Les Miserables

Last month i’ve seen Les Miserables theatre play, and it was very interesting experience, mostly because it was all in French.  Since i didn’t understand anything they were saying, i was focused just on the feelings that the actors were transmitting and what i found fascinating is that the content really didn’t matter. All the time, there were different topics of concern and suffering, and although they were different, the outcome was always the same.

Sometimes i look at myself and i realize, through observing my mind, that the main problem i have is not the content, but the structure of my mind. The subject of suffering changes, but the result of it is always the same. Yes, teh intensity varies, but its variation depends just on my awareness or identification with it. 3 years ago i had some fears and pains, now others have taken their place, the show just goes on. And you don’t even need words to understand, it’s enough to watch it for a bit in order to get the point.

And truth as it appears to me in this moment, is that there is absolutely no point to it. Yes, most of the times growth comes with pain attached to it. And if we would stop with the pain there it would be great. But no, the mind needs to fear, to be threatened, to question, to disagree, to resent. And not because there are reasons, just because that’s how it works.

Ina, how free are we really?

 

2012

Today a read a small book written based on the visions of one person about what will happen from 2009 to 2021, with a big climax around 2012. I’ve heard about this big DL of humanity for a long time, and i gave more or less credit to it.

Maybe my limited comfortable capacity can’t fully grasp most of the horrors that several religious texts offer us, but i do think that something will happen. Maybe not in 2012, maybe later. Something will happen because we can’t make it as we are now. Concerned just about ourselves and the ones close to us, always waiting for the future to come and save us, in an unjustified need to accumulate and consume more and more, lacking of empathy compassion for all living beings and for the planet that is our home.

The book i read today was exagerrated, nevertheless is brought back to my attention some interesting points that i should meditate more on. The fact that most of the humanity that has the power to change something is numb or indifferent. The fact that all the others that started to develop caring still lack of integrity to promote the change, the world is full of environmentalist that eat meat and leave their lights opened when they leave. The fact that the future is in continuous creation and can be strongly influenced by those who have the courage to do whatever it takes to achieve that. The fact that we chose to be here now and live through or beyond this.

I’m far from understanding what this new shift in consciousness will bring about, but i do want to understand how i can contribute to it. And by I,  i don’t reffer to this identity that i created in the last 25 years and that i hold on so dearly to, i  reffer to the truth that lies beyond that. I want to know this truth.

Ina, life happens for a reason

 

You’ll follow me down

I suffer of a disease. It manifests every month or so, and when it does, it’s hard not to get in the grip of it. Under its influence i become someone i don’t recognize as being myself. I exagerrate everything, every single fact becomes huge and disturbing, all my negative emotions come out and get in my mind where my thoughts go crazy with no real reason. In these moments, i suffer of the disease of the pain body.

The pain body is an emotional creature that lives inside me and thrives on all the events from the outside world that it can feed on, more excatly everything that can cause me pain in some way. The pain body consists of unexpressed emotions that i hold inside since i was born and which i didn’t yet recognize or accept within myself. It is also the emotional aspect of my ego, whenever my ego is being hurt, there goes my pain body rising. I have observed within myself, that the main trigger is my ego being hurt, that’s the moment when my pain body arises and then crawls to every single disturbing fact from outside to feed itself. Observing that its there delays the procesz, but somehow i still fall in the grip of it. Maybe i have a pretty dense pain body, or maybe i’m not conscious enough to avoi fallin into it.

The main issue with this disease, it’s not my personal form of suffering that i have to go through while i’m in its grip, what bothers me most is that it transforms me into this difficult person, that is very hard to handle for others and that most of the time, will try to get others in the suffering as well. I have observed this best in my own relationship, where i go crazy emotionally and i keep trying to get Darren to understand my exagerrated emotions. The pain body is very sly, after the attack, i rewind facts in my mind and i’m amazed by the strategies it has. It does everything to get the other to follow it down to the inner hell of fear, anquish, threats, etc. Fortunately in my case, Darren is very resilient and wise when dealing with it.

The pain body can be yours from your life story, can be inherited from your mum, your dad or both, from your granmother and all the adults you came in contact with as a child, from your own nation, race or even gender. It says nothing more about yourself than the fact that you are not yet trully aware of your real essence hence you identify yourself with the wrong things and that’s where you can be attacked.

This apparently horrible entity has a main advantage, it gives you the possibility to be truly aware of yourself, as my friend Eckhart says, used well, it becomes fuel for consciousness.

Ina, go beyond or through it

 

Losing my religion

When i was about 2 years old and i was playing hide and seek with my mum, i was covering my eyes, that was my hiding techinique. As if since i was not seing anything, i was also invisible for the world. Today i have been wishing i were that child, even if for just a few moments.

It’s funny how, once you are in this game of adulthood, you stay in the game. You can’t really escape it, and even if you are outside it, your nature calls you back in it. You need to work, to prove yourself, to sustain yourself, to contribute to the society by assuming your piece of responsibility and acting upon it. It makes no difference anymore if you like it or not, that’s how things go and you go with them.

The circumstances now are not easy for anyone, nevertheless, some were more prepared than other to cope with them, both in emotional and real terms. My generation, or at least me and most of my friends, were raised to choose for ourselves and we were given that space to choose. According to what you like, or what you’d like. We were talking about calling, about self actualization, about how we can achieve our full potential and about which job would suit that best. The job was there either to serve a bigger purpose, to serve who you are as individual, or to bring you enough money to sustain a cool lifestyle.

The reality now strikes everyone, but somehow it strikes most this generation that grew up in the la la land and is now forced to fall to Earth. Not all of us of course, but the majority yes. If 2 years ago companies were fighting for my profile, for a job that made sense for my resume and that was well paid, this is not really happening now, although i have more experience than before. If things use to happen way faster, now the uncertainty and fears of everyone make everything freeze or move very slow.

Not only i’m not emotionally fit for this game, but i’m also not mentally fit, in the sense that my beliefs are way too positive and too pinkish for this reality. And these beliefs affect my decision-making process and more broadly, the way i perceive this whole reality and what importance i give to it. I don’t feel ready for this, but this doesn’t really matter, as it’s happening already. Life is bigger, way too bigger than me.

Ina,  i’m too young that’s my fault

 

Hide and seek

Last weekend i had a very meaningful conversation with a very inspiring friend. He told me a lot of things that blew my mind, but at one point something he saidresonated deeply within myself  “By denying your emotions, you let go of your intuition to your instinct.”

It’s been on the back of my mind for a week now, repeating over and over in the background. I knew that by denying my emotions i can get sick but i never looked at it from this angle. I wonder how many times in my life i must have mistaken intuition for instict. How many times have i kept myself away from this source of intuition just because i was not brave enough to face my fears?

My mind doesn’t like fears, when i feel things i don’t like feeling my mind will feel threatened and will do anything it can in order to make them go away. I will crawl away from the emotions, hang on to my thoughts and hope everything will go away. Pretty reactive of me. What the repetition of this pattern taught me is that being spared is way different than being saved.

Choosing not to smell the trash under the carpet when it’s there an you know it, it’s like playing hide and seek with yourself. The winner is always also the looser. Easy to talk though and not so easy to manage it when you’re in the grip of it. Emotions are not easy to handle because they involve letting go of the ground of thought where we feel safe and flowing into the sea.  It involves flow not control, understanding not judgement. It’s frightning, more than it’s risky. It makes no sense for the mind, but there is a certain calling from the soul to get in, since it’s anyways there already.

And until that calling is strong enough, i hide in my mind and seek for answers about my emotions while we have no idea what i’m rationalizing about. I wonder if real self awareness require thoughts or just conscious awareness.

Ina, dreaming of intuition 🙂

 

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?