Hello

There is a tradition in some professions to take a year off from one’s regular work to  study something of your choosing called a Sabbatical. The idea is a great one!  Focus on what you want, right?  The theory is that one will return from Sabbatical refreshed and with renewed vigor and inspiration.

Why not institute that in your everyday life, regardless of your profession?

What an idea.  To allow yourself to study intensely and intimately something that truly interests you.

I believe if we did this we would go far to really model a LOVE of learning and model the importance of renewal.

I have some friends that were put on a forced Sabbatical.  They have used the time to renew their relationship, focus on what they REALLY want, where they want to live, who they really are, and what they want to do.   And as a result of this forced Sabbatical, something they experienced as a painful change of events, they have developed a better, more fulfilling relationship with each other, their family, and life.  You can see it in their eyes, their kindness toward each other, and their general demeanor.

How joyous to observe such a profound transformation.

It got me thinking: what impedes one to create this renewal and bring this spark and peace back into ones life?  And how that space to transform be created?

From Wikipedia:  In recent times, “sabbatical” has come to mean any extended absence in the career of an individual in order to achieve something. In the modern sense, one takes sabbatical typically to fulfill some goal, e.g., writing a book, traveling extensively for research. Some universities and other institutional employers of scientists, physicians, and/or academics offer the opportunity to qualify for paid sabbatical as an employee benefit, called sabbatical leave. Some companies offer unpaid sabbatical for people wanting to take career breaks.  Sabbatical typically follows at seven-year intervals of full-time employment. The most common arrangement is for a half-year at full pay, or a full year at half-pay.

Okay so many of us don’t fall into categories that allow for a Sabbatical under these qualifications, but the idea of taking a time-out, a space for reviewing or re-evaluating or just a space to study, or create something different is something that may be very useful.

From a religious perspective, the sabbath is a time-out from work, to consider and connect with spiritual practices.

Creating a space for viewing, and reviewing your life is a way to enact mindfulness into you’re everyday life so that you can really effect change and maintain health, balance, and innovation.

The attraction of the idea of a Sabbatical is that it encourages a change in your thinking, being, and experiencing.  It is like a cognitive head stand.

Engaging in mindful review of your beliefs, paradigms, goals, and relationships/agreements on a daily basis is like creating a sabbatical space incrementally.

For those of us not as fortunate as my friends and their forced Sabbatical or those who can simply create with their contract the space to re-view, focus, and investigate new vistas in an extended way, mindfulness and the sabbath may be our best shot at creating a space for this kind of activity.

If you allow yourself this incremental process you may find you too can find the rejuvenation that comes with a breather and adventure.  Mindfully review and evaluate your way of being in the world.  Create a cognitive head stand; feel all that blood rushing to your head – that could be a renewal and shifting experience that you could take back to refresh your everyday life and work experience.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

Being real, and allowing yourself to be seen and fully present in your interactions, is both desired and avoided in society.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting. e e Cummings (1894 – 1962)

Socializing groups is a way of transmitting values and beliefs.  This is an important aspect of living in groups.  But what about when this transmission of how to be in the world is so strong it strangles individuality and unique styles.  This is when the power of the group overtakes the empowerment of the individual.

Hermann Hesse (1877 -1962) wrote a number of powerful novels about authenticity, spirituality, and search for self.  These had themes focusing on the issue of group versus individuality, Demian, Siddhartha, Kingsor’s Last Summer, Narcissus and Goldmund, and Journey to the East.  His final book Magister Ludi, also known as the Glass Bead Game, struggled directly with this issue.

When do the needs of the group overtake the needs of the individual and visa versa?

This is an important question for us as a society and as individuals.

Bullying is a form of socialization.

When focused from an individual power issue, it has to do with a power hierarchy.  We see this in the animal world and we see it among young children of both genders in elementary through high school.  The individual is working to deal with his individual power position within the group.

When it is in a system or group environment, the group is attempting to enforce conformity.

When faced with a bullying situation it is important to identify which is happening  – is it the group  forcing conformity or is it an individual power issue.  The answer to this will inform you as to how you can best help the individual faced with the bullying situation.

In the school environment this can also help you to redirect the “bully’s” aggression and power issues.  In a group environment individual development will determine the best course of action for the identified “victim”.

I have put “victim” and “bully” in quotation marks because they need each other to exist; these are survivor/victim/perpetrator scenarios.  Only by assisting both parties to see their distortion regarding the power issue can real change and peace be accomplished.

In Bullies to Buddies Izzy Kalman writes that we need to not react like a victim to the truth or to lies by giving away our power.  He says when victims stop being victims, bullies stop bullying, or at least it diminishes their power to bully.

His theory informs us that knowing yourself, being real, and acting from your center, is the best way to escape the negative effects of being bullied.

This concept of truth, or reality, as what we allow to have power over us in our inner picture of ourselves and our outer actions is found in many philosophical traditions.

However, sometimes information from our enemies is of much better use than information from our friends.  Our enemies don’t buy our story, and as a result they can see what we may be trying to hide and they can use it against us.  Inside those treacherous acts are gifts of gold and healing IF we can get through the pain of hearing the truth without the takeover.  This is underlying the anecdote of keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

The idea of sifting through painful criticism or observation to find the kernel of truth can help you use your limitations or failings to your benefit.

Our mistakes, when seen as missed takes or missed steps, can help us to understand both ourselves and others more holistically.  Learning from our mistakes allows for a re-take, a shift in our perspective and our actions.

It is in this perspective, where the idea of attachment is pronounced.

If you have an attachment to what something should look like or how you should be (insert a need for something to look a certain way or you to be perfect) than a mistake feels insurmountable.  The attachment keeps you stuck, unable to re-take and shift your perspective, or paradigm.

Attachment interferes with your ability to engage mindfulness and centeredness in your internal review of the situation and disallows your ability to place the mistake within context, with a realistic degree of meaning.

Attachments can take all forms.  They are a way of viewing the world and your actions so that you are compelled to act in a certain way and can feel unable to be who you really are.

Creating an accurate and empowering internal self-picture requires a willingness to see yourself with neutrality and compassion.  Compassion allows for passion rather than attachments to guide your actions.  Here I am using the word passion as spirit, an inner push to create and act from your true self.

Marlo Thomas wrote a children’s book in 1974 called Free to Be You and Me. The book was designed to assist children in opening their horizons and discovering their true inner nature and acting from that space in creating their identity and career paths.

The idea of free here is to be free of attachments and limiting paradigms of what or who  you can be.  It encouraged allowing your inner passion to guide you in determining who you are from the perspective of how you wanted to be in the world.

This idea of freedom is about being real, free of unwanted enforced conformity, or phony facade dictated from the social environment.

Evaluate what aspects of how you see the world are transmitted from your personal culture and in what ways these may be holding you back from your true self-expression.

Allow yourself to be comfortable with real-ity so that you can model this comfort, acceptance, and compassion for your children.  This allows them to embrace those values that are truly of value to you in their internal self-development.

This is an empowering attitude to transmit to your children.

It is the best vaccine for bullying and for insecurity.

It teaches them to seek guidance from within to determine who they are and how they want to be in the world.  In this way they will be able to bend but not break under the pressure of conformity.  This results in self-love, positive self-esteem and self-confidence, and a true inner light to guide them through the world.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

When you know something is right it moves you closer to creating exactly what you want.

This doesn’t work as perfectly when you are working with another person in relationship because creating requires both people being in the same right place of knowing.  That doesn’t happen that often but when it does things transform immediately.

This knowing also helps to get you through difficult times.  If you know it’s all going to work out then you can tolerate when it is falling apart in front of you because you know it will all go back together in a perfect way.

For me, I have had several experiences of the heart with a clarity in knowing that have served me to act in exactly the right fashion to achieve a sublime result.

When I met the individual who would ultimately become my husband, I had a premonition – a flash of seeing into the future and the past, simultaneously threading past, present, and future together in a beautiful weaving of connection.  I felt that he was the one, not in that high-school-girlish-crush-way rather,  in this deep knowing that was at the core of my being.  It was a peaceful, calm, enlightening experience.  I felt solid not fragile.

This clarity in knowing was very useful as our relationship took a bunch of twists, turns, patience, and working through to result in what is currently quite lovely.  An example when one party has the clarity in knowing and the other doesn’t at first.

An example of when both parties had a clarity in knowing was my first interaction with his son, who has joined my family tree in a grafted on limb of love and connection.  He felt like the son I always wanted and I, to him, felt like the mother-connection he desired.  It was a separate and complete connection.  We turned all those step-mother fairy tales on their heads.  We have a strong, loving bond that has served us well over the years to create a supportive and affirming relationship.

When I met my sweet dog, Joxer, standing in the animal shelter, there was an instantaneous connection between us.  It was like reconnecting with an old friend.  He and I went on to have a companion connection that was extraordinary by anyone’s standards.  And later when I met my next canine companion I could feel him from across the state, just waiting to find his way to us.

With my sweet, lovely daughter, I knew her before she ever began to grow in my belly.  I knew she was coming and that she would be the most amazing being.  Our connection is powerful and enlightening in many good ways.

Now reading this you may say but this is how everyone feels.  Perhaps that is true.  What I see as a clarity of knowing, and the difference from other relationships for me, is the lack of internal conflict in each of these identified relationships.

There were negative comments, disagreements, and dissuasion from the outside about these relationships.  But from within there was a singular knowledge that each of these interactions and relationships were meant to be; and therefore a singular presence in how I acted within them.

This clarity in knowing allowed me to set aside the outside chatter and dissention and focus on the internal knowing and relationship building process.  I was not pulled out of my center by the fears and negativity of the outside environment, or even the difficulties present within the relationship at times, because of the clarity in knowing within my being.

This is a powerful experience and a powerful way of being in the world. To know, and then act on that knowing, focuses all your energy rather than separating off parts of yourself to protect yourself from what you don’t know or what you fear.  Acting from a clarity in knowing space harnesses all your energy to create.

Now this is different from a distorted knowing that is actually a need for completion or control that you find with a stalker.  I am describing an experience that is accepting, peaceful, and centered which allows the other to also have a free choice in the relationship.

How do you know you are not tricking yourself and it’s real.  It’s something you feel in your heart.  It may not be something you fully understand but it is something you know in your heart.

This clarity in knowing is what pushes us forward in times of trouble and it helps us to discern if the trouble is a cue to get out or remain, and work it through.

Having a clarity in knowing is empowering and allows us to act from our strongest and most balanced center.

It includes having an understanding that the other may not choose what you know to be true. So that although you feel certain about the relationship, it may end if the other doesn’t have the same internal experience.  When this happens it is not a result of your clarity in knowing being wrong but rather a result of the free will of  each of us to move forward in our lives on our own determined course.

Having a clarity in knowing is empowering.  It is not a fear, or a need, or a co-dependence. It has a fullness and a peacefulness to it.  With it you act compassionately toward yourself and the other as you each move forward in the relationship and make your choices.  You feel acceptance and love regardless of the outcome.

If you feel the other has let you down or broken an agreement because she does not choose to embrace your clarity in knowing, then you have misappropriated the feeling and misidentified it.  These feelings are not part of a clarity in knowing they belong to some other attachment or linking in relationship.

Clarity in knowing can be applied to what career or field of study best supports who you are.  It can apply to everyday decisions.

To increase your capacity for a clarity in knowing you can develop your mindfulness skills.

Use mindfulness meditation to develop that inner peaceful, centered, balanced, unattached and compassionate state.

The more you live in the present, in empowerment and balance, with compassion, inner strength, confidence, and acceptance, the more available you are to you inner instinctive knowing.

Develop these skills and apply the peaceful attention to your decisions and relationships.  You can increase your clarity in knowing and harness your full energy on whatever you desire to create.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

In Argue for your limitations posted February, 2010 I used one of my favorite quotes from Richard Bach’s Illusions to discuss the Law of Attraction.

Esther Hicks talks about the Law of Attraction as a function of energy.  In her view, the universe is responding to what you are feeling or requesting from an energy perspective, and so presents opportunities, situations, relationships, and experiences in response to the energy you are expressing, or to what you are most intently focused.  She suggests whatever we are getting is what we are requesting, so that if you don’t like your circumstances you should change what you are requesting.

This is a curious and fascinating concept.

She does not look at this as a blaming but rather a level of responsibility and she sees this as empowering.  You can change your life, if you can simply understand how you are sending the message to the energy universe that creates your situation.  Her book titled, Ask and it is Given, provides many different theories regarding this, with activities to help you discover how you have gotten yourself into your set of circumstances and how to shift the energy.

This concept is described in a number of paradigms of spirituality and theories of how the universe works, ie:  Joel Osteen, Carl Jung, Louise Hay, Bernie Siegel, to name a few authors, theorists.  There is some support of the theory of the law of attraction in psychological theory and some eastern spiritual traditions.

In recent blogs I have written about reading signs, interpreting funky moods and focusing on self-confidence rather than insecurity.  All of these have to do with this issue of creating more of what you want and less of what you fear, by moving yourself into your center and the present moment or now. Through this centeredness you can first be more clear about what it is you want, and second you can disengage the power of your fears.

To stay balanced and mindful and in a neutral unattached state you need to reorient yourself away from what you don’t want, or what you are anxious about or fear, and toward what you want to create from a balanced, neutral, unattached state.  Getting into an unattached neutral state is tricky.  Attachment is a linking equation which suggests if this then that.  It can be a habit reaction pattern or a linking of emotion to action that is historically accurate but not inherently true.

Neutralizing the fear, unlinking or detaching the equation of emotion and action, happens as a result of acknowledging it as well as bringing it into the light to evaluate its realistic nature.  The majority of things we fear are not realistically as powerful and problematic as they feel once acknowledged and viewed in the light of day.  Looking at your fear with the question, so what’s the worst thing that could happen if that is true ( the thing you fear)?  And then querying – can you handle that or what would you do if that happened?  Through these answers you diminish the power of the fear over your sense of well-being and internal okay-ness.

The process of  focusing ourselves in creating our most balanced and essential path in life or way, requires us to utilize our internal guidance system and our inner knowings to move through space and time.  Unattached perceptions allow for desires, and maintain us in our center, so that what is our best action is obvious to us and effortlessly enacted.

To keep us on track this is a great internal mantra.

FOCUS on WHAT you WANT rather than what you fear.  In addition we must be open to increasing our understanding of how much power our fears have over our perception of ourselves and how our fears limit us and keep us shackled.

This mantra keeps you focused within, for your guidance.  When you do this, life stops happening to you and You start living.  You move from the passenger seat, to the driver’s seat of your life, so that more of you and your goals are in your life, rather than reactions to outside opinion or other’s desires for you driving you.

What’s tricky is when you have something about which you are in conflict.

You want a relationship but you are afraid you are not worthy of one or afraid of being hurt.

You want to take a risk but are afraid of making a mistake.

You want to believe in yourself but have a deep-seated feeling of insecurity.

Simply owning and acknowledging your fears diminishes the power they have in your subconscious.  This last concept is well-developed in psychological theory.  Unacknowledged fears and secrets wreak havoc in our unconscious – and in effect call to us from that esoteric collective unconscious, precisely what we fear or that from which we are hiding.

Unlinking the two aspects of the conflict, acknowledging both and then evaluating from a mindful, neutral, unattached, balanced perspective allows for paradigm shifting and reduction of the power of the fear over you actions and responses in your style of being in the world.

In each of these instances above the but part of the sentence negates the element that precedes it and so a conflict arises within the person that gets created in their outside environment and experiences.

In Chinese Medical Theory you can effect the system from various perspectives.  From this paradigm perspective,  changing how you speak about your conflicts in itself can shift the energy of the conflict quite effectively.  As such, I encourage people to use the and conjunction because it allows both elements to exist and be worked through simultaneously – bringing the fear to light where it has less power and reduced charged energy.

If one has conflicting ideas, hiding the fear without addressing it directly or working it through, a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs wherein the person tries the first part of the conflict until what they fear happens and they feel discouraged.

From the perspective of this energy universe – the person puts both requests out but the negative energy has more Humph to it, more charge.  The energy universe reads this as the thing more wanted because charged energy is more energy and so the thing the person most fears is the thing that presents itself.

If you have been unable to see your conflict, and find yourself in this sort of situation faced with precisely what you fear,  you have a choice when the thing you feared presents itself – you can 1/ remain in the conflict  noting that your world experiences support it, OR you can 2/ say hmm, I wonder what this is about and you can delve into what your fear is really about – bringing it into the light of day –  and shift the energy of that issue directly.

The latter affords more empowerment in your style of being in the world.  It also allows you to feel more responsive and less reactive and it will possibly bring quantum shifts in your internal positive sense of self.

The key here is your internal guidance system, the information you receive from your 5 +1 senses.

Your internal guidance system has an inner knowing which is your truth. Your fear may be an accurate description of your past experiences but it is not your truth.

When you evaluate the conflict from a neutral, compassionate, mindful, balanced center you can dislodge the fear and increase your understanding.  Through this process you can create a unified presentation of what you want in your energy request into the energy universe.

The discovery process can feel very en-lightening and freeing as you release the limiting aspect of your fears.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

I was thinking about how tricky compliments are.

In a way they take us right out of our center.

Knowing who you are, an internal clarity in knowing, keeps you acting from your center.

Another’s opinion can be de-stabilizing in either direction, whether he says something positive or negative.  If the person says something positive that isn’t true, it can skew your perception of yourself and that person.  You may even get attached to hearing these positive statements so that the other person can have power over you.  It can also be a way of tricking you, or distracting you, from something else about that person or something he is doing.

If she says something negative that is untrue, you can lose your center by becoming insecure and diminishing your self-confidence.  This interferes with your capacity for mindfulness and responsiveness.   It can spiral you into a negative skew and you may react in ways that are against your best interest.  It also gives power to the other. You may act to change her perspective which disallows your inner sense of empowerment and balanced perspective.

I have a friend and she has a special skill of reading what other’s want to hear.  She uses this to put others at ease.   It also allows her the opportunity to get more of what she feels she wants, or needs, from others.  This may have been developed to neutralize others’ attempts to react to her competitively due to her good looks and intelligence.  It makes her seem less of a competitor when she is flattering and building up the other.

This is a dangerous energy exchange.

It is dangerous due to the underlying intent of the flatterer or opinion-giver.  In this woman’s situation she does not have an underlying desire to control the other to make him or her do her will.  This is not always the underlying intent with unsolicited compliments or opinions.

There is a deep desire to hear positive information about oneself built into our social development. Or for those more negatively raised, there is a deep desire to react to push through when confronted with negative reinforcement.

In both instances the movement toward the opinion pulls the person away from his or her own center and inner knowing.

Knowing who you are is essential in acting from your center and developing supportive, proactive, encouraging, and empowering relationships and success in your life.

When someone provides an opinion that resonates with what you know to be true – it brings you further into your balanced-centered-state.  This allows you to feel reinforced from a positive perspective that you are on the right course.  Accurate critical information is also positively reinforcing by keeping you in your balanced-centered-state.  It helps you avoid paths that are not in your best interest.

Mindfulness is a great way to increase your capacity for empowered, centered, balanced responses to these sorts of opinions.

First, know yourself.  Have a realistic understanding of your positive and negative attributes and capacities.  Know your limitations and talents.  From this balanced perspective you can receive information and know whether it is truth or not.

Remember that knowing and fearing are different.  Clarity in knowing increases your sense of self-confidence and fearing increases your feeling of insecurity.  Focus on attending to those things that increase your self-confidence and releasing those things that increase your feelings of insecurity.

Second apply mindfulness and clarifying attention to information that is unsolicited, and solicited.  This allows you to determine if the information is useful and how it applies. See the information within the center of the situation from a balanced, neutral, perspective.  Does it resonate?  What might be the person’s agenda whom is providing the opinion?

Remember to evaluate from various figure/ground perspectives and apply paradigm shifting as necessary.  Utilize compassion and understanding toward yourself and the other.

Flattery is tricky.  It can move you out of your center and give power to the person providing the opinion.

Pay attention, and use your mindfulness skills to keep you, in your center, neutral and unattached to the outcome of the evaluation.  This will assist you to remain balanced and empowered in your response to the information.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

When I wrote about this topic before, I suggested that insecurity:

interferes with our growth, happiness, connection to self, success, and mindfulness.  And what seems to enhance our growth, happiness, connection to self – others, success, and mindfulness – (is) Self-confidence.  Insecurity is like an unwanted weed in our garden of life.  It blows into our consciousness and then it starts to take over – it sucks up the nutrients and sustenance of our self.   We spend all this effort trying to rid ourselves of it and yet it seems so deeply rooted.  self-confidence and insecurity blog posted June 23, 2010

I also suggested insecurity can be a cue that something is askew and you need to get into your center and then evaluate the situation about which you feel insecure.  Evaluating your expectation, and the expectations of others to determine if they are reasonable.

View insecurity, anxiety as you do anger, as a message from your emotional guidance system – your built-in awareness system – (that there is an attachment or linking) that you have to review or evaluate a situation to get yourself on track.

This is what I want to focus on here.

Much like fear and love cannot exist together, because the former contracts your energy and the latter expands it, insecurity and self-confidence are incompatible.

The idea is to use feelings of insecurity as cues that you need to shift your perspective, your energy, your focus, your paradigm, or all four.

If you allow yourself to respond to the feeling as a cue it immediately diminishes its power over you and your reactions, and allows you to engage in a mindful focus.  It allows for you to discover a set of response-able actions and to choose the best way to respond to the situation that is bringing up the insecurity (or fear).

What is important is to unlink the negative or unrealistic expectation from the event or action.

This is especially true when the insecurity is a result of past behavior or past action that was unsuccessful, or had a negative outcome.

When you make a mistake, either by action or non-action, and it  results in a negative outcome, there can be a linking of insecurity with that action or inaction; so when presented with a similar situation then you are less able to act from your center.  You develop a set of reactions; this is like a habit reaction pattern.

The insecurity triggers a habit reaction pattern that continues to skew out, in an off-center spiral, specific perceptions of yourself, others, and/or your competence and power.

The more negative the outcome, or the more internal shame attached to the outcome, the more that linking of insecurity to the action or non-action is solidified.  And in turn the more intensity and fear, as well as insecurity is connected to or linked with the habit reaction pattern.  This can develop into this skewed spiral in a way that is unconscious.

The only way to slow it down is through mindfulness.  Mindfulness shifts and slows through paying attention, focusing intention, allowing figure/ground and paradigm shifting to increase your capacity to respond rather than react to the habit reaction pattern driven by fear and insecurity.

Using the concept of cues to focus your attention and mindfulness onto the problem while applying compassion, and understanding to the situation you will begin the slowing process so that you can shift insecurity and fear to self-confidence and love.  In counseling we use the term triggers but it has such a negative connotation I prefer the concept of cues.  It provides a more centered and empowered spin on the process.

If it is a strong linking then it will take a number of attempts to unlink the inner feelings of fear, insecurity or anxiety and the event.

This type of linking of internal-feeling-awareness and action also works to create and build self-confidence.  Utilizing this process to make connections of how we do/did things in a useful, growth promoting way – linking action and feeling –  will strengthen an internal sense of self-confidence and love.

Using mindfulness, compassion, and understanding pay attention to your internal-feeling-awareness-guidance-system:

use the cue of insecurity, anxiety, or fear to focus on how you can dis-integrate habit reaction patterns that are skewing your perspective and pulling you out of your center;

use the cue of self-confidence and/or love to create a linking of health promoting actions and successful responses which bring you to your center.

See you tomorrow.

Beth