Be What You Imagine You Could Be

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As you are walking along your path, you can be who you are at any time, even as you discover new things about your true self. You are not consigned to have to be imprisoned by your past, or the story of your life. It does not have to define you. 

Just think of the story as events that happen to have occurred, and things you have been in the midst of at various times. The choices you made in different circumstances were based on your programming and the beliefs you were holding in your subconscious at the time. 

Many of the beliefs you hold in your subconscious brain, are things that were programmed in by other people you have interacted with, by your family of origin, and by society. Any toxic shame you are carrying was brainwashed into you. Self doubt and ;earned helplessness are other things that come from believing that “you are your story.”

You are not your conditioned thoughts. You are not your story. You are not your past. 

You are infinitely more that anything that has happened to you, and anything you have ever done. You are expansive and go beyond this illusion that you have been told is the only reality that matters. 

There is more to reality than you see. There is more to you than other people tell you. Your feelings and intuition can guide you. You must re-train yourself to feel your feelings without self judgement. Your feelings are not your enemy, and they never mean that there is something wrong with you. 

The more you shove down your true feelings and your true thoughts, the more the illusion draws you in. Who says that your inner thoughts about how your reality should be are wrong, or that they have to be approved by society?

What visions and dreams would you have, if you did not fear your own judgement of yourself? What possibilities are there that you tend to shut down, because you fear the judgement of others? What things have you denied in yourself,  because someone else told you there was something wrong with it? 

You are in this life to explore the dreams and possibilities. You can expand beyond the role you are playing.

This pattern of feeling obligated to repeat the same kinds of behaviors day after day is like a self imposed prison. You can be who you are, even if that does not match what people expect from you.

As a child you had imagination and played out roles and situations in a way that allowed you to explore your ideas and your feelings. Society and the people in your life may have crushed your imagination down, and discounted it as childishness. 

Imagination is one of your greatest gifts. It allows you to explore possibilities and come up with creative solutions for problems. Imagination can take you outside of the box you have been restricted to and to mentally explore your own expansion.

Dream and allow your visions to be free. Imagine and create as you desire. Be who you dream of being. Follow your passions and part the veil that has been limiting your potential to be your true amazing self.

What to Live For

Live for yourself. Create your reality. Listen to your inner voice. Nurture your inner child and your emotional wounds.

Live for the connection of all living things and for the value of life and existence.

Live for loving others. Do random acts of kindness. Search out special people to share intimate relationships with.  Passion and sensuality are part of being human and part of spirituality.

Live to love animals and nature. Be kind and mindful. Treat living things with respect and care.

Live for your visions, hopes and dreams. Be creative, inventive and original.

Live to fight against evil and injustice. Be the advocate for those who have no voice.

Teach others to be sometimes still, and other times to roar like a lion.

 

gentlekindnesscoaching.com

 

Do We Live in Simultaneous Realities?

Everyone searches for a purpose to their lives. Some people are more focused on just surviving, but in the end humans are wired for more than simply existing.

Different people see their purpose differently. Time and age can change where you focus your energy.

Some people focus more on others than themselves and feel more fullfilled if they are serving others. Some people look to invent something that will improve the lives of others.

We need all different kinds people, with different skills and interests in order to tap into multiple kinds of brains and different kinds of intelligence.

I believe that each of us is happier when we feel like we are able to use and develop our best gifts, and what we feel drawn to do.

It is easy to get off track because others think they know what we should be doing. And some people only want to guide us in a certain direction because it serves their agenda.

We are all unique and have an inner guide that wants to lead us. When we really listen to our feelings, we can tap into that guidance. We should be careful not to get so busy that we ignore our feelings and intution.

Ctitical thinking has its purpose and can serve us in many situations. It can also talk us out of doing what we love because it can rationalize our behaviors.

If you feel miserable in a situation, there is something wrong and your emotions have their own intelligence.

We exist in multiple realities. There is the thought reality that we tend to rely on. There is our emotional reality, which is just as important. Our spiritual and intuitive reality can guide us to a higher vibration of consciousness.

There is our physical reality, which is made of pleasure and pain. The reptilian brain drives us by primal urges, and warns us about danger.

The thoughtful mind is the conscious mind. It is the critical factor that tends to make us ignore our other realities. The primal drives react and override our critical thinking.

We need to live in harmony with all the aspects of ourselves. We need to be physically comfortable and safe. But we cannot ignore our emotional reality. It lets us know when something is wrong with the direction we are going, or how we are going about it.

Make time, also, for your spiritual self and explore the meaning of that to you. Let your realities all have a voice.

Balance in everything is important for health and to move closer to enlightenment and peace of mind.

 

Blessings and peace,

Annie

More

Humanity needed in the world of humans

Soft sweet touches

An understanding ear to hear

Laughter bursting from the small bodies of children

Old hands carefully baking bread for a neighbor in need

Or crafting a blanket with yarn for a stranger in the hospital

A nurse’s reassurance to a frightened patient

Looking at them with the self confidence of the profession; but adding something personal in their glance

A worker willing to go outside the usual procedures  and protocol…in the name of  helping someone who is in danger of foreclosure on their family home

Too many medical bills and not enough time…

Time spent working to take care of loved ones has to be balanced against the need to just be with them

Sitting next to a stranger and matching their body language… their hopeless slouch on the bench…

just to let them know someone sees them…and they are not forgotten

…they are not invisible

Humanity enough to pay the extra 2 dollars for the pizza at the Mom and Pop shop; to drive the extra mile to get there

Rather than paying the “fast-food- dictators” their tithe;  the Mama Rosina Pizza places need to be there…on the Main Streets

What happens when no one cares anymore about the “little” people; will they truly become little people after all?

And the smallest gestures of holding doors for a mother carrying a child and helping the elderly woman cross the street safely…

What will becomevof these small acts of random kindness ? What shall we say to those …who call us foolish for wasting our time…

On people of no consequence?

Who has the right to determine who is more or less significant?

And what does this say about mankind…

If we are just too busy spending time making money…and nothing more?

Isn’t there something further? Isn’t there something more?

 

 

Ideas for Lessoning Severe Insomnia

I like listening to talks by Ajahn Brahm. He is a Buddhist monk who gives talks about how to live with a more peaceful mind. His talks are about anxiety, depression and other mental health focused issues. The talks are on YouTube and can be searched by his name.

There is one talk I remember in particular that had a section about insomnia and worrying at bed time. He gave an interesting technique that I would like to share with you.

At bedtime you take off your shoes. Nearly everyone removes their shoes at bedtime so this technique can be used by almost everyone.

You take off your left shoe and call that one The Past. Then you take off your right shoe and you call that one The Future. You set down each shoe and leave them on the floor, outside of the bed. Take off the left shoe and set the Past on the floor. Take off the right shoe and set the Future on the floor.

You never take your shoes to bed, so this way, you remember to leave the past and the future outside the bed. Do not take them to bed with you. They will be there in the morning.

I like this technique because if you associate it with your shoes, then you will always remember it.  You can remember not to take the pain of the past, or the anxiety over the future to bed with you. Set them on the floor and they will be there tomorrow.

Not that I have been able to do this every night, but it is something to work on. It is true that your problems are not going anywhere. They will still be with you tomorrow.

Just as your shoes can wait until tomorrow for you to put pick them back up again, so can the past and the future.

There is nothing that you can do to change the past, recover from past trauma, or to ensure the future, while you are trying to get rest.  Those things just keep you awake. If you could actually just take them off, as easily as your shoes, then you could relax and get to sleep.

Insomnia is caused by worrying about the past and the future.Memories of the past torment you. There are things that should have been …..and things that should not have been….

The future is an unknown and your mind tends to experience obsessive  thoughts about what is going to happen in the future. We have fears of certain things happening.

Sometimes we do not easily identify our thoughts as being past oriented. We think of the past as something that happened years ago. But in reality, anything that happened prior to this moment is in the past. Things that happened at work today and the conversation we just had an hour ago, is in the past.

I am sure it would take a high level of mindfulness (perhaps enlightenment) to  be able to remove the most recent thoughts from our heads, but it is fascinating to me that some people can do that.  Perhaps we could simply allow those thoughts to occur but not feed into them.

I  spend hours each night feeling bad about things in the recent past.  Then I spend precious sleep time   worrying about what events are going to trigger me into post traumatic stress tomorrow.

I am so fearful of being in mental trauma that I fear the triggers of the next day. It is like impending doom. Tonight I am fearful of taking my daughter to therapy tomorrow. I do not like going to therapist offices. I do not like the video camera filming me when I get called in to discuss how I feel about her progress or lack thereof.

The entire situation surrounding her having to go there, is traumatizing to me. Every time I have to go to the office, I a forced to relive trauma . So every week, the night before the appointment, I lay in bed and picture how they will traumatize me in the office tomorrow.

But the truth is that the lack of sleep makes it worse. The more sleep deprived I am tomorrow, the worse the trauma will be. There is nothing productive I can do tonight other than to sleep.

So tonight I will try to take off my shoes and leave them beside the bed, on the floor. The left shoe is my past trauma and the right shoe is tomorrow’s post traumatic stress. Neither one of them belongs in the bed with me tonight.

The  theory of mindfulness says that we should care for our thoughts. Even if  we cannot dismiss them as easily as taking off our shoes, then we can at least be kind to them. Our thoughts and feelings  do not require judgement from us. They are just our thoughts. it is what our mind is choosing to do.

We can be kind to our thoughts by allowing them to exist without judging them or shaming them. If we just let them exist as they are, then  maybe we can not attach so much energy to them. The less energy we give them, the less powerful they will become.

If we can lesson the severity and the energy of the thoughts of the past and the future, at bed time, then it is a good step. It may be easier for us to sleep, than if we fight with our own thoughts like they are our enemy. If they are part of us then so  be it.

Let them exist and then let them rest until tomorrow. We must get  sleep for the sake of our mental and physical health. Perhaps bedtime is the time to focus on our spiritual strength, rather than our mental weaknesses.

I have been pondering these things and cannot do them any better than you can, but I would like to learn. The more we consider mind / body / spiritual connection, in my opinion, the more accepting of ourselves we can become.

Namaste,

Annie

Abnormality is defined as a deviation from the accepted thoughts, emotions and behaviour

Abnormality is defined as a deviation from the accepted thoughts, emotions and behaviour

What is  ‘normal’ ? It is  an invented idea related to conformity.

Conformity to the status quo and the manners and behaviors that the vast majority are comfortable with. Saying “fine” when someone asks how you are, is the accepted behavior.

Following the rules at a workplace,  even when there is an obvious , glaring exception to the rule, staring you in the face.

Going along with our plans and our schedules like drones , without thinking about what we are doing. That is the status quo. That is conformity.That is a lack of creativity and individuality.

When people all follow what someone else thinks, no one thinks at all. Who is making the social norms? The people at the top who are benefitting from it. All the drones underneath have the impression that they are the ones that benefit but it is not true.

Loss  of humanity and individual thinking. Taking each individual situation for what it is and thinking and and making and intelligent , thoughtful plan of action. This is all lost in the confusion and the illusion or orderliness.

People have the impression that the status quo rules are neat and orderly. They think that they like the rules ans that the Normal accepted behaviors and reactions are going to keep them safe and protect them.

if this is true, then why is suicide on the rise and mental illness more and more prevalent in society?

Maybe mental illness is caused by the infliction of an untrue reality upon independent thinkers. The forcing of a reality that someone created and is telling us is safe. But when we see that it is not true and it is unsafe for us, we are seen as abnormal people. The ones who do not fit in.

This results in isolation and alienation. We can see what the reality is. But they tell us we are not conforming to their thoughts and their reality.

People that have survived, or their children have survived sexual abuse, are expected to attend holiday functions with the offending family members. They are expected to sit there are pretend nothing ever happened. Ot to pretend that the abuser is rehabilitated and no longer a threat.

Women living with abusive men are told that things are not as bad as they think. People think they are exaggerating and the “poor guy” is just venting from a hard day.You should be thankful that he works so hard to support you. How do they know how the guy is supporting you? They don’t even know if he shares any of his money with you. Why do they assume?

Even family members sometimes support the abuser and treat the victim as though she is in some alternate abnormal reality. You have to be a better wife, a better girlfriend. Maybe he would be a better man if you were more supportive. It must be you… Crap! Crap! BS!

I have always been supportive in relationships. Begging someone not to leave you and a child with no money in the bank account and no food in the fridge, so they can go to live in another state with friends to “find themselves” and their “Purpose” and a job, is crap. Why should you suffer with no food and no money, to be supportive of someone who does not want to work. Someone who leaves you stuck with his parents, because he can’t stand living with them anymore.

When our feelings do not match what the others tell us to feel, we become mentally ill. Our brain suffers because it tries to hold onto the actual reality while other people are messing with it.

What are We Passing Down to the Next Generation?

When I was 6 years old, I got hurt on a see-saw. The person on the other side suddenly decided to get off. They jumped off in mid air, sending me crashing to the ground very hard.

The shock sent nerve pain streaming from my bottom all the way up my spine. I never got on a see-saw again. I did not let my kids get on them at the park. I simply fear them.

When I was 9 years old, I smashed my finger in a nutcracker. You know the ones… they look like a wooden doll that is a man with a white beard and a red jacket. Yeah, those things. I was playing with it because I thought it was a toy.

I ended up getting my finger smashed and it was extremely painful. To this day, I hate the sight of those things. I won’t let my kids even touch them in the store. I don’t even like regular nut crackers. I buy the nuts in the can that are ready to eat.

When I was 12 years old, I stepped on a tack. It got stuck in the heal of my foot. It was so stuck that it did not come out, even when I lifted my foot, jiggled it or yelled. (yeah, that one was a long shot…)
So I had to pry the stupid thing out of my poor foot by myself.

Ever since then I have not liked tacks. I don’t like bulletin boards that require tacks. When I am someplace that has a bulletin board, I immediately start looking on the floor for tacks. I have never allowed my kids to have bulletin boards in their rooms , even when they asked me for one.

These were physical pains. The memory of the pain is triggered by the offending objects. (ok that was a little dramatic… LOL).

By now you must be thinking “For God Sake that poor clutsy girl. It is amazing she survived to be an adult.

Yes, it probably is!

My father always says he did not think I would survive to be 2 years old because of all the furniture I ran my poor head into. He had to pad every corner, including but not limited to the handle on the kitchen fridge.

So, is this an article about my traumatic childhood. A memoir of how I was abused by inanimate objects? No, but let’s suffice to say it is still an ongoing problem for me. The battle with inanimate objects, that is.

No. This post is about the fears we carry and pass down to our children without really meaning to. Are my children deathly afraid of tacks, nutcrackers and see-saws? No, they actually think I am a little crazy about those things.

But if we carry fear with us about those things, imagine what fears we carry inside about mental and emotional harm that we incurred. It makes you wonder what fears we are passing down to our kids that we are not even aware of.

Not only that, what fears were passed onto us? How many generations can they go down?

Just a thought to ponder.

Namaste,
Annie

Mental Illness / Emotional Healing – The Poweful Effects of Human Electromagnetic Fields on the Nervous System

“The human nervous system can create electric energy waves that can be measured with scientific instruments. The human body produces infra-red radiation that, with night vision equipment, can be seen from miles away.”
Human Electricity

Spiritual garden.com

Scientists have proven that all people give off an electromagnetic field. The nerve impulses in our bodies are actually electric signals. These occur inside of our bodies but they also project out of the body. They create a magnetic energy field that radiates out into the air.

Positive people will radiate a positive energy field and negative people will send out a negative one.
When you are in the vicinity of another person, you will be affected by the energy field that radiates from them.

When close to some people, you may feel as if your body and mind becomes more energised, more hopeful and optimistic.
When close to other people, you may feel as if your energy drains away, a depressing or lazy feeling.“
Human Electricity Spiritual garden.com

When we are trying to heal from a mental illness and addiction, it is critical that we surround ourselves with positive energy fields. If we are made to feel depressed and discouraged, then our self-esteem will go down.

We need our self-esteem to be high in order to have healing in our minds and our bodies.
Low self-esteem is counterproductive to our personal healing and peace of mind.

It is extremely important for our self-esteem that we are around people that radiate positive energy fields. Our bodies will be affected by the other person’s nervous system and the resulting energy field.

When we are around people that are mean, judgemental, vindictive, violent, depressed etc, it sends that exact feeling into us. When you are trying to get better from depression , it is not a good thing to be around people who emit negative energy.

As part of the healing process of mental illness, please surround yourself with healthy, compassionate, kind people. It will help your nervous system to feel calmer. Your nervous system will regulate itself with the other person’s.

*This is similar to the way a newborn baby’s heartbeat and breath regulates to its mother’s when they are cuddled together.*

It is dangerous for us to be around a person with a negative spirit about them. Their nervous system is full of negtivity. This negativity will be felt and absorbed directly into our own personal nervous system.

This is a tested scientific fact. The energy fields have been measured and recorded. This is the reason why you feel bad when you are around a selfish, unkind person.

I know that sometimes we live with someone who is like this. It happens to the best of us. We meet a beautiful man and he seems so great in the beginning. After we move in together then his true colors show themselves. I have done it myself.

If you are stuck in a house with someone that emits negativity then you have a problem. The only thing I can suggest is that you try to spend some with other people who are good for you. Think about your physical proximity to this person and try not to sit close to them all the time.

If you have severe anxiety, PTSD or another mental illness that invades your mind with negative intrusive thoughts, then you need to regulate your nervous system with someone else’s as often as possible.

If you are near someone who is calm and patient, with a kind personality, your nervous system will regulate with theirs and you will feel calmer. It is amazing but it is true.

All the work we go though to become sober from alcohol, quit drugs, control intrusive thoughts etc, we don’t need to be going up the down escalator by sucking bad energy into our nervous systems.

Check out the article called Human Electricity, at spiritual garden.com
I found this article and the web site very interesting and informative. I stumbled upon the site this evening.

On a personal note, I find that I feel my nervous system calming down when I pet my bunny rabbit. I think that animals must also emit energy fields that can be calming to our nervous system. So spending time with your pet be may be helpful. I have not researched this yet but now I have something to do while I am up with my insomnia tonight. LOL

Peace be to you all.
Namaste,
Annie