The Body-Love Paradox – for anyone stuck somewhere between ‘I love myself the way I am’ and ‘Do plastic surgeons take credit cards?’

On any given day in your life, I bet you receive the message – subtly or blatantly, once or many times – that your body needs improvement. In one form or another – whether it is to do with your weight, your ageing, your fitness, your style, your energy-levels, your six-pack, your health or the whiteness of your teeth – it is a generally accepted (and money-making) notion that your body should be better than it is now.

Those of us so-inclined absorb these ‘should’ messages from:

• The conversations and behaviour of people around us
• Images in the media
• Experts (doctors, dieticians, medical aids, gyms, supplement-sellers etc)

The perfection of the body is a time-and-culture-specific obsession that we have accepted as normal, even healthy. Yet, interestingly, with more focus, information and resources than ever before directed at ‘health and wellness’ (which is often, more accurately, about perfection and control), we are more out of balance and unhealthy as a culture than probably ever before.

I cannot see the value in wholeheartedly prostrating yourself to anyone else’s opinions, society’s (fickle) aesthetics or the ever-changing knowledge of experts. To do so not only disempowers you, it also drives a wedge between your mind and the real, natural desires of your body.

It’s very hard to tune in to your body’s natural tastes, built-in balancing signals, unique sexual expression and its own preferences for movement when you are privileging the external conversation (i.e. the one that OTHER PEOPLE are having about your body) over the internal conversation. This internal conversation with your body (which some really lucky people seem to just do naturally, though I am not one of them) is where you receive the signals about being full or hungry, which specific foods would most light you up at any moment, how your system wants to move at any given time, where and how much stress you are carrying, whether or not you are truly attracted to somebody or something and so on. Vital information! Yet almost impossible to decipher while we place so much stock on the externally-focused comparison between where we are and where we ‘should’ be.

In the light of this overwhelming and shaming bombardment of ‘should’ messages, I really do understand (and have gone there myself) the impulse to go right the other way and say ‘screw you’ to all the ideals, rules and social conventions about how we should eat, exercise and look. Resist the shallowness, love yourself the way you are and all that.

Alternative messages, like these below, are finding an increasingly bigger voice and more appreciative audience, the more the rules about bodies get shoved down our throats:

• All bodies are beautiful the way they are
• It doesn’t matter what you look like, who you are is more important
• Fat is a feminist issue
• Beauty is a subjective and political idea used to keep people (esp women) ashamed and powerless

I happen to believe all the above statements, and I can’t think of much that is more boring than spending the majority of my energy, thoughts, money and time on my looks.

However (and it’s a big however), I also cannot just dismiss the imbalance and suffering that comes from emotional eating, addictions, and a deep-seated resistance to movement. If your pain is showing up in your body, this is not simply something to accept and pretend is all about society’s shallowness.

That leaves us (as a commitment to truth inevitably does) facing a paradox:

Do I love my body just the way it is OR

Do I get going to improve it?

The only answer to this paradox (and you’ll have to stretch past your left brain for a minute), is ‘yes’. To both.

I recognise that these two options appear to be contradictory and mutually exclusive, but that is only a problem to the intellect. Seriously. The heart, spirit and body can all happily accept and make use of contradiction which, in this case, means that it is quite possible to choose love and real gratitude for every inch of your current body, while also daring yourself to get real and tell the full truth about why, how and what we eat, drink, snort, rest, have sex, touch, exercise and all the other marvelous pleasures and possibilities a body has.

So many of our thoughts and habits related to our bodies are in shadow, in shame, and are secrets that only we (and maybe our housemates) know. We keep our bodies covered up, ensuring that they are both despised and fetishised at the same time. This is why, on Embody, we work actively with inter alia these two principles:

1. Only that which is fully seen can be fully loved and
2. You can only transform that which you love (not hate!)

Most of the time we try to run our lives on exactly the opposite principles of these two (admittedly, startling) truths, but Embody (my signature body-love workshop) works the other way round. In a spirit of gentleness, respect and courage we encourage you to let yourself be heard and seen and, insodoing, uncover the truths that your body is speaking on your behalf: what it is grieving or raging against or desiring or holding onto on your behalf.

Through this process you can reach a quiet and consistent peace, forgiving (and perhaps even celebrating!) your body for where it’s at. But this acceptance doesn’t mean you give yourself license to eat mindlessly, ignore your natural pleasure in moving or pretend that all your choices make you happy! The fundamental difference is that you now make new decisions, not because you abhore what you are, but because you are committed to your own joy.

Only from this place, followed by a set of new, consistent choices, can you take your body to different (and sustainable) levels of energy, play, grace and strength.

(Angela’s radical EMBODY workshop runs twice more in 2011 on 18-20 November and 2 – 4 December. For more information see http://angeladeutschmann.com/workshops/embody.htm)

My R10 000.00 Shadow

On the morning of writing this I happened to be the seventh lucky caller into a local talk radio show, 702, for a competition to win R10 000.00. Those of you who tune into this station know how enviable it is to get to play and even the presenter, John Robbie, greeted me by saying ‘a whole lot of people hate you at this moment!” I was delighted, excited and confident but ended up not knowing the answer to the one question that would have won it. My feelings over the course of the morning were fascinating to observe. The strongest and most uncomfortable one was a sense of having let people down. I actually found myself wanting to apologise to my husband and domestic worker. Apologise?! For not knowing an answer? It has now become very clear to me that I fear that I will let people down (my loved ones and the world) if I don’t always have the right answer.

This realisation is both horrible and glorious. It shows me clearly that I have been in the grip of the helper / teacher / knower archetype as a means of avoiding something I don’t want to ever allow: letting people down and what will happen to my sense of self if I do. Ironically, needing to always have the right answer is actually a disservice to me and the people I’d love to empower. It means I don’t give myself enough chance to ponder something, to play in the fertile field of the unknown for long enough to discover something totally new and possibly even more valuable.

The glorious part of this is that now I know and, as all those who have seriously embarked on shadow work will tell you, even in just the naming of something there is freedom from it. Does this mean I should stop being a teacher? No. Does it mean I need to try and let people down now? No. It means I need to embrace the thing I fear most i.e. make peace with the fact that I will definitely let people down even when I don’t intend to, and realise that, while that will hurt my ego, it doesn’t say anything about my real worthiness. Now that’s a release worth R10 000.00

Personal Growth – let’s get some things straight

I’m in my eighth year of being a personal growth teacher, speaker and writer. Not only is this my job, it’s also what I read most, talk incessantly about with my husband and friends and it’s significantly informed the approach I take to raising our children. Personal growth is even what I do for fun, for heaven’s sake, sad as that may understandably seem to some. Along the way – thanks to my channelling, hours spent with clients and personal experience (read: mistakes!) – I’ve begun to distill what the essence of this journey is for me and to distinguish it from the huge industry of self-improvement available to us in bookshops, workshop venues and therapy rooms these days. Here are a few things I want to set straight. I hope they help you interrogate the jargon, own the journey and have more fun.
• Personal growth is a process of emergence, not improvement. It is not about miraculous manifestation or turning you into what you aren’t but letting go of the layers of defense you have inevitably put up between you and reality, including between you and yourself
• Your role in this journey and in this universe is creator – not puppet, not seeker, not student. You are giving meaning to life, not finding it
• The goal of personal – or spiritual – growth is wholeness, not goodness. We go on a journey of self-discovery in order to be more real, not to try and be perfect (whatever that is)
• As such, being on a spiritual journey should result in being more vulnerable, honest and able to face painful truths – not more superior, withdrawn and sure of our rightness. It should allow us to sit fully awake inside our lives and relationships rather than encourage us to float above them
• There are as many ways to experience and express our full selves as there are people. My preferred way to navigate is through joy and being in close contact with divinity, but there can be equal value in choosing religion, suffering or nature as your path. Do yourself and others a favour by not expecting them to grow in exactly the same way as you have
• Personal growth is not about making an impressive or successful life, much as that is how it often gets sold. There will always be parts of your life that contrast your preferences and no amount of affirmation or enlightenment is going to change that because contrast is the currency of creation. The masterpiece you are creating is you, not your life
• Transcendent experiences, yummy as they are, are not enough for true change. Without facing yourself and your past squarely, owning and feeling all of your experience and pain, no amount of meditation, peak spiritual experience or positive thinking for that matter is going to truly move you forward in an authentic way
• That said, personal growth is not a linear, structured process of ticking off certain boxes and then arriving at the finish line. Much as we westerners like to be goal-oriented about everything, including our spirituality, the evolution process has its own rhythm, its own grace and its own timing which must also be noticed and honoured
• The most graceful way to grow (whether at any moment that means it’s time to forgive or take new action or strengthen your intuition) is to clearly and regularly demonstrate permission for this – in whichever way you can with whatever is available to you – and then listen to life’s response
• There is a time and place for teachers (whether those are therapists, facilitators, friends or writers) and there is also a time and place for the conversation to purely be between you and yourself, or your divinity, with no third parties involved
• Judge workshops, therapies, books and teachers by the effect they actually have on you not by who or what they happen to be: is this empowering, energising, loving? Do I feel inspired, real, truthful, respected here?
• Most importantly, does the teacher / writer / facilitator consider me an equal and consider that I actually know my own way better than he or she does?
• Nothing specific is needed, required or obligatory on a personal growth path, and there is no urgency or rush. Think twice before trusting teachers who tell you so
• Likewise, there is nothing on earth that you are obliged to do in order to have lived a full, conscious, joyful, purposeful life. Your purpose lies in who you become, not the job you do, successes you attain or good deeds you undertake
• Every athlete knows there is as much value in resting muscles you wish to strengthen as there is in using them. Personal growth is the same. If you’re in a cycle of workshops, therapy or self-help literature or feeling what I call ‘improvement fatigue’, take a break. Focus on walking or poetry as a tool for joy, or painting your toenails for that matter. Nothing is spiritual and nothing is unspiritual unless you make it so (see second bullet!)
• Have fun with your spirituality! Play with it rather than labour at it. Be light about your faults, your issues, even your purpose. You cannot create light in the world by being heavy, no matter how noble or spiritual that may appear
• Does personal growth ever end? I don’t know. Many of us have experienced being at the point where there is no more drama, where we take absolute responsibility for how we feel and respond and where the undercurrent of everyday life really is joy. But is that the end of challenge, risk, stretch? Oh no! It may well be the beginning.

From Puppet to Pupil to Partner – the most important shift you can make

Here is a divine conversation to explode your ideas about truth, loyalty, change and who you are relative to divinity. An invitation to step into creatorship. Key ideas have been italicised.

We come forward, we come forward here willingly, joyfully, exuberantly.  Not to lead you, nor to guide you, nor to show the way.  We are very aware – as we engage with the collective field – of what we might call a new paradigm emerging.  Always paradigms have application, or use, or relevance on a number of different areas of your lives.  A paradigm is deeper than a circumstance in other words.  A paradigm is also deeper than an issue.  A paradigm is how you interpret your circumstances, and make sense of your issues.  And so while we recognise and respect that the activity, the churning, the issues, the events that occur in the circumstance of your lives are important, and worth sharing, expressing, and learning from, we must also say that without shifting on the level of paradigm, no real change ever occurs in the circumstances.  They may look different a few months or a few years on, but the essence of the challenge, or the tension, or the block, or the leak, whatever it may be, will be just the same.

So as we come forward here – not heavily, not with sombreness, or seriousness, or even not with great reverence – we come forward here joyfully, happily, exuberantly and we wish to open up for you a paradigmatic suggestion.  As always this is only a suggestion, just an invitation to which you are welcome to say yes or no and there will be no withdrawal of love for you from the Universe. There will be no less approval, no implicit judgement and punishment, depending on whether or not you take up this invitation.  We understand that that may be your experience of love, but that is not the way we love.  And so what we bring is simply, and purely, an invitation.

It has to do with who you think you are, relative to God.  Now you may presume that that aspect has little or nothing to do with the issues and the circumstances with which you are grappling in this stage in your practical, everyday lives.  We are saying to you it has everything to do with that.

Common paradigms – The Puppet

So if we may, we will share some of the common paradigms that are visible within this culture in this time. Paradigms about who human beings are relative to God, abound.  There are many different belief systems, many different ways of making sense of that.  And humanity is evolving in these.  But what is most visible in this stage, in this culture, and which will therefore have influenced you the most, are these two models.

The first is the model of the puppet, where God or the Universe (it doesn’t really matter the language, it is the paradigm that is important, not the naming of things) is seen to be in charge.  Perhaps not in charge in the old way of thinking about it like sending lightning bolts as punishment.  Perhaps these days it is understood that God is in charge by sending disease as punishment or bad events of some kind.  It is just the same thing as believing in a God who sends lightning as punishment, if you believe that disease is also punitive in some way. This is the puppet paradigm, the idea that a higher force is in charge of everything. That what happens in the world is the will of that higher force and you must simply play the game as best you can within the limitations of your own destiny as designed by that higher force.

Those people in the puppet paradigm, in the puppet mentality, will often say things like: “It was meant to be”, or “It wasn’t meant to be”, or “In God’s timing”, aspects like that.  Not necessarily every time those phrases are uttered are they coming from a puppet paradigm, not at all, not at all.  There is also truth around the aspect of grace, not forcing thing on life, but being open to a natural rhythm and that can be a very empowered stance. But sometimes those phrases are indicating that the person uttering them is living in a puppet paradigm.

The implications of living in that paradigm – and it needn’t be consistently, it can simply be sometimes – are quite obvious;  a lowered sense of responsibility, a lowered sense of power, an understanding that everything you have must be earned, that your purpose in life must be found, you must find it and seek it, and then obey it.  Those kinds of thoughts come from puppet paradigm.

When we call it puppet paradigm, we are turning it into a caricature, an extreme way of saying what we mean in that paradigm.  But not all people who are living out of this paradigm are necessarily unintelligent, not all are unspiritual, some of them appear to be very spiritual, but you’ll see by the working of their lives, that their ability to create what they desire – and that is the definition of power – is relatively low.  The problem is not their intelligence, the problem is not karma, the problem is not spirituality, the problem is the paradigm.

The second common paradigm: The Student

Usually – because paradigms work on an evolutionary basis also – a little while after living in puppet paradigm, a human being will begin to flirt with the paradigm of the student where, instead of Divinity being in control, instead of Divinity being a puppet master, It is now the teacher and a human being is the learner.  That is the student paradigm.

People who are steeped in this paradigm – and there are very many at the moment – will usually talk a lot about the lessons in their lives.  They will consider that they are here on the planet to learn, that the curriculum is predetermined and that their job is to work though lessons one by one so that they will be rewarded by moving on to the next lesson.  That is a very common mythology at the moment.

We will never call any of these paradigms wrong.  Notice, we have not once said that.  They are not wrong, but they can be outgrown. At a certain stage in your life, becoming aware of the puppet mentality may be very useful for you.  It may bring you some peace, it may give you hope, it may help you get through a situation, or a childhood, as it often does.  There are times in the human journey when that paradigm is appropriate, but it simply is not sufficient.  You will grow your way out of that being a useful model by which to understand your relationship with God.  And if you do not allow yourself – and it’s tough – but if you do not allow yourself to shift your fundamental paradigm when you have outgrown it, then there is no way you can change, fundamentally change the circumstances of your life. As we said earlier, you will just circulate within a paradigm that you have actually outgrown, but cannot get yourself to leave behind.

So the student paradigm is not wrong, in fact it is a positive development when somebody allows themselves to move out of the puppet paradigm, and into the student one.  There is a little bit more responsibility taken in the student paradigm than there is in the puppet.  But the nature of the responsibility is all around learning.  That is the word that is used, it is the mentality, and therefore it becomes the way that everything is seen.

In this particular paradigm people are often very devoted.  They work very hard on themselves.  They are reflective a lot, perhaps sometimes too much.  They become very observant of themselves, but not so willing to take risks. That is part of what it means to be part of the student paradigm.  Also people use that paradigm to explain why they don’t make real shifts: “I still need to learn the lesson here”, is often uttered in this paradigm, “I’m not changing this, or creating something different, or leaving that behind, because I just haven’t learned it yet”.

So, as with all paradigms, it isn’t wrong, but at a certain stage of your journey it becomes a limiting theory, and not an empowering one anymore.  When you were just stretching into responsibility, and out of victimhood, then it was useful for you to take upon you the student paradigm.  But it is not the fullest truth.  And we would invite you to examine yourself very closely in terms of how you use these two paradigms, in what situations you revert to them, and how you might indeed be hiding behind them.  This is not an intellectual analysis, it is a simple truth-telling exercise.

But it is deeply frightening to a human being to allow their paradigm about God to shift, or change, or expand in any significant way.  It feels blasphemous, it feels wrong, it feels irreverent.  More than that, if you make adaptation to your belief about who you are relative to God, maybe that makes a mockery of the way you have lived for the past few years, and that does not feel good.  But that’s why we are saying to you, the paradigms – none of them – they are not wrong.  They were of use to you at the time, they have simply become outgrown.

So you can look back to a phase in your life when your relationship to God was very different and you can still recognise, respect, and honour that at the time it was necessary and useful for you to engage with Divinity in that way, whether you were doing that consciously, or unconsciously. And now you may have found a new paradigm that has a better effect on you. Because that’s what we are looking for here: not truth but effect of a truth.

Judge something by its effect, not by what you deem to be its ‘Truth’

There is no way, while you are within a human mind, that you will know the full Truth with a capital T.  It is not the design.  In agreeing to express yourself physically, which is a marvellous privilege, you also agree to withhold or suspend, full awareness.  You are not going to know the complete picture about Divinity, or life, or humanity or even your own self while you are physical and living in duality. But neither do you need to. It is not that life is the constant search for Truth with the capital T, it is for you to use, and we say use, whatever truth works best for you at anytime of your life, whichever truth feels to you the most honouring, the most thrilling, and has the best effect on you.

Judge a truth, or a theory, or an idea, or a belief or a fact for that matter, by its effect on you.  If an idea sets you free, freer than you where before, if it gives you a little more energy, enthusiasm, excitement, empowerment, trust, self love, ideas, creativity, mobilisation – all the things you might like – if it brings you an increase in what you respect, then make use of that belief system, for now.

You don’t have to call it the Truth, you can call it a truth, a truth that at this moment in your life, at this time, allows you to become more of who you wish to become.  You do not need to be loyal to a paradigm, you do not need to be loyal to an idea, a belief system, a theory, not at all. You never need to exchange your fullest well-being for any loyalty. Not any single loyalty in existence is worth exchanging your well being for, including loyalty to an outdated idea about God and who you may be relative to God.

The student model of Divinity – where Divinity is the teacher, life is the school room, and you are the student – can be of value.  But humanity is nearing the end of the time where that paradigm serves you.

So, while in puppet mentality someone might say they need to find what purpose God has intended them for (and it doesn’t matter if they say God, or life, or the Universe, or Spirit it’s all the same),  in the student mentality they will say: “I need to learn the lessons I came here to learn.”  Both of those, to some degree, are disempowering paradigms.

An invitation into The Partner Paradigm

And so we wish to invite you today, to begin to tease, or flirt, with a more expansive paradigm, the one that we call the co-creative or partnership paradigm, where you are not living out a destiny over which the universe is in charge, nor are you sitting in your life as a student, trying to make your way through a curriculum but instead you – just like us - are a creative force in existence.  No less valuable than the non-physical companions you have, but simply operating in a different dimension.

The dimension from which you operate does not necessarily indicate your value to the system.  You have presumed this all along.  You have presumed that because you exist in a dense dimension, that that must mean that you are lower life force than for example those of us who exist outside that dimension by a short margin.  It is not so.  You have different abilities from us, but they are not lesser.  You have a different role from us, but it is not lower.

You are very welcome to reject this truth if it is not good for you.  Don’t reject it ideologically, reject it because its effect on you is not an effect you like.

But let us tell you some of the implications of the co-creator paradigm.  In this paradigm no one says: “I need to find my purpose.”  They say: “I want to create a purpose.  I want to make for myself a life, that according to me, has got great meaning, and great joy, and about which I’m very inspired.”  In the co-creator model there is the recognition that my experience in my life is as important as what my life ends up being, or doing, or giving, or achieving.  There is the recognition that it is vital that I make sure I am inspired, that I make sure that I exist in the way I wish to exist.  So there is much more responsibility in this paradigm than in the other two at that’s often the real reason why people reject it.

On the surface, they reject it because it sounds blasphemous to posture that human beings might just be equal to Spirit.  But often the real reason for the rejection is because the implications of that are very overwhelming relative to the kind of responsibility and power and beauty and influence you all carry.  You don’t all feel it, and you don’t all exercise it, but you do all carry it.  And that thought can be very overwhelming.

If it is overwhelming, if this is not a useful paradigm for you at this point, then it will not have a good effect on you.  But if it is a useful paradigm, it will make you feel more free, even a little giddy with freedom.  It will make you feel a little apprehensive, as paradigmatic leaps always do, but it will also raise your sense of fulfilment and mobilisation.

We find it both amusing and sad that people become deeply trapped, imprisoned, by a notion of a purpose.  They articulate that until they find their purpose they can’t be joyful.  The idea of purpose is having an immobilising effect, a paralysing effect, and still they use the idea. Even if that idea, that paradigm, is not having a good effect, it is still adhered to.

If there is one thing you take with you today, it is this: Don’t let ideas use you.  You use ideas.  So if they work for you, use them, whatever belief, whatever truth is good for you use it, until it is no longer good for you, and then let yourself expand it.

You don’t need to judge something in order to let it go. We hope you heard that.  You don’t need to judge something in order to let it go.  You can simply choose a more expansive, or simply useful, paradigm, job, belief system, whatever it may be.  Simply because you let go of one thing does not imply that you are judging it.  You can honour what it has meant to you previously, you can honour that at one stage its effect on you was good.

What we are talking about lies at the very deepest level of belief, which is about who you are relative to God.  Simply have a look at what beliefs, whether conscious or unconscious, you have been employing about this.  You have been employing a belief.  It is impossible for someone not to employ a belief about themselves in relation to Divinity.  Even if for them Divinity doesn’t exist, there is still a relationship.  So have a look at the way you have been deeply relating to Divinity, and have a look at the effect it has on your decision making, on your ability to life a full, content, exciting, balanced life.  And then see if a more expansive paradigm will serve you better.

Loyalty has no place in an evolutionary system.  We know that in certain paradigms loyalty is very valued, highly priced.  But if your interest is in your own conscious evolution, loyalty is not going to be a useful attribute by which to run your life.

If you are coming from a puppet paradigm, or a student paradigm, then what we have just said would feel wrong because, in a student paradigm, you should be here learning from us who have superior wisdom and, in a puppet paradigm, we are the ones who have made all this possible anyway, you are just puppets.  But in a co-creative paradigm it is both you and us who have made this conversation possible.  It is because of the insights you have let in, in your previous conversation a few moments ago, that we could speak as we did here.  It’s because of the steps you have taken, the leaps you made, the letting go you have allowed, that has made this particular conversation even a possibility.

And so understand that this very experience here has been literally created by both you and us.  So if it appears to be useful, or intelligent, or wise, then understand that those are attributes that are also part of you.  If you continue to project all your positive attributes onto Divinity you are going to keep yourself at a ceiling of development.  We know that it feels somehow perhaps right and respectful to project all of your positive qualities onto spirit, but have a careful clear look at what the actual effect of that is in your actual life.

That is how you judge your belief system.  Not because it sounds nice, not because it’s currently popular and what everyone else is saying, not because it appears to be high-minded and lofty but because of its actual effect on the living of your everyday life.  And so we offer you a paradigm that is highly respectful of you, and in our opinion a lot more mobilising than some of the paradigms you have been used to using.  It’s not the last paradigm you are going to encounter either, but for now it is a very valuable one on offer.

We are so grateful to express, and experience, this.

Thank you.

This teaching was channelled by Angela Deutschmann 2011

How to Really Create Real Change (hint: not positive thinking)

Much has been said about using positive thinking, affirmation and visualisation to create the changes you want to see in your life. Indeed, it’s an industry all of its own with the movies, cards and action figures to match. I doubt whether this philosophy could have grabbed human consciousness so powerfully if it had no truth to it at all, but here are the reasons why positive thinking on its own isn’t enough to bring real, sustainable change to your life.

1. Positive Thinking is still just thinking

Arguments about the power of the human mind to influence circumstances are usually built on the theory of the Law of Attraction. But the Law of Attraction works on a far more comprehensive basis than simply matching what you think or affirm with your rational intellect. You are comprised of a body, feelings, an imagination, a subconscious, a past, a deep belief system, a pain body, an astral presence and, undoubtedly, more layers than even that. All of these aspects of you combined create your field (also known as your electro-magnetic field, whole self or aura) and it is the vibration of your complete field that attracts or repels experience. The thoughts you can control – located in your intellect – are just one part of what ultimately determines your reality.

This does not mean you have no conscious influence at all on what comes your way, but it does mean that you need to be aligned on many levels to do so. It’s never going to work to repeat three times a day ‘I am worthy of a loving relationship’ while still carrying unhealed pain from the previous one. Simply because you have a picture of a bikini-clad model on your vision board does not mean that that body will arrive on your doorstep, overpowering your low self-worth in the scramble to get there.

 

Change happens because you inquire honestly and deeply and intimately into your relationship with what you feel you need. On Embody, for example, we look at why you want a certain kind of body, what has happened to your body that you’ve stifled, what associations you are holding with beauty, ugliness and being physical in general and much more. Simply imagining how nice it would be to feel beautiful is never going to cut it.

 

More importantly, the purpose of life is not success, it is wholeness. This means that your soul is more driven by your development than by your ego’s shopping list. Managing to manifest something in your life by positive thinking is in itself not of great value in the bigger scheme of your evolution. However, reaching into your deepest well of courage, brilliance, creativity and truth in order to create your Joy, is very much what it’s all about and how it works. Fulfilling our desires is vital as a seduction into growth, but it is not the aim of life (our becoming is), which is why positive thinking will never be enough.

2. The Change Cycle is comprised of TWO steps, not one

 

In order to create change there are two steps required – the first is Permission and the second is Demonstration of that permission.

 

The Permission piece is internal. It is about allowing or truly desiring this change to occur, not only because you want it intellectually, but because it also aligns with who you are on an emotional and deep belief level as well. To illustrate this once more: it won’t work to simply say you’d like to make more money when, on a deeper level, you have some resistance to wealth – rationally or irrationally. To really give permission for something new, for example having more love in your life, means you have to actually be ok with all the implications of this and carry little ambiguity or resistance. This step is deeply personal and intimate. No-one (including Divinity) can or will ever be able to give permission for something on your behalf, no matter how much they may want it for you. It is in this step of the change cycle that imagining new realities, dreaming and visualising can assist you to see if you are really aligned with what you’re desiring and help you to clarify it.

 

However, if you stop at this step, you are only directing half of the required energy to complete the change cycle.

 

The second necessary step to making change happen is actively and regularly demonstrating the new permission you have given. This is external i.e. it is action of some kind. Demonstrating a permission means regularly devoting your resources – time, energy, money and attention – in that direction.

 

Most of my clients, at this point, protest that they don’t know how to demonstrate a new permission.  What I have learnt is that willingness is more important than knowing how. Back to our example, if you feel you have given real permission for a new relationship with your body then you must demonstrate that in whichever way your circumstances allow: buy a new scrub instead of a new book, invite friends over for massages not movies and spend time engaging with the pain you’ve buried in your body. You will always have what you need for your one next step – probably not your tenth next step, but at least the first. The way you ‘put the universe into gear’ around a desire of yours is to actively and regularly demonstrate that desire in action – even if it feels silly, even if you can’t see how this will lead to step 10, even if you’ve tried it before. This is the second, unavoidable, part of creating change.

Thank you to the people whose readings have taught me about this empowering and workable approach to change.

 

From Menial to Meaningful – 5 ways to rescue Valentine’s Day

If – like me – the schmaltz, wasted money and forced sentiment makes Valentine’s Day less appealing to you every year, here are some ideas to make it count:

1. Can it!

One option is to declare yourself all together independent from the fuss. If this is the way for you, then revel in your non-compliance with no apologies or guilt. Celebrate the love you have in your life in other – more authentic and spontaneous – ways.

 

2. Love someone you tend to neglect

If you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, then another way to make Valentine’s Day mean something is to choose someone to spoil that you normally overlook or neglect. Focus your gift-giving, flower-delivering or letter-writing on your mum, domestic worker, friend, child or favourite NGO.

 

3. Make your body your Valentine

 

No-one will travel the length of your life with you, be present at all moments and be as significant to your wellbeing as your body. Maybe this Valentine’s Day can be a pivotal moment in choosing to pamper, look after and listen to this essential aspect of you.

 

4. Take responsibility for receiving in your relationship

One of the techniques I use often in my work with couples is what I call My Love List. Each of you writes down the top ten ways in which you  specifically like to be loved e.g. include me in your business decisions, tickle my back or give me a weekend on my own once a year. That way you are owning your desires (instead of hinting or whining about them) and it gives your partner the option to love you in your preferred way and not only theirs.

5. Celebrate Valentines’s Day with A Morning of Joy

Bring yourself, your friend, your colleagues or your partner to a morning of serious pampering, good food and a rich discussion on why Joy is so important, what it really means and how to gear your life in that direction. This is a gift that will plant a seed as well as indulge the senses with giveaways from Dermalogica,  the Soul Khaya Spa, Bella Vida Family Centre and Family Constellationist Bev Moss. Last chance to book is Wednesday afternoon and you can do so by contacting cherylann@travellinglight.co.za. We would love to see you there!

 

My Anti-Resolutions

In the last few weeks, my ‘anti-hero self’ has been making more appearances than normal. She’s the grumpy, dissatisfied, vulnerable me who snaps at people for taking advantage of her [read: husband and children] but, equally, keeps on raising the bar in terms of what she expects of them . Go figure. She’s not that reasonable, but often has a point, and can be so infernally whiny that a good name for her could be NAG which, as an anagram of Ang, is neat.

I hardly ever used to let NAG out of the closet but having delved deeply and personally into Shadow work over the last few years, I now know that she is vital to my wellbeing, sense of balance and clarity of direction. Not that I like her, understand, I just know she’s necessary and that I really should listen to her. Kind of like my gynaecologist. Plus I do know that she is as intent on releasing humanity into Joy as me. She’s just not quite so polite about it

I caught NAG making her own version of New Year’s Resolutions. As a rule, I abhor New Year’s Resolutions but these, I suppose, are palatable and, in obedience to the New Year’s reading (‘unhide yourselves – unhide!’), here they are:

1. Get more angry

…….or at least let myself own and feel and express my anger when it’s authentically there.

 

1. Cut down on giving

…..when it is not 100% real, inspired and motivated by joy, not by duty

 

1. Be less responsible

……for things and people that do not need, or desire, my help

 

1. Eat only for pleasure

…..never for boredom, habit, obligation, or based purely on what clever experts (other than my body) say

 

1. Be more selfish

….in claiming lots of time for walking and stillness no matter what the resistance!

 

NAG and I will battle these out for the next few months until, hopefully, we both surrender into wholeness. For those who want to meet their own versions of NAG, our next Shadow Workshop is on 29 March…..

 

Travel – a short story

‘So you consider yourself a traveller, a bit of an intrepid African nomad?’ my latest therapist asked in his odd tone of respect and mockery.

I nodded, in my own odd tone of pride and defeat – precisely the damn paradox that had me seated in this sweaty leather couch. Pride and defeat. The story of Africa, and now of me. Or at least that’s what I imagined they’d write on the back of my biography.

Me, the almost-brilliant travel writer. A risky, most would say manic, journalist striding headlong into the beauties and cruelties of the continent. Awards won, women won over, wonderings limited only by the budget of whichever gullible editor was footing the bill of whatever local beer in which I happened to be drowning.

And then the pathetic suicide attempts and shameful depressions. That was an unrecognisable me, but one who held the position of dictator nonetheless.

 

‘He is confounded and incapacitated by the paradox he has encountered at every turn of his travels through Africa’ was the intelligent but useless observation of one psychologist.

He was right about running into the sneer of paradox: poverty dancing its cruel dance with wealth, disease’s body on the continent’s unimaginably beautiful face, enlightened contentment in the eyes of exploited and ravaged peoples. Africa nurtures them all. But he offered no way to make sense of it.

 

‘He suffers intense feelings of meaninglessness and guilt related to his whiteness and supposedly superficial pursuits’ remarked another.

I already knew what my generation’s white African skin conferred: prejudice, liberalism or shame. But he couldn’t help me get me out of that skin and I was beginning to think that suicide had been the only bloody meaningful thing I’d ever attempted.

 

So here I was, shrinking in front of another shrink. A regressionist, apparently. I’m sure you appreciate why I might have been put off by the term – how does one regress from trying to kill oneself – getting it right? His mild laugh at this joke irritated me. Calm, huggy new age types always do. Despite the fact that I find myself wanting to kick some excitement up their second chakra, I despise the westernised middle class religion of self-improvement. Sell that to the child prostitute I met in Mozambique, taking care of a mother whose decaying body could have been giving itself to any number of masters: starvation, AIDS, TB. Or to Ou Een, a Khoisan shapeshifter whom his people called ‘die boesman leeu’. I never managed to lay eyes on the elusive man, reputedly a hundred and three years old with a nighttime job as a skulky canine, but I’m sure I would not have found him reading a manual on how to reclaim his inner child.

 

Desperation and the urging of a decent friend, however, had me consenting to the process of a past life regression. I felt too listless to resist, which is probably why I easily followed Don’s instructions to imagine I was descending a stairwell where each step was a year of my life. I must have swallowed some of my skepticism with all those pills, I remember thinking dryly. But with nothing more than a somewhat lulled mind and tired acquiesence I did indeed experience my seven-year-old self and every detail of my school classroom as if I was back there. Then I was three and then five months old, fully aware of my mother’s sadness and a great desire to pee. I’d have simply added ‘phenomenal memory’ to my list of skills if I hadn’t experienced what happened after that.

 

Don instructed me, in his irritatingly musical voice, to move into a significant previous existence, and asked me to look down at my body and describe myself.

 

Without hesitation or any thought of the impossibility of what I was doing, I told him of my thin, weak legs and sickly female body. I was wrapped in a blanket that smelled of the smoke from the fire in the centre of our hut and I knew I hadn’t moved from there in a very long time. I described my young brown face and my pride in the markings on my smooth cheeks and the plaits in my hair.

 

My sisters have done up my hair to celebrate the beginning of my bleedings, I tell Don. I am surprised that I have been blessed with bleedings when my body is so ill and abnormal in every other way, but how gracious of the ancestors and how wonderfully important I feel on this day. There is no movement in the bottom half of my body, but my arms work just like my sisters’ and my head even better says our father.

 

I watch him sweep outside our hut with the dignity of a chief, though he is a lowly herdsman and constantly mocked for not taking another wife to care for his three daughters. Our mother died giving birth to me, and that is also what killed my legs and many other inside things of mine besides. I do feel the pain of this, especially watching my oldest sister make eyes at boys. I also feel that throbbing sometimes and now I’m even bleeding, but I will never lie with a man nor push a baby from between my legs.

 

I talk to our father of these things and he tells me only two things: life, like the sun and the moon, is a circle and every person will travel every path at some time. That is why I should search deep inside my broken body to find out the name of my path and to be grateful for each experience of this particular way of being alive. That way I will recognise the path when it comes again and I will know I have already had that gift. The other thing he tells me is that my sister is too young to make eyes at boys.

 

When it is time for my body to feed the soil, I know it. I have learned how to talk to her by staring at the fire for a very long time until my mind disappears into the flames and I am free to listen to the stories that come from my legs and my womb and many other places besides. Today they are singing a joyful song as if the rain is on its way or they are about to eat something delicious. I can understand the words of the song, which whisper that I am soon to meet my mother and to make my father the head of only two living daughters. When my mind is resting like this I can see the meaning and richness of my life quite clearly and it is in this state that I gratefully release my body.

 

Fortunately Don had the wisdom, or lack of time, to allow me to make my own sense of experiencing myself as a paralysed, young black girl who didn’t live for very long nor achieve very much, other than that which I longed for most. Certainly I have considered that the whole story was intelligently imagined by me to provide an explanation of inter alia my need to roam and have as much sex as possible. I am now trying my hand at a novel to see if indeed I do possess such a quick-thinking, wise imagination.

 

More than the source of the experience, however, I am intrigued by the questions it poses to me about how essential my whiteness, my travelling and even my body and mind are to my sense of myself. Maybe I’m white and black and all the shades in between and maybe my usefulness is measured by more than what my mind and body produce. Maybe the paradoxes in the African world around me simply reflect the ones with which I internally wrestle. I have no more answers than before but at least I have more questions. That, and a desire to live, seem to be just about all I need.

 

Why the Princess Really Kissed the Frog

Dejectedly she sat, legs dangling in the pond
And cried out her frustrations to the great beyond:
Some think ‘cause I’m a girl I should be soft and scared and mild
When often I’ve the feeling that I’m sharp and rather wild.

They praise my smile and posture and dress me up to please
I love my kitten heels, but I also like grazed knees.
Can I be a princess without being in a box?
Can I curl my hair without my locks becoming locks?

Take a look at Mama, she refuses to dress up
She won’t be known by beauty and is scornful of make-up.
‘A girl’s best asset is her brain’, she always says to me,
‘There’s not an ounce of value in femininity.
You are in every way and skill quite equal to a man,
Disregard your gender as strongly as you can’.

But God, the princess argued (with both her Mother and The Source)
Giving up my GHD will cause me great remorse
I know that gender stereotypes will rob me of my chi
But how can I refuse them while still being fully, truly me?

In voicing this conundrum she kicked up water near a log,
Revealing just behind it a small and slimy frog.
In both disgust and pity, the princess said outloud:
Horrid little frog, how is that you vowed
To be a scaly, lowly creature with such narrow range of life?
It’s even worse being you than being a woman or a wife!

As always, God will answer, in whichever shape or form
This time ‘twas in a frog’s croak sounding not the least forlorn:
‘Dear little princess, the way out of a box,
Is always to discover the hidden Paradox.
You wonder how I live inside this body and this spot?
The reason I can be a frog is because I’m not.

Like you, I am one spark of a Fire so Divine
That my light and love and power are not dulled by all this slime
I can play my froggy role with full gusto in this pond
Because I know that who I am is something far beyond

You are not a woman anymore than I’m a frog,
Your life is not your real home anymore than mine’s this log.
But that sweet, sweet knowledge shouldn’t make us run away
From the particular role that we’ve come here to play.
So relish being a woman, in all its different ways
It’s the beloved, precious costume from which you live Love’s gaze.

Now all women know deep down that what makes our hearts beat fast
Is a glimpse of loving wisdom from a heart and mind that’s vast
So when the princess leaned toward him whispering ‘I am no longer vexed’
We women know quite well exactly what came next.

When Affirmations Don’t Work

John arrived at his coaching session with ‘failure’ written all over him (now that I’m an addict of the Lie To Me Series I am observing facial expressions much more closely so beware .

The divorce settlement he had signed years ago had thoroughly (excuse me) screwed him, his ex-wife is manipulating his children into disowning him, and the recession has hit his new business at a crucial moment. John, who has an impressive intellect and high degree of spiritual awareness, has managed to weather these storms and still preserve a new relationship with an integral, warm woman. But do you know why he still feels like a failure and keeps on attracting evidence to prove that he is? John thinks he is spiritually lazy and incompetent because the affirmations he has pasted on his mirror have not come true and he isn’t meditating for an hour a day. He hasn’t managed to turn his life into a Floro advert by virtue of positive thinking.

Those of you who know my work will have heard me refer to this phenomenon as ‘The Secret backlash’. I see it in my practice regularly – clients feeling guilty and spiritually weak because, even though they have been visualising success / a hot date / no more potholes, it’s just not happening. And even though they have been practicing gratitude, looking for the silver lining (read: ignoring their real feelings), they are going round in circles, stuck in the same pain. John is sitting on top of a volcano of anger in a valley of sadness. There is no way he will lift himself or his life up until he has gone right into the core of his anger and the depth of his sadness, no matter how many affirmations he says. It is simply not possible to intellectually manipulate your heart or body out of the truth of its feelings even if you suppose there is a ‘more spiritual’ way to be or think.

Using affirmations (or anything else) to try and make yourself grateful, forgiving or positive while you are still jealous, angry or scared won’t work. Does this mean you vent your unprocessed rage or envy the moment it comes up to the person who has stimulated it? There are some people who feel this is the only truthful way but in my experience that causes unnecessary damage, usually to things or people that you love. Instead, you can take ownership of what you feel in any moment, let it be fully felt, acknowledge it to yourself or to a friend, understand what really triggered your reaction (it’s seldom the actual event but an interpretation you drew out of the event) and then have a clear, quiet look at what your feelings are telling you. It may be that it’s time to draw the line somewhere or make a request for something you’re not getting or tell someone clearly that they are hurting you. Or it may be that you realize your feelings are coming from a past pain that you need to heal. Either way, you first have to feel what is there before moving on to a higher perspective. In the words of Ken Wilber, you cannot transcend what you haven’t been through.

So John and I are going to go and find his buried anger at his ex-wife, his sadness at losing his kids and his fears about his business. Instead of using techniques to get over these feelings, we are going to go right into them and give him a safe place to express and process his real emotions. When his feelings no longer have a hold on him, then we can use them to tell us what actions he should take next. Affirmations and positive thinking can assist at this point – only when the real work is done and they are not being used as a Band-Aid or a quick, simple fix.