Self Discovery

People are Like Plants

January 5, 2017 by lyra777 6 Comments

People are very much like plants.

Plants need four things to grow – soil, time, sunlight and water.

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We are in fact exactly the same.

All the time we are incubating seedlings of wisdom that are waiting to blossom. We are fertile ground.

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We tell people how they should be growing their little plants, which is madness really. Your plant maybe a rose, and mine may be a cactus. If I applied the same requirements as you — lots of water in a temperate climate — my cactus will end up all shrivelled up.

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Yet, we say to others, you should grow like this, and you should grow like that, thinking that is best for them. This is only because it worked for our plant, but it may not work at all for theirs. We could be twisting their little plant to grow in a way it doesn’t want to.

We may also become impatient with other people’s growth process, demanding that they grow faster, that they act now. But no matter how much you yell at a plant, it will still grow at its own pace, because plants need time and patience to grow.

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Plants also need sunlight and water. This also will come naturally. As time passes, there will be inner weather changes. Sometimes we have days of bright, warm sunlight within, making us feel bursting with happiness and hope.

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But other days we are surrounded by dense clouds of sadness. They can become heavier and heavier, eventually enveloping us into darkness.

Fear not, because these very clouds will provide you with the second key ingredient to grow your seedling: water. Your very tears will be welcome nourishment for your little plant of wisdom inching towards the sky.

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As with all things in life we need a optimal balance of sunlight and water for our plants. Individual balances may vary — some plants may need more sunlight, others may need more rain.

However, sometimes we may find ourselves being enveloped in thick, dark clouds for long periods of time. They can become so dense that we cannot pierce through them with our own little sunlight. Being in darkness for so long is unlikely to help our plant to grow.

Luckily no man is an island, and we have other people around us who can lend a helping hand. They can share their light when we can’t shine it on ourselves. There is another word for this — love.

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Often when other people consciously share their sunlight with us, our clouds will naturally start to rain. They can, in fact, pour. Floods of tears will come flowing down, and the rain will pitter and patter until your clouds will start to disappear. Eventually you will start to see the shimmering of your own sunlight again.

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And your plant can bask in its warmth.

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Now remember, sharing sunlight doesn’t mean trying to forcibly blast someone’s clouds away through pushing happiness on them. This can be very counterproductive. Yet, people using this method often can get frustrated as to why the other person is not responding to their happy bomb.

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The reason is simple. If you are throwing a happy bomb at someone, often (but not always) you are indirectly saying, “you shouldn’t be sad”. In other words, “I don’t want to accept you as you are”. This tends to be because people do not like to accept the clouds of sadness within themselves, so they do not want to be reminded of them through other people.

This is where remembering that people are like plants is so important. People’s little plants benefit from the sadness. They are nourished by tears. As such, accepting people as they are, in that moment in time, is crucial. Also, remember that plants need time to grow, so no amount of blasting with happy bombs will speed up the process.

Sunlight is love, and love is unconditional acceptance. It is a state of being. It is to warmly radiate your own sunlight on someone, gently telling them “you can be exactly who you are“.

Another mistake people make is to go in the polar opposite direction when trying to help people with clouds. Thinking that it’s inappropriate to be happy around them, they instead draw out their own clouds of gloom. Although on the surface this may seem like a form of empathy, in the long run this equally doesn’t help, because instead you are just darkening each other’s clouds together.

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Note that you will find that some people actually want to stay with their clouds of gloom. These people will prefer to be with people who darken their clouds further. This is fine if that is what people want. However, whilst this may give these people a temporary feeling of satisfaction, ultimately the little plant of wisdom will not grow by staying continuously in darkness.

Ultimately, our plants need their own unique mixture of of soil, time, rain and sunlight.

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As we go through cycles of rain and sunlight through the passing of time, sometimes aided by the sunlight of others, you will find that what was initially a little seedling inside…

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…will eventually sprout a stunning flower that radiates both deep insight and beauty.

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What kind of a plant do you have? 🙂

Afterword

The idea that people are like plants was one I had during my winter months of darkness.

I have learnt the importance of patience when it comes to self-development. Often I beat myself up for not feeling better quickly. But now I know that my plant will grow at its own pace. The best thing I can do for it is to lovingly accept it as it is.

I have also learnt the importance of accepting your sadness. We live in a hyper-positive world where the social expectation is that we need to be super duper happy all of the time. I’m sure I’m part of a large majority of people who see crying as a ‘weakness’ – even if it’s on a subconscious level. Although we may say to others that crying is ok, we still don’t want others to see us cry, and we feel uncomfortable when others do. I picked up the idea that “crying = bad” at a very young age and I remember holding in a lot of tears as a young girl. This is maybe why I cry so much now. I think I’m crying for the young girl inside that didn’t think she was allowed to cry.

Our plants need both sunlight and water. Our tears are crucial for our own emotional development. I once heard a beautiful quote – “Two things bring us closer to God, prayer and tears”. Crying can be the exact catharsis that we need. The only reason why I have some of the deep insights on life that I have today is because a few of my little plants have sprouted after years of going through both sunlight and rain. My “rainy seasons” (i.e. periods of depression) I know so far have been crucial for my own development.

Maybe I have tropical plants 😉

I also wrote this blog because I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help people who find themselves in thick clouds of darkness. Seeing what helps me has taught me a lot. I talk in this entry about the things that don’t help people with dark clouds, and that’s because I have made all of the mistakes I mention here. I have thrown happy bombs and I have further darkened others people’s clouds. I know I still make these mistakes, but then I’m only reminded about how they don’t work. Conversely I have been on the receiving end of both types of approaches, and I know that they have not helped me.

I have learnt that if someone can’t pierce through their dark clouds, just be with them and shine your sunlight of acceptance. This sometimes may mean just sitting with someone in silence. Then let the magic of time take over. Finally I want to extend my special thanks to JW and CH who have shared their wonderful sunlight with me during these recent cloudy times.

Adopting a Growth Mindset

November 7, 2016 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

In school we are graded on our work. If you work hard, listen and do exactly as the teacher says, you can get 100%. When you do, congrats! You’ve reached the end line. That’s exactly the place you want to be, and you should try everything to continuously maintain those marks.

This is the paradigm we’re taught, so it’s only natural that some of us start to apply the same principles to life. Because we think that life is like school, you start to believe that there is a way of life that earns you an ‘A’. That there is an ideal state of being that you should continuously be in. I call this the ‘plateau of perfection’.

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The existence of the plateau of perfection means that if you work hard, eventually you will reach some sort of nirvana. Of course, no one can really tell you what this is because it doesn’t exist. But in the meantime other people may give you their opinions on what flawlessness is, and you may take some of their opinions on board (“It’s getting into an Ivy League school”, “It’s getting an Olympic medal”, “It’s earning a six-figure salary”).

Now, the issue with this kind of mindset is that it’s very black and white. If in any way you deviate from this illusory plateau, you are failing. And when you’re failing at life, what is the point in doing anything?

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This leads to several toxic behavioural patterns known today as perfectionism. You become scared of falling from white into black territory, so you try everything to avoid feeling like you have. You are less likely to start something new because you don’t like to do things unless you are good at them. Even if you do begin learning a new skill, the moment you realise how behind you are compared to other people, or find yourself struggling to learn something, that is black territory so you quit. You don’t take criticism well because any sort of critique means that you have failed, that you haven’t achieved an ‘A’ in what you are doing.

This is all a big shame, because you are running away from opportunities to develop as a person. From my experience I have come to learn that there is no plateau of perfection. Growth is an infinite, continuous process, more like this:

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Now, the idea that there is no plateau of perfection in life may be a daunting concept for some people. If there is no end-point what’s the point of even doing anything? If you find yourself thinking this, then probably you are what I call an ‘end-ist’. You see life just as set of goals, and have a tendency to miss out on the enjoyment that comes from the actual process of doing things (if you do find identifying with this description, I highly encourage you watch this Alan Watts video).

I too used to be like this, but not anymore. Now I believe that our purpose in life is to savour all elements that emerge in the present moment. As such, infinite growth presents a wonderful opportunity to forever experience new and exciting things. Think of it like you are running a leisurely marathon. As you jog along you will pass a variety of sceneries – parks, forests and buildings – all of which you can relish as you go along. This is the beauty of continually developing.

Also, you may have noticed that life works in a funny way. The moment you start to plateau and think that you’ve ‘made it’, it throws at you challenges that encourage you to grow even more. And it will do so for the rest of your life, reminding you that there is no plateau.

This is why we hear experts say that they are still learning something new everyday. They are humble because they know that there will forever be things that can be learnt. There is no room for arrogance because whatever we believe to be ‘true’ will eventually all shift and change.

Personally, I find the growth mindset extremely liberating. There is no need to rush to get to any end point, because it doesn’t exist. Instead, enjoy looking at the different sceneries as you jog along your chosen path.

The Rollercoaster

October 8, 2016 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

We often hear that life is like a rollercoaster.

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We get tossed and turned through its ups and downs, thrown mercilessly from one extreme to another.

When we are on top its a high. We look down upon the world and feel like we can do anything.

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But then there is the fall.

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Which can be sudden and frightening.

We can find ourselves plunged into darkness. Sad. Alone. Unable to see the light.
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This can be seconds, months, years…

But eventually we come out

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And start the process all over again.

After years and years of being on the roller coaster.

rollercoaster6 We ask ourselves, does it have to be this way? Do I have to be thrown around by life?

And then you realise, there is actually a door on the roller coaster.

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You can step out.

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And plant two feet firmly on the ground.

rollercoaster9 The rollercoaster stands tall above you and is still moving.

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But you simply watch in stillness and in peace.

When it plunges downward, you continue watching.

This is not to say you don’t feel the emotions you felt on that rollercoaster.

We all have an inner theme park within us so the emotions will still happen.

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But you are simply now watching the rollercoaster make its way up. You vicariously feel the high. When the rollercoaster plunges down, you also observe the despair and pain. However this is all now from the ground, all from a place of calm.

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You feel stillness and your emotions at exactly the same time.

Because you know you are safe, you don’t have to be scared about what is happening. Especially when the rollercoaster plunges into the dark. You don’t have to close your eyes anymore. You can look and really see what is happening.

When you do, you may discover something very surprising.

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That you constructed this inner rollercoaster yourself.

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Even those very dark tunnels.

Which means, that you can choose to reconstruct your rollercoaster in a different way.

Only after you’ve fully observed and understood the structure of the rollercoaster of course.

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So the next time you find yourself being tossed and turned around by what would appear to be external circumstances, use it as an opportunity to get off the rollercoaster and observe it. Even reconstruct it if you want to.

Stillness is possible.

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Afterword

This was the analogy that emerged in my head when I tried to explain to a friend about being the observer of our thoughts and emotions, and also about how meditation features in all of this.

Although there are many types of meditation each with different goals, one of the key things it does is to allow yourself to access the space, quiet and stillness that exists within. It also helps you access your inner observer. You no longer become your thoughts and emotions. You are just the neutral person hearing and feeling them.

Some people get frustrated with meditational practices because they can’t get their mind and emotions to quiet down. They think that by meditating they should be achieving a state of complete emptiness straight away.

Although this may be a state we may someday achieve, trying to repress what is bubbling up from inside will just make you feel frustrated with the practice, making it counterproductive. In fact, when meditating what you are doing is accessing more of who you really are. So all the thoughts and emotions that you didn’t want to look at will eventually come to the surface.

Accept them, embrace them and let them go. That’s what they wanted you to do in the first place 🙂 Then just gently return to your meditation (e.g., following your breath).

And remember, you don’t need to be tossed and turned mercilessly by life! Objectively life may throw you the biggest curve balls, but you can remain still within

Dear 20 Year Old Me

September 27, 2016 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

Saying goodbye to my 20s with a Roaring 20s Great Gatsby Party!

I have turned 30. Entering a new chapter of my life has made me reflect on how I have grown in the last decade. This then made me wonder – if I were to write a letter to my 20 year old self, what would I say to her?

Actually, if I were given the choice to send a letter back into the past, I wouldn’t. I would want 20 year old Marie to plunge into her new decade with the same ignorance I did. Why? Because my hardships and struggles have made me the woman I am today.

But if I had to pick six pieces of advice to say to her, perhaps I would say something like this.

(I also have a recommended reading list at the end of the entry based on what I’ve written, so please check out below if interested.)

1. Be your authentic self

In your twenties you believed that life is a performance. Every action, every conversation needs to be manipulated to bring about the ‘perfect’ outcome. That is, to have other people like you.

The problem with this is that because it’s an act brought about by fear – that is, the fear of not being liked – you spend all your energy trying to avoid this outcome as much as possible. To do so, you constantly suppress what you think and feel. This is nothing short of violence towards your self.

In fact, in not being honest you are not only hurting yourself, but you are doing all the people around you a disservice.

Life is too short to be anyone but yourself.

Remember these three things:

Be honest with your emotions

We may be taught that ‘emotional control’ is a sign of maturity. This may be so, but this is different from emotional suppression. If you deny and push down how you are feeling inside, it doesn’t miraculously go away – it gets stuck inside you. The result is that you become a volcano of emotions, waiting to explode. Often also, this leads to depression. It is possible to openly accept all the human emotions we feel – from happiness to anger to sadness. It is only through truly embracing them that you can let them go.

Be honest with your words

There is something to be said about radical honesty. You may feel like you are preventing people from getting hurt by choosing words carefully, but in actuality you are doing them a disservice by not telling them the truth. This doesn’t mean however, that you tell the person you hate that they are an asshole. This is not helpful. I very much recommend nonviolent communication as a means of getting across what you are thinking and feeling.

Be honest with your body

If your body tells you to stop, stop. Don’t push it beyond what it wants. You will find that to do otherwise will eventually hurt your body. You don’t have to push your body to the limits to achieve something. Yoga is a prime example – you work closely with your body, listening carefully to it and soon flexibility + strength follows.

2. Constantly let go

In Japanese there is a saying, ‘dan-sha-ri’. It means refusal, disposal and separation. Derived in part from yoga, it refers to the cleaning and throwing away of unwanted items.

The importance of this is perfectly demonstrated in the parable with the keen zen pracitioner and the enlightened master. ‘Teach me everything you know!’ the young practitioner said to the master. The master simply told him to pour him a cup of tea until he said stop. Even when the cup was overflowing the master said nothing, ‘The cup is flooding!’ the zen practioner exclaimed. ‘Yes’ said the master, ‘that cup is like your mind, how can I teach you anything if it’s full already?’.

If you don’t throw away things in your house, it clogs up. Mess builds. Life is the same. If you don’t constantly let go of things – may it be thoughts or emotions – they accumulate and you’ll simply have no space to let in the new. When you feel like you’ve hit a life block, then don’t do anything more. Instead, let go.

Oh, and on a side note, remember that your inner state and outer state are closely connected. If your room is messy, that’s probably a good sign that you need to do some cleaning on the inside. Conversely, an effective way to start your inner cleanse is through scrubbing the house and throwing away all unwanted items!

3. Remember that you can be the observer

In your early twenties you lived your life swayed by emotions and thoughts. It was like you were on a boat rocked constantly by a storm.

It doesn’t have to be this way, because one thing you must realise is that you are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions either.

You are, in fact, the observer of all of these things. You are the listener. You are the feeler. As such, you can choose not to react to what emerges from you. That is not to say you should suppress your thoughts and emotions (see ‘1) Be Your Authentic Self’). It just means you are fully present with your thoughts and emotions, while making the conscious choice not to respond to them.

Meditation is key to sharpening this technique.

4. Remember that all actions come out of love or ignorance

All actions come from love or ignorance. Even fear and anger come from ultimately not understanding what you are dealing with properly. Each and every single decision in life we have a choice as to whether or not we make it from these two states. And there are absolutely no excuses – ‘but that person was being horrible, I had no choice’, ‘I had to respond immediately’. No. We always have a choice, so long as you are totally present in the moment.

On a similar vein, remember there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ decisions. There are only decisions that either come or not come from the heart.

But surely there are ‘right’ decisions! You may say. For example, what if you invest in something and it is a huge success? Wouldn’t that be a correct decision? Well, what if after your successful investment, you become so well-known among your business peers that brings about jealously? What if someone backstabs you and steals all your money, leading you to suffer terrible poverty? Your ‘right’ decision may not seem so ‘right’ anymore.

My point is, you never know the complete consequences of what each decision brings. Some may be pleasant, but they can quickly become unpleasant too. So the only thing we can do in these circumstances is to ensure that every decision we make at least comes from a place of total openness and honesty both to ourselves and others.

5. Live with humility

In your twenties you are still struggling to find your place in the world. You believe that there is such a thing such as a ladder of success, and it is your job to work hard to climb up on it. As such, people lie above or below you on this hierarchy, and you have a drive keep on top of it. You are also terrified of falling behind.

It is time to let this idea go.

First, if you define ‘success’ as ‘being skilled at something’, you must realise that there will always be people better at everything single thing that you do. Even if you were an Olympic gold medal winning champion, one day your muscles won’t be what they used to be and someone else will take your spot.

Conversely though, there will also always be people who are less skilled at things than you. So just accept that there is this spectrum of people that will always surround you, no matter how good you become at something. Therefore it is pointless to get on the treadmill of being ‘at the top’.

More importantly though, remember that this whole idea of placing people and things on a scale is a mentally constructed one, so it can be abandoned. For example, let’s say you start sewing. If you break it down just to what it is, all you are doing is threading a needle in and out. And the experience can just end there. But if you come out of the present moment of performing this action and start comparing yourself with others, then suddenly you are ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than other people at it. You could have just stayed in the moment enjoying your sewing.

Humility is being in a state where you do not see the world anymore on a scale. Everything just is. There is no ‘better’ or ‘worse’. Things just are. Seeing and experiencing the world in this state will bring about a massive feeling of liberation.

6. If you want to live life to the fullest, play with it.

One of the biggest errors you made in your twenties was thinking success and suffering were synonymous. They really aren’t. Success may take lots of effort, yes, but it doesn’t have to involve suffering. Suffering is simply a mindset.

If you are the type of person who approaches life ‘seriously’ you may find yourself facing a lot of blocks in life. Why? Because this type of consciousness and attitude is actually very limiting, not to mention painful and boring.

Instead, think of life as a game. To play is to be creative, to be exploratory and to have fun. Approaching life as a big playroom helps you to more effortlessly navigate what it throws at you, no matter how hard it is. Even for things that may not seem like a playful event, such as a break-up, stressful exams or illness, try bending your attitude a little and see it within the context of a playroom anyways. This doesn’t mean you are not taking what has happened seriously. In fact, it’s the polar opposite. Because you want to approach all of these hardships in the most effective way possible, this is what you are doing. Less suffering from you means that you can be there and help out others during these hard times.

If you want to take life seriously, stop taking it seriously.

Thorns

September 20, 2016 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

Words can have a funny effect on us, especially when we are little

thorns-1 At the end of the day, that’s all they are – words – so we can easily just allow them to pass by

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But often, instead of letting them go, we take them…

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…and transform them…

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..into thorns

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And we stab ourselves with those words

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Keeping them inside us as we grow older

When a thorn is there for a long time it starts to feel numb, and we may not notice that it is there

That is, until something, or someone, happens to rattle the thorn thorns-7

Bringing up the pain

What rattles the thorn can be directly related, or indirectly related

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Although it was us that stabbed ourselves with the thorn in the first place

We can forget this

And blame the pain on the person who moved the thorn

thorns-9 But when someone touches our thorn

We must remember that this is a gift

They are reminding us that there is a thorn that we need to remove

When we feel the pain, it is an opportunity to feel it

And to see it for what it truly is

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As you start to do this, the healing can start

The solution isn’t to deny that the thorn is there, or to pull it out with brute force

In fact, the more you apply pressure, the further the thorn will plunge in

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The solution instead, is to do what you should have done in the first place

When you heard those words many years ago

Let go

Remember that it was you who stabbed yourself with those words in the first place

So it is also you who has the power to release it

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Finally freeing yourself of pain

Remember, this is all thanks to that person who rattled the thorn in the first place

Alerting you to its presence

So the next time you feel stress, anger or pain because of someone else

Instead of lashing out at them, ask yourself

Which thorn is being rattled?

And let the healing process begin

Afterword

For the purposes of this story, I have said that we can turn other people’s words into thorns. However, in reality we can turn any thought that we have into a thorn. For example, you may be with a group of people and feel ignored. You think ‘no one ever listens to me’. Instead of simply observing this thought and letting it pass, we can transform this into a thorn to carry with us until we choose to pull it out again.

When our thorns are rattled it is painful, and we really don’t like it. So we actually spend so much of our lives being fearful of, and trying to avoid, situations that could potentially move our thorns.

I for one, am terrified of criticism. This is because it moves my thorn saying that I am a bad person. I observe in myself how I navigate situations to desperately avoid this from happening. I think this occurs on a subconscious level for many of our thorns.

However, this is a shame. Because the only way to remove the thorn is to feel where they are and to see them for what they truly are. Only then can we relax and let them go. Thorns are actually very much like shadows (see previous blog post), so the best way to release them is to stop resisting them and to accept and love them. Nothing else is needed really. The thorn will then come out by itself.