Be the Hero

I’ve been reading Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My Stroke of Insight”. It’s a true story. Jill was a brain scientist and at the age of 37 she experienced a stroke. She recalls the morning of the stroke and the days in the hospital that followed and the eight years it took for her to fully recover.

In chapters two and three she explains very clearly the role of the two hemispheres in our brains. The left hemisphere deals with language, naming, describing. It also divides our experience into time - past present and future, it is our left hemisphere that knows we need to put our socks on before we put on our shoes. It also effects critical judgement and deduction, always comparing one thing with another. The left mind keeps us informed of who we are and where we are and how we fit in by constant “brain chatter”.

The right hemisphere has no concept of time, with it this moment goes on forever. It thinks in pictures and sees the big picture. It can interpret non-verbal communication and can notice inconsistencies between someone’s words and what their body “says”.

Because the stroke disabled Jill’s left hemisphere she had first hand experience of her right hemisphere working on it’s own. Her story explains why we get so caught up in our thinking and how we can help ourselves to live in peace. As she recovered she experienced the left brain’s growing influence and how to live peacefully with this influence.

The first thing I found amazing was the idea that the job of our left brain is to chatter to us with ideas, comparisons, judgements, fears, etc. I thought this chatter was a bad thing because it is distracting and it seemed, much of the time, to attack the things I did and judge others unkindly. But when this chatter was missing from Jill’s life on the morning of the stroke she kept “forgetting” that she needed to get help. She had to work very hard to remind herself that she was in danger and that there were things she needed to do to survive. Our left brain keeps us in touch with what’s happening around us and allows us to function effectively in the world.

With this new piece of information you can look at the chatter in a different way - as a necessary function of a compulsive, detail and judgement-orientated left brain. It’s intention is not to attack you. Also, the chatter is not you!

I used to think that meditation was impossible, that I was doing it “wrong” because I couldn’t silence the chatter. But the chatter cannot and probably shouldn’t be silenced. Instead maybe it could be ignored, or managed?

I’m only half way through the book so I’ll keep reading and write more when I’ve finished.

“My stroke of insight would be: peace is only a thought away,

and all we have to do to access it is

silence the voice of our dominating left mind.”

Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

Ballytrente Beach Co. Wexford

The Smell of Seaweed.

I went to visit a friend who has a house by the sea in Co. Wexford. I grew up at least a hundred miles from the sea and due to other commitments we saw the ocean only occasionally. I still remember the screams of delight as my brother and I (my favourite sister wasn’t born yet!) began to notice the familiar smell of the sea. Only years later having moved to less than a mile from the sea did I identify the smell as seaweed! I still love that smell and it brings me right back to childhood.

My friend’s house is about a hundred yards from the sea, so I was a child again for two days. I woke early on the first day and wrote my morning pages and while my rice porridge was cooking I skipped out to take a look. It was inspiring. The wind was blowing and the waves crashing and the tide was out so there was a huge expanse of firm sand running for miles both left and right. I ran back inside to get dressed and eat my breakfast so that I could start to experience its power. The sand nearest to the house was very soft so it kept getting into my shoes and when I took them off to empty them I realised I’d forgotten how great it is to walk barefoot, so I ditched the shoes and began to feel my walk…….

Sugar Free Away from Home.

When I arrived at my friend’s house on Monday I wondered how I would be able to keep to my sugar-free diet. I had packed two shopping bags with my supplements (including my sugar craving little helper Chromium) and my grazing snacks (by the way I would be there for just two days!). In a way it was a trial run for going on holidays which happens tomorrow……..

The Sugar Monster.

The biggest problem with going off sugar for me is hunger. In the past when I’m hungry the sugar monster comes and makes me eat sugary snacks. So all the grazing snacks are protection against the sugar monster. When I’m well fed I’m impervious to his attack. A friend loaned me a book called Adrenal Fatigue way back in March and I read it in an afternoon. I read it so fast because it was like reading my life story. It was the seed I needed to begin my healthy eating and led me to sugar-free life.

There’s way too much information in the book to tell you all about it but the bit I want to mention is one of the solutions it proposes to Adrenal Fatigue - eat between meals.

Eat between meals!

I was eating between meals anyway, but it was mainly sugar foods. That’s not useful for the adrenals. But there are other foods that don’t contain sugar and do taste good. For example, at about 11 am I might have a sugar-free yeast-free cracker with avocado and seeds, or a slice of Yoghurt Soda Bread with humous and whatever meat I’ve kept from the previous evening’s dinner. At about 4 pm I could have grated carrot and beetroot with pecan nuts or cracker with nut butter (my favourite is hazelnut, to me it tastes like chocolate!). So I eat five meals a day and I’m loosing weight without trying!

The Master Meringue Maker.

It turned out not to be difficult to stay sugar free while visiting my friend. Even with the addition of a huge temptation in the form of a Master Meringue Maker (her reputation had proceeded her and I am only sorry I met her too late to appreciate her gift). In my past life I loved meringues, why wouldn’t I they’re mainly sugar! The Master Meringue Maker arrived with a tin of meringues, strawberries and cream. I was sorely tempted as the bowls were filled but I had a tomato instead! Even as I write that seems crazy and impossible and not something I could have done pre my sugar-free life, but I did eat a tomato instead of a meringue and I survived. So I think I’ll survive and even thrive on my two week motorbike trip through France.

Do croissants have sugar?

One morning at the beach......

Habits are easy to Keep.

I mentioned in passing in my last post that I have a “walk every day” habit, that began about 3 months ago. In the past few days the concept of “good” or useful habits has been keeping my mind occupied. We are sometimes ruled by our habits - the ones we don’t choose. The nail biting, the comfort eating, the gossiping, whatever. We started doing something and now we don’t even notice we’re doing it. When we do notice (or when someone points it out to us) we feel guilty and promise to break it, but breaking a habit is harder than making it and we often fail.

The thing that’s been going through my mind is: Since I find it easy to “do” habits (easy to bite my nails, really easy to talk mean to myself when I make a mistake), then what if I could make something useful easy to do - by making it a habit!

How I Started a Habit.

For months I had guilted myself out about not walking. That made me feel worse. No motivation to walk only mean self talk. Then one day I started, it was accidental. The sun happened to be shining and I was near the beach bringing my son to school. Instead of driving back home I went for a walk. It wasn’t much fun. I worked out how far I’d have to walk to do 30 minutes (for some reason a 30 minute walk was what I wanted to do) and then I went back to the car. During the day I did feel better though because now that I had walked, anytime I was reminded of walking I felt great instead of guilt. (Great good! Guilt Bad!)

Next morning I didn’t think about walking, just brought my son to school as usual. But driving home I remembered and grudgingly parked the car and walked. It kept going like that. My walk was now connected to the drive to school and it became harder not to walk. For the first few weeks I didn’t walk on the weekends but something shifted and I started to miss walking. Now my son is finished school and I still walk every morning. Now I look forward to it. Maybe I’ll start a “walk twice a day” habit!

The Experiment.

I’m going to try an experiment : Start a habit to watch (only) one hour of television each evening. (I already have a habit of watching television from dinner to 10 pm). Looking at how I started the “walk every day” habit, I think I can identify some before and after steps:

Before:

1. Positively, minutely, specifically, name the habit. (I had a thirty minute walk in my mind for a long time before I began.) I will watch television from 9pm until 10 pm, only, each evening. I will read or paint or draw or write between dinner and 9pm.

2. Make it possible. (I had rain gear and sun cream in the car to cover all eventualities.) I’ll have writing, reading, drawing and painting material set out on the kitchen table.

3. Make it real! (I’d been imagining how much better I’d feel if I walked more.) Choose something you want to achieve and daydream what it would be like if you had it.

4. Connect it to something. (I connected walking to driving my son to school.) Dinner.

5. Tell someone. (I told my son.) I’m telling you!

6. Start!

After the Start Date:

1. Once started, keep going. This is especially true for the first 21 days, after that it becomes harder to stop!

2. Do it at your pace. (I walk at a slow to medium pace when I walk on my own and for some reason it “feels” right.) One hour of television each evening “feels” right for me, even though I may cut that to 3 hours a week for my next habit!

Start a Habit.

If you want to join me with your own habit, can I suggest that you pick something that seems easy to start with, because success is very motivating. And even easy things can help you shift an old unwanted habit!  After you’ve got good at this you can go for a bigger challenge!

What habit do you want to start?

I’ve got a new habit - one that I like. Going for a walk every morning by the beach. Since I started early in the spring there’s a message in graffiti on a wall that continues to grab my attention.

“No right or wrong just the consequences of your actions!” Destiny.

and a p.s.,

Sorry about the wall.

I think it attracted me because it’s scary and exciting! Ever since I was a little girl I was “good” - you know the type, plays nicely, smiles at visitors, helps mother in the kitchen, works hard at school and doesn’t bring shame on the family. Good was: follow the rules that parents and teachers have set and fit in with what others in your community believe is right.

And it worked very well for me, I got plenty of positive attention and I rarely got into trouble at school. But the things that work well for us as children, don’t work so well when we grow up. Now, I did my best to force the same kind of goodness into my adult relationships, my committee memberships, my working life, my church life and it worked - to a point. (Let me just say, in my defense, that I was unaware that I was forcing something, it was a habit I had never noticed, it was normal to me.)

When I joined something or helped someone I was doing what was generally considered right. I never checked if I wanted to help or to join - I was asked so I said yes. When my daughter was seven I joined the parents association at her school because I heard it was a great place to learn about advances in education. To be a good parent was the right thing and to gain information for my daughter’s education was being a good parent.

I was there about a month when I had another opportunity to do the right thing. The chairman, wanting to retire from her position, asked for volunteers for the role of chairman. Long story short she needed help, she’d been in the job for years, no one volunteered, it was the right thing to do so I said yes!

Less than six months later I had resigned (in tears) after a particularly bitter feud between the committee and the school board. Friendships were damaged and it was a big mess.

Now, I’m not saying it was all my fault, but would things have turned out as bad under a chairman who wanted the role for reasons other than to be good and to do the right thing?

That experience was a turning point for me. Being good up to that point brought me compliments, friends, gifts. Now it brought me notoriety in my community, criticism from my peers, and angry thoughts in my head. I imagined everyone was talking about me (in a bad way) and I was certainly talking to myself, in a bad way!

Nearly 15 years later I’m not so good and I don’t do the right thing so often! That’s why the graffiti excites me. I’ve replaced doing the right thing with being responsible for the consequences. And that’s what scares me - it’s easier to do what everyone else thinks is right than to be responsible. The right thing is: follow the rules others have set and fit in with a moral code that’s in majority in your community at this time. Being responsible is: look at each situation as it happens and decide based on your own wisdom and beliefs what is the right thing for you to do and then live with the consequences.

I’ve just finished reading a book called The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It’s a story about how black maids were treated in Mississippi in the 1960’s. The moral majority in 1960’s Mississippi considered all black people as second class citizens and treated them as such. In 2009 things are different and the moral majority in the United States agreed that it was right to elect Barack Obama. Would there have been a black president sooner if everyone considered each situation as it happened and picked (based on their own wisdom) the responsible thing instead of the right thing?

It’s now 11 weeks into my No-Sugar diet and things have settled down in the food area. The breakfast menu varies from Rice or Quinoa Porridge or Spelt Pancakes to boiled eggs. My lunch varies according to the salads in the fridge but is often Rye crackers with humous, tomato, scallion, cucumber and grated carrot. And dinner is easy because there was never any sugar in dinner! (Well… except for cheese, which believe it or not is a kind of sugar in digestion!).

But a funny thing has started to happen: Other stuff has begun to shift!

I got a toothache 3 weeks ago. Very painful but it was possible to relieve it with tapping (EFT). Anyway that led me to a holistic dentist who told me my jaw was out of alignment and I needed to go to a chiropractor. So this week I visited Nolene a chiropractor in Greystones and I am amazed by how flexible I feel. Flexible in my movements but also in my thinking. It’s like a space has opened up around my head.

The x-rays she took showed a twisted spine that “must have caused you to be stiff?”. Oh… but I only know how stiff I was because I am so free and flexible now! I didn’t realise how numb I was to the things that were causing me damage. I couldn’t feel pain until it was really bad. Since going to Nolene if I’m sitting or standing in an awkward position I notice straight away and shift my body to a more comfortable position.

This got me to thinking about being “stiff” in other areas of my life.

When I began the No-Sugar diet back in May, I was very stiff in my thinking about sugar - I had to have the sugar fix after every meal; it was impossible for me to live without biscuits, buns or cakes; a cup of tea only works with a chocolate snack.

I was stiff in my thinking about sugar, but was I also numb to the damage sugar was doing to me? What would it be like if I became aware as I ate of “awkward” eating and then straight away shifted my body to comfortable eating. (By “comfortable eating” I mean eating food that makes my body well, no pain or bloating or blood sugar imbalances like the shakes). That would be miraculous! And I want that. I want to be able to notice straight away that I am uncomfortable or off-balance and stop eating that food.

With the No-Sugar diet I have been re-training my taste buds away from the addictive sugar and towards the vegetables and wholemeal grains. In the past 11 weeks I have not given myself permission to choose one or the other because my sugar craving took the choice. Soon it will be time to allow my body to choose and then it will be as ready to choose comfortable eating as it is to choose a comfortable sitting position.

Another thing is happening: It seems like when I made the decision to give up sugar and gave it up, my requirements began to line up, things began to fall into place, doors began to open. Like the friend who knew a herbalist, the Recipe Book, the toothache (yes, even that!), the holistic dentist (who used tapping), the chiropractor (who lives 3 minutes away and is brilliant!).

As Joseph Campbell said

… follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

Campbell noticed that some people lived their lives not doing what they wanted (or loved) to do. They worked hard at what they “should” or “must” do. From time to time he used to talk to his students individually about their studies. Whenever a student would start to talk about something that really excited them, Campbell could see the change in them. He would watch as their eyes lit up and they became animated. This was it! This, he guessed, was their rapture - their bliss.

For a long time I wanted to eat healthily, to choose the things I wanted to eat. For the first time it looks like this is possible. I will keep you posted.

The noise in the garden is huge, gigantic and not just a little irritating. Our neighbours are having the boundary trees trimmed. It quite a nice day and so the doors and windows are open but probably not for long more. I like it when our neighbours get the trees cut - we get a bigger sky and a brighter perspective. But its time to close the openings and batten down the irritation.

That’s a little better. I’ve been talking to a friend this morning and she mentioned again something she has said before, that she’s not creative. The words jumped out at me this time because I’m reading Julia Cameron’s book the Right to Write. Julia wrote The Artist’s Way and other books and movies. But when I began reading the Artists Way back in 1999 I also thought, “I’m not creative”. I went on to follow the 12 week course one chapter a week and within three months I no longer thought I wasn’t creative. Nine years later I still think I’m creative. But it’s not just me who’s creative everyone is creative according to Cameron. It’s part of our birthright - we have the power to create. Now before I get carried away in the passion of the moment let me explain. We’re not necessarily born talented writers, painters or sculptors, but we can create stories, pictures, clothes, whatever and the more we create the better we get at creating.

So let’s give it a go right now. Lets “make believe” (pretend if you prefer) - You are creative and a magician has made you fearless in your ability to create. Got it? Then, what will you create?

Mmm nice isn’t it. IT IS nice…… Right now what comes to mind for me: is I would create a hand made journal in which I would write every day.

OK, lets keep going (by the way if this is your first time trying this exercise be patient the answer may be waiting to be sure that your “make believe” is fully functioning. Let go and be fearless enough to allow an answer).

If you were sure about your creative gift and fearless about the consequences, what do you want to create?

MMM still nice… Right now I want to create a change in my kitchen table, I want to sand the surface, wax the top and paint the legs blue - my favourite colour.

These questions are useful to ask ourselves from time to time because its usually fear that’s stopping us from taking up our birthright. Do you really want to allow that whiney moaner fear to stop you before you’ve even had time to play at creating? Course you don’t! Now lets get going with another question.

What did you love to create as a child? Was it a little performance with your siblings? Was it drawing pictures with your favourite colouring pencils? Was it writing little notes to your best friend at school because you couldn’t wait until the next day to tell her the news? Was it making clothes for your dolls or your dogs!? Have a daydream and remember what you used to create when it was just playing.

Let’s play! Whatever it was that you used to do as a child find a way to fit in an experience of that this week. Do you need to put coloured pencils on your shopping list? Or, do you need to find some old clothes to cut up, do you have a needle and thread?

Let’s rest. Set up a quiet place to sit for about twenty minutes (set a timer if you think you’ll miss something). Go to your quiet place, close your eyes and allow a memory of your childhood play at creativity to come to mind. There will be no need to force this. It is very much about just allowing the memory to surface, all by itself. Be patient, and when the memory does arrive, enjoy it, wallow in it and relive it gently. All the time allowing the memory to play away in your head while you have an experience.

When the timer goes off allow yourself to rouse slowly and gently and notice how this experience could be useful for you. What is this message or picture or feeling that is now available to you? Take it with you as you go through your day.

Tags: creative, play

Remembering the Bob Marley song No Woman No Cry, I thought it was a good place to start my Sugar Blog. There’s a line in the song,

“Everything’s gonna be alright.”

and it repeats eight times, it’s very comforting!

I started a candida albicans diet on Wednesday. Thinking about it for a long time I had even made an attempt at it last November. The difference this time is I have support. My friend gave me the name of a Medical Herbalist and I’ve found her help really useful. She’s given me supplements to keep my body nourished and books to keep my mind occupied(!). One of the supplements even seems to have stopped the sugar craving. But I didn’t know that last Wednesday.

On Wednesday morning the sky was grey and my mood was black. I had a “sort of” plan to follow but wasn’t hopeful. The previous Monday night at the cinema I had eaten a €5 bag of sugar coated jelly sweets! I ate them one after the other almost without tasting, almost unable to stop. If I had done that -

How am I gong to survive without any sugar?

But it turned out that wasn’t the important question. Feeling miserable after my breakfast (porridge, rice milk, cinnamon, sprinkle of crushed flaxseed and supplements) and not wanting to share my misery I went up to my bedroom and wallowed for a bit. In my head I could hear, (well, I wasn’t hearing voices … it was my own voice!)

This is so unfair…. How am I going to manage?……. Why can’t I just eat what I want?……. Where am I going to find the energy?……. I’m so tired……… I’m so fed up…… I’m useless……. I never do anything right……. How am I going to feed myself? …….. How am I going to cook for everyone else? … What can I eat?……

And I started to cry. Now I’m no stranger to wallowing, but I hadn’t done it in a while and I may be loosing the knack, because soon I was hearing,

This is just an outward manifestation ………. What? This is just stuff happening out there, and you can use it to grow calm in here …… Oh…. ok that sounds just like something I tell other people ……

And then I started to feel calm. I wanted to go back to wallowing but it wasn’t working. I talked to myself for another few moments and then I heard,

What about a book with recipes?……..

Well, now you’re talking! I love books. That’s what I’ll do. So I got up, dried up and went to buy lots of vegetables and a new cookbook. The funny thing was I was feeling so good that when I made the grocery list I crossed out the book because I have plenty of cookbooks and I could find suitable recipes in them.

Wanting to buy vegetables I drove to the vegetable shop but for some strange reason parked near the book shop. Walking past it occurred to me that I could just look to see if there was anything interesting. So I walked in and found the healthy eating section. There were a few books and I flicked through them until I came to the one that had a recipe for Yoghurt Soda Bread, and it had two stars beside it.

Before I go on some background information: I’ve never liked cooking! Probably because I do it everyday for my family, whether I feel like it or not. And also because I didn’t think I was that good a cook. This has changed a bit in the past couple of years, and when I cook calmly the food tastes better! Leaving aside the cooking, I love baking. Scones, Apple Tarts, Rhubarb Tarts, Queen Cakes. Yum! I love eating the result of baking, now that I think of it that’s probably because of the sugar! So when I saw the recipe for the Bread I started to get excited.

The other thing about my diet is it excludes yeast and I thought I wouldn’t be able to eat bread, but Soda bread doesn’t have yeast! Yippee! But the MOST exciting thing about the recipe was the stars. You see this was a book written by a lady, Erica White, who had to go off sugar and yeast and she knew what that was really like. She knew that there could be bad days on this journey and she had come up with a plan to help! Star ratings. There were three star ratings. One star was a recipe for days when you are just surviving. Two stars for a day when you’re reviving and three stars for a thriving kind of day! The fact that making bread could be considered harder than easy and easier than difficult and I was willing to make it, made me feel great. I must be doing better than I thought. So I bought the book.

After that traumatic first day, things got easier. I picked out the recipes I wanted to make and bought the ingredients. I accepted that I might need to go shopping each day, and that made the almost daily trip easier. I stopped watching food programs on TV, stopped having biscuits in the cupboard and kept my eyes from straying to chocolate at the shops.The fridge had alternative sources of food always available. A week into the diet now the important question is -

Why do I want to eat when I’m not hungry?

The answer’s not clear yet, but it’s related to using food to comfort myself. I had a very busy day yesterday and there was some stress and some excitement and I was tired by dinnertime. For the first time since beginning this diet I wanted to eat something “nice” (”nice” to me means sweet) after my dinner. Fortunately there were plenty of non-sweet choices in my fridge. It was only after I had eaten some beautiful red Pesto with multigrain rye bread that I became aware that I was not hungry when I began eating. For the first time I considered that sugar may not be the problem, the problem may be that I eat when I don’t need the food for physical nourishment. Could this be another drug? This is just week 1, await further revelations!

For now all is well and I’m surviving, reviving and thriving through my sugar-less journey.

Tags: candida, diet, sugar, surviving

Sometime last year my son put me onto a video at http://www.stridegum.com/#/mattsplace/  (the Dancing 2008 link) It’s a guy call Matt Harding who travelled around the world (including Dublin’s St. Stephen’s Green) with his girlfriend doing a silly dance. His girlfriend Melissa Nixon recorded Matt and the people (or monkeys) who joined him. The video lasts about 4 minutes. I found it again earlier this month and I’ve watched it every day since. I cry every time….. I wonder if I’ll ever be immune to its effect. 

I love the music, it’s playing as I write. I love Matt’s enthusiasm. I love his openness, lacking any embarrassment. I love the children. I love the people running in to dance. I love the bad dancers. I love the Bollywood dancers. I love the guy in the wheelchair. I love when it gets to Tel Aviv and then East Jerusalem, and I cry some more because they’re almost dancing together, they’re almost laughing together and they’re almost together.

I long to be so free that I could go to St. Stephen’s Green in the middle of Dublin and do my own silly dance, with a big smile on my face. But I’m afraid. Even imagining it makes my stomach knot and my face burn up with worry about what the people passing by would think.  

This guy, Matt has no fear, or seems to have no fear of what others might think (he is afraid of spiders though!). And that in some way is what makes him and his dance so attractive. He does the perfect silly “Matt Harding dance” and he has an impact on lots of people, he has an impact on me. What a simple way to have an impact.

Is there something simple that you want to do? Are you worried about what others would think? A passerby, your parents, your brother, your sister, your friends? What if what you wanted to do could have this kind of impact on just one person - would it be worth the fear? Would it be worth courageously doing the thing you want to do?

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.

  ~Ambrose Redmoon

No one can do the dance quite like Matt. No one can do your “dance” quite like you.

 Let’s dance……

Tags: courage, fear

I’ve been reading Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception (1954). He’s the English author of Brave New World (1932). In the Doors of Perception book he was testing the effects (on himself) of taking a hallucinogenic drug called mescaline.

The thing that most interested me was his reasoning for drug taking. Why do people take drugs, including alcohol and cigarettes? He says it’s because they have a sense of something greater than normal, (their own spirit or their own connection to spirit), and they want to experience that.

We can sense it when we are climbing a mountain, or running a marathon or watching our children sleep or when we’re caught up in creating art. It’s fleetingly there and then gone and it’s a let down to be in the ordinary world  We search for a way in normal day to day life to recreate that experience. Maybe we’re not even aware of having had an experience, all we know is there’s more to life than this…..

Huxley says that’s why humans choose to get high or get merry, it gives them a taste of this connection to something extra-ordinary.

This makes sense to me. There’s another drug to add to the list. It has always been easy for me to make that connection to spirit and I didn’t even think of it as something unusual - it was just part of life. As a child I loved going to church, and even went to extra masses during the week. It wasn’t strange when I was a child in rural Ireland, lots of people were doing it and there was an acceptance that this was the right thing to do.

When I became a teenager and started going out with boys, that place where I got spirit connection became unfriendly for me. As teenagers my peers and I were judged sinful and evil by the rules of the religion. Trying to follow the religious rules was difficult because they went against my own wisdom. For many years things continued like that, keeping the rules breaking my wisdom, breaking the rules keeping my wisdom, there was a lot of guilt. But I wanted the spiritual connection so I continued taking the religious drug. For me, there was no separation between spiritual and religious, and to have the spiritual nourishment I had to follow the religious rules.

But how can any religious structure/organisation have exclusive rights to spiritual connection? Spiritual connection came first and religion followed as a man-made symptom (at best) of that connection. When I realised that, I could honour my own wisdom and still have connection.

My drug was religion, I thought it was necessary to experience the spiritual connection. Some people’s drug is alcohol or cannabis or whatever… Is it necessary to drink alcohol, take drugs or attend a service in order to experience a sense of spirit? Would it be enough to have the experience without the drug?

Tags: alcohol, connection, drugs, spiritual, wisdom

To celebrate the inauguration of a new president in America I started reading Barack Obama’s book Dreams From My Father. In it there’s a story about his father (also named Barack) at college in Hawaii in 1961 or 1962. 

One night he, his father-in-law and some friends went out for a drink. There was a white man at the bar who was annoyed that a non-white was allowed to drink at the same bar. He voiced his opinions loudly. (This was within six years of Rosa Parks being arrested for saying no, on a bus, to racial segregation.) Barack Snr. heard the comments as did his friends, who anticipated a fight. Instead, he went over to the man and “proceeded to lecture him about the folly of bigotry, the promise of the American dream and the Universal rights of man”. It ended peacefully. Something about this story got me thinking.

At the Access your Calm course we touched on The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, in particular the Book of Law, a metaphorical list of rules that we each learned as children and still carry around with us. As children we were taught to obey the laws and we still feel guilty if we disobey them. Unfortunately, it’s easy to disobey them, as the laws often contradict each other. So we find ourselves feeling guilty a lot.  We’re stuck in the “be a good child” mode and if we’re breaking the rules then we’re not being a good child. Of course in the grownup world where we live we don’t want everyone to know that we’re not good so we cover up. We act “normal” and discuss our good beliefs and what should be everyone’s beliefs. But underneath it all we believe we’re “bad”, because we can’t keep the rules, all the rules. So, when we are accused of some “fault” and we are upset, it is because beneath our carefully held veneer of acting normal, we believe the accusation. 

For example, you’re taking a coffee break in the kitchen at work and a colleague passes and jokes, “You’re always in here, do you ever do any work?” and then continues on walking. Depending on your Book of Law rules, you may or may not take offense at this remark. For example if one of your rules says Be conscientious and another Don’t be lazy, then you will probably take offense. And you may carry the pain of it around with you all day (long after the colleague has forgotten their throw away remark). You may say and believe  “she hurt me”, but in truth you have hurt yourself. By the way, this is true even if the colleague believed what she said, but that’s her issues!

We can realise that the Book of Law is just an illusion, albeit one that was very necessary when we were growing to maturity. Now we can write our own book and it will include some of the old rules and some new. And crucially, we can trust that we are intrinsically good, and begin to believe that as a new rule.

So when I read the story about Barack’s dad I saw it like this - When Barack Obama Snr. heard the racist remarks directed to him he did not believe them. He didn’t have any rules in his Book of Law about skin colour, he didn’t have any rules about him being less than or repressed by, white people. Barack Obama Snr was the son of an elder of his tribe on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. He won a scholarship to study in Nairobi and was selected by Kenyan leaders and American sponsors to attend University in America and afterwards to return to Kenya. He was the first African student at the University of Hawaii and he graduated within three years, top of his class. He trusted that he was intrinsically good and he believed that as a rule. 

In summary - An opinion about you doesn’t shake you, hurt you, or offend you - unless you believe it.

When the remark was made at the bar, Obama Snr. saw it for what it was - an uneducated and flawed opinion, and he set about reeducating the individual! No offense was taken, as the person was obviously (to Obama) misguided. Obama Snr. had the option to walk away, or stay and teach. He choose to stay and teach. Fighting wasn’t an option, there was nothing to fight for, nothing to defend. 

The next time someone “hurts you” or “offends you”, would it be useful to consider that they have given you some valuable information? Have they have uncovered a rule from your Book of Law that you believed you were guilty of breaking? 

You have a choice - be offended and blame “them” …… or …… become aware of your conflicting rules. What would be the most useful choice for you? 

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about”

Oscar Wilde.

I met my friend Monica, for lunch today and we discussed this topic. She recalled a situation that occurred over 25 years ago. She was living abroad with her husband and young daughter. One day she discovered that a “friend” was spreading a rumour that Monica’s husband was not the father of their daughter. My friend thought this hilarious as her daughter looked so like her husband no sane person could doubt her parentage. And of course Monica herself also knew for sure who the father was. So rather than feel offended, my friend was chuffed (like Oscar Wilde) that she was being talked about!

Tags: Eleanor Roosevelt, four agreements, healing, Obama, offended