2%

When i was in my first year of uni, this funky old professor that was teaching Neuropsychology told us that studied have revealed that a normal person is using just 2% of the entire capacity fo their brain. I didn’t give it too much thought by then, i just assumed it’s related to IQ and let it pass.

Today i was listening to a cool podecast, and i had a big aha moment. The speaker was reffering to the 2% in relation to nature of thoughts, and the reason for which we use that little is because 98% of our thoughts are useless. Repetitive, conditioned thought process. When i observe my mind, most of the times i realize it’s not really with me, it’s just wondering in circles over the same old grounds, far away from the present and from my focus now. I’m amazed by how fast it goes, in what places, it’s truly redundant it consumes energy with absoloutely no postive outcome.

I would even call it crazy, but you can really label as crazy something that is a state of normality for most of us.

Ina, running over the same old grounds, what have we found? my 98%

 

The temptation

Although i believe in God, i’m not a religious person. Due to not being satisfied with the religion i was baptised in, when i was 17 i  have started my pursuit to find a religion that suits best who i am and what i believe in. While i found very interesting perspectives in most of the ones i read about, i realized at one point i didn’t really feel the need to belong to any other religion nor to mine,  so i respected them all from a distance.

What’s funny is that the more i become consciousness of myself, the more i understand what a lot of the religious metaphors really stand for. Today i had a pretty busy schedule and in the middle of my focus, there was a voice in my head that was trying to keep me away from this focus. And it’s interesting to observe, because it was very foxy, in the sense that it was tempting me in the most customized way possible. The apple seemed like designed for me in that specific moment, and when i took the bite, i remembered the cliche scene from the bible.

It’s very easy to criticize religions, mainly because most of the people that practice them don’t truly have the inner substance to understand their teachings and promote them properly. But what i realized today, is that there might be a certain truth to the initial teachings of Christianity for example. And i’m sure this must apply to the other religions as well.

People can reach closer to their essence in various ways, and while i’m not embracing any religion , i agree that religion can be one of them.

Ina, i incorporate both the temptation and my capacity to go beyond it

 

Je vois la vie en rose

Inside not outside. I make this distinction because i don’t reffer to optimism. I ran into a quote today that explained me better what i mean “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

Je vois la vie en rose doesn’t mean that everything i see has a pinkish shadow to it, everything is as it is red, yellow, brown, grey. Covey was saying in his 7 Habits book that the quality of life stand in how one manages the space between perception and reaction to that perception. There are moments when i realize that almost anything we can perceive as an enemy can be transformed into a friend if one has the strength to see beyond his Ego.

If i were to pray, i’d pray to develop the capacity to manage this space with patience, empathy, wisdom and service. Seing things as they are, and processing them as they can be. Surrender and control rolled into one. Maybe that was my chaordic that Lotfi was referring to.

Ina, live learn love. love. love

 

This is home

I was thinking a few years ago if one can have wings and roots in the same time and with a very radical approach i was concluding that you can only have one of the 2, and i was always up for the wings. I have been away from Romania for over an year now, and it’s  interesting to see how i perceive my own culture now, how i relate to my roots and my wings.

If i were to analyze the culture as detached as i could, i would say it’s a culture of HEART, with all emotions that a heart contains. I was talking with a friend that also lives abroad that our culture holds a certain amount of pain and sadness inside it.  It is culture of effort, of striving and of being challenged. It is a culture of rebirth and growth, not self- sustained and not with a long term perspective, nevertheless it has a potential to grow that deserves to be acknowledged.  It is a culture of compassion,  with plenty of opportunities that enable you to grow in compassion  and serve. It is a culture of risk and courage, where one can and will risk security for freedom.

I think there are no good or bad cultures, nor good or bad traits of a culture. There are environments where, in behavior terms, some traits can be your best friends, and other environments where they can be your worst enemies.

I don’t want to underestimate the power of the culture i grew up in when it comes to the effect it had on my patterns and behaviors, there are specific traits that seem to be market in my DNA, and there are a lot of others that i was so scripted in that at times, it seems mission impossible to reverse that. But behaviors can change, and so can mindsets. With concentration and determination patterns can be broken, and eventually one can look at life from the other side of the glass.

What one can’t reverse is the emotional legacy that these roots left. I think now that at a deeper level, the content doesn’t matter much, what matters is the structure of this legacy and how one deals with it.  The energy of all this pain, effort, courage, compassion, risk, rebirth all expressed through my family that got to me, and i am made of this energy. Like the pith of a plant, it makes no difference for the plant what that pith is made of, nevertheless that’s all that matters. A plant couldn’t look at the sun if it wasn’t for the pith that flows through it because it wouldn’t exist anymore. And i couldn’t dream and grow wings, if it wasn’t one with this energy.

I feel like a kid that has no judgement over what and why and it’s just grateful to have been the result of this combination, of having been given the chance to be and to become. That’s where i feel my roots.

http://www.trilulilu.ro/maroelva/0827ac9fdd653d

Ina, i don’t know how to explain it. i just feel it

 

Lapse of reason

It took me an year to start writing again, and as i started i realized it’s way harder for me to write now than before. In the past, i used writing and words, to explain to myself the world, to attach meaning, to state some points. What happens now, is that i realized it’s hard for me to write without letting my ego self interfere in the process.

If i would write like before, and often that’s the tendency, i feel like the feminine version of John Cage, from Ally Mcbeal: i have a point, i state it wisely, but in the end, i’m just joggling with the truth.

The last time i stated something with conviction was last week, and what i realized is that by being so opiniated on the issue, my ego transformed it into a mental possesion that i had to defend in front of anyone that didn’t agree with it.  There was no difference between me and a kid that’s holding on to his toy just because it’s his.

I know i am smart, i think  it’s the first thing i’m recognized for but even if that’s the case it doesn’t justify my need to project my mind everywhere. I feel at times like i try to collect the reality and put it into boxes with labels on it so that i feel safe. I  always seem to have needed meaning, and i still do. The question is how can i get meaning without the judgement of my ego?

A couple of years ago, at my Hypnosys formation, i managed to get into a trance that was actually  induced to a colleague of mine. When i realized i’m slipping into the trance, i thought i should use that space to focus better on goals and practical things (i had a huge workload in that period) so i was trying to remember my agenda for the week, and when the image appeared, the words were being erased from the page. My mind was just blank. Unlimited space with no meaning attached to it. It was the most relaxing moment i have lived in the last years.

One day this content will leave space out. There is a place inside me where, as Blaga was saying, nu strivesc corola de minuni a lumii si nu ucid cu mintea tainele ce le intalnesc in ea.

Ina, ultimate freedom of inner space

 

One

One life, you gotta do what you should.  And you should be who you are.

A couple of years ago, someone asked me in an interview a standard question : what’s your biggest minus? And i remember i answered  that i just can’t not be myself. I was not reffering to behavior, i was reffering to my essence. Today i realized it’s still true. Of course, i can fool myself, i can tell myself stories to justify mistakes, i can voluntarily forget things, i can play with my own mind. But i can’t not be who i am. When it comes to my core, i can maybe call it soul, that i have no control over.

For a couple of years now, i’m consciously growing up.  don’t find it easy to define an adult life in this times, mainly because the majority of models out there bring more confusion to me than direction. I fell in traps and i started to believe in what i have to do just because it’s time, i approached compromises with a so called maturity and called it negotiation. I re-considered some never again sort of decisions just because circumstantially they made more sense.

Today i was talking with a friend about the business environment and she as telling me that the business environment is rational and cold and that we have to accept that and adapt to it. And while i can accept that and respect its way, i couldn’t adapt to it, it just isn’t me. Maybe for 1-2 years, for money, for whatever reasons, but i will always consider that like a parenthesis in my life.

Some people would call that imaturity, lack of adaptability to the world as it is, there are several judgement that one can have on this and while i agree that there are mature and imature ways to behave and approach certain situations, i don’t agree that maturity is a label to be attached to a decision that comes from the essence of who you are.

I don’t think growing up means adapting to society, i think it’s the best moment when you can get closer to who you are and have the courage to express that in a constructive way. When a tree grows, no one tell it needs to become a flower, as a duck doesn’t need to become a horse. What would i need to become anyone but myself?

I realized that regardless of what i might do, until i’m capable of living a sustainable life based on who i am, i’m just playing small. And when i’m really honest to myself, i know it.

Ina, one life you gotta do what you should

 

Girl in the mirror: friend.

I have read an interesting quote of Deepak Chopra on his twitter a couple of days ago, he was saying ” To be authentic, you have to be everything that you are, omitting nothing. Within everyone there is light/shadow, good/evil, love/hate.” It  really made me think.

There is tons of literature out there that encourages us to think positively, to control our thoughts, to switch to happiness when we feel sad, all bunch of things. Basically, at every corner we are told we should fight our dark side and then we are being given several tips on how we go about doing that. And then you have this fellow showing up and telling his twitter followers that in order to be authentic you should be yourself, with all good and bad.

I have spent all my life trying to avoid feeling bad, denying emotions, and most often exagerrating them because of my fear to live with them. I successfully managed to fight my own self, hate parts of me that i considered made me weak, live in denial. I was in my own eyes and in the eyes of others the Dancer in the Dark (cool movie with Bjork btw) and i remember i use to be proud of myself for being able to fight the dark.

What i have discovered just recently is that i was running my own battle there. By not accepting what was, i was creating a lot of dark or i was exaggerating the existent one. I was fighting against the curve and the only prize i was getting when i was arriving up hill was nothing more than my own grratitude that i finally made it. Like small kids that play with imaginary characters, i was fighting withg my imaginary enemies, losing for a while and then winning in the end. No matter from what perspective i look at it now, it was  just me fighting my own self, no winners, no loosers.  What was i defending and whom was i fighting against in the end?

This pattern keep coming back to me, in various ways, to try to get me again in the realm of bad things that need to be fought, and there are times when i fall into it again. But somehow, i feel this ride is not working for me anymore, i’m sick of the same ride over and over. I don’t say it’s easy to get out of it, but what if i’ll take myself exactly as i am, accept and recognize every part of me, and live with it for a while? What if i try at least? What if i don’t judge myself if i don’t manage to do so? What if i take myself easy? Would it be the end of the world? In which ways will the awareness over the whole thing enable me to act differently?

What if just the thought of it will make it happen?