LIFE IS ARITHMETIC!

LIGHT OF TRUTH

Self-worth is simply a declaration and does not have any pre-requisites. Anyone can declare their self-worth by saying that – I have a place in this world, I am uniquely me, and I have something to offer.

Self-esteem, on the other hand, happens in the listening of others and it is an admiration for what we bring (self) to what we do. It has to do with our actions and whether or not they produce value in the lives of others. It is the contribution that we are, and whether we meet or exceed our own standards. Confidence comes from what we are standing for.

According to psychologists childhood experiences of shame can change who we are and how we think about ourselves and our sense of self-worth. A child who is constantly blamed and shamed for different reasons will ultimately believe that he/she is not good enough and is unworthy of attention and affection. Destruction of self-worth leads to lack of self-love which in turn is a pre-requisite to loving others. In time, the individual becomes isolated and disengaged from society and can not be creative or contribute to the lives of other people.

Brené Brown defines shame as” the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore, unworthy of love and belonging.” For that reason shaming should never be used as a parenting tool because it destroys self-worth and prevents us from engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. However, we should not keep blaming or shaming our parents for having done that because as Louise Hay has said: “We are all victims of victims, and they could not possibly have taught us or done anything they did not know. We need to choose to release the past and forgive everyone, ourselves included.”

Reading about worthiness and shame triggered me to look at my own experiences through childhood and adult life and find out if I can identify with any of the standard categories of shame. To my surprise, I could easily identify a few categories such as my traumatic childhood, my survival traumas during the revolution in Iran, my divorce and my imperfection around parenting and motherhood having to play the role of both mother and father, my altered body image as a result of breast cancer, bankruptcy and not being able to pay my debts, having an accent and being considered a foreigner, getting old and not finding a job and having to rely on my children, and the list goes on and on.

I then tried to introspect and see if I, as a mother, have ever used shame as a parenting tool. My daughter told me that I have compared her with a friend of hers in high school and have asked her why she is not in the honor list of her school as frequently as her friend is. She hated to be compared with someone else and still remembers the experience of not being good enough. I also remembered that when my son graduated and was settling down in his first apartment, I visited him a few times and I made comments about the size of his apartment, the dishes he used, and similar remarks which upset him and he said he remembers other things too. While my intention was good, my words had registered with both of them as shame.

For the first time I shared my findings about myself with my children and a few of my friends, and now with my readers. My courage to do that and to be vulnerable was extremely helpful to me in terms of getting rid of the heavy burden of shame and gaining more clarity in the light of truth.

Now I actually believe that no matter who we are and at what age, we should identify and recognize the areas of shame we have suffered in our childhood or in our lives as adults, and have the courage to own, to share, and to engage with our own vulnerabilities. We may get emotional in the process but we need to show the depth of our courage as our value which will lead us to a renewed sense of ourselves. As stated by David Richo:

“Mental health is not about what happened but how we manage what happened.”

Being vulnerable is also one of the important criteria in self-expression especially when we are sharing our stories with others. We should be authentic, able to show our emotions, able to reach out and able to not show concern about other people’s judgments. This is practicing awareness and courage, owning the stories, and developing resilience. We should remind ourselves that we each are part of the grand design of life and our willingness to go forward in spite of our vulnerabilities will enable us to access the courage that we need because as PEMA CHÖDRÖN says:

“Deep down in the human spirit there is a reservoir of courage. It is always available, always waiting to be discovered.”

To be continued….                                                                             

THEY SPOKE TO ME....

This

Sky

Where we live

Is no place to lose your wings

So love, love,

Love.

How

Did the rose

Ever open its heart

And give to this world

All its

Beauty

It felt the encouragement of light

Against its

Being

Otherwise,

We all remain

Too

Frightened

Even

After

All this time

The sun never says to the earth

“You owe

  Me.”

Look

What happens

With a love like that,

It lights the Whole

Sky

If God

Invited you to a party

And said,

“Everyone

In the ballroom tonight

Will be my special

Guest,”

How would you then treat them

When you

Arrived?

Indeed, indeed!

And Hafiz knows

There is no one in this world

Who

Is not upon

His Jeweled Dance

Floor.

Blame

Keeps the sad game going,

It keeps stealing all your wealth

Giving to an imbecile with

No financial skills,

Dear one,

Wise

Up.

I

Will need

Someone to feed my cat

When I leave this world,

Though my cat is not ordinary.

She only has three paws:

Fire, air,

Water.

The

Heart is right to cry

Even when the smallest drop of light,

Of love,

Is taken away.

Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream

In a dignified

Silence,

But you are so right

To do so in any fashion

Until God returns

To

You.

  

We all

Sit in His orchestra,

Some play their

Fiddles,

Some wield their

Clubs.

Tonight is worthy of music.

Let’s get loose

With

Compassion,

Let’s down in the delicious

Ambience of

Love.

What

We speak

Becomes the house we live in.

Who will want to sleep in your bed

If the roof leaks

Right above

It?

Look what happens when the tongue

Cannot say to kindness,

“I will be your slave.”

The moon

Covers her face with both hands

And can’t bear

To look

Why

Are there

So few in the court

Of a perfect

Saint?

Because

Every time you are near Him

You have to leave pieces

Of your

Ego

With

The hatcheck

Girl

Who won’t give them

Back….

Passing, passing

The blossom gives way to the fruit;

Both are necessary,

One passes into another.

Bread exists to be broken

To sustain its purpose,

The grape on the vine

Is wine in the making,

Crush it and it comes alive.

When for an infinite second

You leap like antelope

Out of time’s snaking passage

You leave attachment behind,

It fades into the distance.

Timeless, without expectation

You’re born into non-attachment.

Don’t flounder in preambles of the past

Wounded with regrets; don’t let autumnal

Nostalgia blind you to the sounds and scents

Of the present’s Spring; you’re a native of

The pellucid moment, make it infinite beyond

The curving snake of passing time and space,

Learn to die in the infinitely elusive moment.

  

I was a speck of dust measured in molecules

Now I am a rising mountain peak, snow-capped;

I was forgotten like coffee grains in an empty pot

Now I am surging light leading a multitude.

You erased my famine, unpicked my anger

Your energy charges my voice, it radiates my heart;

Now I am alive with the ore of words pouring

From my lips like molten lava glittering with joy

__________________________

Selection of short poems of beloved Persian poets namely Hafiz and Rumi translated by Daniel Ladinsky, and Raficq Abdulla

PONDER ON THESE - III

If you are doing something to avoid pain, the pain is running your life. Your effort to avoid pain has created layer upon layer of sensitivities that are linked to the hidden pain. The other choice is to stop avoiding pain and to face it through inner work. There is tremendous joy within you on the other side of pain.

The personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not OK with life and needs protection. To obtain inner freedom you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them. You have to be willing to just watch the fear without protecting yourself from it.

You can actually feel the fears and insecurity of a five-year old when you are sixty because that unfinished mental and emotional energy patterns are getting stored and reactivated.

Pushing away and/or clinging to your life experiences create energy blockages which are the cause of all your fears. The alternative is to enjoy life instead of pushing away or clinging to anything.

Real spiritual growth happens when all parts of you are unified. There is not a part that is scared and another part that is protecting the part that is scared. There is simply you (the consciousness) watching the dance of the psyche.

Decide that you don’t want the weakest part of you running your life. You want to talk to people because they are interesting not because you are lonely. All you need to do is to watch who is feeling lonely. The one that notices is already free.

Your mind is always telling you what to change outside in order to solve your inner problem. If you are wise you don’t play this game.

If you are not in touch with your emotions you will start acting out. That means you will do something but you won’t know why you are doing it. Examples are eating compulsively, yelling at a child when you had a bad day, getting drunk, etc. If you experience your emotions you will have less destructive behavior.

When you feel weak remind yourself that you are spirits who have taken on the physical experience and have far greater power than you are showing in the moment of weakness.

Try to create authentic power by transcending fear and choosing love in every moment of your life. Expand the loving part of your personality.

If you feel that you are giving all the time and are not receiving, your love is filled with sorrow for yourself. To others the love feels thick with need.

Power is energy that is formed by the intentions of the soul and love is the energy of the soul. When you hold someone responsible for what you experience you lose power. Accept responsibility for your choices and choose intention of love instead of fear.

The parents are the souls to whom you are closest in your life time, and whose influence upon you is the greatest. This is so even if it does not appear that way, even if, for example, you were separated from your parents, or a parent, at birth. Your soul and the souls of your parents agreed to your relationship in order to balance the energy that each needed to balance, or activate dynamics within each other that are essential to lessons that each must learn.

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes and I am left the same as I began.

We are not troubled by things but by the opinions which we have of things. Let me see this exactly as it is, let me not distort it by judging it.

The way for gauging one’s spiritual strength is to find out how often you become disturbed in the course of a single day.

Don’t limit your child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

A newly married couple said, “What shall we do to make our love endure?”

Said the Master, “Love other things together."

But I am where man chooses to look and see me. Even if he chooses to look within himself, there I am.

Each time you cling to something to stop yourself from falling, understand that it is falling too.

_____________

*Quotations from the books I have read and documented.

To be continued……..

Who Am I That My Sufferings Are?

The last few months have been challenging for me because I finally confronted some of my long standing issues while on my infinite journey of learning. One of my challenges was having a huge amount of sensitivity around being judged especially by my loved ones. This made me feel angry, disrespected, unloved, and extremely defensive.

While suffering about being judged, I was also noticing that in my mind, I too judge them without being aware of what I am actually doing. I judge them for what they say or don’t say, for their actions, their likes and dislikes and their preferences.

I was coached about this issue and I learned that in spite of disliking what other people have said or done about me, I must acknowledge that my own verbal expression or even thoughts about my unsolicited opinion of others is, in fact, a judgment of them. When I judge others, even if I don’t talk about it, I carry the negative energy with me.

I also learned that if I do not like what other people, including my loved ones, have said about me, I can look at it as a painful opportunity to love them as they are and to affirm their rights to be who they are. I should have love and compassion for them, as well as for myself, and disengage from the story that something is wrong with either of us. It is important that I do not act out of fear and I offer them what I expect from them unconditionally.

The learning has had a tremendous impact on my relationships and my interactions. I have stopped taking things personally and have started to curb my sensitivities around the conversations I have with my loved ones. I am trying to create a peaceful atmosphere for open and authentic communication and I intentionally refrain from judging them by reminding myself that my judgments are my assessments only and not the truth.

The other challenge I was faced with was a sudden rejection and withdrawal of a loved one, my own flesh and blood, which truly shattered my life. Considering my experiences in life and the hardships I have gone through, I always thought that I can deal with almost any kind of problem or difficulty, but I was wrong.

I was devastated and my heart was filled with utter sadness and sorrow. I felt judged and victimized, I felt that everything that I have done thus far has not been appreciated, I felt I am being abandoned and this made me feel defeated and helpless. I noticed that I am more or less at the mercy of the person who wants to cut communications and this imposed a lot of hurt feelings and suffering on me.  

A red flag was raised for me and I was coached to contemplate on a deep spiritual shift. The process was intense and I had the chance to look at my challenges from a different perspective and to consider digging into my own personal aspects of essence. Here is a summary of what I learned:

Essence/Self/Spirit by definition is an intrinsic nature and the most significant quality in a person which can be lost or can atrophy if we are not aware of it. Love, Peace, Value, Strength and Will are aspects of essence.

When we are with people whom we love we feel joy but when they withdraw we feel the emptiness, a hole, as if we have lost parts of ourselves. In other words, the emptiness we had was temporarily filled by a person who made us feel loved but when that person is gone we do not feel loved any more and the emptiness is still there. The hole may have originated in our childhood because our parents did not see or acknowledge our value thus we remained uninformed and unaware of our own aspects of essence and consequently, the essence stopped manifesting and more holes were created.

Our emotions of sadness, feeling hurt, jealousy, anger, hatred and fear are indications of holes and they point to where our aspects of essence has been lost. When we suffer, the intensity of our pain is the indication of the depth of the lost essence. If we stay with the hurt and go all the way into the sense of emptiness we will get to the essence that has been lost.

Our growth is helped by our essence and when there are conflicts in our lives, instead of suffering, we should look within for the lost essence and dismantle the barriers that prevent us from understanding and getting to our personal aspects of essence.

In short, I learned that I should observe my emotions and my reactions, understand the patterns, and see the connections between those emotions and the loss of various aspects of my essence.

Learning about essence has given me a new perspective and the strength to not cling to anything or anyone. I am encouraged to look beyond the suffering of day to day life and be a keen observer of my problems instead of getting lost in them. This is hard work but a joyful practice and I am forward looking and excited about my progress.

During the learning process, and going along with a family tradition, I also did a Hafiz* reading and I heard his words of wisdom in relation to my challenges at hand. Hafiz is a great Sufi Master and one of the most beloved poets of Persia. The poem, entitled “Please” read as follows:

We are at

The Nile’s end.

We are carrying particles

From every continent, creature, and age.

It has been raining on the plains

Of our vision for millions of years

And our senses

Are so muddy compared to Yours – dear God,

But I only hear these words from You

Where we are all trying to embrace

The Clear Sky – Ocean,

“Dear one, come.

Please,

My dear ones,

Come.”

I realized that even Hafiz is calling my attention to my essence which is divine and the most significant quality in all humans.

I still have a long way to go but at least now, I have an awareness of a tool to face my journey with.

______

* The Gift, Poems by Hafiz, Translations by Daniel Ladinsky 1999

To be continued…….

The Night at CIBO's

My daughter recently purchased her first home which was a scary process for her, but it was almost as if it was meant to be, the way everything fell into place in every aspect. It was amazing that she loved the house at first sight and she also became best friends with the young lady who was her next door neighbor in a matter of few months.

During this time, my daughter discovered how similar her life has been to her neighbor’s even though our families each came from a different part of the world. For instance, her neighbor’s mother currently lives with her daughter, and I also had planned to live with my daughter as of next month. Realizing the things we had in common, the four of us agreed to have a dinner together during which it became so clear that we have been living parallel lives – meaning that our lives have been similar and comparable in many ways in terms of direction, course, and nature including what we had gone through and the challenges we were facing.

We the mothers have both been divorced, we each have a son and a daughter who are in their 30s and 40s, the girls were both born in November, and the boys were both born in October. Both sons are living down South - one in Florida and one in Louisiana. None of our children are married nor do they have children, and both sons keep a certain distance from their mother and sister for reasons similar to both families.

The Mom told us that at the time of divorce she kneeled in front of her husband and begged him not to leave her, and I shared that at the time of my divorce I was praying to God that he will kneel in front of me and beg me not to leave but he did not.

The Mom told us about her own Mom’s experience talking to a Gypsy and how everything she predicted had come true, and I shared my experience with a Russian lady in Iran who read my life and everything she predicted has come true, except for one prediction that I am still waiting for.

The daughter told us that no fortune teller has ever been able to read her so far and she was wondering about the reason. I searched the issue on the internet and I learned that the quality of our energy, our health condition at the time of reading, and being overworked or tired are among the reasons. 

The Mom told us about how she quit smoking (2 packs a day) with the help of a hypnotist, and I told them about my battle with breast cancer and how lucky I am to be a survivor.

The Mom told us that she lost her parents at the very young age and that her mother had a miscarriage of a daughter before having her. I shared that I was taken away from my mother by my father at the age of two because of their divorce and that my mother also had a miscarriage of a girl before having me.

It was interesting that both Moms liked Merlot wine, and both girls liked pumpkin and banana flavor in everything.

I was so intrigued and mystified by the similarity of our lives that I started to search and read about parallel lives and their significance. At one time I came across an internet commercial about a soon to be published book called “Parallel” which talks about collision of parallel worlds where your past is no more yours, and your future belongs to someone else!

The experience of the night at CIBO’s was very memorable for the four of us - the Moms and the daughters. We hope to involve our boys in this mystery of our parallel lives someday, but more importantly, the love and friendship that has developed during this short period of time is something that we will all cherish for ever. 

To be continued....

UNTIL.....

2013 for me began with a long anticipated surgical procedure in mid-January which required for me to be under anesthesia in excess of five hours. I was very anxious about this, knowing that anxiety and distress of mind is caused by fear of danger. However, I also knew of other surgical procedures that require longer hours of anesthesia from which patients safely recover.

A few days before surgery I opened the book of Hafiz who is one of the great Persian poets of more than seven centuries ago. Many people around the world believe that his words signify reception of spiritual wisdom. He was known as Tongue of the Hidden and Teller of Secrets. The book* that I was using was an English translation of some of his poems. The following short poem entitled “Until” was on the page that I opened and read as follows:

“I think we are frightened every

Moment of our lives

Until we

Know

Him”

I felt a sense of immediate relief and conviction that all is well and my anxiety diminished a great deal. Fascinated by his words of wisdom I continued to read the next pages and I came across another poem entitled “I learned so much” which astounded me. How could he have these thoughts seven or more centuries ago? The poem read as follows:

“I

Have

Learned

So much from God

That I can no longer

Call

Myself

A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,

A Buddha, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself

With me

That I can no longer call myself

A man, a woman, an angel,

Or even pure soul.

Love has

Befriended Hafiz so completely

It has turned to ash

And freed

Me

Of every concept and image

My mind has ever known”

The collection of poems of Hafiz known as Divan is found in the homes of most people in Iran as well as elsewhere in the world, most of whom, learn his poems by heart. My own father was able to recite most of his poems. The tomb of Hafiz is in Shiraz – Iran surrounded by a garden of roses and it is documented that the Mausoleum or Shrine was designed by a French archaeologist and architect.

The tomb of Hafiz

February was the month of physical and emotional healing for me. I had to be patient with the pain and restoration process of my surgery. In addition to medical remedies, I tried to tap into my own inner resources to heal and to feel better. I believe that the healing force is within us and using my professional nursing skills I helped myself to regain health and to become whole again.

At the same time I was planning for the Persian New Year and the spring celebrations in March. I was excited that my son who lives in Louisiana was going to join me and my daughter in Phoenix and we were going to have a wonderful time together. Alas, to my total disappointment he informed us that he is not able to come. My reaction was total devastation and emotional breakdown. I was heart broken and could not find the strength to gain my emotional balance.

I was surprised at myself and alarmed by my own disproportionate desperateness and the way that I reacted. I was feeling helpless. It suddenly dawned on me that I needed to evaluate my own spiritual strengths and to find out more about who I am in order to be able to help myself. I decided to draft a short questionnaire and use it as a self-test. The questions were as follows:

1. Am I relying on others for my happiness?
2. Am I fighting the fact instead of dealing with it?
3. Do I have the ability to accept what I can not change?
4. Am I clinging to what I want?
5. Am I pursuing things outside of myself instead of looking within?
6. Is this the vanity of my ego?

My goal was to see things as they really are in order to learn about my weaknesses in dealing with the situation at hand. The test results were an eye opener for me and I realized that my knowledge and awareness, when it comes to real life situations, is at the theoretical level and I can not apply the knowledge right away. I needed to expand my learning to an applicable level by practicing and doing what I know. I also needed a support group from whom I could get the essential feedback on my path of learning.

I know that I have to work hard and I have a long road ahead of me but I feel that I must do that if I want the joyous life that I deserve.

My journey continues and I am still learning to relax in the present and to welcome, learn from, and make the best of whatever that comes my way. As Hugh Prather once said:

“Your life is not in advance of you. You are not pushing a cart; you are riding one. This means that you may not only trust your life as a whole, you may also trust every instant of it. It really is safe to be happy now”.

_____________________________

* The Gift, Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master, Translated by Daniel Ladinsky, 1999.

 To be continued……