Life's Controls

I get many emails everyday from people who need to scream, it's a kind of 'letting off steam' email account. I set this up because of the huge amount of people that I meet who feel completely lost or unable to control the direction their life seems to take them. If you feel this way then I urge you to read on. I was like this once and I can assure you it really isn't that hard to change.

Life's Controls

Do you sit at home or at work in a daze? Do you wonder where the time goes? Do you cry for a little control to come back to your quickly moving out of control life? Most of us can say yes to this. I have often sat at my desk or in front of the TV wondering why my life had gotten so out of my control. What had I done wrong?

Well the answer to that, as I quickly found out, was nothing! I had done nothing wrong, all I had done was take my life exactly where I felt I wanted to be, all I had done was blame the pitfalls of my life on other things, people and situations. But how had I got there? That was easy too. I had put myself there! You can't go to the shops without you choosing to go to the shops. You can't go to the park unless you choose to go to the park and you can't be upset or pissed off unless you choose to be upset or pissed off.

Now I know a lot of you will argue that, say, a close family member is taken very ill or dies suddenly, how can we choose not to be upset? For me there are different levels of emotions, a few strong ones and hundreds of very subtle ones.

Let's look at some examples

When I was younger I was a spend thrift. If I had money it burnt a hole in my pocket. When I turned 18, I was introduced to loans and credit cards. Woohoooo! I had never been so rich! I could do and go wherever I wanted, I could spend, what seemed like, a never ending 'magical pocket' of cash. And did I spend! Time went by, and as i grew older i found myself increasingly more in debt. I couldn't keep up with repayments, I became depressed and felt all I was doing was going to work to just hand my hard earned money over to somebody else. Those bastards! Life was so unfair. Each month I earned just enough to pay bills. How could my life had gotten like this? For years I was angry with the banks for letting me have the loan, I blamed the credit card companies for letting me have credit cards, in fact, I blamed just about everyone other than me for being so skint! Couldn't they see that I couldn't afford it? couldn't they see that I would get into so much debt and trouble that I would be paying hugely inflated amounts of interest back because of my inability to keep up.....Oh wait a minute!

I woke up one morning a few years ago with a sick realization. I had taken myself to the bank, I had 'flowered' up my earnings to get loans and credit cards, I went out and spent money like the world was ending tomorrow, no-one else, me! I couldn't blame anyone else but me. It wasn't their fault I lied on applications and it certainly wasn't their fault I went out on a spree. It was mine. Since that day, I have worked hard to repay the debt I got myself into and I am getting there, but it was such a huge action on my part, the repercussions will be around for a long time. And I have accepted that. What else can I do? I can't continue blaming anyone else because there is no-one else to blame. Acceptance is your first step to moving forward, to evolving and it is a huge step. In fact I'd say it was nearly 75% of the way there. Now, this example is an easy one to see how we choose to put ourselves in to places or how we choose to feel about things, let's look at a much deeper example;

How do we feel if someone we love becomes ill, or worse, dies? Do we become upset? Do we cry because they have gone? Do we cry because we will miss them?

 If someone close to me becomes ill or worse then I choose not to be upset. I choose to continue to have compassion for them, I choose to continue loving them, I choose to be whatever they need me to be! Being upset doesn't help them, being upset won't bring them back to life, all being upset does is drain away our happiness. 
 If someone we love dies, we should celebrate their life and remember the times we had with them. It is perfectly fine to cry, but choose to cry in happy memories or because they are now free.  
 Hardest of all, is choosing these things when  somebody close dies suddenly through accident or crime. However, dwelling on the circumstances does not help the future. Action helps the future, compassion helps the future, your never ending levels of love helps the future and ultimately helps you to come to terms with the passing of a loved one. 

I know that this will cause debate about feelings and that is fine, it shows our humanity. Only you can change what happens to you in your life. We are all in control, we never lost it, we just seem to have forgotten. 

Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, take a good deep breath in and say to yourself, "Today I am responsible for me". When things look like they are heading the wrong way ask yourself how you got there, look back to the choices you made, step by step, that bring you to that very place you are standing in right at that moment. You will begin to see that you did actually make those choices. Whether you like them or not, the choices were made for you, by you.
So what do we do now?

Ok, so you have now accepted that you are responsible for all that life brings you. From now on, every choice you make will be made with an awareness, with an insight. Every choice you make, everything that happens to you now will feel different. They will feel different because you are aware and have accepted that you brought yourself there. 

There is a synchronicity to life that cannot be ignored. Have you ever started to think of someone and 2 minutes later they have phoned you or you have bumped into them in the street. Do you ever feel like you have had deja vu where events play out in front of you yet you already know the outcome? These are synchronicities that you shouldn't ignore and the more you start to take notice of them, the more frequently they happen. These events are telling you, and only you, something that is important to your life. We cannot always see the benefits of something straight away however what we must always be sure of is that what we experience should be looked upon as a lesson. Everyday you should look over the events and ask yourself 'what have I learned about me today?' 

Coping With Death

When I speak to people about terminal illnesses or death it is apparent to me that a loved one’s decline in health or the death of a loved one continues to be a subject that many find hard to discuss. Generally, throughout the UK, the older generation see death and the ceremonies surrounding death as a time of great sadness and loss, however this is beginning to change. Whilst the loss of a loved one is an emotional time and overwhelming sadness is our initial reaction, reflection of the life that person led should be at the forefront of our mourning. More and more of us are celebrating and affirming our memories of the person who has passed helping us to deal with our own mortality, sense of loss and overwhelming emptiness.

My belief system is centred on that of Tibetan Buddhism albeit slightly different from choices, lessons and conclusions I have reached through my own life experiences. I believe that we reach a natural point in our existence that requires us to move on or progress. Life itself is about learning and experiencing and whilst we are here we learn and experience exactly what we came here to, moving on once that is completed.

“How do we know what we are until we know what we are not”

I have spent many years of reflection on this subject and felt I needed to write down my thoughts and feelings to share what I believe is our natural progression from mortality to immortality.

“Once we pass, our soul rejoins the oneness, a universal energy”. I often try to explain this as:

Think of the ocean as the universal soul. Take a glass of ocean water; this is the soul of an individual. It is separate from the ocean but is still ocean water. Boil it, it experiences boiling, freeze it and it experiences freezing however it is still ocean water, the only difference is it has experienced different things. Now pour it back into the ocean and it rejoins the universal energy, the one soul, only now with experience.

“We are spiritual beings having a human experience”

Having this belief has helped me fill my life with love and compassion for all things. I look upon each one of us having our own experiences and the more we learn from these experiences, the more we develop spiritually throughout our human experience.

If we keep having the same experience, then clearly we are not attuned to the lesson we should be learning, and until we learn that lesson, we will keep having that experience. To help me learn from my daily experiences, I reflect on each day to take on board what has happened. Sometimes the lessons from our experiences don’t come apparent to us for sometime however being aware of every moment, of every action, learning becomes natural.

Whether your belief is that we are re-born to continue the yearning for experience or not, your growth as a person through wisdom, compassion, empathy and love can only continue through personal reflection.

Death of a loved one is of course a very difficult time for all those close, each one of us deals with our own sense of attachment and fear of losing the one we hold so dear, yet we must focus our attentions on the one who is dying. Dying should be made as calm as possible with our love and compassion focussed on helping the one who is dying do so with as little upset and heartache as we possibly can to allow the time of passing be as peaceful as possible.

For those of us dealing with the imminent loss it is difficult for anyone of us to let go. The Dalai Lama explains his approach to letting go of a loved one as such;

“Imagine you are on a boat and all of your closest family and friends are on the dock. The boat is pulling away and there is nothing you can do about it other than go with it. Now look back to the dock, how do you want to see your family and friends saying goodbye?”

It is never easy when faced with terminal illness or death of those we hold so close yet we find strength in our memories, in our stories and in our hearts that lives with us forever.

I will leave you with this, one of my favourite quotes that I always find myself referring back to on the passing of a loved one.

“When our hearts weep for what we have lost, our soul smiles for what we remember”

Much Love xx