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Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

~ Recovery from PTSD & depression + yoga, silliness & poetry…

Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

Tag Archives: neediness

Generating lurvvve – part 2

29 Thursday Oct 2009

Posted by Svasti in Learnings, Spirituality

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

chronic lack of love, Healing, Inspiration, Love, neediness, perception

Water heart - artist unknown

[Read part 1 first]

Just to clarify, part 1 was NOT an ode to being selfish and self-involved taking care of numero uno and screw everyone else kind of attitude. Quite the opposite really.

First things first though, that old maxim is true – how can you possibly offer real love and care to others if you’re always looking outside yourself for love and acceptance? You can’t. That’s just how it is.

You have to find your own happiness first, whatever that looks like.

But what if you’re not sure how to get there? That’s where the concept of starting with just doing things you really love, and letting the experience of doing those things take you over for a while… that can help A LOT.

Of course, for some this is much harder than for others.

What if you’re not even sure of what you like, let alone what you love or enjoy? What if you’ve suppressed all of that under a mound of unhappiness and hurt and sadness and depression? What if it’s hard to even imagine liking something a lot?

Have you ever been in that place? I know I have.

So you just start small. Perhaps there’s… I dunno… a tree you like in a local park. Or the birds outside your window sing prettily. Or a computer game you enjoy. Or a TV show you like. Or taking photos of street art (one of my secret pleasures). Or ice-cream. Or… well, it could be anything. And perhaps just for a nanosecond, that gives you a fleeting thought. Like: Hey, that’s nice.

Nice. That can be enough to get you started.

Might take a few attempts before you can get from that fleeting moment to something that lasts a little longer.

Might not seem like you’re getting anywhere. But you have to stick with it, you know?

Then eventually, one day you might just be able to say you really like something. Anything. And that should be celebrated. It’s an achievement, especially for those coming from a deeply wounded place.

Keep going. Don’t stop yet. Before you know it, you might even allow yourself to enjoy something fully. Then, you might extend yourself and find yet another thing that makes you happy.

Then you might notice that doing things that make you happy has an impact on how you see yourself and everyone else around you, too.

Like = Enjoyment = Happiness.

And eventually, Happiness = Love.

A teaching I’ve been given (many times now) is this:

There’s nothing that we feel or experience that is external. No matter how subjective reality appears. All of our experiences, things we think of as caused by other people or experiences, are really just our own reactions, feelings and thoughts…

I know, that can be a lot to take in and accept.

An example of this is enjoying the finest meal you can think of. The ingredients are fresh and perfectly prepared, the aromas are mouth watering and everything is faultlessly seasoned and spiced. It’s not like you’re just eating food – it’s more like music or poetry with every bite you take. Ever eaten food that’s positively orgasmic? Yeah, like that…

In the middle of this incredible meal, you get a call that a loved one has been in a horrific car crash and they’ve passed away. Not only are you in shock, and busy trying to work out what you need to do, if you to keep eating your meal, you’d find those amazing flavours have vanished. For all you know, it could be a hamburger from the corner shop.

This is because the taste, the enjoyment, everything that you were getting out of that experience actually comes from within. It is your perception of the food that makes it the best thing you’ve ever eaten, and again it’s your perception when it loses its appeal.

And I guess what I’m trying to get to, is suggesting that there’s a lot of people in the world out there living with a chronic lack of love.

Which is partly due to our perception of life, our reaction to other people and our life experiences. The end result is however, that we feel unloved. Neglected. Rightly or wrongly, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how that impacts us.

There are well documented studies proving that plants grow better when given love. So do people. And while many have grown up with adequate love and affection, there’s many more who didn’t.

They may not have been assaulted or abused or neglected, or maybe they were! Either way they sure as heck didn’t grow up feeling loved.

What I’m saying is that our experience growing up might’ve been that we didn’t get what we needed from our interactions with the world and other people, in order to feel confident, loved, cherished.

And that’s enough to start feeling the need to shut down. And when we shut down, we stop taking care of ourselves, including activities that allow us to generate our own sense of love.

Make sense? Yeah, it does for me too.

[To be continued…]

~Svasti

Generating lurvvve – part 1

07 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by Svasti in Learnings, Spirituality, Yoga

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

ardha chandrasana, bhakti, Cycling, direct realisation, Enter your zip code here, Facebook, Inspiration, kaleidoscopic, kirtan, Krishna Das, kryptonite, Love, neediness, Om Namah Shivaya, Shadow Yoga, Sri Krishna Govinda, Suffering, Yoga, Yoga of Chant

A kaleidoscope mandala

Recently life’s been a little kaleidoscopic. So much going on, it’s kinda hard to work out what I’m actually meant to be focusing on.

Which can be good and not so good. Then when there’s half a moment to calm down, sometimes things settle in a pattern that makes sense of the world a little more.

And that’s good, right?

So, last week I heard this (voice in my head), then wrote it down AND made it my Facebook status:

Do something you love, something from the core of your being. Give over to it entirely. Let your heart open. It makes all the difference…

And today I’d like to add this:

Doing the things you love, generates love.

See, I’ve been thinking a lot about our outward seeking culture recently and how needy we human beings are as a result.

To clarify, there are two broad definitions of need that I’m talking about here:

Need type #1 – fundamentals that help us to live. E.g. oxygen, sunlight, breathing, nutritious food, love (yes, I think love falls into this group). Characterised by things we do not thrive without.

Need type #2 – internal or external objects of desire that we crave. E.g. entertainment, clothes, physical appearance, other people, money, cars, houses, iPods, travel, fame etc. Characterised by a belief they will improve our self-image/confidence etc.

Of course, needs from type #1 can and do cross over into needs from type #2. And we tend to believe strongly that needs type #2 are in fact, needs type #1.

I’ve been wondering about that. Why? Why are we so needy? How do we get these different types of needs so messed up?

And I confess. Most of my life I’ve felt that sense of need, based on what I think I’m missing. How, if only I had a boyfriend who loved me, or more money, or more friends, or if I was prettier, or wasn’t such a dork, or had a home of my own, or children or nicer/better taste in clothes, or if I was taller/shorter/thinner, or if I didn’t have to work for a living or… you get my drift… that I’d be happier.

Maybe other people are smarter than me and have this stuff figured out already? But I’d be willing to bet that most of us, even if it’s only in a very subtle way these days, experience that kind of need. It can make a person feel desperate at times. Or hollow, even.

But generally, we just think less of ourselves because we don’t have what we think we need.

This my friends, is need type #2. The kind of need that creates suffering because it makes us feel incomplete in some way. But actually this is really just the default human condition, until we get sick of it that is, and seek another path.

For me, that path is yoga. And what I’m trying to convey here are some personal realisations combined with everything I’ve studied and learned to date.

So, let me talk a little about my own personal kryptonite: love. Or the lack thereof.

I’ve had such a funny relationship with love in my lifetime. Mostly, I’ve felt like I never had enough love, or enough of the right kind of love. Not accepted. Not wanted.

And if you believe it, and so it will be.

Like many people I grew up believing that we must be loved by someone else in order to have love, and to feel like we are valued. And much of the “evidence” in my life suggested that I was not valued very highly at all!

I have a good idea how these beliefs arose. As far as I can tell they date back at least several generations before I was even born. I grew up saturated in them and so of course, I’ve inhabited those ideas for myself.

At the same time, as I’ve been re-counting, my other life-long goal has been spiritual evolvement, before I even knew what that meant. There’s been this ongoing battle between my extreme neediness and my desire to shed such a limited view of life.

Of course, throw a few traumatic experiences into a person’s life, and watch the neediness factor multiply. Especially if they’ve got screwy ideas about love in the first place.

I’d say this is something that’s plagued my relationships and friendships for most of my life. Even worse, it’s had endless impacts on my relationship with my Self…

A few weeks back I went to something called ‘Yoga of Chant’, conveniently held at a yoga studio just a five minute cycle from my place. It was advertised on a meet up website that I’ve used before, and I was immediately drawn.

First one I didn’t get to as I was at home with a horrible flu. So disappointing! Second one was only two weeks later and I was determined to go! Of course, it had to bucket down rain just as I was leaving. I arrived kind of sodden but it was worth it.

Had to peel off my plastic pants and rain jacket, so the chanting (or kirtan) started before I found a seat. The dude running the group (a yoga teacher) played electric keyboard and sang (gorgeous voice!) while his friend played double bass (it worked really, really well), while we sang extended versions of Sri Krishna Govinda and Om Namah Shivaya mantras (Krishna Das style).

I don’t get too many opportunities for kirtan here in Melbourne (i.e. none) and this one rocked. It was kinda awesome actually and for me, there was real bhakti in the singing – loudly, deeply, from the very center of my heart.

Its not that I have a fantastic voice, but I absolutely ADORE singing kirtan.

Next day I was still buzzing, and had this lovely-warm-gooey-heart-opening sensation most of the day. The sort of feeling I get when I do ardha chandrasana and reeeaaalllly rotate and open through the torso…

…times about a hundred!

Interesting, I thought… and went to the next one (last Saturday actually).

The other thing I did last Saturday was attend a free Shadow Yoga class (more about that in another post). And I came away literally glowing with happiness. I could feel it, and I noticed other people noticing it, too.

Cycling home from the yoga class (before the kirtan), that’s when those words popped into my mind: Do something you love, something from the core of your being. Give over to it entirely. Let your heart open. It makes all the difference…

And I got it. Hey, sometimes it takes me a while to get things!

Ohhhhhhh! By doing things you really, really, REALLY enjoy, you are generating love for yourself and other people? And when you do that, there’s no sense of neediness? No space for miserable, self-defeating thoughts? No feeling bereft, adrift and craving connection with others, because the connection is already generated with yourself, through the LOVE you’ve been pumping out via your own actions?

Ahhhh..!!!

That’s what happens sometimes, when you shake all the pretty pieces of coloured light in your kaleidoscope to reveal a mandala you probably already knew about on some level… but had never experienced for yourself.

Until that moment when you do.

And it changes EVERYTHING.

[Read part 2]

~Svasti

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