Day 12 - A Year to Clear - Look Up

Photo by Majid Sadr on Unsplash

Lesson 12: Look Up

Today’s lesson is to look up from the computer screen and recognise something of beauty. Taking a minute to really use awareness and focus on the details. Focusing on how it makes me feel.

I got up from my computer at work and looked out the window. I like being in a high rise being able to look outside. I like looking at the cars move with unity and people walking going about their day. I especially like how tiny everything looks at this level and that everything below looks like toys to play with. I can see the beach in the distance and it is a gloomy day today in Melbourne, so grey fills the city. I watch the clouds move and think about how free it looks up there. There is a rooftop garden that’s empty but the layout looks carefully architectured from my point of view. Looking at all the other buildings often makes me wonder how great it must have been to have been the designer of such structures. How someone must have looked up at their creation and thought “I did this” and how magnificent that must feel. I am always in awe of concrete jungles and what it must have taken to build such a city.

What I do notice is that it’s very calming. To be able to not focus on anything else but what I’m seeing. I often wonder what all those people down there are thinking about. But there is a beauty in just being an observer to the outside world. There’s a stillness and peaceful feeling with no sound to accompany what I’m seeing. Just being appreciative of being where I am is enough.

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.

Day 3 - A Year of Spiritual Awakening - Karmic Crossings

Lesson 3: You will have many karmic crossings...

I honestly had to google karmic crossings as this a foreign concept to me. I wasn't sure if that meant you've done things that causes karma to come back to you, and in a way, it is yes. Karmic crossings focuses on the souls you've come across in your journey, whether this lifetime or another that serve a soul lesson. They can be described as soul mates, as everyone that crosses your path is a soul mate, but the level of complexity of these particular relationships is how learn in this particular life time. There are 3 karmic crossings, I learned: Neutral Karmic Crossings, Complex Karmic Crossings and Cooperative Karmic Crossings.

• Neutral Karmic Crossings are those people you interact with but don't really teach you any lessons. They don't bear much energy, cross your path but aren't in your immediate soul circle. Examples of this are acquaintances you meet through a friend, a short dating stint you had back in the day, a person you interacted briefly on the train - short and quick that you would probably never remember.
• Complex Karmic Crossings are those people you interact with that present big karma, soul lessons. They are usually so full of drama that they aren't completed in this lifetime. This usually involves abuse, anger, resentment, betrayal etc. There are larger lessons to learn that each party will learn from but it's good to let go of the unhealthy toxic relationships because you'd be resolving this in other lifetimes to come or you're dealing with this from a previous lifetime.
• Cooperative Karmic Crossings are meant to be those you seek out for life. They are deep relationships that can work through the lower and negative lessons to transform into a cooperative beautiful transcendence of love, support, kindness and patience.

So details of the Lesson Three: You will have many karmic crossings in this lifetime. Those who surround you now are familiar to you; most of them, you have known before. If you are jumping levels of consciousness in this lifetime, some karmic crossings, some relationships, may be new.

The exercise is to consider now, who is with you on your journey and what karmic lessons are you learning.

I don't want to reiterate yesterday's post fully, but I find that Joanna, Debra and Nasiha are definitely cooperative karmic crossings - those within my soul circle, transforming into their true selves and teaching me that it's okay for me to be myself, see me in my own development and I have the rawest conversations with. 

If I am thinking about outside this soul circle, I have many cooperative karmic crossings. I do have one major complex karmic crossing which is my relationship with my dad. I don't usually like to call him dad as I don't think he fathered me well, he mentally and emotionally abused me, and I cut that toxic relationship out of my life for now. When I am ready to forgive, then I will reestablish that relationship. When I think of all my cooperative karmic crossings, that would involve any person in my life at present. I have worked hard to cut negative people out of my life and when I spot toxicity, I'm quick to distance myself from it. It's not to say that I'm above it, but I would like to try and avoid it with a 10 foot pole.

When I think of friends that helped me in my life, Brett, Ben and David are friends who immediately welcomed me to Melbourne during a very tumultuous time, as I'd just broken up with my ex, moved interstate and they were the first set of friends, that I truly relied on to get me out of my funk. It wasn't necessarily to talk about my feelings, but to gain some independence, and knowing that I had the strength to stand on my own 2 feet. They are still good friends to this day.

Colin, gets a mention because even though I bonded over the Flash and Arrow (DC TV Series), this guy cares more about his friends more than he cares to admit. I feel like sometimes he stresses himself worrying about us. I met Colin through Ben and probably should have met him 5 years prior to my actual meeting with him, but I guess, he came into my life when he was supposed to. He has been there during my most darkest moments. He's fun, loving, shares my sci fi passion and has got all the time in the world for his friends- something I do cherish and sometimes forget to share myself.

Amena is a friend I met through work. Didn't know if I'd get along with her if I'm going to be honest, as when paired together, we look like the most unnatural of friendships, but I think this is why it works so well. I think I came into her life so she could express herself more, not having to be closed off all the time and she came into mine, so I can be more bold. It doesn't matter what people think, just be who you are. Fuck the haters, so to speak.

I could go on listing people but these are the people on my current journey (I would say those in my Melbourne life) that stand out for major karmic crossings. Every friend has made impact, but these are my friends who came at stand out points in my life of recent times. Whether it was tragedy, loss, hard times, transformation and transition, these friends have helped guide me whether they know it or not. I am grateful for their presence in my journey as I am all my friends and family.