Today I'm doing what every Pinterest board ever made urges me to do - something that scares me. I'm holding a market stall offering angel card readings. This is scary because I'm an introvert, so not entirely comfortable being so prominent. The solution to this is to focus on the people coming to me for readings, which is a good reminder that it's not all about me. I'm looking forward to being able to help people - which is, after all, what we're all here to do. I'll check in later and let you know how it goes.
Being single in a world that’s in love with romance
An awful day is approaching and my anxiety levels are
rising just thinking about it. February 14. It’s a day you don’t really give a
shit about when you’re in a healthy relationship, but when you’re single it
feels like the entire planet is flipping the bird at you.
For me, the build-up is always the worst. The day itself
is fine. And so is the next day. And the next day. That’s because I’m happy
being single. Would I like to be in a relationship? Sure, I love the thrill of
a new attraction, and all the wonderful getting-to-know-each-other stuff that
follows – but only with the right guy (who will appear in my life when he's supposed to). But for some
reason, the lead-up to Valentine’s Day makes me feel really really crappy about
my single status.
Our society romanticises (pun intended) coupledom, and long-term relationships are seen
as a measure of success. What if you’re not in a relationship – does that
make you a failure? Sometimes I feel that way, even though I know it’s not
true. I know a lot of people who’ve settled for mediocre or unsatisfying
relationships, because they’re too scared or just unwilling to be on their own.
I’m proud that I haven’t succumbed to that pressure.
From a spiritual perspective, there's no requirement to have 'another half' - we are all perfectly complete on our own. That said, we all have various soul contracts with various people who will accompany us from one lifetime into the next. That includes family members as well as significant others. Through my spiritual learnings I know that the most important relationship we all have is with ourselves, and that's the primary relationship we're here to develop.
From a spiritual perspective, there's no requirement to have 'another half' - we are all perfectly complete on our own. That said, we all have various soul contracts with various people who will accompany us from one lifetime into the next. That includes family members as well as significant others. Through my spiritual learnings I know that the most important relationship we all have is with ourselves, and that's the primary relationship we're here to develop.
So here's where I come unstuck: with the amount of hype around relationships on Valentine’s Day it’s
easy to lose sight of this and feel like the world is participating in a party
you didn’t get invited to. Because you weren’t good enough. Because no one liked
you enough. All bollocks, I know. But, still.
This year Valentine’s Day will be really cool – it’s
a Saturday, and I’m going on a picnic with a bunch of my single friends. We
will eat, drink, laugh and celebrate the awesomeness of solid friendships. (I
highly recommend this for any Saturday, not just Valentine’s Day.)
This Valentine’s Day, look for me in the park having
a laugh with my friends. I’ll be the one shouting ‘Happy VD!’ to smug couples.
And giggling inappropriately when they don’t get the joke.
It must be a sign! (Literally)
Sometimes
the Universe is really obscure, sometimes it is blindingly, laughingly obvious.
Today I experienced the latter.
As I
mentioned in a previous post, my project for the year is to improve my
debilitating low self-esteem. I’m only a few weeks in, but already I’m feeling
lighter and more powerful. To magnify the effect, I’ve assimilated these two
mantras into my morning meditations, and I also utter them at random points
during the day when I feel like self-doubt is gathering momentum:
* I have
the ability to change
* I have
the power to change
On my
lunchtime walk today I was reflecting on a situation I’m in at the moment, and started
to feel that doubt was taking over, leading me down a familiar dead-end street
– Giving Up Avenue. I interrupted this train of thought and asked the Universe
to tell me what to do next. Within five minutes I’d seen a truck boasting the
words 'ABLE' barrelling past. I put that down to coincidence (note to
self: there is no such thing as coincidence). Then I looked up and saw this
street sign: Power Ave. I LOLed.
It
doesn’t get much more obvious than that. The Universe was giving me a sign – literally
– that I have the power to change this situation.
Wish me
luck! Actually don’t – I won’t need it (OK, possibly a little TOO confident now, lol).
Dear Mercury retrograde. You suck. (un)Kind regards, me.
You guys are feeling this too, right? The Mercury retrograde
is incredibly frustrating. And besides allowing extra time for travel hiccups –
which I clearly failed to do, d’oh! – there is only one thing you can do. Surrender.
Stop checking your unhelpful bus timetable obsessively and pull out a magazine
to read while you wait. Breathe deeply. Smile at strangers. Listen to Uptown Funk on repeat. (OK, that’s more
than one thing... pretty sure my shoddy arithmetic skills are not Mercury’s
fault.)
This is an important lesson for me in just about every area
of my life, so instead of getting angry at planetary forces beyond my control,
I’m choosing to see Mercury as my teacher. It’s not easy. And sure, letting go
of my frustration at having to wait half an hour for a bus is not quite the
same as letting go of my attachments to the bigger-scale things I could really benefit
from letting go of (habitual self-criticism, regrets over failed relationships,
ideas about how my future *should* look, just to name a few) but it’s certainly
a step in the right direction. It reminds me that while I don’t have the power
to change what life throws at me, I always have the power to choose how I respond
to it, which is an extremely powerful concept. If nothing else, it reminds me
how good it feels to be at peace with the world (even for short bursts of time)
– that’s the place where wisdom starts to flow.
Good luck out there everyone!
BTW, for an excellent reference on how the mercury retrograde
nightmare affects us (causing communication breakdowns and technology fails), check
out this helpful post by sparkly blogger Gala Darling.
Rocking my body. How meditation can affect your health on a deep level
Because I once fainted while giving blood, I’m aware of the
need to keep my body calm during this important process. In a bid to avoid a
repeat performance of the
losing-consciousness-then-needing-emergency-intervention-and-vomiting-everywhere
situation, I had a genius idea: meditation! What better way to keep my body
calm and well out of shock territory?
This was not a good idea, as it turns out. What happened was,
my heart rate dropped so low that alarm bells started going off –
literally! – and the staff rushed over to check that I was not on the verge of
fainting. (I wasn’t.) That’s when I realised it might be a good idea to keep my
heart rate fairly fast so it can pump blood effectively.
Guys, I slowed down my own heart rate! This is an incredibly
empowering realisation. There’s plenty of scientific research out there to
prove that meditation can calm your entire body but it’s something else to actually see that happen. Not only did this confirm to me that meditation is a
wonderful tool (when used in the right setting; ie not in a blood-donation
situation), it’s also a reminder that my heart responds directly to what my
brain tells it.
So maybe I should be telling it to open up more. To trust. To
dance. To take risks. To light the way forward.
This reminds me of a beautiful passage from Paulo Coelho’s
book The Alchemist – a book I adore
so much that it would be a desert-island item for me – about talking to your
heart: "Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself."
I think I’m going to do that more often now.