So I am signing off here until next week, but I want to introduce you to my friend Vi. She is a talented, beautiful person that I knew was on the same wavelength as me from the moment we had a proper conversation. To coin a phrase I use it was "real talk" and in that five minute chat over lunch I knew I needed to find out more.
Stay tuned to hear from more inspirational people in the coming weeks.
"Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them" - Eckhart Tolle
For the past 10 years spirituality has been an imperative part of my personal growth. I understand that life can be tough, confusing, mysterious, amazing, unique, crazy and it can even suck! Of course it can! BUT it is all in our choices every moment and every single day we wake up we have choices, it is also in how we choose to react to every situation that has or will occur in our lives. This is how I see it, life is about experiences, good, bad and ambiguous, sometimes you get to choose these experiences and most times they just happen, you have no choice or say at all in them, you have to flow with it, but as any human being would, we resist or we just don't accept certain situations. These particular moments allow us to learn a lot about ourselves, to know who we really are,… nobody ever told our great grandparents, grandparents or our parents... or anyone that we needed to live through experiences in order to grow spiritually and learn from them to find our true selves.
Today, all we think about is the future, many families, parents or family friends ask their children or grandchildren all the time: "What would you like to be when u grow up?" "Have you thought about what you want to study in university?" ...And when we get married "when are you having children?" ...if we have partners they ask "when is the engagement/wedding?" "When are you moving in together?" "When are you buying a home together?" So on and so on.
We are constantly living in the future or the past, our parents, our environment, our culture programs us to be this way, society programs us to be this way, and this is the beauty of it all… well, sort of... well not really, BUT imagine if we knew everything and we didn't need to go through these experiences? It would be boring, right?.
Let me share with you part of my journey. A few months ago, I felt as if there was a deep deep sense of emptiness in my heart, I had never felt this way before, it felt like I had no purpose in my life,... this was very unlike me, I felt lost for the very first time in my 39 years, this went on for months, I had feelings of depression and anxiety, all I wanted to do was retrieve myself from everything in my life, yet, I forced myself to be present everyday, I had to be aware of what I was feeling at that moment and work with what I had... I had to do my best to understand where all these feelings were coming from, I had to face past experiences that I thought I had left very deep deep down in my heart and I thought I was over them. I thought... wait a minute, if I don't face these now, then I could possibly keep falling even further into this deep sadness surrounded by very unloving feelings towards myself and my past would keep creeping out very slowly, It would have been worse, so, I didn't give myself a choice to give up to these feelings, and of course I couldn't do this to my son... I had to show him that if I was capable of getting out of this, that life is what it is, good and bad, that if he ever went through this he would be like me, find out where these feelings are coming from, understand them, work daily to overcome the difficult journey and come out the other end having learnt something about himself and that experience.
During this journey, my mind wondered around non stop everyday, day and night, it travelled to the future and back to my past, I spent a lot of my time wondering about how I could or would have changed certain situations and how I could avoid certain things in the future. It was all very confusing and hurtful. At this point, I would live every single day surrounded by assumptions and my imagination (both ego driven of course, because anything that is unlike love is ego driven). I now know that I had to let go of the past, and the worst part is… that we all somehow allow the past (mistake or choices) define who we are today, which is completely crazy to do! This robs us of having a great life now! There is no use holding on to that past... or the future in that matter, these don't change a thing, if you think about it, these only waste your time, are you willing to spend your time (or life) today thinking about tomorrow or even yesterday? Are these beneficial in anyway? Can you change your past? Do you know what the future holds for you?... I bet your answer will be no, of course not.
I ended up finding a way to improve my life,... let me tell you, it is a very slow process but it works, you have to be consistent and disciplined, respect what you feel and acknowledge it. I was able to work with the feelings of being lost, the sadness, emptiness, anxiety and depression by turning the attention towards the essence of who I am today (right now, NOT yesterday or years ago or tomorrow or a couple of years in the future,...right now),... so for me, meditation and working towards living a life with daily intentions has helped me very much. Everyday I work towards being a better version of myself for me, for my family and people around me, it is all about self love, compassion and acceptance of who we truly are.
Now let's do a little exercise, you can do this everyday anywhere you want, it only takes a couple of minutes, give yourself 10-15 minutes of you whole day:
Close your eyes, take a nice deep healing breath and feel how the hot air comes out of your nose slowly, repeated this 3 times, feel the place you are in, listen to your surroundings, observe how your heart beats in your chest, observe how you physical body feels, listen, just be the observer of your feelings and thoughts at that moment and let them pass, if you feel like your mind drifts off bring it back to your breath, observe from the inside out, now ask yourself who is the observer?
Open your eyes observe how you feel, are you feeling stillness? Peaceful?
That... that is you, you are the present moment, you are that stillness, you are the peaceful feeling, you are not what happens outside you. Always remember that.
A huge thank you to my fellow spiritual friend Tom for allowing me to pour my heart out about life experiences and spirituality.
With infinite love and gratitude,
Vi
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