“End your Bout with all the Doubt”

Aside

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Khalil Gibran

Ever felt the silent crawling of doubt on you?

It is really interesting how it starts with a small, tiny thought and without any warning it starts affecting your whole thought process and consequently engulfs your actions and every walking step of your life. It’s like a web which multiplies manifolds by itself.

We are human beings and doubt is actually a part of who we are. We can’t really be away from it. It helps us seek truth.

But what happens when doubt prevails without  facts. A lot of times, doubt stops us from taking risks, believing in ourselves and our capabilities. We start by sowing a seed of doubt in our thinking process and in no time it grows itself into a tree which starts taking decisions on our behalf. Without seeking the truth, we follow our doubts blindly leading to misery, sorrowfulness and end up limiting our growth.

“What if…” becomes the starting point of every thought which emerges within us. We create our own stories with the results already decided. This makes our actions and reactions towards people and situations more negative. We dread being in positive environment because doubt has conveniently put blinders on us.

May be when you’ll read this, you would be able to recognize some patterns in yourself. The only solution in such situation is, TAKING THE LEAP OF FAITH. 

Faith in the almighty. Faith in a Power that is beyond you and faith in whatever happens, happens for the best. This step of yours will stop feeding your doubts and ceases its growth and power on you. You start taking things objectively leading to sending positive vibes and restating faith in yourself.

Let go of your doubt with step towards faith!

 

 

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Shut your Mind, Listen to your Heart!

“I want to go to McDonald’s and think that it’s a four-star restaurant.

I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make a sidewalk with rocks.

I want to think M&M’s are better than money because you can eat them.

I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer’s day.

I want to return to a time when life was simple. When all you knew were colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, but that didn’t bother you, because you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you didn’t care.

All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.

I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good. I want to believe that anything is possible.

I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.”- Unknown

Have you really observed a child, he is blessed with the power of innocence and love. He does what he feels like regardless of whether he is making the right moves or not. He is governed by his Heart. I agree that you’ve to grow up and learn the way of the world, but in this learning we are also learning to be shrewd, opportunist and gaining baggage of stress?

Our adult life has become a chess board, where we are always playing against something or someone. There is always a race going on in which we’ve to be on top, in return even if it means stepping over someone else’s territory, we don’t mind. The world has taught us to think, see our gain in a situation and move forward to achieve.

Sadly, in all of this we lose our innate nature of trust, acceptance, unconditional love and the beautiful gift of innocence! We become slaves of our reasoning and mind. We all have the gift of having an inner voice. The voice which guides us, shows us the path of righteousness. We keep muffling that voice everyday, till we become accustomed to living without even realizing it is there.

We have become a human machine, happiness is there but with a condition. We become happy but it is so short-lived because it is always dependent on an outer reason, it seldom comes from within.

When we are born we are not bound with chains. We are like a free bird, which knows how to fly high and be itself but as we grow social conditioning starts tying us in chains. We have to be logical and find reasons in everything. This limits us to experience the whole realm of the beauty of life, as anything which goes beyond our explanation, is trashed by our mind. We also devoid ourselves from a range of emotions because that doesn’t go with our image of a reasonable adult.

When was the last time you heard your heart’s voice?

I know we have priorities and our duties, I am not saying leave all of it . What I am trying to convey here is learning to respond to these situations with the help of the voice which lies within you. I know it is difficult to rely on a voice for an important decision, so why not start with small matters and test the results. Go for a combination of both, strike the right balance!

The world is running after spirituality. What is it? It is not a huge complex phenomenon but a simple connection to oneself. If you want to minimize the inner turbulence, start depending on your inner strength. If something doesn’t make sense to you or you are not comfortable with a decision, pause and reflect and choose the path shown by your heart.

Your brain could let you down but your heart would never! When you’ll start living in harmony with yourself, you’ll see how it will spread around you…It is a ripple effect.

Related articles

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We and our Addictions

Whenever we use the word addiction, it is generally associated with a substance. The picture which comes to our mind is of someone in a secluded place, in a grave kind of state, leading a sorry life.    

But, the addiction I am going to talk about today is something closer to home. I am going to talk about the thing or behavior which is beyond our control, which we understand we need to get rid of but somehow aren’t able to bring ourselves to do it. It can be our addiction to junk food, getting involved with the wrong kind of guy, not able to manage time effectively and so on.

Before going on, think of a behavior or thing which you are making constant resolutions to change or give up but it is not happening.

I’ll take the  example of  ‘loosing your cool on a loved one ‘, even when we know we shouldn’t do it as it hurts us too, we are not able to control ourselves. We have done our share of talking to ourselves, made a pact that the next time if a situation like this is going to rise, we won’t repeat what we did the last time…. But the same or worse happens when the real situation comes. It feels it is beyond our control, something which is not in our hands.

The reason for the need for change in behavior or thing usually is a consequence or a negative outcome we are facing due to it. We face the results, make promises to ourselves on not going on the same path again but everything falls flat on our face as soon as we are in front of our problem behavior or thing.

Now, picture a person, you call an addict. Is there a difference between him and us? You’ll say certainly, for being an addict there need to be a substance.

You are right but what about the behavior difference?

• An addict has no control over the substance, the same is the situation with us, as far as, the behavior we need to work on is concerned.
• An addict is not able to do anything about his addiction even after consequences and same goes for us.
• An addict operates on immediate gratification and we are not far behind. We indulge in the behavior because it is something which is giving us immediate relief though it may hurt in the long run.
• As an addict we are also developing a tolerance for that behavior or thing. The intensity keeps on getting worse.

It is perfectly fine to be a little doubtful about your addiction after this. Don’t worry this is not a post to make you feel bad about yourself but the aim is to challenge ourselves, to work on us and grow as an individual.

Even if we accept that we are powerless over a certain behavior or thing, what is the next step. I’ll say, something very similar to the treatment of chemical dependency. You should not mess with this certain behavior.

I have seen, in the course of my practice, it’s a vicious cycle. Until and unless you are not in it you are fine but the moment you indulge in the behavior/thing, you lose all control. You become an audience and witness yourself repeating the behavior/thing again and again. Enable yourself by not experimenting with this certain problem.

Going back to our example, of losing your cool on a loved one. If you feel a situation which could make you upset is rising, walk away. Don’t think that let me convey this message in a decent way and leave. Because chances are you’ll start on the vicious cycle, and won’t be able to make your point and leave but end up losing your temper again.

I believe God has made us the master of certain things but at the same time we have our challenges. This is the difference between a common man and a saint. We just need to accept the things which are beyond us and leave it to those who could handle it.

Deal with your addiction and stay sober…Renew your Spirit!

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Live the Pain

I am going to start with a belief that we did come to a conclusion from the previous post which talked about feeling the pain. We need to feel the emotional pain, in order to heal, to lead a healthy, balanced life.

As Shirin beautifully described it in our forum, ” Pain like any other emotion needs to be felt and lived through, for it to heal. Not facing it is equivalent to sweeping the dirt under the carpet…it may be hidden for a while, but under the layers it festers and the psychosomatic symptoms reveal themselves as mood swings, depression or even cancer at the physical level. Every emotion needs to be dealt with not pushed aside.”

Another relevant reason to feel the pain, which emerged from a discussion on this same topic is:

If you decide not to feel the pain, you end up developing an avoidant personality. You start filling your emptiness and void with negative choices like substance abuse, gambling etc.

Now, the next question is, if we are ready to feel it, how do we live with this painful emotion?

The first major step in starting this process is ACCEPTANCE. You’ve to accept there is a problem which is causing a negative, unbearable emotion inside you. Without acceptance no other steps could be taken. It is a crucial step because it requires a lot of courage to understand that there are things under this sun which is not under your control but at the same time this process of acceptance is liberating and empowering.

One thing which we can call as the golden rule and need to remember for most of the processes, we discuss here is : Process is something which needs to be worked on an everyday basis. It is not something which can be fixed and kept and acceptance is one of them. Once you’ve started the process of acceptance you actually get in the process of healing.

With acceptance comes the desire to grow, to change for the betterment. You start looking for answers and solutions. The moment we see our pain and feel it, we start living with it. Does that mean I am not doing anything just going through a sad phase?

Actually no, You’re working on your pain by living it and also sometimes by that you are able to the start the process of ” Let Go”. You no longer become scared or uneasy by the word pain which in turn make you live life to its fullest.

Karrie quoted Osho,  “You are sad. Go into your sadness rather than escaping into some activity, into some occupation, rather than going to see a friend or to a movie or turning on the radio or the tv. Rather than escaping from it, turning your back towards it, drop all activity. Close your eyes, go into it, see what it is, why it is — and see without condemning it, because if you condemn you will not be able to see the totality of it. See without judging. If you judge, you will not be able to see the whole of it. Without judgment, without condemnation, without evaluation, just watch it, what it is. Look as if it is a flower, sad; a cloud, dark; but look at it with no judgment so that you can see all the facets of it. And you will be surprised: the deeper you go into it, the more it starts dispersing. If a person can go into his sorrow deeply he will find all sorrow has evaporated. In that evaporation of sorrow is joy, is bliss.”

I found this great piece on internet. It talks about how to live you pain in a constructive way.

Emotional Pain is a three-pronged approach to being with pain fully.  These three prongs included:

Responsibility – How do I respond to pain? The goal here is to respond to pain with honesty, loving acceptance, and soft openness.

Accountability – How am I accounting for my response to pain?

Being accountable for pain is the next step.  This means to account for it or to report about it.  In other words, really looking closely at how you are with your own pain or the pain of others.

Keeping Presence – Learning to open to pain and staying present with pain moment by moment.  Pain is soothed so quickly with simple, open, Presence.  The key here is to completely drop defenses and make sure that you interpret pain as simply pain.

I would like to end this post with a poem written by Glenn Johnson, a beautiful way to summarize our whole discussion;

Poem I recently wrote about pain in male female love relationships.

WOMEN AND MEN
glenn

Thousands of miles away.
Hearts crossing oceans of memories.
A new beginning,

Hope within hope,
Reality or dream . . .
Have we crossed the universe for this chance meeting . . .
What a challenging journey . . .
An ancient history of dreams dreamed then shattered . . .
Lessons of the heart. . .
Joyful expectations of soul intertwining with soul. . .
As naked limbs intertwine with naked limbs in ecstasy. . .
Something gained, something lost, only the heart truly knows. . .
Joyful beginning. . .
Then slow piercing of the heart. . .
Loss of trust. . .
Loss of respect. . .
Loss of love. . .
Why the existence pain. . .
Pain, cruel burden of humanity. . .
God’s punishment for our sins. . .
I know not. . .
I know that pain is not for us to suffer. . .
Pain is God’s gift to us all. . .Peculiar idea. . .
I know not. . .
Humans, go ahead, take all pain from the world and you are lost forever. . .
Pain tells us we are being mistreated. . .
Pain in the face of others says we are doing harm. . .
Pain reminds us of the place we buried our hurt. . . Pain guides us to what we must heal. . .

The maniac, the Hitler, the serial murder knows no pain. . .
When the challenge of pain is denied by us, again we are lost. . .
Pain is God’s gift to us all. . .
It is our salvation. . .

God is truly awesome. . .
Our pain leads us to God’s healing of perfect eternal love. . .
Love leads us to compassion, wishing no one harm or pain. . .
In time, we feel agony and now we know to accept God’s love is to heal our pain.

Go ahead…Indulge in it!

Wait for the last post of this series; Relieve the pain!

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