Disobey

 

Okay, so I see graphics like this all the time. But this morning this one caught my eye. 

It caught my eye because like many of the messages I see being spewed out to our generation, it tells us that we have a problem. Our problem? Obedience. The solution? Disobedience.

But my problem is that in my opinion, I think people equate disobedience to Anarchy, and widespread resistance against the government and legislation. But there are other subtle ways you can disobey and truly break free.

WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN TO DISOBEY?

 To disobey means to cast out constraints. Time limits? Deadlines? No need for these!
Everything that society considers important runs on time. We need to get to our jobs on time, we need to pay our bills on time, TV shows are on at a certain time, and we only have a certain time limit on our holidays... Time must be used productively, they say, as time is limited.
But time limits us! It limits us to a certain amount of day that we can do things that we want to do, as it keeps us thinking about the next "important" thing that we have to do.
Be free of limits! Have days where you chuck out your clock and enjoy what you're doing without watching out for when it will end!


To disobey means to do what people told you you would never be able to do. What's that? Impossible? Unacceptable? Count me in!
Society limits us by telling us we can only do certain things in our lives. We must live life a certain way - get a certain kind of job, have a house and a family. Where do your dreams fit into your life plan?
You will be told that some things are impossible and you will almost certainly fail. Don't be limited - face failure and achieve your dreams!

 To disobey means to push past your pride and your fear. Society's norms tell us to fear others, fear failure and fear embarrassment. My fear keeps me from doing so many little things that would enrich my life and help me connect to others and myself. But fear is NOTHING! True fear may keep us safe but most fear -that comes from obeying norms- only keeps us trapped.

Want to help out that stranger? What are you afraid of?
Want to learn something new? What are you afraid of?
Want to speak about something you're passionate about? What are you afraid of?
Want to dance in the street? What are you afraid of?
Want to tell your parents you love them? What are you afraid of?

The reward may be a lot greater than staying safe and wondering what could have been!
Disobey your fear -and society's fear - take risks and break out of your internal prison to live an extraordinary life.

 To disobey means to be yourself even in the face of criticism. Society teaches us that we need others to like us! We must fit in in order to be liked - this lesson is widely apparent on social media. But how can you ever be someone other than yourself?
Disobey the norm -be who you are, and love yourself for it! You don't need anyone else's approval, but when you start to show your true colours, you will attract those who appreciate them the most.


To me, to disobey truly means to thrive WITHIN an environment that is meant to suppress you and squish you into little boxes. You don't need to live without society, although you certainly can go and live a different life if you wish! But sometimes there are things that keep us here. My family and my career path will keep me living within the rat race of the western world, at least for a while. I may have to obey certain rules, like paying bills and taxes, but that doesn't mean I have to abide by all of them!

ABOVE ALL - Follow your heart and it will lead you to the places that will make your life amazing, even if society tells you different!

<3

The Divine Feminine

I didn't go to Yemaya Festival this weekend to reconnect with my feminine side, I went to a bush doof, as usual, to dance. But the universe had other plans for me.

Adorned with feminine colours, designs, shapes and symbols, Yemaya was representative of the mother goddess of the ocean, the divine feminine. I like to look at the divine feminine at its core aspect - Yin.

Yin is feminine, water, earth, soft, night, dark, shadow, passive, receiving, yielding, gentle, slow, consuming, cold.

In contrast, I am a rather yang person. I am very upbeat, extroverted, bright, bubbly and energetic. I like to control, and I am stubborn and unmoving, unlike the soft, accepting and allowing qualities of the feminine.

But this weekend at Yemaya has changed how I use feminine energy in my life, and it all happened in an extraordinary didgeridoo healing session.

At 7pm on the Saturday night, our group was pretty high and we were in the process of figuring out what we all wanted to do (A mighty task while on LSD). I tried to dance at my usual favourite place at a bush doof, the main stage, with high energy psychedelic trance booming from the speakers. But after a few minutes by myself, I wanted to go back to my friends. 

My best friend declared that she would be attending a didge healing session at 8pm. I'd never participated in the healing spaces at a bush doof before, and was keen to try it out.

We entered the space a bit early to settle in before the healing. It was a large dome-like space, with pink silk sheets drooped from the middle of a ceiling, where a crystal chandelier hung like the crown jewel. I had seen a vagina sculpture in crystal healing space a bit earlier, and noted again the vagina-reminiscent decor.

To tell you the truth, this vagina stuff was quite confronting for me, even as a female (I wonder how my male friends took all of this in). It wasn't until later that I realized that our culture shames female genitalia, and this is why it was so confronting to see a vagina sculpture blatantly staring me in the face.

Despite this, the warm pink sheets and the mood-lit space were highly inviting. There were people snuggled amongst blankets and pillow, with my friend smack bang in the middle. Feeling like a deer caught in headlights, thanks to the overemphasizing effects of lysergic acid, I went straight over and sat with her.

There was a kind of open-mic thing going on, and a young dreadlocked woman named Megan came to sit up at the mic to share her poetry. I immediately thought that this was an amazingly brave thing to do, to open yourself up to a bunch of strangers and trust they would pay you respect. (And that they did, which is a wonderful thing about bush doofs.) Megan, with a strong spoken word and conviction, proceeded to read us multiple poems that are all beautifully blended in my memory, exposing her life with themes of womanhood, children, love, heartbreak, and the body. One that touched me in particular was about fat on the body. I have always hated my stomach fat, wishing it wasn't there, and at the end of the poem she encouraged us, with her soft, kind voice, to touch that problem part of our bodies, and tell it we love it. Light giggles echoed as the room filled with love for our bodies. And when I gently held my stomach and told it I loved it, unlike the other times I have tried, this time I actually meant it.

Megan had set the scene for the healing with her poetry, uniting the room with laughter and love. There was a sense of solidarity within the space as the didgeridoo healing man began to set up. We lay down with our heads on pillows, and a beautiful stranger covered my friend and I with a blanket. The healing ceremony started with a light drumming beat to ground the energies. And as I closed my eyes, the the man said "Let yourself fall into the earth"...

My breath flowing out let me fall deeper and deeper. I was restless at first, trying to relax to the abrasive sounds of the healing didge, which were unlike the more melodic sounds we usually hear from Aboriginal educators who come to schools and cultural centres. I kept opening my eyes to make sure I was still in the room, and my friends were still there. My closed eye visuals were confusing and full of colour. But after a while, I was deep within myself. Deeper than I had ever been before. My breathing was so slow, and with every breath, I felt my body let go of tension. And after the bodily tension was gone, my breathing was penetrating my very inner layer. My whole being was opened by my breath, my inner self expanding and expanding. I was seeing and feeling places so deep within my self that I was sure would take YEARS to access without the help of the LSD (which I like to think of as a spiritual lubricant). My breath finally reached a tiny red tent like structure right at the middle of my being. I was sure this was me, hiding away in there. By now, I had forgotten I was even on LSD, or that I was at yemaya festival, or that there was time. I was now in the deepest meditative state I had ever experienced.

It was about now that the didgeridoo sounds "clicked" into my body. I had started letting go of control and trusting, and my deep breathing had allowed the sound to enter my being and start healing me. But to heal, you first need to get the dirt out. I started seeing all this dark stuff being scraped out of the particles that I consisted of. I was far more than a 3-dimensional matrix, a vast rainbow pixellated like structure that was woven into the space around me and beyond. The didge sounds were like rakes on my being. It kept raking and raking the soul crap into a pile, until a climax was reached and the sounds gently brought us back down, releasing it all, and bringing us back for another round. I surrendered to the sounds which were now making my body arch and twitch, and my breathing got faster as the energy rushed through me and whirlpooled out, taking all the stagnant stuff with it. My gut even churned as if the didge was cleaning out my physical body! I had never experienced healing like this before. When doing more gentle, subtle healing in my old psychic development class, we were told that stuff would come up for us as it was released, but this was like everything was released through me at once. It was super intensive, and there was no denying that it was real.

All of this was uncomfortable at first, I had never experienced anything like this before, nor trusted anything to come so far into my being. I hadn't even seen this much of me before! My body is so much more than anything I could have ever dreamed of. On the very inside, it is as big as the sky, and all of this is contained deep deep deep inside the very center of me. But I never looked! We're always too scared to look, afraid of who we are and afraid of what we might discover. But by letting go and relaxing everything, I was able to peek in, and eventually, let the healing right into me at a deep soul level. I could feel the transformation happening. The didgeridoo reached right into my soul and pulled out chunks of darkness like they were thorns embedded deep into the skin. Now that I had gotten used to it, and I could literally see how beneficial this was for me, I could have stayed there for hours. But eventually I had to get up.

I got up way too fast, like when your alarm wrenches you out of a super deep sleep. I pulled myself out of the deepest parts of me, stood up, literally stumbled out of the healing space, disoriented, and was gasping from the intensity of the healing. It took me a while to be able to think clearly again but the most amazing thing I was feeling that I was VERY grounded. I was right into my body, I could feel every part of it and could feel my feet on the ground. This is a huge deal for me, as a double Aquarius who spends most of her time in her head and the sky. I was stomping my feet on the ground like it was the best feeling ever! And it was - I have NEVER felt to connected to my body, and the earth beneath it. Just, wow.

I was pretty spent and we all wanted to chill away from the intense energies of the party, so we all went back to our campsite. To my surprise, it was only 10pm. My estimate at this point was 3am or 4am. Long story short, I stayed up all night chatting with my dearest friends. I had a sleep, and in the morning, as I walked into the bush, the sun greeted me. I felt it all over my skin, bathing me in warmth. I walked, feeling all the movement in my legs and feeling the solid earth beneath my boots. I took my sweet time, gently stretching in the morning sunlight. So much peace filled me in all the places I had discovered the night before, in all the places that darkness had been removed from. I felt bigger, expansive, and deeply relaxed.

Later that day, I tried to sleep again. It didn't work, so I spent a good couple of hours just lying on my back in my tent, breathing deeply and stretching. I took my time that I never had before, and I stretched my body like I never had before, feeling every stretch as deep as it went, and observing how my body thanked me for it, for taking my time.

That's what I learnt at Yemaya. To take my time, like Yin, like the feminine, which is slow, and gentle, and soft. I learnt how to fully embrace myself, like a loving mother; embracing my body, my whole being, and embracing the chance to heal.
I learnt to yield, to be vulnerable, to let go, accept and receive. Like the vagina yields to the male, yield to the present moment; accept it, embrace it. Let yourself breathe, let yourself relax, and slow down.
Breathing IS acceptance! The deeper the breath, the deeper the acceptance. Slow down, breathe, and accept every part of yourself. Accepting is connecting... Slow down, breathe, and connect to your body and to the Earth. Allow yourself to feel, and be vulnerable, even though it is scary... Allow yourself to receive love and healing with grace, even though it is scary... Allow yourself to let go of control, even though it is scary!

When you let go, when you become soft, when you embrace all that is Yin, the feminine, you literally open yourself up to possibilities, knowledge, love and peace.

You open yourself up to YOU.

Sin and forgiveness

If you take the offical version of God to be true, then when you confess, you are confessing to a loving deity who will immediately release you and fill you with forgiveness. If you take God as I described it in my last post, then when you confess, you are admitting to the core of your being that you did something wrong. This is how I confess. I feel the guilt heavy in my gut, and I say to myself with no words, "alright, I did the wrong thing.. what now?"

The difficult thing about my type of confession is that it takes work to be forgiven. First you have to truly recognize and feel what you have done. Then you have to find the strength and love to let go of that feeling. You don't just say sorry and then your remorse is magically scooped up by the light and taken away. You have to fight your way past the ego, and the ego does not forgive. It wants you to suffer so you remember the pain you have caused yourself and others. This may be a protection mechanism, but it only holds you back from liberating yourself. Once you access the God self, the part of you that is everything, the part of you that loves you and knows you are worth unconditional love, you can forgive yourself and you can can finally let go of the past. You are freed from the pain by forgiveness, but you'll never forget that lesson. The day you can remember the lesson and not feel the shame and misery is the day you have truly forgiven yourself.

The thing about this is, how would psychopaths confess, if they don't feel deeply for what they have done? If they can't confess, they can't be forgiven. In my opinion, psychopaths, who have different brain structures in the areas of emotion and empathy, are the furthest removed people from their true selves. They are so far removed that they cannot even recognize when they have hurt another being, a being who in truth has always been part of them. They are so far removed that they would not ever be able to find a true and lasting love for themselves or anyone else. I wonder how a spiritual being could get so far away from themselves. I guess if you have had a parent with pain, or if your own life pain was so deep that it was unbearable to feel, then the ego would block out anything and everything to protect yourself. Even if it means blocking out your emotions, a release and expression of your energy. And the further they fall, the harder it is to feel again, and they become living demons; a human image of their dark, black hole energy. And you can see it in their eyes, the light has been extinguished.

I'm glad I'm not a psychopath, but I see why they exist. Feelings are hard to feel sometimes. Especially those of remorse and guilt. You can see why their ego protects them from it when you have felt it. I feel terribly guilty for a lot of things I have done, and somehow cannot find it within me to forgive myself for some of them. Maybe it is because I have not received forgiveness from the other person or being. I feel if they are still hurting then I cannot forgive myself. But being attached to their pain isn't doing me any favors. If anything it is probably binding them to their own pain at a deeper level. Still doesn't help, it is like my mind thinks I need to be punished.

Now that I think about it that is such a common mentality in western society... we want to see people suffer for what they have done. We see it as justice. We say "they deserve it". And the reason we can't forgive ourselves is because we treat ourselves the same as we treat others. Deep down we think we need to suffer for the pain we have caused others, rather than being loved and forgiven. Maybe the reason I beat myself up so much is because that's what I've been taught is right.

That is actually pretty messed up.
I guess that's why Buddhism focuses so much on compassion; compassion and forgiveness for others will help us liberate ourselves from our own guilt.

I think it's time to exercise that long lost spiritual muscle, and learn to forgive myself.

Word vomit of illusion and love

I have been doing some thinking over the past week, after a bit of a stint in struggle street, and today the spark has come back in a big way.

Something terrible and unexpected happened to someone close to me, and it snapped me straight out of the illusion I'd gotten stuck in. That illusion is the material world. Yes it's here, and we have to live in it and survive in it, but its not the very essence of our being.

The fact that we are in this amazing universe for a fleeting amount of time makes us insignificant in the scheme of things, and that insignificance brings with it great freedom. We all live in a world where no one can tell us what to do or give us instructions on how to live life. We just somehow evolved here and no one can ever tell us why. So why do we let anyone else on earth control what we do? They don't know any better than we do how life should be. When eventually our whole earth ceases to exist no one is going to remember us. So why do we strive to make such an impression? Who do we do it for? Ourselves? Why do we feel we need to impress ourselves? Is it because we are our own inner judge? The only judge, the only 'god', that rules your life is you. Your intuition is that god part of you speaking to you in a language which isn't tangible and therefore not valued or not deemed 'real' by a materialist culture. In this culture (Alan Watts describes culture as an operating system- a great analogy), we use the 5 senses, mostly the eyes, to determine what is real. A physical, tangible reality. How do you define feeling in those terms? We can describe what feeling is like but there's no way to show another person exactly what you're feeling because it comes from within, not from an external source. So Materialist cultures value those external, easy to see and easy to believe things over internal things. They base our reality on the material realm, thinking that because its real, it must be the source of happiness. And of course god must be some tangible entity external and separate to your own self.

We have so many problems trusting that god self within because our cultures have us so focused on the external that we don't even think that inner self is real, in a sense. I know if I had a physical entity in front of me telling me 'yeah you can do it!' I would be way more inclined to believe it than the invisible inner self that I sometimes forget is even there because I can't see it, I can only feel it in a way that I can't be taught about. You're sposed to get to know it and trust it from the beginning but culture distracts us and we begin to distrust it because it has become unknown, a stranger. A lonely wail at the bottom of your being crying out for you to listen and be friends with it.

Your inner self, is kind to you. Be kind to your self and it can blossom like a friendship. It will be the kindest and most honest friend you can get, and you will find that you will never be alone. You will learn to love your self.

So right now I am hearing loud and clear instructions to go out and make a difference in the world. To unplug myself from this material world and open up to the reality that we are free and nothing lasts forever. There's no need to feel so attached to the physical world, because the end of you is the end of the illusion. There is no need to fear. We are all scared and that is more reason for us to connect with each other. We are so scared of people, but taking chances and risks with people can lead to some beautiful and magical life moments which would never be possible if we didn't trust that foreign stranger who offered to fix our bag at the airport, if we didn't take a chance to do something nice for someone that you don't even know, or if we didn't talk to each other about our feelings. But that part of us is ignored, and we are too scared to connect with others, we were never taught how. Its because no one knows!! Except for ourselves...we already know how to connect. Trust that inner want, the want that seems to terrifying to do but the most rewarding! And helps other people access that deep forgotten part of themselves too. Two awoken souls recognise each other immediately, its that feeling described as 'connection', which is really a re-connection. True reality is that we are all one and even though we are physically separated by our bodies, our soul connection is stitched together like a patchwork blanket in an invisible realm layered right over our environment. Don't ignore that fundamental part of reality. You can't ignore the physical part too, but don't take it so seriously, because it will not be the thing that brings you true happiness.

That's it for Stoned Saturdays.
I'm the rainbow lady, signing out for a good nights sleep.

Peace and love
<3

Non-conformist guide to jealousy

I was thinking the other day about how easily I have kicked addictions in my past and very recently. In my (short) lifetime, I have kicked 4 addictions. Some substances, some actions/behaviours. Some physical and some mental addictions. Either way, as soon as I put my mind to it, I fucking aced it. I think it is because I have strong principles. As soon as I decide something is against my principles, I will abandon it.

Today, I realized that I still have an addiction to kill. This addiction is conformity.

For a while now, I have strongly considered myself a non-conformist. In fact one of my most highly-held principles is not letting others dictate what I do/say/wear etc. But a lot of the time I still do, because as a human being, and as an individual, I have high rejection-sensitivity and a need for approval from others.

For me, being non-conformist is a conscious decision. It is actually a lifestyle choice. But it's not just about deliberately being different just for the sake of it. Non-conformity is truly about not letting large-scale approval for something influence my actions. So if I like a band that everyone else likes, I am allowed to do so as long as I'm not just tricking myself into liking them because I will be included and accepted. And if I want to wear my crazy 60s patterned flare pants (which I will do so today at the risk of disapproval -which hurts sometimes!), I am allowed to do so as long as that is what will make my heart sing and my spirit soar.

This process is conscious, as I must always pinpoint the reasons behind any negative emotions and assess how to deal with the conflict between external pressures and my own values and beliefs. It is essentially fighting instinct, the survival instinct to fit in. This is a highly involved cognitive process which I am involved in every day, and it is not at all easy. The pressure of conformity is strong and relentless, and it is helped along by jealousy. Jealousy is the enemy of the non-conformist. It makes you look to others to decide what you want, instead of looking within. Jealousy is also a defense mechanism that makes it easy to regain self-confidence by putting another person down. It is disguised as pride, while it is really insecurity. As someone who considers themselves a good person, it is hard for me to admit that I do get jealous a lot. One thing I get jealous of (along with a lot of women) is other girls' bodies. To state the obvious, something that is highly valued in this increasingly online society is a fit body. Girls with these type of bodies like to put them on display, and obviously they never fall short of 'likes' and admiring comments. This high level of approval is what produces the jealousy, and pressures people to conform. 

I see jealousy as giving me 3 options:

1. You can change yourself to resemble the person that you're jealous of - therefore erasing the jealousy because you now will get the same approval (If you can't beat them, join them)
2. You can keep being jealous but pretend you're not because that person is a skank and you are way better than them for not putting your boobs all over the internet (If you can't be them, destroy them)
3. You can address the underlying insecurity, be confident in your own values and qualities, and let that person march to the beat of their own drum (Let go of needing approval)

I find it really hard to be jealous, as I know I can only ever take option 3 to be happy, as much as I want to take options 1 or 2. Both options 1 and 2 are big conformity traps in a jealousy battle. They both inflate a sense of pride because on either side of the battle, you're going to get approval. People love to swoon over chicks with hot bodies, and people love to put down chicks with hot bodies. Seemingly a win-win for the ego! Except you will still harbour the deep insecurity that you began with. That is why I go with option 3, or at least try to. Option 3 opens the doors for a wonderful relationship of self-love and will help you build compassion and acceptance of others. Option 3 leads to PEACE.

You might think option 1 would be an okay option because once I get a "hot body" (by someone else's standards), I'll stop hating on other chicks and stop criticizing myself... right? Well, not in my experience... My body is what it is and trying to change that was a hard battle that led to an even deeper self-hatred than I began with. Why? Because I couldn't be what I thought society wanted me to be, no matter how hard I tried. If I am reliant on others to approve of me in order to love myself, I will never love myself, because people will always hate me for something. However, if I cultivate love for myself from within, no matter what others are telling me to look like, then my self-confidence will be sustainable. I choose to love myself, but I cannot choose whether other people do. Self-love and self-awareness are the keys to non-conformity.

This is why I choose to be a non-conformist. It may be hard and I may have to dig up and battle against deep-seated insecurities. I may have to think a lot, and have debates with myself in my head. I may not have anyone to tell me that I'm right, to ease my doubts. It may seem that everyone is against me, and I may feel lonely and unsupported in my decisions. But in the words of Chris from Parks and Recreation, "I'm not lonely, I have myself". And as long as I work on becoming my own best friend, no large-scale influence should ever be able to tell me what I need or want.

Even jealousy comes with a blessing, as it can help me recognize how I can become my own best friend.

I'm going to start with the body love :)

Intermission

The other weekend my old friends and I were sitting by a pool, our crystals laid out on deck chairs to cleanse in the sunlight. We had just been smoking a leisurely joint and began to talk about life and beauty, you know, the usual. Earlier I had seen my friend rescue a spider from the pool. I looked down beside me and I saw a ladybug on a tiny feather, floating near the edge of the pool. I scooped it up in my palm and lay it down on the concrete. Instantly, our conversation was diverted. We became transfixed at this sign of luck, the orange ladybug. We got on our bellies and watched with amazement as this incy wincy creature lifted its symmetrically patterned shell to reveal its tiny wings. As it attempted to dry its wings in this way, we noticed how intricately designed its shell was. Orange with little black patterns, almost as if they had been drawn on with a fine liner. It had two little eyes and legs smaller than the width of a hair. It was too perfect to be real. But there it stood, drying itself, preparing to fly off to safety.

I'm usually scared of bugs. Even ladybugs. But the love I experienced watching this creature overcame any disgust I could have felt. I'm sure the pot helped, I find it actually helps my brain detach from the feminine chaos of thought stream and focus in on one specific thing. But that's beside the point. We are so busy playing with our phones, worrying what we look like, trying to please other and our own egos, that we forget what a magical place we live in. We strive for our idea of perfection, when perfection already exists all around us. In the tiny ladybug, the veiny leaves of a plant, our own bodies that work effortlessly to keep us alive...

We take so much for granted... I take so much for granted.

I've been a bit disconnected lately, from myself. But what goes down must come back up again, and death always makes way for birth. I thought I was at a spiritual dead-end but when I think about it, I have learnt so much in the past two weeks, and a new theme is coming up for me: Yin and Yang.

Hopefully I'll be posting some more pretty soon :)

My love-hate relationship with religion

When I was in the third grade at my small Catholic school, everyone was preparing for their "Reconciliation" ceremony which would lead onto their receiving of the Holy Communion. While everyone else was nervous at the prospect of confessing all their sins to a priest, I was relieved that I didn't have to do so. My school had told me that I could not take part in these religious ceremonies, as I was baptized Anglican, not Catholic. In every subsequent monthly mass, while everyone else stood and lined up to receive the 'body of Christ', 'the bread', or 'communion', I would have to sit in silence and watch them. This was the beginning of my break from religion. We were taught that God loved everyone. Yet, my school basically told me I was not allowed to enter God's kingdom. As a small child, I recognized that if there really was a God, he would not exclude me based on my baptism or any other factor.

Since that moment I had a strong dislike towards Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, which I haven't been quite able to shake, even in my quest towards tolerance and acceptance of others. I felt that God could not have been real if he killed people or imposed rules on people. I disrespected the church every time I was there for weddings, baptisms or whatever reason. I really disliked (putting it nicely) the last Pope and what he stood for, though the new Pope is kind of more favourable. These beliefs about the church have also not been helped by all the bible bashers in America who want to convert Gay people because of a couple of passages in a book that is centuries old and should not be taken literally, at all. I still don't understand how people don't believe in magic, yet they believe there is a man in the sky who created us all. Go figure...

Anyway, religion has made a few appearances in my life where I have been forced to challenge these ideas that formed when I was so young. By the time I started to think about conspiracies, I had concluded that the Bible was a bunch of crap orchestrated by a patriarchy who desired to control the world with strict doctrines and fear. I then stumbled upon my first conspiracy thread, which talked about how the revelations was a prediction of the Roman Empire and how it had continued into modern day America. That was an extremely long but highly convincing thread about the parallels between society and the ancient text's account of our downfall. It was very compelling to me, but it required me to re-evaluate whether the Bible really was a bunch of bullcrap or whether it was something else, maybe a metaphor or a prediction, rather than a literal transcript of actual events. Some while later, I watched the documentary Zeitgeist, which highlighted the parallels between ancient religions and modern day religions. This again, was compelling to me, as that meant that the Bible had not been simply put together as fiction. It had some basis in history.

The most recent catalyst for a change in attitude has been beginning psychic development classes with my cousin, who can contact spirits and is into what people call "New Age" spirituality. And yet, he believes in angels, specifically Christian angels such as Jesus, Mary, Archangels Michael and Gabriel, and so on. He also refers to the "higher power" as 'God'. I have preferred not to do so, as just the word God symbolizes, to me, restriction, compartmentalization, strict beliefs and doctrines. But as I have developed throughout these classes, and developed more open-mindedness, I have realized that God is just the name for this thing that we can all feel within us. God does not need to mean "a man in the sky who kills people if they disobey him". God can just as well refer to the universe, or the cosmos, love, or the singularity before the big bang.

Maybe the God in the Bible doesn't even refer to an actual being. Maybe it is a metaphor of a symbol for the thing that connects us all. Reading "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown tonight has really opened my eyes to the potential symbolism of the Bible. I find it funny that God was the one thing I have strived to reject, when all along I have been lead along the path to find God. I still feel uncomfortable calling it God, I prefer calling it the universe, or love... To me, the universe is God. God is the universe. The universe is within me and it is within everyone else. It's also funny that throughout school we were constantly told that God is within us, and that God is everywhere at once. Because now I can see that this is SO true! We are all connected through God. It's just that everyone takes it too literally and thinks God is a man with a white beard who sits in the clouds! The truth is much more profound than that!

Indeed, we came from God and will one day return to God. But God will not meet us with open arms or a warm embrace.. we will one day return to the gigantic web of the universe where no physical boundaries exist between us. We will not be able to hug God, but we will feel as if we are a PART of God. Oneness!

It still feels wrong saying God. Too Christiany... I feel like a preacher. But there is no wrong way to say it, as long as we are all talking about the same thing I guess, so saying 'God' is a good exercise to reduce my own prejudice.

It feels good writing again! I plan to do a lot more soon :)

Until then,
Peace <3

Faith

Had a great chat at uni the other day with a vibrant girl from the Christian Union who approached me to talk about faith. After viewing a short cartoon, she asked me how it related to my own faith. The whole conversation that stemmed from there was surprisingly awesome, and I found that I connected well with this Christian girl, that in fact we shared very similar ideas about the world and the same values. It reminded me that we see the world from all different perspectives but what really unites us is love and understanding! 

I want to share with you a few things that I shared with her, as through this conversation I realized how very little I get to talk about something that I am so deeply passionate about. I also never thought of myself as a person with a faith, maybe because I don't name it. I just think of it as my set of beliefs.

God, or the Source, is for me, like in other religions, where we all came from. I like to think of the God concept as the Big Bang. At the moment, the widely accepted theory is that the Big Bang originated from a singularity- a single point of mass in a void where space and time did not exist. Considering that everything in our universe supposedly came from this singularity, it's rational to say that, since we were all 'one' when this happened, that we are still 'one' with everything around us. Everything we are made, the stars are made of, even what space is made of, originated from this point. This is why I love to say that we are all pieces of the puzzle; The puzzle of the universe! 

Another thing about my faith that aligns with others is that I have a similar set of values. When talking with this girl, we both believed that we should have love and compassion for one another, and that we are too selfish now and scared of connecting with people in this 'dog eat dog' world. For me, this stems from the belief that we are all one... If you are me, and I am you, what am I afraid of? Why would I want to hurt you? For me it's really sad that we compete and are jealous and hateful of one another because this reflects on and creates how we treat ourselves... We did an exercise at Reach once where we had to make a criticism of another person, and then ask ourselves whether we had said the same thing about ourselves too... Every time. Another one of my favourite sayings is 'you must love yourself before you can love others'.

She also spoke to me about her underlying feeling that there's something wrong with the world, that its not working in the way it was meant to... I get this a lot. I got it from a young age. I always questioned why we work all our lives and then rest when we're too old to enjoy life properly. Now I question it in a deeper way, and try to remember that while I can't change how it works, I can work around it. I can do things to avoid having to rely on money and greed, such as remembering that my worth isn't dependent on my looks or possessions. Everything is impermanent, so it makes no sense to attach myself to anything. I can go natural, buy organic or grow my own food, which is like growing your own money, but allows my body to absorb pure, rich nutrients rather than the chemically altered crap that they sell in supermarkets. I can center myself in a more natural environment. All these things make me more at ease and closer to nature on this dying planet. 

The last thing she asked me is where my beliefs came from. I thought about it for a minute, and realized that my beliefs materialized one day out of nowhere. I was always drawn to spiritual and space talk when I was young. I think when I watched zeitgeist I really awoke. Everything sort of clicked into place and I thought, this is right. My morals stem from my empathy as well, which allows me (or forces me) to feel others' pain, to really absorb it in my mind and heart.

I really believe that we can only find the answers within. I always want to know things, and I keep reminding myself that all I have to do is look within to find what I'm looking for. The trouble is trying to find the time and also the discipline to let the material world go and meditate without the interruption of my mind or anything else. I always plan to. But what if I am planning until I am old, and one day I realize I never did it? I was always waiting for the time when really, time doesn't exist, it is an illusion of the material world. I have to let go of time as well in order to properly explore consciousness....

I have a lot of self work to do. 

Thunderstorm

Nature is a lot like us (considering nature created us), but I think nature is a lot more lucky.

Nature can flow in and out of days without noticing the time,
while we are glued to our watches.
Nature can roar and scream with thunder and lightening,
unlike us, we keep our storms inside.
Nature can dance with circular winds and crashing waves all day long,
we must live in a structured way.
Nature can weep and suffer but will still rejuvinate,
alot of the time, we give up.
Nature gives itself unconditional love and nourishment,
often we are our own worst enemies.
Nature experiences life without a conscious thought nor a worry,
ours is plagued with these distractions.
Nature's goal is to be,
our goal is more, more, more.

I've always had a fascination with natural disasters and the weather. In particular, tonight's thunderstorm got me thinking about why I like them. I think it is because I envy it's freedom, it can thrash about, destroy things and act in a spontaneous manner, and people still think it is beautiful. You can't hate a storm; because a storm doesn't take on your feelings, there is no purpose in hating a storm. It just is. And even if we don't like it, we can't prevent it from doing whatever it wants. It doesn't care. It must feel amazing.

I want to be a thunderstorm.

Another look at the Existential Givens

One of my earliest memories of self-talk, or thinking to myself, is one of Existential Isolation. Only today have I discovered this term and its meaning, and this memory came to mind.

I remember as a young girl, maybe 6? ...I thought it was younger, I'm not sure. It was probably when my sense of empathy began to develop, so around the age of 6-7. Every now and then I used become aware that I was looking at the world through my own eyes and I would say to myself, "This is MY life". This was the predominant thought, accompanied by the general sense of 'knowing' that other people were also living and experiencing life, but I would never see the world through anyone elses eyes. I wondered what they were seeing and why I could never see it. I must have been so unconsciously scared by the thought that another voice would always jump in and say "Shut up, Katie, you're an idiot".

As weird as this seemed to me at the time, this now holds a lot of significance to me. After reading about the 4 Existential givens/Ultimate concerns (mentioned in my last blog, see 'Love's Executioner' by Irvin D. Yalom), I realized that the voice that told me to shut up was protecting me from the concern of existential isolation. Existential isolation refers to the barrier that exists between the self and others, even in the presence of deep relationships. It is the fact that we are born alone and we die alone. This causes anxiety, and much like the other givens, we try to protect ourselves from this. A common way is to form a passionate relationship whereby we perceive that two become one. Yalom states that this attitude to a relationship is destined to cave, because we can never fully be one with another (at least in this physical form). This anxiety and how I use my relationships to combat it is definitely true for me, but I thought it was just because I haven't been so kind to myself in the past, and I am scared of how I will speak to myself when I am alone ("Shut up, Katie, you're an idiot" demonstrates this well!)... but this theory and my memory have opened me up to consider that a lot of my anxiety is about being alone, not just physically, but existentially.

Yesterday I was pondering about which attachment style I have (anxious - this theme pops up a lot in my life) and now I'm thinking about this. So many theories in psychology, so many possibilities. But nothing is concrete, I guess any explanation is a good one as long as it makes sense and helps with overcoming major problems in life!

Now that I think about it, Existential Theory is applied in a lot of places. Landmark Education (based on Scientology) did actually address the concerns that life is meaningless and that we have the freedom to live however we want. There was a great discussion about how we are responsible for everything that happens in our lives, and once we assume that responsibility rather than blaming it on external sources, we can free ourselves from our barriers and create our own meaning for our lives. That was probably the only good thing I got out of it, aside from learning how to spot a cult, and to be careful of self-help seminars as they will turn their beneficial learnings on you so you feel obligated to attend and fork out hundreds for future sessions...

Live and learn, every day.

Healing

So I am in the hospital with my boyfriend today. Pretty much the day after I posted that blog, he texted me telling me he was in hospital with what they thought was a ruptured kidney. Later he was airlifted to a larger hospital, thankfully much closer to my house. Turns out he is ok and healing well.

So this could have come at a slightly better timing, since I was still distressed from the incident which prompted my not so friendly blog post. I feel bad about my anger but I think I handled it way better than I would have in the past. Letting out my anger in a constructive way was very helpful.
Unfortunately, more problems arose and I ended up being abused by the same people all Friday morning for a minor request, and it all got too much for me. I had a massive breakdown and left class to see a counsellor at uni. He was actually amazing, he did so much for me in that hour than any other psychologist had ever done, and he was still provisional. I am so grateful for his help as I have avoided slipping back into a highly negative state. I am still angry and hurt, but I am in no way depressed and have managed to maintain some of my Zen. Yay.

I am still pretty resentful today though, as I am in the hospital visiting my boyfriend, and these people decided to come and visit too. So I am bored, sitting in a cafe, writing this blog post, waiting for them to leave. I am trying my hardest to let go of this resentment, as it is draining me a lot and I am very aware that I am putting out negative energy. But as you can imagine my guard has gone right up and I'm not ready to open up and relax any time soon. Having an anxiety problem also doesn't help. Sigh. Baby steps I guess.

Maybe I should try and meditate or something.
Yesterday in my tute for Psychopathology, we discussed Existential Therapy. Apparently the case study (the Fat Lady Yalom case) presented this therapy in a negative light, but I was late and didn't read the case study, so I am very enthusiastic about reading more about this therapy technique. Apparently, it is based on the theory that inner conflict is due to 4 Existential Givens, or Ultimate Conerns in life. These are:
1. The inevitability of death
2. Freedom and associated responsibility
3. Existential Isolation and
4. Meaninglessness

Without having read anything about this, including any critiques, I am naturally drawn to this theory as I believe a lot of my own internal conflict is due to these existential givens. For example: today I am trying to let go of my anger because I feel that with freedom I must be responsible for my own emotions and reactions to events, but I am finding it hard to so. So this results in conflict. Also meaninglessness troubled me for a while there, like there was no point in life so what is the point in living, but now I have created my own meaning so it doesn't bother me that much anymore. The inevitability of death also creates conflict within me as I believe this is where a lot of my anxiety about work and uni comes from. In my mind there is no time to waste as I have limited time to enjoy my life, but as I have to succumb to these seemingly meaningless responsibilities (again freedom and responsibility comes in) which take up so much time, I get frustrated. I am not too sure about existential isolation as I'm not sure what it means exactly so I don't want to comment on it. Apparently it's the same as phenomenology. Forgot what that is too. I am hella tired.

Anyway, hopefully I will get to go back into the hospital room soon.
Thanks for reading guys, again I would appreciate if some positive vibes could be sent my way, and more importantly healing vibes for my boyfriends kidney!
Peace.

Awake

The other morning I was having a blast listening to The Beatles while driving to uni. It was a beautiful sunny morning and I was keen to attend my first lectures for two of my subjects. As I was driving, I started thinking about how amazing my friends and family are, and how loved I am, and how I'm in such a good place mentally at the moment. At this point, singing along to Hey Jude, my thoughts shut off, paving the way for a flood of emotion. I actually teared up as the feeling of gratitude and love expanded in an infinite space inside my soul. I felt pure love for myself and everything around me. A feeling of completeness, oneness.

I am 99% sure that this only the second time in my life that I have ever felt anything like that without the aid of what I like to call... "spiritually enhancing substances". It first happened in my weekly meditation class, when we were doing a meditation themed around expanding the aura with energy. This time I was meditating - just being - without trying. I instantly tapped into myself and my energy in its purest form. High on life.

This experience was then followed by an amazing weekend with some of the most open and loving humans I have ever met :) Saturday night, (yes, with the aid of "spiritually enhancing substances"), was another magical night, where I felt absolute clarity and peace. We talked about so many things, real, raw and no bullshit. We expressed out love for each other without fear. It was such an amazing vibe. Some people may think this isn't real. It's influenced by drugs, it's just a fake feeling. I disagree. I tend to think that all these feelings are there already, waiting for us to unlock them. This has been supported by my experience the other day, when I was completely sober. These substances, these compounds... essentially change the way our consciousness works. We are able to tap into different perspectives, and come up with different ideas that we already know, but are yet to be discovered, or realised. These substances either unlock buried parts of the mind, or block certain perception processes that keep us grounded in 3D. Once you can shut the ego off, you become just feeling, just energy, and can access higher levels of reality. I guess this is pretty much a shortcut to a meditative state. However, I do feel that you need to be somewhat open to yourself and the world to be able to utilise the spiritual effects of certain drugs. Otherwise they just become another blanket for your issues, another escape from reality, a destructive addiction pattern. What a waste of potential magic.

At some point during our Saturday night shenanigans, as a lot of people who partake in such shenanigans would relate to, the subject of being "awake" came up. What does it mean to be awake? My chemically ridden brain came up with this explanation (as accurately as I can remember saying it):

"To be awake, is to know... that we are all one. We all came from a single source. We are the same; you and me, we are the same, so are you and (friend's name), and him and me... All of us. And to be awake is to know that to change the world, you must switch to love. Not fear, only love."

To switch to love requires conquering fear. Conquering fear requires courage. And courage comes from a confidence in yourself. Start to treat yourself better, and become so confident in your amazing unique self, that challenges no longer scare you and negativity no longer poses a threat to your spirit. Then you will learn to forgive and love everything unconditionally, for all its good and bad.

It all starts with you. Love yourself and love others... love yourself and love everything. And realise that you ARE everything.

What is normal?

On Tuesday I attended my first Disability, Diversity and Social Exclusion tutorial. Turns out that most of us doing this unit are psychology students. My tutor made a comment, "all you psychology students, going to change the world"... damn right we are. Eventually anyway, after 6 or more years of study!

She also said something else, something that came up for me during my mushroom trip last Friday night. "What is normal?" This question is asked of psychology students the moment we begin. We are actually taught common definitions of normal, how normal is measured. You know, because we like to categorize things. If you are acting in an accepted way, if you are part of a majority (socially, physically, whatever), or if you are deemed to function well (all 3 factors dependent on culture and context), then you or your behaviour could be described as 'normal'. What you do could be 'normal' in one culture or context but could be 'abnormal' in another.
As you'd expect I took a different take on it with shrooms in my belly. My mate said we should watch something 'normal'... my mind started racing as I asked the familiar question to myself: "What is normal?" Did he mean that he wanted to watch something we would usually watch, or did he want to watch 'normal' people, like reality shows? Are they even 'normal?' I don't think so... they seem pretty outrageous. Well, what do 'normal' people do? Were we going to watch a show where people sat around and had breakfast and went to work? Complained about traffic and workmates? Picked the kids up from school? What a boring show. I would rather watch something trippy. Would these TV people even think about stuff? Would they wonder what normal is? As I type this, the word 'normal' is losing its meaning. Is that normal? Does that happen to a majority of people? Is it specific to my culture? If so, which culture? Drug culture, Australian culture, language culture?

Life's endless questions...

I just looked up at my formatting toolbar for this blog and saw that 'normal' has been automatically selected for me. Blogger assumes that we all want normal as well...

So I started another subject, Social Psychology of Relationships. And get this... one of my unit learning objectives is "to observe and code behaviour"... Yes, I will be doing more categorizing, but I will be learning how to read you guys! Be afraid!
My lecturer made the point that whenever he says he is a psychologist, people always ask "Oh can you read my mind?"... I actually get that a lot too. We don't mind read but turns out we watch your every move... Seriously though, I am really excited that I will be learning something useful, something practical that will assist me in my relationships and my career :)

A last thing I will leave you with for now is another point my lecturer made... That the way in which you code behaviour, depends on the lens you observe it through.
Have a think about how your lens affects the way you see things, that other people may see differently...
My aim, as a future psychologist, is to have a neutral lens... Or at least an educated one.
Educated is the only way to gain a wider perspective, and a wider lens.

Now the word 'lens' has also lost meaning.
Time for bed.