Excitement; that rush of energy; that “Hell Yes”-feeling in your chest; that’s your compass, and it points straight at what makes You feel Alive. Move towards that. Don’t wait for your nervousness to go away. Don’t wait for the critical voice in your mind to become silent. Don’t wait for the right time. You will wait forever. You live NOW! DO THAT THING!
Loving kindness is one of the most powerful ways to sooth the inner critic. You can read more about the inner critic here: - https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/breaking-the-chains-finding-relief-from-harsh-superego-0426175 - https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/silencing-the-inner-critic-the-power-of-self-compassion-0608154 - https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/working-with-the-inner-critic-essential-to-inner-work-0617155
This is one of my favourite lullabies O, I love you O, I love you O, I love you most of all https://open.spotify.com/track/1K18ZkRjuOTFEH0rxo5Zwq?si=e1901528048d4b6f
-A letter to a human- Remember that you are human You are the divine You are the infinite Yes And you are human Your brokenness is not a sin It's the natural state of things Feeling lack and loss and lonely That's what life's about Not all about But parts about A game without restrictions Is not a game at all So play your limitations They are what makes you You
During the week I watched this video that describes the difference between the Ego self and True self, that I found really useful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfrkVMCif9M&ab_channel=JuliaKristinaCounselling Here’s a summary: The Ego is like this shield that is trying to protect us from shame. It is There is nothing wrong with it, but acting from it is usually not what we want because it keeps us stuck and unsatisfied. It doesn’t feel good. It has this inherent feeling of not-enoughness. I...
Mind the gap Mindfulness is the gap between input and response in which we can bring in our wiser parts. If we don’t have this gap, we are merely reacting to life. Auto-pilot mode. Without this gap, you are not aware of why you are thinking and acting the way you are, you are simply letting the automatic internal program run. This is a great way of saving energy, but it’s not a very useful way to live, because those automatic reaction patterns is what is causing much of our suffering in life. If...
Our bodies carry so much of our inner resources; Our strength, our intuition, our compassion, but we tend to lock them down by tensing up. When we allow our bodies to deeply relax and let go, we gain more access to those resources. Body scan meditation can be a nice way of nurturing this kind of relaxation while also growing a deeper connection to the body. There’s magic in our bones A north star in our soul That remembers our way home There’s magic in our bones https://open.spotify.com/track/3Q...
The more I struggle and fight Trying to get it all right I push away the very thing I want Thinking it's all up to me Deciding how it will be Forgetting that I am guided by the One - Fia For me, this song is a reminder to let go and have trust in life. All I can do is to act in alignment with my heart to the best of my ability, and sometimes that ability is great and sometimes it's tiny. When we stop clenching our energetic fists around the results we want in the future and instead focus on the ...
When time pulls lives apart Hold your own When everything is fluid, and when nothing can be known with any certainty Hold your own Hold it 'til you feel it there As dark, and dense, and wet as earth As vast, and bright, and sweet as air When all there is Is knowing that you feel what you are feeling Hold your own Ask your hands to know the things they hold I know the days are reeling past in such squealing blasts But stop for breath and you will know it's yours Swaying like an open door when sto...
Trust When we cultivate a deeper intimacy with ourself we also cultivate a trustworthiness with ourself and with our body. When trusting the breath to take care of itself we let go of control and relaxation occurs. When trusting that the ears will hear without us interfering we come into a more receptive and open mode of being. Becoming aware that the organs function to our support without us needing to know or control anything we come into a more symbiotic relationship with our body. In this de...
I believe that outer peace comes from inner peace and that inner peace comes from allowing ourselves to be what we are and feel what we feel. To connect with our needs, our deeper nature, is not a small task in the face of war, we need each other. 𝐿𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑏𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝐿𝑒𝑡 𝑢𝑠 ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑖𝑡 𝑏𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐿𝑒𝑡 𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑡𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟. 𝐼𝑓 𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑒, 𝑤...
'I remember when I was a kid there was this famous saying in activism —I don’t remember who it's attributed to originally— that says: “if you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention”. And it’s true: If you go to a factory farm, or you go to a sweatshop, or you go to an open-pit mine or a landfill, like, fuck, you’d be pretty outraged. And then it's like, “How do you do your normal stuff, in the face of THAT?” At the same time, I would read Kahlil Gibran or Hafiz, and the artist and the poet...
"We Don’t See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are" - Anonymous We see our reality through our preconceived ideas, assumptions and opinions. Between us and the world is a filter created from our past experience, our culture and expertise. It is said that in the mind of the expert there are few possibilities, in the mind of a beginner there are infinite. The expert limits herself by thinking that she knows, and we are all experts in our lives. We think we know what our partner thinks, or how...
You know the voices inside that says "you are bad" and "you should..." and sets an impossible bar to live up too. I'll try and present a way of understanding them as "The Inner Trojka", which is an understanding that comes from my teacher, Kåre Landfald. The inner Trojka is the inner Critic, the inner Pusher and the inner Perfectionist. They can be experienced as voices in our head, but often we are not directly aware about them. Instead we mostly experience the effect they have on us as shame, ...
Why meditate? I could drop a list of benefits, but I don't think that would move you much. So let me instead try and share my own motivation. "We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one." - Confucius This is the only chance I get. I hold in my hand the infinite beauty and mystery of a human life. So much potential for Freedom, Strength, Love, Kindness, Compassion, Joy, Truth, Gratitude, Connection. I will not throw this away. I will sit in the drivers seat of my li...
You are all so warmly welcome to the first Friday meditation of the new year
Olympic finals, 100m sprint. For the sprinters, this is probably one of the most important moments of their career, perhaps even their lives. They have prepared for this moment for years, basically all their lives, and now they are finally here! And how do they face that? https://youtu.be/2O7K-8G2nwU?t=187 Look at Usain Bolt the last few minutes before the race . He looks laser-focused just like everyone else (as you would expect), but he's also playing around, putting on a show for the audience...
For me, admitting to myself that I need to rest is one of the hardest things. The Inner Pusher doesn’t really like it when I’m not being productive and working towards my goals. Is it the same for you, or do you find it easy to take time to rest and recover? The story we tell about a happy life is often equal to a life in constant productivity, action and doing and not so much credit is given to slowing down and recovering from that intensity. The expectation seems to be that we should also be i...
A little something about **Non-striving**, one of the seven attitudes of mindfulness as described by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I find myself leaning forward a lot of the time. I feel my weight more towards the front of my feet than flat across the whole sole. Is it the same for you? The energy in that posture is a "going somewhere"; Forward, onwards, to the next thing, to the result, to the end of whatever is happening Now. I associate it with progress. It feels active, energetic, important and busy. Alwa...
We cling to so many things in life, material things, thoughts about how things should be and feel, ideas and views about ourself and others. This is a clinging on the inside, like a contraction, not so different from a closed fist, desperately holding on to what we don’t want to lose. The story goes that you can catch a monkey by putting a banana in a narrowly barred cage. The monkey reaches in and grabs the banana, but the banana is too large to fit through the bars so the monkey is caught with...
Jon Kabat-Zinn outlines The Seven Attitudes of mindfulness: Non-judging, Non-striving, Acceptance, Trust, Patience, Beginner’s mind and Letting go. This is how he describes Non-judging: Mindfulness is compassionate, openhearted, choice-less awareness. It is cultivated by taking the position of an unbiased attentive witness to your own experience as it happens in the present moment. To do this requires that you begin to relate to the contents of experience, without judgment, as the present moment...
Today seems like a really good day to delve into the first meditation technique I ever learned; Following the breath. But why? The breath can only be experienced in the present moment, and in that way it act as an anchor in the Now for our attention. And when we practise paying attention on the present moment in a non-judgemental way, over time this gives rise to a greater awareness... and also, some times it feels good.
Somewhere I’ve picked up the analogy of the body as our dear pet, perhaps a dog. It’s quite happy to serve us and it doesn’t need much; some sleep, good nutrition and healthy movement. But we often treat our body more like a slave than a beloved pet. Demanding more and more from it, pushing it to bend further, stay awake longer, have more energy than it has. Today we’ll take a break from that and give our body some loving attention.
Today we’ll see how we can use our breath as a way to find ease and relaxation.
I want to invite you to do a very short exercise with me. Right now when you are reading this, stop what you are doing and feel the breath in your belly. Without any need to change it or wishing it to feel different, just follow three breaths. Do this now. Make a mental note how that was for you. Do you feel any different now compared to before? Today we will experiment with a few different mindfulness exercises. You are all warmly welcome to Friday meditation
About sharing. We can share all kinds of things; food, experiences, things. And we can also share ourselves. This is what we do when my let another person know what is going on inside of us, in the moment. “This is what’s alive in me right now.” Sometimes we do it by using words and describing our experience and some times we do it my simply living it fully, this is what young children do, they fully live and express what is alive in them in each moment. For me, this is a fantastically brave thi...
Disease, dis-ease. Lack of ease. The lack of ease can range from not even noticeable until it goes away (like a kitchen fan) to a perfect hell, but the components are usually the same: - Difficult emotions such as shame, guilt, anger, sadness or fear that we are resisting in subtle ways, most often not consciously - Discomfort in the body in form of tension to various degree - Non-productive thought patterns like judgement, criticism and blame agains self or other, obsession on getting out of th...
I went over some notes yesterday and came over this quote from Svagito Liebermeister, Osho therapist and spiritual leader: _Meditation has nothing to do with feeling calm, meditation is about watching_ And with inspiration from that we'll watch our breath today.
Today I want to share my current understanding of what being a human Being means. In my experience there are two modes of being: Personality or Being. *Personality* This is the ego structure that holds our our coping strategies, reactive patterns and compulsive reactions. It’s built on fear for our survival, of abandonment, rejection, loosing autonomy, etc. At its foundation it is the rejection of Self / Being in favour of something in the outside world. The development of the Personality struct...
I had a conversation with a friend some days ago about being a whole human Being and I thought I’d share my experience. I used to experience myself as being something living inside of my skull. If I’d been asked to point to where I was I would have pointed to at the head. I knew I had my body ofc, but it felt like it was “just my body”. Me, my spirit, the sense of “I” was not there. I wasn’t present in my body. It has taken me some time and it’s still a work in progress but the more I learn to B...
