Day 89 - A Year of Spiritual Awakening - It Is Difficult...

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Lesson 89: It Is Difficult...

To hold compassion for yourself may not be so easy if you have hurt someone else. We are definitely not perfect and it’s more than okay to make mistakes. Wouldn’t you say we’re all the same in this regard? People can hurt us just as easily as we hurt others.

If you have hurt someone, do you think that you need to right this wrong? Or should you just release it as a slip-up? I can’t answer this for you but you can look within yourself for the answer.

I think it’s good to apologise but if the moment has truly gone and passed, is there reason to bring it up? I think in some situations, having that closure really helps people and ends a chapter in their lives. If we set it for release, we do need to take the approach of holding compassion for ourselves – accept what you did, accept that we are not perfect beings, learn the lesson and then move forward. We should be beating ourselves up over past mistakes though we should definitely learn the lesson. Apply awareness so you notice what not to do next time to another. You have to open yourself fully.

Day 89 - A Year to Clear - Meditation - Enough

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Lesson 89: AUDIO Meditation - Enough

Today is all about focusing on the following phrases through meditation.

• I am enough
• I have enough
• There is enough

You can place some instrumental music on, take deep breaths and repeat each phrase, noticing what rises within your body, noticing how your breathing is, what thoughts pass through? Keep repeating “I am enough” for as long as you want and move onto the next phrase “I have enough” and finally “There is enough” when you are ready. You might find that you have to focus on “I am enough” and that’s fine. The point of today’s exercise is to repeat it for as long as you need in the upcoming days until they hold your true meaning to those words.

For me, “I am enough” is really about me accepting me as I am and knowing that despite my flaws, I am perfect in my own way. “I have enough” really sinks in for me the fact that I am aware of my environmental impact, and that material possessions are not a way of life for me anymore. I haven’t bought anything that isn’t essential in my every day life. I know that I don’t need to fill my life with “stuff” and I am grateful for a lot of things – like food, shelter etc. “There is enough” really enforces a need for me to want to help others see the impacts we have on the world. We lead such consumerist lifestyles and ignorant to the fact it has harmful impacts to the planet. This for me is much larger than myself, and it’s about standing with my cause and helping others see. Definitely a big job that will span over years.

How do these phrases impact you?

Day 88 - A Year of Spiritual Awakening - It is Difficult at First

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Lesson 88: It is Difficult at First..

Compassion for those that have hurt you isn’t an easy task to accomplish. Especially if the hurt is so deeply rooted, that even the thought of applying compassion isn’t something that crosses your mind. This act could take you some time or maybe even your whole life.

Today is all about thinking of a person who has wronged you and hurt you deeply, asking yourself if there is space for you to hold compassion for this person. It is just a consideration and not about you forcing yourself to do it. If you can hold compassion, why? If you can’t hold compassion, why not? Let the idea sit with you and really truly see what comes through.

Like I’ve mentioned before, I have had some deeply rooted pain from my father and even my mother’s ex-boyfriend. There were hurtful things that were said and heavily buried into my subconscious. Those things that were said were definitely impacting my adult life when they were buried from when I was a young and a teenager. Before I even considered hypnotherapy, I was ready to let go and apply compassion, because getting to that stage really meant taking a step back and realising that it wasn’t about me anymore. I felt sorry in a way, that these people must have their own issues to want to emotionally and mentally hurt me. There was something going on in their lives, maybe they didn’t even understand, that they had to work through. It could even boil down to them not knowing the impact of their words, or them not really understanding how their words can have holding on others.

I am not going to say that I am bigger than them, as I have come to some of my own realisations and acceptance. I just hold the belief that everyone has their own way of living, conditioned in their own ways, not self-aware nor aware of others and because we hold them against our own values, morals, idealism, we tend to want people to act in the same way – but they won’t. So, for me it’s about seeing from a different point of view, trying to have more understanding, but always applying reason in any sort of disagreement to my own way of thinking. It does take some tolerance and maybe building a thick layer of skin, but I don’t seem to get a rise of anger like I used to. I try to apply reason to every situation and know how to stick up for myself when I need to. It takes time and work, but we can tolerate a lot more than we think.

Day 88 - A Year to Clear - Breathe Into the Squirmy Stuff

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Lesson 88: Breathe Into the Squirmy Stuff

Today’s practise is all about thinking and saying out loud “I Am Enough”. I actually starting doing this at the beginning at the week and tell myself when I look at myself in the mirror. It makes a difference by beginning this at the start of the day.

You may not start to believe it when you first start saying it and you will be challenged by negative thoughts. For me, it’s really tackling those negative thoughts about yourself and really truly understanding them. It does take awareness to recognise what holds you back into truly believing that you are enough. It’s not an easy overnight you’ll be cured type of situation. I believe when you can really break down what’s holding you back, apply compassion, then you will have a foundation of where you can rise up from. “I Am Enough” will start to sink in and begin to elevate you.

Day 87 - A Year of Spiritual Awakening - The Heart of Compassion...

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Lesson 87: The Heart of Compassion...

As we evolve and grow into the passage of the heart that holds compassion, we can’t discount the passage of pain that still holds within the first. We have the ability to change our pain into pure love. It’s about taking the pain and transmuting it with compassion in order to stir the love in. Definitely not an easy task for some but know that it’s possible.

Today’s exercise is about closing your eyes and picturing a time in which you felt pain. With all these past events, apply compassion to the situation. If we can provide compassion not only for ourselves but those involved, it really shows our opening of the heart.

I’ve recently had hypnotherapy which really gave me peace to so much past trauma that I feel good now. The only moment in which I was applying compassion, was as memory I had buried in my subconscious of my mother’s ex-boyfriend. He called me a loser and I would never get a boyfriend with the way that I was. I was a teenager at the time, was so unsure of myself and that just wasn’t the nicest thing to say. At the time I cried, never told my mum and moved on from it eventually. It dropped into my head the other day for something to deal with. I held compassion for my mum’s ex, because he just didn’t really know how to be around children, and I felt sad for him in sense that he leads a lonely existence, won’t have good human connections and that may just come down to the  type of person he is. I am grateful I have a good support system but I just don’t see the same for him. So even though he was mean to me, it doesn’t impact me and I feel he needs my compassion more than I hold onto any of his words. He won’t change and he doesn’t need to. I can only hope he evolves as a person and can only pass on good thoughts for his future.

Try this exercise and see what happens for you when you apply compassion.