Love

Two Becomes Three

August 15, 2016 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

In previous posts, I talked about the importance of being in charge of your own happiness in relationships, and the pain and suffering that can result from relying on someone else to satisfy your needs. This can be anyone from your partner, to your family, to your friends.

Often with regards to relationships, we hear phrases being used such as “two become one”, “my other half”, “he/she completes me”. The issue with these sorts of analogies is that they suggest that we are in some way incomplete unless we have these other people in our lives.

Yet, the truth is: we are complete already on our own. Your partner should not fill a gap in your life, but rather should add something new.

With this idea in mind, I suggest the following exercise:

1) Ask yourself: what are the gaps that someone close to you fills in your relationship? This could it be partner, parent or friend.

2) Write what you need to complete within yourself to fill that gap.

For example, I have a person dear to me who I feel is one of the few people who unconditionally accepts me for who I am. To me, my relationship with this person fills a gap – my craving for unconditional acceptance.

This clearly shows me that I need to work on unconditionally accepting myself more.

The list could go on, and could be anything. Does your partner make you feel protected? Make you feel happy? Make you feel loved?

Yes? Now figure out ways in which you can achieve that feeling within yourself.

Ultimately, these gaps are the things that are currently missing in the most important partnership of all: the relationship between you and yourself.

As you start to slowly re-discover how to access these elements again, your relationships with others will no longer be one where you are relying on them to fill in a void within you. It will be a relationship where two beings approach each other in their entireties. This allows for the highest form of creativity to occur.

When this happens, two doesn’t become one. Two becomes three.

The Man Who Was Afraid of His Shadow

August 9, 2016 by lyra777 1 Comment

Once upon a time, there was a man who was afraid of his own shadow.

He didn’t know what it was, but he knew that there was a dark, scary monster that would sometimes be behind him, and he was terrified.

He tried everything he could to get rid of it.

He ignored it

He yelled at it

He despaired at it.

But he was so scared, that the one thing he never did was to turn around and look at it.

The shadow would sometimes come out when he was with his friends, and all he could do was apologise for the black monster that followed him.

But the shadow didn’t go away. He ran and ran, but not matter how far he went, the shadow was right behind him.

He ran and ran, until he could run no more.

Now out of options, he decided to do something different.

Something he had never done his whole life.

He was going to stop, turn around and look at the shadow for what it was.

Slowly he approached it.

He stared at the very shadow he was afraid of straight in the face.

Suddenly, he came to a life-changing realisation.

The shadow came from him.

The shadow was him.

He didn’t want to accept it. That big black monster that followed him all his life, was an extension of him?

But as time went past, he decided to look more closely at the shadow. He started to get to know it better.

And as he did, he started to realise it wasn’t so scary after all. It may be black and gloomy but it couldn’t actually hurt him.

It was only a shadow after all.

He realised that what was hurting him was his fear of the shadow. The way he had spent his whole life running had drained him for years.

After finally seeing the shadow for what it truly was, he decided to try something new.

Why not love, instead of fear the shadow?

Instead of running from it, why not embrace it?

The man decided to shine the bright light of his attention to the shadow, enveloping it with love and warmth.

It was a part of him after all.

And then the unexpected happened.

The shadow disappeared.

Because to transmute darkness, all you need is light.

This was the lesson that he learnt from the shadow.

To this day, sometimes when the sun sets, the shadow reappears behind the man.

But the man no longer runs. He is no longer scared.

He simply turns around, smiles and lovingly shines his light on it.

Afterword

Probably the first thing people may think when reading this story is that the shadow represents something like depression. But actually, your shadow is any side of you that you don’t like. Like anger, jealousy, arrogance, anxiety, grief or longing.

We often feel that those emotions are there, but we don’t like them. So we push them away instead of fully embracing them.

In fact, we often reject them as part of our identity completely. If we get angry at someone we may later say, “Sorry, I wasn’t myself”, or if we’re depressed we may think, “I want to be myself again”.

This, on a certain level, is true – you are not ‘yourself’. But only because you are rejecting something that is fundamentally a part of you.

Remember, these shadows aren’t separate from you. They are a projection of you. In pushing them a way, you are actually making yourself feel worse.

We are raised by society to believe that we must be happy all the time. Being positive should be our baseline, and if it’s not, there is something wrong with us. We must ‘fix’ ourselves, and ‘fix’ our lives.

But there is nothing to fix. You are perfect just the way you are, emotions galore.

We are here on this Earth to experience. We subjectively add labels such as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ to the emotions that we feel. But at the end of the day all emotions are just another way in which we experience being a human.

It’s just that some emotions are just harder to accept within ourselves than others.

The first step towards healing your shadow is to acknowledge that it is a part of you. Take responsibility for your shadows. This is not saying if you get angry/sad/depressed/[insert emotion] it’s your fault. I’m saying simply acknowledge that it is an emotion that is part of your experiential being.

The next step is to lovingly accept it. When you relax and fully accept the emotion that you are feeling in the present, it is actually released. The light that you shine on it will conversely make the shadow dissipate. This is because you are allowing yourself to be who you are. You let the emotion run it’s natural course, rather than pushing it deeper and deeper inside yourself.

“But I do acknowledge my tough emotions but they don’t go away!’, you may be thinking.

Perhaps ask yourself, are you just feeling the surface of the emotion? Are you like the man who knew his shadow was there but didn’t look at it? Are you wishing that you weren’t feeling the emotion that you are now? Do you want to get rid of that emotion?

If you are, consider instead saying to yourself:

“I am feeling angry/sad/etc. and I love and accept myself just the way I am”

That very emotion you’re feeling is wanting to be a part of you too.

When you finally embrace the emotions that you have fully, you will soon discover that the very thing you fear inside yourself the most is actually your best friend and greatest teacher.

How Much Water Should You Take?

August 5, 2016 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

The other day I was having a chat with a survival expert.

“People ask me how much water they should take if they’re going on a serious hike. I then ask them – how much do you think? I never get the answer I’m looking for”, he said.

“What is your answer?”, I asked.

“Normally people say 2 litres? 3 litres? I tell them: no I would take 7-11 litres. 1 litre for every hour we are on the move. They’re very surprised at this response.”

“Wow, 11 litres? That’s a lot”, I replied

“I take enough for myself and for other people. What if we all run out of water? What if there are emergencies? What if you meet someone on the way who is in trouble? Everyone asks this question because they want to know the absolute minimum only they need to survive.”

—

I found this answer very enlightening and a great metaphor for loving ourselves and others.

You often hear the saying, ‘you need to love yourself in to order fully love other people’. In the past I used to think, ‘well, I may not love myself very much, but there are many people I love! I can still love!’.

But over the years I have realised the deep truth that underlies this statement. Any aspects that we can’t accept within ourselves, we have trouble accepting in others. In order to fully embrace – or love – the people around us, we truly have to start within ourselves.

We need to first learn to carry enough water for us, before we can start to generously share with others. What would you do if your friends and family are in need of love, but you are filled with self-hate? Would you be able to wholeheartedly support them during their time of need?

Instead, why not love yourself to the extent that you have enough to both nourish yourself and to enrich others. You would be able to freely give, without needing anything in return. Why not carry enough water for both yourself and others?

It is definitely something to strive for.

Be Your Colour — A Cartoon About Relationships

July 16, 2016 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

Once upon a time there was a world full of colours

Each of these dots shone their colours brightly and magnificently

They would spend their time playing, talking, working…doing what colours do

They were happy

Sometimes two colours would meet, and they would like each other’s colour

Sometimes they would fall in love.

When they did, they were happy…

…for awhile,

Because often, the colours would get confused

Very confused

After being together for so long, they would start to believe that they needed the other colour

If the other colour was missing, they would feel all sorts of emotions, like sadness and loneliness

They would also start to believe that because they needed the other colour, it was also the other colour’s responsibility to complete them

Or other times, one colour would ask the other dot to be a different colour all together

This illusion was so great, that sometimes the colours started to believe in it

They believed that they were incomplete

But all of this made no sense at all

No other colour could complete their colour, but themselves

And often they had forgotten the most important truth of them all…

They were complete in the first place.

When two dots fully embrace both their own and each other’s colour

When they both fully realise that they are already complete

Only then can they start to create a strong and unique colour when together

This is a beautiful thing

But remember

Even when alone

They are still shining brightly and magnificently in their own colour

Be your colour.

Afterword

It is so easy for us to fall into this relationship trap.

If your answer to why you are with your partner is: “because I’m not happy if I’m not with them”, you need to have a long, hard look at your relationship.

Conversely, if you are single and your answer to why you want a relationship is along the lines of “because I’m lonely/because I want to feel safe/because I want to feel [insert your need here]”, again, you need to have a rethink.

In Ram Dass‘ own words:

“…often, we come into a relationship very much identified with our needs at some level or other. “I need security, I need refuge, I need friendship.” We come together because we fulfill each other’s needs at some level and the problem is that when you identify with that, those needs, you always stay at the level where the other person is “her” or “him” that is satisfying that need….” (Original article here)

And the problem is, you never grow as a couple. You get stuck into a cycle of attachment and suffering because you believe your partner’s life duty is to forever satisfy your need.

Except it isn’t their duty to.

Remember it’s NOT your partner’s job to make you happy.

It’s your job to make yourself happy.

If you feel incomplete without your partner, remember that you are under a temporary spell.

You are actually complete just the way you are, on your own.

You just need to re-find the beauty that lies deep inside.

Writing From a Place of Serenity

July 14, 2016 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

Now that I’ve vowed to myself that I will write about anything I want, suddenly I want to post about everything.

I do feel like this is not some random burst of excitement that might die down just as quickly. Even when I wasn’t blogging I was always thinking about things I wanted to write about. I would construct the blog in my mind and happily think about how I would convey my thoughts to the reader. But I never actually did it.

Now that I’m finally putting these daydreams into practice I can’t describe how much better I feel. I am bringing some much needed flow back into my life. I understand it’s going to be a wobbly start because I’m still trying to find my voice. When I read my own writing I can significantly feel which bits I wrote from the heart, and bits that I didn’t so much. The difficultly is that growing up we are taught by various people how to write. Our parents first teach us what is right or wrong, and then at school a certain style is demanded of us. We soon start to adapt our writing into something that we think will get that A grade or will be applauded by others. Often in the back of our minds the question isn’t “I am expressing in writing what I truly feel?” but “I am writing in a way that other people will approve of?”.

In other words, we write from a place of fear.

Fear that other people won’t accept what and how we communicate. We desperately try to avoid the sinking feeling of rejection and ridicule. When we do avoid it, and people give us a positive stamp of approval, we get a rush of excitement. Positive reinforcement. This can become almost addictive. The trouble with having this sort of relationship with writing is that while the highs can be ecstatic, the lows can really bum you out. Instead of being content with the beautiful act of creativity, your happiness is defined by the reactions of other people.

I want to get to a place where I’m consistently writing from a place of calm, loving presence, which in turn will cultivate creativity. A place where I am writing what I want, how I want to, without worrying what people think. A place where I am constantly enjoying the mere act of writing, regardless of the consequences it brings. A place of serenity.