iota of our life that is not creative self expression.

The way we slouch, how many moments our eyes rest on that particular spot, the tension in our jaws and shoulders, the words we speak, the tone with which we speak them. All of it is creation and all of it is expression. As we learn to work through our tensions, to bring our shadows out into the light, we expand our awareness, we expand our consciousness to encompass more of ourselves. We can then bring more deliberate action in our lives.

When we are not held hostage by limiting beliefs that we project onto ourselves through others, we unlock a special kind of freedom to explore the many ways we can hold ourselves and the many creations we can manifest. Our identity is not this body or this ego, we are the energy benders who can work towards mastering our art.

Life gives us energy, emotion gives us energy, danger gives us energy, the sun gives us energy, food gives us energy. The art of life is bending this energy into the forms of expression we truly want to manifest. When we can recognize and step out of the grooves of behavior that lock us into habitual patterns, when we can open ourselves up to ourselves and to the world, when we can be brave enough to stay vulnerable, that is when we can be free. Free to laugh and free to cry, free to dance and design and wonder.

You will never grow old if you retain the ability to look upon this existence with awe and wonder. We don’t know, and that’s okay. Not knowing is the state of openness that allows all wisdom to flow!