I am nearing the end of "A New Earth" a non-book book. A book that transcends the written pages, form.
At this point I am at peace with the knowledge that my inner purpose is to be where I am, doing what I am doing. At first it was quite difficult, something in my head kept telling me that what I was doing was not important. Something else, at a different location, either in the future or the past was better and more worthy of my time.
Obviously this is an illusion. Even during the happy moments of the past, or when we were the person we believe we were, even then, we were somewhere else. It is just now that the past has developed itself like a Polaroid that the image gels in our minds as perfect. We might want to go back to that stage, but it cannot happen as we are always changing with time, in a progression of events that alter us forever.
Thinking too much about the future is the same. In fact, there is no image of the future without memory. All there is, existing beyond the present is an illusion of our brains. A mere collection of thoughts strengthened by...thinking.
I personally enjoy "dreaming" about the future. Imagining my children as grown-ups, being happy and well adjusted makes my heart melt. I understand that there are no guarantees. However, most importantly, I have come to understand that the quality of the future depends on the quality of the present. Learning and growing makes us better, as long as we keep ourselves true to who we are inside, keep our ego in check and allow it to step off centre stage.
My inner purpose now is to finish typing, to end this bubble of expression.
Good night, thanks for being here tonight.
E.
Showing posts with label Tolle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tolle. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Pain-body and my story
If you thought that my last post was a bit heavy, it is maybe because my pain-body was activated, making me feel sorry for myself. And what is this "pain-body" I speak about? together with ego, it is the other main entity that tends to render people unconscious, masking with pain a life that by all standards seems liveable and pretty alright.
Pain-body is emotional energy that feeds on our personal history. It was easy for me to comprehend this concept because I have carried emotional stuff all my life. Almost every event can be linked back to a chain of past painful events, thoughts that built upon themselves and make up a story. I have questioned myself often as to why I seem to have a better recollection of negative events. Trauma perhaps, or maybe it is the fact that briging up the memory and building a story around it makes us relive the experience. How much of that experience is fact, after we dress it up with all kinds of tragic connotations?
The power that comes with detaching ourselves from our story is great. In "A New Earth", Eckhart Tolle, tells us that it only takes an instant to lose the identification with our pain-body. If you try it, you will see that it is true. However, I've likened this identification to a bad habit, we do it because we are used to. I have found myself sometimes, idling towards a story, past or future, without even being aware of it. The result is pain, ready to interfere with my decisions and send me into a downward spiral of fear and suffering.
Pain-body feeds on drama. Some of us create drama to feel alive, maybe in the hope that all this suffering will be rewarded one day with a happy ending. "Amor que no es del todo dolor no es del todo amor" I learned in my chama days. Drama is part of my cultural background, if you don't believe me, do tell me, in which other culture is it legal to name a person "Dolores", which can be translated as pain and/or suffering?
One of the challenges is then to break the habit, especially in situations where we react before even formulating a thought. Preparation, knowing the triggers come to mind as a strategy.
My personal pain-body has the watermark of abandonment. At the time of my first formal dealings with anxiety in 2004, my greatest fear in life was being left by my partner, if I became ill or incapacitated. It sounds very complex, but in defense of my story, there were more than one trigger confabulating to feed this fear, mainly being far away from my family, having had surgery and ending up with pneumonia as a side effect. I felt alone and scared, terrified of my own thoughts. Since then, being a bit ill has become a trigger for activating my pain-body. A backache, is not just that, but a feeling of my body failing, of my life entering a dark place. It is obvious to me that I am capable of building a lot of emotional pain on to a backache.
Recently, someone told me that I look sore when I am in physical pain. Pain-body is recognisable, I see it in other people, therefore I am sure I show it too, probably, surely, more than my actual physical pain.
Sometimes when I am out and about I see people whose bodies are being seriously challenged, some cope better than others. I do not presume to know what it is like to be any of those people, in fact I know nothing about them, other than what my knowledge of physics tells me. And I wonder "how would I feel if my body were to dramatically change?" or even "how would I cope with getting old when my body starts indeed failing?", then I remind myself to breath.
Along with some exciting design work I did this week, I listened to audio of Eckhart Tolle on Oprah answering a question from a caller who has suffered Lupus for years and who is in chronic pain, this got my attention. His advice was simple, to break the identification with the illness, she should find wellbeing in nature, and in those places in her body where it exists; do not talk about the illness with anyone but her doctors, while doing all the necessary to help herself.
The more we talk about our story, the more the pain-body feeds, the more negative thoughts occur. The way I see it, breaking free of pain-body is like the quitting smoking of the emotional world, ten times over at the very least. You can quit easily, in fact smokers do it often.
If I believed in God, I would pray to never lose my faculties, to gently and gracefully age with enough time adapt to every change, to never find myself alone when I'm in fear of pain, or actual pain and death. I ask the universe instead, knowing that there are no guarantees, and still taking care of this body, to allow me the space to not attach myself to pain and suffering, and to not struggle with what is happening now.
à bientôt
Evelia
Pain-body is emotional energy that feeds on our personal history. It was easy for me to comprehend this concept because I have carried emotional stuff all my life. Almost every event can be linked back to a chain of past painful events, thoughts that built upon themselves and make up a story. I have questioned myself often as to why I seem to have a better recollection of negative events. Trauma perhaps, or maybe it is the fact that briging up the memory and building a story around it makes us relive the experience. How much of that experience is fact, after we dress it up with all kinds of tragic connotations?
The power that comes with detaching ourselves from our story is great. In "A New Earth", Eckhart Tolle, tells us that it only takes an instant to lose the identification with our pain-body. If you try it, you will see that it is true. However, I've likened this identification to a bad habit, we do it because we are used to. I have found myself sometimes, idling towards a story, past or future, without even being aware of it. The result is pain, ready to interfere with my decisions and send me into a downward spiral of fear and suffering.
Pain-body feeds on drama. Some of us create drama to feel alive, maybe in the hope that all this suffering will be rewarded one day with a happy ending. "Amor que no es del todo dolor no es del todo amor" I learned in my chama days. Drama is part of my cultural background, if you don't believe me, do tell me, in which other culture is it legal to name a person "Dolores", which can be translated as pain and/or suffering?
One of the challenges is then to break the habit, especially in situations where we react before even formulating a thought. Preparation, knowing the triggers come to mind as a strategy.
My personal pain-body has the watermark of abandonment. At the time of my first formal dealings with anxiety in 2004, my greatest fear in life was being left by my partner, if I became ill or incapacitated. It sounds very complex, but in defense of my story, there were more than one trigger confabulating to feed this fear, mainly being far away from my family, having had surgery and ending up with pneumonia as a side effect. I felt alone and scared, terrified of my own thoughts. Since then, being a bit ill has become a trigger for activating my pain-body. A backache, is not just that, but a feeling of my body failing, of my life entering a dark place. It is obvious to me that I am capable of building a lot of emotional pain on to a backache.
Recently, someone told me that I look sore when I am in physical pain. Pain-body is recognisable, I see it in other people, therefore I am sure I show it too, probably, surely, more than my actual physical pain.
Sometimes when I am out and about I see people whose bodies are being seriously challenged, some cope better than others. I do not presume to know what it is like to be any of those people, in fact I know nothing about them, other than what my knowledge of physics tells me. And I wonder "how would I feel if my body were to dramatically change?" or even "how would I cope with getting old when my body starts indeed failing?", then I remind myself to breath.
Along with some exciting design work I did this week, I listened to audio of Eckhart Tolle on Oprah answering a question from a caller who has suffered Lupus for years and who is in chronic pain, this got my attention. His advice was simple, to break the identification with the illness, she should find wellbeing in nature, and in those places in her body where it exists; do not talk about the illness with anyone but her doctors, while doing all the necessary to help herself.
The more we talk about our story, the more the pain-body feeds, the more negative thoughts occur. The way I see it, breaking free of pain-body is like the quitting smoking of the emotional world, ten times over at the very least. You can quit easily, in fact smokers do it often.
If I believed in God, I would pray to never lose my faculties, to gently and gracefully age with enough time adapt to every change, to never find myself alone when I'm in fear of pain, or actual pain and death. I ask the universe instead, knowing that there are no guarantees, and still taking care of this body, to allow me the space to not attach myself to pain and suffering, and to not struggle with what is happening now.
à bientôt
Evelia
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Welcome
My friend, the TaiChi instructor whose name I usually borrow for my French assignments, said to me "you need a Blog"...so here we are...my first blog entry.
I will keep it short as I am at work, and I am allowing myself only a few minutes break. I am at a point in my life were things seem to be difficult. It feels as if I am starting a new stage, leaving behind an old life where I managed to achive all the things that were prescribed. I can say that it was rewarding in many ways, however, I feel exhausted, need a change or a few many thousands of changes.
My friend, the hairdresser, gave me a book: A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I am reading it in an unconventional way, I imagine many of my subsequent blog entries will be about my musings on the book.
Threee things that I should point out:
- The friends I have mentioned are much much more than their occupation, I have appreciated that from the first time I met them. It's just that I don't want to use their names without their permission.
- I chose the name of this blog to remind myself that there is no point in trying to outrun my life, I must walk it, every step of it.
- My body is perfectly healthy, but I am a perfectly fair weather being who likes not to be tired, not to feel pain, ...I have lessons to learn...many... come and visit from time to time, maybe you can check on my progress, or even remind me that I already learned that one.
au revoir,
Evelia :)
(yes, I like to show off my written French sometimes)
I will keep it short as I am at work, and I am allowing myself only a few minutes break. I am at a point in my life were things seem to be difficult. It feels as if I am starting a new stage, leaving behind an old life where I managed to achive all the things that were prescribed. I can say that it was rewarding in many ways, however, I feel exhausted, need a change or a few many thousands of changes.
My friend, the hairdresser, gave me a book: A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I am reading it in an unconventional way, I imagine many of my subsequent blog entries will be about my musings on the book.
Threee things that I should point out:
- The friends I have mentioned are much much more than their occupation, I have appreciated that from the first time I met them. It's just that I don't want to use their names without their permission.
- I chose the name of this blog to remind myself that there is no point in trying to outrun my life, I must walk it, every step of it.
- My body is perfectly healthy, but I am a perfectly fair weather being who likes not to be tired, not to feel pain, ...I have lessons to learn...many... come and visit from time to time, maybe you can check on my progress, or even remind me that I already learned that one.
au revoir,
Evelia :)
(yes, I like to show off my written French sometimes)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)