Tag: Freedom

Preparing for a new year

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As yesterday’s post said, people begin to look forward to the new year as an opportunity to start again. This is natural, but frequently does not lead to any real change, unless we understand the patterns within our own heart. Any lasting growth comes from  an understanding of our heart, with all its needs and hopes, its vulnerabilities and wisdom.  This means that we can drop all pretense and the need to blame others for what is lacking in our lives.  In many cases the desire for change around this time is based on comparing our lives with others and feeling we are lacking.  Instead of looking outward, we turn within and gently look forward – not based on fear of where we are now or criticism of this past year – but rather accepting who we are and opening to the new opportunities which will unfold.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

C.G. Jung

Throwing plates out the window

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When I lived in Rome, New Year’s Eve was a noisy affair, with fireworks in most households and the old custom of throwing plates out of windows. This practice, more honoured nowadays in the South of Italy, was meant to get rid of all of the negative events and influences of the old year, so you could start the new one with renewed strength and enthusiasm. It maybe corresponds to a human need around this time of year, as we can see something similar in the Times Square Good Riddance Day which was held yesterday. People were invited to bring their worst memory from 2010, write it down and shred it, getting rid of it once and for all.

We probably all have some things from this past year that we are glad to get rid of. I know I have. It can be useful to consciously let go of those things and move on.  It may mean that you have to say yes to things that did not go as you wanted but cannot now change. This  does not mean that you are suddenly happy or at peace about everything, or have come to understand the meaning of any of it. You do not need to know all the answers.  It just means that at some stage you have decided to move on and find a new outlook on life, trying to integrate the losses and everything you can learn from them. You may have to live with some sadness, while trying to live without regret. You accept it and give yourself permission to move on.

The slight problem with the way that the Times Square event was named is that it plays into our need to blame others or justify ourselves when things do not work out. One way of dealing with  experiences we do not fully understand is to protect ourselves and ensure that we minimize hurt by needing to feel that we are in the right. Thus we may turn all our upset into anger towards the other and ensure that we “win”.  We blame them for the decision and freeze them into that moment.  However, what we need to realize is that we all get lost from time to time. Maybe we learn more about ourselves that way. The famous physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared growing in knowledge to climbing a mountain. You do not proceed in a direct line up the mountain. You go round, crossways, zigzag, retrace steps, and on and on in this fashion until you arrive at the peak. From there you can see all the way down as if in a straight line.  But it was not that way coming up. Growth is that twisting path, those zigzags where we learn, the stumbling, the turning back. We are moving onwards, even when we feel we are not. Now that we have arrived at a point in the journey we may need to look at some of those twists and turns  where we got lost and simply let them go. There are more mountains to climb.

Looking forward

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One’s life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage

Anaïs Nin

The search

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There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home.

Some find it in the place of their birth; others may leave a seaside town, parched, and find themselves refreshed in the desert. There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city. For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or a brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock of recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place.

Josephine Hart, Damage

Stillness and safety

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An old soothing lullaby, in Irish,  to calm the baby before sleep, sung here by Altan. The deepest rest comes when we know we are safe and we can let go. The progressive internalization of this safety from consistent parenting in our childhood is crucial for our capacity as adults to be alone.

Dún do shúil, a rún mo chroí
A chuid den tsaol, ‘s a ghrá liom
Dún do shúil, a rún mo chroí
Agus gheobhair feirín amárach

Close your eyes, love of my heart
My worldly joy, my treasure
Close your eyes, o love of my heart
And you will get a present tomorrow

Stille Nacht or finding inner peace at Christmas time

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All around the world the popular Christmas song, Stille Nacht/Silent Night is sung on this day. The German word stille has some deeper connotations than what is conveyed by the English word “silent”. It has its roots in the verb “stillen”, meaning to suckle, to quieten a child and put to rest. The mother feeds and comforts the hungry child so that it becomes calm and content, able to close its eyes and sleep. For us too, the calm which we all desire inside our hearts is related to our awareness of being safe,  which allows us to become still inside.

As an adult, can we ever get back to this early awareness of calm? Maybe never fully, but there are some things we can do. It seems that this interior stillness is related to exterior quiet. It has been found that noise raises cortisol levels, the hormone related to stress and anxiety and that taking some quiet time lowers these levels. It has even been measured. Apparently 12 minutes of quiet will bring down cortisol levels in the brain and lay the foundation for calm. However, these days, this is not se easy to do. We are continually bombarded by noise: the TV, radio, iPods, mobile phones, and computers hardly stop for a second. We also live in an age of visual stimulation that leaves us craving louder and brighter, kinds of entertainment. These means that a lot of us are extremely uncomfortable with silence and have become so unfamiliar with it that even momentary periods of quiet are quickly filled with sound or anxiety.

And yet, we all long to silence the noisy chatter of our thoughts, the crying of our needs and emotions, and develop a place of quiet and calm within us. A place which is safe, away from the judgments, expectations and demands placed on us by our own critical mind or by others. At some times in our lives we find it relationships with others, or in the embrace of our family. However, what this day and all the wisdom traditions remind us, is that real, lasting peace is to be found within our hearts, a quiet space where nothing can harm us, untouched by all the stuff that others may wish to impose upon us.  If we do not find that stillness within, it is hard to find it in the outside circumstances of our lives. Only when we have found this inner place of peace can we have contact with others without anxiety. We can rest, and be still, without fear of being hurt.