Productive Gratitude

There is SO MUCH moving right now. This “stream of consciousness” moved through me just now. So I decided to let it out:

There is a fundamental truth I understood on a different level: We are all the same. We all have the same life force. We are all walking through this life with the same intention: To move energy – no matter if we are aware of it or not.

At the end of the day everyone of us is crucial.

Everyone of us has a purpose – the purpose to just be.

Omg, this purpose is so simple that it literally blows my mind when I try to put it into words, because as soon as I am trying to phrase it, it sounds so pathetic – too simple to be true.

Bizarre and surreal to most human beings who ‘distant’ themselves from aliveness so far off.

Still there is truth no one can deny: We are transforming matter from one state to another. Our emotions are our fuel to transform that matter, because they dictate what we do – short term and in the long run…

There is no human better or worse. There is no one on a higher level. The guru is us – you, me.

There is STILL such a huuuge misconception around the word ‘guru’. There is soooo much resistance created by splitting ourselves apart. We split us apart until nothing is left.

As soon as we’d understand that we are all one, that absolutely no being, no plant, not a single atom on this planet is separate, we’d find peace….

How could we do that? By FEELING OUR FEELINGS fully. And by assisting each other to do the same – safely. Without being judged and without judgment of ourselves.

I know that this is a long way to go. So let’s better start NOW.

If we take the time to just be there for a moment, be present with what and who is.

If we take the time to hold a hand, to look another person in the eyes, to not look through them, THIS is when we are creating change…

“Productive Gratitude” – this is a phrase my mind came up with the other day when I expressed my gratitude towards my fellow “yoga-retreaters” I journeyed with at “The Journey Through The Chakras” by Refeel Yoga.

All of a sudden I felt this huuuuuge connection – to myself, to this group, to the ALL.

And as sudden as this sensation arrived I felt it FOR MY WORK, for any work that I am doing – even the work I don’t love. The daily work. The 9-5. The 24/7. Whatever it is. I felt grateful for it and I DID IT with thankfulness for being able to do it.

If I am expressing my gratitude with EVERY SINGLE ACTION I will inevitably change the world.

How is this possible?

Because I am BECOMING gratitude. And by becoming it I am acting from a place that is not defined by trans-action.

I am doing and I am moving on at the same time (this is a small reference to Tao Te Ching;)

It is NOT easy. Definitely not. It is hard. In order to become gratitude I have to become myself first.

A quest of a life-time – a quest I am forever grateful for.

Namaste 🙏

 

Thoughts on Compromise

I used to be allergic to compromise until I understood that it is essential for our survival…

‘To compromise’ originates from the latin word compromittere – ‘to make a mutual promise’. The prefix ‘com’ means ‘with’ or ‘together’. Precisely the word ‘promittere’ signifies ‘to let go’, ‘to send forth’, ‘to assure beforehand’.

‘Let go – together’ – I like that one.

Okay, what is compromise really?

To compromise means to consider everybody’s needs.

As human beings we all have the same needs.

Unfortunately we live in a society with strong narcissistic traits. We deny our needs with powerful defense-mechanisms. These mechanisms became so strong that we lost the ability to feel what we need – as humanity and more and more as an individual.

As a collective we are taking on masks that cover up our trauma – the trauma that needs to be solved in order to proceed to higher levels of consciousness. And this is where we want to go if we want to align with nature.

With other words – we live in a society that denies life.

Overcoming this conditioning became the challenge of my life. I was raised to function – nothing more. How can I be okay with that?

“You are seeing this a bit too pessimistic,” a friend recently called upon ‘my lack of optimism’.

Don’t get me wrong. I love life and I highly believe in life. That’s the reason why I am so passionate about transformation – because I believe in change for the better.

So, what does this all have to do with compromise?

The possibility of growth derives from exchange. This is a fact I become more and more certain about under current circumstances.

By not-compromising we are getting stuck in our own perspective of reality.

This is dangerous. Why?

What we call ‘our perspective’ are just thoughts.

No matter how certain we are about our own point of view – it is just our thoughts.

They are nothing – if you look at it sober-minded.

By clinging to our perspective, by always bringing up the ‘but’ (But this is me. But this is what I think. But you are not right.) we obstruct the pathway towards harmonious coexistence with righteousness.

And righteousness definitely belongs to a spectrum of lower frequencies which causes all the suffering in the world.

We are not allowing flow – the flow of life. If we are holding on to our arguments we are closing ourselves up to possibility.

We don’t ‘solve’ our collective misery by arguing.

We solve it only by establishing human values – mutual values around the whole globe.

We are ‘out of alignment’. Compromise is our means of transport to go back to human nature.

And how do we do it?

Lao Tzu says: “Knowing the other is intelligence, knowing yourself is wisdom.”

It starts with ourselves.

Crisis is a great opportunity to get to know ourselves better.

A real crisis is a turning point. It is about life or death. Am I willing to change for the better or do I prefer to stick to outworn habits?

Our relationships are an invitation to learn more about ourselves. And how do we relate to fellow human beings?

By being open about our needs.

If we are aware of it or not – our needs are the only certainty in our lives. Our basic needs are the same, so why not talk about it openly and find solutions that serve us all?

This crisis is our chance to find a mutual promise again.

 

Why Feeling Feelings Is Important

Since quite some time I’m trying to write an article about taking responsibility for one’s feelings. About three months ago at a writing meetup I’m attending every so often I thought ‘Okay, this article is nearly done. Just the final touch and off we go.’

Well, things turned out differently. An honest self-confession brought me to the realization: I don’t really have an idea about what I’m feeling, so how can I write about it?! 

Yes, it sounds bizarre – to me too. How can I not know what I feel? 

There was something going on, yes. There was anger. There was rage. There was excitement. But what did these emotions want to tell me? And is there anything that lies deeper?

The Seven-Minutes-Experiment

So, I started off with the Seven-Minutes-Experiment. Now I have a slightly better idea about what I feel. But this is an ongoing process. Every day I have to remind myself to take the time to feel.

What I did find out is that there is not always a necessity to act. It is the opposite: I obtain peace of mind by non-acting. By just observing I’m automatically detaching from my feelings. Because feelings are like thoughts – they come and go. They don’t define me.

Okay, where to start? I might feel cold or tired, agitated, overwhelmed or nervous. By nature these feelings are not connoted in a negative or positive way. They just ‘are’.

Our mind likes to label our feelings. It marks them as good or bad. This way our mind creates its own version of reality. And this version of reality dictates how we experience the world, how we make decisions and how we interact with our environment.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is important that we categorize. The problem arises when we overrate our own judgement and we identify with this perspective of reality.

This causes stress. The mind takes over. It judges and judges. 

This way we create a barrier between ourselves and reality.

This is a difficult one. On the one hand I have to feel my feelings. Feelings are something natural. They give me a hint of what I need or what I am supposed to be doing in a given situation. They show me a direction.

On the other hand I have to be careful not to over-interpret them. Many times I would be better off by stoically ignoring them instead of labeling them and ‘acting out’ – verbally or ‘operatively’.

But let’s go a step back:

What Is The Difference Between Feelings And Emotions?

Oh boy, do I really want to open this jar? This is a huge topic. It is so complex and there are several approaches and even contradictory explanations of the relation between feelings and emotions. So, please research yourself if you want to draw a wider picture.

Etymologically the word emotion comes from the french word ‘to move’. Something is ‘in motion’ whereas a feeling is considered more as a state.

While an emotion passes quickly, a feeling can persist or better say reoccur over our whole lifetime when triggered for example by an emotion.

As you see – emotions and feelings are interconnected, but still something different.

The only way to really understand the difference between feelings and emotions is through neuroscience.

And this is pretty down to earth.

Emotions are a biochemical response – mainly brought on its way by the Amygdala and other subcortical regions of the brain. They originally helped us as a species to react quickly to possible danger or reward.

A feeling on the other hand is subjectively influenced by our former experience. They are processed in other areas of our brain, but as they are influenced by cognitive input it is hard to really locate them. 

While an emotion is a physical reaction of the body to a stimulus a feeling manifests psychologically through our experience. This process is very complex. It can be more described as a psychological conditioning.

If you imagine a theatre play emotions would be the scenes whereas a feeling would be the genre.

You could say feelings ‘plot’ emotions on the canvas of our mind. 

How Do Feelings Find Their Way Into Our Lives?

I summed up two perspectives:

Our background: What we have experienced as a child conditions us and our feelings. It determines how we act in relationships, what we think about ourselves and about others. It determines our whole experience of the world. Freud and his disciples knew that if we want to understand ourselves fully we have to go back to our traumatic experiences and feel the emotion that we faced during this traumatic event. This helps us to process and integrate the marks of our journey. Getting to know these ‘old’ emotions helps us to understand why we react in a certain way in a given situation.

Our needs: Rather our needs are fulfilled or not conditions the way we ‘feel’ about ourselves and the world. What are our needs? Yes, there is maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When we are tired, hungry or alone we lose our balance easily and we might react emotionally. Rosenberg extends or better say elaborates the list of needs even more: Next to physical nurturance every human has the need for autonomy (following own goals and values), the need for ‘celebration’ (celebration of the creation of life and its fulfillment, and also the celebration of losses, e.g. of loved ones), the need for integrity (authenticity, creativity, meaning and self-worth), the need for interdependence (community, appreciation, intimacy, emotional safety, contribution to the enrichment of life, honesty, support, trust,…), the need for play (fun, laughter) and the need for what he calls ‘spiritual communion’ (beauty, harmony, order, inspiration, peace). 

With the definition of these needs and which feelings arise rather they are met or not Rosenberg lies the foundation for nonviolent communication: “The intend is to remind us about what we already know – about how we humans were meant to relate to another – and to assist us in living in a way that concretely manifests this knowledge.”

So what is there? We have a body and we have needs that make us feel one way or another. And we have things that happen to us that make us feel one way or another. And in the end we have our thoughts that influence the way we feel.

So far so good. Life should flow smoothly if we would just listen to our feelings. But a lot of times it doesn’t, because we distract ourselves.

How Do We Disconnect From Our Feelings?

A lot of times what we call ‘our feelings’ are just projections. We make other people responsible for not being heard, not being loved, for not being sufficient. More than anything they are often reponses of our old conditioning. Our little hurt self that wants attention. 

Rosenberg explains: “Judgements, criticism, diagnoses, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our own needs and values. When others hear criticism, they tend to invest their energy in self-defense or counterattack. The more directly we can connect our feelings to our needs, the easier it is for others to respond compassionately.”

At the beginning I thought: Okay, I’m aware of this. I will just change it. I don’t judge. I don’t re-act. I only observe and take the time to understand my needs.

I found out that this is easier said than done. As I explained earlier – there is a fundamental biochemical process going on in our body. We don’t change that easily.

Sometimes we deny feelings subconsciously. Most likely we deny the uncomfortable feelings, because our brain can’t be bothered with finding a solution for an unsatisfying situation. 

Why? Because it wants to protect us from discomfort. We make ourselves vulnerable by confessing our deepest needs, because they might not be met. This is called coherence. Our brain likes convenience. It wants us to experience our life as ‘comprehensive’ as possible. This is why it prefers to stick to behavioural patterns that ‘work’. And a lot of times these patterns are not very useful.

Most of the time we are craving for something or we lack something and we are trying to find a ‘quick fix’.

A quick fix can be work, our phone, sex, drugs, TV or any other type of entertainment.

The problem is that these distractions lead us further away from ourselves. I don’t say they are generally bad, but they can be if they help us to avoid confrontation with our feelings.

“Avoidance is never an option in order to live a happy life,” said Margarete Paul, author of the book “Healing your aloneness”.

By avoiding our feelings we deny ourselves.

‘Not taking part’ can also be a form of denial. By avoiding new experiences we prevent ourselves from failure – but also from feeling ourselves.

Why Should We Better Connect With Our Feelings?

If you detach yourself from your feelings you will never fully feel yourself. You will never arrive in the present moment. You will never know what it means to be alive.

The more you become aware of your feelings the more confidence you get. If you are able to accept your vulnerability you have nothing to be afraid of. Social anxiety won’t be necessary anymore as you are not looking for approval.

Your nervous system relaxes if you are honest with yourself. Confess and accept anger or rage or sadness and automatically you will find release.

Additionally your body starts working in its natural power, because energy is being released.

The Real Homework

I found out that this is what it’s all about. I get to know myself by coming to my senses, by feeling myself.

Daniel Goleman, expert in emotional intelligence, expresses why this is so crucial for all of us:

“To understand human nature in general it helps enormously to first understand ourselves, which takes self-awareness. With emotional self-awareness, we recognize our feelings and how they impact us, which helps us, for example speak from the heart in a way that resonates with other people. Self-awareness also underlies effective emotional mastery, as well as empathy– we can only understand other’s emotions if we understand our own.” 

About six years ago, when I ended an unhealthy relationship, I started off with my journey of self-discovery. 

The following years were only about ‘toughening up’. I thought I have to get stronger. I thought I have to toughen up and this is the only way to get through this life. 

I was wrong. What I had to discover was my vulnerability. 

Through a lot of painful experiences I finally realized that I have to do my real homework. I have to learn to manage my emotions, I have to deal with my feelings instead of numbing them.

Stop creating yourself. Be who you are.

 

Conflict is the Foundation of Compromise

All of my life I tried to avoid conflict. I’d rather shut my mouth, than having an argument.

I’ve started to learn about nonviolent communication years ago. Only recently I found out that I still had a massive misconception around this whole topic in my head.

I connoted conflict in a negative way. I thought it is a bad thing, so I avoided it – especially in intimate relationships. I thought it is bad karma, negative energy, the beginning of the end…

It is the opposite.

It sounds a bit contradictory, but conflict is positive. It is the foundation of compromise. (The diplomats of you will smile at me.)

How? Well, what happens when conflict arises? Let’s assume there are two people who don’t agree on a topic. They blame the other person for not being right. In reality these people are not able to express their needs in a way the other person understands it.

But guess what? We are all humans. So, if we express ourselves in a grounded and compassionate manner most likely the other person will comprehend our point of view.

This is all there is. This is all that needs to be resolved. If everyone would be able to articulate their needs in any given situation a conflict would be part of the solution.

There will be some amount of discomfort involved – sometimes the problem is might be very complex, but in the very end things will smoothly fall into place.