listen to our feelings, be deeply honest with ourself, connect with our breathing, constantly come into present moment awareness using our five senses, feel the constancy of our own presence, do things we enjoy and love, exercise, sleep well, yoga, meditation, have delicious healthy food, spend time in nature, focus on beauty, appreciation and gratitude, get comfortable being alone, have healthy social connections, listen/play music, art and creativity, ask for support when we need it…
With extreme events where we feel lost or our heart gets broken, we are faced with the choice:
to open or to close.
Do you open your heart wider to receive the healing process?
Or do you shut it down, off, closed to protect yourself from being hurt again?
In shutting down, the hurt will keep presenting. It will persist.
In opening, yes it feels wild and raw and out of our control, but we can ride that wave right back into the shore of our own true heart. And we find love there.
Stay open. Stay connected. Be willing to be wounded by life.
Some people think they’ll be happy when they have a good body, or a flash car, nice house, all the money in the world, perfect partner etc.
This kind of happiness isn’t reliable. Even if we attain the perfect bod and all the riches, our struggle usually then will just shift to the next thing.
It can become fearful of losing those things, or it might focus on the next imperfection we perceive, or the next greatest thing to attain or achieve.
It’s nature of measuring things is unending and insatiable.
Unless we practice seeing this insatiable demander or critical inner judge and catching it out at its game, we will be forever chasing after its whims and running from its whip.
Freeing ourselves from this vicious inner cycle can only occur through becoming more conscious and seeing this pattern clearly for what it is.
Seeing it, we can call it, bring compassion in, begin to let go and be more kind to ourselves.
To help yourself with this:
STEP ONE: Each time you notice you are judging your body or chasing after the next best thing, name it. Write it down. Expose the thought process/pattern; write down the kind of thoughts that are there around it and the behaviour that comes from it. Build the light of your awareness to be able to identify it as clearly as possible. For example, when you’re checking in the mirror how much your tummy might be sticking out, notice first that this is what you are doing and say to yourself either out loud or clearly inside: ‘measuring my body’.
STEP TWO: As if it were a sub-personality acting on a stage inside you, paint a picture of the part of you that is measuring, judging or insatiable. Describe this person as though you needed to cast the character for a play. Write your character profile down. And each time this behaviour and thinking comes, start see this person there acting.
When you start to see this person, you can start to choose from the place of the observer if you need to be this person.
When we raise our level of consciousness, stressful things that consume us can begin to fall away.
Be aware of where your thoughts lie.. are they in lack mode? Complaining mode? It’s not fair mode? Or are they seeing the beauty and abundance and stemming from an underlying trust in what is?
Where we focus our thinking generates the quality of our experience.
Two people can look at exactly the same thing and yet interpret it completely differently.
Be aware.
How do you want to receive this moment? How do you want to create your future?
RATNA DYER 