Tag Archives: inspiration

Ego

The 6 Thoughts That Are Keeping You Unhappy

Light

“Whenever there is unhappiness in the background of your life (or even in the foreground), you can see which of these thoughts applies and fill in your own content according to your personal situation:

‘There is something that needs to happen in my life before I can be at peace (happy, fulfilled, etc.). And I resent that it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe my resentment will finally make it happen.’

‘Something happened in the past that should not have happened, and I resent that. If that hadn’t happened, I would be at peace now.’

‘Something is happening now that should not be happening, and it is preventing me from being at peace now.’

Often the unconscious beliefs are directed toward a person and so “happening” becomes “doing”:

‘You should do this or that so that I can be at peace. And I resent that you haven’t done it yet. Maybe my resentment will make you do it.’

‘Something you (or I) did, said, or failed to do in the past is preventing me from being at peace now.’

‘What you are doing or failing to do now is preventing me from being at peace.’” (Tolle 114)

Do any of these thoughts sound familiar?  Seeing them without content lays bare the structure of the egoic mind that does not recognize the present moment, living in the phantom past and future.  Shining the light of your own awareness on the voice of the ego is the beginning of its end.

Standard
consciousness

How do you know if you’re being yourself?

Me as a child with my older brother.

Me as a child with my older brother.

When I was a little kid I longed to know who I really was.  I remember wishing someone could just tell me.  I envied my friends from foreign countries who had a strong national identity.  I thought they really knew who they were.  I tried finding my identity in things, like being a writer, an actress, a musician.  But nothing ever stuck.

Now I am grateful for that.  I didn’t yet realize that the self attached to thoughts and things was the ego, the parasitic mind that can only survive through attachment to forms.  It wasn’t until the summer I turned 23 that I suddenly realized what a gift it was to experience the self without definitions and attachments.  It was then, when I realized what I was not, that I became open to finding out who my true self was, how it expressed itself, and how the true self was more expansive and inclusive than I could have ever thought up with my mind.

At first, not buying into your own thought created identity can feel like a black hole with no end in sight.  There is another side.  You will know it through inexplicable feelings of joy, love, and the state of peace.  For me, it still becomes obscured by the ego at various points throughout the day.  The good news is, that once you’ve experienced your true self it continues to grow in presence and power, no matter how the ego may try to reassert itself.  So who are you?  Try asking yourself without answering with words, and let your self show you.

I love this short video with Eckhart Tolle because it can give you an experience of your true nature as pure consciousness, as the watcher:

Standard
spirituality

Are you giving away what you don’t have?

GiftsYesterday I cited the old adage, “The more you give, the more you get.”  While this is true, it requires a disclaimer: you can only give what you have.  In concrete terms, this means that if you are giving away heaps of money on a credit card, money that you don’t actually possess, then you will not end up receiving.  Instead, that which you borrowed will end up being taken from you one way or another.  Part of the accumulation of financial debt is simply giving what you do not have.

This principle also operates in relationships.  If you are always trying to help others, give them advice and a shoulder to cry on, but never ask for assistance yourself, you are giving away what you don’t have.  I love the way Brené Brown put it when talking to Oprah about giving and receiving help: if you give help freely, but consider yourself a person that doesn’t ask for help, then every time you are giving help to someone you are judging them.  You are saying, “It is okay for you to ask for help, but not me.  I’m not the kind of person that does that.”  To give genuinely, you must first possess.

This also comes up in love relationships.  I’ve heard many times that you must first love yourself before you love others.  But what does that actually mean?  To figure that out I look at the way I treat myself.  When I forgive myself for making mistakes, have compassion for my shortcomings, comfort myself in times of grief, and let myself laugh and be joyful every single day, I can see that I am truly loving myself.  It is a lot easier to refrain from criticizing your partner for gaining a couple pounds, than it is yourself.  That is where the practice of loving yourself comes in.  The more compassion you can exercise on yourself, the more genuinely your compassion will be experienced by others.

Yesterday at the grocery store my thoughts attempted to gain my attention by worrying about the price of my groceries.  Worry is a common pattern for the mind.  But going into the grocery store I knew I had enough money in my bank account to buy groceries.  I knew that I wasn’t borrowing money from the credit card company that I didn’t already have at my disposal.  Of course, that doesn’t matter to the mind, which attempts to use any situation to place itself firmly at the center of your attention, often through negative reactions. So I allowed myself to enjoy the exchange of giving and receiving.

The first step in giving is to check your bank account.  How much love do you have in your bank account?  How much gratitude?  How much forgiveness?  Your funds will only be depleted if you are giving what you don’t have.  Start with yourself.  Practice gratitude and self-forgiveness.  If it is physical money that is an issue for you in the exchange of energy, create some savings; pay yourself before you pay everyone else.  Whether physical or spiritual, you can only give what you already have.  And once you have, and start becoming part of the exchange, there is no end to the growth of giving and receiving you can experience.

Standard
consciousness

Don’t Let It Go To Your Head

WinterNegative emotions are low frequency energy currents that pass through the body, and often surface from within the body if they weren’t fully felt and “digested” when they were created.  I sometimes feel negative emotions unconnected to thoughts, which surface randomly.  They are uncomfortable.  But they can also be dispelled.  The trick is, don’t let negative emotions go to your head.

It is easy to not want to feel negative energy currents and try to numb them, or come up with various schemes about how to rid yourself of those emotions.  When this happens, thoughts end up feeding the negative energy currents with more energy of a like frequency, creating a cycle of negativity within the body.  Not only do thoughts create more negative emotions, but they also prevent them from being dispelled.

When I feel negative energy rising up within me I find the most helpful way through it is allowing myself to feel the emotions fully.  I let myself sit with them.  It is not comfortable, but it is also not difficult when I tell myself that it is okay to feel negative emotions.  There is nothing inherently wrong with feeling “bad.”  I give myself permission to feel what I’m feeling, without trying to explain it away or come up with a solution.

Negative emotions are just another frequency of energy we can experience.  So I let myself have the experience.  By accepting what I’m feeling in the moment, space is created around the emotions.  I don’t give more energy to the negativity by wrapping myself up in it, and letting it feed my thoughts.  Instead of becoming the negative emotions, I experience them.  (This didn’t happen overnight, it is an ongoing practice!)

As an energy current, negative emotions naturally try to feed and grow, but this can be prevented by retaining the awareness that they don’t actually help.  I know that feeling bad isn’t going to make me feel better, or improve my circumstances.  Only high frequency energy can take me where I want to go.  So even as I’m feeling the emotions fully, I am aware that I needn’t let it go to my head, because after they pass through I will once more be on my way to feeling peaceful.  One of the most life changing observations I learned from Tolle is that behind all negative emotions is the belief that they will somehow get you what you want.  But they can only feed on the same low frequency of energy that they are, and cannot improve your circumstances.  What happens when you have a surge of negative emotions?  Does it trigger your thinking mind?  Next time you experience a “bad” feeling, see what happens when you allow it to be there.  It may pass through quicker than you think.

Standard
consciousness

“Stop Trying to Read Other People’s Minds”

Rolling CloudsHas someone ever told you an assumption they had about you, and you thought, “Where did that even come from?”  Several times throughout my life friends have regaled to me their thoughts about my actions and motivations that had nothing to do with my actual experience.  When you’re on this end of an assumption, it is easy to see how inaccurate and unnecessary assumptions are.  At worst, assumptions can be destructive and hurtful.

It is a lot harder to notice assumptions when you’re the one assuming.  I am positive I make several unconscious assumptions every day.  For example, when I’m choosing a TV show to watch at night I’ll think, “My boyfriend doesn’t want to watch this.”  Or when I’m talking to a friend I might think, “They don’t want to hear this piece of advice or story that I have.”  Assumptions are like a cancer, they multiply without discretion, until they destroy whatever they were attempting to create.

In this video from Super Soul Sunday Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, lays out the roots of assumption and how to control those thoughts:

Standard
consciousness

The Spice Girls Situation

Elementary Aged Katie

I ditched school in the fourth grade to see the Spice Girls with a friend and her older sister.  We waited outside in the freezing Chicago winter for hours and they never showed.  Worse still, as I arrived at school the next day all of my classmates were telling me how mad the teacher was that I had ditched.  I loved my fourth grade teacher.  She was a comfort and inspiration.  I am positive that I went on to study poetry in college because of her influence.  She read us poems that she had written to her mother, who had passed away.  She even cried in front of us.

I had never met another adult, who I wasn’t related to, who I felt so strongly connected to.  So on that shameful day after the botched Spice Girls escapade I felt lower than I had ever felt in my short life.  The second I saw her face I started to cry.  At that moment she held me tight in her arms and let me know everything was okay, she had just been worried about me.  She was loving, forgiving, and had expressed none of the anger my classmates had described.  But the idea of letting her down was traumatic.  It was so traumatic that I still remember the scene vividly in my mind’s eye even now as an adult.  And yet, this was not a traumatizing situation.  Now I think it’s pretty awesome that I skipped out on school to see the best band ever.  But in future, anytime a teacher showed the slightest sign of disapproval there was nothing I could do to keep from crying.

I remember getting a C on an important Spanish test in high school and running out of the room lest my teacher see how ridiculously distraught I had become.  The positive side effect of wanting to please my teachers was my straight A record in school.  Deeper than that is an issue common to many people, in many walks of life: the need to please.  For me, my need for approval came from the story that I told myself about how bad it felt when a teacher was angry with me.  My actions were motivated by trying to mitigate an imagined pain.

The stories we tell ourselves, and believe in, have tremendous power to shape our behavior and our lives.  What stories do you tell yourself? While not all stories are negative or fearful, such as “I am awesome and can do anything I put my mind to,” they still cannot compare to reality.  It is impossible to get a true experience of reality when it is seen and felt through the filter of a story in your mind. 

I can see in my own life that I could be held back, from relinquishing stories about myself, because of the fear of what life would really be like.  I might think that living out life according to a story I have about my life will protect me from something worse.  The problem with that logic is that it’s just another story.  True expansion, freedom, and possibility await right on the other side of your story.  The mind might feel lost, because you are letting go of thought forms, but you know that you are not your mind.  And no loss of thought, opinion, or story actually has any power to take away from you, because you are life itself.  You are the platform that allows stories to arise.

I never quite got over my need to please my professors; I ended up Suma Cum Laude in college.  But getting good grades never did anything to increase my learning, creativity, or fulfillment.  I only gained the temporary high of meeting the needs of the story I was telling myself about having to get good grades.  Life went on after my school years ended.  Those grades don’t mean anything anymore.  All that I am left with is my true self; greater than any story I could ever tell, and more abundant than any need I could ever conceive of.

Standard
spirituality

The Day The Universe Divulged My Secrets

One Way

For something new to come into your life, space has to be created. For example, if I want to have a new relationship with an acquaintance, but I already have set parameters about how we function together, there is no space for a new way of being together to arise. If you want to gain new understanding about your life, your work, the world, space must be created by releasing the old understanding. For me this translates into declaring out loud to the ether, “I don’t know anything!” Which is often followed by, “For real, this is crazy. I have no idea what is going on!” For you this may sound different.

By vocalizing that you do not understand, you create an opportunity for new understanding to present itself. This can also sound like, “I do not understand. Please show me!” Several years ago I experienced an incident on a city bus that prompted my declaration of “not-knowing.” It is not a story I tell at parties, because I still do not understand it. But the beauty of its consequence continually reveals a world more wondrous than I could have thought up.

As I was sitting on a bus one hot summer day in Chicago, I overheard two girls talking behind me. I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to them, but the conversation took an abrupt turn, and admittedly I went into full eavesdrop mode. They began telling my life story, the story that I told myself about my life at the time. It happened all of a sudden; in the middle of a normal conversation one of the girls started discussing a girl she knew. She described her relationships in detail. There were even timelines. What was more, she was telling the story of fear I had been operating on. There were tales of betrayal, mistrust, and secrets, along with the faults in this person’s character and how it was affecting her relationships. Although it is several years later, I cannot bring myself to recount the exact story the girl on the bus regaled to my eavesdropping ears, because it still feels too personal. Too many fears and perceived flaws divulged.

The story ended and the girls quickly exited the bus through the back door. I tried to get a glimpse of them. At first I thought, “Was that someone from my hometown? Did I go to high school with these people?” I couldn’t get a good look at them as the bus sped away. I was left completely and utterly baffled, and slightly afraid. There was no good explanation for the event.

I never found out who the girls were, whom they were really talking about, and why my life related so closely to the story. Logically, I knew it wasn’t an actual story about me. Then the question became, “Who has such a close life experience to my own?” I had never encountered such a mysteriously inexplicable moment in my entire life. After the initial horror that came from hearing my greatest fears spoken aloud to me on a city bus for all to hear, I reached a point where a decision had to be made. I could drive myself crazy by trying to find a logical explanation with my thinking mind, or I could let it go, and admit that I had no idea what was going on. Because it was such an unbelievable occurrence, I decided to relinquish my need to explain it away, and just not know.

That letting go, of the idea that I had to know everything, created the space that allowed my true self and a new way of experiencing life to begin to emerge. Life started to become more and more miraculous. I was able to relinquish past fears, because after all what did I know anyway? I was able to let go mistrust, and love the people in my life more fully than I had ever let myself before. From admitting that I did not understand, the universe began to show me new ways of understanding. When life showed me that I had no idea what was going on, it in turn started to present a new reality.

I had been putting restrictions on life. When you put parameters on the universe, you restrict the fullness of reality from presenting itself to you. You leave no room for your highest potential to manifest in your life. Over the years I have become comfortable with the “not-knowing.” What would happen if you let go of some of your own thoughts about how things are? What would life be like if you knew nothing about it, created no barriers? The simplest way to invite a new life situation your direction is to relinquish your firm understanding about how your current life is or should be.

Standard
Peace

Experiencing Your Life, and 15 Seconds of Peace #2

clouds

Today I remember that everything is, and cannot be otherwise.  When you’re not attached to a thought in your mind about how your life “should” be, you are free to see and experience life as it really is with peace and equanimity.  What is more, life opens up for you when you are open to life.

This means that when you allow your present moment to be as it is, without demanding it conform to your ideas about it, it begins to flow with ease.  There are already solutions to any obstacle you may experience.  When you allow your present moment to be as it is, you offer space for those solutions to arise.  I try to remind myself in moments of stress, that if I let go the power of the universe will run its course, gently carrying me in alignment with my true purpose.

I am so excited to present the second “15 Seconds of Peace” video/music, created by my father, Peter Spero.  For me, this small glimpse of stillness helps reset the busy mind back to its natural state of peace.  I hope it speaks to you right where you are today:

Standard
Ego

The Thoughts In My Head Care A Lot About The Thoughts In Your Head

enterWhat can we learn through the comments on Facebook posts?  Or rather, what is the lesson behind all internet comment threads?  I have to guess there are many; have you read that stuff lately?  If in millions of years these internet comments are found by aliens what would they glean about humanity?  When you take out the content of comments, and are left with merely the structure of the comment itself, I find the biggest take away is this: the thoughts in my head care a lot about the thoughts in your head.  They would see us humans engaged in a constant back and forth, a never-ending cycle of opinions.  Alas, this too is just a display of thought.

What causes my thoughts to react so strongly to yours?  As can be observed in many a YouTube comment section, the content of discussion can be anything, and the reaction will be present and passionate.  Have you ever read something in your News Feed that just bothered you?  Did you end up replying to the initial statement?  I know I have, many times.  And it feels important.  But in reality, the thoughts in my head are just reacting to the thoughts in your head.  When thoughts do this they give themselves renewed life.  A thought in reaction can keep gaining until it completely absorbs your attention to the point where you don’t even notice you’re thinking anymore.

At this point, instead of referring to the thought reaction as merely thoughts, we call it ego.  Ego is attachment to thoughts.  This displays itself quite clearly through internet comments.  Since the people are not present, the thoughts themselves are left bare, living their own life until you see them for what they really are.  The internet leaves ego right out in the open, precariously perched in the perfect position for you to become aware of it.  The moment you notice the comments you are reading and writing are not who you are, the ego is no longer in control, and you can begin to experience you true self beyond thought.  Our ego, our mind; it is all one.  Our thoughts egg each other on, because they are truly one flow of energy, gaining life momentum through our interactions.

Sometimes I scroll through Facebook and don’t notice what I’m doing, don’t realize the reaction switch is in the on position.  Sometimes I scroll through and feel my ego rising up with each reaction.  It is in those moments that I can most clearly see the separation, see what I am not, and start to experience what I am.  Becoming aware of the ego is the beginning of its end.  Where do you notice the ego playing itself out in your world?

Standard
consciousness

Who are you, really?

flowering

If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream. (Present Moment Reminder, Eckhart Tolle)

You are not thoughts.  After that seemingly simple realization you have “woken up.”  You have the power to experience your true being, and to see life as it really is from the vantage point of the watcher.  You have the power to change the situation, to be an active participant in creating your own reality. There can be no diminishment of even the smallest glimpse of awakening.  Once you know, experience, that you are not your thoughts but the one who perceives, you have initiated the flowering of your own existence.
Standard