There’s nothing wrong with you!

In all the work I’ve been doing over the last few years, I keep coming back to a central myth that is so deep in our human conditioning it’s hard to shift. The myth is: If things go wrong there must be something wrong with you.

I want to bust this myth wide open and have a look at it. It really doesn’t help. Creating through challenging times is difficult enough without adding another layer of self-blame or self-doubt.

I’ll start with a current example from my life. I’ve been having trouble recently with my internet connection. I’m sure you can relate to that, it happens to all of us at some time. It’s been very frustrating, with the signal fading and cutting out on and off all day, or working perfectly for a few days and then, just when I need to rely on it for that special call or interview, now it’s gone again. This is stressful, and when we’re stressed we tend to revert to old patterns. In this case, I first became obsessively hooked on trying to fix it, repeating the same strategies over and over. Soon, I saw the folly in this and took a step back, turning my attention to becoming calm, mindful, inventive and solutions-oriented.

I began to reflect on how these interruptions in the internet signal are also mirrored within my own mind. Most of us are not fully connected all of the time; our consciousness waxes and wanes. Now we’re here, now we’re gone. And it seems to me that for those of us on a conscious path, this is the state of the art at the moment. We’re learning how to become stable in a new level of inter-connected consciousness in which we can stay creative within the disturbed and fragmented world we are part of. It’s truly a heroic journey.

I think we’ve been sold a number of myths which add to the difficulty. These have come both from the consumer culture and from spiritual and personal growth teachings.

For example, when my conscious spiritual path found me twenty-five years ago, I like so many others, set off on a quest for enlightenment. I thought this was a destination I would finally arrive at – maybe a lifetime or three down the track – a stable state of bliss in which all suffering would be at an end. Well perhaps… but over the years I’ve come to see it all rather differently. I no longer think in terms of a final goal but of a process of gradual awakening, rather like the opening of a flower. Through this process, we have the opportunity, as spiritual beings having a human experience, to connect with, and grow into, more and more of our essential wholeness. This requires experiencing more of who we are and what is here now, rather than trying to get somewhere or trying to fix those parts of ourselves that are inconvenient. It’s an opening, an allowing, a letting go, a relaxing, a being present with what is, a releasing of what no longer serves us, a making space, a resting in the unknown.

This process of awakening into a more integrated, unified consciousness; this becoming more whole, is fabulously exciting and also deeply challenging. Far from reaching a stable state, I find I’m continually in a process of expanding and contracting – like the breath, or the waves on the shore, or the waxing and waning moon. One day, I’m open and expanded and I can marvel at the big picture in which everything is perfectly harmonised and synchronised. The next day I may be more contracted and stressed and feel disconnected from the source of life. Recently, the process is quickening and I can experience both states within hours or minutes. Just like my internet connection fading in and out.

For a long time this has been my normal and one of the things I am learning from it, is to avoid getting attached to either state. So when I’m feeling expansive I relax into it but don’t take any credit for my good fortune, and when I’m feeling stressed, I remind myself this too will pass, and I don’t take it personally.

When you’re feeling less than you know you can be DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY, IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU!!!

It’s simply the breath of life moving through you, informing you, touching your mind and your emotions.

Use each contraction to discern what needs to be released from your emotional body or from your mind. Use it as an opportunity to breathe and relax and do your consciousness practices, but please don’t use it to blame, criticise and judge yourself. Only self-love and acceptance will release the flow of energy, and the movement towards wholeness again.

In other words, there will be days when you feel more connected, inspired, well and contented. And there will be days when you appear to lose the connection with the source of well-being. This is normal. It’s life.

The consumer culture has tried to brainwash us into the belief that life should be fabulous all the time, that we deserve it, and if that’s not what’s happening we should do something to fix it – go on a trip, find a new partner. Why not go out and buy all those goodies to fill the hole inside? Let’s plug our inner emptiness with food, alcohol, sex, drugs, fashion, toys and over-work, to keep the world of commerce turning.

Instead, a different and more radical choice is to learn to sit with our emptiness, to face our unhappiness and anxiety; to get to know whatever monsters we believe are lurking in our inner world. That’s what I mean by Sitting with Death – it’s a choice to sit with our most difficult, intense, challenging, most vulnerable feelings – and to welcome them home into the community of our being.

I read recently that Deepak Chopra, someone whose work I admire, was offering a programme on how to transcend our emotions. I don’t think transcending our emotions is what we, as individuals or as a collective, need. Rather, in my experience it would serve us more to make the choice to descend into our emotions, to become more embodied, more fully connected, more fully here, awake and alive.

Easier said than done, I know. But that’s my current mission, and if any of this rings true for you, there will be lots of opportunities coming up soon to join me in this exploration of Sitting with Death and Choosing Life.