 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| Fear - The Attachment to Time All fear is, in essence, fear of the future Difficult Times When painful events happen in life By Peter Shepherd |
| Heal your Heart - Love your Body - Live your Joy! Simply Stunning! Healing Meditations 3 guided meditations on one CD. Access higher wisdom, intuition and insights. Change habits, activate healing energies and free yourself from emotional trauma. Beautifully and expertly scripted and backed by Mike Rowlands amazing Fairy Ring music. Click CD's for more info. |
The concept of the NOW has great validity when dealing with emotions and the
senses. NOW is a point at which you are in touch with the ongoing process.
Past and future take their bearings continuously from the present and must be
related to it. Without reference to the present they become meaningless.
Difficult Times
When painful events happen in life, such as losing a job, breakdown of a
relationship, illness or when one fails at an important task, this is naturally
distressing. Like the pain we feel when we fall to the ground, it is a reality of life
that we need to accept, then pick ourselves up and continue a little wiser.
Because of the pain, we may be tempted to avoid the reality of life through
resistance and denial. Something bad happens, and we look the other way. We
pretend that we don't have a problem when we do - "It's not my problem the
sales figures have collapsed," "I'm not upset she's left, good riddance." But the
problem doesn't just go away, and neither do our suppressed feelings - they
build up and fester inside, causing anxiety, tension, depression, and a host of
stress-related problems. The emotional energy these suppressed feelings create
eventually drives you to behave in ways you don't like or understand, and which
you cannot control.
Another way of avoiding reality is through exaggeration. This is when you make
the situation out to be worse than it is, to justify your resistance. Whenever
anything mildly unpleasant happens, you start imagining all the bad possibilities of
what may go wrong, as if they were real and already happening. So of course
you cannot face up to this and you 'blow up' or lose your temper to relieve the
pressure of the accumulated emotions. This can feel good because it puts the
feeling into action - but it doesn't change the reality of the situation that you are
still not confronting.
A third common way to cope with feelings is by attempting to avoid the issue
altogether by attending instead to distractions - by talking, watching TV, eating,
smoking, drinking, taking drugs, having sex, etc. But despite our attempts to
escape them, the real issue and our feelings about it are still there - and still take
their toll in the form of stress.
But there is another option for handling a feeling - you can focus on it, fully
experience it, and then let go of it: release it, discharge it, as we described in
Mind Visions 10. Release requires acceptance; acceptance occurs when we no
longer resist - no longer look at things in terms of black and white, no longer
judge. When we tap into our capacity for unconditional love, including love for
ourselves.
Whenever you are experiencing any kind of discomfort, you are resisting the fact
that some person, situation, or thing is the way it is. You may be doing so
unconsciously and automatically, but nonetheless, all suffering, all discomfort, all
pain, comes from not allowing what is to be what it is. If you could be totally
nonresistant to what is, life would flow easily and happily, without discomfort, no
matter what the external circumstances.
This does not mean you can't take action in order to make things different. It just
means that when faced with something that is the way it is, and cannot be
changed, you do not, as a result, suffer over it.
Do what you can to create what you want, but don't become attached to the
outcome; that way your level of well-being can remain the same, regardless of
the outcome. Your happiness comes from inside, not from what does or does
not happen around you.
When you want to change yourself or help others to change, you need to gather
information, the noticeable parts of a problem, the symptoms one is
uncomfortable with. This is the present state.
There will also be a desired state: an outcome that is the goal of change. There
will be the resources that will help to achieve this outcome and also side effects
to reaching it, for oneself and others. There will of course be the barriers and
difficulties. But if it is a worrisome problem and not simply an interesting
challenge, there will also be underlying reasons that create it as a problem: what
does the person keep having to do that maintains the problem, and why? What
is not being faced up to? These causes are inevitably to do with resistance, the
denial or exaggeration of a reality, and the suppression of accompanying
emotions.
The element of conflict is intrinsic to problems and the trick of solving them is to
be able to spot the counter element to one's own intention, and to recognize that
one does indeed have a causative contribution to the situation, otherwise it
would not be intention versus counter-intention - a problem! The 'solution' to the
problem is simply a realization of the structure of the problem itself. To accept
and no longer resist the honest truth of the reality of the situation. To recognize
the denial or exaggeration that has been going on, and the emotional attachment
to an outcome. The emotional charge or confusion of the problem will then drop
away, and appropriate actions may be taken.
The amount a person suffers in their life is directly related to how much they are
resisting the fact that "things are the way they are," because they are not as they
are "supposed to be." Attachment to things being different than they are needs to
be "upgraded" to a preference. This means that when "what is" is not what you
want, you do not suffer over it (get angry, sad, fearful, anxious, and so on), and
your happiness and peace are therefore not controlled by forces outside of your
control. You then have the clarity needed to much better be able to actually
improve the situation.
As you go about your day, notice when you are feeling resistance or feel that
what is happening is not acceptable to you. Then switch your viewpoint to: "I'd
prefer it to be different but I can accept this as a starting point, really it's OK."
See what you learn about yourself and if it actually empowers you to be both
happier and more effective.
----------------------------------------------------
Peter Shepherd is a transpersonal psychologist living in France. He runs the
personal development website Tools for Transformation, which includes many
resources for transformation of body, mind and spirit - including his full book
'Transforming the Mind' available freely online and for PDF download, and a
popular free weekly newsletter. For details of these and much more please click
here... http://www.trans4mind.com/
www.reinventingmyself.com/peter_shepherd3.html
senses. NOW is a point at which you are in touch with the ongoing process.
Past and future take their bearings continuously from the present and must be
related to it. Without reference to the present they become meaningless.
Difficult Times
When painful events happen in life, such as losing a job, breakdown of a
relationship, illness or when one fails at an important task, this is naturally
distressing. Like the pain we feel when we fall to the ground, it is a reality of life
that we need to accept, then pick ourselves up and continue a little wiser.
Because of the pain, we may be tempted to avoid the reality of life through
resistance and denial. Something bad happens, and we look the other way. We
pretend that we don't have a problem when we do - "It's not my problem the
sales figures have collapsed," "I'm not upset she's left, good riddance." But the
problem doesn't just go away, and neither do our suppressed feelings - they
build up and fester inside, causing anxiety, tension, depression, and a host of
stress-related problems. The emotional energy these suppressed feelings create
eventually drives you to behave in ways you don't like or understand, and which
you cannot control.
Another way of avoiding reality is through exaggeration. This is when you make
the situation out to be worse than it is, to justify your resistance. Whenever
anything mildly unpleasant happens, you start imagining all the bad possibilities of
what may go wrong, as if they were real and already happening. So of course
you cannot face up to this and you 'blow up' or lose your temper to relieve the
pressure of the accumulated emotions. This can feel good because it puts the
feeling into action - but it doesn't change the reality of the situation that you are
still not confronting.
A third common way to cope with feelings is by attempting to avoid the issue
altogether by attending instead to distractions - by talking, watching TV, eating,
smoking, drinking, taking drugs, having sex, etc. But despite our attempts to
escape them, the real issue and our feelings about it are still there - and still take
their toll in the form of stress.
But there is another option for handling a feeling - you can focus on it, fully
experience it, and then let go of it: release it, discharge it, as we described in
Mind Visions 10. Release requires acceptance; acceptance occurs when we no
longer resist - no longer look at things in terms of black and white, no longer
judge. When we tap into our capacity for unconditional love, including love for
ourselves.
Whenever you are experiencing any kind of discomfort, you are resisting the fact
that some person, situation, or thing is the way it is. You may be doing so
unconsciously and automatically, but nonetheless, all suffering, all discomfort, all
pain, comes from not allowing what is to be what it is. If you could be totally
nonresistant to what is, life would flow easily and happily, without discomfort, no
matter what the external circumstances.
This does not mean you can't take action in order to make things different. It just
means that when faced with something that is the way it is, and cannot be
changed, you do not, as a result, suffer over it.
Do what you can to create what you want, but don't become attached to the
outcome; that way your level of well-being can remain the same, regardless of
the outcome. Your happiness comes from inside, not from what does or does
not happen around you.
When you want to change yourself or help others to change, you need to gather
information, the noticeable parts of a problem, the symptoms one is
uncomfortable with. This is the present state.
There will also be a desired state: an outcome that is the goal of change. There
will be the resources that will help to achieve this outcome and also side effects
to reaching it, for oneself and others. There will of course be the barriers and
difficulties. But if it is a worrisome problem and not simply an interesting
challenge, there will also be underlying reasons that create it as a problem: what
does the person keep having to do that maintains the problem, and why? What
is not being faced up to? These causes are inevitably to do with resistance, the
denial or exaggeration of a reality, and the suppression of accompanying
emotions.
The element of conflict is intrinsic to problems and the trick of solving them is to
be able to spot the counter element to one's own intention, and to recognize that
one does indeed have a causative contribution to the situation, otherwise it
would not be intention versus counter-intention - a problem! The 'solution' to the
problem is simply a realization of the structure of the problem itself. To accept
and no longer resist the honest truth of the reality of the situation. To recognize
the denial or exaggeration that has been going on, and the emotional attachment
to an outcome. The emotional charge or confusion of the problem will then drop
away, and appropriate actions may be taken.
The amount a person suffers in their life is directly related to how much they are
resisting the fact that "things are the way they are," because they are not as they
are "supposed to be." Attachment to things being different than they are needs to
be "upgraded" to a preference. This means that when "what is" is not what you
want, you do not suffer over it (get angry, sad, fearful, anxious, and so on), and
your happiness and peace are therefore not controlled by forces outside of your
control. You then have the clarity needed to much better be able to actually
improve the situation.
As you go about your day, notice when you are feeling resistance or feel that
what is happening is not acceptable to you. Then switch your viewpoint to: "I'd
prefer it to be different but I can accept this as a starting point, really it's OK."
See what you learn about yourself and if it actually empowers you to be both
happier and more effective.
----------------------------------------------------
Peter Shepherd is a transpersonal psychologist living in France. He runs the
personal development website Tools for Transformation, which includes many
resources for transformation of body, mind and spirit - including his full book
'Transforming the Mind' available freely online and for PDF download, and a
popular free weekly newsletter. For details of these and much more please click
here... http://www.trans4mind.com/
www.reinventingmyself.com/peter_shepherd3.html
Fear - The Attachment to Time
All fear is, in essence, fear of the future. We are afraid of the things that have
not yet happened, but which if they did might bring us pain, suffering or some
other discomfort - or stand in the way of our future contentment. And we are
afraid that circumstances that are already causing us displeasure may continue
in the future. Or that what occurred in the past may occur again.
We may fear losing our jobs and the resulting drop in living standards. We
may fear failure for the disapproval it might bring. We may fear having
nothing to do because we might get bored. We may fear telling the truth
because others may not like us for it. We fear the unknown for the dangers it
may bring. We fear uncertainty, not knowing whether or not we will find what
we are after. Here lies a sad irony. We want to be happy and at peace with
ourselves. Yet the very nature of fear makes us anxious in the present and not
at peace.
Many of our fears are not so strong that we would label them as fears. They
may be just concerns, little niggles we have about how things may turn out.
They may not even be conscious concerns - in many cases they surface only
in our dreams, in conversation with a friend, or after a couple of drinks.
Nevertheless they fill our minds with thoughts.
This is the voice within our heads that comments, often critically, on
everything we do. It thinks, "I did that well, people will approve of me", or "If
only I had said it differently she would not have got upset". It is the voice that
speculates on the future, "Should I make that telephone call? What if?" It
wonders what other people are thinking and how they will react. It is the
voice of fear, the voice of the ego-mind - the part of us that believes that only
through what happens to us in the world around can we be at peace within.
But filling our minds with worry over what people might or might not think is
not the most constructive use we can make of our imagination.
This internal dialogue keeps us trapped in time - it dwells on the past or the
future. As long as our attention is in the past or future, we are not
experiencing things as they are, we are seeing them through the judgments of
the past and our fears for the future. At times we can be so caught up in our
self-talk that we do not even notice the present. We ignore what is going on
around us, do not really hear what people are saying, do not appreciate how
we really feel. So engrossed are we in our concerns that we never seem to
pause to let things be. We have lost the present moment - lost the NOW.
This moment is all that exists. This fleeting instant is the only reality. The past
is gone forever. The future is not yet born.
Your body is in the NOW. But if you're like most people, your mind is in the
past or in the future. You grieve or glory over events of long ago. You harbor
resentments and guilt and shame - hangovers from the past. You think of
what you should have said or might have been. You fear and fantasize over
the future, you worry about every moment of wasted time. You worry about
death, not having enough time to achieve your ambitions, the end of your ego.
All of which cuts you off from the present like a dark screen.
If you bring the mind from miles away to the activity of the moment, if you
abate the clatter in your head to focus on the physical reality surrounding your
body, and the sensations from within it, you'll gradually experience a
surprising sense of well-being. Indeed, tuning in to the NOW is one gateway
to perceiving eternity. The philosopher Wittgenstein observed: "If we take
eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, the eternal life
belongs to those who live in the present". By experiencing a moment for itself,
you stop time. Time is defined as the interval between two events. When you
are in the NOW there is no interval, only the event alone.
All fear is, in essence, fear of the future. We are afraid of the things that have
not yet happened, but which if they did might bring us pain, suffering or some
other discomfort - or stand in the way of our future contentment. And we are
afraid that circumstances that are already causing us displeasure may continue
in the future. Or that what occurred in the past may occur again.
We may fear losing our jobs and the resulting drop in living standards. We
may fear failure for the disapproval it might bring. We may fear having
nothing to do because we might get bored. We may fear telling the truth
because others may not like us for it. We fear the unknown for the dangers it
may bring. We fear uncertainty, not knowing whether or not we will find what
we are after. Here lies a sad irony. We want to be happy and at peace with
ourselves. Yet the very nature of fear makes us anxious in the present and not
at peace.
Many of our fears are not so strong that we would label them as fears. They
may be just concerns, little niggles we have about how things may turn out.
They may not even be conscious concerns - in many cases they surface only
in our dreams, in conversation with a friend, or after a couple of drinks.
Nevertheless they fill our minds with thoughts.
This is the voice within our heads that comments, often critically, on
everything we do. It thinks, "I did that well, people will approve of me", or "If
only I had said it differently she would not have got upset". It is the voice that
speculates on the future, "Should I make that telephone call? What if?" It
wonders what other people are thinking and how they will react. It is the
voice of fear, the voice of the ego-mind - the part of us that believes that only
through what happens to us in the world around can we be at peace within.
But filling our minds with worry over what people might or might not think is
not the most constructive use we can make of our imagination.
This internal dialogue keeps us trapped in time - it dwells on the past or the
future. As long as our attention is in the past or future, we are not
experiencing things as they are, we are seeing them through the judgments of
the past and our fears for the future. At times we can be so caught up in our
self-talk that we do not even notice the present. We ignore what is going on
around us, do not really hear what people are saying, do not appreciate how
we really feel. So engrossed are we in our concerns that we never seem to
pause to let things be. We have lost the present moment - lost the NOW.
This moment is all that exists. This fleeting instant is the only reality. The past
is gone forever. The future is not yet born.
Your body is in the NOW. But if you're like most people, your mind is in the
past or in the future. You grieve or glory over events of long ago. You harbor
resentments and guilt and shame - hangovers from the past. You think of
what you should have said or might have been. You fear and fantasize over
the future, you worry about every moment of wasted time. You worry about
death, not having enough time to achieve your ambitions, the end of your ego.
All of which cuts you off from the present like a dark screen.
If you bring the mind from miles away to the activity of the moment, if you
abate the clatter in your head to focus on the physical reality surrounding your
body, and the sensations from within it, you'll gradually experience a
surprising sense of well-being. Indeed, tuning in to the NOW is one gateway
to perceiving eternity. The philosopher Wittgenstein observed: "If we take
eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, the eternal life
belongs to those who live in the present". By experiencing a moment for itself,
you stop time. Time is defined as the interval between two events. When you
are in the NOW there is no interval, only the event alone.
| Heal your Heart, Love your Body and Live your Joy! Click the book cover to find out more. |
| EBook also available for only $8 |
