Читать книгу The Inner Art of You and I - Tatz Holmes - Страница 5

Self-awareness is the ultimate key to self-mastery. Without it we cannot know or build a relationship with ourselves. We may think that we already know ourselves and that it is impossible not to have a relationship with ourselves, yet how much of our personality, beliefs and behaviours are conscious and how much lives within our programming and remains unconscious? How have we actually cultivated a loving, nurturing relationship with ourselves and truly taken the time and effort to go within and get to know who and how we are being, and whether or not this person is truly aligned with the dreams that we hold for our future.

You see, I always dreamed of something bigger for myself, something purposeful. I dreamed of a life beyond mediocrity, beyond working in restaurants feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled. I spent 23 years in the hospitality industry not pursuing my dreams because I did not believe in myself, I did not trust myself not to fail if I tried and I knew that I was good at the work that I did so thought that this was the path that I should follow and maybe one day open a restaurant or a lodge. Now, I am not saying that hospitality is a direction of mediocrity, I am saying that I was unsatisfied and unfulfilled in this journey. Yes, I could have followed that path and found some satisfaction in it, but it was not the path that I truly desired for myself.

The stories of my past haunted my reality and imbued me with the idea that I could not be more, that I could not have more; that I would fail anyway and so why bother trying. Yet inside of me I yearned for greatness, I felt something inside of me that was destined for bigger things, yet I quite simply had no idea what that was or what that dream even looked like for me. How could I? I had no idea who I was, who I was being and who I truly wanted to be.

During the breakdown of my the abusive relationship that I was in, one day I went to work and was asked if I was okay, I broke down into desperate sobs of relief as someone had finally infiltrated the loneliness I felt in my suffering of this relationship that I was in, that was collapsing around me and taking me with it. In that relief filled moment I felt seen again and everything came bursting out of me. As I opened my Heart and shared everything that was happening in my world I became aware of myself and in a moment, the strength that I had handed over to this man peeked up over my dam wall and I chose change for the first time in a long time.

“Fuck him,” I said, “I am going out tonight and I am not going to come home until 4am in the morning. I am done with this!”

That night I went out and met a friend that would become such a massive support through that time. I stayed out all night in defiance of this man and this was the beginning of something new, I was shifting into a new realm.

The music also began to shift as I danced through my pain and the anger began to subside giving way to acceptance. With every movement of my body I cracked the shell that held me captive open, and bit by bit it began to fall away as I was stripped bare of this person I had been. With each part of the shell that fell away the light of truth, of my truth, was able to shine as I started the journey home to myself. The next phase of music was Ben Howard, his melodies of love returning my Heart to the light so that it could shine into my Soul and so it was that I had arrived at a new place in my life. A new sense of softness arose within me, yet it also held a fierce strength, a fierce determination and tenacity that has expanded with time and burns brightly in the fire of my Soul. I had birthed a Warrior Woman through dancing in my fire, dancing through the moments that I thought I would die, yet in truth I was dying. The self that was a victim was dying, the self that was a survivor was dying. I died in those flames of pain and in every moment of death I was being rebirthed, the proverbial Phoenix arising from the flames, a woman of fire, a woman of substance and grace, of truth and love was to emerge from the pain. I immersed into this woman gathering up her strength and calling her power back home with arms outstretched to the sky as I was walking away from this relationship that had held my spirit between clenched fists.

Down the track a new relationship sprung to life and I met a man who cherishes me in his beautiful and unique way. Yet in the beginning, it was difficult for me and for him too. This was the evolution into full self-awareness and discovering all that was running in my unconscious programming through a new relationship where old stories boiled rapidly to the surface, playing out over and over until one day in a heated argument I stormed out of the house, the usual tears welling up in my eyes and emotions of the past being expressed through the same patterns. I didn’t make it far out of the house when I stopped dead in my tracks once again and thought to myself “I don’t want to do this anymore.” I turned around, went back inside and returned to what I had been doing prior to the outburst. In another flash, I had become aware, I had once again become the observer of myself and chose change. I recognised a cycle, a pattern that played out and realised that it no longer served me, it was time to let it go. I think that this was where I realised that I needed to deepen into knowing myself and understanding these trigger points that I carried and the emotions that came with them so that I could move into the person that I truly wished to be.

To shift into a new consciousness, we need to train ourselves to become the observing presence of ourselves. This takes a certain amount of practise. As I mentioned previously, it is up to you how often you train and how quickly you build the muscle required to level up and achieve the results you are after. It requires discipline and a willingness to step fully into self-responsibility.

We start by watching our thinking. We notice where our judgements lie and what the beliefs are that lie beneath those judgements. How do we perceive those around us and how is the world showing up for us? There is a guiding principle that can be a bitter pill to swallow at times but gives us an accurate reflection of our state of consciousness and our relationship with ourselves. It is called the Mirror Principle and it teaches us that the people and experiences we have in our lives are simply a reflection of ourselves. Juicy, isn’t it? I personally struggled with this principle when I first learned of it at 25 years old. It was only years later in my life that I was able to integrate its wisdom to some degree. It is confronting for those of us that have experienced trauma through abuse in any of its forms and everything inside of us may want to recoil, lash out and strike at it in defiance. Yet, I recognise that out of all of the abusers in my life, I was the greatest. I abused myself far longer than any other would ever abuse me, talk about mirror principle in action there.

We can notice how we are being by those that we have surrounded ourselves with, and this is often where friendships and relationships may fall by the wayside as we awaken to truth and love because we begin to shift our perceptions and they may no longer align with those around us. Sometimes this path can be lonely for a time, but I can assure you that the further down it you walk the more you actually relish in the moments of solitude and your need to be constantly surrounded by others begins to dissipate, plus you draw to yourself new people, places and experiences that align with who it is you are choosing to be and how you wish to create your life. There is simply a bridging that needs to occur between the old you and the new you, your old world and your new world. There is a space between those worlds where there is a sense of chaos and emptiness all at the same time, and it can be enticing to give it all up and return to the old ways, but with a little more persistence and a few more steps you get to the other side and your new way of life begins to manifest more and more in each moment of every day. This concept can be seen on a collective scale in our world reality at this time in history. The old world is falling away and crumbling as the structures of society that no longer serve begin to crumble and a new consciousness is rising. We are in the bridging phase, and all seems chaotic, scary and even hopeless. The key is to hold the Dreaming. To keep Dreaming into your life, into the collective experience because it is the Dreaming that manifests and we all Dream all of the time.

What is it that you are Dreaming? What is your world telling you? Are you surrounded by people that uplift and inspire you and others, or are you surrounded by people that are judgemental and negative? It may be the case that you have both these types of people in your life and it may also be true that you may maintain some of these relationships because you can see the deeper essence of these people that is simply waiting to shine through. Either way, they are all mirrors, reflections of aspects of yourself, gifting you with insight into your inner state of being.

Take a moment here and reflect on the situations that are currently presenting in your life. Are you in a never-ending cycle of struggle? Do you feel drained and tired by life? Are your relationships with those around you strained or difficult?

These mirrors are there to give us valuable information on how and who we are being. Our outer reality is the manifestation of feedback that, if we are listening, informs our inner reality of the necessary adjustments required to create differently. Once we can move through the discomfort of this principle then it becomes a valuable tool that tells us moment by moment where we need to make shifts in our energy and return to presence. Self-awareness is fundamentally about presence and what is presence? It is the gift of our essence. It is the expression of love unconditional that cherishes the present moment, the now moment in all its sanctity. You see, when we are so fully present in the now moment, we enter Divinity. Think of a dancer as she moves and flows, her eyes closed with a smile upon her face lost in the moment, consumed by the music or the musician that she dances with exuding his passionate expression through his song. The athlete with focus so intent that there is nothing else in his or her awareness but the present moment and the task at hand. There is power in this place, yet we spend so much time living in the past and projecting into the future that we forget where we are at times. When we are lost in the past and projecting into our future from the past we are creating more of the same, because we are creating from the old stories. Until we become aware of our beliefs, not just the surface level beliefs that we know of but those that live in the depths of the dark spaces that whisper to us that we are not good enough; that we are failures; that we could never possibly have all that we choose, until we know these and transmute them we will be creating our future from our past reality and life will always be the same cycle in whichever form it presents for you.

The more present we become the more self-awareness we cultivate because we can only be aware when we are present, and we can only be present when we are aware. A beautiful and complimentary circle that opens us into expansion.

Opening our awareness means that we open the inner listening and we start noticing the feedback from our outer reality. The more we watch ourselves in every aspect of our being, the more we know ourselves and the more we know ourselves the easier it becomes to create the change that we seek, but we have to keep flexing the muscle of consciousness and training. Every day presents us with opportunities, countless moments there for us to use to our advantage, to mould and shape our reality the way that we choose for it to be.

One day I was sitting and crocheting my first and only crochet project to date. I was using this incredible wool that changed into different colours as it unravelled, it was like watching a kaleidoscope evolve as I worked which was mesmerising. I had no music or documentaries playing as I would usually, for whatever reason, and I entered into observation. I watched my mind cycle through the same sequence of thoughts like a buffer on a computer screen going around and around and around. I didn’t fully engage in the thoughts but simply allowed them to be and witnessed them. For seven hours I noticed this cycle and pattern and was amazed by what I saw. I noticed myself also becoming a little irate with the cycling and, again, did not engage but simply witnessed the irritation rising. What I found fascinating was the futility of it all. The same cycle of thoughts creating the same feelings of irritation and resulting in the same experience that was essentially fruitless. There is a saying that insanity is doing the same thing expecting a different result, or something along those lines, and this was a perfect example of insanity.

You may wonder why I did not shift or change this and, honestly, I couldn’t answer you that, as I was merely observing it for interest sake. I must say that there is also something profound in being the witnessing presence. You are not engaged in the activity of the mind but simply observing it, you are in the realm of the deeper essence of you and connecting into that which is greater than the mere Human existence. You are connecting into the Spirit of yourself that carries the eternal wisdom of all life, you are connecting into creation itself, that which some call God. You are accessing the God force that exists within you.

The idea that God is separate from us is preposterous to me. Why? Quite simply because our bodies themselves are an expressive reflection of the Universe itself, everything that we are made of is what the Universe is made of. The intelligence that is at work within our bodies is magnificent and while we may know and understand how everything inside it all works, we still don’t truly know the true “how” of how it works, it is a phenomenon unto itself. We do not need to tell it when to breathe, it simply breathes; we do not tell it when it needs to eat, it tells us when it is hungry; we do not need to tell it to process the food that we eat, it does it regardless; we do not need to tell it to operate, it operates beyond our need to control it and if this is not the force of God within then I do not know what is and, furthermore, it is the same force that exists within the Earth, within our solar-system, within our galaxy, within our Universe, how is it feasibly possible that we are separate from it or each other? How is it conceivable that the God force could not exist in, through and all around us?

I would just like to say here, that I do not use the term God in the traditional, religious sense. I do not use the term God as a representation of a male figure that we worship. I use the term God to encompass both the masculine and feminine forces that are a distinct feature of our reality. I use the term God to acknowledge the force that is beyond our Human understanding and exists within the mystery of life. I use the term God force so you may read these words with an open mind and an open Heart without prejudice, bias or dogmatic belief structures. I also do not denigrate any religious belief structures but simply do not own them as mine, yet also acknowledge the teachings that lie at the essence of the religions I have encountered. That being said, I also invite you to not take anything that I write as truth, for this is merely the truth that I hold for myself and I, in no way, am here to impose what is true for me onto you. You may find that you resonate with some of what I share and wholeheartedly reject other concepts that I may place here for your contemplation, and that is all in perfection. I am not here to sway you from your beliefs or even unhinge you from your story. I write this to offer a perspective, an opportunity to widen your scope of vision and begin exploring the depth of who you are. I write this to invite you to dive deep and perhaps meet yourself in a new enlightened way. You see, enlightenment is not simply about knowing the God “out there”, it is about meeting the God within in order to truly know Divinity. It is to make lighter the journey through knowing that all that you seek is right there in the centre of your being, laying in wait for you to open the door and meet its light. This is the path of self-awareness; it is the journey to meet God and the realisation that this force also lives in your Heart and you need not look outward but simply turn inward.

The beauty about belief is that it is changeable, mutable and malleable. Think about it, the beliefs that you had as a child of the Tooth Faerie, the Easter Bunny, Santa and so on are distant memories shelved in the department of Faerie Tales. The beliefs that you held as a teenager, filed in Adolescent Mysteries perhaps. The beliefs you held in your twenties, thirties and so on (depending on how old you are, of course) have all shifted and changed as you have grown and expanded through life. There will be things that I write on these pages that may change for me in the coming years as my perspectives widen and my awareness deepens, in fact, who knows something in me may shift in the process of placing my inner contemplation onto these pages and something I write here in this chapter may no longer be true for me through the coming chapters or by the time I have completed this book. This applies to the ingrained beliefs that we hold of ourselves and our lives both consciously and unconsciously. Our conscious beliefs are obviously easy to work with, it is the unconscious ones that are the tricksters as they play out beneath the surface and we simply say that this is our personality or who we are.

I was driving with a friend and she shared with me a story of unhappiness in her relationship and dissatisfaction in the fact that she felt like she should be able to share everything in her life and about herself with her partner. I could recall a time when I felt precisely the same way, yet I had learned that it was not necessarily the truth, not for me anyway. My perspective on this is that we have different people in our lives to fulfil different roles. We share certain parts of ourselves with certain people, which does not necessarily mean that we are being pretentious, it just means that we meet each other in our similarities. We have friends or family members that we may be a certain way with that we quite possibly do not express with others. For example, my younger Sister and I have an incredible knack for being ridiculously silly and find ourselves outrageously funny and while my partner and I are silly together it is not quite the same. This is the specialness of the relationship I have with my Sister. My partner and I have a playful relationship with each other that involves silliness expressed in a different way that does not satisfy the type of expression I have with my Sister and vice versa. We have people that we connect with on all manner of levels and each interaction is going to be unique and fulfil an aspect of who we are and who we choose to be. When we can look at it this way it takes the pressure off one person to satisfy all areas of our lives and opens us up to healthier relationships.

As I shared this perspective with my friend, I asked her three questions, which I wrote down because they were quite poignant in moving through the story, the feeling and the belief. I now use these questions with people that I work with in groups or individually as they are a quick and effective way of cutting to the core of what arises for us and recognising what we believe and how much energy we have vested in these beliefs. When we open to this inquiry, we are able to choose what we wish to believe, whether or not it is worth the output of energy and if we would like to reclaim this energy and let the belief go.

Firstly, we need to frame the story, then we ask the questions.

1 What are you feeling?

2 What is the belief attached to the feeling?

3 Is that belief true?

An example:

Story: “Life is a real struggle right now and there is not enough money to make ends meet. I am having to get payment extensions on bills, and I am getting really stressed out because I am working so hard to get ahead.”

1 What are you feeling?“I am feeling frustrated, annoyed, confused and maybe even angry.”

2 What is/are the belief/s attached to these feelings?“I should be further ahead in my life at this age with a solid career, family and money in the bank. I was told that I shouldn’t bother because I am going to fail anyway.”

3 Is the belief true?“No.”

The interesting thing about these questions is if the same story or belief keeps showing up, we are receiving regular reminders to choose differently and change our perspectives. Another reason they may keep coming up is that we may only be scratching the surface and we can look at how honest we are being with ourselves. When we are experiencing something that creates discomfort in ourselves and we ask these questions, if we truly dig deep the answer to the third question is most often going to be no. I have had a few people answer yes, but as we peel back the layers and get to the core the answer almost certainly shifts to a no. It is at the surface level that we might answer yes. Let’s go peel back a layer. Imagine that this is the same person, they were able to move through that first layer of the belief and began to create change. Yet the same story arises in a new situation.

Story: “I am working so hard and I am actually making really good money now, but I just don’t have time for myself to do the things that I want to do.”

1 What are you feeling?“I am feeling frustrated, annoyed, confused and maybe even angry.”

2 What is the belief attached to these feelings?“I have to work hard in order to get ahead in life and that means I must sacrifice the things I love.”

3 Is this belief true?“No.”

These examples are straight out of my own life, stories with unconscious beliefs that cycled beneath the surface creating more of the same experiences for me. For the purpose of deeper understanding I will explain the beliefs around these stories a little more.

“I should be further ahead in my life at this age with a solid career, family and money in the bank.”

Society tells us that we should go to school, then go to University, then get a job, get married, have children and live behind a white picket fence in order to be considered “successful.” In white South African culture, working as a waitress was a job you did when you were in school or in your early twenties and not something that you were still doing later in life. It was a “stepping-stone” that you used to earn money while preparing yourself for your future career. At almost 37 years old, I had a conversation with my partner about what I had been interested in studying when I was younger and it was only then that I enrolled in a Diploma in Counselling and embarked on my chosen career path. I also believed that I had to have children at least in my early to mid-thirties and by this stage I should be completely self-sufficient financially. The proverbial “dream life.” So, are these beliefs true? No, we do not all fit into a square, some of us are circles, triangles, stars and all manner of different shapes and sizes.

“I was told that I shouldn’t bother because I am going to fail anyway.”

This one is a beauty! The story that goes with this is of me as a young girl, in my bedroom and studying. My father, (not biological, but also the perpetrator of my sexual abuse) opens my bedroom door and asks me what I am doing. I tell him that I am studying for my exams, to which he replies, “Don’t bother, you are going to fail anyway.” True? Hell no! I did not do well at school, but I hated it and I hated life and most of the people around me. I hated myself and was trying to cope with the myriad of things going on inside of me related to the layers of trauma that I had experienced. School was not at all at the forefront of my consciousness, somehow coping with my anger and pain was. Drinking, smoking and taking drugs numbed me from it all and I would much rather have been stoned or in a drunken haze than sitting in a classroom that bored me anyway. This belief held me back all the way until I was almost 37. I danced and was really good at it, I could have taken it further, but why bother I was going to fail anyway. I studied hair and makeup and was really good at it, I could have taken it further, but why bother I was going to fail anyway. When I did try and I did fail, it confirmed what he had said and I gave up, reinforcing that belief and locking it in place.

Nobody taught me that it was okay to fail, that it was okay to make mistakes and to know when that happened it was simply life guiding you to do something differently. So, when I failed, I gave up. Is that belief true? Again, absolutely not.

“I have to work hard in order to get ahead in life and that means I must sacrifice the things I love.”

This one was a gift from my Mom (love you Mom, you are amazing!). My Mom lived through her own horrendous trauma, she too was not guided or held through these experiences and so how was she to know how to do the same? My Mom has had an extraordinary journey and I love and respect her so very much. She has made her mistakes in life, but I know that she did the best she could with what she knew at those times. I know too that she would love to go back and change some things, but all occurred as it should. My life journey has been precisely what it had to in order for me to finally step up and do the work that I am doing in the world now. My Mom left an orphanage at fifteen I think it was and went out into the world. Throughout her life she worked, and she worked hard. She was determined to have more than enough money to give to her children everything that she never had and so she worked and worked and amassed her fortune gifting us more than we needed in clothes and toys. Yet this came at a cost. She sacrificed time with us, eventually spending her weeknights living in the city so she could get up early for gym and get to work early, finishing late at night, and it was this time in my life where the sexual abuse would begin. There is an extra layer to this belief though which is attached to my old money story, and that is that money does not buy happiness. Is that belief true, Yes. Except there is an added extra to it, “money is evil and actually causes unhappiness (abuse) and because of this I do not want it.”

As we explore our stories through these questions we can shift through layers and layers of beliefs until we come to the core and we can replace them with new stories. You see, we become so attached to our stories of the past that we create our future in alignment with all that we have been through. Yet those stories are in the past, and we get to choose what we create for our future. We can change our story to transform our future. I once walked in the world as a victim, then I changed my story to a survivor, and I held onto that one for a long time. Then I changed it once more to a Warrior Woman, not one who needs to fight but one who leads the way steadfast in her strength and prowess. It is the survivor who needs to fight to protect all that she has become as she transcends victimhood.

The Warrior knows and in the knowing comes an inner peace that does not require justification, the Warrior learns when to speak and when to let be. The Warrior walks in awareness, present to the mysteries of life, listening to the guidance within her Heart and the calling of the Ancient One’s. She is connected to the Earth Mother and hears her song. The Warrior stands open to the skies as he connects to the Stars, Moon and Sun. The Warrior is the Dreamer, the Dancer of Life and the Hearts beating drum. The Warrior knows, the Warrior is One.