Blessed Be The Longing ..

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blue-bird-dream

Blessed be the longing that brought you here

And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire

That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease

To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

May the forms of your belonging–in love, creativity, and friendship–

Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

May the one you long for long for you.

May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness with which
your body inhabits the world.

May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.

May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

by John O’ Donohue

More poetry at the archives.

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LEARN TO GET OVER PROCRASTINATION AND NOT-GOOD-ENOUGH BS!

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birds-woman

”Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.’‘ – Marianne Williamson

Pretending to be small and powerless is not going to cut it anymore. Take THIS as a sign that it’s time to get over yourself and start doing the work you were meant to do; to share the unique gifts that have been so divinely bestowed upon you.

TRUST ME: YOU ARE REALLY FUCKING GOOD.

And clever, too. So clever, that all this time you’ve managed to deceive yourself into believing lies about why you couldn’t, when in fact you know very well that you can.

But knowing is not enough. You have to walk the walk. Do the work. TRUST.

Yes, it means facing all the what-ifs, and all the rest of those chickenshit fairytales. And, somebody is always gonna be pissed off by what you do or say. There is no helping that.

THE ONLY PERSON YOU WERE MEANT TO PLEASE IS YOU

When you decide to live the naked truth of who you really are; to step out courageously, despite your fears of inadequacy or ridicule, it’s gonna aggravate the hell out of those people who are still hiding behind façades of self deceit. And there will be some protesting.

Keep in mind, that you are doing these folks a favor by leading with your example of authenticity and courage. Let them bitch and complain, or unfriend you in Facebook – shocking. Who cares! Other people are not really the problem here. You have to come to terms with your fear of not being good enough – good enough for what or for who? – for YOU.

DON’T WAIT FOR READY TO HAPPEN

When I knew that writing a self-help blog was part of my life’s mission, I was terrified at first. Who am I to claim to be qualified to give any kind of advise? English is my second language, never made it past high school, and my grammar is a good guess. Mostly, I felt too messed up to help anyone else. I kept waiting for the day I would feel ”ready”. That day never came.

But I did go through some hard core life changing stuff, and hit a place where I didn’t give a fuck anymore about what anyone else thought. It’s beautiful when you get there. Sadly it doesn’t last. The same old fears creep in, and I have to face them, over and over again, until this small self learns how to shut up.

HERE’S WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT FEAR

Fear is that door in you that will lead you to your biggest leaps of growth. The bigger the fear, the bigger the growth. Fear, pain and discomfort are your most valuable teachers. No growth or real progress ever comes from happy. When you’re content and cruising on OK, what’s the hurry to improve? Therefore, fear is your lover and your best friend. Dance with it. It will show you where your greatest talents lie.

WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL RADICALLY ALIVE?

So, I ask you: is there something you’ve been procrastinating about doing forever? Something that gives you a rush of adrenaline so high, you don’t know whether to crawl under the bed and hide for the rest of your life, or step out to the light of your own greatness and shine like the crazy diamond you are?

This is your yellow brick road. Your true calling that will lead you to greatness. Yes, it will take some work like anything worthwhile in life, and you may have to slay a few hungry demons along the way. But it’s what you really need to DO to live your truth.

CAN YOU DEAL WITH YOUR OWN GREATNESS?

There is no contest going on here on how to be you. Nobody else can be YOU. Even if there are millions of people doing what you do, there will never be another expression of your very form of uniqueness and talent. And that makes you truly, infinitely priceless, and remarkably rare.

WHAT YOU DO IN THIS LIFE MATTERS A GREAT DEAL

No more of this second guessing bullshit. Go out there and live the dream. Stop wasting your life by doing something less than what makes your soul sing.

 

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Lakota Prayer

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Photo: Nahko Bear

Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery: teach me how to trust my heart, my mind, my intuition, my inner knowing, the senses of my body, the blessings of my spirit. Teach me to trust these things so that I may enter my sacred space and love beyond my fear, and thus walk in balance with the passing of each glorious sun.

- Lakota Prayer

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Small Reminder on Opening the Heart

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love without trust is like a river without water

“You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation… and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.” – Herman Hesse

Sometimes in life your heart just breaks open.. and is left sore and raw like a piece of steak. This is just what happens, and it’s okay.

It will keep happening until all your heartache turns into a river of trust. The river runs through you, into the ocean.. and becomes surrender. And the ocean loves you unconditionally, without fear. If you have spent enough time by the ocean, you know this is true.

Love is the absence of fear.

Nobody is there to stay in your life. Some stay longer than others, but not one can promise you permanence. People come and go, life happens, and it doesn’t make love any worse.

You will meet some people who are unable to respond to your love. But others will come who can receive and share your love.

Love will always come back, especially if you learn how to give love without fear of losing it.

Maybe it will arrive in ever so subtle ways, like rays of sunlight through a cracked door.. or a helpful gesture from a kind stranger. Rest assured, love is always there and you were never apart from it.

Take risks. Let people in. Love someone even if they’re not around. Love without any hope for return. Love because you can. When you allow yourself to love in this way, you grow expansive and fearless.

Above all – be grateful that you have a heart. And that heart was made to open. There is no other way to use it.

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Healing the Rejection Wound

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healing from rejection

 “Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.”  - C.G. Jung

What if this thing called rejection is only a story that the mind has conjured up to keep you from tasting the fullness of life? What if it’s preventing you from experiencing the bliss of a true intimate connection with another soul? When you look deep within, to the darkest cave of your past, do you see the light of consciousness shining toward you, beckoning you to soar higher.. until you can no longer cling to this dysfunctional pit of darkness?

Out of all experiences in life rejection is the one that seems to push our buttons hardest. No wonder we walk around with such a heavy emotional arsenal against it. A variety of defensive patterns that supposedly ”protect us” from getting hurt. Such as being overtly reclusive or independent, or getting caught in a shallow speed dating pattern, only so you can reject others before they reject you. These barriers only shut us down further, and prevent the healing. Most of us crave intimacy on a deep, primal level, yet we block access to it because of old protective mechanisms.

Let’s face it: everyone has experienced rejection at some point in their lives and it was never pretty.

Now you have two choices about it:

1. Do the work and heal this BS!

2. Ignore it and pretend to move on (bad idea!).

Re-living our stories we only deepen the scar. This often happens when we enter in a relationship trying to patch up the wound with other people who are broken in the same way – dating people who carry the same unprocessed scar. And before we realize it, the situation turns into one big rejection festival. Who left who? We have a way of hurting others in the same way that we have been hurt. Aaah.. it was the karma, you say. But this karma is only real if you were unaware of your story and chose to repeat it.

TAKE A LOOK IN THE MIRROR..

All rejection is really our inner self rejection projecting itself into outer reality. We unconsciously sabotage the operation because of core beliefs we harbor. Whether it is you that are doing the rejecting or being rejected, it’s all part of the same play. Most likely the person who seemingly rejected you carried an unacknowledged part of your story that you weren’t ready to own. If you were not aware of this until now, this is the one realization that will turn your life inside out – or more accurately – outside in. There is no one else to blame. What now? Can you see how you’ve been hiding from love because of this huge misunderstanding?

When you shift the focus on YOU alone, you can finally stop finding fault in outer circumstances and blaming other people. Then, find out how and why you are rejecting yourself. How do you keep yourself  ”safe” so you don’t have to experience rejection again? Where do you hold feelings of not being worthy of love? These are the blocks that cause repeated rejection to occur. By healing the rejection wound within yourself, you no longer attract this experience in your life.

CAN YOU ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS TRUTHFULLY?

In what ways have I not allowed love into my life?

Have I not forgiven someone who seemingly ”rejected me”?

What defense patterns do I engage in that keep me from loving and being loved?

Am I holding on to hurt from past relationships ending?

TRULY, IT’S ALL ABOUT SELF LOVE

“A cup that is already full has no room to receive.” – A Zen Proverb

If your cup is full of defenses and hurt from all those outdated rejection encounters, you have no room for receiving love.

Somewhere in your inner operating system there is a command that says: I am not worthy of love, or I am not good enough as I am. This prompt keeps you on automatic, no matter what your conscious wishes may be. If you think you can enter into a relationship and not have it end up in another rejection scenario, without doing the work of self forgiveness and healing, think again. These patterns don’t change until we do.

When we subconsciously send out signals of low self worth, what shoots back are situations and people that reflect it. Then we wonder why we keep getting into so-called rejection scenarios over and over again.

So find out what your inner blueprint says. Are you hiding a sense of worthlessness behind a facade of false pride, self directed sarcasm, rap about how none of this stuff even applies to you?

A quick way to see how much you really love yourself, is by taking a look at how people closest to you in your daily life are treating you. This is a direct barometer of your sense of self worth. The people closest to you, or their absence, can teach you most about how much you love yourself at this moment.

Remember that there is a bigger picture in every heartache. Life is really teaching you to love more – through the pain – even if it feels like a stagger in the heart. We continuously set ourselves up for rejection unless we truly learn how to accept and love ALL parts of ourselves. This is the journey back to wholeness.

THE RECOVERY PLAN

There is no express way to loving yourself more. It’s a matter of making the choice, and then following up with consistency and commitment to yourself, day by day.

When you start focusing on loving yourself and living life the way you want it, miracles start to happen. Suddenly, all these barriers start crumbling down. This is the single most valuable thing you can do to yourself and others. After all, all of your experiences and relationships arise from this place of unconditional love and acceptance of yourself.

Here is the way it works: the more genuine self love you can allow in (not talking about egoistical, self indulgent kind of love, but soul love), the more loving people and circumstances you will attract in your life. From a place of authentic self love, it is impossible to experience rejection, because there is nothing to reject!

DON’T LET THE PAST TELL YOU WHAT TO DO

Start living in the present moment, conscious of who you want to be TODAY. You have chosen this experience and finally understand what it was all about. Just process it, and choose to let go. Pain and joy are both part of life’s ebb and flow. They come and go. Don’t hold on to your pain for longer than necessary.

Ultimately, rejection is another story we tell ourselves to avoid being truly vulnerable and open. Allow the feelings to run through you without resistance, and realize that you were never truly rejected by anyone else, nor were they.

All we really need to do is LET GO of the stories that keep us from realizing the illusion of separateness.

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Love is an Inside Job

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ocean

“Greet yourself in your thousand other forms as you mount the hidden tide and travel back home.” – Hafiz

All my life I have been seeking for this elusive thing called love. But, looking for love hasn’t brought me any closer to it. Quite the opposite, actually.

Then, sometime ago I went through a trauma that woke me up. I had just lost a baby and left a painful relationship. I was so shattered that all I could do for weeks on end, was to lay on the floor and listen to silence.. it was somewhere in that silence that I entered an awareness where all desire for any kind of seeking dropped. As I laid on the floor week after week, I began to surrender to the pain and decided to listen to what it had to say. I was exhausted on all levels of my being, and there was just nowhere else to go.

To my surprise, what was underneath the pain was an ocean of Love. I felt how everything I had ever searched for was already in me; like a kaleidoscope that reflects an entire world in a single fragment. Separation no longer existed – I was one with everything I had ever sought for. This was home and I had been there before countless times, but somehow kept forgetting the way back. Seeking hadn’t brought me there. It was only after I stopped seeking, that a door opened.

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, they’re in each other all along..”  – Rumi

Have you ever been in a perfect relationship and still secretly yearned for more, for something deeper? We wander from one relationship to the next in search of the “one” true love.

Each time, when you look into your lover’s eyes, what do you see? A reflection of yourself.

We constantly buy into some counterfeit form of love: sex, romance, egoic attraction and so on. Then, we assign conditions and objects to this love. But, the love that needs a condition or a face is not the true story. You may be caught in the temporary delusion that love mysteriously appears when you meet a “match” or a certain condition is filled. When the conditions of your love affair fall out of favor, what is left of this love?

Sometimes, it takes many heartbreaks and fruitless quests to understand that romantic love is not what we ultimately seek.  

All the people, shapes and forms we fall in love with in the exterior world are only ripples on the surface of an endless, primordial ocean. In the end, romantic love can only remind us of the divine, unconditional, unchanging love that is our true home. It exists as a force of nature that secretly powers everything. Love can never leave you, because it’s what you’re made of. We are caught in a perpetual search for outside love only because we have forgotten this simple truth.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” -Rumi

I had understood the concept intellectually, and even felt it in fleeting moments, but it had never taken root until I had exhausted myself with suffering.

Finally, I saw that what my heart really longed for, was not a lover, but to return back to its source. True Love is not a question of finding anything or anyone to love, but remembering who you are.

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Choose a Better Reality

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Photography by Leea

“You create your own universe as you go along” – Winston Churchill

The country I grew up in had two TV channels at the time. That was all that was available. Then, a few years later they added a third one. By the time I was a teenager another one came.

I remember feeling overwhelmed by all these new channels that had popped up.

In the U.S alone, there are hundreds of channels. Television is like a micro-cosmos of life on earth: at each given moment, we choose which channel we wanna tune into.

When I watch TV I’m getting thoughts, ideas, and subconscious signals of somebody else’s pretended life. All my time, energy, and focus is being wasted on fiction, instead of what’s really happening – and more importantly, what could be happening if I wasn’t pouring my attention down the tube.

When you choose something on TV, it’s called entertainment. When you choose something in real life, it’s called manifesting your own reality. Both actions are governed by the same basic principles of energy.

Our lives are created by the choices we make. If you’re flipping through too many channels, you not only get sensory overload, but become de-sensitized to your choices and what’s really happening in your life.

What if I Can’t Choose What I Want?

Not being able to make up your mind is another type of choice; one that creates chaos and unpredictability. Some may call the result of this kind of choice ‘chance’ or ‘luck’.  Getting lucky simply means that somewhere along the line you made a choice without knowing it, and it happened to be in alignment with your best wishes. If you were unlucky you made a choice that was in alignment with you fears; what you didn’t want.

Frequently, we are unconscious of our choices. Having gazillion channels buzzing around creates static, and makes it more difficult to discern your own truth from fiction.

If there’s fear, lack and confusion in your life, then take a look at the channels you’ve been tuning into. What has your attention and intention been focused on lately?

What About Other People’s Choices?

Everyone has a channel. We are all stars in our own reality show. If two channels merge by conscious intent, the frequency shifts and the channels can become co-creators of the same show. Multiplied by many viewers, the channels’ power grows. This is how realities are created: choice, attention and focused intent.

You can’t consciously create your own reality when you’re caught up in someone else’s drama.

What other people choose does not matter, unless their wishes happen to align with yours. If they choose the opposite of what you want, there’s nothing you can do, apart from undertaking futile resistance. Your channel is your own making.

Change The Channel

All our experiences are created by the choices we make and the intentions behind the choice. Choose what is most significant and relevant to you, and use the power of your attention, focus and will to align with the outcome you want.

There is nothing else standing between the life you wanna lead and where you stand currently, except these three very powerful steps. If you don’t like what’s playing in your life, change the channel. It’s about as simple as that.

Furthermore, get off CNN, Facebook, Twitter (after you Tweet this post) and whatever else is distracting you and start focusing on the life YOU want to create.

 

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Living Through Addictions

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Photography by Martin Marcisovsky

“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” -Carlos Castaneda

Earlier in my life I was addicted to drugs. Then alcohol. Then martial arts. Then adrenaline. Anything that made me forget the pain would do. Later, I became addicted to knowledge and learning. At the moment, I am addicted to chocolate pudding and Bob Dylan.

Nearly everyone has some form of addiction. Addictions are born from the belief that we are not complete as we are. That we need to look outside ourselves for something that will fill the void, complete us in someway, and take away the pain. Rather than going through the emotions, we reach for something to numb them out.

It doesn’t matter what your addiction is to – booze, love, sex, drama, even spiritual teachings – it all comes from the same source of incompleteness. We think that people, thoughts, or things outside of us can fill that bottomless pit of hunger in our being.

Feelings and thoughts come and go. That’s all that the pain is – just a feeling that needs to pass through, so you can learn from it.

I’ve had friends and family members who have died from addictions. Because they never faced the source of their pain. What a waste. Often, we spend more energy in trying to avoid the pain, than it would take to just look at it and let it come out. So, that’s what it was all about? Some rejected feelings that got blown out of proportion.

Reality check.

If you are addicted to something you are out of touch with your emotions and need to ask yourself the following questions:

What do I avoid and reject?

What emotions have I not allowed myself to fully process and feel?

What truth about my life have I not faced?

If you don’t meet your pain, it will come to meet you. Chances are you will be out of your favorite drug-of-choice when it happens. Then what? You can either face the pain directly or perish. Accept the reality of this moment or exhaust yourself by fighting and resisting it.

The emotional band-aid that the addiction provides disappears as easily as it came to be. Then, we’re left with the void again; in an endless cycle of seeking external fulfillment. The pain never goes away by hiding it. It’s always there, only numbed out and in exile. I’ve realized with my own addictions over the years, that I can never escape something that is part of me. I can only accept it, try to understand it and then transform it.

Truth is that nothing “out there” can complete us. Because we are already complete, only somehow we’ve forgotten this. Feeling the pain is vital. The more we allow ourselves to feel, the more understanding we develop, and the more healing can take place.

There is no right or wrong. It’s all just LIFE.

We think of something as good or bad, right or wrong, because we were born with the idea of separation and duality. Black and white. Hot and cold. Pain and pleasure.

Putting labels on everything makes us more comfortable. But, can we ever really and truly know what something is? It surely doesn’t get any better because we know. To know that I am in pain doesn’t bring any relief.

You can call it what you want, join groups and try to force yourself out of the addiction, but you’re never gonna be in complete recovery, until you understand and process the root of the pain.

Besides, nobody is perfect.

There is no such a thing as perfection. It’s only a story you’ve made up.

I still struggle with the search of external happiness from time to time. What helps me get through it, is that I allow myself to feel the pain and emptiness, and to make mistakes.

If we knew without a question of a doubt, and not just as an abstract thought, that we are all connected to one source of life, would there be a need to search for something on the outside to complete us? I think not. We would understand that we already are, and have everything we could ever want – and most importantly – that we are never alone.

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Why we Choose Difficult Relationships

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hard relationships

“We are attracted to people who express the qualities we deny or repress in ourselves.”

-Shakti Gawain

You keep going to the same restaurant year after year, ordering the same stuff. It’s comforting and you feel good when you’re eating it. But when you get home you feel sick to your stomach. You couldn’t resist because it’s your favorite junk food!

Relationships are like this too. We have our favorite subconscious pattern that we keep ordering, again and again – only with different people and various appetizers.

When we get sick we blame the restaurant, then the cook, or the food itself.

The Truth is That You Placed The Order

Last year I entered into a relationship that seemed fairytale-like at first. After a few months, the turbulence kicked in, and I realized I was in the same situation as in all my previous relationships: feeling rejected and abandoned.

In the past, I’ve chosen men that were unavailable, in one way or another. Then usually some kind of abandonment scenario would ensue.

It’s the exact opposite of what I consciously want. Yet, it’s what I’ve been getting nearly every time.

So, What’s Going on?

We enter into significant relationships to work out our major issues, often established in early childhood.

As a child, you have no filter for what’s wrong or right, you simply absorb whatever is going on. If one of your parents left, or there was any kind of abuse going on; be it mental, verbal or physical, rest assured that you will be acting out your dramas with your partners. It’s a subconscious play that repeats itself until the wound is healed.

Relationships are no play date. Being in one is much like holding a mirror to your deepest fears. This is what you need to face, learn and let go. Consequently, that’s what you get until you do.

You Can Call it Karma or Law of Attraction..

We choose our partners because they resonate to the same underlying emotional patterns we hold. This connection holds a key to something we need to resolve and heal. This is the soul’s way of pushing us to the next level in our evolution.

Early Abandonment Issues?

My father was not around much. When he was there, he would retreat into his own world, leaving to work on cars until late at night. This was his way of escaping the family life that he really didn’t want. He simply wasn’t emotionally or physically available for most of my life.

Naturally, my mother felt abandoned. Finally, she left me and my father after years of deep unhappiness and resentment. I was left growing up by myself, since my dad was largely unavailable and did not know how to function in the parenting world.

Acting Out Subconscious Patterns

As children we have no other playground for relationship models except those of our parents. This was the relationship blueprint I had taken on from early childhood: I keep choosing men that are emotionally or physically unavailable, so I can avoid truly connecting, in fear of abandonment. It’s pretty obvious where I picked that one up.

If you were abandoned or felt rejected by one or both of your parents, you might be stuck in a similar relationship pattern.

Don’t Re-live the Past

Anyone who has been in a long term relationship has likely repeated their traumas a few times over, leaving hurt and wondering what the hell happened in the end.

We keep re-living our past, until we become conscious of the underlying patterns, and start to do the work that is required to overcome the dysfunctions.

Take Responsibility

Avoiding your problem or projecting it on someone else is a foolproof recipe for conflict and separation. Have a look the issue that keeps popping up as a common theme in your relationships. Are you seeing the pattern yet?

Once you’ve chosen to take responsibility for your repressed emotions, you will come to see that you’re attracting difficult relationships and connections for a reason: to heal your past and mature beyond the wounded ego.

Look at Things From Both Sides

It’s easy to get stuck in drama and hurt when you only see your side of the story. Try to look at things from your partner’s perspective. Doing this opens you up to the empathy that both need, in order to resolve any conflict.

What was his childhood like? What were the major events that took place in his life? How did his past relationships end? Look into his early traumas, and put yourself in his place. How do your past experiences mirror his?

What if it Doesn’t Work Out?

If only one party is ready to work on resolving deeper issues, the relationship will likely terminate, and usually not in a pretty way.

Be willing to learn from the experience, instead of lingering in the pain and hurt of past stories, and you will be ahead of the game next time around.

There is a valuable lesson in every difficult or painful seeming relationship. If you do not see the lesson, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. You have simply chosen not to look at it, and are surely in for a repeat course.

Quote Wisdom:

“We do not attract what we want, but what we are” -James Lane Allen

“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each guest has been sent as a guide from beyond” –Rumi

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