Month: March 2012

Alone With Solitude

by Manuela, posted in Being Present, Meaning, Spirituality, Understanding

“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know that I am strong.  There is no doubt about it.  To go through what life has handed me on a silver platter these past few years, and still be standing could only mean that I am strong.  I didn’t always think so, but I’ve learned to believe in my strength.  If I had the chance to go back in time and make changes, I wouldn’t change anything because so many beautiful gifts and so much understanding and growth has come out of this.  But I must admit – I am tired.  I’m tired of having to be the strong one, of always having to chug ahead no matter what and having to make decisions and take responsibility for a lot.  I am reaching the point where I am too tired to think and talk.  When I’m really tired I tend to go silent.  It isn’t that I’m avoiding people, or I have nothing to say.  I find that it just requires a lot of energy to line up all my thoughts in order to form them into sentences.  I don’t have that energy at the moment, and so I just let those thoughts swirl and swirl around in my mind hoping that they’ll wear themselves out eventually and stop.  So, please don’t think I’ve been quiet because of you.  It’s not you, really, it’s me.

So, what I’ve found out is that when I’m silent and wanting to be left alone, people get suspicious.  Trying to be alone becomes difficult, and I find that the opposite actually happens.  Because of my solitude, I am constantly apologizing or explaining my wanting to be alone.  People seem confused with the reason for why I crave it so much.  So I sometimes wonder why so many people are afraid to sit for a while alone without distractions, what are they afraid of that will happen?  It’s when I silence the blaring lights and mind numbing sounds of my daily life that I find that I can actually hear what life is truly trying to teach me, what has taken residence in my heart and is desperately trying to be communicated to me.  I find that at that moment things are no longer distorted and I can see the situations in my life for what they really are.  They are no longer mean and scary, and this is where I can gather up the strength and courage needed to take me through the next phase which I will be facing.  The only way I can understand this big, gigantic, and yet small world is to once in a while turn away from it, and retreat inward.

Please don’t think I’m some kind of hippy or monk.  I don’t sit on the floor in a yoga pose, or sit under an apple tree and say “Peace, Dude.”  I go on with my daily chores as normal.  I still go to work, run errands etc.  I just modify a few things.  I place my Blackberry on phone calls only – and respond only to urgent things.  Although I can’t stop doing everything, I do try to reduce the amount things that I do, because it’s unrealistic to think otherwise.  I just don’t speak with anyone. I stay quiet.  I listen to what my body tries to tell me. I may listen to the radio or watch TV, but most of the time I don’t because I find that with the silence around me, the noise tends to be intrusive.  I just veg out.

You’re probably wondering what the heck I’m talking about, so let me explain what solitude means to me.  I believe that the silence is a way to rest the mind.  Silencing the mind is to my spirit what sleep is to my body.  I don’t know about you but I know that I can’t go without sleep for too long because my body will break down, and the same holds true with my mind.  Silence provides nourishment and refreshment.  Going too long without providing it with what it requires makes it go mushy.  This is when depression sets in, situations become extreme and to difficult to be in and everything is thrown out of proportion – bigger, scarier and more complicated that they actually are.  To retreat inwards is difficult at times though, because sometimes I am forced to face not so nice things about myself and others.  I see the true nature of people, different from what I originally thought about them, almost like devils are disguised as angels, and angels are disguised as devils.  Being in silence allows for my spirit to tell the difference, since I am not wrapped up in the drama of the situations.

My times of solitude are gifts wrapped in many different sizes, some are happy, sad and many are suffering.  But it’s the times when I go through the darkness, the lonely, intense and horrible darkness and I struggle to express my pain, unable to comprehend, and my efforts to put words on paper that I find it to be most effective.  Through these times I am forced to be patient with myself, to endure and believe in the simplicity of it all, as life is so hectic most of the time.  With the difficulty of the silence grows a confidence in life and me, which allows me to loosen the reins of control and let life happen to me.  Because most times, life knows exactly what needs to happen, and the path is shown to me while in silence.

There is a pattern with this I have noticed too.  I don’t think about wanting to go into solitude, it just happens.  In the beginning there is a sense of joy as I begin to notice that I am preparing for the future, what is to come.  Then with action, anxiety then sets in as efforts are made to make changes to my life.  After this comes weariness, discouragement and then, once again, flight into solitude.  Sounds crazy really, why would I want to go into solitude again?  Why? Because of the joys which is felt.  There is meaning to all of this.

The secret of why I go into solitude, besides reflecting, growing and gaining strength and courage is that it gives birth to my creativity.  All the pain it causes me, these are gifts to me.  It is a place where I am able to go alone; I’m unable to bring anyone with me.  This world we live in is starved for solitude, silence and privacy – even in midst of the very unfamiliar circumstance.  There I am able to find all my paths, my healing and my peace. My solitude is my home.

Out Of Control With Control

by Manuela, posted in Love, Relationships, Understanding

“You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” ― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

 

I have been on a writing hiatus for the last while, though my mind has been cranking, trying to make sense of all sorts of things that are going on in my life.  I have found that a way to release myself from these thoughts is to write about them, put them on ‘paper’.  I find that as I write, everything that I’ve been contemplating comes together, the puzzle pieces join to make a lovely picture.  Essentially, I reach a point of clarity about the situation.

 

What has been grappling for me lately is one’s need for ‘control’ – the need to control situations, people and things.  What is behind all of this?  What brings a person to feel that they must control another?  Dictionary.com defined control as the situation of being under the regulation, domination or command of another. And Merriam-Webster.com defines it as to exercise restraining or directing influence over another thing.

 

I have found that fear and uncertainty are married and is a breeding ground for one’s need for control.  People are afraid of uncertainty; of not knowing what will happen next, and things unfamiliar.  We are all afraid to make decisions or act on our own free will for fear of making a mistake, and especially what other people will think about us or how they will react towards what we do.  The moment we decide to take a chance, to act fully on our own desires, we fear to face the repercussions of a decision made which was not ideal.  We expect guarantees with whatever we do will turn out ok; we want to be able to go through life without struggles.  And when the situation doesn’t turn out as we planned, or something is out of our means of control, we do not understand, and try desperately to rein in the ropes.  We feel like we’re going crazy.

 

Of course we feel like we’re going crazy because society teaches us that we need to control everything.  Fear is pounded into us right from the start – when we are born.  We are taught at an early age to follow rules if we want to be safe, happy and accepted.  We’re taught to fear things that we know nothing of, have not experienced or seen, such as ‘the bad guys out there.’  We must behave or act in a certain way or we will be shunned from the community, and people will ‘talk’ because we are doing things differently from everyone else.  And so at an early age we already fear about how our own future will turn out, and this is paralyzing in itself.  We need to start controlling our life’s outcome at an early age.  Children are asked what they want to be when they grow up, high school students are told to think carefully of what career path they want to take in order not to waste four or five years worth of university, we need to plan for retirement while we’re still young or else we’ll live in poverty.  How can we not feel the need to control our future?  But when this sometimes spills into the need to control others, that’s when things get really messy.

 

But we can’t control others.  This isn’t possible and yet we try and try and try.  We become angry because we cannot make others be what we want them to be, or do what we want them to do.  I believe that the anger isn’t because the other person isn’t doing as we said; the anger is the result of us being discontent with our own life.  We are not the person we want to be and because of the other person’s reaction to our needs isn’t what we expect, it forces us to reflect inward and that scares the crap out of us.  This is too painful, and so we project our feelings onto others, as it’s much ‘safer’ to do so and as a result we up our antes when they don’t do what we say.  The end result is a vicious cycle is born.  Being the person who has the need to control is an awful place to be in.  The expectation placed on others is so unrealistic that any chance of them being met is impossible.  Extreme disappointment and mistrust is then experienced.

 

However, no matter what the other person does, the person needing to control will never be able to trust.  Trust is the fruit of a loving relationship, and it cannot be produced by the person being controlled.  Trust is only possible from the person needing control.  They relationship either has it or it doesn’t.   I’m not saying that the person controlling doesn’t love the other.  Sometimes when you love someone so much you feel that you need to control them, to protect them.  This, however, cuts off their life force, and prevents them from living their own life, and experiencing all that they need to experience.  In the end, resentment is felt towards the person wanting to control.

 

When I decided to make changes in my life, to become happy, a lot of people became angry with me.  I created ripples in the delicate waters of their life, which they did not want.  It was almost like the changes I was making became radical when in fact they weren’t.  The fact that I decided to make for myself the life I wanted, the way I wanted was a foreign concept to some.  I can still see the confusion on their faces.  It frightened a lot of people.  Everything known to them was challenged, almost as if a chaos bomb was dropped.  What was real became unreal; things that were impossible became tangible.  Any means to control the situation became impossible and when this was attempted, their attempts seemed silly.  People were miserable, depressed, angry and in pain -including me.

 

Relationships became strained.  Not just the relationship with my ex, but the relationships with many people.  Many dissolved altogether, not by my choice, as I wasn’t even given one in most cases. I was hurt, tried to make sense of it, and even reached out.  But soon enough I gave up any need for control in those cases, and accepted the outcomes willingly.  But in many other cases I fought to have the relationships continue, and in the way I wanted them to.  The relationships had become painful to be in.  I forced love to take place in them, and to have the other person accept my views, my life all on my terms.  It didn’t matter how much I loved the person, I still wanted to have my own way.  I think this holds true for many people, especially when we want nothing but the best for the other person.  But it’s not in the nature of love to force a relationship.  That is contradictory to what love is.  It is in the nature of love to open the way for the relationship to blossom.  I decided to make changes.  I took the pain which I was feeling and decided to use it towards good.  I used the energy from the pain and channeled it towards positive reactions to the situations I once tried to control.  I no longer tried to control the situation or the people in it, because I learned the hard way that this was not possible.  I took control of my life by controlling my reaction to the situations.  Life became brighter and less stressful when I let things flow the way they were meant to flow.

 

I found that control gives you a false sense of power.  It is illusory and therefore you feel that you have the power to judge others and feel superior to them.  You believe that you know better, and your standard of living is higher and therefore you judge, enforcing rules and expectations, in an attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty.  But we don’t call the shots.  We cannot make sense in this world based on a small and incomplete picture of reality.  We don’t know what someone else’s reality is.  Yet we dictate the terms and judge their actions and find them guilty of things untrue.

 

There will always be situations which I find unsatisfactory, things that I want done a certain way or people who I want to behave or do things differently.  I don’t have control over that.  I can only change what people know by speaking with them, and lending my opinion, but they are ultimately in charge of what they do with it and in charge of how they want to live their life.  The fear of the unknown will always be there and the decision lies in whether or not the fear of the unknown will hinder life from taking place.  A life filled with happiness could be waiting around the corner but the uncertainty and living in that fear can kill it, can prevent it from entering our world.  Babies take this chance all the time.  Imagine what the world would be like if every baby was afraid to take that first step.  Or give up after they fell the first time.  They would never know what it would be like to walk, to run, jump or dance.  All that freedom would have been taken away.  Those who are afraid of freedom are those who are unable to trust others to live in it.

 

And so I learned to forgive – myself.  I needed to release myself from something that was preventing joy from coming into my life, which affected my ability to love.  It was eating me alive.  Many people are sick, miserable and extremely stressed because of their unhealthy attachments to things that they cannot control.   Incredible things can happen in life when we make the decision to control what we do have power over – our reactions, instead of craving the need to control what we can’t.  If you want to control things in your life so badly, you need to start working on your mind.  It’s the only thing that you should try to control.  If you can’t, then you’re in big, big trouble.  The more you try to control everything else in life, the more out of control you will be.  You will be basing your personal happiness on things entirely out of your control.  Good luck to you if this is what you choose.

Have A Little Faith

by Manuela, posted in Spirituality, Uncategorized, Understanding
Fath Makes All Things Possible
punjabigraphics.com

“Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. And lo, no one was there. “~Author Unknown

A while back someone said to me “If you want help, all you need to do is ask, and I’ll be there for you.” Actually, many people say this to me.  But there is a problem – a big problem. The problem is: I’m stubborn.  I really am.  And for those of you who know me, and are saying “noooo, really?” I say to you “shush up!”  Sit tight and hear me out.  I know I can be pig-headed, and I’ll be honest, I really don’t see anything wrong with that.  I know what I believe in, I know what is suits me, and until someone can show me something different, I’ll continue doing what I’m doing.  I’m open-minded; I want to learn new ways, and I’m willing to listen.  But like I said, I’m stubborn, and because of this, I sometimes suffer a great deal of hurt as a result of it.  I’m working on changing this though, albeit slowly, but I am working on it.

The other day I found myself on my knees.  I didn’t fall; I wasn’t searching for something on the ground.  I was on my knees because I was praying for a miracle. I was told some terrifying news which made me weak in the knees. This news scared me right down to my core, and has the potential to change my life forever.  Despite of all the troubles, heartache and tribulations I have been through in the past, this has to be the worst of it.  It’s a mother’s worst nightmare, and right now I feel like I am living it.  I hope it turns out to be a dream, but only time will tell.  This news is challenging me in ways which I have never been challenged before.  I don’t know what to do, and so I’m doing what feels to be the right thing at this moment.  I’m on my knees – well, not really, but figuratively speaking.

Life hasn’t been easy for me, especially these past few years. I’ve been through a lot. I’m not looking for sympathy, or pity, I’m just stating the facts.   It appears that as soon as life starts to get better, I get hit square in the forehead with another brick.  This time I I’ve been knocked out.  10 points to the thrower!

As I mentioned in an earlier post “God, I Hate You”, I’m not a religious person.  There are a lot of things that I just don’t agree with about religion, but one thing I have finally come to understand, is why people pray in their time of need.  I never fully understood the term “Have Faith.”  But right now, I’m learning more about my faith and what it means to have faith.  For some reason, I keep hearing Bon Jovi in my mind singing “Keep the faith.”  But what is faith and what does it mean to have faith?  I have no clue.  And so I went on a journey to figure this out.

And it wasn’t easy.  I’ve discovered that faith means many different things to many different people.  What you’re going to read is what faith means to me.

One thing I believe is that having faith does not mean that everything will work out fine.  Having faith is a huge stiffening process, and it hurts. I have learned that once I was willing to share my burden with a higher being, I felt lighter. By doing this, it makes life more bearable for me.  It doesn’t mean that my life will be without worry or care, no way.  But it took the fear that I was feeling, and somehow it turned it into some kind of a prayer.  It also kind of lets me see the sudden joys, the startling glimpses of happiness during all the tragedies which I am experiencing.  As a very wise woman who I had the honour of having a conversation with told me, faith doesn’t make things easy, it just makes things possible.

Faith is also a shovel.  I find that it allows me to dig deep into an inward reservoir and tap into a bunch of courage, hope, confidence and calmness which I didn’t think existed, especially in a time like this.  I am finding a sense of calmness around me, assuring that despite what could possibly happen, even if the unthinkable happens, that I will be ok, I will survive this. It also gets me through the day.

In the past I would have been full of self-pity.  I would hear “be strong” over and over again, but not understand what the heck that meant.  I have now understood that having faith allows you to be strong of soul, which in turn, feeds your body to allow it to be strong physically.  Self-pity is paralyzing.  It can be your worst enemy.  When I was wallowing in self-pity, I did not have faith.  Having faith wasn’t possible.  How could I give the situation everything I had to give, when I couldn’t see past myself, my despair?  I couldn’t understand what was happening, and so I was afraid.  I couldn’t do anything to help the situation because I was blind with fear.

And this time I was beyond fear, I was petrified.  But I was not blind.  The difference was that I had accepted what was happening, rather than resisting it.  I  handed over all my fear to God.  It doesn’t mean that I wasn’t afraid, I was, but I was not fearful.  I acknowledged the fear, said thank you to it, and said to God “Ok, now you hold onto it, so it doesn’t weigh me down, and I am able to do what I need to do.” Like I said before, faith makes things more bearable. I wasn’t about to let fear control me, make me useless.  By handing things over, I’m saying “Ok, this sucks, I know it.  I’m scared to death.  I hate what’s going on, but things also need to get done.”  But I’m now able to meet whatever comes my way head on with courage, and I vow to give it the best that I can give.  I’m not waiting for the storm to pass; instead I’m walking right into it head on.  It makes things less scary.  I know that with the storm I’m going to get wet, but I also know that I have an opportunity to dance in the rain as well.

Life may not turn out as I had hoped.  I can see that very clearly, and I also know this for a fact.  But it’s a lot less lonely now, and it’s comforting to know that I have someone around me all the time, even when I’m alone.

But the one big thing I learned the most about having faith is that in order for me to be in touch with my faith I had to ask for help.  I had to be willing to hand over what I need help with otherwise I couldn’t be helped.   And this is what faith is: asking for help, and accepting, receiving, help when it arrives.  And this was my biggest problem in the past.  I was too stubborn to ask.