Would love to hear your thoughts on how to move forward in life without internalizing the criticisms and judgements of past relationships?

There is a difference between personal growth and conditioning. 

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” ~ Maya Angelou

Personal growth is conscious learning. Conscious learning is the result of experience when met with mindfulness. It entails an expanded capacity to understand and act without tying superstitions into the narrative. By superstitions, I mean errant beliefs such as “I always lose,” “I always come in last,” “I never get what I want,” and so on. Such statements are superstitions that can get woven into your psyche and become self-defeatist. 

Conditioning is unconscious learning. While conscious learning led to a widened capability, unconscious learning leads to a narrowed capacity. Unconscious learning limits your powers of perception and therefore action. 

So when you talk about internalizing criticisms and judgments, whether they are from past relationships or any past experiences, we are talking about conditioning and unconscious learning. 

No matter how bad a past relationship or experience was, it can be directed either toward personal growth or it can become conditioning. If you make it personal, if you make it about your identity, then it tends to become conditioning. This most often happens when you make a personal narrative or story out of it. “I’m this kind of person,” “That is just who I am,” “I always attract those kinds of people,” and on and on. 

To be directed toward personal growth, nothing is taken personally. How other people view you can tell you a lot of useful things. But it cannot tell you who you truly are. Only you can know yourself and in so doing you will better understand other people. If someone doesn’t truly know themselves, they cannot know others. So while we can learn from the criticisms and judgments from others, it is important to understand the context and circumstance. 

Context and circumstance unlock criticism and judgment to reveal what is useful in it and what isn’t. Personal growth will take what is useful and let the rest of it go. Conditioning will make an identity of victimhood and then continue to be a victim despite the circumstances long having passed. 

What makes this distinction possible is mindfulness and daily meditation. It can be very easy to get caught up in our emotional reactions such that we perceive everything with a filter on it. Spiritual practices help us to dissolve our filters so that we can meet reality as it is. 

A book that will be very helpful with this is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. 

Namaste :)

Lazy- the ego is such a trickster. Does it ever heal completely? I feel like I'll find clarity and truth, and then be sucked back into its illusions full force. It makes everything about itself, claiming that this is the way to happiness. Then I let go of the identity and I remember peace, joy and the freedom of a child. Quickly, the ego comes back in with its plans of achievements, desires and things to acquire. It is so fucking addicting.

Patience. 

When you turn on a light, first it will flicker. This is part of the path. Nothing is wrong with your current experience. Keep going. 

Although wounds may be part of the ego, the ego itself is not a wound. Therefore it doesn’t need healing. Healing requires time; freedom from the ego does not. 

No matter how long a room has remained in darkness, the moment you turn on a light that darkness will disappear. The ego is that darkness. 

The light doesn’t need to fight the darkness or push it away. There is no struggle. The darkness has no choice but to fall away in the presence of light. 

Likewise the ego has no choice in the presence of your attention. A rope in the darkness may seem like a snake but when you look upon it in the light it is seen to be a rope. The ego, when seen clearly, is just a collection of mental impressions, judgments, and habits. 

The only mistake is taking that collection to be alive and to be you. Observing it without identifying with it as you go through life is enough. 

Sometimes you will forget. Sometimes you will remember. You will start to remember more than you will forget. Then you will eventually find there is nothing to forget. There is only your presence. 

Daily meditation will be your constant through the ups and downs.

Namaste sis :)

How will meditation help me with anxiety? How many times a day should I do it?

Broadly speaking there are two kinds of anxiety: general and specific. General anxiety is a background of uneasiness, worry, and discomfort. It’s like you aren’t feeling right but you can’t put your finger on it. Anything you can worry about, you will. Specific anxiety is tethered to an explicit phenomenon that elicits an unwanted anxiety response in you. 

Meditation helps both. 

Meditating daily helps to alter your baseline “frequency.” Many of us live with an unnecessary amount of anxiety in our day to day life. It is mostly semi-conscious such that we often don’t even realize that is the case. Whether it is FOMO or restlessness or worry we aren’t doing what we need to be, it spoils the simple pleasure of living your day. 

Why does this happen? A collection of fears, worries, judgments, concerns, and conditioning lingers wordlessly beneath the surface of your consciousness. Trash that hasn’t been taken out since childhood. 

Meditation drudges up all of these things and allows them to be washed away in the light of your attention. This leaves you feeling lighter and liberated, and therefore happy. 

Once a day for meditation is good enough. Or doing once in the morning and once in the evening is good too. 

When it comes to specific anxiety, meditation helps you to recognize when you are deviating from your baseline frequency. You are at ease until something happens. Then your anxiety is triggered. You witness and observe the triggering and the reaction. You also witness when it finally disappears. 

This reveals to you through your direct experience that you are not your anxiety. Your anxiety comes and goes. You do not. You are like a rock that is unmoved. And so you stay true to that rockness by practicing mindfulness. A rock doesn’t try to push things away or suppress them. Nor does a rock run away from them. A rock simply abides. If it is in a river, the current runs around it. If it is on a mountaintop, the winds flow over it. And the rock is still the rock. 

Just because the anxiety arises doesn’t mean you have failed or lost or something has gone wrong. It simply means that anxiety has arisen. And it means you have this opportunity to intensify your mindfulness practice. In the short-term this will make your anxiety more bearable and in the long-term it will make your anxiety less likely to come around. 

A book that will help is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. 

Namaste :)

What are your views on sex?

I have no views on sex. 

Be smart, be safe. 

Namaste!