Do you sense you are becoming a bit stagnant,
perhaps slightly stale? Do you feel it’s time to freshen your self up? Are you
ready for a ‘makeover’?
Millions, if not billions, are spent every
year by millions, if not billions of people, in pursuit of a new or improved
self image. For the vast majority it’s a surface exercise focused around
appearances. Facials, hairstyling, nails, eyebrows and skin all get the
treatment. The aim is to refresh ones physical image and hopefully ‘ramp up’
ones confidence to face whatever and whoever life brings our way! Many will
embark on some serious nipping and tucking, thinning and liposuction, scraping
and exfoliating, on their way to the ultimate overhaul!
Most people are aware that it’s a superficial
approach which only temporarily fixes some surface issues. There is a feel good
factor that doesn’t just come out of a bottle! But it’s short lived. There may
or may not be the realization that the whole makeover process is NOT ultimately
about ones appearance. The whole exercise is really a business deal! I attract
and impress you with a new or improved appearance and you give me the energy of
your attention and admiration which I can then convert into a sense of esteem
and worth! Deep down most are aware that time and money could be better
spent.
A few of the many who recognise that it’s
often a fools errand don’t ‘turn away’ from the makeover philosophy, they ‘turn
deeper’. They realise that if ones sense of self worth, security and serenity,
even ones attractiveness, are to be enhanced, then it has to come from within.
It is unnecessary to make visible changes, but necessary to beautify ones
personality, to ‘nip’ those negative thoughts in the bud and ‘tuck’ away those
feelings of helplessness and depression, to ‘scrape’ out those layers of
habitual neediness and ‘exfoliate’ those long dead beliefs and
misperceptions.
Just as the physical makeover can require an
array of therapists, the ‘personality makeover’ usually entails the hunt for the
personal development gurus, the experts on how realise and ‘unleash’ your full,
unlimited, amazing and incredible potential as an all round human being! There
seems to be plenty of those around today! Some will head for the bookshop and
then fill their shelves with the ‘how to’ self help manuals. Others will book
in for the ‘miracle changes in three days’ course, or the enlightenment in an
afternoon workshop, or the transformation in a weekend retreat! None will
change your appearance, except perhaps to restore a spiritual twinkle to your
eye. Each is more deeply intended to help you to do your own changing! To help
you find your own power to change what you think, how you feel and the way you
act. All are useful, all have a part to play, on the way to finding the ‘right
way for me’.
Eventually there is the ‘Rome wasn’t built in
a day’ realization. It takes time and consciously focused effort to realise and
apply the wisdom, insights, tools and inner treatments on the road to the ‘more
enlightened, happier and kinder me’. The ‘inner makeover’ is really a cleaning
and scrubbing of the soul. It requires the continuous input of insight and
information in order to trigger and sustain an ongoing process of
self-realization. It requires the conscious translation of those realizations
into action in order to replace the deeply entenched habits of self-sabotage!
Then it requires time to review, as the ‘results of practice’ are assessed, in
order to discern what is working, what ‘feels’ right and what is still way short
of a me being the new ‘inner me’! Phew!
It can all feel like hard work. Which is
probably why so few are able to turn away from the distracting stimulations of
the glamorous surfaces of the world for long enough to allow themselves to work
on the ‘deepest tissues’ of their mental and emotional issues.
And so... in the context of this short
article, for the sake of brevity in a busy world, here are seven inner makeover
‘markers’ that you can lay down every day without needing to sit at the feet of
the guru or slope of on a ten day silence retreat. They are all a bit ‘stop and
start’! That’s because each is a call to STOP and each has an invitation to
START.
Stop BLAMING and Start
CREATING
“Someone else is responsible”, is one of the
deepest layers of our programming. It stops us from realising the primary
dynamic of human consciousness which is the creative process of life and
living. Any workshop worth it’s salt will facilitate your realisation that ‘I
am responsible for the world’. Not the world ‘out there’ but how we create the
world out there ‘in here’! But as long as we play the blame game, as long as we
point the mental finger at anyone else for what we feel and where we are, it
means we are killing our creativity. So ...STOP IT!
Then your energy is free to START thinking
creatively. Even if it’s just in retrospect to begin with. Questions like,
“How could I have responded differently or why did I react like that,” serve to
interrupt the old ‘it’s them’ programming and allow you to start recovering the
full spectrum of your creative abilities. Be patient, it’s a little
time.
Stop WORRYING and Start
LIVING
Some people, often called ‘researchers’,
spend their time measuring how much time in our lifetime we spend in front of a
TV or at our computer screen or waiting in queues. It’s usually years for each
of such non-activities. Or how much time we spend just sitting down. That’s
usually many years. But how much time do we spend worrying in a lifetime of
time? Would it be days, months or years? Could it be as much as a decade of
our entire life? Some seem to ‘worry so’! It is probably our deepest habit.
All the while we will be the first to say that we know worry is a complete waste
of time. It changes nothing. We become absent from the present while we get
lost in a fictitious future and make our self extremely unhappy in the
process...now! So...STOP IT!
It’s easy to say START living. But it
somehow doesn’t compute. Just saying it doesn’t renew our enthusiasm. Probably
because we cannot see that we are not really living. We don’t easily notice
that we are often just passing time before we die, occasionally interrupting our
self with fleeting moments of excitement that we mistake for a happy life.
Occasionally, in between such moments, we might think, “Is this all there is”?
Then we worry if we will ever know authentic happiness before time runs out!
Life only begins when you realise you have no future! Now there is a
meditation!
Stop REGRETTING and Start
FORGETTING
Sometimes we need to refer to a previous
experience in order to deal with what’s in front of us now. That’s when looking
back is OK. But wishing it could have been different, that we could have made
a better choice, that things could/should have been avoided or defended better,
is to lose your self in a fictional and speculative mental movie. STOP it!
Forget the past. The past, as they say, is past! What keeps the past alive is
our ‘idea’ of the future. We keep using the future to create a better
past! It’s all about the ‘story of me’. It’s the story we tell ourselves
about ourselves. We don’t realise ‘I am not a story’ of a future or a past, I
am me, here and now! If there is any desire for success and/or achievement in
the future then the past will often be a heavy weight pulling us back into doubt
and excuses, “I can’t succeed/achieve because I said this or did that or thought
this and chose that”. All references to what is long gone.
To START forgetting requires the conscious
practice of releasing our self from the story of our life. That requires the
realisation that, “I am not a story”! That means forgetting what other people
in my story have said and done, and what I have said and done in response,
yesterday. That means forgetting any sorrow and suffering that you felt
throughout all your yesterdays. It is possible. We are capable of starting a
new story every day. But first we have to experiment and taste the difference
it makes to the quality of our life, to our relationships in life, when we cease
to regret and just forget.
Stop RESISTING and Start
ACCEPTING
It’s seems that we are fated to live a life
of resistance while not being aware that we do so. Even when we seem to know
that whatever we resist will persist, we still insist to resist! Whether it’s
someone else’s ideas, or their desires, or their opinion, or just ‘them’, we
square up against them, even if it’s just in our own mind. In such moments we
are essentially killing our contentment and generating anxiety.
So ...STOP IT! Try starting to accept
everything. It doesn’t mean agreeing, but stop disagreeing. It doesn’t mean
condoning, but stop condemning. As you do you will generate a very different
quality of energy. When you START to accept all and everything and everyone as
they are you will start to feel calmer and much more positive about
...everything and everyone. You will start to connect with others in a way that
builds and nurtures the relationship. The needle jumps out of the old groove
and your life plays a new and delightful note. Oh yes it will!
Stop TAKING and Start
GIVING
Any impatience means we cannot wait to receive.
Wanting, having, keeping, holding, grasping, are all forms of taking. It’s not
wrong. It’s just not very enlightened. Notice there is always a tension, an
anxiety, perhaps an intense fear, that sits behind each. This is how to make
your self stressed. So ...STOP IT! Start receiving. START realising and
knowing that you are always receiving what you need, at each and every moment.
That’s a revolutionary idea to most minds. Don’t fight that idea. Try not to
resist it as an assault on logic. Stop and reflect, look around, notice where
you are. Can you see what is happening around you at this moment is exactly
what you need. And if it seems or feels like nothing is happening, then know
that ‘that nothingness’ is necessary in this moment. It is probably there to
help you to acknowledge and cure your addiction to the agitations that accompany
the desire for something to happen all the time!
START releasing, offering, sharing, giving
and you’ll also notice you naturally start receiving. There will likely be the
feeling of a very different energy that comes not from others or from the world,
but from your own heart! Wise is the soul who lives to give. Happy is the
soul who cares and shares. Clever is the soul who receives, but never takes, in
order to give!
Stop THINKING and Start
FEELING
We tend to leave our heart and live in our
mind. We live ‘in’ what’s ‘on’ our mind and this is where and why emotion is
created. We have an idea or we create an image in our mind. That’s OK. But
it’s not so OK when we lose our ‘self’ in the image/idea. Then, when something
happens to what the image and/or idea represents in the world around us, it
feels like it’s happening to us. What we feel is a disturbance in our
consciousness that we call ‘emotion’. It’s not long before we start to believe
that our emotions are all we can feel.
We make this mistake so often it feels
normal. We then become addicted to our emotions and we forget how to feel.
Which really means we forget how to choose our feelings. Which really means we
forget how to ‘be undisturbed’ within our consciousness by anything that happens
outside of our self.
It’s easy to say STOP IT i.e. stop living in
what’s on your mind. But it’s probably the most ingrained habit of man and
womankind! In order to START feeling, which means start consciously choosing
what you feel, you will have to leave your mind and return to your heart, the
heart of your being. When you live from the heart you then become the master of
your mind.
Sit quietly and make the journey of no
distance in one second, from your mind to your heart, from thought to feeling,
from noise to silence, and you may see for your self if that ‘feels’ right to
you?
Stop DOING and Start BEING
Its tough to stop being a compulsive doer!
The speed of events is accelerating. The imperative is to do more in less
time. The world is now filled with rushaholics! It’s not difficult to become
and action addict, especially when there is the fear of being left behind. From
the day we arrive all we seem to hear is, “This is what you have to do...This is
what they did....This is what needs to be done...”!
We even feel we have to do something in order
to relax and do nothing! ‘I’m busy’ is our mantra. Preoccupied is our
attention. Agitated is our state. We believe we have to be seen by others to
be always doing something, working on something, creating something. So we
chase feelings of importance, fulfillment and worth through action.
So... STOP IT! Stop being a ‘human doing’
and start doing a human who is just being! Can you start just allowing whatever
is happening to happen, to occur, to appear, as it will! Can you just be with
others without trying to advise them, find out about them, fix them, make them
feel what you think they ‘should’ feel? Can you just be with others and with
the world and watch the variety forms and multilayered textures of life
just...appear, and then disappear? If you can you will notice the fictions that
you have been creating, the illusions that you have been sustaining, through all
your incessant ‘doings’. You will feel the reality and the power of ‘the being’
that you are. And you will know that that is all you are. And that will be
enough! Quite enough!
Question: Which one of the above did
you find most challenging and why?
Reflection: Take each one and ask
your self, “Why is it not so easy for me to do this?” Reflect
slowly!
Action: Take one of the above each
day for the coming week and experiment with it throughout the day and see what a
difference it makes, or indeed how challenging it is to enact. Then reflect on
how you did at the end of the day.
© Mike George 2013
The last two Clear Thinking e-articles
were:
Have YOU Restored Authentic Happiness to Your
Life?
Are YOU in Conflict with Anyone?
Clear Thinking is Monthly at the
moment.
A Retreat in August in Somerset,
UK |
