I am not my body! - I have one!
I am not my feelings - I have feelings. I am not my thoughts - I have thoughts.
This discovery that behind the physical body is something else which is free from involvement is a huge step and one of the most liberating realisations.
As long as we believe that our personality (thoughts and beliefs) define us, we will stay identified with our personality. One of the main reasons that we resist changing is that the movement back to our essence always entails feeling the pain of our self-abandonment.
As soon as we are willing to say: I want to be who I really am, and I want to live in the truth, the process of recovering ourselves has already begun.
In order to start this journey, it is important to feel compassion for our self and that it is important to love our self enough to make the effort to get to know ourselves as we really are.
This means we have to love our self enough to not abandoned our self when we feel depressed or anxious for example.
Our true self, our essence, our soul is pure love, untouched and untarnished. No past experiences however bad they may have been, can ever damage or destroy our essence. Our essence (soul) is perfect and will always be.
We are yearning to break free. We all have a physical body and are on a spiritual journey.
Everything that happens to us is here to help us on our spiritual journey.
The mind can never
be controlled; it can
only be questioned,
loved, and met with
understanding.
‘I am not my body but have one’ would describe a person that has realised that no matter what happens to the body, the true self or the soul is not affected. To the contrary, the spiritual body has a physical experience in order to resolve some of the stored beliefs that bind the person to this reality.
Suffering
Suffering very often comes from either an imagined past or an imagined future (not including physical pain), since an identified mind is always remembering or anticipating what isn’t happening in reality. When you just look at the moment “the now” everyone is ok, you are always in a state of grace even when you don’t realise it.
Empathy
The definition of Empathy in the dictionary is:
-the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
I don’t think it is possible to feel another person’s pain. I believe we project what someone’s pain must feel like and the react to our own projection. This kind of empathy is unnecessary for compassionate action; it actually gets in the way. Empathy has nothing to do with experiencing pain but it is rather a fearless connectedness and an immovable love. It is a way of being fully present with the other person. As soon as we take peoples problems serious, seeing it from their point of viewpoint and we can remain very close to them.
Feeling empathetic is a very important part of any coach / practitioner when talking to clients. Often client’s problems and life stories are very emotional and can impact us as empaths. We take their problems home and keep them in our mind as in the story of the monks in the previous chapter.
Characteristics of an empathetic response:
If you want to create a safe space for a client then it is very important to give the right empathetic responses to their stories or questions.
The keys are to:
- Focus on the other person, not yourself.
- Help the person feel heard.
- Create a connection.
- Acknowledge the other person's point of view and learn more by asking clarifying questions (not giving advice!).
- Increase understanding and dialogue.
Here are some examples of empathetic responses and the difference between a sympathetic and empathetic response.
1.Example:
A woman confides that her husband is spending most of his free time with his work mates. She is very stressed about it and doesn’t know how to handle it.
Ineffective Response: I am sure that isn’t that bad. He just needs the time with his friends to destress from his job. I think you are making a bigger deal out of it and it has nothing to do with you.
Why is it ineffective: This response uses feeling stoppers, minimising and fixing. There is a disregard to her pain and insecurities.
Empathetic Response: Sounds pretty stressful for you and I can understand how you feel. What is most upsetting for you? That he is spending time with his friend and not with you or that is not talking about his problems?
2. Example:
A client just shared with you that she had recently experienced a devastating separation from her husband after 20 years of marriage.
Ineffective Response: Oh I am so sorry this happened to you… You poor thing! It will be all good. I know I had a separation 2 years ago.
Why is it ineffective: The response includes feeling stoppers, pitying and over-identifying. With strong emotions it is easy to over-react or identify too closely with the person’s feelings.
Empathetic Response: I am deeply sorry for your loss, that must have been devastating. My heart goes out to you.
3. Example:
Your client is visibly discouraged. He explains that nothing works and nothing has changed. After all the lifestyle changes, he is still not losing any weight.
Ineffective Response: I can’t believe it hasn’t worked after all the effort you have been put into it.
Why is it ineffective: Too much emphasise on the outcome instead of understanding the disappointment.
Empathetic Response: With eye contact and loving support: “ Yes you have worked really hard to change your lifestyle. I can understand that you’re really disappointed at the moment…”
There are several ways you can help to clean and free yourself of these energies:
- Cold showers are really helpful in cleansing energies
- Smudging the consultation room with sage
- Having a diffuser running with essential oils.
Stillness
We have no idea how immersed we are in our busy monkey minds until we stop for a moment to just pay attention to this moment—to this one, eternal moment, called the NOW. If we pay very close attention, for example, to our breath, we experience beneath our breath the stillness of the now.
Being still isn’t easy. We all have something like a compulsive thinking disorder and life’s distraction which keep us constantly busy. We don’t take the time to pause and be still and present.
What is incredible is that this experience is available to us every moment, if only we stop and pay close attention to This Moment, to the Now.
The experience of stillness is profoundly healing.
Stillness is recognized by several spiritual paths. Vedanta describes the nature of our Self as Blissful Stillness (Ayam Atama Shantah). In Buddhism, being in a state of still contemplation in which the chatter of the mind quiets is called Samadhi. In Christianity, stillness is experienced as a content-free mind filled with an awareness of God as a living reality.
Meditation is the most common practice to still the mind but I have to admit it isn’t easy to calm down from extremely wired to being still. That’s why many people use different mediation practices. For example: Walking meditation, candle light gazing meditation, focused breath meditation, mindfulness mediation.
Mindfulness mediation:
During this specific mediation the person is concentrating on his / her existing surrounding. Being mindful of noises, smell and sight. Crucial to this form of meditation is the lack of judgement. So rather than reflecting on what is happening especially in the past and future, we simply note what is going on right NOW.
Yoga, Qigong, gardening, knitting, drawing, painting can be all some forms of meditation which help us to still the mind.
All these methods are really beautiful ways to achieve silence, stillness, peace, and separation from your active worldly life.
Grounding practice:
Another great exercise to great stillness of mind is by using your body and its five senses. Often this is called “grounding” practice.
Take five slow breaths and ask yourself:
- What are three things you can hear? (the birds, music, rain etc.)
- What are three things you can see? (the sun, moon, grass, your desk etc.)
- What are three things you can smell? (coffee, fresh grass, aromatherapy, my lunch etc.)
- What are the things you can touch? (my seat, my feet on the ground, my cushion etc.)
- What are the three things you can taste? (if applicable) (my last coffee, tea, lunch, snack etc.)
Tools that can be helpful and recommended are:
- Calm App --- The Calm app helps listeners to build self-esteem, lean into gratitude, and sleep better while increasing happiness through guided meditations that ease panic and anxiety.
- Smiling Mind --- Using the proven benefits of mindfulness meditation, this free app incorporates a fun and easy program for both children and adults.
- MyLife app --- once known as Stop, Breathe & Think, asks you how you’re feeling and includes the ability to log your emotions. The app will suggest personalized meditations that will help you find peace for whatever state of mind you’re in.
- Breethe --- Breethe is a free app that offers five-minute meditations, along with tips for overcoming pressure, feeling love, and living with intention and inner peace.
- Buddhify --- Buddhify It is widely known to be one of the best apps for anxiety, and is personalized depending on what you’re up to, from waking up, commuting or taking a quick break at work to dealing with stress or having trouble falling asleep.
Further studying but not required:
Book: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Book: Empath's Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People by Judith Orloff MD