The thing that screws us up the most in life
I stumbled across a quote a few years ago now, which I was reminded of as the dust settled after the new moon blast of insight.
It goes something like, ‘the thing that screws us up the most in life, is our idea of how it is meant to be’.
This is so true!
And of course inherent within this is the idea of how we have been conditioned to believe it is meant to be so.
This because our conditioned and therefore fixed - and often rigid - mind is often at the crux of our suffering. The ancient yogis knew this, the whole premise of yoga is about reducing our suffering and unlinking our link with pain. More often than not, our pain arises because of our state of mind and its tendency to want to control through fear of the unknown and the uncertain and the patterns that arise because of this.
I stumbled up against another strand of this in my own life just recently. An event happened that was completely out of my control. Eben managed to rack up - and we still don’t quite know how - a substantial amount of credit on the dreaded Roblox, bypassing all security measures so the amount was deducted from my bank account. Panic ensued. Fortunately, my bank and Apple were helpful; this is clearly something that happens regularly and eventually Apple did refund me the majority of the charges, but it took me on quite a journey.
In fact it was a much needed experience, because it gave me the opportunity to witness my own patterning around not being in control. First I went into shock; shock that this had happened and I had been none the wiser - shock then that I hadn’t managed to be in control of this. Then I went into self-criticism and made it all my fault because I hadn’t been ‘on it’ whatever that means. I also criticised myself for my apparent lack of attentive parenting skills.
This giving myself a hard time of course dampened my spirit. It also kicked into being an old pattern of then trying to control everything I could control, as if to find some safety in a world which clearly wasn’t safe because otherwise the whole Apple thing wouldn't have happened in the first place - or so my mind told me, because it had at that moment labelled the experience bad and I must surely then be a bad person for having attracted it in. Of course this is negative and limited thinking, but in that moment I had overlooked that there is always a different side to the coin and that every challenge brings with it a blessing - more on that later.
Furthermore, as with every challenging situation, I was overwhelmed with feelings of anxiety, doubt and fear. It’s like all our fears get triggered just by hitting up against one of them - in this case a fear of losing money, which brought up a fear of being unsafe. This also brought with it doubt about the power of spirit to resolve the situation favourably, even though on some level I sort of knew that the situation would resolve itself, but I was looking for signs to validate this.
I am conscious that when we act on these feelings - let the fear get the better of us and lose our faith in the higher power - that we can split apart from the our spiritual path and start to doubt it or doubt ourselves. My tendency is to doubt myself - shouldn’t I have known better, was my intuition wrong? For many this is when imposter syndrome can kick in, and anxiety which then prevents people from making changes in their lives and living more of their dream. For me, I got stuck in a pattern of anxiety, which caused me to want to control whatever I could control because of the uncomfortable feeling of not being in control.
And yet this is counter productive because then the mind creates even more rigidity and gets stuck in its limited patterning. It is easy to forget the wisdom of patient non-action. In some way I was conscious of this and was grateful to be able to observe my mind as it followed a well trodden path rather than being stuck in it - this is what yoga is teaching us in many ways, the ability to observe, rather than being a victim of our mind, not realising we are not our mind and that we have choice in our thoughts and feelings and therefore our experience of reality.
Not that this made it any an easier process - the path to greater consciousness is anything but easy in fact. This because we have to break through our conditioning which is causing the unhelpful patterns and the fixed mind and the resulting pain and suffering. And this demands that we let go. We have to let go of all we thought and believed to be true, to allow something deeper to come in stead. But we don’t like letting go because the unknown is scary.
Yet our suffering can become so painful that we realise there is little choice in holding on. This is when we expand consciously. When we give it up. We stop trying to think our way through something and allow the benevolent and grace of the universe to enter our lives instead - I might argue this is just the higher self being finally allowed expression. This is a metamorphic process, like the butterfly exiting the cocoon, like the breaking of the casing of the seed, nature has many examples. Essentially, the breaking down needs us to be still and quiet, accepting our reality rather than fighting against it and instead weathering the storm patiently.
I was trying to explain this process to a client the other day. Because once we have caught our patterns, then we need to do something about them. I tend to dig deeper into spiritual practice, prioritising time on my mat, engaging in breathing exercises, going for long walks, being outside, getting in the sea, baking, doing things with my hands, and settling into the physical discomfort of the feelings as they arise.
I was feeling anxious. I knew it was part of the process, but it is still a horrible feeling. However, rather than turn away from it, I knew I needed to turn deeper into it. I could feel it deep in my stomach, an unsettling feeling that makes me want to get busy or run, anything to distract myself from it. But it is important that we don’t turn from it, that we sit into it instead, really feel it and allow it its expression.
It is also helpful to talk to it, to the mind which is creating it. So in this instance I kept repeating to myself “thank you mind for trying to keep me safe. I know you are trying to help, but it isn’t helpful anymore, I can just be with my experiences as they arise without having to feel anxious”. After all anxiety is just a form of fear manifesting, when the mind is challenged because it doesn’t feel in control and therefore safe.
Ideally we are trying to train the mind to be OK with the unknown and the uncertain. Then we can just be with our experiences as they arise, without labelling them good/bad, right/wrong, for example, or in any way allowing the mind to have power over us.
Eventually, working with the mind in this way, of noticing the feeling, of challenging the thoughts and any limited beliefs which arise, we can get to a point where we can actually laugh compassionately at the mind for it’s attempts to keep us safe - in this way we can befriend it rather than judge it, berate it or in any way limit our experience.
Thus, the more I worked with it, and challenged whatever thoughts and limiting beliefs were arising such as “Am I really unsafe? No”, “Am I really going to lose all my money? No”. “Is there any evidence to suggest that I am unsafe? No”, “Is there any evidence that I will lose all my money? No”, the more the mind lets go of its grip.
Of course we (the mind) is not in control, how can it be. The universe will always send challenges and curved balls to remind us of this. Not to say we don’t do all we can to try to control things, but ultimately we squander copious amounts of energy in trying to make things the ‘right’ way whatever that is. This because you're ‘right’ and my ‘right’ are no doubt totally different, so it is ALL an illusion anyway, which keeps us trapped. At some point we have top break free, especially if we are keen to evolve in this lifetime.
In many ways we are up against our indoctrination, our false belief that there is a right way to live our lives. I am convinced part of this arises because of our fear of getting it wrong and being bad and therefore needing punishment and if we are not careful ending up in hell, because this notion lives in our psyche whether we are religious or not. But really this is a benevolent universe, it knows only kindness, it is just our mind that labels things good or bad, right or wrong, as my previous blog post touched upon.
I came to realise that the Apple situation actually brought a huge gift because life had to change - it was a wake up call on many levels, the universe intervened and life has not been the same ever since. The iPad went in the drawer and is still there now. Eben hasn’t asked for it once, instead he has found other activities to entertain himself that do not dumb him down. I have made more effort to be offline and this has created a much needed re-prioritisation in how I live my life.
Ultimately, there is now space. And space of course is needed to make change and for the us to create a new way of living. And I can tell you one thing - when we have managed to cultivate more space in our lives we absolutely don’t want to give it up. We no longer want to over plan or over commit, we no longer want to fill our diary, we no longer want to waste our precious time here on earth doing things that our mind tells us to do but our soul is not the slightest bit interested in.
Ultimately though, this whole process helped me to see very clearly that our idea of how we think it should be is one of the greatest obstacles to our inner peace. Not only because we then try to control our reality to make it what we think it should be, opposed to just accepting it as it is, which inevitably creates stress, but because we also play roles, behaving in ways we think we should behave rather than just being ourselves regardless of the situation. Furthermore role playing becomes exhausting, and creates greater stress, as we mask to the world.
The minute we give this ALL up and accept reality as it is, and ourselves as we are, warts and all, is the minute that things change for us, and our stress starts dropping away. This involves honesty, being very honest with ourselves about the way we are living, the choices we are making, and the stories we are telling ourselves that create our reality. At some point we have to let go of the many boxes we have created, to make our life neat and orderly, at least in our mind.
I knew my boxes needed to change because I was getting bored, but I didn’t know how to change them. So I am grateful to the universe for ushering in the the opportunity for change, to break down any fixed ideas about how it should be. It wasn’t in the way I might have liked, but in a way that has been extremely helpful. I have had to let go of my idea how I thought it should be, to allow something else to come in - and that something else is freedom - freedom to let life unfold as a continous experience and freedom to be myself regardless of the situation.
Thus, I am grateful to Eben and Elijah for continuously showing me another way, for unsticking me from more of my limited thinking and unconscious and unhelpful behaviours. I am also grateful to the universe for showing me that I am not in control as much as I might like to think that I am. And I am indebted to the Scaravelli-inspired approach to yoga which encourages me to let go of my fixed mind, and especially as it applies to my yoga practice - there is no one way or right way, just moments constantly unfolding and dancing in my body.
I hope that my honest sharing might help you if you are up against your fixed mind and idea of how life should be - how your children should present themselves, how your partner should behave, how your home should look, what role you should play to earn money, how you should ‘be’ in this world, what masks you wear and just let go and flow, remembering that we are not in control, there is always wiggle room and this wiggle room allows greater consciousness and the beautiful gift of freedom.
Love Emma x
