Tired of Transformation?

‘I’ve done so much work on myself, when does it end?’

‘I’ve done everything right, where are the rewards?’

‘Why is there always more growth to do?’

 You’re not alone if some of these thoughts have been playing on your mind recently. Many of my clients are voicing similar exasperation or exhaustion with their personal growth journey, especially after uncovering some of the very new and perplexing ‘shadow layers’. I see that there are two main underlying belief systems that are leading to these experiences of ‘enough already’:

1. Spirituality has been a system for getting what you want or
2. Spirituality has usurped your joy

Without using a very deep definition of joy, those two beliefs look contradictory. Here’s why they’re not, and why each of them will unquestionably lead you into frustration.

Spirituality is not a system for getting what you want

 I’ve noticed that most spiritual teachers, services and products sell themselves on the basis that ‘following my path will get you the stuff you want’. They don’t put it in those words exactly but they do claim that you will improve your wealth, relationships, health and success as well as attract to yourself all you desire if you train yourself in this way, think these kinds of thoughts, meditate for this number of hours, buy this bracelet etc. Hogwash. To be polite. Spirituality is not a path for getting what you (intellectually) want and avoiding what you don’t. It is an ever-deepening relationship with self / source that meanders and astonishes and challenges and evolves and opens and softens you. If you have been ‘working on yourself’ just to become successful, give up smoking, get thin or make more money then you have been duped. Some of those things may happen, sure, and of course you are welcome to pursue whatever is joyful for you but if you have been thinking that the more you work on yourself the more perfect you become and the more you get what you want then spirituality has, perhaps unwittingly, been more of a system for acquisition than for evolution and it is bound to disappoint.

 There’s more to the Law of Attraction

 What’s more, there is much more complexity to the Law of Attraction than meets the eye. As the September Group reading phrased it, you do not attract things by your ‘cognitive intent’ but by your whole vibration, which includes all levels and layers of self and not simply the small part of you willing or affirming something. That’s because the Law of Attraction, like all natural and spiritual laws, is a powerful feedback mechanism to you about the permissions you have been giving. It is not simply a system that you can use to intellectually control what does and does not happen to you. The drive of the universe is towards expansion, integration and wholeness, not perfection and success as we have been lead to believe.

 The outcome of a truly spiritual existence is Joy

 Don’t believe this if it doesn’t accord with your experiences or observations, but if you are feeling disappointed or tired of spirituality then one of the possibilities is that you have been expecting an outcome from your growth endeavours. An outcome could be a reward, a summit, or a sign that you have been ‘doing well’, like getting a new relationship or becoming successful in some area. The only outcome that I can comfortably promise from personal growth work is an increase in your permission for joy. And remember that joy is not a state of being that arrives when all your circumstances line up to your ego-expectations. Joy is the experience of living uncontained – being free to live without being contained by your past, your pain, your fear, your expectations or any other limited thoughts. Sometimes not getting what we want takes us closer to authentic joy than anything else, at least initially, so it is a huge misunderstanding to equate a spiritual life with getting more of what you want more easily. It will happen, and it won’t and if you can hold that paradox then personal growth won’t tire or disillusion you, it will merely offer up the next open door to wholeness.

 Joy is the outcome – growth is a tool

By precisely the same logic, personal growth should never eclipse your joy! If it is in no way fun, exciting, or wonderful to do a workshop, read a self-help book, meditate (note that this doesn’t mean it isn’t scary or uncomfortable) then don’t do it. I have seen in myself and many clients that spirituality can become an excuse or a crutch or a shelter if it is being used to avoid being fully present in other relationships – with the body, with pain, with feelings. It is sometimes more of a challenge, and more of an opening, to embrace the parts of yourself that don’t seem spiritual (sexuality, humour, irreverence, the body, the shadow) than to develop only the ones that do.

I laughed when I recently came across one of Osho’s essays in the book The Man Who Loved Seagulls. In it Osho speaks of meditation as medicinal. It’s useful for when you are not well, he says, it can make you feel better. But if you are really well, you don’t need medicine and when you are really joyful, you don’t need meditation. That’s because, as the readings have said for years, joy is the motivation and spiritual growth is the tool.

If at any moment walking in nature, watching silent stars, cooking, shouting, lying naked on the grass or anything else makes you feel alive, relieved and open (the 3 characteristics of joy) then go there. It may well be that a personal growth workshop or conversation or book does this for you, but be careful of presuming that it will and getting stuck in an expectation that is not in alignment with an experience. 

If you are feeling tired of personal development, ask yourself if you have been expecting it to ‘deliver stuff’ or if you have been privileging it above your joy. Then, as always, just drop it softly and be still.

From Holy to Wholly

This month I am taking some Growth Clubs through a process called Integrating the Shadow. Like many of you, I have been exposed to Shadow work through the books and films of Debbie Ford who has popularised the notion of the shadow, a concept which was originally named and described by Carl Jung. It is only as I sit down to write this that I realize (of course!) that life has been putting me through exactly the same journey on which I intend to take my Growth Club members. So this week I have been meeting one of my shadows and her name is Prejudice.

Painful as it is, let me share with you two incidents that happened this week that have opened up my prejudice to me. On Monday, after doing some work with an NGO in the city, I had a fit of ‘I’m-not-your-typical-white-South-Africa-I-embrace-diversity’, which resulted me in deciding to do my weekly groceries at a Pick N Pay in Newtown rather than my regular, suburban branch. I felt rather virtuous about my choice to shop in the city and rub shoulders with people who are very different from me. Of course my virtuosity, my sense of being a good citizen, my superiority even, followed me right on into the shop and caused havoc. Everything went wrong from the time I tried to park (Newtown Pick N Pay doesn’t provide parking because its patrons are largely on foot) to the time I tried to pay showing my Vitality card (Yini Vitality?!). I got in everybody’s way, slowed down the lunch-time shoppers with my big trolley and kept people waiting behind me at the till because no less than three different items of mine would not scan. I stuck out like a sore (white) thumb and I cringed inside at what I could so clearly see: in my effort to cross boundaries I had entrenched them even more.

This is always the result of effort, of trying, of going out of your way to be good instead of following your natural path, your authentic desire. Wherever you are trying to be good (at parenting, at spirituality, at eating etc) you will inevitably, in some form or another, either produce or attract the reverse of what you want. This is because, contrary to what most of us would believe, the universe or God is in support of wholeness, not holiness. If you have to try to be or do something, if it is not a natural joy or an authentic desire, then you are repressing something, pushing away a part of you that you wish wasn’t there and that is the shadow. Whatever gets pushed into shadow will be what you unintentionally display or bring towards you so that you can see where you are in denial or being fragmented. In trying so hard not to be a stereotypical, racist white South African I had become just that. My prejudice was in the shadow.

The following evening Garrick and I went out with friends to watch the phenomenal film District 9. Sitting in front of that screen was, for me, like being repeatedly punched in the stomach. I could hardly tolerate the oppression and homegrown prejudice. If the film wasn’t quite so brilliant I would have walked out the cinema from the sheer pain of watching it. In-between my sobs afterwards I sssssaid to Garrick that I was interested in the degree to which District 9 had affected me. Why was I so much more emotional about the content than other people, why had I been enraged when people around us laughed at some of the blatantly oppressive comments? I could see that my buttons had been pushed, or actually bashed, in a big way.

Ken Wilbur in his book Meeting the Shadow suggests a simple and very clear distinction to determine whether what you are experiencing is ‘your stuff’ or not. ‘…if a person or thing in the environment informs us, we probably aren’t projecting; on the other hand, if it affects us, chances are we are a victim of our own prejudices’. I was so deeply affected by that film because my own capacity to be oppressive, deeply buried, was being reflected to me in a most powerful manner. This conclusion is supported by my history. I spent years working in NGOs and other organisations dedicated to undoing oppression and developing the under-privileged. I consulted to corporations on black economic empowerment and corporate social investment, dated more black men than white and was always very outspoken on matters of racial and gender discrimination. I wasn’t simply informed about these things, I was fighting them. I understand this now as the obvious outcome of my own prejudice being dis-owned, being in the shadow.

It has been painful for me to acknowledge this, especially because now I am seeing evidence of my prejudiced thoughts everywhere! They follow me into my relationship with Garrick, with my body and in how I make choices about where to live. But it’s important to note that there is nothing I can, or need to, do about my prejudice other than fully and softly see it. Just the act of observing creates a distance, a gap, between the real me and those thoughts. Over time that gap will grow sufficiently for me to naturally, gracefully, use prejudice consciously rather than unconsciously (it can be done and it can be useful). The shadow does not need to be forcefully eradicated, it needs only to be gently brought into the fullness of the light.

Here’s to each of us bringing our shadow into the light so that the shadow of humanity will follow the same path.

The Empty Cup

We welcome, we welcome you here. Maybe you can take a few moments to accept that. We recognise that you desire insight and direction here, and we will bring that. But before we do, allow us first to extend our welcome. And we say allow us, because it is also possible that you do not allow it, that you flip over this part of the conversation quickly in order to get to the more important things. It is possible that you sit where you are and you hear us, but you do not really hold the truth of what we are bringing deeply in you heart. So let us say it again: We welcome you. That means we want you. It means we love you coming. It means that to connect with you like this is wonderful. If you can just accept even a little bit of that, maybe your understanding of who you are will begin to become accurate. We cannot convince you of who you are. We can’t write out an essay telling you the truth about your beauty and your bravery and your ability to make a difference to the world around you. We can’t write an essay and present it to you, and that will mean you accept it. No. We can offer up to you, and we will today, a fuller idea of who you are. But we cannot choose that you accept that. The last decision is always left to the human being. God doesn’t get in the way of your choices, as maybe you have noticed. God can bring you towards people, or places or opportunities. God can also bring to you understandings and insights. But God cannot decide on your behalf what you will take, and what you will reject. So we will offer here to you today, and we have begun already, some ideas about the truth of you. But it will be your choice whether to believe that or not, whether to accept it or not, and whether to begin to live that, step by step, or not.

We are very delighted to be like this with you. It’s so beautiful for us to see your, and we’re going to call it, your unknowingness. Maybe that surprises you. Maybe you think it’s better to be in the world in a state of real knowing and sureness. Maybe you think the ones in the world who are the most blessed and the most productive are the ones who know themselves, and who know the world and the way it works. We want to say something different to you. Let us put it in an analogy for you. Let us say that you are holding a cup, and let us say that it is full of delicious coffee. It’s coffee that you have been drinking for years. You know it, you are in a state of knowingness, you know this coffee, and you are in a state of havingness, because you have this coffee in your cup. Imagine there arrives a waiter near to you, and she is carrying a pot of magnificent Turkish coffee. And she says that it is the best she has ever tasted. You have only had one or two sips of your cup, and she comes along to offer you something better. If you hold out your cup and she pours the brilliant new coffee into it, then very soon your cup is going to spill over, and you will just have a mixture of the old coffee that you know and the new coffee that you don’t. The other option that you have is to say “No, thank you” to the better coffee, because you’ve got what you need. And the third option that you have is to throw out that coffee that you have. You know it’s good, and you’ve got it, but you take the risk of throwing it out and having your cup filled with something that proves to be infinitely better. And you never go back to what you knew.

We are illustrating to you here the benefit of not knowing. Where you are in your life at the moment is that you have an empty cup. You are not full of knowing, and you are not full of having either. And, if we may as bold as to say, that is the most beautiful position from which to reinvent yourself, from which you can begin to re-imagine life. The ones that are too full of knowing and too full of having, are the ones who miss out on the benefit of a new experience, a better experience. That delicious Turkish coffee will not be theirs until they give permission to empty their cup. New experiences, or what some are calling transformation, is only possible when you have been prepared to have an empty cup, when you’ve been prepared to not know, and to not have. It is not the ones who are full of having and full of knowing who regularly experience transformation to much better states of living, it is not those. Ones who are so full of knowing and so full of having want to ensure that they hang onto it, so they are not the ones who give permission for metamorphosis. We know you want metamorphosis, we know. And because you want it, it is yours to have.

Not everyone in the world is programmed with the same desires. Not everyone wants it. You imagine everyone wants metamorphosis, transformation, emergence into their most beautiful life, but not all choose it. We see, we see, from your idealisation and identification with the butterfly, we see that what you are saying is that you want metamorphosis. No less than that. You want what the butterfly does. It changes from one way of being into a completely different lighter, freer way of being. But first, if you notice this with the butterfly, first it has to stop being what it is. There is a period when the butterfly is no longer a caterpillar, and is not yet a butterfly. In that time the butterfly is in the cocoon, and the magic is happening. But before the magic happens, that little caterpillar must be prepared to throw away, to give up, its very identity. If the caterpillar was not prepared to stop being a caterpillar, if he was clinging onto himself as a caterpillar, then it couldn’t go through the cocooning phase, and certainly could not emerge as a butterfly. That’s exactly the same as we were talking about earlier – if you are not prepared to throw out the coffee you know, you have no chance of experiencing something infinitely better. What we’re saying to you is this: before metamorphosis can happen, everybody has to be at a place where they don’t know. Otherwise they will not accept the new. And it takes many people, hard, hard work, and sometimes years of pain, before they will acknowledge that they do not know, and before they have a point where they do not have all the answers, all the awareness, all the plans.

And you are already there. You are an empty cup, you are not full of your own sureness, you are not full of a preset idea of who you are and who you should be. You are not attached to yourself as being this kind of way, you are not attached to a career, you are not attached even to a place, and that is the very best kind of openness there can be. We know it’s frightening to have an empty cup. We know you look at other people, and they have full cups, and you think that that is right, and you think that they are better, and they are more powerful, because they have full cups of coffee and they are drinking what they know, they have a lot of knowledge, and they have a lot of having, they have a lot. And we know you think that it is better to have a full cup of coffee, than an empty. We’re not saying that it’s wonderful to life forever with an empty cup. We know that it’s pleasurable to drink coffee – we’ll continue using our analogy – but what we are saying is that only those who are prepared to sit with an empty cup for some time are those who will have the even better coffee. Which is our way of saying to you that only when you are prepared at a certain set of times in your life, only when you are prepared to not know, and only when you are prepared to not have, can you be wide open enough to allow for your biggest metamorphosis .

The caterpillar first has to go through an intense period of unknowing. For a while, while the caterpillar is in the cocoon, he is neither a caterpillar nor a butterfly. For a while – hear us carefully – for a while the caterpillar has no identity. He’s no longer crawling on the ground and eating as many leaves as he can find. He’s no longer participating in the world at all, have you noticed? There is a period when the caterpillar is not in the world, and is not having an identity, of any kind. He’s not a caterpillar and he’s not something else. He also doesn’t know what he’s turning into, have you noticed that too? The reason that your soul loves butterflies is because the journey of the butterfly is also the journey of you. But, we are talking to you in detail about the journey of the butterfly, because people forget that the butterfly was first something very different. And they forget that for a while the butterfly was nothing at all. They forget that. They just see a beautiful free creature, living as she chooses, but they forget the journey. And they forget what steps that butterfly had to take before emerging in that way. And one of those steps includes where you are now, which is having an empty cup, not knowing their path. Not knowing who you are. Not knowing the answers, not knowing the right way to live, not knowing the path to God, and so on. It’s very few human beings who are brave enough to sit long enough with the not knowing, with the empty cup. It’s very few who are brave enough to sit there, and even fewer who are brave enough to talk about what it is like sitting there.

You think it’s wrong to have an empty cup. And we think it’s part of what is required for full metamorphosis. You think it is wrong not to have a certain and clear identity, and we think it is what many people are missing, and so they are transforming a little bit, but not to the degree that the butterfly metamorphisises. So, even though we can recognise and respect the place that you are in as being fearful and unsure. even though we know that according to the world it’s better that you know and are sure, even though we see you comparing yourself to other people and you think you’re falling short because your cup is empty, even through all that, we feel excitement at the space around you.

So many people are so full that we can’t possibly bring them something new, something better. They are full of their own identity, for example, they are so sure of themselves as a teacher, or as a healer, or as a poet, or as a mother, they are so sure of that identity, that it begins to get very full around them. Others are very full because of all they know: they know exactly what is the way to live, they know exactly how to manifest dreams, they know exactly how love works, they know exactly how to raise children, they know exactly how to run businesses and make money. And they are so full of what they know that there is no space for us to bring something better. They don’t even hear us knocking on the door, they are so full. Others are so full of having all the things that they have around them, all the gadgets, all the entertainment, all the space to live in and take care of, all the friends, all the engagements. They are so full of having, and doing, that they also don’t leave enough room for Divinity to trickle in, let alone for enough Divinity to come in to create a metamorphosis equal to that of the butterfly.

So here you sit, with an empty cup, with space around you. You have space. You have space in your identity, because you don’t know who you are. You have space within your time, because you are not attached to a requirement of a job at this moment. You have space even around where you are going to live, which is unusual. We invite you to do the unthinkable, and that is to sit with your empty cup, and if you can, to start to be thankful. There is no reason for you, and it will not be, to sit with an empty cup for very long. We will move into your path that which can assist you to begin to fill your cup again, to begin to refashion your identity and the other parts of your life. That will come. But if you rush this emptiness, if you are too scared of it, if you are too resistant to your own un-sureness, then you can go and force your cup to be filled, but it won’t be with the very best quality of Turkish coffee available. It will be something less perfect. Many people do that all the time, there are very few who have the courage to sit with emptiness for very long, and lots of them, in resisting the emptiness, go and fill their cup with whatever comes along, just not to sit with the unknowingness. When they do that – and it is okay because one day they too will taste the Turkish coffee, one day they too will fly as a butterfly – they are delaying it. They are going around in the same cycle, over and over, and that’s not required.

So we invite you, and we are going even to close this conversation soon, because at the moment your emptiness, and your unknowing are the most beautiful parts of you. You find them so ugly, you find them so undesirable. You feel a lesser human being because you don’t know. You call yourself lost, we simply say you have an empty cup. And we hope we have made it clear to you that there’s a certain kind of beauty, and of grace in the experience of not being sure, of not knowing. We know that it pulls at the deepest parts of you, and we know it raises resistance, and we know it raises in you self-hatred, we can feel that, but that’s not a reason to run away from the emptiness too soon.

Give yourself the respect you deserve for being in a place of not knowing. Give yourself enough time with an empty cup to allow for that cup to be filled with the very best quality of experience possible, instead of just a substitute. You know what it’s like to make a choice as a substitute, instead of waiting for something better, you just take what’s here now. That’s not wrong, but it does put you into a cycle that you might have avoided. And so this time, this time, we’re asking something even bigger of you, we’re asking you to change the way you think about yourself and about not knowing. We ask you instead of using the word lost, to use the word empty. Yes, you are empty now, we feel that, and that is the only way to allow yourself to be filled with something superior than you used to have. So, for the moment, we invite you just to rest. It’s okay not to move, it’s okay to be unsure. You have a wonderful blank slate, don’t rush the filling of it. There are people living the kind of full and sure life that you think is amazing, and what are they desiring in their innermost hearts? A bit of emptiness, a bit of space, a bit of people not wanting them all the time, so there is beautify in where you are. But as we said earlier, we can bring you that understanding, but it is you who chooses to be. Thank you.

What’s all this about Joy?

It seems like Joy has been a theme in your work recently?

Yes, since about the beginning of 2008, the readings have been raising the concept of Joy more and more. Firstly, to extend an invitation to us to commit to our Joy and secondly, to provide some insight and practical suggestions about what that means and how to do it. And that order is important! Normally, we want to completely understand something before we commit to it, but I’ve learnt that permission for something needs to come before any real kind of understanding and experience of it.

Let’s explore those in order then – what does it mean to ‘commit to my Joy’?

It’s a choice to make the purpose of your existence about Joy, as opposed to making it about success, obligation, relationships, service or even growth. It’s a radical invitation because it profoundly affects how you navigate your way through the big and small choices of your life. Committing to your joy means taking the risk to live only for your joy, and knowing that only you are responsible for the realization of that.

‘Living only for my Joy’ sounds at best frivolous and at worst utterly selfish

I recognize and respect that the notion brings up huge resistance in many people – from those two perspectives and from others. That’s why I dare to call the invitation radical. If you’ll bear with me, allow me to respond to the two concerns you raise. Though I have no need to convince you of anything nor to ‘convert’ you to this way of being. It has never been spoken of as something obligatory (there is no such directive ever from divinity) and I urge you only to consider this if it rings true…and of course if it contributes to your joy!

Imagine a world where every human being took full responsibility for their own joy, never expecting that any other person or system or religion or government would do so for them. Imagine that you were taught to respect and identify your Joy and supported in your quest to bring your joy into being. Do you think there would be more creativity, production, wellness, harmony in that kind of world, or less? Is that frivolous? Do you think the ‘takers’ in our world – the ones who grab, steal and hurt – are full of Joy or empty of it? My realization has been that if you are not committing to your joy then inevitably you will have an expectation – consciously or not – that someone or something must provide you with that, whether it’s your spouse or your children or your leaders or ‘more privileged’ people – and that is selfish. Do you think it was selfish of Van Gogh to commit so passionately to creating what brought him joy, even if that wasn’t welcomed or understood at the time? Was Mozart selfish? Tiger Woods? The reason we afford these people the permission to live solely for their joy is because we can recognize their genius. If we recognized our own genius would we give ourselves the same permission?

I can get my mind around that, but what about helping others, being of service?

Service is not a replacement for Joy, it is a natural and inevitable by-product of Joy. It is impossible for you not to deeply affect the lives of other people when you are living your deepest Joy. It spills over! Firstly, because you will be bringing into the world a creation or a product or a service or a self that is high vibrational (anything created from joy or love is high vibrational) and secondly because you will be radiating energy, wellbeing, passion and playfulness, which quietly invites all whom you touch to choose the same. That is service! We do not serve others by doing for them what they can do for themselves or by trying to take care of their joy – we serve others by inviting them into their fullest selves purely because we make it seem like so much fun 

I used to have a deep intention to serve the world, and as a result spent years working in NGOs and development-oriented organizations where I wasn’t having all that much fun nor being well taken care of nor using all the academic and other talents I have. Of course, it didn’t work and I got continually sick and found many other ways, too, to duck and dive out of full commitment. Not because those organizations are ‘wrong’, but because it wasn’t really, authentically, my Joy. I eventually gave up my (second) Masters degree, as well as my career in social service (of various kinds) and started to involve myself with what I really love. Now I am serving far more people than before, and I am very well rewarded for it, in all ways. That’s the kind of service that really works and is sustainable.

What are the implications of committing to my joy?

The implications are huge! Essentially, you will be navigating through your life using Joy as your compass – not service or habit or success or spiritual growth or approval or social norms. It’s not that these things are not allowed – it’s just that they should follow joy and not eclipse it. When you navigate with Joy, you will naturally be growing, naturally be of service and naturally be living a purposeful life. Not that committing to your Joy means taking the easy road – it doesn’t! Your desires are programmed in such a way as to require you to step up (your courage, your risk-taking, your surrender etc) in order to follow them. It would be worth talking about what Joy is and isn’t in another question.

Ok then – what is Joy?

The specific circumstances of Joy will change moment by moment – for example, in one context it will be joyful for you to speak up, in another it will be joyful for you to remain silent. But the essence of Joy is always the same, though difficult to describe. Joy is how you feel when you are living at the cusp of comfort and discomfort; reward and risk, success and stretch. Too much time in any of those extremities begins to move you out of alignment with Joy. Joy is when you are living in a full-blooded and uncontained way. One of the readings described the opposite of Joy as being ‘containment’.

Not sadness?

Certainly not. Joy can co-exist with sadness, grief, anger or any of the other emotions we call negative. These can exist as the waves on top of the ocean of our experience, while at the same time Joy can be the current driving it forward. For example, standing up for yourself in a relationship can cause conflict or pain, but it is also deeply joyful.

How will you know when you are moving in the direction of Joy?

From recent readings, I know that these are three of the markers, or signs, of choosing Joy: 1. You feel ALIVE 2. You feel RELIEVED 3. You feel more OPEN than before If a decision or a thought or a relationship or an opportunity increases your sense of aliveness, relief and open-ness it is aligned with Joy for you, even if it also requires you to step up your courage or your exposure or your trust. In fact if it requires you to step up these things it is definitely your Joy!

So Joy is almost like a lure into stepping up?

Exactly. By committing to living our Joy we are guaranteed both to expand in the fullest possible way and to be of enormous service at the same time. A lot of people are frustrated and disillusioned at the moment because, despite affirmations and positive visualisations, the universe has not delivered to their doorsteps exactly what they want. But that is not the point at all! Your Joy requires you to step up into a deeper, truer and fuller expression of yourself – which is what you are really doing here. One of the readings described Joy as a magic carpet. A magic carpet, as you may have noticed, never lands flat on the floor but always hovers slightly above the ground next to someone, requiring them to step up if they wish to experience the freedom and exhilaration of riding it.

Finally, if we are ready to commit to our Joy, how do we discover what it is?

This question is most usefully answered on two levels. Firstly, the biggest truth is that Joy is a choice and not a career, lifestyle, vocation or even a passion. You are not at the mercy of a particular partner or job or location or anything whatsoever to give to you Joy. You are the one who gives permission to experience Joy in any moment and it is only the stories you tell that reinforce that this particular circumstance is inherently joyful and this one is inherently not. If you are committed to living your Joy then it is your responsibility to create it in whichever way the moment makes available. For example, if a meeting is becoming nauseatingly boring, then you have a number of ways in which to respond to that. You can withdraw into fantasies of wishing you were somewhere else, you can drown yourself in coffee (or whatever is in your hipflask!) to stimulate you or you can bring into that setting the creativity, truth, fun or humour that you experience is lacking. To en-joy life means to make it joyful, not to wait until something or someone delivers it to you. Of course, when you are committed to bringing Joy into, for example, your current working environment you are likely to either vastly increase your contribution and, thus, reward or to clearly and quickly realise that the environment cannot support you, allowing you to move on far more quickly than you otherwise might have.

Yet, secondly, it is also true that you are deeply programmed with certain desires that are beyond your intellectual control and are part of the blueprint of this particular life. Having the courage (and it takes courage!) to realise, own, express and live out what you truly want is magnificently empowering. It is not as easy as it sounds to find out what you want – many adults I come across in my practice are quite far removed from their desires and it can be a truly heroic act to relocate and express them. My JoyMap process can assist with this, but if you are really committed to knowing your Joy you can simply bring this question into your daily existence as often as you can remember to: what is it that I actually want here? Asking this question in front of a menu, your wardrobe, within a conversation or at a major choice-point will slowly (and it’s ok for it to go slowly) begin to reacquaint you with the voice of your desires and begin to reveal you’re your Joy. Thank you.

©Angela Deutschmann May 2009

Move Over Meditation

Before I get drawn and quartered by devotees of the peaceful practice of meditation (or is that an oxymoron?), allow me to share some observations of myself and my clients, which have lead me to question some of the presumptions and prescriptions surrounding meditation as a spiritual tool.

Empirical research and personal experience certainly seem to indicate that no technique we know of (yet) can beat meditation for combating stress, training the mind and, in some cases, creating the conditions for blissful union with self, or the all that is. I’m not refuting that at all. Meditation may well be the quintessential tool for centre-ing and raising awareness; it’s just not the only one. And that little distinction can be the key to freeing up your spiritual life immeasurably.

Many people I’ve met carry significant guilt or worry about their meditation practice, or the lack thereof. It features on every to-do list they have and yet does not ever seem to become fully integrated into their daily life. The result? They get very heavy about the fact that they’re not getting light. Mmmm…

Of course this guilt feeds their heaviness and makes them feel like meditating the way a hippo might feel like taking a spinning class. He’d rather lie down and eat, which is precisely what many of them do. When we tell ourselves that we just can’t do this meditation thing (today), we tend to abandon a spiritual practice all together instead of exploring other possibilities of connecting with our divinity when meditation isn’t happening.

It’s a bit like me and exercise. In my head, exercise = running for 20 to 30 minutes three to four times a week. When I can’t, or don’t want, to do that then I do nothing at all. Sometimes for months! Some part of me, quite rightly, rebels against such a narrow, externally-taught range of exercise which is seldom very much fun. And because I have an ‘all or nothing’ idea about exercise, this leaves me high and dry. Or fat and flat, as the case may be.

Now that I see this, I teach myself and clients (especially in the Embody and Joymap processes) to recognise lots of different and creative ways in which we might get some exercise / love / international travel or whatever else gives us joy. Exactly the same is true of a spiritual practice. If your idea of speaking and listening to your divinity consists only of meditation, then you are at the mercy of the time, energy, conditions and inclination to meditate and if you don’t do it (and I can guarantee you that sometimes you won’t) then you’ll probably do nothing at all.

Why not expand your range of spiritual tools to give yourself a bigger menu from which to choose? Make sure that at least one of the options does not require money, at least one of the options does not require a long stretch of free time, at least one of the options doesn’t require you to be well / peaceful / high energy so that you don’t cop out of your spiritual practice just because on any given day those things aren’t there.

Of course you can be meditative while washing the dishes, driving to work or watching a Barney video (apparently) so the art of meditation can be practiced at any moment of your day, but that’s not only what I mean. Sometimes, loud or wild activity (which would seem anything other than meditative) also has the effect of bringing you back to your centre, clearing out the stuck emotions you might be carrying and clearing the path for the flow of divinity to move through you, well, loudly and wildly.

Over and above meditation, these are some of the things on my list of spiritual practices:

• Putting my iPod on shuffle and listening deeply to the first three or four songs that come up. Inevitably, these raise a valuable emotion or insight for me, even if they do leave me crying in public places..
• Dancing freely by myself for the pure purpose of expressing how I am feeling (i.e. not for showing my cool moves or getting sexy). For me this is one of the most effective, accessible and easy forms of letting go
• Writing and drawing in my journal
• Making love
• Talking or sending emails to specific friends with whom intimate sharing is the order of the day
• Being on aeroplanes. I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but in aeroplanes I’m immediately filled with a vast peacefulness and creativity. I step off them as if I’ve ohm-ed for hours. An expensive form of meditation but great for Voyager miles…
• Laughing. It’s irrelevant whether I’m laughing at my (big and strong) son dressed in pantyhose and doing ballet to ‘Hier Kommie Bokke’ (really) or at reruns of the Friends series, something about laughing in itself makes me lighter, less stressed and more open to possibilities. A very good replacement, or precursor, to meditation on the days you feel particularly down or heavy.
• Bringing people to mind with whom I’m having difficulty and forgiving them (which is really forgiving myself and my own projected qualities)
• Doing something I’m not good at. This weekend I played Wii Golf. You might not think that has spiritual benefits, but because this is so far off the list of things that I’m naturally good at, it did wonders for allowing me to laugh at myself and, in doing so, shrink my ego. Which is, after all, the purpose of meditation.

Your list will be different and, in actual fact, it’s not the activities themselves that create the value, it’s the permission behind them. If you can give permission to many more things than just meditation to be part of your spiritual practice, then you will fling open the doors of possibility and find yourself connecting to truth and divinity in the most unlikely situations. I’m sure Meditation would be proud.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

 

On 4 February 2008, our close friends Marilyn and Pieter were shot in their beds at close range. Four months later – through a stubborn belief in their own responsibility, a passion for their visions and an incredibly loving circle of supporters –they were well, and I had the privilege of being with them through the birth of their perfect baby girl, Keana. This is my story of that event and how it birthed me.

 

Two weeks ago Pieter dreamt that I helped them to birth Keana, which is why, on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday, I find myself laughing with Marilyn as she bounces on a birthing ball in a maternity clinic. Light contractions come and go. The room is gentle and full of sunlight. Pieter and my husband, Garrick, keep us amused and I keep us reverent. It may not be conventional for two couples to be doing this together, but it’s all right. We hold Marilyn’s hands and take a walk, stopping regularly when the force of a contraction takes over. The three of us supporters become humble, our egos dissolving into countless repetitions of 1-2-3-4 and the comicality of rubbing your friend’s bum in a public parking lot. It’s easy to be bigger than your personality and your gender when you are in the courageous company of a labouring woman.

 

Back in the birthing room, our words are few. Marilyn plays some music into which she gracefully disappears. Her hips sway, her knees bend, and she dances her breath deep down into her pelvis.  Her sensuality is like fire, but she is oblivious to everything except her body and her baby making its way into the world. When our eponymous wedding song starts to play, I know that she will understand when I stop rubbing her calves and go to kiss Garrick, pressing my body against his with the kind of intimacy we have only expressed in times of deep hurt, the birth of our own children and during that self-same wedding dance.

 

But there are awkward moments for me too. Maybe because I am a channel, or maybe because I am a woman, I always seem to know where the energy is in Marilyn’s body, and what is needed. But I feel very concerned that I’m taking over, dominating Pieter, being a pushy know-it-all. I suddenly see that this is the fear I carry around with me all the time – the fear of being arrogant. In a split-second of realisation, I get that I have cultivated a lifetime’s habit of not being fully present so as to tone down my impact and not be a ‘show-off’ (which I was called as a child). Language junky that I am, it makes linguistic sense to me: I don’t show up, so that I don’t show anyone else up. Over the years I have quietly become less spectacular, and more pleasing, because I fear the loneliness, and criticism, if I were to be full, complete, magnificent. This wonderful insight opens up to me in the midst of my rubbing, supporting, holding and encouraging. The joy of realising it eclipses the pain that it brings, the same way that a baby in arms eclipses the pain of bearing it. 

 

So, on this occasion, I choose not to tone myself down, but to take the risk of being fully there. It’s easy to do because of the magnetism of the birthing couple. I have never seen Marilyn so assertive, beautiful and in touch with every important signal in herself. She is so self-attuned that she can hear the music of the cosmos singing her baby’s name. We who have the pleasure of watching her can see her disappear into bliss every now and again, between contractions. We know that when she smiles like that she is meeting her daughter as a soul, enjoying a tiny, precious moment of full recognition before the exhausting demands of newborn motherhood. I ache for it.

 

As the dilation progresses to 8cm, the pain is overwhelming. Marilyn’s body is colossal in its strength and humbling in its vulnerability. Her face is dazed, panting, illuminated, as wave after wave of contractions pass through her, bringing her baby down. Pieter’s recession is as powerful as Marilyn’s emergence. I’ve never quite seen the grace and compassion he is when quiet and inspired by the awesome being that is his wife. Their dance is harmonious. She is prepared to lead and also to be lead; he is prepared to follow and also to be followed. The two of them have given the room a sensuality, which Garrick and I also feel and express in our eyes. It is only when you are a friend of your body, and of pain, that you can find the sexuality of birth, like a surprising diamond in a gushing river.

 

And that river is certainly gushing now, we can all sense it. Keana is ready to come. Garrick quietly removes himself so that Marilyn can birth in the most secluded way and I don’t know if I have ever felt more proud of his gentle selflessness. The midwife confirms that she is fully dilated and we assist her into the welcoming arms of the warm bath where she drifts between the heaven of rest and the heaven of sharpness. At one stage I am separated from her behind a curtain and I hear her let out an animal roar, as she touches her threshold of pain. Because she can’t see me, I let myself cry. But I am not crying for her, I am crying for me. I have done this too, I have given birth twice and embraced pain and fear to go and meet my babies. For the first time, I actually realise how miraculous that is and my tears roll in recognition of what my body and I did together. I remember channelling that the function of pain in a birth (and possibly elsewhere) is to take us to the edge of our identity so that we will give permission to step beyond it. I watch this in Marilyn as she begins to push. In that moment she is not attached to her personality, her image, her past, her future or all the stories she tells about who she is. She is immersed in a moment that is relentlessly physical and, therefore, wholly spiritual.

 

Watching her push – in fact pushing with her – is incredible, incredulous. We can see Keana’s black, wispy hair in the water already. Marilyn reaches down to touch her daughter’s head as she spends the last few moments inside the body of her mother. We are encouraging her to push, to breathe, but she is oblivious to anything but the command of the contraction that bears her baby down. The room is dramatic. Not one of the people there is thinking of a single thing except what is happening in front of us. We are singular, alive, witnesses to power. Marilyn reaches down inside her to roar an ancient roar and pushes Keana’s head into the water. I grip her hand and watch as the head turns into a neck, turns into shoulders and eventually a complete, perfect body slides out of another and into life. There is no way to get used to that. Yet there they are – Marilyn, Pieter and Keana in each other’s arms, cradling themselves, recognising themselves. Only a moment ago pain was taking Marilyn to the edge of herself, now she is gurgling to her baby girl asking her if she is cold and hungry.

 

I retreat now, spilling my tears carefully so as not to shift focus off of an intimacy so sacred that it can’t bear itself for very long and is soon replaced by scales and stitching and latching and laughter. I take a look at the clock on the wall and I know that I will always remember the baby, and the self, that I birthed at 4.50pm on 11 June 2008.    

 

Are You Knitting?

Most of us have had the experience of praying for something that just didn’t happen, despite grazed knees from all the grovelling, or visualising something that just didn’t materialise, despite a whole armoury of affirmations. Does this mean we just weren’t positive enough, faithful enough, aligned enough or could there be other reasons why (to put it bluntly) we don’t always get what we want? 

 

Contrary to what some popular spiritual teachings are proposing, our divinity is not a personal online shopper who receives an order from us, fills it out to our demand and delivers it a couple of days later. I agree that that’s kind of fun, but that’s why Woolworths exists, not God. What exactly, do you think, is the grand meaning of human existence if all we are doing here is, well, shopping? I’m all for making dreams come true and embodying our desires, but that is the vehicle of human existence, not the purpose. Let me expand on that subtle, but significant distinction.

 

That car / wellness centre / full body massage / new Alanis Morissette CD (I hope my husband is reading this) that you want is part (and hopefully only part) of your desire. Our desires are encoded in our DNA (the readings call them ‘the voice of your divinity’) and are very worthy of our attention. Our desires, or visions, drive us forward, give us focus, they essentially carve out what would otherwise be an undefined life. But actually getting them, or achieving them, is not really the point. Ask any world-weary celebrity or billionaire (even Mother Theresa if you read her personal letters) if getting and doing everything that you want makes you happy for ever after.

 

It is who we become in the process of making our dreams come true that is important, not so much the dreams themselves. The masterpiece we are creating is ourselves, not our lives, despite so much current focus on having it all, reaching goals, making dreams come true. A spectacular life, even one focused on service or spiritual upliftment, does not mean much to someone who cannot love the self they have become in the process. And that self is of course the only thing that travels beyond this temporary world we live in, the rest is illusion.

 

That is why our divinity is far more focused on the process of reaching our dreams than the dreams themselves. The universe, or God, or your higher self (I promise it doesn’t mind what you call it) is interested in how you develop and expand as you go about creating what you want. As such, it’s far more likely that your visualisations of your dream job will be answered by providing you with tools, insights and growth opportunities rather than the job itself just landing at your feet.

 

This has been sweetly explained in the readings using two different analogies. One was the image of a magic carpet. There are always magic carpets around for us (i.e. vehicles for making dreams coming true) but if you can remember seeing a magic carpet arrive next to someone, it never lands completely flat on the ground next to their feet. Instead it hovers just above the ground, requiring them to step up if they wish to use it. The solutions to our problems or the next steps to our dreams are always available but they will require us to step up in some way (to our fears, our truth, our talent, new levels of commitment etc) because that’s the point! The aim of this game of life is our stepping up, not really what we get as a result.

 

I’ll conclude with the second, symbolic, illustration of this understanding from someone’s reading, which puts it beautifully:

 

‘You keep on asking for a jersey [substitute lover / published book / full bank account]. We’ve given you 50 balls of wool already……………………..…why aren’t you knitting?’

 

 

©  Angela Deutschmann www.angeladeutschmann.com

 

    

 

 

Whole-some Living

I’d like to share with you what I did this morning. It took some courage but left me feeling uplifted, inspired and sure of myself. After resisting the experience sharply, I eventually surrendered and took what I think is a big leap towards creating my dream self. Truly, it was nothing less than pure transformation.

 

I went to have my hair done.

 

Hopefully for most of you this is a relatively normal activity. But, for me, committing time, energy and money to having my hair done requires surrender, risk and a leap out my comfort zone to the extent that I can call it a spiritual experience. Not because I got high on the peroxide fumes or braved Sandton City on a Saturday morning, but because my story about who I am has excluded beauty for a long time.

 

For reasons that are too complex to mention beauty is an aspect of divinity that has never seemed to belong to me. I have an uncanny (and certainly not coincidental) knack of being surrounded by beautiful family, friends, and even my own sons, but I’ve never managed to own what was being reflected to me. So for a long time, I reacted to beauty the way many of us react to what we secretly want but think we can’t have. We make it wrong! It was much easier for me to call beautiful people superficial than to face my own sense of lack and much more convenient to label those girls who did embrace their beauty, sluts, rather than begin the sticky, scary journey of embracing my own.

 

So I worked hard to carve an identity that positioned itself as somewhat opposite to beautiful. I developed the serious, intellectual, spiritual side of myself so that beauty in relation would look frivolous and meaningless. But, of course, that lack of wholeness repeatedly comes back to bite me on the bum! In a reading this weekend, it was gently suggested to me that my struggle with marketing myself and my work is a direct reflection of my own firm belief that the content (the inner) is far more important than the packaging (the outer). Ouch! But, in the practical, playful tone that is characteristic of the readings, I was advised not to judge myself for that (mis)belief but instead to do something I’d secretly wanted to do for ages – and without guilt! That’s why I found myself spending the morning with my head under a dryer rather than under a book.

 

There are many ways to look at what aspects of yourself you’re suppressing. An obvious one is to observe the labels you most often put on yourself and consider what the opposite of that might be. Do you think of yourself as clever, middle-aged or spiritual? Perhaps you’re missing out on the benefits of being a little silly, youthful in your thinking, or commercially minded? A friend of mine exemplified this to me when she took some time out from her two-year-old to shop for shoes. She consciously looked for the pair of boots that seemed the most UNmother-like and she feels wild and sexy each time she puts them on.  Just for the sake of feeling that it was a good thing to do, but the value goes even beyond the feeling. Being in touch with that side of herself is going to be extremely useful as she embraces her fledgling career and needs a sense of toughness to draw on, or when she has to muster up the self esteem to speak out.  Most often, it is our repressed selves that hold the key to our next step in business, relationships or personal growth.

 

What small choice can you make this month to express who you think you are not? I guarantee you learning, liberation and a great deal of fun!

 

An angel in a packet of Kudu biltong

 

There were two funny, and humbling, synchronicities around today’s reading. Most of the reading was focused on inviting T to rest and ‘be soothed’, as she was trying to achieve a lot from a low base of energy, thereby exhausting herself. After the reading she told me that she had decided just last week, to rest and take some pressure off herself, as the focus for her month. Clearly she had sensed already what was in her highest interest, before even coming to a reading (it happens so often).

 

Right at the end of the reading, there was a small piece of practical advice to T – it would do you good to eat meat from game at the moment, she was told. It is very different from eating domestic animals, which are born to become produce, and will assist you to ground, but still remain light. Her smile was huge as she told me afterwards that on Friday her mum had given her a big packet of Kudu biltong…she already had what she was being invited to eat!

 

This raises four fascinating points for me:

 

·         Your higher self communicates to you all the time, not just through channels, or teachers or spiritual books. T had just felt like she needed to rest for a while and this was exactly what her higher self confirmed was in her best interests. As the readings always say – your desires are the signature of your divinity – there’s actually no need to look anywhere else (though admittedly the confirmation can be fun!)

·         Often we categorise things (and people for that matter) into what is ‘spiritual’ and ‘not spiritual’. So, for example, vegetarianism and Deepak Chopra fall into the former category and Coca-cola and Robert Mugabe into the latter. But here, in a reading (and it’s not the first time) someone is specifically being encouraged to eat meat. This is not to say that eating meat is therefore spiritual and we should all go out and do it for immediate enlightenment. It’s instead an indication that, inherently, everything has its ability to serve someone in some place at some time. Disregarding anything, or anyone, as unspiritual limits our ability to benefit from them.

·         T hasn’t always had an easy relationship with her mom and would probably not describe her as one of her teachers, yet she was the one who handed T the gift of something she really needs at the moment. Our learning, or gifts, or support can come in ANY package, through any person, even the least likely. Keep your eyes, eyes and heart open for where love is going to show up next….

·         And, lastly, I was reminded that you probably already have what you need right now.  

The alchemy of hate

The Alchemy of Hate

It’s hard to keep my mind on much else today, other than on the upsurge of horrific violence against foreigners in my very own city. In places just kilometers away from where I live and work people are being kicked out of their homes, looted, beaten and set alight for being ‘other’. The taxi rank and supermarket a few minutes’ walk from where I am right now, have just shut down hours early in anticipation of another afternoon of fire and hate. I’m feeling alternately numb and horrified.

Naturally there are a number of lenses through which to try to make sense of what’s being called xenophobic backlash (though I’m not convinced that’s what’s actually afoot). There are economic explanations, political explanations, cultural explanations, even bureaucratic explanations if you listen to the sagacity of Mamphele Ramphele. And on all those levels there also possible actions to take if, like me, you are feeling appalled and grief-stricken by mob behaviour that one can’t help but compare with the sniffing and snuffing out of Jews only 70 or so years ago, or our own local brand of apartheid for that matter. Things you can do to contribute include political lobbying, supporting newly-homeless folk by taking blankets, food, toiletries and water to police stations and making your voice heard in the press.

But more than that, I have to engage with this violence personally and spiritually. Although I myself can cringe at the esotericism of this approach, I trust deeply that the internal eventually becomes the external and therefore that’s where to go when treating the cause of the disease, and not just the symptoms. If the world is only ever a mirror of the self (which is why Gandhi famously suggested that to change the world we must become that desired change ourselves), then the actions we see around us (yes, even theft, murder and the like) belong to all of us. Rather than that disheartening me, it inspires me. At last I can contribute. At least I can be part of making a new reality, when just dropping off some blankets (which I have also done) doesn’t feel like enough

It’s easy (and probably natural) to focus our outrage and judgment on the people bearing the torches and tyres or those in power who’ve let it come this far. Yet, if we do, the place we are coming from is exactly the same one that they are – hatred and blame. More of this in our country, and our world, can not be the solution. So today I’ve been looking in myself for these two thugs that I see mirrored around me. Perhaps for you there are more striking reflections than hatred and blame, giving you another set of questions to raise, but for me, that’s where I’m starting to look.

Hatred

Is there anyone you feel justified to hate? BEE fat cats, the Chinese, the person who hijacked your car, the taxman, your boss, the government, paedophiles, your sister who got all the privileges, Robert Mugabe?

The emotion of hatred exists and therefore has value. Feeling it and expressing it healthily must be available to us (and perhaps part of our problem is an overly politically correct context) but the rot sets in when we feel justified to hate and to act on that hatred in any way we like. Unreachable as this sounds, the only way to create the world we’d like our kids (and ourselves) to live in, is if we never let ourselves justify a perpetual hatred. After all, if our hatred can be justified, then why can’t somebody else’s? Swearing at someone on TV and burning down a shack are just a few degrees of hatred apart.

I’m investigating at the moment whether I’m holding onto any hatred. It’s not an easy task because those of us who like to think we are educated and somewhat self-aware, presume that hatred is something rather outdated, an emotion for the ‘less developed’ along with things like, say, sloth and wrath. But after persistent searching, some of the places that I’m finding speckles of hatred are:

·         Where I regularly ridicule others (on TV, in newspapers, in conversations with friends)

·         Where my highest values get threatened e.g. people that send me hate-mail about my work (yes, really) or people who don’t think my children are the cutest, brightest, most beautiful angels ever to be humanly conceived (no, not really)

·         Where my social circle justifies hatred and I just slip into it (usually toward despotic, neurotic, psychotic or just plain stupid political leaders)

·         Where I transfer my hatred from an ‘unacceptable’ focus onto a more justifiable one (being angry at my husband instead of at my baby, shouting at the cat instead of the CEO of the medical aid scheme and so on)

·         Abstract areas of life – hating poverty, debt, ignorance, violence, mess, injustice and so on. Hating hatred, as I’ve already mentioned, keeps it alive and thriving.

Naturally it’s a little futile to examine all the external locations of our hatred without looking at the primary source, hatred of ourselves. I realise that sounds a little overdramatic, but I can’t tell you how many clients I have whose dream is to bring peace and healing to the world in one way or another, but feel quite justified to hate their own fear, addictions, body, habits, stuckness, inadequacies, secret desires or lack of clarity. How can we possibly transform hatred in the world if we are carrying it for ourselves?

Blame

Blaming illegal immigrants for the poverty, unemployment and women-lessness (yes, this is one of the major arguments) of some South Africans is (to me anyway) quite clearly a case of scape-goating. I found myself arguing vehemently with a friend today that the spate of attacks on foreigners was a case of locals being too loyal to the ruling party and finding another, less powerful, group of people to punish for the appalling conditions of their lives. During my convincing debate however, I realised that my own argument, just like that of the looting mob, was rooted in blame.

I’m not suggesting that people should never be held accountable nor face the consequences of their choices. But there is a difference between calling someone to book, and blaming them for your sorrows. And here’s the difference in a little example from my own life:

One of my husband’s few Extremely Irritating Sickening Habits (EISH) is spending hours on his computer upstairs. I regularly blame our untidy house, my small writing output, all our debt, my children’s dirty hair and anything else that concerns me on this. There is some legitimacy to my complaints, and just this evening we made a deal about some of the no-go times of day to be on the computer (bath-time, breakfast-time, during a fire and so on). Asking him to be accountable for chores that we share is one thing, but blaming him solely for Complaints A – D above, is an escape and one that can only leave me paralysed and resentful with no options for meaningful action. If the story you are telling yourself also leaves you in that position (or if the only action you can think of is torching someone’s home) then it’s highly likely you are blaming.

When (or maybe in present company I should be saying if J) you do encounter blame and hatred in yourself, the only way to heal it is, paradoxically, to love it better. (Or were you thinking that feeling hate and blame towards your hate and blame was gonna dismantle that hate and blame, huh?). Just the awareness of when and where it comes up for you, already dissolves it somewhat and if you’d like to take it further then have a conversation with that yucky (as my son would say) part of you until it feels heard and tells you why it is acting that way. We know that criticising and punishing a young child all the time only produces more undesirable behaviour, why don’t we practice that towards ourselves?

As we create more compassion in ourselves, it will spill over into our lives, and into the world at large. That’s the only way I know how to alchemise hate.