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February 6, 2020 at 11:06 am in reply to: How do I know it was a sign and not just manifestation? #336952
PeterParticipantI’m dealing with the end of a long distance relationship, which didn’t came because we didn’t love each other but cause the circumstances are so hard.
There is a difference between seeing a sign and asking for a sign
When asking for a ‘sign’ we are at the same time implanting a thought into the subconscious. At a subconscious level we see more then what we are conscious of seeing. (we ignore most of what we see and hear…) By setting the intention for a sign you asked your subconscious to make what you might normally ignore noticed. Kind of like the “pink elephant paradox” which refers to “inductive thinking caused by the difficulty of inadvertently proving the existence of a concept or phenomena just because it overtly or insidiously exists in one’s thoughts, leading to mis-attribution, or mis-categorization of data, and thus subverting inductive processes.”
Meaning if the thought of seeing a butterfly as a sign is important to you your more likely to notice butterflies and because of the sign association you have attached to butterflies make a mis-attribution as to what it means – wishful thinking to see what you want to see.
If your going to ask for a sign and then define what that sign must look, your defeating the purpose as you must then ask if you are seeing what you want to see… although doing so is a indication that you really want the relationship to workout. (which is a sign of what you want. Sadly does not change circumstances.
It is unfortunate that Love alone does not mean a relationship is destined to be.
PeterParticipantHi limbikanimaria
I have no Idea why someone would leave a note like that for someone else with no explanation as more often then not the color black is unfairly associated with negative connotations. I might guess that this person was asked to leave the conference because of a habit of doing this.
Begs the question as to why the color black is associated as being negative. Perhaps as it is associated with death and death seen as “bad” and or sadly perhaps due to false racial associations.
Symbolically the color black is associated with many things with the qualification of good and or bad dependent on context of the person engaged with the symbol.
Black as a color is not a color, or it is the absence of color, which at the same time gives depth and vibrancy to other color. (as does death provide depth to life). As a symbol the color Black is associated with uncertainty/mystery. In the west uncertainty is something to fear however it is only with uncertainty that learning is possible.
Black is associated with power, fear, mystery, strength, authority, elegance, formality, death, evil, and aggression, authority, rebellion, and sophistication. In other words ‘Black’ adds depth to experience.
The art of symbolic language is similar to dream interpretation where it is the dreamer the decides what the symbols in a dream means or points to. This is an engagement where nothing is right or wrong, good or bad, and instead a door to learning something about ourselves.
Contemplating what a ‘black heart’ might mean to you could be illumining as long as you don’t attach a sense of self to the process. This is not a ‘fact’ or ‘objective’ exercises but a subjective one where you pay attention to your intuition and discernment.
All the best
Light likes to think it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. – Terry Pratchett
PeterParticipantHi Joanna
As you work through your thoughts and feelings about your experiences with Anita and Inky it can be quite emotional, and the tendency could be to identify with the emotion and or though. For example, I am sad vice in this moment I feel sad are two very different things. Or I am Bad because bad things happened to me.
My suggestion is that as you go through this process of healing that you take a few moments each day to sit quietly and reflect on what you have learned and notice if you have attached your sense of self to an emotion or thought. Nothing more then noticing is required.
There is a time in everyone’s lives where the task is to take responsibility in learning how to nurture ourselves and “become our own mother” – (nurture yourself). Your experience of your mother will have influenced your ability to nurture yourself however it does not or need not define that ability.
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality. – Seneca
PeterParticipantI agree with Inky. When the idea that we influence our reality becomes blaming oneself it becomes unskillful and a victim trope
Here is an allegory
Say there is a dark ally in your neighborhood in which many people have reported being robbed. One day you find yourself running late so decided to take the shortcut through the ally and you get robbed.
Some may argue that you should have know better, so the fault is yours. However, it is not a crime to walk down an ally it is a crime to assault and rob people. Love requires that those that robbed you be held accountable. The guilt is theirs.
On reflection asking yourself why you did what you did may prove helpful, maybe you discover a part of you likes danger or feels that you aren’t a good person and deserve to be hurt. Those would be important realizations as you probably are at a unconscious level helping to creating those situations where such judgments will be verified.
That does mean you are to blame. When reflecting on the role we play in creating our reality, judgments are unskillful. The idea is to make conscious what is unconscious so that you might write a different script. Learn and do better or don’t, there is no blame. Maybe the next time you don’t walk down the ally maybe you do, this time with a bat… or maybe you engage the community to address the problem.
PeterParticipantHi Joanna
I’m afraid I have no identity…
From the perspective of Buddhism you are correct you are not a ‘identity’. You have experiences you are not your experiences.
That might sound like semantics however it does create the space to engage in life experiences without being overwhelmed and defined by them
PeterParticipantThe word that comes to mind reading your post is “duality”, the problem of dualism which has many forms and were we tend to think in terms of either or. The problem of dualism is related to the problem of opposites. In most wisdom traditions the overcoming and coming to terms with the problem of opposites leads to the realization of oneness with All and with that oneness compassion for all. Here’s the rub, even after that kind realization the question of how to engage with Life, engage with other remains.
“It is said that you can never hurt anyone, you can only hurt yourself.”
From intellectual and spiritual perspective there is truth in that. Say you stubbed your toe tripping over cloths left on the floor as you got out of bed. You could decide it only hurt your body which will heal but not your experience of ‘self’. Or you could beat your self up for being so stupid for stubbing your toe, such an idiot… (mind body dualism). Perhaps like most people you will do both, and maybe one being more spiritually skill full then the other. Either way a reasonable action will be to make a habit of keeping your cloths off the floor.
Your friend hurt you. An attribute of love is accountability and responsibility. If we never got to be held accountable nothing we are would matter and we would never learn anything. Engaging in life, engaging with your friend in the moment and addressing the experience is engaging in life. Address the wound and pick up the ‘clothes’ off the floor.
After maybe a time for reflection. What role did I play in the experience? Could I have handled the experience better, what did I learn, what should I work on…. Did I attract the experience by thoughtlessly “tossing my clothes” on the floor? Why would I do that… what does that say about me
Being hurt in relationship is of course much more difficult experience to see through. It wasn’t you who thoughtlessly tossed their cloths on the floor it was you partner… You stubbed your toe on their issues. The process remains the same. Work with your partner to address the problem and maybe, in time, reflect on what the experience is teaching you.
PeterParticipantWell done ArtHeart!
You are a inspiration!
December 4, 2019 at 10:44 am in reply to: I BEG YOU! I need mature advice on my relationship #326011PeterParticipantHi Jamie: The best advice I’ve gotten about relationships is from the following books which I very much recommend.
- How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving
- The Languages of Love
- Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
As a practice I might also recommend ballroom dance lessons as it requires each person in a partnership to take responsibility for creating space for the partner and at the same time filling space.
Its is said that an aspect of Relationships is to act as the crucible in which we discover ourselves. What this means is that we are going to step on our ‘ghosts.’ (subconscious issues that need healing). One thing ‘ghosts’ love to do is play with other peoples ‘ghosts’. The key to working through these issues, ‘having the ‘ghosts’ move on into the light, is to make them conscious. Which is where the book recommendations come in.
Wishing you the best
PeterParticipantHi Kaylen,
Your story reminded me of the ‘don’t think about the pink Elephant’ thought exercise that proved trying to suppress your thoughts doesn’t work. Zen, meditation, mindfulness teaches the same lesson. The harder we not think a thought the more likely such thoughts will persist.
Meditation we practice observing our thoughts without attaching to them. We notice that the mind is full of thoughts, that’s its job. We also notice that its when we attach ourselves (ego) to a thought that thoughts create more thoughts….
When we first learn to meditate, we might think that the goal is to have no thoughts and so we try to force the mind to be quiet. But that never works. Allowing the mind to be the mind we learn to detach our sense of self from the mind allowing the thought to flow. (unless we chose to fallow a thought to see where it might lead)
Ego gives us a sense of safety and security
I’m not sure I fully agree with that definition of ego as I might argue that when we are overly attached to our ego its usually because we do not feel secure. But perhaps that semantics as to overcome that sense of insecurity the ego will try to prop itself up to feel safe. For example, observe others negatively so that we might view ourselves as being better then them.
Jung once made a comment that it takes a strong healthy ego (sense of Self) to let go of ego (detach from ego as the defining sense of self). Thus, we see that if we start a practice or enter into therapy we dig deep into our past the purpose being that the better we know ourselves the less likely we will be to repeat the past but something else also happens, we begin to notice that the we are not our past, or our thoughts, or our emotions… we are not our ego. The ego is the bridge of which we communicate experiences to our self and others. (Notice how difficult it is communicate experience without reference to a ‘I’. When we attach our sense of self to the ‘I’ we are more likely to mistake the map for the territory and tell ourselves I am that.)
The goal is not to vanquish the ego but to detach the sense of self from the ego, allowing it to be what it is and play it’s part. The tricky part is not allowing this idea of detachment to become indifference. The goal is to be detached and engaged with life as it shows up.
Anyway, don’t be to hard on yourself.
PeterParticipantDear Michelle
I have to hate him to breathe. I have to hate him to survive.
I love him. I still love him. I believed in our marriage and I believed in us.
I’m sorry for your loss.
My approach to your problem may be more philosophical as it concerns love and hate so I understand if you’re not interested. These are only thoughts.
A notion in the wisdom traditions is that there is a time for all things. A time to love and a time to hate. In this moment of time your realizing that its time for something other then hate but how to move past that?
We live in a world of duality and in the wisdom traditions it is identified with the problem of opposites. On the path of becoming, seeing past/through the problem of opposites is the last obstacles to be overcome. (Life will constantly present us with opportunities to confront the problem of opposites)
Here is a paradox for you… there is only Love. I know how odd that sounds especially as you come to terms with your experience of love and hate. However,we learn by confronting the problem of opposites, which gives birth to consciousness, that the opposites are not ‘two sides of a coin, an either or, but intimately intertwined and connected so that neither exists on its own nor can they be separated from each other. When opposites are experienced in this way, they ‘disappear’ and in that space… Love.
Asking you to work on getting to a place of saying YES to your experience of love and hate can seem mean and unfeeling. It is not my intention to discount your experience. I understand that when you’re in it, attached to it, its difficult to see past.
Buddhism suggest a starting place is the art of detachment and mindfulness. Detachment is not indifference to the experience but remaining engaged in life as it shows up while not attaching a sense of self to the experience. You, your experience of SELF, is not your experiences. You are not your emotions, you are not your thoughts. In this way detachment creates space to be mindful where you may better observe your experiences of Love and Hate – not the reasons you have for loving and or hating you husband – but your relationship to love and hate.
In time you might realize a new consciousness of love as it is, life as it is, and find yourself saying getting to a place where you can say Yes to it all.
I wish you Peace
PeterParticipantI am curious about this:
The thought ‘I should just kill myself’ could be the subconscious suggesting that your stuckness may be due to an attachment or your sense of self/ego whose time has past.
And also this:
What would it feel like to engage with the life that shows up and see where it goes?
What does this look like? I think I sort-of understand, but would like to better understand what you mean.
The two thoughts may be connected. Something about the story you have attached your sense of ego/self to is stopping you from ‘showing up’ to your life. The practice of mindfulness (noticing without judging or labeling – we tend to attach our sense of self to our labeling and judging) and meditation (watching the cluttered mind while not attaching to it) can help in the task of letting go of our attachment to ego. (An ego remains, it what we communicate our experiences through, however the realization is that You are not your ego.) The death of this attachment to ego frees you to be you.
So, what would it look like to let go of the stories you have been attaching yourself to that have left you stuck and instead engage with Life as it shows up so that you might write a better story of which you are consciously the author?
When you engage with life as it shows up everything is a possibility and your path will show itself. That does not mean saying yes to everything that comes your way. It means being honest with yourself so that when you do say yes or no it comes from an authentic place. Not a place of fear, or expectations, or should s, or what will others think….
PeterParticipantHi Janine
I f*cking hate that I am this way. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I have been this way as long as I can remember. I feel like I can’t commit to anything…. I am worried that I should just kill myself
I’ve only read you initial post and I’m sure Anita will address looking into the reasons you might have gotten stuck in acting in ways you do not wish to act.
In the hero’s journey the idea of death is often a symbol for the desire of transformation, not a physical death but more often then not an ego death. The thought ‘I should just kill myself’ could be the subconscious suggesting that your stuckness may be due to an attachment or your sense of self/ego whose time has past. (Change is often felt by the ego as a physical dying and so its understandable we hang on to what we ‘know’ and fight when the task is to let go.)
The title of your post, ‘can’t commit to Life’ struck me. Personally, I prefer the word engage with Life then commit. Words matter and for me, engage implies participation with what shows up.
The reality is that Life happens to us with or without our commitment to it. That may seem bleak however it isn’t as Life does not demand anything of us, its free. We are loved freely. Life does not give us meaning or purpose, it is we that give life meaning and purpose. We are free to engage as we are, the gift to learn and grow. We are not committed on one path, we get to discover our own.
What would it feel like to engage with the life that shows up and see where it goes? Don’t get me wrong there is a place for discipline and goals and now may be a time to engage with discipline to get unstuck. Engage with your classes without labeling yourself. Forget try just do, detach your sense of self from your inner dialog and do. What doors might open?
One step, then the next. That’s how everyone does it, even if you imagine they don’t. One step, then the next…
PeterParticipant‘How do we walk around in a world full of shadow traps?’ As the individuals we were created to be. Every being on this planet was born out of love. That is who we are. Gandhi is right. Once we change ourselves the tendencies in the world will also change.
Love, one of those words we think we ‘know’. I suspect that if our expectation of love is that we never experience pain, as the song goes, we don’t know love at all. Perhaps then, the shadow traps are not so much traps but gateways to a better relationship to Love ‘as it is’ the pain and the joy. A love transparent to the transcendent blossoming when we are it.
There is a character in the TV show ‘A Million Little Things’ whose Husband had/has a drinking problem, cheated on her with one of their best friends which resulted in a child and has chosen to stay in relationship with her husband, family and friends.
The expectation as we watch is for the drama of divorce and separation. She has been betrayed. We learn that over the last few years she wasn’t fully engaged in the marriage however that is no excuse for the betrayal. She/we deserve better, society expects/demands it, justice demands it, the cost of betrayal is separation, everyone knows that.
We watch puzzled, the character is determined to respond and make a real choice that comes from within, who she is. There have been no ultimatums, no demands or for that matter any talk of forgiveness. Only Space. Is this a unrealistic character on tv or is it possible… We watch, She’s done something….
The character has chosen to choose over ego. This is not a sacrificing of love for love, but Love coming from loving herself. The experience of betrayal opening her up to herself, she is choosing… and has made herself more. She is expanded.
There is a hermetic riddle. As above so below, as below so above. We are influenced yet in the same moment we influence. That is not a paradox. We are part of the whole, inseparable, smaller then small and bigger then big… we are the change we see.
PeterParticipantHi Angel
So Much of our anxiety is created not by what does or does not happen to us but by our thoughts on how we view the past and imagine the future. Nothing chases away the opportunity for the experience of happiness then paying to attaching our sense of self to our memories and fears of the future. Identifying ourselves with these thoughts will most assuredly take us out of the present. The possibility of the experience of happiness lies in the present. Seeking it in the past and what might be works against us. (Happiness isn’t something we create but something we experience. These moments can occur taking out the garbage or curing cancer.)
“The car goes where the eyes go” without awareness the eyes tend to focus on our fears, and doing so that is what we crash into. Mindfulness and meditation may help.
In Mindfulness you learn to notice when your eyes/thoughts are focused on the past and or future and how your sense of self is being influenced by that focus. Ask yourself if you notice feeling bad about feeling bad. That would be an indication that you have attached your sense of self to how you feel. Try not to judge or label yourself for doing that. The practice is to notice. Eventually you may notice you can experience your feelings and thoughts about your feelings without “being” your thoughts and feelings.
In Meditation you learn how to detach yourself from thoughts and emotion. You are not your memories, you are not your future, you are not your feelings, you are not your thoughts. There are thoughts, there are feelings, there are experiences… You are not that.
The “quite mind” is not a mind that stops chattering, but a way of being that does not attach identity and or sense of self to the chatter. Your mind is doing what it was designed to do, you are not your mind….
Best wishes
PeterParticipantHi Harshita
With regards to the question: How to become responsible for your own happiness. I really like today’s blog -
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