Ask Parvati 16: Anger As An Ally, Part 4: Anger, What A Pain!

 

ANGER, WHAT A PAIN!

(Continued from The Irony Of Anger)

I have a particular soft spot for the short little green guy, the master Jedi knight known as Yoda. (Ok, now you know I am a big time Star Wars and sci-fi fan.) The enlightened teacher skillfully sums up the role anger plays in our demise. He says, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

 

If we are to learn to meet anger as an ally, we must learn to touch its gems by undoing the painful grip of anger. Anger hurts us when we feel it. Withheld anger causes headaches, ulcers and cancers. Unbridled anger puts ourselves, others and those we love in harm’s way. We have only one healthy option when we feel anger: understand that it is caused by not seeing reality clearly, and committing to seeing a bigger, more accurate picture of what is. In so doing we let go of its seductive grip and we learn to embody the courage of love through compassionate understanding.

 

I love the Longfellow quote: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

 

As we learn to undo the pain of anger, we see that when we are angry, we are in judgment, we are blaming, and we are afraid. When we unravel the judgment we feel of others, we learn to see their frailties, their need for love and their ignorance with understanding, love and acceptance. We can do this because we know that all of those painful emotions are also emotions we too can feel.

 

Feeling anger is a natural, human thing. It is a teacher, showing us the power of the mind’s projections and the innate power of consciousness. We have the ability to either destroy or create. The choice is ours.

 

Just as we learn that our tendency to become angry is born out of a judgmental, divisive mind, we learn to not be angry or judgmental of ourselves for being angry. We need to be kind to ourselves when we feel the heat of anger rise. We need to learn healthy ways to self-soothe and remain rooted in the reality that all is perfect in this moment, that we are love, that we are loved. In that safety, we can find the courage to relax, look deeper within and get to the source of what we are really feeling. When we express our true heart, everybody wins.

 

(Continues tomorrow: Anger Is Natural, But Never Justified)

 

Ask Parvati 16: Anger As An Ally, Part 3: The Irony of Anger

 

(Continued from Look Behind The Anger To Act Awake)

THE IRONY OF ANGER

“Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.” - Eckhart Tolle

Anger is a hot emotion. As it courses through our veins, we feel the surge of adrenaline. We feel powerful! Blinded by that power, we feel we can leap buildings, take on an army, even conquer the world. Anger can be a tremendous motivator, providing raw energy to make big changes. As primitive man living in the wild, we needed that energy surge in order to survive because we lived in the fear of constant attack. But as we evolve, we understand that to live with the constant fear of attack comes at a great cost to our health and to our well-being.

When we react in anger – blow up, yell, call names, slam doors, road rage – our primal circuitry is on overdrive. Unconsciously, we have convinced ourselves that we are displaying how terrifying and powerful we are. But when we look deeply into anger, we can hear in it a soulful cry for help. Anger shows us not that we feel powerful, but that we feel terrified, overwhelmed, out of control, incapable and powerless.

Is it not true, that when we feel angry, immersed in a boiling, surging moment, we are completely convinced that the problem is “out there”? When we feel angry, we blame. We judge. We attack. We do so because we feel attacked. We feel unsafe. We feel threatened. We don’t feel in balance. We don’t feel loved and safe.

Whatever it is that triggered our anger has shown us how we feel unloved. Because of that, we want to push feeling so exposed away. We want to stop that feeling, destroy it, and get rid of it! When we are angry, we react unconsciously. We have lost the fullness of the moment. Those primal instincts have kicked in. Tunnel vision is all we know, telling us how to get out of perceived danger - fast.

When we are willing to be humble, we learn to slow down. We learn to drop our weaponry, open to what is and greet anger as our teacher. Anger shows us where we have lost our connection to the fullness of the moment, which is always love.

Let’s go back to our roommate with the noisy TV who was disturbing our sleep. When we allow the anger to get the better of us, we will throw off our bed covers, storm out of our room and do something rash like just go turn off the TV without saying a word, or yell at our roommate for being so insensitive.

When we take a moment to calm down, take a few deep breaths and look within, we see that likely the roommate meant no harm. Even if he was annoying us intentionally, that would be an expression of his ignorance and his own feeling of being unloved. His actions and choices are no reflection of us. Likely his actions were a simple oversight, nothing more. By calmly saying what we are feeling and what we need, the problem can likely be resolved.

When we look at the moment and meet it as it is, we need to remember that our baggage distorts the lens through which we see the world. Perhaps we had a controlling or absent parent who was insensitive to our needs. Perhaps we grew up feeling unsafe expressing what we needed, so we don’t really know how to do it as adults.

When we meet seemingly straightforward life situations that set us off for apparently no reason, we can be assured that we have touched some of our personal baggage. The roommate inadvertently pushed our unconscious button and before we know we it, we are not going to talk to some neutral guy sitting in our shared living room, but we are on a crusade to confront an insensitive parent who never gave us the love we needed.

Taking the time to calm down helps us see clearly the moment as it is. When we see the roommate for the roommate, we begin to see him as a gift to learn greater discernment and act with greater compassion. He also just provided us with an opportunity to lighten our baggage load and live more freely within ourselves.

(Continues tomorrow: Anger, What a Pain!)

 

 

Ask Parvati 16: Anger As An Ally, Part 2: Look Behind The Anger To Act Awake

 

LOOK BEHIND THE ANGER TO ACT AWAKE

(Continued from Knowing What You Feel Gives You Power)

We receive powerful information when we listen to our emotions. What we do with that information separates the wise from the foolish. The challenge with anger is that, like fire, it is quick, sharp and potentially destructive. When we feel angry, we must learn to take time to cool down before we act.

We must learn to read the early signs of anger in our emotional landscape. Usually we first will feel uneasy, restless and tense. Then we may feel irritated. This leads to feeling annoyed, then angry. The movement towards feeling angry can be surprisingly slow, even over a long period of time. But once we become angry, our mood can quickly escalate into feeling irate, raging, wrathful, violent and hateful.

Once we feel anger, we have awakened the beast within. We have become the lion that roars, the gorilla that thumps its chest, and the shark that attacks. All we see is the need to defend. Just like many animals, we instinctively attack when we feel attacked. But the difference between animals and humans is our ability to act with awakened consciousness.

When we react in anger, we usually create pain for ourselves and for others. We say things we later regret. We destroy things we later wish we had kept. We break trust we later wish we still had. Following the impulse of anger rarely serves the greatest good.

When we go deeper, we learn to touch what is really driving our anger. In my experience, at the root, we always end up touching fear. In the case of the roommate with the noisy TV, we could say simply, we were afraid that we were not going to get enough sleep. At one level, surely that is true.

Perhaps, deeper still, our roommate with his noisy TV has given us an opportunity to realize that in fact, we never really feel safe. Perhaps we have felt a low-grade anxiety all of our lives, a pulse that moves us to feeling separate and unsafe. When we touch that pulse, we see that our deepest fear is our fear of not being loved.

Our anger shows us the ways we believe we are separate; the ways we don’t feel loved or supported; the ways we don’t believe love exists.

In Marianne Williamson’s words, “What is not love is fear. Anger is one of fear's most potent faces. It does exactly what fear wants it to do: It keeps us from receiving love at exactly the moment when we need it the most.”

 

(Continues tomorrow: The Irony Of Anger)

 

Ask Parvati 16: Anger As An Ally, Part 1: Knowing What You Feel Gives You Power

Dear friends,

Thank you for reading this blog. This week, I’m going to try something different. Rather than posting one long blog entry to answer the week’s question, I am going to post shorter entries daily throughout the week. Each entry will explore one facet of the question, and build on what has already been posted. By the end of the week, I hope you will have a more comprehensive view of the question. I will provide specific tips you can implement in your life, as well as a broader understanding of the topic.

This week’s blog entries will explore the yoga of dealing with anger.

Let’s see how this goes. Enjoy!

ANGER AS AN ALLY

Dear Parvati,

I used to think I was pretty easy going until I started to notice that I can get really irritated with people, even get angry and blow up. I have tried to get a handle on why I get angry, but can’t seem to get to the bottom of my negative emotions. I know I am not supposed to feel so angry, but I do. Do you have any words on what to do with anger?

KNOWING WHAT YOU FEEL GIVES YOU POWER

It sounds like a healthy first step to know that you are feeling angry and that you want to do something more creative with that energy than blow up. Too often we take out unresolved emotions on those around us, usually on those we love the most, instead of having the courage to go deeper and understand the root of what we really feel. The first thing I would do is to pat yourself on the back for understanding that you have a problem and that you want change. Yes!

I don’t know if I agree with the use of the term “negative” emotion. I know it is commonly used, but the word does not resonate for me. I prefer saying “painful” emotions. Is that not more accurate? We call an emotion negative because it hurts.

Because of the pain certain emotions create, we to try to push them away and judge them as bad. The problem with that is when we judge, we feel separate from the thing we are judging. To feel separate creates a push/pull dynamic within us that perpetuates suffering. So to judge the emotion as negative weakens our ability to learn from it and be present in the moment.

All emotions offer us intelligent information and a greater opportunity to act with discernment. For example, we may feel irritated by a noise in our environment. Perhaps our roommate is watching TV and we are trying to sleep. We may not care at first about the noise, but as it continues, we begin to feel annoyed.

Feeling irritated by the noisy TV tells us that we value our rest and that we prefer doing so in silence. It may also signal that we don’t yet have good communication with our roommate and that we need to spend more time working towards greater understanding. Or it may be letting us know that this roommate may not be appropriate for us and we may need to change our living arrangement.

When we reactively direct anger towards something we don’t like, we cause harm to ourselves and to others. As the Buddha says, “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” Anger does not feel good for anyone. But when we look more deeply into the anger, behind the heat, beyond the knee-jerk reaction to attack, we find a gem there: a guardian of our truth that can keep us honest and on our path. The wisdom found there within can motivate change, help us hold healthy boundaries and provide a safe space for us to grow and evolve.

By noticing what we are truly feeling, we understand ourselves better. In understanding ourselves better, we can act with greater clarity so that we may take better care of our needs and feel happier, more fulfilled. When we take better care of ourselves, we can participate with greater balanced joy in the world. When we respect ourselves, we are more likely to be kind and respectful of others.

(Continues tomorrow: Look Behind The Anger To Act Awake)

Ask Parvati 15: Listen To Your Body Talk

Listen To Your Body Talk

Dear Parvati,

I have been experiencing repeated physical symptoms that the doctors are having a tough time diagnosing. Part of me thinks it is all in my head. The other part of me feels there must be something my body is trying to tell me, but I don’t know what it is. What do you have to say about the way our body talks to us through illness, whether that is true or if it is all in my head?

LET ME HEAR YOUR BODY TALK

Thank you for the question. It means a lot to me because my body has been and continues to be a great teacher.

The term ‘body talk’ was likely brought to the spotlight with Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical” hit single in the 80’s, and has recently experienced a revival through electro-pop diva Robyn’s new album by that name. (If you don’t know Robyn, check her out.) For me, the term has come about organically through learning to listen to what my body communicates, be it through impulses to move, sing, dance, express; or impulses to move away from, set boundaries and cut ties. Whether I am feeling healthy or poorly, signals from my body help me to stay true to who I am and to reach my fullest potential.

Several years ago, at the end of teaching a yoga class in my Montreal studio, a student came up to me and asked, “Who is your yoga guru?” My immediate answer arose spontaneously. “My body,” I replied. I went on to explain that by listening to the wisdom within my body, I was able to go deeply into my yoga practice by allowing knowledge from within to rise into consciousness. I found learning by respecting my body’s innate voice much more potent than externally imposed, cerebral or textbook learning.

As a practicing yogini and meditator, I know that the body is intelligent. If we try to move into a yoga pose “from the outside in”, thinking of what it looks like and trying to replicate “over here” what we see “out there”, we can experience inner resistance in the form of tension, discomfort or even pain. But when we allow a yoga pose to flower from the inside out, we learn to honour an already present, natural intelligence.

The same is true for meditation. When practicing, we learn to quietly and lovingly witness where our body holds tension, which becomes our humble teacher showing us where we store unconscious thoughts and energies that no longer serve. When we give our body intelligence the respectful space it needs to be heard, we let go of the illusion that our egos are in control. We become guided by a most potent, natural, divine force, which then has the room to express itself through us.

If we are willing to listen, we will see that our bodies talk. We hold memories within our cells of past experiences, unfulfilled desires, painful events, wishful hopes and soul-directed dreams. Our bodies are like archeological sites that reveal the stories of our lives. When we listen, we can see that our bodies are full of hidden treasures, stories that are held from the past or yet to be born in the future.

ILLNESS IS SOUL TALK

We live in a society that to me seems quite disconnected from the physical. Despite a general cultural focus on the material, we treat matter like a disposable commodity, rather than a partnership to be respected. We converse electronically though portable devices, able to go days without tactile, personal, human contact. Yet, through the noise created by a society that races time and fights to control nature, our bodies cry out with inescapable reminders of its importance in our lives. When we face illness, we are often abruptly reminded of our fallibility and mortality.

Times that our body brings us to our knees and we come to a grinding halt are usually seen as a nuisance, as an inconvenient interruption to our busy life plans – as though it were happening “to” us. But I have learned to understand that the voice of the soul speaks to us through the body. We must learn to welcome it as a lost part of ourselves. It reminds us of what we have forgotten, that is, our intricate connection with nature and the need to develop humility and awe at its power. As such, illness is a gift, not an obstacle, helping us along our path.

Our body is the very same stuff of which nature is made. Organic, imperfect yet completely wise, it exists within an intelligent whole, constantly seeking homeostasis and balance. In my song Sanctified Skin, which is all about the body sacred, I sing:

My body is my temple.

I play inside.

It is so peaceful and even quite sublime.

I am an earthly traveler making peace with my tribe.

I wear this human spacesuit where spirit can find

The light that shines within

Sanctified skin.

My body is no sin,

Sanctified skin.

I celebrate my sanctified skin.

Love emanates through my sanctified skin.

Life gyrates behind sanctified skin.

I breathe it all in.

And life begins!

To me, the body is a place where we can grow quiet and celebrate the divine. The body is a reflection of the divine. Like a “human space suit”, we borrow it briefly while we are here so it may house our soul’s voice and reminds us of our evolutionary path.

Illness comes as a knock at our consciousness door from the voice of our soul. It may be saying that we simply need more rest. Or perhaps, we need to be more honest with our self or with others, and need to make some life changes. Or perhaps our body has us in a total headlock and is showing us with no uncertain terms that we need to live a radically different life. Whatever the message may be, when we take the time to listen, our body will let us know in which way we are out of balance with nature and what steps we need to take to regain total health and happiness.

THE SEEN EXPRESSES THE UNSEEN

All that we see in physical form exists in a subtler form. But not all that has subtle form has physical form. The physical provides us with an amazing tool to tangibly see, feel, taste, touch, and sense the unseen. We tend to think of the physical as the root, the cause, but in fact, it is the effect of spiritual laws and our energy tendencies. The thoughts we think affect the feelings we have, which affect how events take shape and how we experience them. The subtle shapes the physical. As such, illnesses and body messages help us tap right into the divine.

Let us take, for example, the common cold. Stuffy, runny nose, fever, and scratchy throat – we have all been there. Some tend to feel defeated by it, as though it were happening “to me”, feeling sorry for oneself, numbing oneself out, switching oneself off until it passes, disinterested in any soul call. Others prefer to plow on through their work, still feeling at some level that the illness is happening “to me”, but feeling stronger and more feisty than nature itself so choosing to ignore the voice of their soul coming through their body as best they can until all symptoms leave.

Others will see illness as an opportunity to listen more closely. Those people will ask, feeling sincerely receptive to an answer, “What is my body saying? What is my soul trying to communicate?” When I have paused in that way, I have found that the common cold, for example, is usually an expression of unshed tears. The body needs to move excess energy somehow. A cold is one way to shed stored water energy and inner dampness. Should I feel like I am about to come down with a cold, I find that when I tune into what I am feeling in my heart and soul, soon tears start to flow. When I allow myself to release this stored energy in the manner it needs, the looming cold quickly disappears.

Illness is a means to reconnect with the voice of your soul. It comes as a message from your soul, designed to catch your attention. Dis-ease is to be ill-at-ease. It signals a way in which we are not at ease within ourselves; we are not in alignment with our truest selves. It signals a dis-balance in our relationship between our body, our soul, our spirit, our personality and the planet. In this way, illness is not some form of cosmic punishment, something happening “to me”. It is no sign of failure, but a sign of grace, the divine offering us an opportunity to reconnect more deeply and honestly to who we are.

THINKING AND BEING

A story that the famous channel Edgar Cayce recounts illustrates the connection between mind and body. Each day, a friend of his was asked how he was. Each day, his friend replied, “Never better!” One day, a series of people decided to let this man know on his way to work that he was looking pale and ill, to see what would happen to his feeling “never better”. As the man came across each one of those people that morning, he gave his usual, “Never better” reply when asked how he was. But this time, the people that questioned him retorted, “Really? You are looking very unwell.” By lunchtime, the poor fellow had to go home, having suddenly come down with the flu.

What we say to ourselves and how we speak to others affects health and well-being. It is too simple, however, to suggest that physical symptoms are psychosomatic. Nor am I saying that all illnesses exist in our mind or that they are simply the results of our thoughts. What we think and feel plays a huge role in our health, just as our body reflects our thoughts and feelings back to us. If we are willing to hear what our body is saying, we have a powerful ally in our health and spiritual growth.

I do know from experience that there is nothing purely ‘physical’. Even things that seem just like physical accidents were part of a greater metaphysical picture. All things physical are an expression of the unseen. For example, why did you trip down the stairs? Were you feeling really in the flow, connected, alert? Or were you feeling down, doubtful, discouraged? What were you thinking when that car accident happened? Had you just received a raise, but at some level felt this was all just too good to be true? I feel we owe it to ourselves and to nature to listen, to tune into our body and let it talk to us.

PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, SPIRITUAL BODIES

Layers of subtle energies surround our bodies, moving away from our skin from the densest to the lightest frequencies, sounds and colours. Our physical bodies are the grossest expression of subtle energies. Subtler than the physical body is a sheath called the emotional body. Subtler still is the intellectual body followed by the spiritual body. As we listen to our physical body, following its cues given to us through discomfort, stresses and pain, we come into contact with messages from these subtler realms.

A woman came to me once for healing work. She had pelvic pain, and wanted relief. When I opened to her, I intuitively saw a rape that she had survived. I saw too the inflamed rage she still felt because of it. Her pain was letting her know she still had deep, unprocessed emotions. She had not moved through the horror of the incident, nor had she seen any possibility for forgiveness. Full of rage, blame, resentment and shame, she did not know how to deal with these emotions, so she packed them away and tried to move on. But her body pain was keeping her honest, letting her know she still had not healed, nor had she learned what she needed to learn through the incident.

Once she was willing to listen to messages within her body as the voice of her soul, she saw that she needed to confront her violator and the family members that were silently witness to the crime. Her soul was speaking through her body letting her clearly know that she had unfinished business on her personal healing and spiritual journey. Once she followed through what she needed to do to heal, her symptoms ceased. She also was free from the entangled, emotional grip of those who were involved, and was able to pursue with confidence a much happier life.

There are several wonderful authors and healers that offer guidance in understanding messages from the body, such as Louise Hay’s classic “You Can Heal Your Life” or her “Heal Your Body” or Caroline Myss’s “Anatomy of the Spirit”. Though I highly respect the guidance these teachers offer, I found for myself that they offered a point of view, rather than law written in stone. As I deepened my relationship with my body and learned to understand my body language, I developed and still am learning skills to understand a very rich, multidimensional language that has roots right to my soul, including everything I know and everything I could want to know. I encourage you to tune in and learn your own unique body language, the one only you know.

TUNING IN: YOUR SEVEN BODY TALK STATIONS

The body tends to work as an intelligent, multidimensional energy system that draws upon and stores information of similar nature within similar regions of the body. For example, earlier I spoke of violation memories in the pelvis. Why pelvis for violation? The pelvis tends to be the area of the body where we learn to have trusting relationship with others. If that developmental process is compromised in some way, we may recreate, attract and relive similar life patterns over and over until we learn new ways of being. So listening to our body talk is one of the most direct and powerful ways to spiritually grow. That was why I said to my yoga student that my body is my guru. Guru means one who leads you from the darkness of ignorance to the light of truth. By learning to listen to and honour what we carry in the dark recesses of our body, we learn to live in greater light and with greater freedom and ease.

The following are some common energy tendencies that I have found in listening to my body talk over the years. Perhaps they offer some starting points that may help your unique, archeological, body talk explorations.

ROOT: The root energy center is located at the base of the spine around the perineum. Illnesses that affect everything from the soles of feet to the base of the spine are governed by this energy center. This energy center tends to be about the self, one’s rooting in this world, how we are anchored, the foundations we stand on. It tends to relate to our feelings and our experiences with our tribe, our primary family, and issues of survival. The earth rules this energy center. An invocation we can embody for healthy root center is “I am”.

SACRUM: The sacrum energy center is located in the pelvis, just below the navel. It predominantly governs the sexual organs, the low back and the lower abdominal area. This energy center tends to be about our relationship between our self and another, how we relate to another person. This energy center is governed by our emotional fluidity and how we flow within life as a whole. It is ruled by water. An invocation we can embody for a healthy sacrum is “I am beauty”, not as in being physically beautiful, but that our essence is beauty, just as nature is beauty. We are called here to trust in the flow of life of which we are an integral part.

SOLAR PLEXUS: The solar plexus is located just above the navel. It governs the upper abdomen and the organs of digestion. As such it is governed by fire. This energy center relates to how we maintain our sense of self within a group and our ability to act in ways that honour who we are. Because of this, boundary issues are reflected here. An invocation we can embody for a healthy solar plexus center is “I can”.

HEART: The heart center is located in the front of the chest. Illnesses that are governed here are those of the heart, lungs, all organs, vertebrae and tissues that are in the chest area. This energy center is about learning to transcend our personal needs, already expressed in the first three energy centers, and tap into the transpersonal and unconditional. It is governed by ether. An invocation we can embody for a healthy heart is “I am joy”.

THROAT: The throat center is located at the base of the neck in the soft tissue above the clavicle. It is governed by sound. It is responsible for diseases in the area of the body that relates to sound through the neck and mouth area. This energy center relates to our speech, what we vocalize, our ability to be truthful and honest, and the actualization of our soul’s voice, our trust in divine guidance. An invocation we can embody for a healthy throat is “I am sound”.

THIRD EYE: The third eye is located just above the space between the eyebrows at the center of the forehead. It governs the organs of the head. The energy center relates to our ability to see clearly, to see through illusion to what is real. As such, it relates to our ability to see beyond our tendency to see the physical as finite and experience ourselves as beings of light. An invocation we can embody for a healthy third eye is “I am light”.

CROWN: The crown energy center is located at the top of our head, in the center of the crown. It oversees the way we flow between the cosmos and physical. As such, it affects our overall blueprint and architecture and how spirit manifests into form. The relationship between the physical and the metaphysical is expressed as the interplay between the bioelectrical field, the bio-chemical field and the tissue field as a biodynamic whole, within the whole. An invocation we can embody for a healthy crown energy center is “Isness”.

Happy exploring, listening to and honouring your own, unique body-talk!

May you feel rooted, vital and expansive as you enjoy the moment to moment unfolding and the eternal dance between spirit and matter.

Parvati

Ask Parvati 14: The Death of Niceties and Feisties

DEATH OF NICETIES AND FEISTIES

THE BIRTH OF FIERCE COMPASSION

Dear Parvati,

I notice that when I am around other people I tend to go into people pleasing at the expense of myself. I wonder what you have to say about that.

DIALING “THEM” DOWN, DIALING ME UP

BECOMING AUTHENTIC

One of the pivotal quotes that shaped my life growing up was from one of my favorite musical icons, David Bowie. He said something like the worst trick God could play is to make you mediocre. Internalizing my version of his message, my motto became through high school and university that I would rather be an A or an F student than a C student.

Living by that belief, I developed two distinct personality traits, a tendency to edit myself to people please with niceties or plow through things with a fiery feistiness. Both extremes were fueled by a drive for what I understood to be “perfection”. The tension that lay between these and the fervour I put into trying to be “perfectly A” or “perfectly F” eventually consumed my health and wellbeing.

By the end of high school and into my first year of university, I was exhausted and stressed because I was not being authentically myself. Though it took me completing university and facing the rest of my life to figure it out, I eventually realized that I had allowed other people’s voices, wishes and dreams to unconsciously run my life. My feistily polite drive for “perfection” was based on the fear that if I were myself, I would not be loved.

I share this because I believe the fear that to be oneself would lead to a lack of love is not unique to me, but is surprisingly very common, even rampant in the human psyche. In the process of trying to come to terms with which inner voices were mine and which were not, I discovered that my extreme personality traits were like healthy qualities on steroids. Through various illnesses and harsh life lessons, I learned to dial down the intensity of my attachment to an idea of perfection and redirect the root energy that was driving it into more life affirming expressions.

I discovered that within my drive for perfection were many strong qualities. From this, immense creativity, powerful zeal and an ability to harness raw momentum out of almost any situation soon became my allies. Drawing upon these qualities, I learned to redirect my drive for perfection towards protecting my inner voice rather than the voice of others.

(I am very fond of the approach of self-help author Debbie Ford, whose shadow work helps people profoundly transform their lives, not by trying to get rid of “bad” qualities, but by finding the gems, the hidden teachings, in all we have within.)

Learning to be true to myself has meant letting go of a lot of excess. I have had to look at letting go of a tendency to become entangled in what others think. I needed to look at my defensiveness, learning to let go of a general, ongoing feeling of being judged or attacked. I have had to watch the death of my niceties and my feisties so that I could find the courage to go within and fiercely honour my own unique rhythm and voice.

As I began to live a more soul-directed life, I realized that doing so was not really the norm. Looking back at the construct I had started to leave behind, I saw that though on the surface it seemed that society supported excellence, the pull to live in the status quo was stronger in the collective consciousness. It seemed most people were complacently satisfied with fitting in and being “normal”.

WHY BE NORMAL?

Midway through university, I started to wear a pin on my coat that asked the question: “Why be normal?” I meant it as a provocative and sincere question as to what normality really meant to the world at large and to anyone who noticed me wearing it.

What I came to realize is that there is nothing wrong with being an A, B, C, D or F student, if that is who you truly are. We each are unique expressions of a divine force and it is our job to discover what that is and express it in our life. The problem is, most of us go through life on autopilot, as though we are asleep, wondering why life feels like a bad dream, tending to react to our unconscious thoughts and desires rather than learning to live fully and authentically.

When we begin to wake up, we wake up to, as the mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “the full catastrophe” of our lives. We learn to see the depth of our reactivity, the ways we give our power away to people and things and how we place happiness in some elusive place or person outside ourselves. Deeper still, we learn to touch and be present for the silent voices that rage through our actions, like feeling fundamentally “I can’t” or “I am not loved”.

When we come upon these old, hidden places within us, we must learn to pause and befriend them, rather than run from them pretending they do not hurt. When we welcome our full self into our self, we access our fullest power. We learn to see that our dreams are completely feasible, and that we have all we need to realize them. We begin to see that our main obstacle has been our self (no one else) and the antagonistic way we have seen the world.

As I began to find my own answers as to “why be normal?”, I started to follow an impulse, a powerful yet quiet force that lay waiting behind my conscious thoughts. It was within me and made no logical sense. But did it matter? I felt alive. I felt open. I felt connected. And in so doing, I was a better, fuller, more inspired, helpful and loving person.

In learning to find our unique rhythms, we need to try things out. I went through a phase of sporting short, electric purple hair with fluorescent blue eyebrows. My regular dress was multi-coloured body paint hidden mysteriously under a wardrobe of solid black. Only after a phase of leopard skin, tutus and combat boots, followed by a love affair with haute couture, did I reveal my joy of full colour. That was when I got rid of everything black.

When I was living in New York City, I went through a phase where everywhere I went, I carried a rubber goldfish in the palm of my hand, that I called “Fishy”. There was no sense in it. It was my own whimsical performance-art piece. The jelly-like goldfish was my friend, so it went where I went. People got use to it and accepted it. It was funny. It made people pause, do a double take and laugh. I loved that pause. I loved the space it gave because it allowed for more authentic connections as we stepped out of “normal”.

A friend of mine from New York, Kelly Cutrone, has a recent book called Normal Gets You Nowhere that shares her own brand of self-love. She believes normalcy inhibits the unique gifts everyone can offer the world and doesn't necessarily bring happiness. I agree with Kelly that when we are true to who we are, it's easier to be honest, it's easier to be compassionate, and the world is a much better place.

FIERCE COURAGE AND COMPASSION

Being true to who we are is an ongoing process as we meet each moment of our lives. It is not a final destination point but a ripening as we get to know ourselves more fully. We all are works in progress, letting go of excess, reclaiming what we lost, discovering the new and rediscovering the forgotten.

It requires a fierce courage to be oneself. “Fierce courage” to me does not mean acting like a bully or railroading people. (If that is naturally who you are, then ok - but I would doubt it to be so. Most bullies are people who are deeply afraid.) We need fierce courage because there is momentum to normalcy, there is social momentum to staying asleep and not awakening one’s true nature. In effect, there is no “normal”. There is either “asleep” or “awake”, to varying degrees.

When we begin to honour our true nature, we shed light for others to do the same. But not everyone is ready for such honesty, nor does everyone want it. Connecting to our inner fierceness keeps us honest, instinctual, and in alignment with nature. Tapping into courage helps us move towards greater expansion. Developing compassion helps us understand the tendency to want to remain asleep. Because that tendency exists within us all, we can see ourselves in others. However, in this moment, we choose to live awake.

When we are naturally who we are, we align our energies with the force of nature, a most potent force. It does not apologize for who it is. It does not sheepishly try to be something else. It does not look for approval. It simply is.

The flower does not question that it is a flower, nor does the lion question its nature. The flower quietly reflects beauty. The lion will tear off your head if you get too close. The flower does not question if it is too beautiful, nor does the lion struggle with guilt, doubt and self-reproach due to the force of its claws. If the lion pretended to be a mouse, the lion would be unhappy. If the flower were crushed by concrete, it could not grow. We must be who we are.

Driven by the ego that knows only fear and disconnect, our minds tend to seek control and manipulate reality to suit our core beliefs. In turn, we create complexity in the moment, in which we become entangled. By becoming mentally convoluted, we lose touch with the force of our innate intelligence that arises from deep within through our connection with nature.

If your joy is singing, then sing. If your joy is being a lawyer, then love it. If you want to sit and read a book, then lap it up. If you need to tell someone how you feel, then let that person know. And do it completely, with every ounce of your being. Whatever it is, if you crush that connection with nature, your connection to who you are, everyone loses. When you honour it, everyone wins.

If there is truth in my desire to be either an A or an F student, it is that neither being driven by wanting to be “nice” nor by being overly “feisty” was right for me. Both were a form of pushing or pulling at life, rather than riding the river I am. Each one of us has to find that flow, our own unique expression of the life force that moves within us. Groundbreaking modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham provides an inspiring quote to illustrate this: “There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. Because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.”

We often mistake compassion for sentimentality and love for sweetness. Love to me is fierce, an unbridled force that defies reason. It is the force that says, “I am that I am.” Compassion is an expression of that force through action. It calls us to serve through love for being here, for being part of it all.

When we don’t say what we need or share who we are, we are living in fear and, in effect, we waste our lives and everyone else’s time. This life is short. The perils are many. We need to sharpen our inner clarity to see who we are and connect to our unique inner light so that we may shine as beacons in the world.

Many people won’t get it. Many people will. Either way, it doesn’t matter. What matters most is that you feel alive, plugged in and real. In tapping into such rooted, vital expansiveness, you send a message to the universe of possibility, of interconnection, of “yes” to life. Without any aggression or warrior rage, you have created a radical revolution – by being exactly who you are. 

Today, and every day, I celebrate you.

Parvati

Ask Parvati 13: I Suck. Please Love Me.

I SUCK. PLEASE LOVE ME.

Self-Love and All That Fun Stuff

May 22, 2011

Dear Parvati,

I really want a life partner but just can’t seem to find the right person. I have been told I need to work on my self before I can find my life partner, but I must admit I don’t totally get why. Are we not supposed to grow with our partner? I feel like I need to be somehow perfect to attract the right person into my life. I find all this stressful so I thought you could shed some light on this. Thanks.

Thank you for the question. Most of us grow up with the idea that someone ‘out there’ will come along some day to fill us up. Mesmerized by fairy tale myths of a perfect prince or princess who will transform our lives into magic, we look (and perhaps are looking) for the one person who would make our lives perfect and bring us the happiness we feel we have been deeply missing.

Just like with all fairy tales, “real life” is something different. For the most part, what we commonly call love is some form of unspoken contractual relationships, where “if I act in a certain way, I will get this and that from you, and vice versa”. Contracts are not love but arrangements.

Getting real about love means learning to face our own lives and look at our values, our hopes, our dreams, our tender places, our relationships with friends, family and peers and most importantly, our relationship with ourselves.

THE CATCH

Trying to find a lasting relationship feeling lousy about oneself is like trying to catch rain with a sieve. We simply don’t have the containment to attract the nectar we seek to quench our hungry and lonely hearts. If we look within, we may feel a hunger that is deeply insatiable. This is a feeling that only we can satisfy. It would be impossible for anyone to do that for us.

Until we feel we are worthy of love, we are unable to sustain the true love we ultimately seek. When we feel incomplete within ourselves, our sense of partiality tends to attract partial relationships that last for some time and then dissolve. It is only when we feel whole within ourselves that we attract the wholesome love that provides the meaty sustenance to accompany and enhance our lives.

When we learn to love our self, we become like an open cup ready to receive the bounty of life. Perhaps, to some, that seems like bitter irony. You may ask, “If I feel whole, why would I want to find love?” Love is organic and infinite. It is not an end point, but an ongoing, alive, evolving force. Love does not arise though “wanting”. When we are “wanting”, we are identified as separate from that which we want. How can we attract something from which we feel disconnected? When we we feel that we are not separate from, but exist within, love, we are able to receive and sustain it.

Love flourishes as an ever-present force to be witnessed. For most, love is to be found, to be had or to be lost. But for the wise, love is to witness an unfolding. As we love ourself or as we love another, we learn not to grasp or to control, but to appreciate with inner spaciousness the blossoming, the evolution of this moment as it is.

It is not someone else’s job to make you feel loved, but up to you to tap into the love within yourself. Friends, family, lovers, spouses can amplify that connection within you, but they are not the source. To put that job on someone else would be to sidestep your own spiritual responsibility.

Feeling disconnected from love can be a deeply unconscious thing, due to wounds we carry from childhood and/or from past lives. There may be a very young place within us that still feels unmet by our mother, our father or both. From this place, we tend to express a wanting for love. We may be feeling unconsciously, “I want daddy to make it all ok,” or “I want mommy to love me in the way I need”, which then gets projected onto any potential partner we may attract. How could a partner fill that void?

A mature, lasting love relationship is not two halves making a whole, but two wholes dancing in the infinite. We must do our own inner work on our deeper issues before we can have a lasting and meaningful relationship with another person.

WE ARE LOVE, WE ARE LOVED

It is up to each one of us to realize that within us exists an unbroken tie to the universe, an unending tap that flows with love. The problem is, most of us are standing on the ‘cosmic hose’ that is pumping love our way, while we scratch our heads bewildered, wondering where all the love has gone. When we are developing self-love, we need to look within at the ways in which we are blocking the flow to feel love, to feel loved.

Love is all around, within, always. The very fabric of the universe pulsates at the frequency of love, of joy, of abundance. In each moment we are loved beyond what we could ever imagine. It is our own distorted thoughts, wounds and attachments that make us believe otherwise. So why do we hold on to feeling disconnected, searching for love ‘to fill me up’ from ‘out there’, rather than within?

Perhaps it is habit, socialized patterns, a sort of cosmic amnesia that keeps us asleep rather than truly empowered. Perhaps it is easier to blame than take responsibility. There is a subtle power we get from feeling powerless, from feeling like a victim. It is scary to let go of blame and take responsibility for our happiness, because we have to look within and change things that hold us back from growing. Stepping into the new, the unknown, is scary, when we are attached to things being as they are. That involves being accountable for our life and letting go of blaming everyone, even our parents, or the universe, for our wounds. We each chose our parents and every aspect of our lives. Everything that exists in our lives is a reflection of our thoughts and beliefs and provides perfect support for our growth. There are no mistakes, only opportunities.

In order to embrace change, we need courage. Self-love takes courage to develop. It is only when we have the courage to welcome ourselves into our hearts that we find the love we seek. In welcoming our full self into our self, that is, in opening ourself up to the totality of who we are, we learn to welcome the love from the universe, and then from others, into our lives. When we love ourself, we discover how to co-create with the love from another. Our life then becomes like a house built on a solid foundation.

Without self-love, we tend to graft ourselves onto another person’s energy, because we are not rooted in who we are. Our rootedness comes from our personal relationship with the cosmos, the divine and the reality (not the myth) of love. One’s relationship to the divine is a deeply personal thing, something no one but oneself can truly understand.

WHAT IS SELF-LOVE ANYWAY?

Self-love is different from self-confidence or having a good self-esteem, though they can be related. Self-confidence is when one feels certitude in their ability to discern or act, whereas self-esteem involves a quiet assurance in one’s place within the whole, a feeling of being a valuable and welcome part of the universe. Self-love involves the ability to treat oneself with understanding, kindness, patience and gentle perseverance. Deeper still, self-love involves one’s ability to know that one’s true nature is love and that our human destiny is to embody that love and express it in all we do.

The notion of self-love conjures images for many of being overly indulgent, narcissistic, egotistical, vain or selfish. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. It is only when we love our self that we learn to truly love others.

When we love ourself, we begin to look at life not as something happening ‘to me’, but as a reflection of who we are. We don’t feel separate from people, places and things, but we see our self in our surroundings. We feel closer to, even a part of, everything. There is a gentle sense of containment, or embrace, that surrounds us at all times, no matter what. In this, we feel rooted, vital and expansive, able to participate in life and follow our true joy with openness and courage.

Self-love is not about being overly attached and fascinated with the notion of “mine”. Self-love is a sacred thing. It brings us close to the divine. It allows us to see our Self as a reflection of the sacred, a part of a much greater whole. Self-love requires a paradigm shift. It involves being able to feel connected at some level to something greater than our ego.

When we allow ourselves to be wholly who we are, we embody the Divine. Our deepest joy is our way into the realm of possibility, a guiding light into our true, infinite nature. I have often contemplated on the meaning of the phrase “It is God’s Will”. Does that mean that some force outside of me could potentially disapprove of my choices? What I have come to realize is that there is no force ‘out there’ that is separate from my true self. The will of the universe dances to the rhythm of love and is supported by joy. In essence, my true joy is the universe’s joy. I know without a shadow of doubt that so it is for you too. We are all beings of love. Let us remember our true nature and set ourselves free. Love, love, love. It is all about love.

May we each remember our true nature, embody love and set the world’s heart ablaze.

Love,

Parvati