Overcoming "Unbearable" Losses

Photograph: Summer Breeze by ~Ninruz

Instead of resisting to changes, surrender.
Let life be with you, not against you.
If you think “My life will be upside down” don’t worry.
How do you know down is not better than upside?

~ Shams Tabrizi

"Health decline is such a gift, isn't it?" a close friend said as we discussed a health concern I'm currently facing. I rolled my eyes as I muttered, "it's not exactly fun". We both had been training since years to accept life as it comes, to find meaning in events and connect to our heart's deeper wisdom so we can lead conscious awakened lives rather than getting stuck in the smallness of our minds every step of the way. So I knew exactly what she was talking about. "You're too serious, lighten up! Everything will be alright." She said sensing I was being grouchy. "The only reason why angels fly is because they take themselves lightly", she remarked. By this time, I couldn't help but smile. "What can I say? I'm not an angel, I'm a tubelight, I take time lighting up" I said and we both began to laugh. 

On the other hand, when the news broke around other places, it was met with, "this is very serious" to "oh my God! I'm so sorry! What will happen to you now, this is so sad" and ofcourse "Repent now so you can be saved (naturally followed by a list of supplications I could read)". The variation in the responses genuinely confused me so I tilted my head to make sense of it. "Serious" I thought. "Hmm.. how interesting" as I nodded. Suddenly my brain caught up with what was being said. It was almost as if there existed multiple personalities of me in my head. One of them covered in a duppatta (i.e. a long scarf-like clothing item) went off running with a jharoo (i.e a South Asian broom) panicked and screaming, "Ya Allah no! no! no!". Another, as I continued to observe, was a balding middle-aged man who watched that woman part of me run all over the place, slowly stuffing himself with popcorns with eyes wide open, he seemed to be amused. As I took my attention on him, he looked back at me. I was startled and decided to quickly move to the others that were present. There existed an over-sized woman with curly hair, angrily shaking her fist at me, giving me a to-do list while pointing fingers at me, saying how everything was my fault. I was plainly offended, so I decided to ignore her. I continued to tour the thoughts in my head and before I knew it, I was smiling at everything, while other people around me discussed the serious implications of it all. This is all very entertaining in my head, I thought. 

All of us have turning points in our lives where we experienced a loss of some kind, whether it took form in a loved one departing, or a loved one walking out of our lives. There's a sense of loss, losing our most prized possessions, our businesses, our bodies, our youth... but I've found, underneath it all, is the resistance to change and the grief that comes from the loss of the thought of the lives, we imagined we'd be living. We fall apart when we realize, life is happening to us, just not how we planned it would be. 

A lot people resort to bargaining with God. "Oh God, if You redeem me of this illness, I shall feed the poor for 10 months". "Oh God, if you bring my ex-girlfriend back, I'll give up smoking" and the list goes on. But no, there's no difference in the way the circumstances take place, leaving us angry and betrayed. We complain, "You aren't listening to me Lord!" while we continue to live in only- what if. We are scarred for life and our faith seems shakier than before. The other set of people start thinking in their heads, "this can't be happening! this can't be happening!". It's happening. "This can't be happening! this can't be happening!" It's still happening; leading their entire lives shut off from the acceptance of how things truly are. And most of us, we hit the replay button and keep watching the story again and again, somehow never really tiring ourselves out.

Anytime life does not go the way we plan, we find ourselves picking a bubble to protect ourselves from sensing the loss of what could have been. There's a sense of self at sake. A self that we have carefully woven over time whose symbolic death seems to cause us to shut down and cut reality out completely. It's too painful to literally watch who we think we are to fade away. We withdraw in our victim patterns slowly clutching on to whatever pieces that we can find. We've been split broken by life and there's absolutely no way it would ever look the same. 

Pain is something we all have been taught to avoid very well. There seems to be something completely dysfunctional when we experience it. Smile in front of others, don't let them see you. Tell people how happy you are, all the while you just want to put your burden down and hope someone sees through you, so you no longer have to pretend. No one does, so we continue to wear our masks, constantly carrying our pain with us silently until even we lose sight of it and its buried deep within our psyche, never really going away.

There's a strange surrender sitting with the real experience of it all, when we are not hoping for things to be any different than they already are. There's a subtle part of us that already has the wisdom to transmute the charge of the situation, all we have to do is stay with it. Sure, its hard looking at ourselves when we are in the grips of our emotions, sobbing uncontrollably with no sense of how our lives will look like, now that we are actually here. There's a constant fear that we will not be able to survive what we have just experienced. "It feels like dying", our minds keep screaming, "I can't take it". And there it is, the light at the end of the tunnel. 

Life is never really in our control. Its only when things go our way, we feel we have a sense of mastery and are accomplished beings. But in reality its unfolding how its meant to be unfolding, we are just in flow, without any resistance. There's no fear, of what will be, for us to tackle therefore we feel secure. But our true gift lies not in having a sense of control of our lives but really in letting things go and allowing it all to be. 

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. "May be," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "May be," replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "May be," answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "May be," said the farmer as he smiled. 

We all have our paths already cut out for us. The choice lies with whether we choose to walk or be dragged while we scream and shout. Because the truth is sooner or later, we will find our paths in front of us. Our only choice is what will we do with it once its there.

The human spirit is virtually indestructible. Even in the most apparent chaos, deep within us is a space nothing can really disrupt. There's a part of The Divine that drifts within our bodies. This part has the inner knowing, that no matter what happens, I'll be alright. That life is happening through me and there's always a bigger purpose behind what I am currently experiencing. This experience offers us gifts in the form of love, courage, strength, forgiveness and we evolve as a spiritual being. Suddenly we are born again and vitalized with a strength that we never sensed before. We hold out ourselves for the world to embrace and we find the freedom to truly live when our hearts are broken open.

How My Inconsistency Is My Blessing

Photo by ~Sea-of-Ice

I'm inconsistent. So I've been told. After my first knee jerk response, i.e. getting offended, was done, I decided to put my years and years of self-development at work. If it triggered something, its definitely of value and I wasn't gonna go around with a wounded ego, pouting and complaining. So I decided to get into an inner dialogue. The minute I explored it, I heard it say the same yes, you are inconsistent. At this point, my pout turned into a scowl and I refused to talk to myself.

I ran a script of my life and I saw there had been times where I was the Holy Madonna while at other times, the dirty mistress. I swept people away with my passion and love for them while at other times I wouldn't shrug a fly off. I blow hot one minute and the next minute I'm rolling my eyes. For all you people who have "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)", yes, I'm a classic case of being a borderline personality with a horrible prognosis. Thank you very much, please feel free to wash your hands off me now.

There is no doubt about the dichotomy of the human nature, but on a deeper level, all this made me realize something more meaningful. There has only been one thing in my life, I've been passionately consistent about in myself and others. The irony is, that very thing itself is inconsistent: human development and growth.

Time and time again, I'm surrounded by the most amazing people who bring love and support in my life. Just when I think, how does it get better than this? They somehow drift away to some corner and new people emerge, who bring me greater joy and support and remind me, all over again, how beautiful the world really is. Every time, somehow it gets better. Same way, just when I get myself comfortable in a place, thinking, "oh there's nothing better than this", life uproots my existence from there and I find myself settled gracefully elsewhere with a huge smile on my face, more fulfilled.

The truth is, life is inconsistent. Look at nature, the seasons effortlessly change from one to another. Its us humans who spend our entire lives trying to fight change which only results in suffering.

Another truth is, our external lives are only a byproduct of how we live inside of ourselves. The richer our inside world, the better our reality would be. The poor the inside life, the poorer the world outside will look. That's why Lao Tzu, the famous Chinese philosopher, said if you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place. Our lives are only responding to how we respond to ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less.

When you are in a particular space or mindset, you attract, likewise people. For example: if somewhere you feel people will let you down, you will automatically attract people who will let you down. Same goes for something positive. It's labelled as self-fulfilling prophecies. Why this phenomenon? Because our minds are constantly searching for what we are feeding it. Our thoughts and beliefs have the power to unconsciously stir us to the places we want to go and even the places we don't want to go. Unless the cycle is broken, no matter where we land, we will manage to attract the same sort of people.

When we release old patterns, its no wonder, a lot of the things we are so familiar with, suddenly fall away. The people who you called your best friends once, become strangers or simply wave you a hello in the supermarket. Its quite painful at times letting go.

We all are spiritual beings, even those who appear the least of it. Part of our journey on this planet is our evolution, which means passing through certain stages to become one with Source. The sudden change in others is simply because we have taken one more step on a the spiritual ladder, upgrading ourselves while the rest of the people around us are still grappling outdated, star plus parivaar dramas, which mind you, is completely perfect, if they are comfortable with that space. Adding another note connected to the previous is that no matter where we are in our lives, it doesn't make us any better than anyone else. Each person has been given their own set of challenges that they need to overcome to complete their cycle. Once the cycle is completed, the purpose achieved, we leave this life for an eternal one.

So how is this all connected to my inconsistency? Well because it simply means I'm changing as an individual. It simply means even if my change hasn't been the most fascinating, I'm no longer the same person I was years ago, I have grown in number of ways and that makes me content, with who I am. 

Reclaiming Our Power, Forgiving Others

Photo by ~Sortvind

There is a person I know, everytime would I meet her, she talked about this old hurt caused by her friend. She always told me, that it was hard for her to move on and she had been struggling to forget. She had tried everything, but even after 5 years of parting, she was still feeling stuck. I listened closely and nodded. I noticed the pain in her eyes and gently said, "did you try forgiving her?". She was startled, "what?". I gently repeated, "did you try forgiving her?". She looked at me and thought before saying, "no".

Anger is a funny thing. Even though we are trying to let go of a person, in reality, we end up dragging them along. Imagine this, they are vacationing somewhere in an exotic place, while you are sitting under a beautiful sky, recalling whatever happened wincing and cringing, literally hurting yourself again and again in your mind. Its only when we find forgiveness in our hearts are we truly free of the perceived burden.

We all have been hurt. As I often say, life happens which means yes, there have been friends who hurt us, some of us have had bad childhood, been abused physically, had ugly divorces, feel abandoned by God, everyone has been in a situation where we felt victimized one way or another.

When we feel victimized, we go in this role of the good me and the bad you. Somewhere we are the innocents ones and crimes were perpetrated against us. No matter what the situation it is, its always the same story, we close our hearts down, encapsulate the injury, refuse to empathized with the other, want revenge and set our mind on an automatic replay so we never forget what happened to us.

It makes evolutionary sense, our minds and our bodies remember it so that we don't go through it again. Its a nature's way of signaling danger and avoiding it in the future. So blaming others somewhere keeps us safe. Some of us, I'm pretty sure, are ready to take these grudges to the grave, rather than letting them go. There's an inner satisfaction that comes from pointing fingers and saying, it's your fault, you did this to me. We justify in our minds that we have a right to be angry and gather every single evidence that we can and then wish something terrible to happen to them, so we can finally be at peace. But like they say,what we can't be with, won't let us be.

There's a twist to this story, when we blame others and refuse to let them off the hook, we literally give our power away. We are waiting until they change, until they apologize, until they admit that they were wrong to end up feeling better. Ofcourse, there's a payoff by avoiding responsibility for being part of the situation. We end up getting to say, "Oh I can't be happy because this this happened to me." "My life is screwed up because my parents were mean to me." And my favourite, "Nobody wants to see me happy, they make me miserable". You get the drill.

Perpetuating these stories keep us in a limited belief of who we are and the other. There's an underlying feeling of separateness and constant fear. We retract in defensive postures, ready to attack at any minute. We look through a filter at the other person, searching for any faults we might find so we can make them look bad, but in reality, we are the only ones suffering. The Buddha said, "Anger is like drinking poison and wishing the other person to die". We are the ones getting ulcers.

Forgiveness is a purification process. Those TV commercials showing all those cleaning detergents clearing out all the gunk from the dishes and leaving them whiter each time its used, yeah, that's forgiveness. Forgiveness is acknowledging that people change, situations change. Its painful, because it means we let go of who we thought we were or who we thought the other is and move on. Its literally like dying because its saying, you and I am not the same anymore. This very death frees up all the energy that was stuck in the past and allows us to live our present lives. We have to give up our identities to let go.

This possibility can not come from living in our minds, rather it comes from living in our hearts. It comes from connecting to others and acknowledging that yes they too are humans. It comes with the understanding that they are only a product of their own conditions and this injury does not entirely define them. Our hearts would open up if we knew, how much pain and suffering, they've had in their lives.

Even though there might be some wounds that we can't forget, but there's always a healing and a closure  that comes from forgiving others. Even though, your relations might not improve over night, it opens space to reconnect. Forgiveness is a seed. If you don't sow a seed in the ground, you can't really expect any plants, but yes, if you sow a single seed, it could bear you fruits overtime.

The Gift Of Things Falling Apart

The most common thing I've heard is, "I wish I could wipe my memory clean, there's too much in my life". At instances like these I usually open my mouth to say something but always instead resort to smiling until my mind floats away to my lalaland. I happen to visit it a lot.

If all of us of could actually choose what happens to us, I doubt anyone would ever choose a painful experience. My personal belief is we avoid pain for several reasons. Ofcourse, there's the evolutionary sense that we are built to survive and any signal of pain might mean a threat to our existence. Again, I'll leave it to Charles Darwin to argue on this one. But on an emotional level, there's a deep sense of shame attached to it. When any one of us goes through a painful experience, the first thing that we think is, there's something wrong with us. We scream, we shout, we deny it like children and then we give up. Our sense of self is threatened, ultimately, leading to the notion something is wrong with our lives. This was not what we ordered from the cosmic menu.

Pain is the first sign that yes, our lives are changing and there is no way that we can stop it.

Life happens, not to specific set of people but to everyone. We live in an ever changing world. Ask anyone and they are fighting their own battle, no matter how successful they are. And the most common thing I've heard during these times? "Oh, everything is God's Will, something good will come out of it". You check back on them after 6 months and your mouth drops open to see them in shambles. I'm no saint but I know God/Allah/Source/ Universe is only Love and this is definitely not what He had on His Mind for anyone.

As far as my understanding of the world goes, everything that happens is meant to happen the exact same way, otherwise it wouldn't have happened. There is absolute perfection in the Divine Chaos. If you feel otherwise then just for today, sit under the night's sky and look at the world, at everything around you, can you think of anything that is really missing? Everything from the wind to the slightest movement of a single leaf is in perfection with everything else around it. So how can anyone of us really buy the notion, that there is something wrong with our lives especially when we are a single drop in the pool of it all?

We plan every single day of what we want our lives to look like. The non-stop chatter, I'll do this and I'll do that and pow! reality happens and suddenly we realize we have been derailed and are thrown in a completely new direction. The truth is, life is never really in our control.

A friend and I had an argument on this, one day. He said, "well tell you what, don't move to eat and let's see if God puts the food right in your mouth, then we will talk about this". So I said, fine and funny thing is, only that day, my 3 year old niece came thrice and ended up literally stuffing things from biscuits, sandwiches to her milk bottle in my mouth, without me asking a single time. I won the argument.

Now please note, I'm not implying that don't do anything and you will still yield results, what I'm trying to say is, life is happening to us every second of the day in ways that we can't notice even. Our hearts are beating perfectly, our brains are functioning, well in most cases, without any interference from us.

When things fall apart, its not life that really falls apart, its our sense of self/other that breaks down. We all live in a bubble that at one hand protects us and at the other hand prisons us. It give us a sense of identity, a feeling of belonging, the feeling that we are safe. Anytime, anything happens which is not familiar to us, we go running back to that bubble and when we find its gone, that's when the pain sets in. While I'm no masochist, I do believe there's a gift in pain if only we are willing to stop grasping and clinging to what we want.

Pain helps us to grow as individuals. None of us would ever leave our comfort zone, if there was no pain. Life is designed not to give us what we want, but provide us with the experiences that we need to in order to complete the evolution of our human cycle, in the time frame given to us. Once this is completed we can return to the Source. Finally, return to God.

The only choice that we are left with is, what do we want to do with what is given to us? There's a certain freedom that comes with the idea that everything is perfect. I don't know about the rest, but for me, it always has faith and hope to it. There's a sense, things will fall exactly where they are suppose to and all we have to do is really enjoy the ride. Once the blocked energy is freed, life itself becomes a gift. It literally becomes limitless. And that's how I believe God wanted us to be - Beyond any limits on a path to freedom.

Letting People Go And Choosing Sleep

As a training psychologist, my colleagues and I can't help but to ruminate over our clients terminating in the middle of the process. We cringe and bite nails while telling our supervisors with our heads hanging down that yes, our clients, decided to end therapy before time. We are doomed. We lie in bed with our monkey minds jumping from one thought to another, trying to make sense. But let me tell you, sleep is good for health.

Someone I know, humorously said, people care more about the cuticle of their finger nail than about you. They are only interested in you as long as you offer them something. More humorously, I agree 110% with her. Our clients choosing to complete or terminate their sessions has nothing to do with us. Translate it to a more reality setting, people choosing to stay or leave has nothing to do with us or vice versa. Anything people have to do with us is nothing to do with us.

Some animals of different species are dependent of one another for survival. When one dies, the other becomes helpless and eventually dies, so their survival is based on each other. I understand you are not a fish accessing the internet, but here's the catch. Psychologist took this process of symbiosis and used it to describe human relations. Anything connected to us in any way becomes us. So everything is an extension of who we are, irrespective of their unique characteristics. The famous Sigmund Freud called it transference. So when people walk out of our lives, it literally send death signals to our brain and we preserve to hold on. Nobody wants to die, even if it is a symbolic death.

Pick any relation you want, parent-child, husband-wife and even friends, the more similar they are to each other, the happier they are. And if not, then starts the personality improvement list. The truth is we only like seeing extensions of who we are and what we believe in this world, everything else can be recycled into us.

I have no disputes with Charles Darwin on this so I shall make spiritual sense of it all.

One wonders exactly how people like Prophet Muhammad, Buddha or Jesus were able to practice pure love and presence with even all those who tried to murder them. And here we are feeling resentful over others not feeding our egos. I'll take a cookie please!

The answer for me seems to be, that they never separated themselves from the rest of humanity. The stronger the sense of "I', the longer it hurts. The "I" pulls in all the energy towards the self, literally leaving none to connect on the outside world thereby only creating walls between who we think we are and who we think others are. In reality, we all have come from the same Source.

We define people based on our limited perception of who we think they are. To give more control to our own worlds, we use different labels so we can make more sense of it all, you might hear someone say, oh he's a loser or she's a bitch. But are they really? No. In no way does a simple label, define a person over all. That is only what your opinion about them is. Not the whole truth. And the more interesting thing: even if they are, where have you displayed similar qualities like them? Let's make it more simple, if not qualities, when did you think of similar acts? Whether or not our egos like it, we all are the same.

Our power lies not in exercising our control over the external world but it lies in making peace with our internal selves. Once we are able to recognize our own divine natures, we open up enough power to recognize the same in others. Our strength lies in knowing who we are and allowing others to be exactly who they choose to be. Once you really understand the depth of our own core, you stop relying on others to give you the happiness. You become liberated from wanting people to do as you please. You by acknowledging your own light, allow others to do the same for themselves. And it really depends on them, what they want for themselves. All you can do is watch and pray, for yourself and others.

The Stories We Convince Ourselves Of

As a Pakistani, I know one thing for sure, advice on how to live comes for free here. If you are crossing the street, you hear from behind, "abay dheek kar", you go to a gathering and somebody shakes their head at your choice of clothing till you wanna drown yourself in that glass of Pepsi you are holding or the most common you hear from everone, "you don't know how to live, here I'll tell you..". Its funny because up till that point, I seemed to be breathing alright and was very happy, thank you.

The storylines we tell each other or even ourselves are simply self-created. It's an illusion that gives us an identity and protection. It allows the defenses that we created to protect ourselves so that our minds know, yes we are alive and in control. So when something comes along that does not serve us, our egos struggle against all odds to maintain the mighty "I". We have been insulted. How dare you. The stronger our egos, the more we perpetutate the dramas and the harder it is for us to short-circuit our learnt patterns. He said, she said.. *after several hours*.. he said, she said..*after several years*.. he said, she said . Nothing changes, except the fact, we separated ourselves further and are now wallowing with that cake in our mouth, thinking how cruel and unfair the world is.. tsk tsk. For you cynics out there, yes this too is a story.

The Buddha often talked about the roots of human suffering in his scriptures and the biggest of the "Dhukkas" was attachment. And what bigger attachment than the word "I". I did this and I did that. I am right. I know. The list is endless. No matter how much we pretend we possess the most compassionate of hearts, we never really move beyond our sense of "I" until we move beyond it. Therefore we pull all energy towards ourselves rather than giving it to others. We are selfish.

We talk about battling other people's demons while we live in the shadows of our own darkness. Our egos putting us in constant fear and anxiety, limiting us to the boundary of what we believe to be true of ourselves and others. The world exist only as we see it. Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, said if we are to finish the darkness within the world, we must battle out our own darkness first.

In reality, there are only myths that we refuse to change, even when the person has years ago. Its like snapping an ugly picture and carrying it in your pocket. The minute something triggers your ego, you pull out that picture and say, yup, that's the one. So how do we move beyond that? Ofcourse, letting go. Life doesn't need to look like how we want it to. And it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with us, if it doesn't.

We all are delusional and living a lie in one way or another, but thats precisely what gives this Earth so much beauty. What was the point of living, if there was only black and white? Movement and flexibility are the very essense of life, rigidity and stiffness are the qualities of the dead.

The truth about our existence is, that if we become still enough to hear the sounds of our souls, we would know that there is no self and there is no other. We all arrived from the same pool of beingness and were given these different forms and faces. How do you ever expect to become one with Your Creator, when you can not transcend yourself, and become one with your fellow human? You and I are no different if we give up our minds and connect with our souls. We simply just are.