Day 163 - A Year to Clear - It's Not About You

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Lesson 163: It's Not About You

We all feel a rant coming on from time to time when someone has challenged us, abused trust, offended us or even neglected us. We allow anger or frustration to arise because that can be a natural reaction. Today we are to change the shift in how we react to those types of situations with a four word reminder “hurt people hurt people”. Anything that gets thrown to us may not necessarily be about us and is about the other person’s pain.

The only thing I can say that in regards to this lesson is that there will be times when someone has challenged you because you’ve done something wrong. I can say that this can occur at work and you’ve made a decision that doesn’t fit in with the business rules for instance, so therefore I think this type of challenge is valid. I think when you’ve stuffed up, there will be times when it’s about you and has nothing to do with someone else projecting their pain onto you – it’s a matter of recognising when someone else flinging their pain towards you and when you’re actually at fault.

I do also feel that sometimes there are times when I’m angry when it’s not someone projecting their pain onto me. It’s just a situation I get frustrated at and need to vent. This is not about someone flinging their pain onto me either.

Ok with that out of the way, there are times when I have felt the pain of others onto me. This usually comes out in a frustration and then projecting on or towards me. I listen because I care and try to understand the person’s situation. I try to reason and just listen. It doesn’t always work because that person’s frustration then becomes my own. Sometimes I vent out their frustrations and pain or it transforms into my own life. Sometimes I get angry at things and I’m not even sure why. This is why this lesson is valuable. I have to stop and think about whether what I am feeling is actually mine or not. Having to take a moment and think about it, is something I need to be more conscious of. It’s hard to do when you’re just going off on a rant, not realising that it might not even be your frustrations you’re going on about. Again, this takes practise but now we can be more aware right?

Did this lesson make you think about the pain you’re taking on from others and what you can do to identify if it’s yours or not?

Day 65 - A Year of Spiritual Awakening - People Try to Numb Themselves

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Lesson 65: Many times, people try to numb themselves...

 There would have come a time in your life where we’ve numbed ourselves to pain. This is usually done via distractions and addictions such as sex, drugs, alcohol, media, exercise, eating, shopping etc. These measures we take upon ourselves are very much to forget the pain, push it aside or just simple to ignore. Whatever the circumstances, we all have our own reasons for our actions. I don’t really judge because I feel we’ve all been there one way or another.

Today is all about recognising addictions/distractions and if I think I have solved any problems with it. In addition to this, have these addictions/distractions actually numbed you to these types of problems. The point of the exercise is that by having these addictions/distractions, it doesn’t allow our heart to be open.

There was a past me very much addicted to TV but it’s not the first thing I think of when I want to do something now. I think TV is very much a form of escapism for many people but I don’t use it to escape anymore. I think I use TV now more for enjoyment of the story, for those times when I have a very heavy day and am mentally drained, it’s good to just have something simple to follow to relax. I think TV was a distraction because I didn’t want to do things to improve my life.  I used to be addicted to shopping because I always felt like I had to impress people with what I had. With my own spiritual development and wanting to have less environmental impact, I’ve stopped being a consumerist in this way. It’s very much a setback thinking you have to look good because some famous person uses and endorses a product. I guess I’m just waking up to the world we live in.

I am willing to admit that when I first moved from Perth to Melbourne I was in a bad state after my break up. I was very much consuming alcohol because I wasn’t really dealing with my feelings. I used alcohol to just numb my pain. Some days I would go out every night drinking. That’s as bad as it got until it started impacting work and that was my wake up call. It actually didn’t solve any problems and distracted me from dealing with my feelings. I wouldn’t say that’s it has completely numbed me. I think I just needed numbing at the time.

And I recognise that I am a bit addicted to my phone. I can’t go an hour without checking it – what’s on Facebook? Did anyone like my posts on Instagram? What’s going on through Snapchat? I am very much aware of this addiction to social media or using our phones in general, and I am actively trying each day to spend less time on it. I think, like everyone else, it’s very much part of our lives in this day and age, and it’s about stepping back. I can’t say it’s to overcome a problem though. I just have this urge to know what’s going on with useless news really. I’m trying to overcome it slowly.

When I was reading this lesson, I thought wouldn’t exercise be a good thing to do for overall positive health? But then I realised sometimes people use exercise as a cover-up for something else. I mean, maybe people don’t even realise that it can be a distraction also? If there is one thing I need more of in my life, it’s exercise, though definitely want to do it for the right reasons.

Anyway, this has been a revealing post and I don’t mind sharing my life. Think about your addictions and think about what good it can be to allow your heart to be open. Even just saying your addictions and distractions out loud may be all you need to be aware and set yourself up for release.
 

Day 5 - A Year to Clear - New You

Lesson 5: New You

This week's lesson focuses on the "New You", but in actuality, it has always been inside you. This version of yourself seems new to you but actually isn't. Behind all the layers, there is the truest version of yourself. You may envision your "New You" as a playful and curious child or an old lady reminiscing about her successful life. So the question is asked "What does your "new you" look and feel like?"

I see myself as a discoverer - a person amazed by wonder. When I learn, it excites me. Even though I'm doing it now, I feel like there is so much more potential. My "new" me is more carefree and not bogged down by trivial matters. She is free-spirited and really indulges in life, is full of laughter and has all the time in the world for everyone. She loves every being and everything the universe has to offer. I always envision her running around in a field on a mountain that overlooks more of nature's gifts. She is always surrounded by good people who appreciate her journey. 

This is the person I strive for. This is the person I'm going to be. There is nothing stopping me from being this person.

Day 4 - A Year to Clear - What is Clutter?

Lesson 4: What is Clutter?

When I think of clutter, I think of myself hoarding all these unnecessary items that I tend to not use or keep for some memory. I always think of physical clutter and what we create in our homes as being the clutter that plagues me. This lesson included a video that outlined that when the body is out of balance mentally such as bad thoughts, loss and tragedy, and fear, this becomes the invisible clutter. Both visible and invisible clutter stops us from becoming our best and true selves. The video went through why we get overwhelmed and how we can slowly, but surely, overcome this.

We live in such a fast paced environment, that it's no wonder we sometimes crash and burn and lose passion for things we love and become lost. We tend to get stressed and don't realise the impact on our lives and our self. When we do have a build of stress, it can make us overwhelmed which is caused by the fight or flight mode that goes off in our brain, which is a reaction to fearful thoughts, uncomfortable situations, attachment and when we're emotionally charged. The problem is, it's hard to switch off. We unconsciously can't stop it from cycling through over and over. This feeling then leads to procrastination and avoidance.

There is a way to break through overwhelm with 3 consistent steps Stephanie Bennett Vogt mentions:
1 - We need to slow down
2 - We need to focus on tasks that don't trigger a reaction in our brain
3 - We need to be consistent in our effort daily
Stephanie used an example of a messy desk with paper everywhere, rubbish piling up and everything unorganised. The most impulsive thing we tend to do is avoid it altogether or try to tackle in one go, but she advises to take a gentle approach to get over this problem. Her method is Reduce and Repeat. The way to reduce the area is to spend focus and time on the task, but then to have awareness to in repeating the task every day until it's complete. SO, if all you can do is move one paper clip per day, do that but repeatedly and consistently. It's all about small steps, one breath at a time with all the awareness you can put together, and you keep repeating this, until it feels good.

Don't let the overwhelm talk you out of it when you think you have so much to clear! Being consistent and aware is the key. Stephanie mentions when you take a slow approach, it creates new neural pathways in the brain that triggers good habits and makes you feel good. This will have a flow on effect onto other aspects of your life. You can do Repeat every day for 1 minute. Stephanie asks you to focus on one thing that causes you frustration or stress, close your eyes, note how it makes you feel, take deep breaths - to me it is like meditating on it. After a week, you might find you slow down and simplify so it may not cause you stress anymore. The exercise is to do this now and answer the following:

• After doing the closed-eye exercise I noticed______
• Surprising ways that clutter shows up in my life are______
  
  My outcomes:
• After doing the closed-eyed exercise I noticed, I still have quite a few belongings that I want to sort as part of a recent declutter of my house.
• Surprising ways that clutter shows up in my life are people buying me things I don't need or me rearranging my house and realising there is more and more items to get rid of.

Day 4 - A Year of Spiritual Awakening - Time

Time is pure mirage

Lesson 4: The idea of time is pure mirage. Time exists in the same energy plane as all energy. Thus, it is created of particulate energy, infinitely expanding and contracting.

The exercise asked me how does time work for me. Do I have too little, do I have too much? What is your concept of time? If it didn't work in the way you believe it does, how would you feel if there was no concept of too little or too much time? If not measured in any way, would you do anything different?

So the concept of time.... Well, I am not a full scientist to conceptualise the spacetime argument, mostly because I haven't read about it also! Haha! My concept of time is really based on the human construct of a ticking clock and the Gregorian calendar. My whole concept of time is based on how I plan my days towards a calendar, and that my whole work/life balance is based on the times of day to this calendar, which consists of 24 hours in a day. The only other concept of time I've encountered when growing up is the Islamic Calendar because my mother is Muslim. 

I recently attended a book launch of Ly De Angele's book called The Skellig and she talked about what is time? That she didn't know if Apollo the God or Apollo the spaceship came first, as an example. This really opened my eyes to a different way of thinking. If we were to see time as just infinitely expanding, then where do we really fit into the grand scheme of things? Is time just constantly morphing and seeping into different periods of life and everything can exist at the same time? It really becomes a philosophical question at that point. Anyway, if I didn't have the concept of a calendar, I wouldn't know where my 9-5 job would fit in because I'd happily be enjoying everything else I wanted to do in life. If that was something that had to be part of my life, I'd spend a great amount of time to avoid it. Then I would go about changing my life and then doing more to heal the earth and its beings. From there, I would want to see how other people live during different periods and connect with them in order to understand how they lived. Imagine meeting an ancestor for the first time and seeing how they lived? If you could project yourself to the big bang or the end of the universe, would you do it? I would. I have a few sci-fi fantasies coming at play here. If "time" could be warped in such a way, I'd be out discovering the universe and the earth during different "time" periods. 

It's definitely a good thought provoking question. I find it difficult to answer. I would love to know where I came from through bloodlines and look at what the universe looks like beyond our observable edge. But if we're talking immediate life, I'd focus more on my creative goals.