October 2010 - Francine Kelley, LCPC, SEP, RYT500

Making friends with yourself

What would you do if a friend confessed to you that she felt really badly about something she had recently done, or really didn’t like something about herself? You would probably feel some compassion for your friend and try to think of something to say to help her feel better, right? And yet what do you do to yourself when you feel badly about something you’ve done? What thoughts come about when you think of the things about yourself that you don’t like? For most of us those thoughts aren’t about being compassionate!

It’s not a secret that we tend to treat others better than we treat ourselves, often to the point where we can offer compassion to others, but have difficulty offering it to ourselves, or even receiving it from others. How much we are able to love ourselves, I think, is directly related to how much we can allow others to love us. If we beat up on ourselves, on some level we begin to think of ourselves as inherently flawed and unlovable. This breeds suspicion and disbelief when others see us differently. We might even back away from people or relationships because we aren’t used to allowing the light of love and compassion into our hearts. To be loved or lovable is unfamiliar.

A few months ago I told someone that I felt I had made friends with my mind. The person responded first with surprise and then with disappointment. “I wish I could do that,” she said. In our culture we tend to think it unlikely that this could ever be possible. Instead we believe that we need to control, cover up, pretend, medicate and distract. And yet, it is possible. In Buddhism, this acceptance of self is called ‘maitri.’ Pema Chodron, a wonderful Buddhist teacher describes maitri on this youtube video as “unconditional friendliness toward oneself.” She describes maitri as “the basis of compassion.”

Think of it, what if you were able to just think of yourself as being okay? What would your life be like if you were able to cut yourself some slack and just love yourself as you are without trying to be more perfect, more knowledgeable, more attractive… How much stress do we put on ourselves trying to be more or ‘better’ because we are so dissatisfied, so averse to what we are now? And yet, have we even looked to see what is actually here or is it just an assumption that what we are couldn’t possibly be enough?

So, how to go about cultivating this self-compassion? I think the first step is really to welcome the possibility that you could be unconditionally friendly towards yourself, that you could be worthy of loving. From there, I’ve found that the universe is only too happy to lead you into more and more lessons and revelations. Sometimes the lessons are easy and sometimes not. It is not that life suddenly becomes a bed of roses, but that you begin to see the difficulties as more ways of deepening in relationship with yourself and with others. Any relationship takes effort and most relationships work better if the focus is on the other person’s positive qualities vs. judging their flaws.

In my experience, a simple way to begin to cultivate self-compassion is to spend some time acknowledging the aspects of yourself that you actually do appreciate. Since we have such a tendency to judge things as good or bad, let me be clear that the other aspects aren’t bad per se. It is just easier at first to love ourselves based on those things we perceive as ‘positive’ qualities. It might take some time (it took me days the first time I tried to come up with one thing), but just finding one thing you appreciate about yourself is like clearing a little hole on the grimy window of our past perception so that the light can begin to shine through.

Make a phrase with your one ‘positive’ quality (or more if you have more than one). For me it was “I am compassionate.” Notice how your body feels when you say this phrase. And when you find your mind going into the place of self-judgment or self-criticism, let this phrase be your ray of light. Once that tiny ray of light is experienced, the shadows become less dense and the darkness begins to give way. Repeat your phrase whenever you think of it. Eventually you might find it pops up on its own!

In the next few blog entries I’ll be offering more tools that have helped me to bring light into my shadows. If you have other tips, comments or experiences to offer, please feel free to share those as well by clicking on the Comments link below.

Until next time, may you live with ease ☺

Is there such a thing as “negative energy?”

Realizing this topic can rub people the wrong way, I offer the disclaimer that this post, like any other I might write is simply meant to cast a few ripples and see where they settle. I’m not preaching or saying it is definitely so, just offering my ponderings on the subject and hoping to clarify as I learn from others.

That said, years ago I attended a lovely talk at Unity in Chicago with Katerina Pellegrino. She is a spirit medium who works with John of God in Brazil. Someone asked a question about how to deal with evil and she presented the notion that what we call evil is actually just a separation from God. As a Reiki practitioner for many years, I was taught to clear “negative” energy from the person I was working on before sending Reiki to them. It always seemed a little awkward to me, all this clearing and containing and disposing of other people’s negative energy. Then I heard Eric Pearl speak and read his book and he had the opposite view. He said all this avoidance of ‘negative energy’ was fear-based and unnecessary. I came to the conclusion that he thought there was no such thing.

So now that begs the question. What is it that you feel when you walk into a room where someone has just had an argument? What is it that people feel when they go to former sites of epic battles or mass human suffering? What is that icky vibe you get from people sometimes? Isn’t that negative energy? As humans we like to categorize and simplify. So light and dark become associated with good and bad, positive and negative. It’s also very convenient to label someone as being “negative” or having ‘negative energy.’ Then we can feel very positive and separate and good.

But what if we looked at it a different way? What if we thought of energy according to the principles of expansion and contraction, as the yogis have? When we are afraid, we tend to contract – physically, emotionally, energetically. The more fear, the more density and darkness. When we are feeling joyful, we feel expansive, connected, light and free. So what if all that ‘darkness’ and ‘negativity’ is really just fear that we are unwilling to face. We avoid the fear within ourselves, we are repulsed when it appears in others. Yet if we could connect with our own fear compassionately, maybe we could see that contraction in others with the same compassion, rather than with aversion. Then, instead of feeding the fear with more fear, we could allow the possibility of light and love.

Whaddya think?

Are you a karma buster?

I know its been a while since I’ve posted! 2010 has so far been a fascinating year of insights, observances, wonderful experiences and deep internal struggles. Sometimes I’m not even sure what part of the mix to write about. So, this possibility of “karma busters” peaked my curiosity recently and seemed just “light” enough that I won’t use too many words 🙂 Lemme know what you think…

It’s no secret that we’re influenced by generations past. Even on a purely scientific level, there’s the issue of hereditary transmission of genetic conditions and disease tendencies. So when I learned the concept of ‘family karma’ years ago, it had a ring of truth to it. I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea that many of us are on the planet right now to be karma busters – breaking the chain of reactivity that has characterized much of our individual family histories.

If you think of karma, not this “eye for an eye” concept that it has become in the popular culture, but as a simple system of cause and effect, generational transmission of behavioral or even disease tendencies is not so strange. One generation’s parenting affects the choices of the next and often leads to reactive swings in parenting strategies from one extreme to the next. A family with a history of trauma or addiction (or both) might be able to trace the manifestation of that traumatic effect through generations. Sometimes the original cause of the seeming disfunction is lost in time, and yet the effects remain.

I had a fascinating Reiki Therapy session last year where an ancestor from generations past spoke about the legacy of fear that she had unwittingly released into my maternal line. She said we were at a point in time when this legacy could be let go. During that time I felt energetic ‘chains’ being released from my spine. I realized after communicating with her that I had been working for years to break up that legacy – to “bust up” and transform that karma.

I am blessed to be surrounded by wonderfully mindful and present individuals. Talking to people, I’ve realized that many of us seem to be involved in this karma busting process. Not satisfied with just reacting to the family history, we are mindfully creating a different way – whether it be through parenting, spiritual work or ways of thinking about ourselves and the world. We seem to have come to the planet with a mission to make a change, not just “in society,” but in ourselves. It feels as if we are releasing those bonds so that we can move forward into a different type of future. There is a sense that going forward our children should not have to carry the burden of the past. This is all pretty exciting to me. I wonder, how will this affect the future of our planet?

Are you a karma buster?