A YOGI CHA BLOG

All we do, we do it because we believe it will make us happy. Content. Better.
As yogis, we would say that all we do, we do for achieving liberation. MOKSHA.
We could also say it the way Buddha would, “life is suffering” and so what we do, we do it to free ourselves from that suffering.
We eat to free ourselves from hunger, we seek company to free ourselves from loneliness, we buy a new car to free ourselves from feeling inferior…
Basically, life is movement and movement towards freedom. Wether you believe in one thing or another, you can agree on that you will have achieved that when you FEEL it.
You will feel it, when you have understood what you need to do in order to feel what you wish to feel. (Happy, content, free… “fill in the blank”)

WE ARE ALL BROKEN – and there’s relief in knowing that. Because what we fear the most is isolation. Being alone with our suffering.
We have been taught how to speak English and we have been taught how to subtract in a mathematical equation. But we have not really been taught how to decipher the language of our emotions. They come and go and we react accordingly. We could even call them our inner environment. Our emotional weather is creating a state of contentment or not. And just like the weather, it would seem that we have no control over this.

This is of course why we feel so powerless in our perception of being isolated with not feeling happy. We can’t see how to change the weather of our emotional world.

So since there was no course starting with our first day of school in how to deal with emotions, we need to accept that as adults it will take some investment in learning again. That would be the way towards MOKSHA or feeling good.

We seek to make ourselves feel good with all kinds of external things to fill the void but when we can’t control what someone else is doing, we regress down to the 5 year old we once were. And here is where it becomes tricky: it’s easy to be the Buddha on a mountain but other people tend to want to be a part of our lives. And we tend to want them to be because life is relationships.

I was listening to a talk on emotional maturity and it underlined three important keys to understanding oneself:

communication, trust and vulnerability

These three things show up in the interactions we have with others. This is what they mean in a situation with other people:

Communication means to be capable to explain what is wrong instead of switching to “the silent treatment”. By understanding that the other is not the enemy, we give them the possibility to understand what is going on with us.
To trust means to not assume the worst straight away. It starts with trusting oneself though because then I know that others aren’t necessarily out to get me. Maybe they’re just having a bad day and are not wanting to offend me at all. Therefore I don’t become angry so easily.
The word vulnerability can seem quite obscure. Shortly said, it means with being exposed, showing ones weak spot. Allowing to be vulnerable means I know that being close to someone implies that I can get hurt. But the only cure to that fear of being isolated is to be vulnerable. Because it’s by showing our weakness to someone that we connect to them. If I give you something that can hurt me, it means I am willing to do so to be close to you. And because I hope that, even though you know this about me, you are still there. So if I can do that it’s because I know that I deserve love from someone who can bare me even in those moments. It’s because I know that I can rise again after falling apart and that I will always have myself.

How do we graduate from the school of emotional maturity? How do we get to the point where we are capable of expressing how we feel, trusting that the other will understand us and not turn their back against us when we are weak?

By learning how to be ourselves.
By taking the time and courage to let our emotions show us the way. By listening to our bodies, our feelings and communicating with them. By befriending ourselves and trusting that what our instinct is saying, is worth something. And by not turning our backs on ourselves when we feel weak and lonely. Accepting who you are and learning to enjoy that person begins with investing time to investigate in it. And showing oneself that you are important enough to stick to that investigation.

The whole idea behind my Self Image course is coming to the understanding of who we are, befriending ourselves and nurture that relationship with a soulful practice.

If you have not yet signed up, visit my website and watch the free masterclass on Self Image and how crucial the understanding of it is on our path towards understanding ourselves. (www.yogicha.com)