Dealing With Bad Days

    "To stand up and be worn 

to something deeper 

is a pledge that living 

forces us to keep."

-Mark Nepo

     From the moment we are born on this planet, we are subject to the elements, the unknown, emotions, responsibilities, and all kinds of fluctuating energies both inside and outside of us.  Each moment brings new possibility for change, both negative and positive, and none of us know how to predict the way we will feel at any given moment.  Some people treat their bodies badly and live to be 100, and others who die young are puritanical about their self care.  Sometimes we get hardly any sleep, and wake up feeling refreshed...and sometimes we sleep for hours and wake up exhausted and cranky.  I used to think that I could prepare myself for the next day, and what it would bring, but I am realizing more and more that I really have no idea what tomorrow will bring.  I do not know how to ensure that tomorrow will be a good day, that I will wake up feeling happy, or even that I will still be alive.

     Sometimes my brain goes to the thought, "What if this is my last day?"  I wonder if the clothes I'm putting on will be the clothes that I die in.  I worry about all the things I haven't done yet in my life.  I worry about the welfare of my kids.  Sometimes I wake up and feel the weight of my responsibilities crushing me, before I even lift my head off the pillow.  My worst mornings are the ones where the pressure of waking into real life feels like quicksand, pulling me out of my free and glorious dreamland.  I drag myself up and stagger around, fulfilling my morning routine slowly, methodically.  I notice that some of my hair falls out in the shower, and I am suddenly overwrought with depressing thoughts about aging, fears about going bald, anger that youth is so short.  I look in the mirror, picking every inch of myself apart, reprimanding myself for not being healthy enough, for not working out hard enough, for eating too much sugar, for everything.  I reprimand myself for being too hard on myself.  Of course, it's a bad hair day.  Of course I have dark circles under my eyes.  No amount of makeup can make me look the way I wish I looked, and no cute clothes can turn me into the young, perfect Barbie doll that I (at this moment) believe I should be. I drop my eyeshadow and it breaks into a billion pieces on the floor.  I hit my head as I'm standing up from cleaning the mess.  My daughter refuses to get out of bed and get ready for school.  We are late for school and work, and we get stuck waiting for a train.  A taxi cab runs a stop sign and almost kills us all...

     In the past, (until I read the book Untethered Soul), each and every one of these events would have built up inside me, and I would have ended up pulled over on the side of the road weeping, or racing onto the freeway with severe road rage.  But something clicked inside me when I read this book, and it is impossible for me to ignore.  So much so that I have been reading it one chapter per month, so as to make sure that I'm applying Michael A. Singer's concepts to my daily life.  I know now that I cannot allow any event or string of events to close up my heart and ruin my day.  Now that I have been awakened to the infinite strength inside my own soul, I know that I can depend on myself to just observe the thoughts and events as they pass through, and let them go.  In every moment of our lives, including the worst ones, we have a choice to either let our consciousness delve into negativity, or to allow the deeper, stronger part of ourselves to take over and bring us forward.  

     The real you, your soul, is meant to listen and observe.  This part of you is witness to all of the crazy thoughts that reach out into the depths of your fear, anger, sorry and joy.  The real you is not the critical voice, the paranoid voice, the nagging voice, or any of the other voices you hear as your day unfolds.  The real you is the one who is underneath all of that, observing it.  So if we can observe the patterns of our brains, then we also have the power to control them.  We may not be able to control what pops up in the first place, but where we let it go is completely under our control.  As the taxi driver speeds away, not even flinching at the fact that he almost killed my family, I observe my thoughts become murderous.  I want to chase him, to crash my car into his, to punch him, to scream.  These thoughts begin to lead into further thoughts that take me deeper and deeper into rage and misery.  This is the point where I know I need to take control, and I know that the sooner I take control, the easier it's going to be for me, and the better chance I have of having a peaceful day despite the events that take place.  

     Have you noticed how one bad thought leads to the next?  Have you noticed that the more you let your mind spiral off, the harder it is to recognize reality?  I am still battling with vices and obsessions that I must work on every day to let go of-needs and thought patterns that I created out of fear, resentment and boredom.  These thought patterns used to be my reality-I allowed my mind to obsess severely over things that eventually destroyed relationships, dreams, opportunities.  I obsessed so much over certain things that I eventually ended up making them realities, and believe me-these were not positive things.  I clung to my vices for comfort when my obsessions had brought me to my lowest, and I circled down there in my own scum for years and years.  I know from experience how easy it is to let your mind get lost, which is why I really believe in the importance of controlling your thoughts.  When I read Untethered Soul, I realized that not only is it possible to bring yourself back into reality, but it's also very simple.  Just remember that your thoughts aren't you.  Recognize your soul and learn to rely on it.  Your soul is stronger than any thoughts, emotions or events that you experience, and all you have to do is observe where your mind is going, reel it in, and relax.  Letting go and moving on has nothing to do with stuffing the feeling down, and everything to do with breathing, physically relaxing, and saying "Hello...and goodbye" to passing thoughts and feelings.  If we can rely on ourselves to drop down into our souls during difficult moments, if we can reel our consciousness back in when it lashes out, if we can keep the negative and positive energy in constant flow, if we can experience each present moment that comes, then we can move our lives forward and upward, away from the stagnant waters of misery.

     I am developing little ways in which I can rely on myself to pull through tough situations.  In the early morning when I am already feeling angry or sad, and I dread coming into real life again, I know that if I just breathe for a while, if I just sit up and do one round of chanting, if I envision all of the people who will smile at me today, I am then able to take the next step forward and set foot on the floor with gratitude.  In the shower, as I begin to panic about hair loss, I stop and remember something Mark Nepo once said, "Misery stems from a loss of perspective."  I ask myself, "What does that mean to me?  How does that apply to this situation?"  Immediately, I have my answer-that there is no time in this world for getting lost in tiny, personal problems.  That there is no time in this world for being miserable over the way we look, or might look some day.  We are all here to age and die.  We ourselves are only a passing season.  In the vastness of eternity, in the grandeur of the universe, what does it matter that two hairs fell out of my head?  What does it matter if all my hair falls out?  There are beautiful sights to be seen.  There are wondrous millenniums to unfold.  There are people to love and support, friends to grow old with, children to guide.  There is a universe full of unknown miracles.  There is your destiny, my destiny, our destiny as a species, as a planet, as life.  We are alive, and we are so fragile.  We are almost gone, and here we are-fighting, obsessing, skulking around in misery.  But when we live from our souls and allow them to keep us present, we can find the peace and perspective we need to save both ourselves and the world.

     Bad days will happen.  Difficult events will happen.  None of that has to break us.  None of it has to be held in.  None of it has to escalate.  Let's let it all move through us, let it all change us.  Let's surrender our egos and stay open to the mystery of our lives.  Let's be kinder to ourselves.  Let's be more understanding with others.  Let's make it our goal to discover our own souls, to close our eyes and recognize ourselves.  Let your smile bring you wrinkles and let your hair fall out.  Find something bigger, deeper and more lovely to live for.  Join me in the ups and downs, and we can continue to bring each other into the truth.  Release the light of your soul, and I will release mine.  Eventually, one day, if we are lucky enough to be old, wrinkled and bald, we will smile knowing that we experienced every moment.

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

-Emerson

www.RNoelle.com

     

     

How Do I Love Myself?

     "Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend."

-Elizabeth Gilbert

     I spend a lot of time wondering when I will have a clear sense of self worth.  When will I feel confident in my ability to succeed?  When will I be open and trusting in my relationships?  The trust, the confidence-they come and go, and when they go, I'm left there wondering, "Who am I to be a teacher/writer/artist/mother/wife/friend?  What makes me special?  What makes me lovable?"  It really doesn't matter how many compliments I receive or how many people love me-I still seem to spend time wondering about my worth.  I wonder if the compliments were true or false.  I wonder if the people who say they love me are being honest.  I feel so much love for others, but when it comes to me, I do a lot of wondering.

     Things happen in our lives that break our hearts and compel us to question our worth.  When a lover ignores us, treats us badly, leaves us or is unfaithful to us, we turn ourselves upside down, wondering what essential beauty we ourselves are lacking.  When our parents criticize or hurt us, we are like children again, defensive and angry or desperate for approval and acceptance.  We hang onto those hurts for years and years, obsessing over them until they become a part of us.  We carry around broken pieces of our hearts, and when our self worth comes into question, all of those pieces come bobbing up to the surface.  Those thoughts and memories make us feel small and exhausted, like we have no place on this earth and no stable ground to stand on.  Even when things are good sometimes we wonder how it is that we deserve happiness, and how long it will stay.

     At my worst, I feel a wretched, spiteful anger toward anyone who provokes me to question my self worth.  In one moment I can turn from tenderness to venom, from Jekyll to Hyde.  In one moment, my heart closes.  Even when I know that it's not the other person-that it's me and my own issues-even then, I feel violence surge inside of me.  I want to hurt the person, to share my suffering, to make them feel the horrible way that I do.  I want to close the doors and never show them love again.  The lack of love that I have for myself turns into hideous anger, directed outwards at others.  In that moment, I feel that hurting someone else would be the answer, that destruction is the only solution to my pain.  And if I can't destroy the other person, I will then turn around and do something destructive to myself.  I wonder what I could possibly do to make things better, or even to just show the world how much it hurts, but nothing I can ever do or say will satisfy my pain.  When I speak from this place, I create more misery.  When I act from this place, I only hurt myself more, I destroy the world around me, and I create pathways to shame and regret.  So I know I must do what it takes to find seeds of love, deep within my gashed bosom.  I know I must do whatever I possibly can to love those who hurt me deeply.  I know that a life of anger and violence, an existence of fear and self pity, is not for me.

     Each person that lives has something that evokes violent urges inside.  We all have our buttons, we all have our weaknesses, and I know for a fact that many, many people in this world have problems stemming from a perceived lack of love.  Quite often we feel desperately alone and positively worthless, and we expect others to fill that void for us, or to at least not trigger the pain.  Of course, others are who they are, and they will do what they will do, so we are left with the pain of bearing our own broken hearts and the huge underlying questions, How do I love myself?  How do I find a place where I can be ok with my rage?  How do I keep from constantly questioning what I'm worth?  How do I become a stable soul who cannot be broken by the mistreatment of others?  

     There are many times that I do feel love for myself.  When I lift others up, when I eat something healthy, when I stop resisting and take care of business, when I create a piece of art that I feel is beautiful or powerful-these things confirm my worth and the worthiness of my path.  Essentially, when I make good choices, I reinforce my self esteem.  When I have done what it takes to pull my life together, when I get out and help others, when I have the strength to reach out, when I have beautiful moments with my children, when I pass up an opportunity to be mean-these things bring me into a sense of peace within myself.  I think, "Wow-I think I can actually learn to love this person who I am.  I think I can actually be grateful for the gifts, and even the problems that I possess.  I think I can actually trust that others will be true and honest to me.  I think I'm worth loving!"  I do these things daily, weekly, monthly, to bring meaning into my life, and yet I still have my open nerves, my moments of despair.  But this is just the first level of true self love.  The first level is to answer the question, "Am I making good choices?"  When we do things that we know are bad for us, we are slowly but surely diminishing our feeling of self worth.  The more things we do for our body mind and soul that we know are keeping us on the right path, the more our sense of self worth will grow.

     The second level comes in facing our past.  There is no need to let the past rule our current lives, but if we are honest with ourselves about the root of what originally hurt us, we can connect more deeply and truly with why it is we are feeling this way now.  When you find that root feeling, and connect with that hurtful moment in time, the only work then is in releasing it.  It was only a moment in time, and we have held it for so long.  There is no reason for us to be hurt, for us to live in fear, for us to close our hearts because of a memory.  At this level, we identify the root feeling and accept it.  Even if the true feeling is, "I hate myself sometimes" or "I feel worthless," just fall into that feeling for a moment and let your soul digest it.  There is nothing you can do in this world to keep the pain away.  When you get hurt, you just let go.  Let the light of your soul burn away all the crap, and just let go.  There are so many ways to let go in the moment, but all of them include breathing.  So when a feeling of hurt comes along, when a painful memory comes up, just empty your lungs completely and then fill them up again.  Don't go down the path that your pain is trying to lead you to-stay right inside yourself, and just feel it.  Face your past, feel the hurt, and let it go.  In doing this, we can learn to rely on ourselves for compassion.  We learn to be resilient.

     The third level into self love is in living with gratitude and embracing your gifts.  Accept that you are a miracle, accept that you are unique.  No one else but you can tell your story.  No one else but you can create what you can create.  You are the one and only person who has lived your life, and here you are still-living and breathing!  There is just so much to be grateful for, and to turn our lives into acts of gratitude is to find more to love than we ever knew existed.  The fourth level of self love comes with the shedding of the ego.  When we realize that we are already dead, when we realize that we are already reborn, when we stand in awe at the vastness orbiting around our tiny little lives, and stop in wonder at the greatness within our hearts, then we can surrender and say, "Wow-this is my one chance, and this is what has been given to me, now.  Choosing to love it all will be my savior.  Choosing to love who I am will allow me to live this precious life!"  Don't let big egos fool you-they are often an outward symptom of a very small sense of self worth.  Look around you at people who love themselves-they shine with a light that is all theirs, and they share it with others.  They see no competition in being who they are, and they accept themselves as divine.  They don't need anyone else's approval to shine.  They don't need to show off.  They don't need praise, and they don't even need acceptance.  To accept that you are divine is the deepest level of self love.

     I heard a woman express recently that she knew what it felt like to love others, but she didn't feel that same kind of feeling about herself.  She took care of herself, she respected herself, but she didn't know if she loved herself.  Isn't it true with all of us?  Do we ever have a rushing feeling of giddiness when we are about to spend time alone with ourselves?  Do we ever wrap our arms around ourselves and say, "I love you so much!"  Do we feel joy in giving ourselves gifts and doing nice things for ourselves?  Do we ever look in the mirror and say, "You're sooooo good lookin'."?  Not really.  In fact, I believe that most people spend most of their lives being very, very hard on themselves.  I have seen it in myself, I have seen it in many of my students, and I have seen it in all of the people I know intimately.  We keep our most precious faults hidden because we are terrified of being vulnerable.  We allow our negative self talk to become our whole existence, and we kick and scream our way through each day.  We wonder if people like us, we wonder if we fit in.  We wonder constantly if we're good enough, young enough, pretty enough, etc, etc, etc.  We can't stop listening to our egos, which are so weighed down with sensitivity that we can't face the truth, and yet we actually believe we can go on pretending to be "normal".  Looking at and loving who we are gets further clouded and complicated by the falsities of the media and the expectations of society, and the thoughts that we allow ourselves to think are rarely the self-nourishing ones.  Is it possible to look within with compassion and tenderness, like a mother loving her daughter, or a father raising his son?  How do we spend more time in that deeper, wiser part of ourselves, and how do we council ourselves out of negative thought patterns and deep-seated fears?

     As Thich Nhat Hahn says, "Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky.  Conscious breathing is my anchor."  Sometimes there is nothing we can do with our feelings, and so all we can do is to make sure we're not holding them in.  We do this by simply breathing.  When the last thing our bodies want to do is relax, we relax.  We experience the wave of emotion and we surrender to it.  We breathe it out, we slow our breath, we clear our mind of obsessive thoughts.  We slow down and we breathe, and we put an arm around the small child within us.  We soften our shell, and we relax deeply-right then and there.  We find our true self, the one who holds us up so tenderly through all of our pitfalls, the one who is capable of unconditional love, beneath the breath and beneath the waves of constant feelings.  

     Even as I write this, my feelings of panic that I'm not enough are starting to seem foreign.  The intense fears I thought would invade my thoughts always are so distant to me that I may as well have read them in a book.  It is this way so often with feelings-they are so strong, and yet so fleeting.  And so of course I know that the fear, anger and sadness can easily be triggered again.  Yet this is the beauty of doing conscious inner work.  In the past, my fears would have invaded my existence, affecting my entire life and all my choices and relationships.  Now that I have learned to breathe and pry open my heart again, I am becoming more resilient.  My nerves are still open, yes, because I choose to be more vulnerable each and every day, but I cannot do this work of loving myself unless I am willing to give all of myself away.  A person who knows their self worth has nothing to lose and everything to give away.  With patience and conscious work, we can each realize that we are just as worthy as anyone else.  Our souls may be full of holes, but that just means that the breath of God can move through us more freely.  Our hearts may be broken, our bodies may be broken, but as long as we have the power to fill ourselves with oxygen and cultivate inner peace, we have the power to fully live without debilitating fear and regret.  The inner work, the beauty we each create, the legacy we leave behind as loving people-these are the things that we truly live for, and these are the things that will help us realize that we are each an invaluable and essential piece of the world.

"The secret of individuality is powerfully suggested by the act of birth.  We come to the earth in an intensely vulnerable way, for birth is an act of separation.  We are cast out into the emptiness as the cord is cut, yet the wound of connection remains open for the visitation of beauty...The shape of each soul is different.  An individual is a carefully fashioned, unique world.  The shape of the flaw that each person carries is also different.  The flaw is the special shape of personal limitation; angled at a unique awkwardness to the world, it makes our difficulty and challenge in the world different from that of others.  When we stop seeing the flaw as a disappointment and exception to an otherwise laudable life, we begin to glimpse the awkward light and hidden wisdom that the flaw holds.  As we look deeper, we begin to realize that the flaw might be the first window into a world of difference that we rarely notice."

-John O'Donohue

www.RNoelle.com

     

How to Become a Grown Up

"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future."

-George Bernard Shaw

1.  Take responsibility for yourself and your life.  Think of it this way:  before you were born, your soul decided on the perfect situation, the perfect physical body, and the perfect family for you to be born into, so that you could learn the lessons you needed to learn.  Beginning with those decisions and leading up to this very moment, you have created your entire existence.  The way you feel about things, the way you view your surroundings and yourself, the life that you are living right now, and the amount of joy that you feel-you need to take 100% responsibility for all of these things.  You have no control over what others think and feel, or over the destiny of nature, but when it comes to you, you have the right and supreme duty to take over.  Stop blaming others for your shortcomings and misfortunes.  Ask yourself instead, "Which of my decisions lead me to this, and what can I do to turn things around for myself?"  You know what you need to do to heal yourself and your life, so do it.  Resist negative self talk, and take responsibility for your thoughts.  Think before you speak, and take responsibility for your words.  The Google definition for responsibility is this:  "The state or fact of having a duty to deal with something, or of having control over someone."  This someone is you, this duty is your life.

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"I do not want the peace which paseth understanding.  I want the understanding which bringeth peace."

-Hellen Keller

2.  Move away from judgment, towards understanding.  You have no idea where anyone is coming from, or what their experience of life is.  You have no idea what awaits you in your lifetime.  If you think about it, humans don't really know much, so wouldn't it be wise to stop closing ourselves off to things we can't comprehend, or things that make us angry and fearful, and to instead have an intention to question and understand?  Wouldn't it make more sense as a human to look around with wonder, loving everyone and learning what we can?  Imagine the life of the fundamentalist.  The fundamentalist has closed his mind and heart completely to the ways and views of others, thereby creating his own sealed existence.  He has decided that his beliefs and opinions are worth closing his heart over, and he goes to insane lengths to feel worthy, right and better than.  If a person is on a truly wise and spiritual path, he knows that the only answer to growth is to continue opening, accepting, surrendering, understanding.  No one ever became a Sage or a Saint by closing his mind and hiding his heart.  When we view our surroundings with fear, anger and judgment, we are experiencing only a portion of what life has to offer.  When we put labels on things and people, we are seeing through the very smallest of minds.

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"Have patience with all things, but first of all with yourself."

-Saint Francis de Sales

3.  Surrender to patience.  Everywhere I look, I see how hard this is for people.  Every single day of my life, I'm reminded of how hard it is for me.  We want what we want, when we want it, and we don't want to wait.  But here's the thing.  Life is a glorious adventure, and I can say from experience that we rarely ever know where the bends in the road will lead us.  I used to feel so enraged by the fact that I hadn't become successful yet, and that was in my teens.  Then, in my twenties I learned as many skills as I could, obsessing over them and then dropping them, one by one, always so impatient with myself and with time, wondering when success would come to me.  As a kid, I dreamed every day of being a grown up.  Now, I work tirelessly on my inner work and when I am triggered again, anyway, and it seems like I have made no progress, I kick and scream...until I remember that wonderful things rarely ever happen instantly, and that the purpose of this life is to just keep swimming.  Time and the cultivation of patience are some of our most painful and most difficult lessons in life, but in so many of our biggest questions, the only true answer, whether we want to hear it or not...is "time."  Learn to trust yourself and your destiny.  Learn to just be.  Set your intentions, work hard, and cultivate beautiful things...one day at a time.

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"When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over.  He does not need punishment; he needs help.  That is the message he is sending."

-Thich Nhat Hahn

4.  Love people anyway (including yourself.)  Don't take anything personally, especially not other people's crap.  Be kind to everyone.  If you have a problem with someone, ask yourself, "What about me is registering with the negative energy in them?"  If you weren't experiencing a closing of fear and anger, then you wouldn't be bothered, right?  So, if we don't want to be trapped in a world of fear and anger whenever we are triggered by someone, then we just need to just learn to stop taking stuff personally and accept each other the way we are.  We also need to accept ourselves even when we're pissed.  When someone touches one of your nerves, imagine them in an encounter with someone like Jesus, St. Francis, or Gandhi.  Take off your judgement lenses and try to see through the emotions that people throw at you.  The weight of one unhappy person is not nearly enough to extinguish the light of someone who lives in love.  It is always the unhappy person who is changed in the end.  As Longfellow once said, "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."  Live in the light of love and acceptance, and you will ensconce each person you meet, and yourself, with the freedom to be authentic.

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"It is not a demonstration of kindness or friendship to the people we care about to join them in indulging in wrongheaded, negative feelings.  We do a better service to ourselves and others by remaining detached and avoiding melodramatic reactions.  Still, if you find yourself in conversation with someone who is depressed, hurt, or frustrated, show them kindness and give the a sympathetic ear; just don't allow yourself to be pulled down too."

-Epictetus

5.  Be a good example.  Even if it's the hardest thing you've ever done.  Be respectful and kind to yourself.  You don't need to take it upon yourself to change the world-just don't participate in negativity.  Use your will power and continuously remind yourself of what your values are.  Many people won't understand you, but as they see you changing and growing, they will either disappear, or they will be changed by you and accept you for the person you are becoming.  Hold your life as precious, and don't allow anyone to bring you to lower levels of energy.  Continue spiraling up, into more and more beautiful, positive energy.  The negativity will gradually drop away, but only if you are making conscious, daily choices to live in your own integrity.  By deciding to be a positive influence you do everyone a favor, especially yourself.

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"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

6.  Live in gratitude.  Stop complaining.  Forget about self pity.  You don't like something about your life?  Do something about it.  Are things bothering you?  Look within and find out why.  Start focusing your critic's eye inward-not to question your self worth or wallow in negative self talk, but to fine-tune your physical, mental, and spiritual self.  Once you have taken responsibility for your life, you will realize that everything you may have to complain about is self-created anyway, so the only person you're really complaining about (and to) is yourself.  Your life is the product of your decisions, so turn your complaining into transformation.  Learn to see life as a gift, and be grateful that you even woke up this morning.  Be grateful for your freedom, and for a new chance each day to get it right.  Give out compliments instead of insults, and maybe even let someone merge in front of you on the freeway tomorrow.  Look at every setback and annoyance as the perfect opportunity for growth.  That's exactly what good businesses do, so why not take that approach with your own life?

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"Be truthful, gentle and fearless."

-Gandhi

7.  Tell the truth.  There is no time in this world for lying.  You have just as much right to a voice as anyone else, so speak it.  Be a grown up and learn to live in your integrity.  I love this Gandhi quote, because these three traits go together so beautifully, and in a way that I have faith in.  I grew up fearing honesty, because I thought that it always meant criticism and confrontation, but it isn't so!  Yes, it takes strength for us to be honest with ourselves and each other, but when you learn how to communicate in authentic, loving ways, there is really nothing to fear.  As long as you are living in your integrity, there is never anything to fear.

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"The great question is:  will you pay attention to things other than yourself?"

-David Whyte

8.  Have the strength to think about something other than yourself.  Pull yourself out of your thoughts every once in a while.  Absorb the world.  Listen to the wind, to the children, to your friends.  Let your ego relax for a while and make space for experience.  I think of this Haiku by Basho quite often:  "A blind child, guided by his mother, admires the cherry blossoms."  Close your eyes like the child and immerse yourself in touch, sound, scent.  Reach out like the mother and lead others to beautiful experiences.  Learn to open and grow, like the blossom, existing and flourishing not for approval or appreciation, but because it is simply natural for you to be who you are.  Notice how the things around you, even objects, are alive and impermanent-an integral part of your existence.  It's so easy to become 100% absorbed in the "I" and "Me" of life, but the only way to grow up is to see yourself as a small part of the whole.

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"Override your dark habits, leave your dark behind.  Let the dark emerge, rise up, and deal with it so there is more space for the light."

-Steven Morrison

9.  Find tools that help you release fear and anger.  Suffering is a natural part of life, and I have never known anyone who could process and release it without tools.  Spiritual evolution (what I call actually growing up,) comes through experience and hard work-not through stuffing emotion, throwing tantrums like a child, or self medicating.  If we don't find tools to process and release them, trauma and emotion build up in our bodies throughout the years, eventually turning into physical and psychological ailments.  My current doctor is working on healing distressed organs in my body through energy release and toxin cleansing, and the biggest part of what he does is pinpointing exactly what trauma, from a specific point in my life, is still stuck inside of my body.  So far, he has hit the nail on the head every time, and I end up weeping out years of backed up emotion for hours.  There is a direct line between your emotional state and your physical state, so think about what you need to do to keep yourself free from energetic blocks.  Here are some suggestions:  breathing, yoga, exercise, TFT, EFT, meditation, Trauma Release Therapy, chanting, toning, crying, laughing, gardening, art, dance, music...the list goes on.  Whatever you do, do it with the intention of opening, surrendering, and releasing.

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"An essential part of spiritual growth is the removal of spiritual blocks.  One of the basic blocks is the sense of guilt.  To feel unworthy prevents surrender and subtly impedes spiritual growth.  Guilt is an indulgence-an emotional teething ring which enables us to remain immature while whimpering that we are not good enough to have the experience we feel is reserved for 'better people.'"

-Rudi

10.  Give up guilt.  Let go of the past.  Don't keep yourself locked in that prison anymore.  Guilt is a heavy weight to carry around through your days, and it only ever brings unhappiness.  Let it go.  Whatever you feel guilty about, whatever you may have done, is already gone.  It's in the past, and today you started fresh...so choose today to move on and build something new.  If you have done something wrong, then seek forgiveness and change, and do the hard work to accept that you are forgiven.  Going through our lives feeling unworthy and sorry for ourselves is a waste of time, especially when all those days, weeks, years and lifetimes could be spent in joy and beauty.  Things happen so that we can learn from them and grow up-not so that we can hold on to them forever and weigh our souls down with anguish.  Find peace in your relationship with yourself, find a path away from self-sabotage, and you will feel a release from guilt, shame and blame.

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"In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness."

-Henry David Thoreau

11.  Live simply.  Slow down.  Stop running and experience life.  You don't need a ton of money, food or possessions.  Nobody wants to hear this but, you really don't need much.  Learn to live frugally, and share what you have.  Find an inner experience that is more fulfilling than the exteriors in your life.  Minimize clutter.  Speak when your words are necessary.  Put your focus into the simple things in life, rather than complicating everything all the time.  Try sitting in silence every once in a while.  Do what you love and enjoy it, because you already have everything you need.

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"A sense of reverence includes the recognition that one is always in the presence of the sacred.  To live with reverence is to live without judgement, prejudice and the saturation of consumerism.  The consumerist heart becomes empty and lonesome because it has squandered reverence.  As a parent, child, lover, prayer or artist-a sense of reverence opens pathways of beauty to surprise us.  The earth is full of thresholds where beauty awaits the wonder of our gaze."

-John O'Donohue

12.  Walk with reverence.  Walk gently, with care.  Treat each living thing with respect and thankfulness, always remembering the sacred nature of your surroundings.  Let go of consumer obsession and remember that none of the objects that money can buy have any real value.  Make good use of this short time you have, to grow your own flourishing garden.  Take it upon yourself to make this planet healthier and lovelier when you leave than it was when you arrived.  Make your song a prayer, make your dance a celebration.  In all that you do, honor yourself.  In all that you do, open your face to God. "...seeing that as I went, I left my beatitude behind me,,." -Dante

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"Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know of avoiding the trap of thinking you have something to lose.  You are already naked.  There is no reason not to follow your heart."

-Steve Jobs

13.  Do what you love, as often as possible.  There is no sense in following a path that you don't enjoy.  What do you love?  What inspires you each day?  Find out all the things that inspire you to get up in the morning, and do them.  Make time for your interests and hobbies, follow a line of work that makes you feel good and that you are good at.  Do all the things you love, as often as possible.  Steve Jobs says, "You are already naked."  David Deida says, "You are already dead."  Both are equally true.  Your time here is too short not to do what you love.

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"Rule of thumb:  The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it."

-Steven Pressfield

14.  Stop resisting and get to work.  You already know every single thing you've been resisting, because you probably get a stomach ache or want to push it out of your mind the moment you think of it.  Some things in life take a lot of effort from us, and we don't help ourselves at all by putting them off and then feeling bad about it.  It may feel good to put things off at first, but it will always be weighing on your conscience, affecting your mental, physical and psychological health.  Impress yourself with courage and open up Pandora's box.  Until you do the thing you most need to do, your life will be merely half lived-a daily act of avoidance.  Don't put it off til your death bed-get to work.

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"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."

-E.E. Cummings

15.  Accept yourself just the way you are.  With all my talk about growth and evolution, now I have to tell you that accepting who you are right now, is the first step in that process, and a crucial part of spiritual work.  We must be kind to ourselves to experience real growth, because growth involves opening, and opening happens with acceptance.  The moments of revelation, of ecstasy, of pure purpose, are few and far between, and in between them we are faced with ourselves and our issues.  It is the same with everyone, and it always has been.  We are meant to have flaws, so that we can learn and grow.  We are taught to see ourselves in a funhouse mirror-where society, family, fear and delusion have shaped an image that is completely distorted from reality.  This is the human path-the path to the true self, and it's not an easy one.  We all need companionship because we can't do it alone, solitude in order to come home again...and little moments to wrap our arms around ourselves and say, "I'm here, and I love you."

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"Success is not final.  Failure is not fatal.  It is the courage to continue that counts."

-Winston Churchill

16.  Cultivate resilience.  When life hits you hard you will fall, but it is down in the depths that we often find our saving grace.  But once you have found the beautiful comfort of having surrendered completely into grief, it is time to return home.  Keep your eyes ahead and your spirits light.  Let yourself go into the depths, and then pull yourself out again.  When we linger too long in despair, holding onto it and wearing it like a shroud, our hearts begin to close.  The longer we spend time in the dark, the more our hearts sink down into darkness.  Let life take you where it will, and always know that you were meant to be there, facing what you are facing.  Keep picking yourself up, keep looking up, keep breathing and laughing and crying and believing that you deserve joy.

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"It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous."

-Benjamin Franklin

17.  Be good.  Being a good person is not something to joke about or cast off with insults.  What have you got if you are not good?  If you say one thing and do another, then why do you even speak?  If your actions are destructive to your life, your relationships and the world, then why are you here?  If you believe in certain moral or religious guidelines, don't you think you should be following them?  To be good is to live in integrity, and the state of integrity is the place where your deepest self lies.  My favorite definition of integrity is from FreeDictionary.com:  "The quality or condition of being whole or undivided.  Completeness."  To live in integrity means to be complete within yourself.  You don't do it for anyone else-you do it because it brings you happiness, it's good for you, and it brings you closer to yourself.  You do it because it helps remove the trouble from your existence so that you can live with a sense of purpose.  As Epictetus once said, "Goodness isn't ostentatious piety or showy good manners.  It's a lifelong series of subtle readjustments of our character.  We fine-tune our thoughts, words and deeds in a progressively wholesome direction.  The virtue inheres in our intentions and our deeds, not in the results."

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"Nothing others do is because of you.  What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dreams.  When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering."

-Miguel Ruiz

18.  Don't take anything personally.  If you let other people's opinions and realities affect the way you feel about yourself, you will be like an untied sail, flapping in the winds of change.  When someone hands you a compliment, your ego will soar.  When someone else hands you an insult, you will feel crushed and depleted.  What others think of you has nothing at all to do with you, so just be who you are and let energies wash right over you.  Look at others with understanding and have compassion for the ignorance that blinds them.  

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"The body has often been a scapegoat for the deceptions and twists of the mind, but the body has a real primordial innocence about it and an incredible brightness and goodness."

-John O'Donohue

19.  Take care of your body.  Put some thought into what's entering your body and try to keep toxins at a minimum.  Eat in moderation, and eat actual whole foods.  Cut down chemicals, sugars, and all the undigestible waste items that are labeled as "food."  Get lots of sleep.  Drink lots of clean water.  Exercise, stretch, and find a good way to release stress.  Do what you need to do to take care of yourself, because this is the only body you're going to get.  

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"The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size."

-Albert Einstein

20.  Admit that you know nothing.  There is no need to hold onto a false sense of security by living in rejection and ignorance.  Let go of the idea that your way is the right way, or your belief is the right belief.  As Robert Heinlein so cleverly stated, "One man's theology is another man's belly laugh" so try to keep your beliefs from becoming "knowledge" in your mind.  Believe what you want to believe, and stand up for what you feel, but in the end, it is only logical to admit that you know nothing.  Great scientific discoveries are found false, great religious leaders are found salacious, and all we humans really know is what we learn in our own experience.  Wouldn't it stand to reason then, that experiencing more and learning more is the path to "knowledge" and "righteousness?"  Never let go of your questioning mind.  Never give up your desire to learn.  There are lessons and awakenings in every corner of this world-clear your mind and seek them.

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"So join me on this journey we are already on.  We can help each other hold nothing back.  We can help each other live a sincere life.  We can help each other wear down what gets in the way, waking close to the bone.  
Come.  There are teachers everywhere:  in the stories around us, in the stories within us, in the life expression that sings where we are broken, in the kinship of gratitude that keeps remind us that we need each other as we become the earth."

-Mark Nepo

For this painting and others by R. Noelle, please visit www.RNoelle.com

Ten Reasons Not to Kill Yourself

"Beautiful grief.  No matter what your pilgrimage, you will always get your heart broken.  We have our hearts broken so we can have them reformed in a much larger way, so that we can drink from a much larger well than we ever knew existed."

-David Whyte

     1.  You are here for a reason.  The universe conspired to make you, and then bring you to this very moment.  This is the moment of legends, where the hero is faced with his own mortality.  This is the realization that happiness will be found only through surrender, that all the fighting, searching and running has brought you to a place where your heart is cracked and aching, bleeding out into what seems like emptiness.  Sometimes it seems easier to die than to live, because living touches you and breaks your heart open.  Living forces you to wake every day, on and on, facing yourself and your challenges.  And guess what.  That is why you are here.  As poet David Whyte puts it, "To fight with your failing is to ignore the entrance to the shrine itself."  You must take all of who you are, and accept it as part of your beauty.  The challenges and heartbreak are not just God, or the universe, or the world trying to smash you.  They are your salvation, your test, and your purpose for being here.  We come here to take the pain and swallow it, to digest the troubles and turn them into light.  To realize that the sorrows and sufferings, even when they seem all consuming, are only temporary lessons given to us to strengthen our souls.  

"If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective."

-Mark Nepo   

  

2.  If you really believe that it is your destiny to die at your own hand, then your real work will be in finding perspective.  There is not one single person who has ever existed, from the beginning of human history, who has not felt utterly, miserably alone and disconnected at some point in their lives.  Our own consciousness can be so lonely sometimes, especially when we are suffering.  No one could possibly understand, or care...and yet, if you reach out in these moments, you will realize that so many people care about you and value your life, no matter who you are.  It may not be the people in your life, it may not even be anyone you've ever met, but if you reach out to someone when you are in need of love, understanding, or even just an ear, your life will change.  Simply put, we are connected, and we are here for the purpose of connecting.  We live in our own lonely consciousness, but we also share a collective consciousness-one that is infinite and stunning.  Even in our darkest hour, we are never alone with our pain.  It is when we are able to lift the center of our consciousness away from ourselves and our problems that we can finally behold the incredible miracle of life.

"Who would have thought that my shriveled heart could have recovered greenness?"

-George Herbert

     3.  The darkest hour leads to light.  If you choose to do the work, if you choose to persevere through these moments where you question your very worth, you will find that it is impossible for suffering to last.  It will always return, yes, just as happiness, fear, anger and love continue to cycle through.  We are vessels of change, of emotion, of longing, and none of us are exempt from feeling deeply.  Once again we are faced with the choice to close our hearts to feeling or to be cracked open in surrender, living as poet Mark Nepo calls it, "close to the bone."  Be compassionate with yourself.  Be compassionate with the little child within you.  Instead of filling your vessel with hatred and shame, fill it up with love and hope.  Allow yourself to venture into the dark, seeking the lessons that your own heart is trying to teach you, and when you have stewed enough in your darkness and misery, have the courage to lift your face to the light.   Put an arm around the part of you that is having trouble with growth.  In the suffering that we all feel, in the ache that is deep in our hearts, in the anger that we have at ourselves and others, in the horrors and miracles of being human, there is a stark beauty, a throb of joy, that brings us deeper into ourselves, and closer to the meaning of our existence.  The inner conscience, the outer world, the darkness and the light, the ticking clock and the eternal.  To live as a human means to exist in all worlds.  

"Love yourself.  Love your soul and let go of the past.  Past pain is keeping you in pain.  You don't have to deteriorate."

-Yogi Bajan

     4.  The rest of your life starts right here.  Right now.  The past does not dictate who you are and where you are going-you do.  The light of your soul is still deep within you, just waiting for you to open your heart.  Your soul is growing, shining through, and all you have to do is let go, and begin again.  Today, you are reborn.  The death of your former self has already taken place, and the light of your soul has been reborn.  Today, you can choose to do what you need to do to find the beauty that's right in front of you.  Today, you can look up and open your eyes, and realize how much you are loved.  It doesn't matter where you are coming from, it doesn't matter what you've done-your new life starts here.

"All the attractions, repulsions, thoughts and feelings don't make any difference.  They don't make you pure or impure.  They are not you.  You are the one who's watching, and that one is pure consciousness.  Don't think you'd be free if you just didn't have these kinds of feelings.  It's not true.  If you can be free even though you're having these kinds of feelings, then you're really free-because there will always be something."

-Michael A. Singer

    5.  You are not your problems.  Your problems stem from the way your own mind has tried to comprehend the world, but more often than not, our minds do not live in reality.  The only reality you will find is deep within you, beneath your mind and your thoughts.  Everything else-thoughts, events, memories, pain, will ebb and flow constantly, and all you have to do is sink down into the ancient breath of your own soul, and watch.  You don't have to get involved in the thoughts, and you don't have to continue thinking them if they don't serve you.  The real you, underneath it all, has the power to observe the craziness of the mind, and say, "How interesting that I'm feeling this.  How nice that it's just passing through."  There is no need for obsession, and no need for depression.  There is no need to take on everything bad that you feel and make it your life.  There is only the need to let the real you observe, and let go, to watch and learn without judgment, moving on slowly into better thoughts, better presence, and more joy.

"Courage is amazing because it can tap into the heart of fear, taking that frightened energy and turning it towards initiative, creativity, action and hope.  When courage comes alive, imprisoning walls become frontiers of new possibility, difficulty becomes invitation and the heart comes into a new rhythm of trust and sureness."

-John O'Donohue

     6.  Your will is always within your control.  Always.  There is never any moment, no matter how lost you may feel, when you do not have control over your own thoughts, beliefs and actions.  It is up to you to decide where you are going and what you stand for.  The moment you decide to choose courage, the moment you have changed your whole existence.  

"Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation.  The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink.  The cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last.  All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves.  Everything is waiting for you."

-David Whyte

     7.  There is so much to be done still!  There is so much to see!  Just think of the stories and jokes you haven't heard, the books you haven't read, the people and animals you haven't met, the beautiful sites you haven't seen.  Think of the sweet smelling rose, blooming in the rainy garden, the sun setting behind green hills, the softness of a child's embrace.  Think of the music that hasn't been written yet, all the ways you have yet to be moved.  Each moment that passes is another opportunity.  The living, breathing womb of the earth welcomes you into excitement and reverence.

"There's a community of the spirit.  Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street and being the noise...Open your hands if you want to be held...Sit down in the circle."

-Rumi

     8.  You are a piece of life, in a family of living things.  The people around you, the animals everywhere, and even the land you walk on all welcome you into being.  Each bird that flies through the sky, not knowing if this day will be his last, flies anyway, with full vigor and purpose.  The wind breathes the bird along, just as it brings a fresh breeze through your senses and down into your lungs.  The trees rustle, the dogs bark, the ocean flows, the planet turns.  This is life.  The unknowns of each day, and the daily rituals of our lives carry us forward, shaping our minds, but underneath it all, in the seat of the self, we find the strength and wisdom of all existence.  You have something to give-give it.  You have something to say-say it.  Reach out and touch damaged hearts, and watch with wonder while they open.  Jump for joy and weep in mourning.  Experience the thousands of golden threads that connect you to living.

"Forget about enlightenment.  Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind in your veins."

-John Welwood 

     9.  It's ok to move slowly through life.  Just stay present.  You don't need perfection and you don't need instant gratification.  Life will take you through many chapters, to many destinations, and your only real job is to open your heart to it all.  You don't need to see through judgment anymore.  You can let go of the fear that you're not good enough.  You can pull yourself up out of despair at any moment, just by bringing yourself into presence.  

"In daily life, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy."

-Brother David Steindl-Rast

     10.  Here we are on this planet, spinning through space, with no idea at all about why we're here.  Here we are, with our emotions and energies, the grief of loss and the miracle of joy, trying to make some sense of it all.  When you think back through the history of humanity, can you see the patterns of tradition, of government, of power, loss, and greed?  Can you see the many, many faces of people who have fought for their lives and the lives of the people they loved?  Can you see how much like your family you are, and how different?  You are part of a vast life cycle on a planet full of multiple living species, who all depend on each other.  You are a part of life.  Your energy affects the world around you, your drive helps move the planet forward.  While we may feel abandoned and insignificant in our seemingly small lives, we are actually living out the great gift that the universe has bestowed upon us.  We have an opportunity to become something our ancestors only dreamed of.  We have the ability to understand, to love and to be a positive part of human evolution.  Our feelings, our senses, our dreams and our consciousness can either tempt us to run and hide, shunning away the very reason for our existence, or they can reveal to us the infinite wonder of being alive.  Drink your loss and find what you have learned.  Thank God and the universe, and all the incomprehensible vastness for its beautiful mystery.  Thank your parents for bringing you into this journey.  Thank yourself for sticking it out so well.  Thank the animals you eat for their lives, and thank the wind for filling your lungs.  Live in wonder, reverence and gratitude, and you will find your way to fullness and joy.  Begin in this moment to seek all the beauty that the world has to offer you, and meet it with an open heart.  The rest of your life starts here.

"All the darkness!  I am going to walk into the light!"

-Job

"A Good Day" with Brother David Steindl-Rast

Love Invincible. You need to hear this.

My happy song!

This gets me every time.

Ubuntu-I am because you are.

And last but not least, the movie "Happy." Everyone needs to see this movie.

R. Noelle

Mozart speaking to Harry in the end of Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse:

"You have got to learn to laugh. That will be required of you. You must apprehend the humor of life, its gallows-humor. But of course you are ready for everything in the world except what will be required of you. You are ready to stab girls to death. You are ready to be executed with all solemnity. You would be ready, no doubt to mortify and scourge yourself for centuries together. Wouldn't you?'
"'Oh, yes, ready with all my heart,' I cried in my misery.
'Of course! When it's a question of anything stupid and pathetic and devoid of humor or wit, you're the man, you tragedian. Well, I am not. I don't care a fig for all your romantics of atonement. You wanted to be executed and to have your head chopped off, you lunatic! For this imbecile ideal you would suffer death ten times over. You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live. The devil, but you shall live! It would serve you right if you were condemned to the severest of penalties.'
'Oh, and what would that be?'
"We might, for example, restore this girl to life again and marry you to her.'
'No, I should not be ready for that. It would bring unhappiness.'
"As if there were not enough unhappiness if all you have designed already! However, enough of pathos and death-dealing. It is time to come to your senses. You are to live and to learn to laugh. You are to learn to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions. So there you are. More will not be asked of you."