Another View Point of the Emotional Baggage we Carry.

Here I place before you two videos that speak about Emotional Baggage and the effect it has on our health. Within these two videos is also embedded so to say the idea of how we could deal with our Emotional Baggage.

The First Video is Joseph Murphy. I am sure many of you have read his books. 

This second Video is Dr. Hegde speaking at Mediquest. It's quite likely you have listened to him on your WhatsApp messages.

Our Lives are precious. I hope and pray that our will to be happy and fulfill our mission on earth is much stronger than our fear of the past. Often we give more power to our fears than to the Love of the life that God has given us. We absolutely must give up our victim roles and take up inspirational and leadership roles. No one can make us happy and no one can make us sad. We need very badly to take responsibility for our happiness and health today.

This blog post is only an interim post. I have not had time to write. I will write. Blessings to all of you.

Sickness – A physical reality, of the Emotional Baggage We Carry!

My Experience.

Emotional Baggage! In all my years of counseling, I have never met a physically sick,  person who is without Emotional Baggage. I have great compassion for people who are sick. At various stages of my life, I have cared for them with much love. But also, with a lot of regrets. 

In life, there are neither rewards nor punishments. There are only consequences.

Sickness is the consequence of the way we live. You just repeat this to anyone, and you will see how vehemently they will deny it. To most people sickness “just happens”, or they believe they picked it up from some unhygienic place or situation or person.

Our beliefs, our emotional baggage – that is, the memories of hurts, rejection, traumas, death of a dear one, or whatever have created fear and insecurity in our lives. These eventually act on our glands, heart, organs etc. And so we fall sick.

Drop your Emotional Baggage

Among the sick persons, I have come across, there were those who were eager to get well and they were very much open to thinking out of the box. These soon learned and understood that their sickness was a result of the emotional baggage they were carrying. While taking the help of medicines and Doctors, they also worked at healing their memories, their relationships, and mending their lifestyle and food habits. (Bad lifestyles and food habits are a result of hanging on to emotional baggage.) These went into counseling, meditation, yoga, walking, exercising in general, and corrected their eating habits. They detached themselves from their emotional baggage and quickly returned to good health and happiness, no matter what their sickness.

People who often don't heal!

The other group of sick people I came across was basically made up of people who were themselves victims of society, born of abusive parents, children of broken families, or simply had had traumatic experiences, like severe accidents, loss of parents, sexual abuse, etc.  They were angry, moody, depressed, dependent, chronically sick, etc., etc. These people rarely if ever recover. They generally blame anyone and everyone, including God for their conditions. Perhaps with help, they could heal. And this is the goal of my article. They must be encouraged to introspect. They must be helped to understand that by looking at their own lives they could make new choices. 

Sickness - A Gift to complete Healing!

Sickness is like a red flag, warning you that it's time to take a look at yourself. Please! Whatever be your sickness, even if it be Cancer, or rather I’d say, particularly Cancer, be sure you can be cured. Yes, you heard me correctly. Cancer can be and is cured. Every sickness can be cured including the so-called incurable sicknesses. There is enough evidence to that effect. Choose to ask yourself; what is my sickness telling me about myself, my life. Choose to live a healthy and happy life.

Suggested Reading: 

• "The Secret Language of your Body" by Inna Segal.
• "You Can Heal Your Life" by Louise Hay

Steps to heal your life, in my next blog Post!

 

Create A New Earth A New World A New Life

 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Genesis 1:1-2

Now I am a Christian and a Catholic to boot; so everyone may not resonate with my thinking. That’s fine. On the other hand, deep down in our hearts I’m sure, is a deep longing to return to our source, our Origin, wherever or whatever that might be, regardless of what our religious beliefs and affiliations might be, including those who do not believe in God (atheists?), Some call this source God, some prefer to call it Vital Force Energy, some say Divine Energy.

Saint Augustine states it very succinctly, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

I often imagine the Spirit of God hovering over the earth, constantly taking note of all that is going on and happening. And then I begin to wonder, does God / Divine  Spirit worry about all that is happening in the world? But then can the Divine worry? I should think not. A quote from a novel I read a long time ago comes to my mind, “God is not dead, he refuses to get involved”, from The Drifters by James A Michener.

The smell of fear and death is all pervading. We have tired of knocking at the doors of Doctors Clinics and Hospitals, we have despaired of help from Government and government agencies, we

have quarrelled and abused family members for not being there for us. And now we come begging to God. “If you really exist then why don’t you do something”. God is not dead he refuses to get involved. Or is He? I mean Dead? Or did I mean Deaf?

Now why is it that in whatever situation we find ourselves, we
always look outside ourselves: be it for affirmation, be it for solutions, be it in sickness, you name it. It never occurs to us to look into ourselves, to introspect, to take responsibility. You disagree? I’m sure you do. And so we come up with blaming statements like: the government has failed us, the medical fraternity has failed us, you can’t depend on any one today (neither kith nor kin), you can’t trust anyone, they are all cheats, all they want is to rob you….stop, stop, stop!!!!

This Pandemic is a case in point. We have run out of ideas just as it seems we have run out of vaccines and oxygen which we thought would save us finally. Let us not run out of Faith, Hope and Love and Self-Responsibility.

Go to God? Yes indeed! But not a God outside of myself. Once

again the Book of Genesis comes to our rescue. (Oh! You need not believe in it, it just echoes the throbbing of the ages of man’s heart) The Book of Genesis comes under the category of “Primeval history”. There is nothing historical about it. It states, “God created man in his own image and likeness, in his own image he created him”. And you might ask me, “do you really belive that?” Yes I do, far more than I believe in any Government, Science, Medical establishment. What that means is that I have within me all the resources I need to face any situation I might possibly face. Yes go to God, the God in your heart. Introspect.

Change your energy level. Instead of blame, let us send blessings, instead of fault finding, let us be compassionate, let us be grateful for all that we have ever received; our gift of life, the natural gifts of our bodies: Eyes, Ears, a Heart that beats night and day, our blood that circulates 24x7, Oh! Yes our lungs, liver, kidneys and all the rest. We have taken everything we have for granted, and used them ruthlessly having absolutely no regard for them. And what about the gift of nature that God gave us. The only natural source of Oxygen our beautiful trees we have selfishly cut down just as we have destroyed the natural resources of life giving water; and where has it led us; I shall not speak more. I think you get the point.

The situation all around us is simply an expression of who we are inside of ourselves. To change the world, we need to change ourselves. When we live a life of peace and compassion, being grateful for all that is, most certainly we will create a new world. So release the power of Love and Forgiveness and as Eckhart Tolle would say, "Create A New Earth"

Suggested readings: "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle, "The Gentle Art of Blessing" by Pierre Pradervand.

 

 

 

OLD FRIENDS ARE BEST

Self-Discovery

The Journey of Self-Discovery! 

My Decision to Find Myself!

                                                                                   By Eleni Makedonas

Eleni's sharing has inspired me and so I share it with you. (malcolm rodrigues s.j.)

I can say with confidence that the moment a person truly starts down the path of self-discovery, they will never turn back. Many may ask the question, “What is self-discovery?” or “What do you mean you don’t know who you are?”

The American English Dictionary defines self-discovery as follows:

“a becoming aware of one’s true potential, character, motives, etc.”

Ignorance towards my true self is something I lived with for a long time. Self-discovery means many things. It means finding your purpose in life (we all have a purpose), it means digging deep into your childhood and revealing the experiences that shaped you... good and bad. It means realizing what your beliefs are and living by them. The effects of self-discovery include happiness, fulfillment, clarity and maybe even enlightenment! The journey however is not always an easy road. The journey includes fear, confusion, misunderstanding, doubt and literally re-visiting all your choices in life. I like to refer to it as spring-cleaning of the mind, your emotions and your surroundings (including the people in your life). It requires making some tough decisions and sticking to them. My journey so far has seen me cut people out of my life. I call them the “takers.” They were takers because I allowed them to be and it wasn’t until I realized that many of these relationships were one-sided — self-discovery — that I decided to cut them out. It has also seen me completely change the course of my life and start to follow my true passion and purpose (this blog). I have also started to set intentions and no longer have expectations from others — okay... this one is really hard for me and it’s a work in progress — but instead I have started to look within for answers. I’ve had several set backs along the way and I have no doubt I will have many more but, I’m not giving up.

What I know for sure is that the journey is worth taking. I am slowly becoming calmer, more aware and more tolerant. I am learning how to pay attention to my feelings and understand myself better.

What I know for sure is that I have been very hard on myself for most of my life. I have not been truthful with myself and have had unrealistic expectations therefore, setting myself up for disappointment. Why do we do this? Why do we lie to ourselves? And more importantly, why do we allow ourselves to get away with it? When someone else lies to me and I find out about it I freak out. “How dare he lie to me? Does she think I’m stupid?” but, we lie to ourselves profusely and even cover up our own lies by accepting them as truth in order to reassure ourselves that it’s okay??!?!?!

For example: I have body image issues. I have always had body image issues yet covered it up by lying to myself. When I was 14 I even tried to starve myself thin. I would convince myself that I was happy with the way I looked when deep down I knew I wasn’t. I worked so hard to cover up how I really felt by masking my true feelings. “I’m happy with my hips” I would tell myself and “I like my perky butt,” even though deep down I hated the way I looked. I’m not implying that what I was feeling was a good thing but, it was what I was feeling and ignoring it, or pretending it didn’t exist was doing no good to me — or my body image issues. Eventually, it became exhausting. Recently, I started working on accepting the fact that I have body image issues and acknowledging my feelings towards them. I am not suppressing the feelings I have anymore instead, I am admitting to them therefore diminishing the threat they once held upon me and reducing the hold they had on my life. There comes a freedom with accepting your feelings and emotions. It’s like a release of some sort. Like you’ve identified the elephant in the room and waved at him so you no longer have to pretend he’s not there. Once you acknowledge the elephant in the room he doesn’t bother you anymore. You learn to co-exist and be okay with his presence and not allow him to control how you act and feel anymore.

What I know for sure is that being true to my feelings and acknowledging them as well as validating them has released so much fear in me. It has released my fear of not being good enough as well as my fear of not living up to the expectations I set for myself. What I know for sure is that we are usually our own worst enemy. We hold ourselves back in so many ways and I am ready to move away from that pattern. I’m not suggesting that these fears no longer exist within me because they certainly do and, I don’t think they will ever go away but now that I am aware of my true feelings and now that I am becoming conscious of my real beliefs, they no longer have a strangle hold on my life. Instead, I have a hold on how they can or cannot affect me.

My message is this... Stop being your own worst enemy! Stop lying to yourself about your emotions and feelings and start accepting them and allowing yourself to feel whatever is it you feel. The freedom you will feel within yourself is reward enough however, the universe will give you back the love that you have finally and justifiably started to give yourself. This I promise you!

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
— Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Tips to Healthy and Happy Living

REST: Take enough time to rest. A tired body and a tired mind finds it very difficult to cope with the challenges of daily life and living. Go to sleep around 10.00 or 10.30 and wake up at around 5.00 or 5.30. Working late hours is a myth and only brings suffering and sickness in later years.

Work: Learn to share, distribute or delegate your work, among your colleagues. You will be surprised at the amount of joy you will create in your own and others lives. Be aware that the limitations of physical time do not allow any single individual, (however clever and efficient) to do everything under the sun.

     

Be aware of the fears that prevent you from sharing your work and responsibilities with colleagues and confreres.

Nourishment: Make sure you take enough and healthy nourishment. Be aware about your beliefs, fears and hang-ups concerning the food you eat. Eating is a trained habit, formed from beliefs generally made in childhood. Habits can be changed. Food as such NEVER causes sickness.

                     Exercise: Take time to exercise your body. A brisk walk, with head held high and hands swinging, early in the morning, definitely is a very useful beginning of the day. Combine this with positive affirmations and deep breathing, and you are guaranteed a healthy and happy life.

                     Holistic: Have a holistic approach to life. Body, Mind and Spirit. When the three are in alignment, you are assured of health and happiness. The Body gives physical signals (aches, pains, etc) and the Spirit gives emotional Signals (anger, depression, etc) that all is not well in the Mind.

                      Privacy: Keep enough time and space for your personal self. Love thy neighbour as thyself…Lev.19/18 Mat.19/19. Take time to be STILL, IN BODY MIND AND SPIRIT. Do the things you really like doing. Reading, writing, listening to music, being with people you love, gardening or relaxing in a garden.

                      Healing: Take time to heal yourself. Practice positive affirmations daily. Let go of memories. Forgive yourself and every one in your life. Start training yourself, to stop criticizing and punishing, yourself and others.

I LOVE MYSELF JUST THE WAY I AM! 

I LOVE THE WORLD JUST THE WAY IT IS!

The above is not exhaustive. I am sure there is a lot more you can add to it. But remember “… an oak tree takes a hundred years to grow! If you want an oak tree, plant it today, not tomorrow!”

                                                                                                   by malcolm sj