There's two ways to succeed in life: the world's way, and the soul's way. When you see the world's way, in the traditional way, you won't be able to sustain happiness for very long. When you see with the soul, you won't have to play games anymore, and you'll be free to create a life uniquely suited to you. Soul prosperity is a completely different kind of prosperity. Soul prosperity bypasses cultural norms, surpasses manipulative game-playing, and rejects the systems the world is selling. This is the soul's way, and whether or not you become an enlightened person will depend on how well you can see with different eyes.
If you believe that wealth, youth and physical beauty guarantee fulfillment, you will always be led, and therefore always be a follower. But you didn't come here to live someone else's life. You came here to live your own. If you only see what society tells you to see, you will have swallowed someone else's interpretation of life. You can only live in a prescribed way for so long. Eventually you will have to learn to develop your own way of seeing, your own style. There is no other way for your soul to grow than by walking your unique path. You will experience frustration and disappointment whenever you've wandered off your path. That's because souls weren't meant to follow. They aren't mean to take orders. Only the mind finds comfort in following, only the mind responds to orders. When you have veered off your soul's path, you have unplugged yourself from your source, and all your attempts to fit in, to better yourself, to have more, even to amass knowledge will only amount to feelings of futility. As long as you insist on doing life like someone else expects you to do it, you'll live in a state of perpetual dismay. There has to be another way. We were not meant to toil in futility. Our souls were meant to live peacefully, harmoniously, and in oneness. We were not given a life just to survive it! While your mind can have a mile-long to-do list, and while you may achieve every goal on that list, still you can come away feeling as if you've really achieved very little which was deeply meaningful to you. This pervasive feeling of dissatisfaction has been with most people all their lives. This is because your soul is dissatisfied, your soul is bored! Your soul doesn't wish to be fulfilling a menial laundry list of to-dos as proof of your value. Your soul already knows you are valuable. It does not need to prove it to anyone. It is your mind which persists in incessant list-making and endless activity. The egoic mind would have you toil endlessly, never satisfied with anything for very long, until you break down in a heap, cornered by the demands you've placed upon yourself.
Your soul, that eternal part of you, isn't interested in any of those things. The soul's purpose is to attain enlightenment. When I say enlightenment I mean to awaken to reality, to attain spiritual truth about who you really are, and the journey of the soul. The soul wants you to SEE. It wants you to learn to decipher true from false. It wants you to become not smart, but wise. It doesn't care a wit about your college degree, your age, your sex, your sexual orientation, or what you look like. It doesn't care where you live, and it certainly doesn't care how much money you make. The soul doesn't discriminate like that-only people, governments and religions do. The soul will ask you to answer this question: what is life for? The soul wants you to stop playing the games you've been taught, and to learn a different way of navigating life. Your mind, however, is content to go on playing games forever. So there is always a tension between what the mind wants (to keep busy, to look important, and to fit in), and what the soul wants (to understand its Divine nature, and to assist others in this realization).
Most of us are so busy trying to survive life that we feel we can't find time to actually enjoy the living of it. That's like saying you can't find time to do what you were sent here to do. When you believe, "I don't have enough time" to contemplate, meditate and thereby come to understand yourself and the reason you're here, you've completely and totally missed the point of being invited to the party! You just whizzed right by it. "I don't have enough time" is just another lame excuse of the mind. It's erroneous thinking. It's not that we don't have time to develop ourselves spiritually, because we all have the same 24 hours a day to work with. The yogis, mystics, saints and spiritual teachers found time because they understood the value of this endeavor. They understood something we are still in resistance to. They realized what a trap it is to follow others, to do what conventionality says you must do in order to be a "success." They vehemently rejected those systems, that psychological programming and societal models, because they understood life was not supposed to be used for making money, and it wasn't supposed to be a popularity contest, or a beauty contest, either. Their souls called them away from the "follower mentality." I've come to a place where I don't wish to follow anymore. I've come to a place where I am no longer hard and impenetrable, the ego's fortress, and these days I can risk letting the truth in. I've come to a place where I no longer give angry, rude, deceitful, demanding, and narcissistic people my time. Not because I haven't been all those things before (I have), but because now I'm intent on planting spirituality in my life, and I don't wish to be robbed of these precious seeds. Peace, honesty and simplicity have become more valuable to me than fortune or fame.
Recently a young man wrote me, admitting he is a narcissist (thinking only of himself), and considers himself a psychopath. He was considering suicide. I told him that being a narcissist and a psychopath is a choice. I told him he's choosing a life of anger, anxiety and depression, a miserable existence. I told him that even if he inherited these tendencies via genetics, even if he had an abusive childhood, he could still get help via counseling and medication. If he had avoided help, he was in fact choosing to take on an identity of narcissist and psychopath. I advised him to seek psychological help and to stop hurting himself and others. It didn't surprise me when he never wrote back-it's easier to blame others than have to change ourselves. When people complain to me about how the world has made them into a criminal or an addict, I could show them countless others who have had it worse in life, and decided to take the high road instead. When my daughter committed suicide in 2013, I was faced with a choice, a choice all trauma survivors are faced with (I call it the Rocky moment). It was a pivotal moment in my life. I had to choose: was I going to withdraw and retreat from life, or was I willing to take this enormous wound and reach out to others who were hurting? It was like struggling to my feet after I'd gotten the knockout punch. The referee was counting, and even though I could barely hear the count, I refused in that moment to be beaten. I grabbed onto the ropes, dragged myself up, and staggered to my feet. I wasn't going to go down like that, not yet, not that way. It was my Rocky moment. There are going to be circumstances that will knock the wind out of you, and people who, if you let them, will knock you senseless. If you have the guts to pull yourself up, shaky, beaten and bruised, refusing to be bullied by life, well then, you're going to feel like a champion. Life is a lot like boxing. It's You vs. Your Problems. Some rounds you'll win, and other rounds your problems will win. There may come a day when you'll be delivered a knock-out punch, that southpaw left hook you didn't see coming. Your jaw's going to be dislocated, your nose is going to get broken. You'll be seeing stars as you spit out blood and teeth. And in those ten seconds when you're face-down on the mat, you're going to have to decide if you are going to find the inner strength to get up and be known as a fighter.
It's easy to give up on yourself. People do it all the time. It's easy to blame who you've become on your genes or an abusive past. It's a lot harder to get up off the mat when you're hurting so bad, when you've been pummeled, when you want to run away and disappear into a bottle of booze or a joint or some other pleasurable distraction that kills the pain for a couple of hours or more. Eventually though you'll get tired of running, and besides, you can't run from your soul. It's who you really are, and wherever you go, you'll be taking it with you. It's easy to see what others tell you to see, and to follow where others lead, because then you don't have to spend time looking and finding the answers for yourself. To see with your own eyes is to see with different eyes, and that takes immense courage. When you walk to the beat of your own drummer, most people won't understand, because you're not doing life they way they were taught to do it, the way they think it "should" be done. I'm not suggesting you should be irresponsible. But I am encouraging you to begin to listen a little closer to that innovative, creative, "think out of the box" voice that comes to you every now and again. I'm encouraging you to interrupt the insanity of survival mode and let yourself be alone with the deeper thoughts once in awhile. I'm encouraging you to begin to investigate and discover who you'd like to become, minus the overlays of who you think you have to be. I'm hoping you will become dissatisfied with being told by a dysfunctional society what constitutes happiness, and decide for yourself what will really make you happy. I hope you will stop trying to please your partner, your boss, your family and friends, and figure out what YOU want. I hope you'll begin seeing with different eyes, not with the eyes you've been told to use. I hope you'll begin to see reality.
To see all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0
Friday, September 12, 2014
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Astral Projection, Average Alice, and The Rabbit Hole
A strange and wonderful thing happened to me, most unexpectedly, which is how some of the most magnificent things in life seem to happen. I was coming home after having lunched out, enjoying the sun as it glistened and sparkled on the water below us, when suddenly I popped out of my body for a moment. I think this is known as an out-of-body experience, sometimes also called Astral Projection (thank goodness I wasn't driving). Without warning my soul (or spirit, it's one and the same) decided to take a jaunt and forgot to tell my body it was leaving. The last time this happened I was an innocent 16 year old, brushing my teeth and minding my own business. I had decided to look into my eyes in the mirror and see what was there (the way you first look into your lover's eyes to see their soul), when, "Pop!" I was standing alongside myself. I distinctly remember thinking, "Hey, I'm kinda pretty," and, "I'm smaller than I thought I was." It was at that moment I realized the pretty girl was in fact ME, at which point I began to panic. "Boop!" I stepped right back into my tiny 16 year old frame, and was staring back at me in the mirror. Since then I've only told a select few friends about my teenage experience, because it was extremely alarming, and I wanted to forget it had happened so it never happened again. Interestingly, every friend I've talked to about this has admitted sheepishly to me that they too have had some variation of an out-of-body experience.
Thirty-four years later my soul did a repeat performance, this time with a variation on the theme. I was standing to the right of my body, a bit above it, noticing the dark shadows under my eyes and how tired I looked. I thought about how the last time I was out of my body I was sixteen, and again, I started to panic. Immediately I was re-deposited back inside, well, ME. Once I was sure I was safe and sound, all in one piece again, the cynical, analytical left brain, the "human" reasoning part of me, seemed to slide out of the way just enough for my soul to commandeer the screen of my mind. It was like watching a movie, and I don't remember seeing or hearing anything from the outside world for about 5 minutes. The movie flashed pictures quickly across the screen in succession, pictures flipping so fast that although in the moment I understood what they meant, I can't recall them all now. It reminded me of the time I almost drowned when I was 12 years old. I was about to go unconscious, pressed down in the basin of the river by an undertow, when I watched my life pass before my eyes in a super-fast slide show (fortunately I was saved by a man's arm that dredged my sister and I from the bottom of the river, and deposited us back in the shallows, although there was no man to be found on the beach. But that's another story for another time). This movie was about who I really am, and the associated feelings were overwhelmingly melancholy.
When my soul popped out of my body, I felt instantaneously frightened...no, it was more like terrified. This wasn't supposed to be happening; my body was sitting there enjoying the view while my consciousness had casually side-stepped the confining boundaries. It's a shock to see your body somehow functioning without you. I protested vehemently and in a blink I was back, staring out through my eyes again. But the movie of my life was playing on the vast screen before me in living color, and as it did, I began to feel as if I were shrinking. Shrinking like Alice in Wonderland. I've always loved and related to Alice-a well-meaning bookworm who couldn't concentrate on her studies for all the distracting adventures outside of the norm which were summoning her. That's me, I'm an Alice. And while it's believed that Lewis Carol wrote Alice In Wonderland while smoking opium, I promise you, I was 100% sane and sober when this occurred.
I was shrinking, but shrinking in relation to the Universe's immensity-seeing my true size as compared to it. I was like a speck of dust flying through the air compared to the vastness of eternity, and to the Eternal Mind. I kept shrinking and shrinking, down, down, smaller than a dust mite on a piece of dust, smaller than the cell of a dust mite, and further down still until I sunk into black oblivion and stopped. Here I would never be noticed by anyone ever again. It seemed to me it was my soul's beginning place, a place I had known before and had returned to, completely void of color or activity, but somehow alive and entirely peaceful, like a black deep sleep. Though it was dark all around, there was an absence of fear. I still had full consciousness, a solitary entity with a personality, feelings, and the ability to reason. I was also very small as compared to eternity. The "I" I'd known, ME, my ego, had disappeared. The confounding thing about it was that while "I" was gone, it was wholly relieving to have shed the weight of my body, and the need to be anything for anyone else. I thought about life on earth, and felt heavy-hearted. As the movie screen showed me hundreds of faces, each animated and in rapid succession, it seemed that every soul there had one common characteristic: they were all suffering. These people were frail, fragile, miniscule, and so...ALONE. A desolation pervaded me as I watched humanity, and I felt tears wetting my eyes. It seemed I had been mistaken, gravely mistaken all my life.
I was used to thinking of myself being alone in the world, separate from everything in my own struggle for survival, an existential island in the universe. As I sat in this den of nothingness, in the movie theater's comforting darkness, I understood that I was never alone. I was never separate or apart. I realized I'd been living in a dream, that life itself is a dream, and most of us are sleepwalking through it. This less-than-a speck person swamped in primordial darkness was in fact vitally connected to all of humanity, an interwoven thread that couldn't possibly be separate from it. I was both connected to the darkness, a part of it, and connected to all of humanity by my suffering. I saw how I was one ray of light among countless rays of light which combined to form the color black. I was a pixel, one speck among countless specs that combined to make a giant black canvass which our souls had originally been plucked from. Yet I had mistakenly thought that I had been plunked down on earth, separated from my source, damned to a life of misery, an Alice lost in an insane Wonderland. What I was being shown was quite opposite of everything my mind believed was true. I wasn't indispensably important as my ego would have me believe, and yet I was a vital part of the fabric of life. Without my thread the grand design would begin to come unraveled. I sat staring into the depth of the blackness for what seemed like years, or at least a very long time. Then I heard my fiancée's voice break in with, "Are you alright?" I didn't want to leave the movie theater yet, the show wasn't over. I mumbled, "Ya." I felt the familiar and comfortingly human ooze of tears on my cheeks. I couldn't find words to describe the connectedness, or the smallness I was feeling.
I remembered hearing a "Pop!" ring in my ears when my soul tethered loose from my body. I thought how like a champagne bottle we are. In death the soul shoots out and the tension of life is finally relieved. I was that cork, spinning through space. I thought how we make such a big deal of death when it is as easy and effortless as uncorking a bottle of champagne. I understood what author and psychic Sylvia Browne meant when she said that birth is much more difficult than death-it is much harder to be born than to die. I thought then about how my daughter who passed of suicide must have been baffled when she learned how important her life actually was, and how taken aback when she saw how essential to life, how indispensable she was, a link in the chain of life not made to be broken. I flashed to the multitudes of souls toiling here on earth-how ill and tired, how fearful and jealous, how hurt, bruised and broken, until I could hardly stand to watch anymore. Tears were falling hard for all of us-for me, for my lost daughter, for every lonely and confused person who has every come to this planet chasing redemption and purification. I understood then that earth is the only, and one true Hell in the cosmos.
And then I saw my daughter, center stage on the screen of my mind, looking radiantly healthy and whole, joyously alive. She led me to a festival, as if she blinked us there. I was standing on the steps of a huge white alabaster marbled building, with great columns and a dome. I was standing with many other people who had returned, back from earth. We were like the refugees who'd finally arrived on the shore-tired, gaunt and weary, but triumphant, the hems of our robes flapping in the refreshingly cool wind. They, the citizens below, were waving colorful flags and throwing what I can only describe as many-colored glitter into the breeze. There was loud celebratory trumpeted music. The crowds were cheering in a thunderous roar. Dressed in white robes with wreaths on our heads, we stood awed at the reception. The whole scene reminded me of ancient Rome. Our return was being decorated and celebrated. My daughter was in the audience below looking up at us with such awe and admiration twinkling in her eyes. Remembering this scene still gives me a lump in my throat. To them, the people who had never chosen to come to earth, or to the suicides who had come home too early, we were heroes. Hero's so great, like the mighty Gods and Goddesses of antiquity, Zeus and Apollo and Athena and their children. I understood what Jesus had meant when he said, "Ye are Gods" (John 10:34). We are eternal souls on an incredible journey through time and space. I saw my daughter marveling at the God-like status of this eternal dust mite. Then my fiancée called me again, her voice dragging me out of the this epic adventure, and "Boop!" I was average Alice again, back in my boringly normal life with its predictably strange and fragile creatures. But in the time it took me to go down the rabbit hole, I had been a part of it all, and had witnessed for myself the oneness that spiritual teachers speak about, the fabric we are all a part of.
Twice now I've stood outside my preconceived notions of who I am. I've seen only a glimpse of what's behind the black curtain leading to the next rabbit hole, but of one thing I'm convinced-we are all headed there together.
To see all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0
Thirty-four years later my soul did a repeat performance, this time with a variation on the theme. I was standing to the right of my body, a bit above it, noticing the dark shadows under my eyes and how tired I looked. I thought about how the last time I was out of my body I was sixteen, and again, I started to panic. Immediately I was re-deposited back inside, well, ME. Once I was sure I was safe and sound, all in one piece again, the cynical, analytical left brain, the "human" reasoning part of me, seemed to slide out of the way just enough for my soul to commandeer the screen of my mind. It was like watching a movie, and I don't remember seeing or hearing anything from the outside world for about 5 minutes. The movie flashed pictures quickly across the screen in succession, pictures flipping so fast that although in the moment I understood what they meant, I can't recall them all now. It reminded me of the time I almost drowned when I was 12 years old. I was about to go unconscious, pressed down in the basin of the river by an undertow, when I watched my life pass before my eyes in a super-fast slide show (fortunately I was saved by a man's arm that dredged my sister and I from the bottom of the river, and deposited us back in the shallows, although there was no man to be found on the beach. But that's another story for another time). This movie was about who I really am, and the associated feelings were overwhelmingly melancholy.
When my soul popped out of my body, I felt instantaneously frightened...no, it was more like terrified. This wasn't supposed to be happening; my body was sitting there enjoying the view while my consciousness had casually side-stepped the confining boundaries. It's a shock to see your body somehow functioning without you. I protested vehemently and in a blink I was back, staring out through my eyes again. But the movie of my life was playing on the vast screen before me in living color, and as it did, I began to feel as if I were shrinking. Shrinking like Alice in Wonderland. I've always loved and related to Alice-a well-meaning bookworm who couldn't concentrate on her studies for all the distracting adventures outside of the norm which were summoning her. That's me, I'm an Alice. And while it's believed that Lewis Carol wrote Alice In Wonderland while smoking opium, I promise you, I was 100% sane and sober when this occurred.
I was shrinking, but shrinking in relation to the Universe's immensity-seeing my true size as compared to it. I was like a speck of dust flying through the air compared to the vastness of eternity, and to the Eternal Mind. I kept shrinking and shrinking, down, down, smaller than a dust mite on a piece of dust, smaller than the cell of a dust mite, and further down still until I sunk into black oblivion and stopped. Here I would never be noticed by anyone ever again. It seemed to me it was my soul's beginning place, a place I had known before and had returned to, completely void of color or activity, but somehow alive and entirely peaceful, like a black deep sleep. Though it was dark all around, there was an absence of fear. I still had full consciousness, a solitary entity with a personality, feelings, and the ability to reason. I was also very small as compared to eternity. The "I" I'd known, ME, my ego, had disappeared. The confounding thing about it was that while "I" was gone, it was wholly relieving to have shed the weight of my body, and the need to be anything for anyone else. I thought about life on earth, and felt heavy-hearted. As the movie screen showed me hundreds of faces, each animated and in rapid succession, it seemed that every soul there had one common characteristic: they were all suffering. These people were frail, fragile, miniscule, and so...ALONE. A desolation pervaded me as I watched humanity, and I felt tears wetting my eyes. It seemed I had been mistaken, gravely mistaken all my life.
I was used to thinking of myself being alone in the world, separate from everything in my own struggle for survival, an existential island in the universe. As I sat in this den of nothingness, in the movie theater's comforting darkness, I understood that I was never alone. I was never separate or apart. I realized I'd been living in a dream, that life itself is a dream, and most of us are sleepwalking through it. This less-than-a speck person swamped in primordial darkness was in fact vitally connected to all of humanity, an interwoven thread that couldn't possibly be separate from it. I was both connected to the darkness, a part of it, and connected to all of humanity by my suffering. I saw how I was one ray of light among countless rays of light which combined to form the color black. I was a pixel, one speck among countless specs that combined to make a giant black canvass which our souls had originally been plucked from. Yet I had mistakenly thought that I had been plunked down on earth, separated from my source, damned to a life of misery, an Alice lost in an insane Wonderland. What I was being shown was quite opposite of everything my mind believed was true. I wasn't indispensably important as my ego would have me believe, and yet I was a vital part of the fabric of life. Without my thread the grand design would begin to come unraveled. I sat staring into the depth of the blackness for what seemed like years, or at least a very long time. Then I heard my fiancée's voice break in with, "Are you alright?" I didn't want to leave the movie theater yet, the show wasn't over. I mumbled, "Ya." I felt the familiar and comfortingly human ooze of tears on my cheeks. I couldn't find words to describe the connectedness, or the smallness I was feeling.
I remembered hearing a "Pop!" ring in my ears when my soul tethered loose from my body. I thought how like a champagne bottle we are. In death the soul shoots out and the tension of life is finally relieved. I was that cork, spinning through space. I thought how we make such a big deal of death when it is as easy and effortless as uncorking a bottle of champagne. I understood what author and psychic Sylvia Browne meant when she said that birth is much more difficult than death-it is much harder to be born than to die. I thought then about how my daughter who passed of suicide must have been baffled when she learned how important her life actually was, and how taken aback when she saw how essential to life, how indispensable she was, a link in the chain of life not made to be broken. I flashed to the multitudes of souls toiling here on earth-how ill and tired, how fearful and jealous, how hurt, bruised and broken, until I could hardly stand to watch anymore. Tears were falling hard for all of us-for me, for my lost daughter, for every lonely and confused person who has every come to this planet chasing redemption and purification. I understood then that earth is the only, and one true Hell in the cosmos.
And then I saw my daughter, center stage on the screen of my mind, looking radiantly healthy and whole, joyously alive. She led me to a festival, as if she blinked us there. I was standing on the steps of a huge white alabaster marbled building, with great columns and a dome. I was standing with many other people who had returned, back from earth. We were like the refugees who'd finally arrived on the shore-tired, gaunt and weary, but triumphant, the hems of our robes flapping in the refreshingly cool wind. They, the citizens below, were waving colorful flags and throwing what I can only describe as many-colored glitter into the breeze. There was loud celebratory trumpeted music. The crowds were cheering in a thunderous roar. Dressed in white robes with wreaths on our heads, we stood awed at the reception. The whole scene reminded me of ancient Rome. Our return was being decorated and celebrated. My daughter was in the audience below looking up at us with such awe and admiration twinkling in her eyes. Remembering this scene still gives me a lump in my throat. To them, the people who had never chosen to come to earth, or to the suicides who had come home too early, we were heroes. Hero's so great, like the mighty Gods and Goddesses of antiquity, Zeus and Apollo and Athena and their children. I understood what Jesus had meant when he said, "Ye are Gods" (John 10:34). We are eternal souls on an incredible journey through time and space. I saw my daughter marveling at the God-like status of this eternal dust mite. Then my fiancée called me again, her voice dragging me out of the this epic adventure, and "Boop!" I was average Alice again, back in my boringly normal life with its predictably strange and fragile creatures. But in the time it took me to go down the rabbit hole, I had been a part of it all, and had witnessed for myself the oneness that spiritual teachers speak about, the fabric we are all a part of.
Twice now I've stood outside my preconceived notions of who I am. I've seen only a glimpse of what's behind the black curtain leading to the next rabbit hole, but of one thing I'm convinced-we are all headed there together.
To see all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0
Sunday, September 7, 2014
A Strategy For Reclaiming Your Life
I have just three things to teach: Acceptance, Letting Go, and Holding On. These three are your most esteemed teachers. Simply put, to reclaim your life, you must do three things: stop fighting what you cannot change, stop trying so hard to be in control, and optimize your natural talents. When we are in the flow of life, what's unnecessary ceases to demand our attention and who we were meant to be will begin to take center stage. I'm talking in larger concepts here, so let me break it down: fear stands in the way of you getting what you want in life. Your circumstances don't control your destiny (however bleak they may seem), and neither do other people. Only your thoughts control your destiny (I know, scary, right?). If you can learn to Accept, Let Go, and Hold On to the right thoughts, you can build your own utopia. These aren't just platitudes I read in some self-help book or said in an effort to manipulate you into buying something from me. I'm speaking from life experience when I say these are the three truths you've got to put to work for you.
Acceptance of Reality
Accepting our own, and others' limitations is pre-requisite, fundamental, and paramount to achieving more happiness and success. It stands to reason: you can't change reality if you're not living in it. Yet we live in denial more than we realize, more than we'd like to admit (we live in denial about living in denial). For a long time I lived in denial about how depressed my teenage daughter had become. Yes, I took her to counseling and got her on anti-depressants. But there was a part of me, the parent part of me that didn't want to admit to her steady decline. The mother in me kept hoping things would improve, that she was just being a moody teenager. But the realistic me, the mental health professional in me was far more worried and skeptical. Each day these two parts battled for control until the morning I woke up to find my daughter had secretly gone off her anti-depressant, and as a result had taken her own life.
Suddenly the weaker part of me that had wanted to downplay and make excuses for her behavior had to face a very harsh reality. I was horrifyingly thrust into the truth, because there's no way to downplay a tragedy of this magnitude. My denial was instantaneously "outed." Once you see that you've been denying what's true, or in my case, pretending it "wasn't as bad" as it seemed, you're swamped with guilt. Regret, blame, disgrace, self-condemnation and failure pull up a chair and take root in your psyche, becoming your constant companions. Once you've been cornered and "outed" in such a big way, it's time to admit to yourself what you did well, but also where you dropped the ball and retreated. Whether it's a failed friendship, a failed relationship or marriage, or having failed as a parent, life always gives you the opportunity to step out of pretense and back to reality.
Today I don't pretend as much as I used to. I try really hard to be honest with myself and other people. When I find myself slipping back into that weaker part of me (and I do), the "pleaser" part of me, I have to remind myself I'm not here to please others, to look good, or to impress people, because when I'm overly worried about being judged or losing someone's love or admiration, it makes it difficult to be real. I also have to keep reminding myself that the purpose of life is not to insulate myself. I'm not here to build a cushiony life so I can escape from reality. The point of being given a life is so I can live in reality! And that means getting really, really messy in relationships if need be, in order to work through problems. In order to keep growing we'll have to get used to heaping doses of difficulty.
Letting Go
Letting go means standing aside and allowing life to happen without my trying to control it. This has been (and some days still is) a completely foreign concept to me, because I was raised by a single-parent who was an abuse survivor. She taught us to stand up for ourselves and never be walked on. She taught us to speak up for ourselves. She taught us to have a really good "BS meter." All important things if you want to feel in control, and not be taken advantage of. What I didn't learn is how to flow with life: how to stand back, detach and be the observer, allowing others to do whatever they are going to do, and not attempt to control, manipulate or change the outcome. In short, I was programmed since childhood to defend myself really, really well. So while I have been described as a strong person, an intelligent person, and a capable person, nobody would describe me as a particularly agreeable person, a gentle person, or a "go with the flow" kind of gal. Quite the contrary, I've been described as a "take charge" kind of gal. This was brought to my attention again recently in a radio interview I did. I wanted so much to say what I'd planned to say that the poor host literally couldn't get a word in edgewise. Sigh. I battle with letting go and letting life spontaneously happen more than most folks, because I was abused as a child by one parent, and then taught to fight back by the other. There was no balance between the two extremes. When you think about it, letting go is all about trust. It's trusting that we live in an abundant and benevolent Universe. It's trusting another person to be there for us and catch us when we fall. It's trusting that I am in fact "good enough," regardless of what seems like evidence to the contrary. It's trusting that it's okay to make mistakes because I'm human. It's trusting that most of the time I'm safe and not in danger, contrary to what my alarmist brain would have me believe. Letting go is the polar opposite of control, and it's what's required if we're going to reclaim our life. I am certain of this, because it wasn't until I let go of my idea of who I was (a mental health counselor) that I could finally see myself for who I'd become (a suicide survivor). Seeing myself for who I really am has not been easy or comfortable, but ultimately it's made my life healthier and happier. We are who we've become, not who we think we are (scary thought #2).
Sometimes I really hate my ego. I've studied spiritual teachers enough to know that what drives us to control is the ego: that over-analytic, judging and critical left brain which is always on guard, eager to squash our enthusiasm and which doesn't give spontaneity and creativity much of a chance to blossom. Sometimes I really hate my left brain, too. Even though we need it for survival, it can sabotage our most earnest efforts to be open, spontaneous, flexible and honest. The ego is very wary of honesty. It sees it as a weakness, and would rather we respond in safer, pre-programmed sorts of ways. Honesty is risky business for the ego, because we might look foolish, stupid or weak, so the ego avoids situations that could create discomfort. The ego is what causes us to reduce, to shrink, ask for less, and to settle. It reasons: at least if I settle I'm not out of my comfort zone. If the ego had its way it would tuck us into bed and keep us there forever, everyday nearly the same, nothing allowed in that would rock our boats. Sterile, yet safe. Yet you've probably realized by now that playing it too safe is a recipe for failure.
Holding On
It's 11am and I'm in my pajamas in my home office, trusty dog by my side, eating last night's Chinese off a wilted paper plate, and baring my soul to thousands of strangers I'm never going to meet, who are never going to think of leaving a comment despite all my soul-bearing posts. Still, writing is what I've dreamed of doing for a living since the 4th grade. It's all thanks to my 4th grade teacher, Ellen Hillman (I put in her whole name in case she's reading, you never know). She saw merit my 4th grade stories and asked if she could read them to the class during our Friday reading circle. I recall my first thought like it was yesterday: but what if they don't like them? To my amazement my friends enjoyed my unpolished efforts, and the class gasped when Mrs. Hillman revealed I had written them. Gasped! Well, that set my little soul ablaze with hope. Maybe I was onto something here, something I could actually succeed at! I've been writing ever since. Thanks to one teacher's encouragement, I've been writing, completely unschooled and rouge for a very long time. While working from home in your comfy p.j.s and being your most expressive and creative self may not sound like heaven to others, it is for me. Pure heaven on earth. Had I not continued to fiercely hold onto that dream over the years (the dream of making readers gasp), I might have found myself working in a high-rise, rat-maze cubical office, bitching about the watered-down coffee and impossible copy machine loud enough so my supervisor was sure to overhear it. Instead, I'm my own boss, eating Chinese at 11am in my jammies, cozy and comfortable at home, baring my soul. I believe holding on to your dreams is crucial to achieving deep contentment with life. What was it you wanted to be or to do in 4th grade? How about when you were a teen or young adult, just getting a start in life-what did you know you could be and do before the world told you you couldn't? The majority of people who love what they do, who relish every minute of their workday and who are living their passion will tell you they held onto their dreams for a long time before they succeeded the way they first envisioned. Success doesn't just happen. Gone are the days where you could go to a corner soda shop in Hollywood, hang out and "be discovered." Due to the www the world is much larger nowadays and competition's much steeper. However, your competition may be lacking in one crucial ingredient that you have, the one ingredient that can set you apart from the rabid pack, and that is a prevailing persistence, complimented by a sprinkling of patience. Success will require that you master the art of determination.
Determination is like having your own private football linebacker. Linebackers are part of the defensive team, who provide extra protection to the quarterback. When we show inordinate amounts of determination, we become more resistant to set-backs. The linebacker in us refuses to let the opposition take us down. In a blitz, the linebacker sacks or hurries the opposing offense's quarterback. The linebacker in us will either pursue and demolish the obstacle, or at the very least, apply enough pressure to hurry the play. To have your dream you'll have to weave and bob around unending obstacles, persist through waves of discouragement (even heartbreak), and charge fiercely towards your goal like a linebacker with the red of blitz in his eye. Who said you couldn't learn anything from football?
Reclaiming your dream is possible at any age, take it from me, but it's never going to be easy, and most of the time you're not going to feel like a superstar. You're going to feel like you're a second-string player, and some days, the water-boy. Just remember feelings don't always tell you the truth. You can't trust them. Always be suspect of feelings that tell you you're not good enough, you're going to fail. These are mostly the mind's fears being projected onto the big screen of your life. Try this three-pronged strategy for reclaiming your dreams:
To see all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0
Acceptance of Reality
Accepting our own, and others' limitations is pre-requisite, fundamental, and paramount to achieving more happiness and success. It stands to reason: you can't change reality if you're not living in it. Yet we live in denial more than we realize, more than we'd like to admit (we live in denial about living in denial). For a long time I lived in denial about how depressed my teenage daughter had become. Yes, I took her to counseling and got her on anti-depressants. But there was a part of me, the parent part of me that didn't want to admit to her steady decline. The mother in me kept hoping things would improve, that she was just being a moody teenager. But the realistic me, the mental health professional in me was far more worried and skeptical. Each day these two parts battled for control until the morning I woke up to find my daughter had secretly gone off her anti-depressant, and as a result had taken her own life.
Suddenly the weaker part of me that had wanted to downplay and make excuses for her behavior had to face a very harsh reality. I was horrifyingly thrust into the truth, because there's no way to downplay a tragedy of this magnitude. My denial was instantaneously "outed." Once you see that you've been denying what's true, or in my case, pretending it "wasn't as bad" as it seemed, you're swamped with guilt. Regret, blame, disgrace, self-condemnation and failure pull up a chair and take root in your psyche, becoming your constant companions. Once you've been cornered and "outed" in such a big way, it's time to admit to yourself what you did well, but also where you dropped the ball and retreated. Whether it's a failed friendship, a failed relationship or marriage, or having failed as a parent, life always gives you the opportunity to step out of pretense and back to reality.
Today I don't pretend as much as I used to. I try really hard to be honest with myself and other people. When I find myself slipping back into that weaker part of me (and I do), the "pleaser" part of me, I have to remind myself I'm not here to please others, to look good, or to impress people, because when I'm overly worried about being judged or losing someone's love or admiration, it makes it difficult to be real. I also have to keep reminding myself that the purpose of life is not to insulate myself. I'm not here to build a cushiony life so I can escape from reality. The point of being given a life is so I can live in reality! And that means getting really, really messy in relationships if need be, in order to work through problems. In order to keep growing we'll have to get used to heaping doses of difficulty.
Letting Go
Letting go means standing aside and allowing life to happen without my trying to control it. This has been (and some days still is) a completely foreign concept to me, because I was raised by a single-parent who was an abuse survivor. She taught us to stand up for ourselves and never be walked on. She taught us to speak up for ourselves. She taught us to have a really good "BS meter." All important things if you want to feel in control, and not be taken advantage of. What I didn't learn is how to flow with life: how to stand back, detach and be the observer, allowing others to do whatever they are going to do, and not attempt to control, manipulate or change the outcome. In short, I was programmed since childhood to defend myself really, really well. So while I have been described as a strong person, an intelligent person, and a capable person, nobody would describe me as a particularly agreeable person, a gentle person, or a "go with the flow" kind of gal. Quite the contrary, I've been described as a "take charge" kind of gal. This was brought to my attention again recently in a radio interview I did. I wanted so much to say what I'd planned to say that the poor host literally couldn't get a word in edgewise. Sigh. I battle with letting go and letting life spontaneously happen more than most folks, because I was abused as a child by one parent, and then taught to fight back by the other. There was no balance between the two extremes. When you think about it, letting go is all about trust. It's trusting that we live in an abundant and benevolent Universe. It's trusting another person to be there for us and catch us when we fall. It's trusting that I am in fact "good enough," regardless of what seems like evidence to the contrary. It's trusting that it's okay to make mistakes because I'm human. It's trusting that most of the time I'm safe and not in danger, contrary to what my alarmist brain would have me believe. Letting go is the polar opposite of control, and it's what's required if we're going to reclaim our life. I am certain of this, because it wasn't until I let go of my idea of who I was (a mental health counselor) that I could finally see myself for who I'd become (a suicide survivor). Seeing myself for who I really am has not been easy or comfortable, but ultimately it's made my life healthier and happier. We are who we've become, not who we think we are (scary thought #2).
Sometimes I really hate my ego. I've studied spiritual teachers enough to know that what drives us to control is the ego: that over-analytic, judging and critical left brain which is always on guard, eager to squash our enthusiasm and which doesn't give spontaneity and creativity much of a chance to blossom. Sometimes I really hate my left brain, too. Even though we need it for survival, it can sabotage our most earnest efforts to be open, spontaneous, flexible and honest. The ego is very wary of honesty. It sees it as a weakness, and would rather we respond in safer, pre-programmed sorts of ways. Honesty is risky business for the ego, because we might look foolish, stupid or weak, so the ego avoids situations that could create discomfort. The ego is what causes us to reduce, to shrink, ask for less, and to settle. It reasons: at least if I settle I'm not out of my comfort zone. If the ego had its way it would tuck us into bed and keep us there forever, everyday nearly the same, nothing allowed in that would rock our boats. Sterile, yet safe. Yet you've probably realized by now that playing it too safe is a recipe for failure.
Holding On
It's 11am and I'm in my pajamas in my home office, trusty dog by my side, eating last night's Chinese off a wilted paper plate, and baring my soul to thousands of strangers I'm never going to meet, who are never going to think of leaving a comment despite all my soul-bearing posts. Still, writing is what I've dreamed of doing for a living since the 4th grade. It's all thanks to my 4th grade teacher, Ellen Hillman (I put in her whole name in case she's reading, you never know). She saw merit my 4th grade stories and asked if she could read them to the class during our Friday reading circle. I recall my first thought like it was yesterday: but what if they don't like them? To my amazement my friends enjoyed my unpolished efforts, and the class gasped when Mrs. Hillman revealed I had written them. Gasped! Well, that set my little soul ablaze with hope. Maybe I was onto something here, something I could actually succeed at! I've been writing ever since. Thanks to one teacher's encouragement, I've been writing, completely unschooled and rouge for a very long time. While working from home in your comfy p.j.s and being your most expressive and creative self may not sound like heaven to others, it is for me. Pure heaven on earth. Had I not continued to fiercely hold onto that dream over the years (the dream of making readers gasp), I might have found myself working in a high-rise, rat-maze cubical office, bitching about the watered-down coffee and impossible copy machine loud enough so my supervisor was sure to overhear it. Instead, I'm my own boss, eating Chinese at 11am in my jammies, cozy and comfortable at home, baring my soul. I believe holding on to your dreams is crucial to achieving deep contentment with life. What was it you wanted to be or to do in 4th grade? How about when you were a teen or young adult, just getting a start in life-what did you know you could be and do before the world told you you couldn't? The majority of people who love what they do, who relish every minute of their workday and who are living their passion will tell you they held onto their dreams for a long time before they succeeded the way they first envisioned. Success doesn't just happen. Gone are the days where you could go to a corner soda shop in Hollywood, hang out and "be discovered." Due to the www the world is much larger nowadays and competition's much steeper. However, your competition may be lacking in one crucial ingredient that you have, the one ingredient that can set you apart from the rabid pack, and that is a prevailing persistence, complimented by a sprinkling of patience. Success will require that you master the art of determination.
Determination is like having your own private football linebacker. Linebackers are part of the defensive team, who provide extra protection to the quarterback. When we show inordinate amounts of determination, we become more resistant to set-backs. The linebacker in us refuses to let the opposition take us down. In a blitz, the linebacker sacks or hurries the opposing offense's quarterback. The linebacker in us will either pursue and demolish the obstacle, or at the very least, apply enough pressure to hurry the play. To have your dream you'll have to weave and bob around unending obstacles, persist through waves of discouragement (even heartbreak), and charge fiercely towards your goal like a linebacker with the red of blitz in his eye. Who said you couldn't learn anything from football?
Reclaiming your dream is possible at any age, take it from me, but it's never going to be easy, and most of the time you're not going to feel like a superstar. You're going to feel like you're a second-string player, and some days, the water-boy. Just remember feelings don't always tell you the truth. You can't trust them. Always be suspect of feelings that tell you you're not good enough, you're going to fail. These are mostly the mind's fears being projected onto the big screen of your life. Try this three-pronged strategy for reclaiming your dreams:
- Accept reality
- Let Go of always having to be in control
- Hold On to your dreams.
To see all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0
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