Marie Buda

Discovering the River Towards Inner Freedom

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The Illusion of Belonging: Why it’s time to abandon the search

April 17, 2018 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

Belonging can only happen when a “part” joins a group

So by wanting to belong

You are under the illusion of incompleteness

In waking up you realise

You are already complete

You are not a part

But a whole

And a whole doesn’t need to join any group

You are there already

You are a whole universe

 

The Problem of “Belonging”

Most of us at some point feel the painful pang of wanting to find the place that we can call “home”. A place full of people that fills us with unconditional love, protection and strength whenever we feel we need it. A place where we always feel accepted, where we can bare our deepest selves.

We label this state as “belonging”.

When we don’t feel like we belong anywhere we feel like a puzzle piece, endlessly searching and hoping that we will finally find the whole picture that we are a part of.

This, however, is a problem.

This is because belonging is a complete illusion. It is a belief that we must abandon if we are to relieve our suffering, or else we will spend our whole lives searching for something that doesn’t exist in the first place. We will end up in a state (“be”) of eternal “longing”.

 

What Belonging Actually Is

Think about the last time you felt like you belonged somewhere. How did you feel on the inside? Warm? Loved? Accepted? Expansive?…

…Complete?

This is what belonging actually boils down to: completeness. And ultimately it is this thirst for wholeness that drives almost everything that we do. When we feel complete in a group, we feel loved, because we become love itself.

As mentioned in my little midnight musing at the beginning of this post, belonging can only occur if a part joins a whole. Yet, in waking up we realise that we are complete. So how did we come to believe that we were only a piece, rather than the entire puzzle?

Let me tell you a story.

 

How the Circle Became a Puzzle Piece

This is Circle. Circle is one full, content and joyous entity.

One day Circle goes to play with some other circle friends. They have a chat.

 

Circle is embarrassed. It doesn’t want its friends to reject it so it decides to cut a fragment of itself off and lock it up in an closet. Now it doesn’t have to show this aspect of itself anymore, and it feels safe.

 

Then Circle goes home. Circle’s parents have spent years cutting off pieces of themselves, so they don’t like it if Circle doesn’t cut them off either. So they push and prod Circle until it does the same.

Soon Circle trims and locks away so many parts of itself that it isn’t a circle anymore.

It becomes a puzzle piece.

Now Circle may feel safer, but it doesn’t feel whole anymore. Feelings of loneliness and incompleteness flood in. It wants to find the place where it can be a circle again. So it starts searching. Little did Circle know however, that what its little soul was crying out for wasn’t for other people. It was yearning for all the parts of itself that it locked away in its closet many years ago.

Eventually there will be times when Circle will go to places, or will meet other people, that will make it feel secure. Suddenly, Circle is now ok with opening the door to its secret closet and letting back in all the fragments that were lost.

This doesn’t last for long though. If Circle always relies on external circumstances to cue whether or not its ok to let back in its fragments, sooner or later someone, or something, will lead to Circle quickly locking the door again.

What Circle doesn’t realise, is that it always holds the key to the closet. Nobody can take this key away. Circle can actually choose to open the door whenever it wants to.

And when it does, it will finally become itself again.

 

Complete. No longer needing to “belong”.

 

Beyond Belonging

When we say, “I finally feel like I belong”, it is never because a person or a group is making you feel that way. Rather, it is you giving yourself permission for once to be who you truly are. Ultimately you are the gatekeeper of your fragments, the decider of whether to bare your heart to the world.

It takes courage, acceptance and a sense of fearlessness to learn how to open your gate when everyone may be against you. It may take a lifetime of practice. But remember – you are always the holder of the key. Go back and invite all of those locked-up selves to “belong” again to the core of your being. Only then will that feeling of completeness return.

It’s time to go beyond belonging. We are each unique circles, so there will never be a circle that is exactly like yours. In this sense, we will always be alone. Yet, to fully embrace this aloneness means also to joyously celebrate your special circle, to revel in all of its imperfect perfection. This opens your heart and fills your being with love. This love then expands outwards, embracing every living being in its path.

In embracing your aloneness, you actually connect with all.

Filed Under: Acceptance, Awakening, Emotion, Loneliness, Love, Relationships Tagged With: awakening, Belonging, Love, Relationships, returning to self

Do You Want To Help Someone With Depression? Don’t try.

April 4, 2018 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

 

Do not try to help someone with depression.

“How can you even say that?” I hear you yelling. “You can’t just leave someone in pain alone. Surely they want help too!”

Sure, I agree. I have struggled with depression for 15 years. But hear me out.

I mentioned in a previous post that a key reason for depression is emotional suppression. The person in front of you is suffering because they cannot accept something. This could be an aspect of themselves (“I hate myself”), or it could be an event that has occurred to them (“How could this be happening to me?”). If they are depressed, they have been suppressing a whole host of emotions inside, such as sadness, anger or regret. The only way to release oneself from this suffering is to completely and fully accept the present, to embrace everything that is occurring both internally and externally (note that this is not the same as passivity). The opposite of depression is to freely express one’s soul.

So this is where the problem of trying to “help” someone with depression lies. You may relieve the suffering of someone as the end result of being with someone, but to have the intention to “save” or “help” will lead to suffering for both parties. To feel that you want to help someone with depression also involves motivations like, “I want to make you happy” or “I don’t want you to be in pain”. This may seem like a noble sentiment, but here is the problem. The flip-side of these thoughts are: “I want to try and change your mood”. If this is the ultimate impetus behind what you are doing, you are actually denying how the person is in the present. In thinking, “I want to make you happy”, you are simultaneously saying, “I do not want you to be who you are in this present moment”. You are not accepting their darkness. This is precisely the opposite of what people with depression need (see also my article on the challenges of being an Empath).

Remember there are no “good” or “bad” moods. All emotions — even painful ones — need to be accepted in order to be released. If the person in front of you is in pain, give them space to accept that pain. To try to do something to change that is to block the natural process of things. It is like building a dam in a river that wants to flow. To approach someone with the intention of helping, while seeming like a great intention, actually is subconsciously sending the message, “I don’t want you to be who you are”. This is not love.

This tactic will backfire too. If you approach people like this, soon you will find a lot of people who won’t respond to your “help”, because in fact you aren’t really helping them in the first place. This will just lead to disappointment and frustration on your end. You may even get angry at the person wondering why they don’t get better more quickly when you’re offering so much “help”. Well, now you know why.

Don’t try and help someone in emotional pain. If you feel a tug to be with them, then go with the flow and be with them. Literally. Just BE. Don’t make solving their problems your goal. Being present can manifest in an infinite number of forms. Anything could happen while you are with the other person. You may want to just be silent. You may listen, you may speak. You may even end up giving them advice. But it all comes from a place of not trying to forcibly change anything around you and going with the flow.

It is highly likely that if you do this, the almost paradoxical end result is that you have helped this person. But “helping” shouldn’t be your first intention.  The person suffering is in a state of non-acceptance regarding a lot of things. You being in a state of presence will draw them into your healing light. In fully accepting them, you help them accept themselves.

Bottom line, if you really want to help someone with depression, let that sentiment go. Being yourself, and in doing so inviting them to be themselves, is the best medicine you can offer.

Filed Under: Acceptance, Being Present, Depression, Emotion, Love Tagged With: Acceptance, Depression, Love, presence

How Do I Embrace My Emotions? – Depression and Emotional Suppression Q&A

February 10, 2018 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

I have noticed a very steady increase in the number of visitors to my last blog, “Depression and Emotional Suppression”. Even though I wrote that entry six months ago, it has quickly catapulted into my most read entry of all time.

This emphasised to me how much people all over the world are also in pain, and how we are not alone in our experiences with depression. What also struck me was that the majority of the hits were directed from Google. To find my entry one would have to specifically type in keywords along the lines of “depression emotional suppression”. Clearly, people are realising themselves that this could be the reason for their darkness and are searching further.

I received some questions this week from a reader, so with his permission, I have published my responses to them below. I realised that in the last entry I didn’t go into detail about what one can do personally to embrace one’s emotions, so I share a lot of the techniques I use below. I sincerely hope that this will be of help to other people who are starting to shed light on their darkness.

 

Say one has been suppressing emotions for quite some time now. Would depression result in confusion and some form of apathy in contrast to feeling pure sadness?

Even though I have experienced depression, I do think that depression can take a multitude of forms. My experience is just one experience, and may not be the ultimate truth. I just want to reinforce the importance of finding your truth, your path to freedom, and to just take on board what truly resonates with your heart.

My experience is that depression ranges from complete apathy to deep sadness/despair. So to answer your question, I would say “yes”. Either way, the common denominator seems to be suffering.

However, despite these so-called “feelings”, it is still not quite the same as fully experiencing an emotion. The analogy I used in my last entry was if that your suppressed emotions are rotting garbage, depression is simply the smell alerting you to them.

Subjectively, the depressive experience feels 2D, almost like a vacuum. As it is occurring because you are not feeling true emotions, what you are experiencing is something slightly different. It’s like a blackhole. I often felt like it was like white fire raging through my guts.

In contrast, emotions are embodied. They feel 3D. Even so-called “negative” emotions like hatred or grief have colour, shape and character.  So the sadness you experience when depressed feels different from when you are completely embracing your sadness. The former is a painful vacuum, while the latter flows through your body. With my synesthesia, sadness also feels dark blue to me, whilst depression has no colour.

 

If someone has been subconsciously suppressing emotions and after doing it for quite some time (which comes with self-rejection of how you feel), how would it be possible to face and embrace said feelings and emotions buried deep?

Firstly, I want to congratulate you for even realising that you a suppressing. Realising this is the first step towards acceptance.

The answer to your question is: there are many ways!

1) Mindfulness and meditation

First and foremost, you need to get back into your body.

It is highly likely that if you are suppressing, you focus most of your consciousness in your head i.e. your thoughts. This is a coping mechanism you picked up at a very young age in order to avoid feeling “negative” emotions like grief or anger.

One interesting exercise is to draw how you feel in your body right now. Shockingly, when I did this I just drew one circle that represented my head. Although obviously I knew I had a body, subjectively I had completely lost touch with the rest of it. It had ceased to exist within my consciousness.

Body scan practice (a form of mindfulness) can slowly help shift the spotlight of your attention from your thoughts back into your body. Here is a helpful link to get you started. In learning how to become aware of your body again, you can increase your sensitivity to any emotions that may arise within it.

In general also, practice mindfulness. Gently, and compassionately, observe how emotions may arise and how you push them down. The importance is not to beat yourself up about it. Just notice. The key here is just to get to know your patterns and habits a bit better.

Finally, meditation — specifically, mindful breathing. If you clear your mind, you will notice that sometimes suppressed emotions will just come up on their own. Instead of fighting them, smile in your heart, smile with your whole being. No matter how tough the emotion, don’t take it too seriously. Be playful with it. Surround yourself and the emotion with love. Soon, you will start to be able to release emotions through the breath.

 

2) Let your body express itself

Personally, while mediation and mindfulness helped, one issue I started having was that I had the strong urge to move while emotions started bubbling up. If anger started rumbling from within I felt the urge stamp my feet, punch some pillows and scream.

My solution? I now just do it. At an appropriate time and place of course.

For me, having danced for many years, I found that movement medicine was right up my street. I discovered 5Rhythms® at a spiritual festival I went to two years ago. Essentially in these classes, you let your body move however you want for two hours, with the leader’s invitation to explore certain styles of expression, should you so wish. Allowing your body to freely communicate what you feel within is great, but seeing everyone around you shedding all of their layers too has its own magic. This practice has taught me so much about myself, how to relate with other people and so much more. I will put some links to a variety of movement meditation forms at the end of this entry. There are so many to choose from.

Dance not really up your alley? Don’t want to publically show your emotions? No worries – just do it in the privacy of your own home. I do this too. Allow yourself to laugh, cry and rage, and do it in a very embodied manner. Become a three-year-old having a tantrum if that’s what needs to be expressed. There is something to be said about returning to the way we used show emotions as kids, with no filters.

I do have one caveat though — make sure that you are still in control of your emotions, and that your emotions do not control you. Ultimately, this is the difference between your adult self, and your three-year-old self. It took me a good few years to get the hang of this. Letting your emotions flow is a great thing, but if you identify with them you can get lost in them. Trust me, this isn’t pretty. You want to be in a state of expanded awareness, as opposed to having narrow focus on only the emotion. The key is to let go while still being centred, knowing that you are simply awareness, and are not the emotion itself.

 

3) Emotional Freedom Technique

Another technique that has really helped me on my journey of self-acceptance is the Emotional Freedom Technique. It is a tapping technique that helps accept and release emotion. Here is a YouTube link to get you started.

 

4) Speak your truth  

To some people, simply feeling their emotions is enough to release them. However, I find I need a little more support. If there is an emotion I can sort-of feel, but can’t quite embrace, and I then proceed to let go and say out loud anything that comes to mind. I usually do this in a safe space, like in my room or in the bath when I’m alone.

I also have a notebook that I exclusively use to release feelings. When I feel the pangs of depression coming up, I know I’m suppressing and not allowing life to flow through me. So I get out my notebook and start writing what I feel. The notebook technique helps because you can do it anywhere, even in a crowded train.

For example I may write:

“I feel angry at Sally, and that’s ok”

“I feel scared about taking that risk, and that’s ok”

Some key points I want to emphasise here are:

1) To always write “I FEEL”, and not “I am”. The former emphasises that at you are simply having an experience, like anger, and that your core being is simply awareness. The latter is identification with the emotion, which is something we want to evolve away from.

2) Be completely honest with whatever comes through, and to add “that’s ok” to re-emphasize that. Remember, even if they are very dark emotions, you have to love and accept them. Feelings are just feelings, they are not You.

 

5) Understand that you have multiple personalities

As you start your journey to observe what is going on within, you will soon get to know the multiple personalities that exist within yourself. Your nurturing personality, your artistic personality, your business personality, and so forth. You also have within you personalities from your past, ranging from your infant self, your childhood self, your teenage self, to your adult self.

Now, things can get a bit tricky when several of these characters come up at the same time, especially when they are in conflict with each other.

For example, let’s say that my friend and I have an argument. At this moment, the “mature”, mediator personality may calmly whisper, “look, your friend also has a point”. At the same time however, our inner teenager will also rip through wanting to yell out a bunch of expletives. When this happens, the mature personality may take over, shoving the teenager into the dark depths of our unconscious (not with everyone though, some people definitely choose to do the opposite!!).

This is understandable, as to give the aggressive teenager the mic may not be the best decision. But suppression equally isn’t the answer. Remember, to accept your emotion doesn’t necessarily mean you act on them. As explained earlier, feeling your emotions doesn’t mean being controlled by them. The eventual goal is to feel, accept and release all emotions that come up, from all of your personalities, but to also calmly pick what action you are going to take next (note: this could mean letting the teenager express itself, but if you choose to do so, it will come from a place of deeper knowing rather than impulse).

To accept contradictory, conflicting emotions that come up is definitely the skill of a master. Meanwhile, for the rest of us mortals who aren’t the Dalai Lama, what we can do is to find a safe space and express what the other personalities have to say later. You can do this out loud, through writing — anything that works for you is fine. No matter how ludicrious or immature the other persona may sound, don’t judge, just observe and let it speak. Swear away if you have to. After all, it still is a part of you.

 

To Close 

Re-embracing your emotions takes daily practice. Although a few years have passed since I had the realisation that I was suppressing my emotions, I’m still learning to embrace them. Even when you do start to get the hang of it, once you’ve released a set of emotions, you’ll find that more come bubbling up to be expressed. It’s like a never-ending train. Don’t let this put you off. Think about all the years you’ve suppressed your emotions. That is a whole load of build up. It’s only natural that we have a lot of healing to do, so welcome the challenge with compassion.

Eventually the goal is to clear what is left within, and to be in a place where even if emotions come up, we simply observe and let them go. As I wrote in my last entry, the opposite of depression is the ability to freely experience your emotions.

Finally, I have written here my techniques of embracing and releasing emotions, but again I want to emphasize that these are things that work personally for me. What works for you may be different. For example, I read recently of a lady who found drumming to be the perfect medium to express her pain. Art and music are also popular choices. The key is to find your voice, and to speak your truth. And don’t forget to do it all with love, as it truly is the key to growth and transformation.

Special thanks to BR whose questions inspired this post.

 

Recommended Reading

Emotional Clearing: Releasing Negative Feelings and Awakening Unconditional Happiness by John Ruskan

Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith

 

Types of Movement Meditation

5Rhythms®

Ecstatic Dance

Biodanza 

Filed Under: Acceptance, Depression, Emotion, Love, Mastery, Self Discovery Tagged With: Acceptance, Body awareness, dance, Depression, expression, Love, Meditation, Mindfulness

“I Do Not Need You” — A Love Letter

February 13, 2017 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

 

 

My dearest beloved

I wanted to tell you

On this day of love

That I do not need you

 

I do not need you

To make me happy

So you will never have the pressure

Of my contentment on your shoulders

 

I do not need you

To provide for my financial needs

So pursue any dream you want

Without worrying about supporting me

 

I do not need you

To boost my self-esteem

So if my butt really does look big in these jeans

You can say and we can laugh

 

I do not need you

To always act cheerful

So if you feel like being grouchy

Express it in all its glory

 

I do not need you

To always be a ‘man’

So when you need to be vulnerable

Do so without feeling ashamed

 

I do not need you

To always keep me company

So when you need time by yourself

Go without feeling guilty

 

I do not need you

To always wipe away my tears

So if you too are finding the world too much

You can relax, knowing I am still supported by friends

 

I do not need you

To always be by my side

So if you want to hang out with the lads

Go and have that beer

 

I do not need you

To be someone who you are not

Be whoever you want to be

And I will support you all the way

 

I do not need you

To make me feel complete

Because we are not two who have become one

But two who have become three

 

I do not need you

So I can set you free

Because I love you

And you are always dear to me

 

Happy Valentine’s Day

Filed Under: Love, Peace, Relationships, Surrender Tagged With: Letter, Letting go, Love, Popular Posts, Valentine's

Disliking People Who Are Like Us: On a Japanese Four-Character Idiom That Teaches You A Lot About People

February 9, 2017 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

In Japan we have a great thing called yo-ji-jyuku-go (四字熟語). These are idiomatic phrases made out of four kanji characters. For those who aren’t familiar with the Japanese language, kanji characters are logographic characters. Instead of each character having just a sound, it also has a specific meaning. Throughout the ages Japanese scholars have put together four different kanji characters to express profound life truths. A great one I came across recently was dou-zoku-ken-o(同族嫌悪). Literally translated this idiom consists of the characters, “same”, “family”, “hate”, and “bad”. It means that we dislike people who are like us.

This may sound strange, because your first instinct may be to think that conversely we are drawn to people who are like us. This is still true. When we encounter people who are like us we feel strong love and affection. On the other hand, if these people do not resemble us at all, we feel indifference. But what if these people are just like us, but resemble aspects of ourselves that we don’t like? That’s when hate rumbles from within. We really don’t like it when other people mirror aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to accept.

A frequently portrayed example of this is the school bully who beats up homosexuals, only to discover later that he is gay himself. Him beating up other poor boys is an outer manifestation of what he does internally to himself daily. We resent people for bringing up feelings that we try so hard to suppress and push down. We hate them because we are just like them. This is what this idiom succinctly teaches.

We only accept in others what we accept within ourselves. The school bully who finally embraces his sexuality will stop hurting his colleagues. This is why people who piss us off are actually our greatest teachers. The anger that wells us from inside tells us that there are parts of ourselves we haven’t accepted and integrated into our being.

Now, you may be thinking that perhaps we suppress things for good reasons. You don’t like Trump for example, because you don’t like how misogynistic he is. And sure, according to what I’ve been saying this would mean that you don’t accept misogynistic thoughts within yourself, but isn’t this a good thing? If you accepted misogyny you would think it’s ok to be horrible to women.

Well no. If you thought this then you have fallen into one of the big misunderstandings about acceptance. Acceptance of thoughts does not equate directly to any form of action (or non-action for that matter). Put it this way, if everyone who accepted their misogynistic thoughts were a misogynist, by the same logic all crime writers would be serial killers. They spend their days unapologetically exploring some of the darkest of ideas, but they are very much normal citizens of society.

To accept is to simply confront and observe various thoughts and emotions as they arise, without judgment. If a misogynistic thought arises, for example, you can simply look at it. You don’t have to act on it. All you have to do is let it bubble up inside yourself and let it go. In fact, the only way such thoughts are released is through acceptance. However, most of us are afraid to peek at the darker ideas that come out of ourselves. We push the thoughts down, build strong walls around them hoping they will never crop up again. That is, until we bump into someone who embodies the very thoughts and emotions we’ve been suppressing. Then suddenly the barriers we tried so hard to build come crashing down, and we hate it. The irony is, you never would have had your walls fall down if you hadn’t built them in the first place.

When you don’t like someone, it’s an invitation to look within to see what exactly it is that you don’t like about them, and then in turn understand what it is you don’t like about yourself. It’s a golden opportunity to shine the light of acceptance on this trait that exists within you. You hate it when people are childish? That’s because you don’t accept the child within you. But ask yourself — what is really “wrong” with being childish?

This even applies to so-called negative traits. If you don’t like someone because they are rude, that’s because you don’t accept the rude person within you. But if you can learn to accept this aspect of yourself, you can then approach this person with calm and love, rather than hate. This isn’t to say you let them get away with their rudeness. You can still say softly to this person that being rude does not help solve the situation. If anything, your calm and composed energy is likely to deflate any tension there was in the first place.

Hate yourself, hate others. Love yourself, love others.

Filed Under: Acceptance, Emotion, Fear, Hate, Japan, Love, Self Discovery Tagged With: Acceptance, dislike, hate, Japan, Japanese, Love

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About Me

Hi there! I'm Marie. I'm a behavioural science consultant with a PhD in cognitive neuroscience. I explore what sets us free and brings us peace. A millennial-in-awakening. Read More…

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