The Inner Journey

What if we valued people for their wisdom, the awareness they had accumulated, their inner strength and peace? What if we celebrated what they contribute by devoting themselves to their inner journey?

Western societies don’t do that. They honour outer stories; stories they can see. There’s no understanding of how vital it is to undertake inner work.  People who make masterful inner progress can end up seeing themselves as failures and rejects - as they are from this outer judging perspective!

We need to start an association which honours and prizes the inner journey, takes it out of the domain of mental health, psychology and religion, and restores it as the sustaining factor of everyone's life.

We need to bring our children up to find the doorways and pathways to wisdom within; to be comfortable inhabiting these places.

I would love to live in a world which encouraged contemplation, learning from life and deeply honouring our inner discoveries!

A Touch of Empowerment

Without inner empowerment, you can't achieve anything as you are thwarted at every turn.

With it, you no longer concern yourself with achievement.  It's not the goal.  The goal is wholeness and holding the vision; watching how each thing has its place and plays its part,

The shift from creative product to creative spirit;

From wanting to shine your light and make a difference to realising  the light is shining through you and I AM the difference I was wanting to make;  

From thinking I'm the initiator and I have to do and try and struggle and fight the resistance, hustle to evolve...to watching how all things happen through me;

From effort to effortlessness;

From a feeling of frustration, stuckness and always having the next 'thing to face' to being God's/The Goddess' smile on the world...

 

Evening and Morning Reflection Time

So much happens in a day, both in terms of the experiences we have and in all our thoughts and feelings.  

Whilst we don't have time to stop and investigate everything, we may want to explore some of the things that stand out and stay with us.

Today I'm going to take you through a simple practise I have found to be a powerful tool for learning from life.

In the evening, take a few minutes to reflect on your day.  

Ask yourself:-

What were the three strongest emotional reactions I had today?

Take time to replay each situation in your mind and watch your reaction(s).  

What does each one want to show me?  

What is it helping me to understand more deeply?

What have I learned from my experience of life today?  

What's growing inside me and getting stronger?

Open yourself to receive any new insights and understandings about yourself, other people and life.

In the morning, take some time to reflect on the day ahead.

Ask yourself...

What are my intentions for today?

What would I like to happen?

What would I like to learn from life today?

Then imagine these things happening and visualise how things might go if these things actually came to pass...

On emails in straitjackets...

I sent an email to a friend last week telling her about some of the things I've been learning recently.

Then I started to worry. What would she make of it? 

I realised I hadn't subjected it to my usual strict barrage of tests, which goes something like...
 

How To Get An Email Right...
 

1. Is there enough preamble, asking them how they are and commenting insightfully on their last email to me?
 

2 .Have I done a good job of explaining what I want to say and/or why I've taken so long to reply (if I have!)
 

3. Is it clear and to the point or could I make it look better by changing some words and sentences around?
 

'I should have been more careful,' I thought. 'I shouldn't have written all that stuff about my own learning.  She'll be in a totally different place to me, and it won't make any sense to her at all...'

But it was too late. The email had gone.
 

The following morning, I received a reply from my friend, which started like this...
 

'...Talk about synchronicity!! Wow and wow again! When I read your email, my head was nodding up and down so fast I felt dizzy...'

She went on the show me how relevant some of the things I'd shared had been as they reflected and confirmed conclusions she had just reached herself.

Oh! I thought, slightly taken aback by her enthusiasm and how wrong I had been.  Perhaps I've been worrying too much about what my words will mean to someone else and how they will come across...?

...What if I can't control those things anyway?  People will respond in the way they do whatever I write and however I put it?

In trying so hard to get my emails 'right', I've ended up putting them in straitjackets!

Is it time to put my trusty list of check points to one side and simply

...write what's there to write?

On cultural deprivation and your town letting you down...

I was having a moan about Winchester today.

'I'm going to have to move.  There's just no culture here.  I want to live somewhere things are happening, there's cultural diversity, things to go and see, music, photographic exhibitions, you know...'

The guy I was chatting to listened thoughtfully for a moment, and then he said...

'I guess I sort of create my own culture...'

What?  He's lived in Winchester for 8 years and has no expectations of Winchester providing his culture for him, and feeling disappointed when it doesn't?

As I came home, I started thinking about all the projections I've put on Winchester.  How let down I feel that it doesn't provide things I want to go to or get involved in.  What's on is just not my scene.  I've been moaning about it for years.  Planning a future escape to the Metropolis where I can lose myself in as much culture as I want.  Fed up with feeling culturally deprived and impoverished.  I'm leaving...

Suddenly his gentle comment woke me up.  

Here's someone who never expected Winchester to satisfy his cultural needs.

So this time it's my turn to 'Try this'...

What happens when I stop blaming the town I live in and take responsibility for creating the culture I want to experience?

Help ! I'm not making any progress...

I have been feeling frustrated with what I perceive as lack of progress with writing my book. It isn't taking shape as I want it to. It isn't how I want it to be. There's no solid foundation to build on.

The gap between where I am and where I want to be is not a comfortable place. It's like being in a lion's den where doubts, fears and disaster thinking thrive.

Some days I take on each fear, moving into and through it to the safe place beyond it. Other days I'm overwhelmed.

But is there any way of understanding how these unwelcome weeds appear in our minds in the first place? And, can we do anything to prevent them?

I think I'm taking too long to write this book. Time is ticking away. That's the thought they slide in through. I can see that it's my judgements around time that cause them.

I get frustrated as soon as my mind tells me 'You should be much further after all this time' or 'You're being too slow'. 'You're never going to finish this.' They can then force the door open and muscle their way into my awareness. Robbing me of my serenity.

But if I take time judgements out of the picture, I'm simply feeling good about what I'm achieving every day. I may have a 'feeling' of getting nowhere, but of course I'm always getting somewhere. I am learning and growing, engaging with the work in new ways, dealing with the stuff in the lion's den. Much further along than I was yesterday.

When we diligently follow our path, we may not get where we want to get as soon as we think we should, but we will always face what we need to face....

...Bang on time.

When not to help...

Learning from life is a funny business. Sometimes I find myself doing things I hadn't expected to do.

Other times, I have to stop myself doing things I usually would.

For example, I was going home on the bus a couple of years ago. The bus stopped. A young mother struggled on with three screaming children and hefty shopping bags. Highly stressed.

I wanted to go and help her stow her bags, park the pushchair and generally calm her down.

I didn't. A moment's reflection made me sit tight.

Why? Am I a mean-spirited person too wrapped up in my own issues to help another soul, or was I too scared of being rebuffed?

No to both. I could have rushed in to help her without the slightest hesitation.

I realised that it wasn't for me to decide whether or not she needed this difficulty. She was creating a lot of noise and commotion, but what was wrong with that? It felt like going against the grain, but could I just allow her to be in the drama she was in?

If I'd helped her it would have been like saying:-

1 There's something wrong with you struggling

2 I would be helping you by reducing your difficulty

I knew these things weren't true.

In my heart I believe we are here to learn from our problems rather than get rid of them. I couldn't say what or how she had to learn from her struggle. In fact, I know from my own experience that it's often when things get really out of hand that the penny drops, or we finally get a breakthrough.

What if this was building into an opportunity for her life to change for the better? I did not want to sabotage that!

It's so easy to fall into wanting to make life easier for other people by trying to reduce or take away their problems. To act blindly on this means making a lot of assumptions:-

1 I know this person shouldn't be having that difficulty

2 I know I can improve their situation by removing the difficulty

3 I know it really is a difficulty and not one created by my or that person's mind

4 In an ideal world I know difficulties should be reduced or removed

We may have to decide on a situation by situation basis whether or not to get stuck into helping people.

But there's also a greater goal - to put energy and thought into how to help others face and deal with their problems rather than removing them.

Something to try...

Next time you see someone in trouble, unless the situation is life-threatening, stop and ask yourself one question...

How can I help this person to accept their difficulty rather than playing along with the idea they need to get rid of it?

See what comes to you.

This is not an excuse not to help people. It's simply about being aware of the bigger picture.

It takes practise to befriend our problems, to come to know in an unshakeable way that they are there to teach us something important.

It takes even more practise to to allow other people to have their difficulties, and work out ways of helping them that honour the value of problems.