Big Bang

As I look out over my life I can see how many times I started off doing something to change myself and my life and then became frustrated and gave up. It's as if I was thinking when I do this and this and this, then BANG I will be all better, my life will be all better, the world will be a happy, easy place. When I worked really hard and the big bang never occurred I became discouraged, wondered why I bothered and went back to just not trying anything to improve my situation. Instead of focusing on all of the work I had done, the experiences I'd had, the lives I'd touched, I was upset about not seeing a huge drastic change in my world. I felt like a failure because I was focusing on what I hadn't yet gained rather than what I had gained.

How sad. How often do we expect a Big Bang and only get a gentle ripple? How often do we not see all that we have gained and accomplished because we are so lost in what we feel we've lost or not accomplished? How often do we set ourselves back by feeling that our work has been useless and in vain?

Could we really accept change if we did get our magical Big Bang and our life was suddenly everything we thought we wanted it to be? Honestly, I have a difficult time wrapping my brain around the small,gentle, beautiful changes that have happened in my life, I imagine a Big Bang moment might literally cause me to explode in disbelief and uncertainty!

Perhaps this is why change doesn't come in a big bang, but in a gentle, step by step process that occurs as we are really prepared and ready for each change. When we stop expecting big changes and shifts and accept the gentle flowing and reshaping of our selves and our lives, perhaps we will be more persistent and patient with ourselves and others and slowly, gently, in a pace we are ready for, our life will become something even more beautiful than what we originally imagined.

Perhaps our lives are meant to change not with a big bang like a bomb, but with a gentle opening and unfolding like the blossoming of a beautiful flower.

Recalculating

For some reason this word has been popping into my head a lot recently. It's one that I often hear while I'm driving in my car because I have taken a path that my GPS has not plotted out for me. Sometimes I am not paying attention and accidentally miss my turn, other times I choose to take a shorter way, often I want to stick with a more familiar route and occasionally I am just wondering what will happen if I go a different way then one my GPS has chosen. No matter what the reason, when I get off of the chosen path I hear the word recalculating ring through the air.

I often find myself wondering if there is someone watching over us all as we travel on the "road" we call our life path. Have we worked with them to plan out a route for our life and then set out on our journey, plotted out path in hand? Then, as we've traveled along and experienced life, we've changed our mind and chosen a different path or side road every now and then causing our "watchers" to yell out...Recalucalting! Suddenly everyone around us shifts and recalibrates to the new route we've chosen for ourselves.

I also wonder if, as each important turn comes up, they are clearly pointing out our designated route saying, "Turn left on exit 333", like my GPS does repeatedly until the turn goes by. Are we sometimes just too distracted by traffic or life to pay attention to their voice? When we aren't paying attention to our guidance we are likely to miss our turn and have to travel a longer distance to get to where we need to be. We aren't lost, we've simply had to recalculate and make some changes in our path.

Perhaps, as the end of the year draws near, it's the perfect time to pull over and assess where our "driving" has been taking us. As we pause we can look out over our lives and determine if we are content on the "road" we've been traveling or if we'd like to make some changes and take a turn that leads us in a different direction. Is the path we are on taking us to where we want to be or do we need to recalculate?

Traps

We have to be very careful not to fall into the little guilt and blame traps we like to set for ourselves. We can fall into these traps when we begin to over analyze and dissect our illness.

If we understand that what we experience outside of ourselves comes from within ourselves, we may fall into the trap if blaming ourselves for everything and then feel guilty. If understand that our bodies have the ability to be healthy, but we continue to become ill, we may fall into the trap of blaming ourselves and then feel guilty. We may even begin to think that the whole world is sick because we are sick and we may fall into the trap of blaming ourselves and feeling guilty for everything. If we don't recognize what our over analyzing and negative thinking are doing to us, we may stay stuck in those traps of blame and guilt for a very long time.

What is the purpose of over analyzing our illness. What is our intent behind looking at our illness? Is it to find a place to place blame or is it to find a way to heal ourselves? Does it really matter where our illness came from or does it matter how we deal with it now? Would it serve us better to focus on casting blame and feeling sad, angry, regretful or guilty, OR would it serve us better to let go of looking for a place to cast blame and instead focus on finding what helps us our body to feel healthy, whole and strong?

I think the answer to that is very clear...what benefits us the most is to let go of blame and guilt and seek instead to focus on feeling healthy, whole and strong. Let's free ourselves from the traps!

Try this meditative or refocusing technique if you wish:

Stop thinking and focusing on clinging to blaming anything for your illness right now.
Take a deep breath in, hold it for a few seconds, then slowly let it out.
Quiet your mind and take another deep breath in and out.
Now focus on how your body feels. Where are we holding tension? Where do you feel pain?
Take a deep breath in and think of those areas.
Now release that breath and as you release that breath feel the tension and pain in those areas of your body flow out from your body.
Take another deep breath in. Feel any areas that are still tense.
Now release the breath and visualize all of those areas relaxing and all of the tension flowing out of your body with the air you release until your body feels relaxed, limp and free.
Now remain relaxed and loose and envision your whole body floating free and loose.
Envision your whole body surrounded in white light.
Take a deep breath in and a slow breath out.
Now repeat these words in your mind, I am healthy, I am whole, I am strong.
Take a deep breath in filling your lungs completely and then slowly release it until your lungs are completely empty.
Envision the white light warmly flowing from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. Let the warmth of the white light soak in, fill us and surround us.
Now say again, I am healthy, I am whole, I am strong.
Take a deep breath, fill your lungs completely.
Let the breath out very slowly, gently emptying your lungs completely.
On your next breath in focus on saying, I am healthy, whole and loved.
Allow yourself to feel that love, allow yourself to soak that love into the very center of yourself. Envision your body healthy, whole and filled to the brim with love. See that the love comes from deep within and radiates outward to the rest of the world.
Relax in this vision for as long as you wish.
Remember to gently breath in and out, do not hold your breath.
Then when you are ready to return, slowly, refocus on feeling your toes.
Feel your fingers.
Feel your feet and hands.
Remember, they are healthy and whole.
Feel your legs and arms, your hips and chest.
They are healthy and whole.
Feel your shoulders, neck and head.
They are healthy and whole.
As you return to your entire body feel the love that fills you, feel that you are healthy and whole.
Hold that feeling and thought throughout your whole day.

We can do this process or any relaxation, refocusing process whenever we feel the need. We do not have to remain stuck in our traps.

Negative overload

Hanging on to anger, resentment, fear, guilt and regret can actually cause us to be physically ill. When we hold ourselves in these feelings we are pretty much asking our bodies to function normally in a state of constant negativity. How well do you think this works out for us?

Think about this, I am in a store and I suddenly feel ill. I think, "Wow I feel sick." Now what is your reaction to this? Do you focus on being sick, or do you acknowledge that you feel sick and then try to focus on something else. I can almost guarantee you if you continue allowing your thoughts to focus on how sick you feel, you will feel worse and worse as time goes on. Wouldn't it make more sense instead of focusing on how bad you feel to focus on some type of breathing technique to relax your body or focusing on anything other than the pain or discomfort you feel?

Wouldn't it seem that if this works with feeling sick, it would also work with anger, fear, guilt and regret? What do you think it does to our body when we hold ourselves in the pattern of feeling angry, fearful, guilty or regretful. As I write this I find myself wondering if any doctors or scientist have done any types of studies as to how focusing on these emotions effect our brainwaves, heart rate, blood pressure and such. Wouldn't it be interesting to see a study on that?

What I know from my own personal experience in this body is that when I am feeling those emotions my whole body reacts. When I am in these emotional states, my heart rate increases, my muscles tense up, everything seems to go into hyper sensitive overload. It's difficult to focus, concentrate, think, sometimes it difficult to breath or even move. When we hold ourselves in this state that has to have a huge effect on our whole system. I also know that if we are willing to do the work, we can train our mind and body to function in a different, more positive way.

This is why it is so important to find a relaxation technique that works for us. We have to find ways to relax our bodies as well as our minds, the two are connected and if we can keep them both from going into overload, the health benefits will be amazing! If we aren't able to train our mind to relax and focus on positive thoughts, it will be difficult to allow our bodies to relax and if we can't get our muscles to relax it may be very difficult to keep our minds from focusing on how over stressed and painful our bodies feel.

In the very first installments in this blog I gave several suggestions for relaxation techniques you could try. There is no set technique that you have to use, you need to find what will work for you and your body. For me music is always very helpful as well as soaks in warm tubs and especially gentle yoga. Meditation can be extremely beneficial. I know when you think of meditation you think of sitting quietly and focusing within, but yoga is a form of mediation in action. Any kind of mind lulling activity can be considered meditative, such as mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, driving down the road. Add some relaxing music to those activities and they can be even more relaxing and mind calming if you allow them to be. These are just a few examples. You will know what works for you and if you don't experiment and try a few different things. As long as you are able let go of negative thoughts and focus on something else you will feel some positive benefits.

The Choice Is Ours

Part of taking responsibility of ourselves is understanding that we all have a light side and a dark side. It won't do us any good to try to hide either side from ourselves or deny they exist. If we really want to heal we have to acknowledge all aspects of our self. Pretending we have never done anything "wrong" or will never do anything "wrong" isn't being honest or authentic with ourselves or with others. Beating ourselves up and hating ourselves for the mistakes we feel we've made or the "bad" things we feel we've done isn't beneficial, it's destructive. Not giving ourselves credit for the "good" things we've done or denying there is any light or goodness in us serves no purpose. Being humble does not mean denying our gifts or dimming the light within us so others feel lighter around us. Hiding who we are or feeling guilty about who we are really only hurts us and isn't a very wise choice to make.

If we want to grow and heal, being authentically real and being ourselves is part of what it takes. Being ourselves means not being afraid to show the world who we really are inside. Being authentic means realizing that we do have a darker side and we do make mistakes and "bad" choices, but we also have a lighter side and we do many great things and make a lot of "good" choices. It's accepting all of who we are.

Our choices help us to learn and grow, sometimes in very painful ways, some times in a more joyous delightful manner, both ways serve a purpose and are beneficial. When we realize this it becomes easier to let go of the guilt we feel for our "bad" choices or inappropriate actions. When we are able to see that even our worst moments served a purpose and we can learn from them, rather than beat ourselves up about them forever, it frees us and helps us to learn from ALL of our experiences, let them go and move forward.

Does this mean that we should intentionally choose to continue to display "bad" behavior or constantly making choices that cause pain for ourselves and others? No, this means we become more aware of who we are and the choices we have made and how they have affected our lives and the lives of those around us and we begin to seek to choose ways that are more beneficial to everyone and less painful or difficult.

Life does not have to be full of pain and suffering, we do have many choices to make that can help to alleviate a lot of the difficulties we may have experienced in our life time. We can choose to look at all of our difficulties and see what there is for us to learn from these experiences and then let them go, while also remembering to look at our life to find the gifts within all of our experiences and hang on to those. Instead of focusing and clinging to the dark, difficult, "bad" times to create how we see ourselves, we can use our lighter, less stressful, "good" times to define who we are. If we are willing to take an honest look at ourselves we can embrace all of us and then choose who and how we want to be in the world while letting go of who and how we don't want to be.

It's our choice what memories and experiences we use to define who we have been, who we are and who we'd like to become. It's up to us to decide, do we want to choose positive experiences and build on those or do we want to chose negative experiences and cling to those, recreating them over and over again in our minds and lives, refusing to learn from them and let them go. Neither choice is really right or wrong, they just create a different way of living in the world, they simply create either a positive experience or negative one. It's all in how we choose to look at ourselves and our lives, what we choose to focus on, what we want to build our lives and what we base our perception of ourselves on.

Do we want to focus on pain, suffering and darkness creating a negative painful experience or do we want to focus on love, happiness and light creating a positive experience? It's our choice whether we are positive or negative regardless of what our circumstances are. Whatever we choose our lessons will be learned and we will move on, it's up to us whether the journey is a forward moving joyride or repetitive march of doom.

Stepping Into Myself

Learning to take responsibility for myself and my own choices and actions in life is another very important step I took in my journey towards healing. It was as if in learning to do this I was able to step away from my pain and suffering and step more fully into being myself.

Letting go of focusing on the pain and suffering that my body felt was very, very important. But I figured out in a hurry that what I focus on is what I experience, so being overly focused on the pain was not a good thing. I needed to learn to focus on other things, mainly what I could do to help myself. I also had to learn to stop being mad that I was in pain. In a sense I had to stop choosing to suffer. I had to learn to let go of my ideas about who and what was to blame for how I felt and where I was in life, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It was not easy.

We waste so much of our time and energy looking at everyone around us blaming them for how we feel, who we are and what we do. We are stuck in thoughts like, "If they wouldn't do this then I wouldn't have to do that or if they wouldn't act in this way or say these thing then I wouldn't have to feel so bad." It can take us a long time to realize that we are wasting our time and energy feeling sorry for ourselves and blaming others. We aren't going to get very far focusing on others and working to change them when what we need to do is look at ourselves and work on ourselves.

Deciding to stop blaming others is not an easy step, but it is crucial because it's the only way we can begin to take responsibility for ourselves. Really looking at ourselves and how we have acted and reacted and chosen to take no actions in our life can be extremely painful. We might not like what we see and we might start to feel badly about ourselves or judge ourselves. Beating ourselves up defeats the whole purpose of looking at ourselves, we are looking only to learn, not to judge and condemn.

We've all been trained to believe that someone or something HAS to be to blame for everything, but if we are focusing on casting blame it is difficult to move forward. Instead of focusing on blame we want to focus on simply seeing what is making our life so difficult and determining if there is any thing we ourselves can do to change the situation. Is there anything at all that WE can do differently that would help to bring about a different outcome in the situation? What sense does it make to focus on anything other than what WE can do or change within ourselves.

If we can let go of casting blame and can look at ourselves and take responsibility for our own actions and how we are in the world, then we may gradually begin to see changes occurring around us. Even if things outside of us do not seem to change right away, we may begin to feel changes within us. We may feel less angry and judgmental, we may relax and stop focusing so much on the things that others do that seem to drive us nuts, which may lead to us being able to be more relaxed and compassionate with others, which may in turn lead to those around us being able to relax more and be more caring and considerate.

There is no guarantee this will happen, but if we are focusing on ourselves, then it should be easier to interact with others, which will make our lives much less difficult and stressful. When we feel less judgmental and angry and aren't focusing on changing others, our whole system can relax and we become less tense and our bodies are more able to be opened for healing. We become less likely to get distracted by the behavior and actions of others and less likely to allow ourselves to get sucked into how they are behaving.

Taking responsibility, letting go of judgment and not blaming others may not be easy, but if we are patient with ourselves and persistent we can learn to do this and this will help us to begin to heal from within. It doesn't happen over night, it's a process like everything and we may take a few steps forward and a few steps back, but the benefits are well worth it, the "healing" that we may see in ourselves and in our lives can be amazing! The new "us" that emerges may be even brighter than we imagined. At least that has been my experience. By looking within myself and making changes and learning to listen carefully to what my body needs, I've gone from being nearly bedridden to being able to travel occasionally and take care of myself and family with much less pain and exhaustion. I've still got some healing to do, but I've come a long way!

One Big Puzzle

It seems to me until we truly learn to love, accept and forgive ourselves we can not fully love, accept and forgive others. What has been difficult is figuring out exactly what it is that I have felt was so unlovable, what was so unacceptable and needing forgiven in myself? I had to look within myself and see how I really felt about who I am and who I have been and come to an understanding of why I view myself in that way. I had to be willing to look at myself without judgment, I had to be willing to look at everyone in my life without judgment. The key was looking to learn and understand, not to cast blame and point fingers.

As I looked I saw many issues, many misunderstanding and reactions to the things that had happened throughout my life time. I could see choices that were made that caused a lot of problems, but also led to some really important lessons and much growth. I could see chances to love that went by the way side, chances to reach out to others that had been missed and many times when I had reached out and been hurt. I saw many times when people had seen me in a way I was not capable of seeing myself. I saw many times when I had seen people in ways that they were not capable of seeing themselves. I saw how capable we often are of looking at others through the eyes of love and compassion, but are often blind to seeing ourselves with love and compassion.

What I really saw was that underneath the surface all of us all just want to be loved and accepted and want to be capable of loving and accepting others. Whatever we all appear to be on the outside, on the inside we are all the same. We are all little pieces of God wanting to reconnect with the other little pieces of God. I suddenly understood no matter what our physical appearance, social standings or beliefs God loves us all even when we can not love ourselves.

Seeing and accepting that we are all pieces of one big puzzle just trying to fit ourselves back together is what helped my healing process to begin.