Love

A Few Thoughts on Loneliness

January 13, 2017 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

Loneliness is not caused by the absence of people who love you

It is caused by you not being able to love the people around you

So is the solution to train yourself to love others?

Not necessarily

Remember that loving others is directly related

To the degree to which you love yourself

They are one and the same

Therefore an excellent place to start

Is within

So is the solution to train yourself to love yourself?

Not necessarily

Love is a state of being

And this state of being is your most natural, authentic self

If you peer deep inside

You will find that there actually is no ‘I’ that loves ‘yourself’

Instead, you are love

Therefore to love

Is simply to be

That deep pang of loneliness you may feel

Is actually the tugging of your own heart begging you

To drop all pretences

To drop all self-loathing

To drop all self-criticism

And to accept yourself just as you are

The more you accept yourself

The more you accept others

The more you love others

The less lonely you will feel

Afterword

I have been struggling with loneliness for a few years now. I have no doubts that it is strongly linked to my depression. I would tell people, “There is nobody that loves me here”. Despite strongly feeling this way, my rational brain would tell me that there were people around me that cared about me. So why did I feel this way anyways?

It very recently dawned on me — it wasn’t that the people around me did not care about me. Instead, I myself was in a state of indifference towards others. A friend of mine gave an excellent analogy – a garage door. The more you open it, the more love that can both come in and out. If we shut it, then we shut love out both from ourselves, and from others. When I’m depressed, my door is shut. So I find it hard to care in general. We only accept as much love as we think we deserve.

Perhaps it is this dark void of indifference that we call ‘loneliness’.

I still haven’t fully worked out what it is. I could go on about the illusion of separation and what not, but that’s for another entry. What I’ve written here is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding no doubt. But I’m sure each day and each moment that is spent being present, just being, is one step closer to embracing the light.

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.

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.

A Few (Inconclusive) Thoughts About Marriage

September 6, 2016 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

The other day I was watching a film. The male hero looks into the heroine’s eyes and says “Jane, I can’t live without you. Will you marry me?”.

Fast forward to the marriage ceremony. The bride and groom exchange rings. They say to each other that they commit to staying with each other for the rest of their lives, through sickness and in health, till death do them part.

A beautiful thing, right?

I felt uncomfortable.

Not because I’m a commitment-phobe. If anything I’m the polar opposite of that. And it’s also not because I don’t like weddings. I absolutely love them. Instead, I feel uncomfortable when I see scenes like this because I see subtitles underneath such statements.

“I want you forever” I don’t want you to leave me.

“I can’t live without you” I am reliant on you for my security.

“I’d be lost without you” I am attached to you for my happiness.

I wonder how many people get married because deep down one person is scared about losing the other. So they put a ring on it to make things more ‘permanent’. To have the mental comfort of knowing that the very person that you are attached to will always be there. People may do this on a subconscious level. To plunge into a marriage for reasons of fear and attachment is suffering just waiting to happen.

In addition, when couples publicly declare their commitment to each other at weddings, I often think – but what if separating is actually the best thing for the couple?

I believe that “loving” someone does not mean ignoring the changes that naturally occur between people and staying in a loveless marriage. It’s sensing what is best for both you and your partner and acting accordingly. This might mean working things out together, but it could mean parting ways. Realistically you just never know. So in a way, are you not imprisoning the very person that you love in having them make this commitment?

One person that I know who has chosen not to get married to her long-term partner once said to me, “People ask me why we don’t get married, but I feel like there is something beautiful about the fact that I choose to be with my partner every single day”. I thought that was wonderful. I too feel like one way I can show my love to my partner is to let him know that he has a choice of being with me. After all, you must allow others the freedom to be their own circle (see previous blog entry).

This then makes me wonder what the motivations should be behind marriage. I’m not talking about legal reasons – because I’m sure I could name a few of those. I ponder on the non-legal reasons because I know I do want to get married someday. Granted, I will freely admit that part of the reason is to wear a lovely wedding dress (what girl can resist having all eyes on her) and to have a day that celebrates love.

I’m still trying to work out good reasons to get married that aren’t based on fear and attachment. I know the feeling of wanting to share the rest of your life with someone. I know the feeling of being permanently connected at the heart with someone. And of course, I know the feeling of loving someone. I guess marriage could be an overt declaration of these emotions.

Yet, I cannot help but feel that marriage symbolises a permanent union. This idea belies how I feel about wanting to ensure that both my partner and myself feel free. Of course, there is a choice of leaving one’s partner even when married. It’s called divorce. But the gravitas is different.

I think the only answers I can come up with at the moment are these two: 1) If you feel a timeless connection (aka union) with someone on a spiritual level, you want to symbolise this on a physical level. This perhaps is marriage. 2) I like the idea of taking on my husband’s last name as a symbol of becoming one family when we have children. We are one unit and a tribe.

So yes, I’m afraid no conclusion to this post because I’m still mulling on this one, and any thoughts will be much appreciated 🙂 Stay tuned for another post someday…!