We begin to journey into the resting season of the year, witnessing the trees embrace the winter rest, the song of birds and crickets lingers in the not-too-distant past.
The rhythm of the passing time slows down, as darkness casts its thickest veil we reignite the candlelight, to reflect the flame that burns inside.
Not merely waiting for the brighter season. Instead – we shine forth, radiating from the core. With all the might our cells and hearts soaked in while the Sun was shining strong and high. Without a speck of dim.
Rising, shining bright. As within so without. As above so below. The light is rising out of the dark.
Let’s celebrate the dark, the festive months of winter tide.
Noble truth and dirty lies? OR Dirty truth and noble lies?
It is not about you telling the truth or uttering lies that reveals who you are. It is your intention that carries the weight and determines your fate.
What is the point of your wretched truth you intend to apply, if your sole intention is to destroy someone’s life, to squander them, to put them down, out of rage, revenge, jealousy, selfish interest, or some other malice that is brewing on your mind?
On the other hand, you tell the noble lie to save the lives of many. With your kindest intention you tell me the lie that stops me from sinking in life. Mother tells a sweet little lie to sooth her son to sleep. Father conceals the truth so life does not appear so bleak.
What is your intention when you start playing your game? Be wise, ask questions before it begins.
Truth can surely be a sin and a lie can be a virtue. Hence, it is the intention behind your action that reveals your direction.
When your intentions are pure and come from the heart, there’s nothing to hide, to worry about. From that moment on, love starts to flow.
Choose well, my dear ones, choose to be free! As free & fluid as you can possibly be! 🌊🤍🦋🙏
‘Truth can be a sin and a lie can be a virtue.’
Some people use truth to harm others – their only intention is to damage their so called ‘opponents’. The information they have can be used in a terrible manner – putting the person down, or in trouble, taking revenge. Would you call that a noble act of truth?
It’s the intention that decides the outcome. Hence, truth can be a sin and a lie can surelybe a virtue.
Mothers lie to their children to get them to sleep, to persuade them to eat, to dress them, to make them move faster. Fathers sometimes lie to their sons or daughters to conceal how much they are struggling to provide for their family. The intention is out of pure love. To protect, to ensure they get enough sleep, to get properly nourished, to arrive to the rehearsal on time.
Remember – lie itself is not a sin, it’s the intention that counts and decides the outcome.
Lying can sometimes be a necessary intervention to calm down the energies and achieve what is in one’s best interest. Sometimes you have to learn to trust the person who had to lie to you because you were not yet able to perceive or accept the truth. Revelation of truth had to happen gradually – with time.
Eventually truth had been delivered to you when you were able to accept it and receive it. Some people understand energies and consequences much better than others, hence trust is the paramount. Trust to the extent that goes beyond the notion of trusting the words of the person you trust. Trust in not merely trust – trust is a creative force. When you really trust, life starts unfolding accordingly.
This is very different to intentional, deceitful lying, purely based on liar’s self-interest.
There’s a thin line that should not be crossed – it happens when lying occurs out of selfish, dirty, mean intention. Petty liars, corrupt politicians, social media deceivers, cheaters, manipulators who want to squeeze you for a dime, precious energy, and time.
What about relationships? Have you ever been in a relationship when you started picking up subtle clues, and began noticing that you were being fooled – something in the back of your neck perked up, you picked up the vibration between the words that was not congruent with the story you were told. When you are attentive enough to observe, you learn how to read the body language, you can easily pick up the clues.
What options have you got if that happens – when you simply know. I can share with you three I know of.
First, you can smile and say to yourself, this too shall pass and ignore it, because it’s too petty for you to waste your energy on. If it continues, try to find a solution together – therapy, coaching, anything that would help. No matter what, you stay together and help each other get to the other side.
Second option, you can roll your eyes, say to yourself – I’m not putting up with this again. It has happened too often, too much, we’ve discussed it already, it’s having an impact on our lives. The consequences are too detrimental to our relationship. Your partner could be an addictive, compulsive liar, who needs therapy and it’s too much for you to bear. You don’t want to stay; you can and you want to move on.
Third case, often the most damaging is when confrontations happen in the heat of the moment. Arguments, defense, blaming, shaming, shouting, pushing, running away. I say, you better avoid that urge and wait for a more conducive moment, because in that particular moment in time you’ll be confronting the ‘liar’, which often represents a fragment of their personality, not the whole. That rarely ends well. Above all, don’t try to change the person, because you cannot.
What about lying to yourself about someone else not lying to you when all your senses tell you that they’re telling you blatant lies. I wouldn’t do that to myself – I don’t think it’s healthy on a long run. But that choice is entirely yours.
Animals don’t plan to lie, deceive, or cheat – if you have spent enough time in the company of dogs, horses, cats you probably noticed that. For example, our dog Daisy – she lies, but her lies are too cute – she pretends she hasn’t eaten so she could get more food even when we all know her tummy is full. Or, she starts barking to get my attention, trying to full me with her story that someone is at the door. All along she was only craving attention – how cute is that and how common to us human beings.
Have you ever heard the story about Koko the gorilla when she ripped the sink out of the wall? Koko knew how to use the sign language; when they asked her if she did it, Koko signed it was the cat, not her. 😊 (Source: Koko the gorilla best stories)
Many of us like to impress upon people our best possible version of ourselves. As humans we need attention, acceptance, and love. When we lie, we get scared that others won’t forgive our lies and transgressions if they find out. We are afraid that we will look bad or lose their respect, their love. ‘Not trustworthy – no love.’ However, if you really love someone – you can see through their lies, recognize their intentions and you will notice if they were innocent and struggling with some deeply rooted issues from the past. In this case, try not to judge – instead, be fully present, so you can help.
Just like you would with a child who was not able to tell you the truth because he/she was too afraid they’d get punished for breaking your costly, favorite vase – and that too, by mistake.
Some people learned to lie because it was the only way to survive in the harsh environment they grew up in. Later on, they built their lives and sense of security upon that particular behavior. Hence, they don’t know any better, they subconsciously became the servants of the ‘shadow called lie’.
Or, there’s another extreme where people simply don’t care, they became totally numb. Or, they choose to lie out of some compulsive habit that gives them a sense of authority and power. I bet there are endless reasons why people lie. That’s why it’s the intention behind the lie that counts and the main thing worth focusing on.
There are all sorts of people in this world, extremes and everything in between. There are people who represent honesty, stability, truthful, authentic, aware, noble hearts – and there are those who are crumbling, patched up, deceitful liars with crocked, and selfish intentions. The more one oscillates towards the latter end of the spectrum the more energy and time they have to spend to upkeep their lies, to fix things, patch it up, while having to continuously feed their lies hungry shadow. It has the power to corrupt their minds, consume them, turn them into a slave of an addiction. Good news is, that everything is reversible, but it does require hard & arduous work. The question is, how much energy, time, space have you got left in your life and do you really want to spend it all on fixing things? Be wise, chose well.
What about you?
Have you built any fragments of your personality that is based on crooked intentions, where you hide behind your lies, deceits, or manipulation? Try and identify which part – if there is such a part. Is it in your relationship to your partner, to parents, relatives, certain people or particular friends, to authority, colleagues, to yourself, with regards to your health, work, eating habits, when trying to impress others, etc.? Yes, you can be fooling yourself directly as well.
Looking in the past I had a strong urge to be accepted by people. I tried to impress upon – the more I tried to conform to various expectations and standards, the more I failed. I was oozing out the lack of authenticity, and above all I was deceiving myself about being something or someone I was not. Little did I know that I didn’t have to try, because I was special just the way I was. The same way as you are special & precious, just the way you are. They eyes can see, the ears can hear, the nose can smell, the tongue can taste, the skin can sense, but the heart – the heart simply knows.
One thing you can take away in case you struggle with trust. You can trust anyone according to their level of consciousness at any given time. However, know that may change. Also know, that your assessment depends upon your level of consciousness and your creative force at any given time. Hence, know who you are, be and remain who you are, love yourself and you will never struggle knowing the other – the other – the most accurate mirror reflection of who you are in your life.
I hope I was able to shed some light on this particular wide spread phenomenon from a slightly different angle. I certainly taught myself a lot, pondering about this topic while writing this ubiquitous piece.
When your intentions are pure and come from the heart, there’s no need to hide, or worry about. It’s what matters in any relationship – the depth and the level of your authenticity and transparency. The place & space where you are love and not just a feeling, or recollection or memory of love.
Developing your ability to recognize the intention behind words is something you can bring to your attention. When it slips into your awareness it becomes a useful communication tool that provides valuable insights – just in case it’s time to clear the space with kind intervention and compassionate inquiry… 😊
I want to focus my attention towards a particular emotional downfall I experience when I get triggered.
Seeing it eye to eye, just a few days ago, I came to realize that sadness is just another addiction. Certain emotions carry the potency of throwing us off balance and pulling us down. This happens to me when I feel sad, angry, afraid, worrisome, disappointed, insecure, etc.
I realized that the outcome I experience is a simple, straightforward consequence of a childhood unresolved trauma. I was 10 years old, my father – the key person in our family had passed away suddenly. The little me had created a story in her mind of being left behind, not loved, abandoned, nobody there to take care of her anymore – during that time I experienced and absorbed a lot of sadness and disappointment.
These were the two emotions that became prevalent in my life. I have developed a part of my identity – the sad, disappointed me, that often but secretly dominated over other emotions. This means that a part of my personality had to be continuously fed to keep on existing – which nicely led to the convoluted craziness of perpetual viscous circle of victimhood of sadness.
Throughout life I would often recreate scenarios to feed that part of my identity over and over again – this became a part of my reality.
Recently I have experience one of my self-mastered scenarios and I have finally gained insight into what was going on. In this particular instance, I was lucky to have been caught by my friend, who has a razor-sharp insight and who was able to penetrate through my unconscious self and blast out the dark chamber with the much-required light.
At the end of this drama, I realized that it was me who manifested the whole situation. I subconsciously invited the other person to play the role necessary for me to react exactly the way that had the potency to trigger my emotion of sadness. Here’s what has happened.
It was a lovely summer afternoon, we were sitting around the table, having a pleasant conversation over a dinner. All of a sudden, I went completely off tangent, babbling about whatever I started babbling about, which appeared as if I was in conversation with myself. My ‘co-speaker’ did no longer feel icluded and he didn’t feel like entertaining my solo stage diva performance. He called out the change of my behavior, stopped listening to me and I felt cut off. Suddenly, I fell into sadness that I wasn’t able to explain in that very moment.
My first reaction: “he doesn’t love & respect me” and I became deeply saddened with tears clogging my eyes, feeling as if someone started choking my throat. My connection with another human being abruptly came to an end.
I reacted and derived a false conclusion that my friend did not pay attention to what I was talking about because he doesn’t love and respect me. All that only to support my fake little paradigm.
If you have ever studied Patanjali Yoga Sutras you will remember that the author refers to the fluctuations of the mind as Vrittis. For me, the second sutra is one of the most important sutras in the whole book. It goes like this: ‘Yoga citta vritti nirodha‘. Yoga is the union of the mind and the discipline needed to achieve the unification, citta is the mind, vritti refers to a way of existing (mind modification), and nirodha means removal; inhibition; stoppage; suppression or restraint.
Putting it all together: “Yoga is the removal of the modifications of the mind – or removal of certain ways of existing – the ways that no longer serve us.” Please note, I have only provided the most basic interpretation of the second sutra – for a more in depth study and understanding, I would suggest you refer directly to Patanjali Yoga Sutras by I.K. Taimni.
I am very lucky and grateful. When something like this happens in my daily life, I have the inexplicable and urgent need to look deep inside the bothersome matter. I cannot go on without resolving the issues. My yoga is to consciously walk towards attaining unification of the mind, which means following the required discipline and practice that lead me towards that unification (also called sadhana).
In this particular case, I stepped aside and I took a few minutes after the event took place. I sat down, gathered my thoughts, required clarity and started jotting down what has just occurred and what I have experienced. I am only able to do this kind of deep work thanks to years of practicing Kriya Yoga. I’m sure there must be other ways for one to achieve similar realizations and resolutions, but Kriya Yoga is the path I have chosen to follow, a technique that works for me.
Going back to my story. I believe communication to be the paramount of a sustainable relationship – you have to learn to communicate if you want to cultivate a healthy relationship. You can’t just pile up unresolved issues and push them under the carpet, expecting everything will be ok and carry on as if nothing ever happened. It never works, it will erode and destroy your relationship and push you further apart. It’s not worth it – so, whenever something similar occurs to you and you have the opportunity to look into it, I highly recommend you put in some effort and find out what’s really going on – for you. For your own good. I assure you, it will make a huge difference in living your life more fully, lovingly, and freely.
At the end of my drama, I realized that all along I was unconsciously playing a very familiar game. I was using the ‘don’t love & don’t respect me trump card’ as a bait for the ego to help me spiral down the habituated part of identity I assumed as a child – sadness, withdrawal, closing down. The whole situation had absolutely nothing to do with what was occurring here & now or with the lack of love & respect my friend has for me.
Which makes me wonder. How many other similar situations have I orchestrated in life and how often, only to have thrown myself off center – depriving myself of here & now of living my full potential. How unnecessary is that – the obvious act of self-sabotage… All good, I will apply myself better going forward.
I hope that sharing my story provides an insight for you to recognize some of the blind spots most of us are struggling with. I hope you will be able to catch yourself or someone else before you/they start spiraling down the rabbit hole, while at the same time you will gain clarity to stop the game of using or falling for the ‘lack of love & respect’ scape goat to feed the hungry ghosts or vrttis.
Our beautiful minds can get very flexible and we have endless amount of creativity to produce oodles of ‘baloneys’ with our convoluted stories, just to keep the habituated victimhood roles & dramas alive and going. Once you realize that and acknowledge the fact that you don’t have to play that role again, because it’s not who you truly are, you can choose a different, more authentic way of your truer self-expression.
I also realized the love and respect I have for myself is not yet 100% – hence the projection towards someone who is close to me about their lack of love & respect towards me. Even though my projection is completely unsubstantiated. Another nugget to work through… all in its due time.
I strive to remain truthful to myself, because only truth liberates. It adds stability to my way of being, thus I face less and less reactions, self-imposed restrictions, and unnecessary drawbacks. Life can be good anf life is good.
As the guide on my side points out (with a bit of a twist of my own): “Work it out before it acts you out. Catch it early – nip it in the bud.”
The original quote goes like this: “Work it out, before you act it out”. You may want to check out more on the Private Work Self Coaching platform – it’s a useful resource, full of guided activities, designed towards generating much needed awareness and cultivating beautiful streams of insightfulness.
Embrace the truth! If there was no desire you would not be here and now. You would not be alive.
What is desire? What drives our desires? Why do we sometimes get blinded by desires and lost in desires? What is the root of human desire?
Could it be life itself?
On a daily basis, desires manifest through many expressions in life. For example, food, love, sex, solitude, touch, a kiss, connection, high speed, prestige, status, this woman, that man, danger, extreme sports, productivity, excitement, attention, winning, losing, drugs, alcohol, arts, sports, pain, pleasure, a combination of several things together that amplify our experience in life. It often leads to so called dopamine spike.
What is the common denominator of all these expressions of desire? To feel alive!
I get attracted to something that stokes my inner – possibly – latent fire, which I am not able to stoke myself otherwise, hence I need a certain external stimulus to feel more alive.
Are there different kinds of desires? Such as healthy vs unhealthy desire? What happens when desire turns into obsession, or even addiction? When it takes over and you lose yourself, your mind, even your life?
What about healthy desire? The one that stokes just enough fire to still make you feel alive in relationship towards yourself and the rest of the world, and yet you maintain perfectly balanced, content, and composed.
Desire to feel alive rings a bell. The more disconnected I am from my true self, the more extreme becomes my sport.
As if my cells are longing, yearning, needing for something that is not here. As if I am missing a part of me and I just don’t know how to rekindle and reconnect. It’s like – sometimes – I feel hungry, yet it is a very different kind of hunger compared to being hungry for food. It doesn’t matter how much I would eat and whatever I would consume I could still not satisfy these deep cravings, this deep hunger that can drive me to the edge if unsatisfied. There is no material food in this world that could satisfy that mysterious hunger.
It feels like when you try your best to grasp the air and no matter how deep is your breath, or however much oxygen is out there, you can’t get enough of it. It’s just not there.
Have you ever felt like that?
Food is a big part of human existence. We need sustenance to survive, to thrive, to be healthy, to receive and convert the required fuel so our beautiful bodies can operate, and our souls can express. Yet, we often confuse our hunger with the inner most hunger that nourishes our being, our soul and our cells – with hungry for food. Food is the easiest, most accessible, and closest type of satisfaction most of us often resort to.
Once I grasped this subtle distinction between hunger for love vs. hunger for food it hit me quite hard. The realization that there is no such thing as compensation for love – the most important nourishment for all the cells vibrating in our body.
Love vibrates at a certain frequency and only that frequency is able to penetrate deep inside, to infuse us, to sooth us, so that the whole fabric of what we’re made of gets nourished.
Some of us have been deeply deprived of that nourishment when infants, and in our childhood. For many reasons – we might had not been able to experience love even if it was there, or we actually didn’t receive love when it was needed the most. The next, closes available substance to us all, has always been food. Hence various food related issues we may struggle with, such as food addiction, binge eating, sugar craving, obesity, eating disorders.
I had quite a few difficult years in my late teens, early twenties, battling with my own imbalances that manifested as an eating disorder. I’m very lucky it all turned out well and I was able to overcome it. It’s also one of the main reasons I can deeply relate to this topic and understand the difference between different types of hunger we experience in our daily life.
Once we get lost in the grip of a very strong desire, that has a detrimental impact on our overall health and state of being (physical, mental, psychological), it is very easy to spiral down and become increasingly disconnected internally as well as externally. General tendency is to close ourselves from everyone who could be able to help us and love us. We hide, because we are ashamed, frightened, vulnerable, afraid, and we feel unworthy and broken inside.
It’s sometimes very hard to talk about our inner struggles, especially when we’re young. Particularly when the surrounding environment is not very kind. Deep emotions exist beyond time and space, especially when experience feels close to the core.
I have learned my lesson and have fine-tuned that distinction between craving for food and the need to love and be loved.
Desire, hunger, love, craving, obsession, struggle, destruction or liberation. Yeah, that’s about it – that sums it up quite well. Our life begins out of desire, the first thing we experience when we’re born is hunger – both hunger for food and hunger for love. When either of the two is out of balance we struggle. Imbalance can lead towards variations of destruction or freedom.
The only savior in case of imbalance is love.
My struggle was with food. Yours might have been or still is with something else.
There’s something I constantly have to remind myself of – to accept and trust life, to accept love, because I deserve it. It’s the only thing that can heal us inside out. Being around people we trust and love, who reciprocate our love is one of the greatest blessings in life. It’s like magic, but much better. It’s natural, effortless; the ease and abundance of being in the moment with your loved ones is the most precious and fulfilling experience in life. Learn to recognize ‘transactional’ types of people, so you don’t end up being disappointed. Surround yourself with people you love, who love you. People you can ask for or offer help when needed most. Recognize those people and be grateful. Every present moment filled with love is a gift, it’s the only true gift that never expires, the most precious gift you can pass on.
I hope you find your way to restore and always maintain your inner balance. Always look on the bright side of life! May all be well.
