Saturday, July 30, 2011

The influence of fear.

It's interesting to see the influence fear has on our lives and how they, most of the times, prejudice our lives decisions and changes.


We all have fears. I think I have ever met a person who didn't know fear. And on one hand fear is a good thing, there it keeps us save from danger, makes us realize when to run or when to defend ourselves. Yet on the other hand many of our fears are surrealistic. Or sometimes they are realistic, but they are given way to much credit and atention.

I think we can divide different types of fears. The first one I would call the general fear. By this I mean the fear shared by a whole society, mostly created by  the mass media, as there is the fear of terrorism. Mostly those type of fears are created on purpose, with deeper intentions. Yet I don't want to go into detail on this subject.

The second type of fear is the personal fear. Even though those fears may be the same for many people in our society, they are the result of our own experiences. Everything we experience in life we divide in good of bad. Someone went on a holiday, when he comes back he will talk about his experiences and will label them 'good experiences' or 'bad experiences'. 
The division of good and bad is one of the factors of the creation of personal fears. When we label something as bad, we make it negative and in a way we say that we don't want to experience the same again. So then we try to avoid such a situation. When we feel we do come near a similar situation we start to feel restless and before you know a fear is created. Now, the more credibility you give those fears, the more power they get over you. In a short amount of time you will see that those fears start to take over your life, they will influence all of the decisions you make in you life. The more fears you create the more limited your life will be, in every aspect. Did you get heartbroken, you might fear to open up to someone again. Did you get fired, you might fear to start a similar job. Did you get an accident, you might never drive again.

Then there is another fear, the reflected fear. This is the fear of other people that they try to reflect on you. Say you want to start you own company and your brother in law once got bankrupted, most likely he will reflect his fears on you, which might you start doubting your own ideas and capacities. Of course, a self conscious man with high self-esteem and -confidence will not be as accessible to those reflected fear as someone who has a lower self-esteem. The latter will always give credit to the opinions of other people and is no able to distinguish fear and reality, neither in the person, nor in them selves, what makes them very indecisive people.

So, if we want to start living our lives to the fullest and in the way we deserve, it's utterly important we start recognizing those fears and deal with them. Only then we will get back a hold on our lives.


Most of our fears are well recognizable, we might picture them as the 'bears on the way'. One way of dealing with our fears is by using our brainpower. Whenever you feel you're being confronted with one of your fears, try to picture it in your head. It might be a very frightening image. Once you got this, make it smaller, like zooming out with a camera. This way you visualize yourself giving less and less credit to this fear. Or, if easier, try to make it ridiculous. So, going back to the bear on the way, showing his big claws and wide open mouth: try to see the nails of this claws with a sugary taint of nail polish. Or maybe all his teeth fall out of his mouth and therefore he starts looking like your grandma after taking out her denture. Anyway, make it smaller or ridiculous, it will help you overcome the fears already existing in your life.

Now, to make sure you don't create any more of those unnecessary fears we have to look back to what I said about the division of good and bad. We already saw that fears are mainly based on experiences we classified as 'good' or 'bad'. So, if we stop labelling our experiences and see them as learning points in our life it might make us more and more alert in the next situation, yet it doesn't create fear.
When you got heartbroken, in stead of fearing getting close to someone again, appreciate all the beautiful things this relationship has given you and know that the next will bring them too. Even learn to appreciate the hurtful things, as they gave you the live experiences you need for you to grow and get wiser.
And in stead of fearing the next job in another company, make sure this time you'll be more assertive. 

Once you start recognizing our own personal fears it will get more an more easy to recognize the general and reflected fears as well. Before you know you will be writing your life script again!

Nb: Important to know as well is that you'll be attracting those things you fear most. By fearing them, you give your fears a lot of attention and energy, what will be send into the universe, where it will find itself with its object. By the vibration sent out by you the object of your fear will come to you.

Saturday, April 02, 2011

The Celestine Prophecy - 9 Insights

Celestine prophecy
 

1st Insight 
We are discovering again that we live in a deeply mysterious world, full of sudden coincidences and syncronistic encounters that seem destined.

2nd Insight
As more of us awaken to this mystery, we will create a completely new worldview – redefining the universe as energetic and secret.

3rd Insight
We will discover that everything around us, all matter, consist of and stems from a divine energy that we are beginning to see and understand.

4th Insight
From this perspective, we can see that humans have always felt insecure and disconnected from this sacred source, and have tried to take energy by dominating each other. This struggle is responsible for all human conflict.

5th Insight
The only true solution is to cultivate a personal reconnection with the divine, a mystical transformation that fills us with unlimited energy and love, extends our perception of beauty, and lifts us into a Higher-Self Awareness.

6th Insight
In this awareness, we can release our own pattern of controlling, and discover a specific truth, a mission we are here to share that helps evolve humanity towards this new level of reality.

7th Insight
In pursuit of this mission, we can discover a inner intuition that shows us where to go and what to do, and if we make only positive interpretations, brings a flow of coincidences that opens the doors for our mission to unfold.

8th Insight
When enough of us enter this evolutionary flow, always giving energy to the higher-self of everyone we meet, we will build a new culture where our bodies evolve to ever higher levels of energy and perception.

9th Insight
In this way, we participate in a long journey of evolution from the Big Bang to life's ultimate goal: to energize our bodies, generation by generation, until we walk into a heaven we can finally see.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Mettā, loving-kindness

Introduction
Two and a half year ago a friend of mine sent me a song saying: "here, I have the feeling this will be good for you."
The first time we met, we went for a coffee, with also another friend of mine. When he walked in he gave me a big hug and I was stunned by his inner peace, happiness and love. The whole time I couldn't say a word as his energy was so overwhelming to me. My friend talked with him normally, but I couldn't, I just felt like crying. His energy was so strong and so loving that it 'attacked' my heart chakra and 'messed' with blocks I had in this (and other) chakra(s). To make things 'worse', he once in a while gave me a big hug or stroke my leg.
As I got to know him better, I started to get used to his energy and to know how to handle it, but it kept having a big effect on me. Of course he had noticed this from the first day on, and that is why he sent me that song.


When I listened to it, I felt tears coming up and at the same time it made me so happy. I felt light, as if a burden had fallen from my shoulders. The sounds and the voice were so pure and loving.
I've listened to the music over and over again. When I felt sad or when I wanted peace and quiet within myself I listened to this music. I felt how this music was healing my heart chakra, which now is one of my most developed chakras.


Mettā, loving-kindness
The song I'm referring to is called 'Mettā', sang by Imee Ooi. I wanted to share this song with you, for you to use it to heal your heart chakra. To meditate on it, to learn how to love yourself and, from there, how to give and receive love. And, finally, to be able to love unconditionally.
As sure as I was that this song belonged to the heart chakra, in fact I didn't knew what the song was about. So that is why I did a little research.


Imee Ooi is a Malaysian composer and singer, who makes music out of traditional Buddhist chants, mantras and dharanis. The lyrics are written in Pali, which is the language used to write down most of the earliest Buddhist scriptures, to be found in the Pali Canon. This language has never been a spoken language, yet only the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism.


One of her songs is called 'Mettā'. 
Mettā (Pāli; Devanagari: मेत्ता) is loving-kindness, friendliness, benevolence, amity, friendship, good will, kindness, love, sympathy, close mental union (on same mental wavelength), and active interest in others. It is one of the ten pāramīs of the Theravāda school of Buddhism, and the first of the four sublime states (Brahmavihāras). This is love without clinging (upādāna). The cultivation of loving-kindness (mettā bhāvanā) is a popular form of meditation in Buddhism. In the Theravadin Buddhist tradition, this practice begins with the meditator cultivating loving-kindness towards himself, then his loved ones, friends, teachers, strangers, enemies, and finally towards all sentient beings. [1]


The last phrase of the paragraph above mentions exactly that what I have been feeling every time I listened to this music, even without knowing what the song actually meant. For me, this means that this music is more then just a song and has real powering energy. It is a music that brings healing to our hearts even if we don't realize it. 
So, now, for all of us to cultivate our loving-kindness towards ourself and then to others, below you'll find the music, with lyrics and translation.


Namasté


Meditation for the heart






[1]: extract from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mettā 

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

A year of silence...

It has been over a year since I wrote my last post. It really is incredible how fast time passes by. Now what happened? What was the motive of my silence?
I normally write about things I observe, hear or feel around or within me, because all the sudden I see them clearly or because I question them. Yet the past year I have had a tough year of introspection. Lots of changes in my live, of which the biggest, emigration to a foreign country.

Like (almost) everyone I still have issues with my self-esteem and with all the changes and introspection of the past year a lot of doubts arose.

I think we all know what this is and we all have passed through moments of doubts about who we are, what we are and what we know and are capable of. Yet the proportion in which we experience those doubts and how we handle them has a lot to do with our level of self-esteem. The lower our self-esteem the more and the stronger our doubts and the more we let our doubts influence our daily live.

Well, this is what happened to me over the past year. I had doubts about myself, about my life's purpose and about my capabilities. I felt like I was always one step behind, I felt inferior to the people in my surroundings and thought that all of them knew and experienced more then me. As Eckhart Tolle would say, this all is Ego.
I always knew that self-esteem still was one of my biggest issues, but I just didn't know very well how to make it better. My Ego had tried to improve it for a long time by comparison to other people, and as long as I had people around me that I could feel superior to, my Ego would be satisfied and would give me the idea that my self-esteem wasn't that bad after all. Yet, my Ego fooled my, like many of you are fooled by your Ego. Our Ego is master in manipulation, but by being present and aware you are able to see this through.

So that is what I did. Many times I stopped, took a step back and watched my Ego. First a felt annoyed, but with time I started laughing about it. I started laughing about it, because I could see the irony of the Ego trying to play his game. And honestly, many times he still knows how to fool me, I'm definitely not free of Ego yet, that will need more time and awareness, but I'm heading the right direction.

Two weeks ago I really had a low point. I won't say that I hit rock bottom, because that sounds very drastic and it wasn't, but I certainly had tough moment. But sometimes we need the darkness to see where light shines. As long as it is dawn it's more difficult to see this source, but when it is dark, even the slightest ball of light will get your attention, will get your focus. And that is what happened to me. In that moment I knew my purpose. Being, loving, trusting myself and the universe.

A couple of days later I went for an aura reading. I couldn't have got any more confirmation. Everything that I felt, experienced, lived through, intuit or knew over the past year, that I had doubted about, got confirmed during this session. Everything. My guides couldn't have given me a bigger message. I have to TRUST myself and my intuition. I have to hear and acknowledge myself. I have to love myself. Then my self-esteem will raise and my (negative) doubts will belong to the past.


When I went home, in the days after this session I was stunned. I had been doubting about myself all my life, especially over the last year, and all the sudden these doubts were gone. I felt (and still feel) so free. My doubts had been blocking my creativity and now it is time to let my creativity shine. Right now my head is full of new ideas, of alternatives and topics to write about.

So my message to you, dear friend, TRUST your inner feeling. Take a step back and feel the difference between your thoughts and your Being, and you will know what is true. Intuition has his roots in Being and therefore is true. Even if your thoughts will tell you that it is not possible or made up, your thoughts are the ones who are wrong and trying to manipulate you. Thoughts are created by society, by culture, which can never comprehend the truth of Being. You are capable of so much more then your mind can grasp...

TRUST.