Musing when my Brain is at Rest

 

Love yourself.

first

Accept yourself

all of you

even the bits of you that

society does not accept

that you don't want to 

accept 

as you

especially love those bits - be honest about them, 

yes, there they are

those are the bits that cannot be canned

contained

made to obey

conform

some of those bits might be smoothed into the character, essence of you - honed by time and wisdom

other bits are rough,   still, can't seem to...

don't hide those bits, they are you, they may mellow, 

but they will do that in their own time

when they're ready

(if they ever will be)

let them be, 

allow them to be

accept that you are not even close to perfection

you will have greater tolerance of other's rough bits when you do

love yourself now

because no one will do it for you, not all the time

we are all strangers to eachother

our known bits only form wholes 

because of the stories 

that people use to glue the bits together 

so you are loved, in part.

maybe you only love yourself in part...the brain-dominated-you

not you, inner-you

listen to yourself

you are not your brain

that is not the you of YOU

your brain is a tool to channel things

look beyond your thoughts, open the curtain behind them

you will find yourself sitting

calmly

you will note the calm

because it will surprise you

that you are not this rollercoaster of emotion and reaction and response and endless thought, self-critique, self-hatred, judgement, fear, anxiety

that is your brain, not you
observe it

thinking

look down on it and observe it doing what it does

can you? 

you can

you will then understand that you are separate from it

I think therefore I am

is enlightenment thinking, 

a time where thinking on one's own was cherished as a new right

 eras since have passed into new ones, yet we still prize thinking, 

we think too much now

for we think that is enlightened
we think that is who we are

strange, 

even you are strange to yourself...

...to find out that you have been there all along

while your brain pretended it was you

and you understand now that the rough bits are really strange bits from the deep down 'you' that your 'brain-you' doesn't know what to do with

so they become transformed by the part of your

public, socialized, brain-you

into an awkwardness, an incomplete manifestation...

because of your brain's resistance, society's resistance
they feel rough, unnacceptable, 

and you can't get rid of them
 

for they are you, 


look at them apart from your brain's haze of interpretation

look at 

you

you behind your brain you

you are beautiful
and those bits that are misinterpreted are there, in beautiful form
spend time with that real inner self beyond the brain

let yourself out

for a walk around the block
so to speak

try that newly discovered self out

and listen to it


it takes practice

now love you

all of yous : inner-you and brain-you
even if there are rough patches

because the brain-you is a hard habit to break

you will find yourself thinking worrying fretting judging

like you used to

relax

observe your brain being busy with itself

don't get involved

love your lovely you -  listen to you

shh
it is in a different language

listen
 

take your 'you self' out for a walk...
your brain can just follow behind

for once

Happiness is not a feeling.

Happiness is a choice.
I have learned this late. I seem to be always late.
But it is not too late.

It has been a slow percolation. But I know it now. At least I understand it one layer deeper. 

Happiness is not reliant on anything exterior to our selves.

This is something you learn when you live in a tiny bungalow in a big-house town.
When you start over in a new career and you are bottom of the heap at the age of 41.
When loved ones judge you for not believing like them.
When people condemn you to hell.
When one of your kindred spirits dies a brutal, slow death.
When you survive depression and come out the other side.
When your teenaged son ignores you.

Deep happiness does not crumble when everything seems to crumble around us. It is so resilient I have found out.

Lasting, happiness is generated within ourselves first,
not outside of ourselves then working its way in...this much I know...

Deep happiness can sit quietly within us when we have an empty bank account. a hard chair. a crappy relationship. a raw deal.

Deep happiness is best created when we have nothing.

Nothing that looks happy, signifies happy, marks us as happy.

Sometimes I think we can spend so much time arranging our exterior lives that we have no time to arrange whats inside ourselves - then there is nothing to base our happiness on except what is outside - - all of which changes, crumbles, gets messed up... no matter how much straightening...or keeping...

Deep Happy is not reliant on things that change. It can't be really.
Its resident within us,
it is the first step for every journey.
It is the way we choose to approach life.

Happiness is forged when we detach ourselves from everything we have built around us -  and our resulting status within our neighborhoods, religious communities, families, work places, groups of friends...

Ego messes with your happy. It gets in the way. 

Happiness, the lasting kind, the kind that gets you through spots, and carries you through a mess - that kind is ego-less I have found out.

Happiness begins by intuiting a core goodness within ourselves, others, the world.

It does not begin on a foundation of judgment of ourselves or others or the world.
That is an impossible foundation to build happiness on,
but a hard habit to let go of.

 But it is lovely when you finally do.

Happiness is a choice every day. every new situation. every new person.
every same-old situation.
every same old person.

It is contentment and trust that things will be alright, that there is still good when everything seems so bad.

Happiness is not glee. not always.

Happiness sometimes is the hardest choice.

But it will make things easier...much easier than if you did not choose it.

Happiness knows that feelings are fleeting and not reality, and does not wallow in them for too long. Happiness does not allow feelings to always dictate actions.

Happiness understands that you are not your mind - the place where feelings are generated. Happiness come from a deeper well.
From your inner self - you are not your monkey brain. 

Happiness winks at you when you finally find your inner self, sitting quietly, beyond the curtain of your mind.

Happiness is not a feeling.

It is a chosen perception.  It is power.   It is deep understanding of what is.

What comes after that choice,  is your life !  Enjoy as many moments as you can today.

 

Digging myself out of a Rut

I don't know if you have noticed, but I am in the process of change. Deep personal change. A reconstruction of how I see myself in this wacky world. I am digging down deep.

It isn't that sudden heart-stopping explosive change that happens to you when you leap headfirst into the chasm. Its more like a gradual inner realization, the opening of a flower and everything that can happen because of it.

My inner eye has been attracted to positive energy lately, an attraction I have never experienced before on such a level. It is feeding me in a place that is starved and shrivelled. And I am still hungry.

Coming from a crusty, sarcastic queen like me, this is quite something. Its cramping my style.

It might have started when I was up in the CN tower in Toronto on New Year's Eve, in the wee hours before 2010. I was with all four of my boys on the observation deck observing the city from up high, we were glowing alternately with red and green light as the lit tower transformed itself for the city.

As we went around and around the circular deck, the lighted contours of the city down below, I would see my kids ahead of me, completely washed in red and then gradually in green taking in the view. And it struck me how that wash of colour changed things. When they were washed in green it felt fake (this is Christmas tinsel green - probably the worst shade of it) and slow and, life-sucking, but when they were washed in red, there was a feeling of energy, possibility...

And thats when I had the "aha". Strange to have an "aha" in the CN tower... of all cheesy things to happen...but when do "aha's" happen on beautiful mountain tops? Its usually when we're picking out shampoo. Or seeing the world not from a mountain top but from a tall, cheesy space pod shaped building.

The universe has a superb sense of humour.

I had been ruminating (as I am wont to do) about my career future, as I've been in school forever and was at the beginning of the last semester of my ESL teaching program at U of T.  I needed to get a job - and was thinking of the prospects of getting a decent job teaching academic English to foreign students here in Toronto, and from my perspective, my chances were bleak compared to other people in my program, I had no experience teaching, nor do I have a masters degree, nor do I...

I was in the old rut, a very familiar rut of despair, of giving up. From this rut, I then had the "aha". My weather beaten, trusty old rut of despair, as familiar and cozy as it was, was getting a little suffocating.

 

I realized that what had to change was not what was out of my control, but what was in my control. Not a knew concept to me, none of this was, but it all knit together into something new - i think thats how "ahas" happen - an accumulation of events and thoughts, feelings and experiences that come to a head with one trigger -  like seeing red for instance -.

I knew down to the bone that it was all about how I chose to see the world. It was my choice entirely. I had that kind of power. I was not a victim of the world and its goings ons.  That old rut  was doing the poisoning - and only if I let it.

It had, in the past, for as long as I knew, caused me great suffering. The fact that I was an introvert growing up in an extrovert-prizing world didn't help either, but I thought I had rooted it out when I realized that it had helped feed my string of mini depressions. They're long gone, as I had managed to at least control how long I would sit in that rut before the big "D" would set in it's talons.

But that didn't fill in the rut. Despite my more sunny mentality in the last years, I have not broken my habit of stepping in that rut long enough to sell myself short. It did not dawn on me that I was clinging to an old form - and that imbedded sarcasm was one sign of this - a sign of anger over being powerless - a victim of circumstance. I see this now and I am embarassed. temporarily. will   not   step in   that   rut.

I went back to school this January with the residue of that image - the glow of red, and within weeks I felt that, yes, I think I can do this, yes, I think I am more than qualified with other alternative teaching experiences, yes, my skills in flexibility and facilitation, my background in cultural studies and conflict studies - I am going to focus on who I really am - all the positives, and I am going to make them grow. I am going to reign in all the manufactured negativities and instead, cultivate the habit of seeing with red positivity. as strange as it is to do so.

Its like I have entered a new room, and so far, I like how this strange new room feels.

I am going to aim high, and gradually get there - step by step, twig by twig, obstacle by obstacle.

Steering clear of that rut until it slowly fills in, inch by inch.

Then I'm going to plant a garden, right on top. With a little red seat so I can take it all in.
Got any ruts you have to dig yourself out of ? 

(My Aunt Hilda's Garden, 2006)

YES-HUH ! Part I

 

(copied with Natalie's blessing: http://www.nataliedee.com/archives/2009/Jun/)

I was raised, as probably most of you were, to say NO,  far more than to say  - YES. Was yes far too positive in a world full of "no-no's" maybe? Other than saying No to unwanted solicitations, I don't think that there is much more use for NO. And sometimes we didn't even use NO for that - and ended up only saying NO to ourselves by saying YES to the unwanted.  I think we might have said YES to ourselves far too little, or maybe its just me. 

So how about turning that over-used NO on its head and framing everything in YES ? This is certainly what I needed to do. I did do it in bits, saying YES to myself for starters, but now I think I understand it better, I see how Yes and NO permeate everything and have a framing effect.

So saying YES....kind of like Jim Carey in Yes Man, but with a bit of discrimination - you aren't going to say yes to running away with Jonny Dep, that would be really foolish if you have things on the go like a family and a loving spouse... and I don't mean saying yes to that little voice that wants yet another coffee and its noon and you haven't eaten anything but caffeine. NO. I would advise no here. oh, but wait.

Here is your chance to say it. 

Instead of saying a resounding, negative, firm NO to yourself about some bad habit that keeps you from doing other things - despite the current idea that saying no is so very adult-like, so very "taking charge of my life" like -  how about just saying yes to something better. Saying YES to eating breakfast and all the good things about breakfast...yumm, home made waffles with maple syrup and bluberries...antioxidants, energy - happy me! Be open to all the good things about it - and make it far more desirable than that old habitual lug - because, in reality,  it IS more desireable. 

When you "Just say No" to things, it feels like you are depriving yourself, it ushers in negative energy, you are locked into an endless struggle with it - always having to deal with it and squeeze out a reluctant, pained NO every time. You are "trying to be good" when the "Bad" is still framed in your mind as "good". (They call it "guilty pleasure" -  How does guilty find its way into our pleasure anyway? It doesn't belong there.)  So when you try to do something else - healthier, better-for-you, something that will make you a better person instead,  you are still in NO mode, negative mode -  I HAVE to do this, sigh....its still framed in with the NO.

We give our bad habits so much power. So heres the opposite tack. Don't suppress it, but observe the no-good habitual desire, with detachment: oh There you are. Aren't you cute showing up everyday. Off you go. I'm too busy saying YES to this new, shiny, good-for-me habit to come out and play. Or you could cooly observe it and lend no judgement to it, don't address it, just acknowledge what it is and let it pass - turning towards something better. more desirable. This renders the thing powerless, you don't have to turn away from it and say no, you can look it in the eye and say YES to something else, or yes to it in your own modified version - where you are in control.

 

The key is to replace that old stinky habit with a shiny good-for-you one. Saying NO, then wandering around wanting to say yes, stuffing down the desire every time it comes up doesn't really solve anything - it keeps it close, as if we don't want to let it go. Believe me, I've been there too many times, holding onto things that did me no good at all. I found that when we say yes to something more desirable , and hold onto that  instead  - consciously - we then can make this new habit even more desireable by practicing it, doing it and feeling great from it. The old habitual desire falls away like the dry empty crust that it is.

Its worked for me, this YES practice. Coffee is my friend, my 3 cups a day buddy - I say yes to coffee, it doesn't force yes on me. I don't have a "7 cups" desire left to suppress. Instead, I do have a great desire for a yummy breakfast with coffee, a soothing tea ritual, going for a meander...getting more work done. I want to say YES to all these things...they are not just things I have to do - duties to myself , "being good". They are things I say yes to - the possibilities I open myself up to. The positive energy, the opening that saying YES creates... has made all the difference.

How's your YES reflex?

 

Yes-huh part II to come...stay tuned my friends.

(This post was inspired by an AHA moment I had on Beth's Blog: Hope's Breath, via her post called  "Say Yes"  - go over and read it - she turns saying NO on its head...)