Oftentimes we are so absorbed in our own story. We claim our suffering to be so unique to us.
It’s not.
It’s historical suffering.
“First you have to understand that your are dreaming all the time,” I don’t remember the full quote of Don Miguel Ruiz, author of “The Four Agreements”.
But this snippet of wisdom captures it so well.
What we think is reality, is a creation of our thougths. Fully.
When you think about your past and your future? What are you thinking about?
You are thinking thoughts that are conditioned by your upbringing, by the media, by the story you have been told about what is possible and what is not possible…
You are retelling yourself the same story over and over again until you belief that this is reality.
If you’d drop these thougths, what would be possible?
Oh my god, there is soooooo much revelation taking place right now.
I know that you are experiencing the similar.
It is the removal of the roadblocks.
For some of us it is a painful removal. Like a surgical intervention.
For some it is smooth – the most natural process. Like the opening of a flower.
One has to deal with freedom. It can be painful to let go of the patterns.
Painful to understand that all the turmoil was created in your head in the fist place.
The anger and frustration is what comes up. But then there is the relief. Laughter. The dance of joy!
You freakin’ did it!!!
And yes, it was that simple.
Nevertheless there is no reason to shame yourself.
You had to live through it all in order to become aware of the lessons.
What is happeing to me?
I’m becoming aware of the lightness I am built of. All density is created. All trauma is imposed – partly self-imposed.
I am able to forgive myself and everyone around me. Because we are all the result of our circumstances. And we are all lovable with everything we are.
There is no one to blame. So I take action whole-heartedly.
I stand up. I stand in my power for once and for all. With you.
Drop your expectations completely. This is how everything resolves. No strings attached. There is nothing to expect. No outcome is ever the same. Expect absolutely nothing.
Oh my god I found the key to everything. How could I not understand this all the way?
I am LOADED with expectation. Expectation of how I should feel. Expectation of how I ought to react. Expectation of what I am about to make sense of…
The solution is to let it all go. To enter into a state of meditation in every single moment of my life with every single cell of my body.
I let the appreciation flow through me and connect the dots of being alive.
My cells, my lungs, my body. The air. Nutrients. All of it belongs to me like I belong to this earth.
Today is a day of insights, a morning of stream of consciousness.
It is one of those moments when I understand that I am not doing it for me. I am not walking the path for the sake of walking it. I am not even sure if I am walking it.
I am experiencing transformation because my life experience is crucial for the life experience of everyone around me – everyone I influence with my being.
What I am talking about here is not my professional influence or what I am saying or not saying within my social relations. It is not about my writing, because this is what I am doing for myself.
It is about how I show up energetically (or not).
Recently there seems to be a challenging time for a lot of us.
I can feel the collective purge – the RELEASE of “old” emotions or life experience.
I witness it first hand by witnessing the processes of my friends.
The unbearable breaks open.
What was closing off is what is causing the opening – of “the path” and of the heart…
New beginnings appear on the horizon. Out of nowhere.
And what is beyond the horizon is unknown.
And that is where we want to go:
There is this big big big misconception around the spiritual path.
There seems to be some sort of cultural narrative (maybe it is within my perception because I am part of the narrative, which makes it even more pressuring to share this thought as unfiltered as possible.)
The narrative is being told on social media platforms. The images shown are flawless. The spiritual path seems to be paved with beauty. It appears to be a chronological process – and incorporation of THE beauty.
But guess what?
THIS IS NOT THE PATH.
The path is beauty, yes.
But “the way” is hard.
Yes, there are the souls that are awake. They are born into awake beings.
But, we, us, the ones who are reading this (I reckon’) are the ones who have to eat the sh*t.
We have to plough that dirt – the most nourishing ground that we have. Our beautiful ugly life experience, our suffering that is us.
It is within us. It’s our feelings, our wrong-doings, our mistakes, our painfully covered truth that’s sooo crooked. It hurts.
The old skin that wants to be shed but it is so “intergrown” with our lives, entangled with our conditionings. There is one thing I am more certain than ever: There is no way around it. The untangling is what will release a ton of energy. We know it deep down inside (not as far down as we think).
Our imagination can help us to give the push, but we have to make the move and trust.
The thing about that is: There is no reason not to trust.
This reminds me of a quote I read in a philosophy magazine called “Hohe Luft”: “Being satisfied with life can be an act of rebellion in times where thriving to be the best version of ourselves became the way of being.”
To trust is also an act of rebellion in times where deterioration is everything that is being broadcasted.
And the counter movement? Is BLINDFOLING our true feelings – burrying the truth….
The thing is: We don’t need a movement. All we need is to trust in our own abilities. And with abilities I mean the gifts that we have inherited, our DNA that is allowing us to receive information and process information within our physical body.
YES, our truth IS our feelings.
Trust exists independently from what is going on in the external.
Truth is subsisting. It is us.
Yes, I am saying: “TRUST! NO MATTER WHAT!”
Trust – whatever feeling arises. Trust – no matter which decision is “the right” decision. Trust – in your sadness, in your despair, in your anger, even – in your addiction or let’s say in “your awareness of your addiction”.
TRANSFORM IT BY BEING IT. LIVE THROUGH IT. This is how you overcome it.
It is so simple that I would like to scream it from the top of my lungs.
I invite trust.
I invite you to purge all of your emotions, to go all in, to feel it all and move on. You will see the next step. Help will appear out of nowhere.
In the introduction round I was all fired-up. For the first time in a while I felt super excited about writing my heart out: “I will finally give it ago and do some stream of consciousness today.” I announced with a solar smile. I felt the urge to just hit the keyboard and go for it…
When the timer started, I was not able to finish even one sentence.
From one moment to the other I tensed up and could barely type a thing.
I started to reorganize some past writing – and I tensed up even more.
“What’s the point of all of that?”
The casual question for purpose made me close my laptop.
The next morning I had a conversation with my boyfriend. I was ruminating about career decisions and life in general.
He said: “While you think all these thoughts, watch your breath.”
“I am not breathing at all,” I countered with a trace of outrage.
“Right, if you look that closely at every moment you don’t have time to breathe – and you don’t experience the moment either. Just let it flow.”
He left me in awe.
Open-mouthedly I starred at the wall.
All of a sudden I understood what was missing the day before – at the writing meet-up… And all these previous days when I felt trapped in my own head – waiting for release that never comes.
FLOW.
The flow of breathe – not despite but united with my thoughts.
I took a breath and finally surrendered to the moment….
“What’s harder? Accepting that you are happy and blessed or resonating with your trauma?”
This is a question that found its way into my notes at some point in 2021.
All of a sudden there was light at the end of the tunnel – after a dark period of loss and despair (Let’s call it “the year 2020”). I had a new job in sight and a relationship I was in (and still am) turned out to be a safe haven for…my chaos, my love and my growth….
Unwittingly I had arrived in a place where I am ‘allowed’ to flourish – in all shapes and colors.
“Yesterday it rained and today the sun is shining. One has to deal with that.”
The quote describes accurately the situation that I had found myself in last year. Even though things got significantly better, the self-doubt was lurking and fight-flight-freeze often the only response to stressful experiences.
“Yesterday it rained and today the sun is shining. One has to deal with that.”
The thing is: We humans tend to resonate with trauma and with worry more than we resonate with happiness.
It is incredibly hard to resonate with happiness if we have re-created and cultivated trauma-responses in our lives early on.
For example: If we are programmed to disregard our own needs or goals in order to protect or impress a parent and/or to harmonize the relationship dynamics within our family, most likely we will carry out self-destructive behaviours in our adult life. We might neglect our personal goals or our health.
Until we learn to prioritize ourselves…
How Far Did I Get With Displaying The Same Behaviours?
We all have developed mechanisms that help us to be accepted within our tribe, but there is a possibility that we have buried parts of ourselves and a whole lot of potential beyond these survival tactics.
There are Psychologists like Gabor Maté or Neuroscientist Bessel van der Kolk who devoted their work to understanding the dynamics of trauma. And how we can train our brains to move “through” the trauma.
I’m taking a short-cut here: What trauma research has shown is that trauma affects our brain physically and as a result it changes our behaviour.
The great thing about that: We are able to transform our coping-mechanisms to some degree – thanks to neuroplasticity.
And I experienced it first hand – basically by starting this blog (which still astonishes me!!!).
At some point I asked myself:
How far did I get with displaying the same behaviours over and over again?
Not that far – so why not try something else? The opposite, for example!
And this brings me to the first insight that helped me to change my relationship with self-sabotage:
1. Belief What Other People Are Telling You About Yourself
About two years ago I was in a state where I had no choice anymore. I had to ask for help.
The global crisis was incredibly aligned with my personal crisis: I reached rock bottom when the pandemic forced me to “go home”. Apart from travel life my whole idea about romantic love got smashed and my mom got cancer. I had no idea what to do next.
I knew one thing: I couldn’t trust myself, because I had been misleading myself very far off from my core… I did not know where I begin and where I end – boundaries still appeared to be a foreign concept to me.
How did this happen? Apparently I was constantly re-traumatizing myself! The more I learnt about trauma-responses, the subconscious and the biochemical processes in my body, the more I understood in which way I had created my own reality:
How do we create reality? We filter, segment and value the information that we receive – partly subconsciously.
I thought negatively about myself, because I never really learnt to prioritize my own needs. I always functioned as some sort of “emotional buffer”. Within my family and in friendships often times I found myself in the role of a rescuer – or mediator (best case scenario).
So, what did this do to my thinking? I filtered mainly the negative information out of every situation and every conversation that proved my self-image to be right. Subconsciously I programmed myself into thinking: “I am not worthy.”
This way my lack of self-confidence became a self-fulfilling prophecy… UNTIL: I had to ask for help, because I felt mentally and physically unprepared to deal with the changes that presented themselves in my life.
Slowly I opened up to coaches and therapists. I talked to my friends and other people who helped me to recover my own resources:
my determination towards growth
my willingnesss to learn
my resilience
my “spiritual tools” like yoga and meditation
my love for nature
and last but not least: My ability to relate to others and my compassion for all beings (connection to the planet).
Finally I experienced a sense of self-worth.
It dawned on me: What if I trusted? What if I’d believe in the positive things people are seeing in me or telling me about myself? (Much, much earlier in my journey I had started to cultivate a diary of compliments, which helped me to collect positive things about myself. Maybe I should start this again.)
2. Make a Different Choice – NOW
I had nothing to lose.
Looking back this sensation gave me a never felt freedom amidst a personal crisis. A freedom that gave me an opportunity to choose a different direction and at the end a whole other way of being!
Today, I made the choice:
“I’m going to press the publishing button – no matter what.”
This is what I owe myself – a commitment to my own writing journey, my own growth (even if it hurts).
And this is also what I did in the darkest moments of my life: I made the choice to think positive. To trust into the universe.
Sometimes we need to make a different choice – just for the sake of it!
Just for the sake of “trying something new”. As simple as that.
In my experience this is the way to go in order to live a different life.
Sometimes any action is better than no action – in order to get out of deep discomfort, the writer’s-block or in order to change anything in life…
It can be the tiniest step, but it will be a step in a new direction – towards a new life!
3. Appreciate Your Gifts
Retrospectively my willingness to open up to possibility led me onto the path of becoming a professional coach! (I will share more about that “right on time”.;) How? I had asked for feedback. I received feedback that helped me to start valueing my abilities. And now I am starting to implement the changes into my life.
All of a sudden my brain created the following questions: What if I had something to share? What if other people could benefit from my life experience? What if I’d drop the self-sabotage-agenda?