Life’s ups and downs

15 February 2010 — Aannsha

I haven’t posted lately as there have been a couple of family issues that have come up and have been taking up my thoughts.

One of the things I notice is that in times of crisis, I tend to default into old habit patterns in an attempt to avoid feeling anxiety or other difficult emotion.  I think a lot of us do that – maybe you can identify with what I’m saying?

For me if its a really difficult situation, I sometimes get very lethargic and want to sleep (that’s a real shutting down mechanism in extreme circumstances).  Alternatively, I crave comfort food – biscuits, or chocolates (which contain those lovely chemicals that make a person feel loved) and mask what I’m really feeling!

A better way for me of handling these times though, is to get up and move – walk the dog, go for a jog, dance a bit – which changes the stuck emotional energy into physical energy that can more easily move through my body, leaving me feeling more alive and positive.

I also find meditation or toning my mantra particularly helpful, although one of the things I’ve also noticed is that I’m less likely to want to sit with myself or do my mantra or meditation technique when I’m feeling ikky. Do you find that? Bizarre isn’t it?! And yet, that’s exactly when we’d benefit most from tried and true techniques. Depending on the type of meditation and/or mantra, they can help us change our vibration at a mental or cellular level and that really contributes to our being able to shift through the emotional clunk that we may find ourselves in.

Ultimately, the meditation or mantra or other practice that we may be practising, is the means to transform at a deep level, which an end in itself.   At the very least, it can show itself as different experiences – ripples of change – in our outer world, as well as a stronger sense of true Self within, that will enable us more easily move through life’s circumstances.

To fully identify with our true Nature though, we have to uncover It, through layers of belief systems, ‘programming’, unresolved emotional issues and judgments that cloud our view of ourSelf and reality.

So the challenge is – next time something we’d rather avoid happens in our lives – instead of heading down Habit Highway, perhaps we can consciously choose to take the action that we know in our heart will be better for us in the long run.  That may be exercise instead of blobbing on the couch vegging out in front of the mind-numbing TV; it could be eating an apple instead of a bag of chips or tub of ice cream (and I don’t get the attraction to do that myself lol); it could be choosing to sit and feel an emotion and breathe it through our body, rather than shout our anxiety at someone we love.

Conscious change often requires us to embrace a healthier choice that may initially feel a poor second choice to an otherwise seductive pull of an habituated knee-jerk ‘fix’.  It may not taste as salty or sweet because its not full of additives; it may cause our body to groan in protest at movement rather than blobhood, and it may be extremely hard to rein back on the sarcastic comments to someone who can’t defend themselves against the onslaught of our frustration.

Whatever it is, only you can decide if you’re worth the effort.  I’m hoping that if you’re still reading this, you may resonate with what I’m saying and perhaps have just made such an effort.  Or maybe next time, instead of knee-jerking your way out of a crisis into the numbed stupour of an addictive avoidance mechanism – you will remember that you really want to rediscover your true Self, and remember too that the only way you’re going to do that is by walking down a road you haven’t spent a lot of time on.  The one of conscious inner transformation.

Here at Conscious Inner Transformer, you will receive encouragement to take that journey.

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Releasing strong emotions

1 February 2010 — Aannsha

I’ve found the best way to deal with strong emotions – and really, it doesn’t matter if they are old emotions being released or from something you’re experiencing as a result of present circumstances, (they’re all felt in your body, here/now) – is to let them go.  In this post, I’ll describe the process that works well for me and others I know.

Emotional release: easier said than done maybe, but a process that in itself is simple, and yet deeply healing and ultimately, profoundly liberating.  If practised on an ongoing basis as strong emotions come up, either as a result of life’s daily living or as a result of a spiritual practice such as meditation or toning, this can go a long way to helping you release long held limitations and feel a great sense of inner peace and freedom.

(1) stop avoiding them and take your projection away from Out There (another person or situation) back to In Here (yourself),

(2) acknowledge them and truly feel them – in your body,

(3) release any judgments you have about them or yourself, (“anger’s bad”, “I’m useless”) and

(4) choose to release the emotions to your higher self, your divine self, god – whatever you call the benevolent highest consciousness that you are connected to, and which a lot of people imagine above them.

(5) if you find it hard to release them – ask for the willingness to release them.

(6) if you can, spend some time breathing gently but deeply, and place your awareness into your body, allowing yourself to feel a sense of being nurtured.  You, connected to a greater sense of self – are doing the nurturing and you – that is consciously experiencing this process – are receiving the nurturing.

I like to do some deep breathing before, during and after this exercise.  Deep breathing right down into my belly, as if I’m blowing my belly up like a balloon with each inhale, and letting it deflate with each exhale.  It really helps me to stay connected to my body as I have a tendency to become ungrounded.  And it keeps me remain connected to the emotional state, as this is important in the releasing process.

Sometimes I imagine roots growing down through my feet into the earth, and the earth holding me in a nurturing embrace, like a mother who is comforting a child.

Obviously this isn’t something you can necessarily do if you’re at work or in a situation with other people who won’t understand or support what you’re doing.  If you can, excuse yourself, or take time out to the bathroom or some place you can feel private enough to deal with this.  If you can’t, try to hold on to this, so you can deal with it when you are in a more conducive environment/time.

Other times you may find that it’s simply a matter of breathing through the emotion, knowing that its just a bubble coming up from the past – and then release it mentally to the universe, or higher consciousness.

During these times of release, it is so important to nurture yourself.  Most of us who stuff down our emotions are unnecessarily hard on ourselves anyway, or think we have to be or ‘perform’ or appear in a certain way.  But the truth is, we are what we are and that includes feeling a whole range of, sometimes conflicting, emotions.  None of them are good and bad, we have simply learned to judge some of them as such.

This work can leave us feeling vulnerable, like little children.  I’m sure its because in truth, there is a child within each of us, as well as a warrior, mother, lover, friend … a whole range of aspects that we as incredible beings can embrace if we give ourselves permission.

In this way we find ourselves coming back to a state of true wholeness and inner freedom.

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Eating catalyzes emotional release

1 February 2010 — Aannsha

Photographer: Salvatore VuonoIt had to happen sooner or later.  Since I’ve changed my eating habits to include mainly fruits and vegetables and cut out stodgy, starchy and fatty foods the inevitable happened today.  Well, its been building for a few days, if I’m honest.  Some of those emotions that I’ve avoided dealing with in the past and instead ’stuffed down’ by overeating comfort foods, has started to bubble up and make themselves known, in no uncertain terms!

That’s the thing with suppressed emotions; if you take the lid off, eventually they’re going to make their way to the surface and scream to be let out!  And if you’re into Conscious Inner Transformation, you’ll welcome them.  Well, maybe not welcome them exactly because if you’ve avoided them, you’re probably scared stiff of them, or in judgment of them in some way.  So welcome may not be the right term – perhaps grudgingly acknowledge their presence as an ongoing aspect of your finding true inner freedom.  If you look at them in that way, you can at least allow them to come up, knowing that you’re on the way to releasing more emotional baggage that you don’t want weighing you down.

When I say ‘release’, I really don’t mean you have to fly off the handle in rage, or literally pull your hair out with grief or whatever – although sometimes, if you’re feeling particularly overwhelmed, there’s nothing wrong with some time out to shed a few tears or stamp your feet, if that’s what you need to do.

Release in terms of consciously transforming is more a grace-ful letting go of what has been long held within and giving it up to one’s higher/greater/divine self, or whatever term you use to describe your higher conscious awareness.  What is happening at this time (and forgive me if I’m telling you something you already know – this is for anyone who is new to this process) – is that what you have chosen to avoid in the past – an emotion that you may have judged as being ‘wrong’, or one that was simply too overwhelming to deal with – is that you are now feeling it returning after its release from your subconscious.   ‘Sub’ – in that its below your consciousness, and at the time you experienced the emotion or judgment about yourself, the way to preserve your equilibrium was to nicely suppress it where you weren’t aware of it.  Hence it ended up in your sub- (or un-) conscious.

As this section deals with eating – and experiencing transformation through changing your eating habits to healthful ones – then the most likely way these unwanted emotions were stuffed down were by the use of food.  Some people overeat to do it, some eat ice cream (although I can’t see the draw in that one myself lol), other like myself as I said above, go for starchy, fatty foods.  Whatever you may grab out of the kitchen in times of emotional crisis though isn’t really that important, its that when you decide to eat healthfully, you will find yourself facing whatever you chose to ignore the first time around.

The good news is that this time you know that rather than being in the actual situation you were in at the time, this is now an old emotion, an old memory, and in the past – although the emotions themselves will feel absolutely real as they come up.  One thing that can also happen is that your subconscious does not know the difference between the past, present and imagined and you might think these emotions are as a result of what’s going on now – or project onto the present situation, making Out There the bad guy.  If you do that, you will find yourself stuck in a loop and will keep coming back to this place again and again, a bit like Ground Hog Day.

I’ve found the best way to deal with strong emotions – and really, it doesn’t matter if they are old emotions being released or from something you’re experiencing in the present – is to simply let them go.

Easier said than done maybe, but a process that in itself is simple, and yet deeply healing and ultimately, profoundly liberating.

In the next post, I’ll describe the process.

Posted in Conscious inner transformation, Healthy eating. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Festive season is upon us

24 December 2009 — Aannsha

… and I’m sitting in the kitchen watching the dog snore her way through to Christmas day, with her head so close to the Christmas tree that if she jumps up quickly, she’ll knock it over.

Despite the ever increasing annual pressure to buy! buy! buy! – and ‘tradition-composite’ Santa notwithstanding, I can still get misty eyed when I hear a well sung carol, remembering high school days in the choir.

Its hard not to become jaded with almost 360 degree encouragement to run up a credit card debt in a festive shopping frenzy. Its just as difficult not to get unnecessarily warm and fuzzy because of some reminiscent pull to the ‘good ole days’.

Pressure to conform to social and/or familial expectations or traditions can really make things hard, if one’s inner self wants to just spend time alone, or step back a little from the hype and simply be. “Be” long enough to really know how one actually feels about Christmas on one’s own terms.

We might find ourselves asking, what is the spirit of Christmas? Is it meaningful to me? How does it apply to me in the here and now (for that is my reality)? If the spirit of Christmas is about bringing more love and peace to earth – is it something that should just be relegated to one day of the year, or do I want to cultivate it in my life on a more regular basis?

And what do the turkeys feel about it all?

I guess the most important thing for me, apart from spending precious holiday time with my loved ones, is that I’ll re-dedicate my focus to allowing more of my true Self to be born in the simplicity that can be found underneath the decorations and trimmings.

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Life in circles – following one’s rhythm

15 August 2009 — Aannsha

One of the questions in the Quiz asks if you ‘do life more in circles than straight lines’.

I find that rather than having a goal and heading straight for it, my life is lived in more of a circular pattern. I have several areas that are important to me and that I attend to one after another – keeping everything in balance.  My attention shifts from one to the other – and it may look to straight line people that I’m flitting around not getting anywhere. To another circular person though, they will understand that it’s more of a dance – the steps of which are unique to me and follow my own inner rhythm.

There are times when I intensely do inner work, and shine light into my share of the darkness – to bring it to awareness and healing.  At other times I wholeheartedly re-connect with loved ones and friends that I may have missed while doing inner transformation.

At the moment, I’m in a creative part of my cycle. One thing I love to do is make felt – from natural fabrics and hot soapy water.  It’s a very tactile experience and brings my love of colours together with a physical creative experience that I find very satisfying.

Wool layout for felt

Wool layout for felt

I think its important to find one’s own rhythm, which comes from within. Each moment then is freeing and fulfilling.

For years I felt as if I was a round peg trying unsuccessfully to fit into the square hole that society presented me with.  A lot of society is focused on going in ’straight lines’, meeting other peoples’ deadlines and expectations.  And if you are more of a ‘circular’ person – a soul-centered person, then you might have found yourself feeling pressured to conform as well. And feeling like a failure or a misfit when you didn’t quite come up to others’ requirements.

While a creative outlet can be enjoyable and relaxing, it can also help you connect more with your inner self, as you seek within for the next colour for the painting, the next chord for the song, the next line of the story.  If you are creating, the desire for its birth comes from within you, as do the inspiration and the building blocks, until you have the finished creation.  Yes, you can copy something.  But in order to create something unique to you, you have to find the piece within you and bring it out.

Sometimes “writer’s block” is encountered and you have to struggle to bring your ‘baby’ into the world.  But ask any mother and she’ll tell you that the frustration and pain of childbirth was worth it the moment she laid eyes on her child.  Writer’s block is a valid part of the creative process.  I see the struggle to overcome one’s block as a transformational one as we release a judgment or break through a barrier to one’s self-expression – especially if you are expressing your emotions or a memory in the creative process, when it can also be a healing experience too.

The more you do this, the more you become familiar with your inner direction and the more intimately you feel your soul essence speaking to you through your heart.  In turn this will assist you to live your life more in tune with your own personal rhythm.

If you are more of a circular person, you may well find that not only do you have times of creative expression, but that your whole life, when lived according to your own rhythm, is an act of creative expression in itself.

Another thing I’ve noticed about the creative process is that it is very deeply nourishing to me.  It is a period of bringing love and beauty through me out into my world.  And in some way this sustains me in those times when I face those shadowy aspects within myself that are still wounded and in need of love, acceptance, release and healing.

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Inner Guidance

29 June 2009 — aristomenes

Inner guidance is the trump card of the healer/transformer. Without it, transformation becomes more difficult than need be and really can only go so far. One of the symptoms any transformer faces is the sense they get at some point that they are alone. There may be information and supporting others, but that support only goes so far, and most transformers in fact feel more opposition than anything resembling support. Transformers are usually tempted at every turn to “get with the program” and “cope”, and those closest to them may even convey that if they don’t “normalize”, something is wrong with them.

In other words, life often seems to send transformers messages contradicting the impulses and drives within them. If this were not so, everyone would be whole. What a transformer realizes at some point is that they, and even other transformers, are not the only ones in need of inner healing. The world at large is fragmented, wounded and distorted in more ways than we can count, and everyone is more or less, in one way or another, in the same boat. The difference with transformers is that they have a such a strong sense of the need to heal and become more than they seem to be that a “normalized” lifestyle is intolerable. This is independent of culture and social/financial status, gender, belief system and even age. The need is within and the degree of its force depends on the person’s disposition. The degree and form of resistance one encounters, however, depends on variables such as those described above. Those variables are the boxes in which we find ourselves and that define qualify our very lives.

Our desire for something more or different tends to defy those parameters. If they are exceptionally strong, however, they may present serious blocks before the desire to realize/actualize our internally sensed potentials can be pursued with commitment. A starving peasant, for example, will look to feed their hungry belly and that of their family before they worry about further horizons. A relatively well-off single individual will usually seek to fulfill emotional needs, and establish interpersonal relationships to fill the void in their life, before considering that void may go deeper than they think. This is not the rule. For a few the urge to transcend the conditions of life is stronger than physical and emotional needs pursued by most people. Belief systems can enter the picture as well, and draw the individual with their promises of salvation, be they political, economic or religious/spiritual ideologies.

The individual who either prioritizes their inner urge to transform beyond established possibilities, or who has realized one or more of those options and has been left disillusioned, will be left standing at a precipice through their rejection of society’s options. They cannot go back, but they don’t have a clue where any forward motion will take them. At that point the only definition of  “forward” for the individual is probably restricted to ”anything other than going back”. Some freeze in place, going through the motions of their lives, but wishing things were different. Such people may soon discover that this is torture. Normalized society is seriously lacking for them, and those representing society for the would-be transformer can sense this and confront the individual. The “voices of reason” may point out that the individual is not committed enough to the ways and means considered proper and well-adjusted.

Often the would-be transformer can’t even explain themselves, or is afraid to do so for fear of seeming abnormal or “troubled” in some way. If they do complain they may be pressured to take “medication” to “correct” the problem. Or they may end up self-medicating in legal or illegal ways, or trying to find some distraction to cover their unexpressed need. The point is they don’t know how to proceed or may not even know what “proceeding” means to them. For those of a more financially comfortable disposition (at least not starving peasants or refugees) the information age does help. Such people can search for what stimulates them, and they may find something inspiring leading to the inner growth they crave. Such individuals usually know the right information when they find it, or may have dreams that point them in a certain direction, or a chance encounter may ensue that changes their lives, or they may have a revelation or profound experience out of the blue.

The common element in all of this is that something deep inside takes over and stimulates the “next step” for the would-be healer. This “something” is a glimmer of the inner guidance that can become the great boon in their otherwise challenging lives. Inner guidance illuminates safe paths in what would otherwise be impenetrable darkness where society generally refuses to endorse possibilities. Inner guidance reveals hidden resources that can prove to be treasures along these paths. Inner guidance answers our questions and gives us the encouragement and confidence we cannot find anywhere else, not from friends, parents, children, lovers, professionals or even our chosen religious icons. Inner guidance is the loving, supporting and invisible arm that catches us when we stumble.

Yet, the paradox is that although we may seem to grow dependent on such guidance, we have nothing to fear in terms of losing our freedom. This is because the source of this guidance is ultimately our own being. Part of the process of healing and transforming is to make the initially still small voice of guidance stronger and more present until we recognize its true nature. Then increased recognition eventually leads to identification, and from there to further horizons of becoming. It’s ok to attribute this guidance to another source at first. Healers are primarily healers of themselves before anything else, which means they may not be ready to stand on their own or even in a position to recognize the possibility. In time the need to heal reflects the need to be free, and this will prompt a deeper recognition of the situation.

Their deeper being knows this, and does not push the issue. This deeper being never judges and never pushes unless that is the only option left, whereupon there will be prior warning. Even in those cases pushing comes because the individual wants to move forward, stuck as they feel themselves to be. In such cases the push is never more than one can handle. If one has a developing relationship with inner guidance, furthermore, they can communicate if they are truly ready to move on. They do not need to be a pawn of guidance, and guidance will make that point clear if they listen.

In short, guidance is a friend and more than a friend. It is a reflection of our potential even before we realize, let alone actualize it. There are two simple things we need to know to connect with inner guidance: 1) We must want it, intend it, choose it and stay receptive to it. 2) It speaks primarily through our feeling nature and intuition. It very rarely speaks in words, and when it does these are usually our own mind translating its nonverbal impulses. Sometimes it speaks through dreams or our visual imagination, and sometimes through a distinct sense of intuitive knowing. Yet always it’s presence is encouraged when we honor our feelings over our reason.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, limiting and conditioned impulses are those that hijack our verbal and cognitive faculties. Judgments are expressed in terms of internal dialogue, and even reasoned out in ways hard to argue. To use a religious analogy, our guardian angel tends to sit in our holistic right brain, and our advocate devil on our analytic and verbal left brain. This doesn’t mean our verbal faculties should be demonized. It is simply the result that all our lives we have been told what to do to the extent that even when we try to resist the voice of conditioned authority we react in the same thinking manner. The good news is that as the healer moves to trust their inner guidance and by proxy their own feelings, the verbal and reasoning aspect is slowly reclaimed. Our choices make sense, and we increasingly see the illogic of marching to the beat of the same imprisoning drummer, who all the more seems to be the pied piper leading lemmings over the cliff.

Describing elaborate techniques to connect with inner guidance is beyond the scope of this article. If the reader applies the two principles mentioned, inner guidance will manifest consciously over time, sooner or later. Methods, after all, simply elaborate upon these principles and formalize them in a structured or unstructured manner. You can, for example, sit and relax for ten minutes every day taking slow and even breaths. In these ten minutes you can focus on your heart and imagine a seat there. You can imagine also a shaft going to a point a few inches above your head, and further imagine a golden light there. Remember all the times you felt safe, secure, protected, trusting. If you can’t, simply imagine what that would be like, and aspire for a presence that would lead you to feel that way. If you have always relied on yourself and are uncomfortable with trusting anything or anyone else, simply imagine a part of you that you haven’t noticed before, something at a distance with more experience, wisdom and capacity to guarantee your safety, and simply know it is in and of that golden light.

Now that your imagination has set the stage, fill it with your desire for guidance. Remember, this is not some “entity” or outsider. It may not be the you you recognize yet, but it is of you, a friend that is more than a friend. an advisor, even a coach of sorts. Desire and choose it to be so, and know that your choice is sacred here. Nothing other than true guidance can come. Even if it did, you would know it because it would not be in agreement with your feelings. That is why the second principle, placing feelings uber alles is important. It is your safety net among other things. So as you imagine all of the above, call this light with your desire, aspiration and intent. Feel your sense of self sitting at the throne of your heart and call this light to fill that self. Guidance is not taking your throne. It cannot because you cannot take over yourself. So it is always you sitting there, and this light simply infuses and increases your own presence.

The next step is to simply receive, meaning listen with all your being for five minutes. Listen with your feelings, not your ears, but still listen. Then take a deep breath and go about your day. Simple as that. Guidance will come usually when you least expect it because initially expectation can be supported by judgment and hinder the process. It may need time to sink in. But even as you go about your day you can refer back to that golden light above your head, which is always there, like an angel’s halo. It may even be that religious iconography meant to depict this guidance with its halo imagery. The point is, encourage the happening gently. Then listen to your feelings, your gut, your heart, your intuition. They’re all manifestations of the same sense. In time you will recognize something is there, even if it may seem just that you realize the “obvious” where you didn’t before.

Guidance is a part of us and always has been. We simply have been discouraged since a very young age (or most of us at least) to ignore it in favor of other more imposing voices that have since taken up residence within our minds. At some point the healer realizes that these voices need to be deposed from their thrones, and will recognize them as the naked strutting emperors that they are. Then the true heir will be free to take sole residence with its most trusted advisor and friend: the guidance that is none other than the other side of our own emerging wholeness.

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Uncovering Facts, Understanding Interpretation and Releasing Judgments

25 June 2009 — Aannsha

In Our Orientation in the Present Moment, Aristomenes looked at the benefits of remaining in the present with our back to the future, and facing our past. When we take the time to look at our past, we start to see patterns in our choices and how they have helped or hindered us in shaping the present in which we find ourselves. Let’s look at one of the mechanisms that can be responsible for shaping our unconscious decision-making processes: Facts, Interpretation and Judgments.

Here’s an example: Imagine a little girl, brought up in an environment where her mother and father have an explosive argument in front of her and her father storms out of the house. As he leaves he turns, points his finger at the mother who’s hugging the little girl and shouts, “You women are all the same. You’re nothing but trouble! Well I’ve had enough! I’m leaving!” The father never returns. When the girl grows up she finds herself in short-term abusive relationships where the males keep leaving her. Yet she yearns for a long-term relationship with a man who loves her and treats her well. The repetitious behavior of men leaving her, only reinforces a deep belief she holds about herself that she’s ‘trouble’ and that all men leave in the end.

Imagine at this point the woman stops for a moment to review her life and begins to realize that perhaps not all men leave, after all several of her friends are in long term relationships – but maybe there’s one common denominator – herself. So imagine that she turns away from her nebulous future and instead looks at her past, looking for answers to her continuing unfortunate choices in men. She reviews her experiences, the choices that she’s made in terms of finding a caring partner, and sees a pattern emerging. Through looking at that pattern, she also realizes that deep down she holds a belief that as well as thinking all men are undependable, she also believes that she doesn’t deserve happiness. At that point, she might ask herself, “Where does that belief come from?”

Then she remembers her father leaving and what he said. She reviews her memory and looks simply for the bare facts and remembers that her parents had a bad argument. The father snapped and made a sudden decision to leave. Angrily, he threw a parting shot at his wife. He left and didn’t return.

As she reviews that memory, she remembers that as the little girl, she was huddled next to her mother as her father left, and when he shouted at his wife, she also took what he said to heart and at that moment made an interpretation that had gone into her subconscious to be replayed over and over again. As a child, her Interpretation was “Men leave because I’m trouble”. She realized she had also judged men as bad for leaving. And she had judged herself as bad for causing her father to leave in the first place.

Realizing this at a deep level is one key to this woman using her past as a key to releasing her in the present to make different relationship choices. At this point, she can consciously release the interpretations and let go of those judgments and choose in future to respond in the moment – the here and now – whenever she is with someone. Over time, these new choices will bear different fruit.

At the same time, this woman may well find that as she identifies again with the child in that memory, the strong and mixed emotions that she felt as a child but was unable to process, flood her emotional/physical body. Rather than attempting to suppress them again, if the woman is able to accept them and then release them as she senses them, she is another step closer to being freer to find real happiness in the present (and future).

This simple illustration shows how we can use this powerful mechanism to release more of our past conditioning and become freer in the present to make conscious, life-affirming choices that bring us more joy. Not only that, but as we have actually let go of painful emotions that have weighed us down, along with deeply ingrained beliefs about ourselves, we actually can feel noticeably lighter and more loving of ourselves. I would like to add my thoughts here that because we are resonating differently, sending out different subconscious messages to our environment, we also start attracting circumstances to us that have a different ‘feel’ / resonance to them. The only challenge we have then, is to remain in the present to respond in the present – rather than knee-jerking back to an old familiar reaction. ;)

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Our Orientation in the Present Moment

25 June 2009 — aristomenes

One thing about life is that we often don’t know where we’re going. The future is a big unknown for the most part, and this is understandably scary. We can try to mitigate that fear of the future by planning, organizing, keeping busy, having faith, catering to the guarantees of some authority etc, etc. Things like planning, organizing and trusting our sense of truth as far as the future is concerned are part of life, and it would be limiting to deny them. They can become prison bars, however, when they join the ranks of strategies of coping with the cognitive dissonance and discomfort that facing the unknown can cause.

To live we must live every moment, and to do this we must be aware of how we trap ourselves into a less than alive perspective. The highways and byways of inner growth can involve many things, but our attitude in the present moment is a foundation for any of these paths to take us toward fulfillment. The present moment isn’t an insulated bubble of experience. It is dynamic. Its dynamic nature is punctuated by its two opposite ends to establish the impression that time flows from past to future. On one end, the past, are all our experiences and memories, and anything established and recorded. In fact, for most of us, what we perceive as reality is really the past. The time it takes for a perception to become conscious is the time it takes for that perception to become a record of a moment that has already passed.

To really experience the present you need to be able to get beyond the recording process of experience, and into what doesn’t involve itself in time lags. This is none other than our own inner nature, our own being and sense of existence and selfhood. It’s actually easier said than done, because survival demands and conditioning force us to focus on the two extremes of our present moment dynamic, and all too often in a manner that does not encourage fully living. You can tell this is so if life seems overwhelming, or if there is anxiety or a sense that you have to submit to events beyond your control. You can tell you are in a perceptual trap if you don’t feel free, or if you feel you should be doing something other than what you are doing, or including something in your life that isn’t being included, whether you can define it or not.

In fact, many of the symptoms that identify natural transformers and potential healers are symptoms of being acutely aware that some serious compromising is going on in the way we are approaching life, and/or in the way life is approaching us. One way to start turning the tide is to identify how you relate to yourself and your environment every single moment, and to recognize your relationship with the past and the future as perhaps part of the cause of undesirable conditions that can make life less than alive and free.

Usually we turn our backs to the past and face the future. This seems right, given the future is the great unknown and our first impulse is to control it or have our catcher’s mitt in place to intercept anything it has to throw at us. At the same time, we may end up backing away from that future and stepping deeper and deeper into the past because no matter what defines it, it is a known variable and a more secure place than the dark void ahead of us. This can be like stepping into a many colored fog that can wrap around us so that our forward view is filled with passed imagery we take as an impending future.

Our stepping back into memory or conditioning (what we “know”) can be projected onto the future as a sense of expectation or self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps us on a treadmill of established patterns. For some this can feel safe if the past is pleasant, but for those acutely desiring to grow beyond former confines, it can be tormenting to the point of feeling trapped by fate. To avoid our insecurity we can adopt a defensive attitude and become allies with the very things we seek to transcend, and often without consciously realizing what is going on.

Most people seem practically addicted to this orientation given how apparently disfunctional “normalcy” is defended in our society, and how so many are secretly comfortable with the world going to hell in a handbasket (as far as appearances go, at least). At least they take comfort in knowing where everything is going, right around to where life turns into a broken record. People who are apparently satisfied with their strategies of projecting the past into the future and repeating the predictable cannot change unless they want to change, and nobody wants to change unless the current situation becomes less than tolerable. Transformers are simply individuals with a more acute sense of the intolerable than most. When they get over all those things telling them they are wrong for feeling this way, they seek solutions. Some wait for the future to bring solutions, some go out and actively search and a minority or those actively seeking ends up building solutions to share with the rest.

In my series of articles here, I’d like to share my own experiences of building what may be solutions to at least some readers. It is not my intention to express dogma or strict methodology, and I will avoid listing things to be addressed in a disciplinary fashion. At this stage, at least, I want to express some thoughts concerning basic orientations with respect to life and self that might help transformers along the way. One of these involves the orientation in relation to the present moment, and specifically the two dynamic extremes of the present moment we understand as past and future.

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, if you reverse your orientation to past and future, your relationship with the present moment and yourself can become free of both stress and limitation to great degree. It’s not a panacea for every form of dissatisfaction in life, but it is a very good start, and a foundation that can lead to surprising and fulfilling results.

Imagine yourself in a stream that flows from an undefined and unknown void in the front and continues to flow behind you. Imagine this as if you are in a wind tunnel and you can sea the streams reaching you. Once the flow reaches you it takes form, and that form solidifies into definition at passes you. It leaves its mark both within you and behind you as all you are and know, through direct experience or hearsay. The front is obviously the future and the back the past. It can seem the flow is coming toward you from this unknown void or that you are actually driving or travelling toward it. There is no way of knowing what is in that void, and so you can find yourself backing up to immerse yourself in the apparent safety of what you do know, the predictable forms of what has already occurred.

But there is another way. Imagine turning around in relation to this flow. Turn your back on the dark or luminous but undefined void and look toward the past, toward all the forms that define your internal structure, the structure of your relationships and the structure of the world at large. These are the forms of who you have become, and what you perceive your world has become, not necessarily identical with who you are.

Facing the future does not do us any good, because there is no such “thing”. The future is made of possibilities, not actualities. It is a realm of potential, not manifestation. Experience lies in the present, but the conditions of the past are the attractors that draw possibilities into the present. Nothing is random because every probability is magnetized by the foundation where the previous moment accepts the next. Ultimately, the buck stops with us as far as causes are concerned, because in one way or another we either consciously or subconsciously choose where we will go or are led there by circumstances when that choice cannot or is not applied. Both choices and circumstances are defined by all that has already been established in our existence. If we are to have the power to change our choices and our circumstances, we must face the causes already in existence. Facing the past, does not mean diving into it. On the contrary. Our natural inclination is to back away from what we face to get a better perspective on it and a wider field.

When we face the past, we back away into the future. The more we back away into the future, the more we surround ourselves with possibility instead of inevitability. We need not define the future to navigate the present. We only need to define our own choices and all that influences those choices, whether it seems within or beyond our current sense of control. That sense of control, in fact, is also defined by past experience and circumstances. What we consider probable or not for ourselves always seems to be proven so by something that is already established. Thus, if something has never been done, it can never be done, according to this attitude, and only what already is can ever be. I don’t know about you, but to me this is a prison mind-set, however convincing it may seem.

When you face the past in every moment, you discover where the past is controlling you, and has been forging your future literally behind your back. You tap into resources of understanding, sensing and insight to make sense of all the patterns you can now consciously unveil, and latent forces of creativity and energy start making themselves useful. After all, necessity is the mother of invention and opportunity the father. By facing the patterns that define you and your life in every event in the present, your can become aware where those patterns cycle in endless themes and variations. When you are so aware, you can combine your need for chance with the opportunity to change the constant repetition into something new and fresh. As you face the past, you will realize the future is not your enemy, but your ticket to freedom.

Bad probabilities exist with good ones, and this is as it should be because freedom is about the right to say yes and the right to say no. Life can be a constant yes, but this implies that there will be some no’s involved, and when we deeply realize the future as our friend, we can slowly (and Rome indeed was not built in a day) begin to recognize our own role in the happenings of our lives through action, omission and submission.

Go back to the image of the flow of time, where you are facing the past, and your back is to the future. Now try the “trust” exercise often used in therapy. Let yourself fall backwards knowing that there is always something to catch you. This something is your own deeper nature, reflected in the nature of the possibility/probability of your own wholeness. When your motive is to be more you, which is one and the same with being more free and more fulfilled, you attract that probability as a presence right behind you. Your choice to become whole and free precipitates as a presence right in the moment beyond this one, and this presence not only catches you so you don’t fall flat, but guides you in understanding how to change and heal so wholeness can be realized in the most balanced and healthy manner. It may be an adventure. It may have challenges. It may not be a completely smooth ride, but it will increasingly feel right.

That wholeness is not just behind you. It is within you and all around you, but covered by everything that denies it. And all that denies it is really embedded in the past and in what is established within us right along with our true nature, the nature of wholeness, freedom and fulfillment. Listen to this presence. It may take time to hear its voice or sense its presence as a subtle feeling. But if you choose the path toward wholeness, if you turn to toward open-eyed (never blind) trust and truly feeling into your every moment. Your resources to toward the blossoming of the greatness of yourself will come on-line like a wondrous panel of possibility.

It is not easy to change ingrained habits around something as fundamental as how we orient to the present moment, but it is worth making the choice and following through. It is also only the beginning…

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Inner Growth

22 June 2009 — aristomenes

It happens all the time, inner growth does. It’s as natural as breathing, and it can be argued that it is as important to our living as breathing is to our survival. Inner growth is, in fact, about living. It’s not exclusively about going anywhere or doing anything or becoming something, although those aspirations are usually an important part of it. Inner growth is about making the most of the ongoing present moment, and that includes taking past and future into account each in different ways. It seems obvious, doesn’t it? We are always here and now, so why worry about it? I’m reminded of a friend who used to rag on me about my philosophical mind-set. In his drunker moments he would slosh beer around and characteristically slur: “Why are you wasting your time on that crap? Life is just what it is! Just live it!”

For some of us, however, this is easier said than done. It seems it shouldn’t be. For many life is usually set with lists of what’s proper/normal/acceptable. We are rarely spared the list of “worthy” goals (whether we fulfill that list or not). Fulfilling this list is supposed to make us happy. Things like money, career, family, good sex and an abundance of the basics for an acceptable standard of material and social living are what any normal person should want. If they want more, there is religion and a few good books, right? In other words, no matter what our origins or individual wants there is always enough to keep us busy from cradle to grave. Some even say that fulfilling any society’s acceptable standards is inner growth. Then our peers are happy, our family is happy, our mates are happy, even our god or goddess is happy. Why shouldn’t we follow the trend? However, some of us may have noticed that the last question is usually posed not as a question, but as a demand. I think that in itself should make anyone suspicious.

It’s one thing to allow for others to have their standards so we may maintain our own, and quite another when those standards are more of an enforced obligation than they present themselves to be. In other words, anyone who is not happy with society’s standards is in some way treated as if that is wrong, and sometimes even punished in no uncertain terms if they push to manifest their convictions, even though nobody is hurt by that. Living your life, on the other hand, as your own being knows you should is living. Anything else is just surviving, and any DNA system does that anyway.

So one thing our impulse toward inner growth does is challenge us to shift from a survival mode (bare bones basic, or dressed up and “civilized”) into something more alive, which implies also something more free. True living is, in fact, true freedom and true freedom is true living. What is so paradoxical about this is that freedom is valued by all species that bear live young in some way. Lock any mammal in a zoo and you will notice their behavior changes. They get depressed, or aggressive and they don’t mate easily. Some die. I read about a study once, comparing animals in zoos with humans in cities, and human beings in general. Lots of similarities there. I would go so far as to say that society itself can be like a kind of great zoo, only there don’t seem to be any visitors. It’s food for thought anyway…

The impulse to inner growth is always a force in our lives. That force never goes away, although it can be suppressed and denied. It happens even if our lives go to pot, because going to pot means cages are rattled and sometimes even collapse. Indeed we can get buried when our cages collapse, and sometimes we suffer for the insanity of those with bigger cages or cages with more ruthless or uncontrollable occupants. Without inner growth, however, life would be so profoundly meaningless, even survival would not be able to sustain it. We are simply not structured for just surviving. We must live and we must grow. The present moment is a treasure house that we must access, own and embody, and if we don’t we survive…maybe. Survival, however, is for cockroaches and bacteria. It is not for people. Yet people are clever and have found ways and means to defy their urge for inner growth.

Why they (we) do so is a far more involved question than may appear on the surface. Cliche answers like “we are scared” or “we are selfish” or “its just human nature” are either insufficient, simplistic or insulting and they never really help. I believe some of us sense that. Some of us cannot outsmart ourselves and “get with the program”. Survival for its own sake, and even with all the trappings of social “normality” is anathema, practically toxic to us. We yearn for a freedom we often cannot even describe for the naysayers and “well-intentioned” skeptics who confront us about it.

Following the beat of our peers is never enough. Revolting against our peers only to seek the same old same old versions of normalcy through radical and maybe ruthless means is not enough. Being in control is not enough. Being accepted and loved is not enough. Being in the lap of luxury is not enough. The problem is that we may not know these things are not enough until we get there, usually after much trial and tribulation. It doesn’t mean all these things are wrong or harmful in themselves, although I would certainly say some are. What they have in common is that they leave us high and dry, as if life is one of those lovers who takes care of their self and then leaves us in the lurch, listening to the durge of their complacent snoring.

By accumulating and accumulating experiences, acquisitions, friends or whatever we can end up thinking there is nothing that can satisfy us or that we are insatiable. I think the issue is far simpler: we are placing the cart before the horse. We are seeking acceptance when we lack self acceptance. We are seeking material prosperity under conditions that force us to deny our inner wealth. We are under the impression that we must sacrifice our selves for our families. We are limited where it counts and forced to invest apart from our interest. We are, in short, diverted to building elaborate houses on flimsy foundations.

It sounds crazy, but if you think about it, the resistance of others and our selves to our inner growth is like a demand that houses are built on sand, like making foundation-building criminal. We even have a word for this accusation against foundation building that can only occur by prioritizing what goes on within us as opposed to what happens outside of us: selfishness. This is a different kind of selfishness than the callous lack of empathy and compassion permeating societies since time immemorial. That kind of selfishness is actually applauded behind the scenes, although frowned upon in public. That kind of selfishness seeks the trappings of survival, no matter how elaborate and dressed up as these may be, with terms like fame, fortune, success and living the dream. It is the other kind of selfishness that is seen as an “eccentric” quirk at best, but can easily be treated like a contagious disease as far as most people are concerned.

Yet, the word “selfish” is a misnomer. Self-ish, is something that mimics selfhood, an impostor of it, a caricature of the real thing. The focus on what goes on within us that some call “selfish” should really be called selfness. After all, we are trying to be real and our own self is as real as we can get. For any rational human being, this should be obviously something worthwhile. Being real means having access to what is really fulfilling and acting in a way that matters. Being unreal is insane, to the point some of us cannot shake the conviction that what most of society considers as normal or at least “part of life”, the good and the bad, is nothing short of insanity. So we seek to grow out of it, and by growing out of it we seek to be free to be who we are. The point is that we cannot grow unless we start from where life is real, here and now at the ground zero of our own being, who we are, how we feel, what we want truly and without excuses and compromises.

And yet it is not really about getting or becoming, and not about a process from a past to a future, but about the real now moment that is constantly renewing itself. We are not just in this moment, we are it, and cultivating its possibilities is where fulfillment starts and where it ultimately ends up. That may sound a bit mystical or otherworldly, but its not. It’s here and now, and this is the great teacher, the ground where we may build our foundation toward living no matter how we choose to do this living. If the foundation is real so are we, and if we are real we don’t have to worry about doing it the “wrong” way.

Inner growth, for me, is about realizing and actualizing our being real. Living for me is about being real. I think this includes everything we may think will make us happy and many things we haven’t even imagined yet. But if we are true to what we sense within, we will imagine them, and know they are our promised treasure.
If we can imagine, we can aspire. If we can aspire, we can realize. We can have the pie and eat it too, because that is what being real is all about. And that is the great challenge for anyone driven toward conscious and self motivated inner growth. It is to recognize that reality is not a matter of democratic vote and majority opinion, but starts right here within, at ground zero, the foundation, the here and now, me and you.

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Hello!

11 June 2009 — Aannsha

… and welcome to Conscious Inner Transformation blog.

In brief, to get the ball rolling …

This blog been set up as a supportive environment for souls of like purpose to read articles and share thoughts, find community and validation.  In particular, its designed for for Conscious Inner Transformers who share similar traits to myself and others I know.

The Conscious Inner Transformer (CIT) reclaims, heals and transforms with ever-increasing awareness; conscious and sentient; into the expanding wholeness of their potential self.

You will find in this blog more information on the definition of a Conscious Inner Transformer, and also a questionnaire to help you identify if you are such a soul.  If you are, then you may find that as this blog grows, it is filled with really useful information for you in your journey to wholeness.  It will also be a place where you can add your own comments, ask questions and share your pertinent life experiences with others if you choose.

But for now, welcome! :)


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