Tag Archives: psychology

Radiate Like a Living, Walking Billboard

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Billboards

I often wish I had loads of money so I could buy up space on billboards all over the world. On each road sign, I would advertise a higher quality reminding people that such energy does exist – in life, inside them, inside everyone. Why not write or draw your own billboard of a quality you long to have? Here’s how:

  1. Sit quietly. Breath deeply.
  2. Then choose a higher quality that you would like to develop or come more in touch with. Here are just some suggestions:
    Evocative Words
  3. Once you have selected a quality (try to stick with one at a time), reflect quietly on the meaning of the word. What is its nature? What is its meaning? Take your time. If an image or idea comes to you, hold onto that image. Try not to censor any images.
  4. Try to “feel” the quality that the word embodies. Let it permeate your being. Allow the word and feeling to take you to a time and place in the past when you felt the feeling. Try now to feel it.
  5. Realize the value of this quality. Recognize its purpose and use, especially in this turbulent world. Praise it in your mind. Desire it.
  6. Allow the quality to express itself on your face.
  7. Now take a card and write the word. Elsewhere, record your thoughts and images. You might want to draw your image on the card.
  8. Place the card where you will easily notice it during the day. Where it will easily catch your eye – at your bedside, on your bathroom mirror, on your desk.
  9. Notice your dreams that night.
  10. Throughout the next month, look at your card. Close your eyes and then open yourself to the inner quality your desire.
  11. Resolve as much as you can to be a living example of this quality. Radiate it! Become a living walking billboard of it!

The Joy of Suffering

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This past week I have received a number of emails from friends as far away as Portland in the USA and Legos in Nigeria. Since they know my husband is Dutch and we live on the German-Dutch border, many are writing to ask if we and our family members are okay after the recent Malaysian airline crash in the Ukraine. (Yes, we are.) On top of this terrible tragedy are the wars raging in Gaza, Iraq, and Syria to occupy us and the news media.

Yesterday I met Simi for the first time. She is a 7-month old solid soul who has nothing but gurgling smiles for the world. Her mother between bites of ice cream became quietly despondent. “Hasn’t the news been terrible lately?” she asked.

Headline

Yes, the news has been terrible. The news is always terrible. That’s what news is. Terrible. It is either full of suffering or full of rich, happy, famous people. Sometimes it is full of rich, unhappy, famous people suffering. But usually it consists of poor, unhappy, non-famous people suffering.

If the news is making you feel sad, then there is probably something you need to feel sad about in your own life. A man I met recently said that he had been so sad about the plane crash that he left work early. He didn’t know anyone on the plane, but after talking about himself for a while, I began to realize that he was mostly sad for himself. Doing the same job for 18 years, he dreamed of moving to Italy and starting his own export business. He soon admitted that he was too lazy and complacent to change his life. His sadness seemed to be more about how his life was like a plane about to crash with no escape hatch.

I call this “the comfort of familiar suffering.” So often we are afraid to change our life because we fear what suffering might come to us as a result. Better to stay where we are. At least we know what the suffering we are enduring now feels like! We know how to talk about it for hours and soothe ourselves with fantasy and addictions. Everything is in place and under control to help us feel comfortable in our suffering!

Assagioli's notes on joy from his archives.

Assagioli’s notes on joy from his archives.
Joy as a Duty:
The duty to be joyous
in every circumstance
and condition.

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You Are a World Champion

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If you’ve been spending the last month watching 22 men chasing a little ball around a green pitch, then you’re not alone. I along with millions of others have also been captivated by the World Cup Tournament. Today the German team appears in the media as World Champions, holding the funny looking gold trophy above their heads. Throughout the tournament, players and their fans have been photographed crying, laughing, beaming, broken, angry, despondent, and joyful. What is this global emotion all about?

World Cup Champions 2014

World Cup Champions 2014

After the final match, my husband and I watched a flustered journalist attempt to interview the German team captain. The reporter could barely put two words together, he was so overwhelmed with emotion. All these feelings with nowhere to go. We look to our national teams for courage, determination, skill and stamina and we bemoan their defeat. The team carries so much more for us collectively as we wave our flags, paint our faces, and wrap ourselves in the designated colors. Now that it’s all over, what will we do?

We might think about our need for outer heroes and heroines (the latter are sorely lacking in football), and how they reflect our personal heroes inside us. All our football players are holding the higher qualities that we long for in ourselves. Perhaps we too are seeking courage and persistence in our own daily struggles along with joy and elation in our own personal triumphs.

Now is the time to try and integrate the feelings that bubbled up during the tournament and make them more our own. For example, I found myself consistently sad at the end of any game, identifying with the losers, wishing everyone could be a winner. What does that say about me? I often criticize myself for not being good enough, a failure, insignificant in this whirlwind called life. But the reality is, I too am a winner in my own way, through my own small everyday battles, sometimes creeping along inch-by-inch with the persistence, faith, and stamina of the best footballer. And when I am successful, I often shy away from the limelight, almost afraid of standing firmly in the winner’s circle.

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