“Only the heart knows the correct answer. Most people think the heart is mushy and sentimental. But it’s not. The heart is intuitive; it’s holistic, it’s contextual, it’s relational. It doesn’t have a win-lose orientation. It taps into the cosmic computer – the field of pure potentiality, pure knowledge, and infinite organizing power – and takes everything into account. At times it may not even seem rational, but the heart has a computing ability that is far more accurate and far more precise than anything within the limits of rational thought.”

- Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

Oh hay! Look! I’ve gone and resurrected this from the dead.

I stopped writing Chrysalis for a long time because, although it did have a positive effect on how I lived my daily life (just having that daily commitment to self-development really changed the way I perceived situations) – it was starting to feel really forced. There were enough things in my life that I ‘had’ to do – I didn’t want my blog to be one of them! But today, I finally feel like it’s the right time to start this up again. Why?

Mainly because I really need to maintain focus at this point of my life.

Coming back to Singapore has been a thoroughly frustrating experience. After just 3 months in New York City, there were so many conveniences and freedoms that I actually got used to. Coming back here I’ve had to face one fact of physical reality – limitation.

Form implies limitation. It’s a fact of the universe and just something we have to deal with. Since coming back I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face with limitation. Everything in Singapore reminds me of my shortcomings and weaknesses – firstly, I find a lot of people to be extremely negative, rude and difficult to deal with, and my interaction with this culture is frustrating at best. I could go on forever (oh believe me, I’m not even kidding about this, I’ve gone on for over a decade at this point), but I learned something important just before I left for America alone for the first time in 2009: harping on what doesn’t work doesn’t actually help me or improve my life.

When you’re in a really bad situation – it’s absolutely imperative that you need to improve your situation.

Life is short – and personally I don’t want to spend my life being stuck in a negative mood. I have to make it clear that I’m not one of those positive-thinking fundamentalists. Recent experiences have taught me that certain negative experiences are important, because you learn from them too and it’s important not to be avoidant about things you’re afraid of. That said, what I’m trying to say is this: Given the choice, I do not want to remain stuck or trapped in a state of being that saps my energy.

I decided at some point in the past that I want to spend most of my life in constructive action. I want to create. Most recently I realized that I want to empower myself.

I’m really tired of letting a country and culture that I find to be extremely negative sap my strength. I want to focus on building up and mainly on feeling good about myself as a person. I love myself and I like to abide in this state of love and appreciation. I know, deep down, that no matter what any human being says, I have a right to live exactly the way that I want to, as long as my intentions are not malicious.

In this sense, living in a place like Singapore can truly be the ultimate test of character. I want to utilize this negative environment to build myself up rather than simply allowing it to break me down as it has been doing my entire life.

3: Courage & Self-awareness (part 2)

I just wrote this spontaneously, and it is the result of focussing on courage and self-awareness this week:

I want to find something that I can truly devote my life to. It’s a constant search I suppose. I have been searching unconsciously for my whole life and consciously for years and years now. For now, photography is the closest thing that I can find and I know I can’t keep waiting until the circumstances are perfect to start working. You just have to start working and the circumstances will arrange themselves to something suitable.

My life is now officially on autopilot. By this I mean that:

1. Social convention is out the window. So is the calendar.

I’ve tried hard to keep some kind of formal discipline or whatever for the last few months to see if it would work, but now I’m back to being more sensitive and in-tune with how I feel (physical, mental, emotional) and just going with that instead of plodding along like a machine. I am not a machine. I am a human being – I am far more sensitive, intelligent, intuitive and perceptive than a machine could ever be. Why is it that we value rote repetition and predictable results when we are capable of sheer magic? We may ‘fail’ to meet projected targets one day, but the next we more than make up for it by shooting far beyond previous expectations.

2. I am literally not planning anymore.

I know what I have to do and I do it. I will obey basic cues and nudges from life, but ultimately I’m not going to force my future into some pre-conceived mould of what happiness ‘should be’. Because I’ve noticed that oftentimes I get exactly what I want but when I get there I realize that although my ideas have come to fruition, what I’m experiencing is an outmoded idea of happiness. Ideas of happiness don’t necesssarily equate to true happiness… Sometimes the most unexpected and surprising things happen when you just open your heart a little more than you usually do and have a little more trust in life’s momentum and ability to carry you and take care of you. You get way more than you bargained for.

3. The only things I am making a commitment to at this moment are love and gratitude.

I am choosing to be in a constant state of gratitude. I like how it feels – it makes me feel really connected with all of life. I am choosing to count my blessings. New York City is so unlike Singapore because it is like a really imperfect machine. The subway is old and seems like it’s falling apart and there is so much chaos in this society (relative to modern Singapore which has a distinct absence of chaos or dirt). Yet NYC is one of the most prosperous cities in the world – there is so much talent and so many great ideas here.

Life doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to work out (and it ‘works out’ when you’re happy with it). Life isn’t all about mathematical precision (isn’t it interesting that most ‘perfect’ shapes in mathematics are actually never actually found in nature?) and it’s not always shiny and clean. It’s messy and organic and unpredictable and illogical and dirty and rough around the edges. But it is warm and open, constantly growing and full of love and joy and being. There is so much love around – just not in the exact form that we want it to be in. I want to accept and appreciate love and beauty in all their forms. I want to tune myself into this frequency and inhabit this for as long as I am alive. I like feeling this way and I like the way the world looks when I am grateful, open and loving. I am making the commitment to look at what works and to notice every single little beautiful, funny or cute thing in my daily reality.

3: Courage & Self-awareness (part 1)

“There is nothing that you are not able to overcome and transform into the light of that which you wish to create.”
- @ShipsofSong

“But acting with beauty and courage doesn’t always mean you win.  It just means that you can still look at yourself in the mirror without cringing.”
- helios137.livejournal.com

Wrap-up of 2: Joy & Acceptance

The interesting thing I’ve been noticing about this project is that I reap the benefits of it mostly towards the end of the week or in the week following. For example, last week I found it a lot easier to focus on Giving & Gratitude – those things were still on my mind. I had a lot of difficulty with Joy & Acceptance in the beginning of the week (it was starting to feel like I was focussing on Stress & Resistance srsly) but towards the end, everything just sort of flowed and came a lot easier and more naturally.

I always get to a point where I get frustrated and angry, and it seems either forced or silly trying to keep up with this. But usually it’s just after I get past that point that things start to get easy. By the end of the week it was easier to enjoy the things I had to do.

Two weeks ago I went into the weekend feeling great and thinking that I made a lot of progress that week. Last Friday I felt kind of awful like I made no progress at all, and today I feel good again – like I’ve made major progress in the past week. Increasingly, I’m beginning to feel that this is just life – there are on periods and there are off periods. There are times I feel great and times I just want to be quiet and alone. For some reason I favour one state of being over the other – and I think that attachment to certain states is probably what causes dissatisfaction when perhaps no one state is preferable to another. I think about this and just let things be. Increasingly, I just enjoy the ride and I find that life surprises me more and more and gets a lot easier to deal with.

3: Courage & Self-awareness

I want the courage to:

• go for what I want and what I think will make me happy
• express myself freely – regardless of whether others will like what I say or not
• live the life that I want, regardless of others’ expectations
• be absolutely free of unnecessary social pressures
• give truly and freely – without the constant worry about compensation
• be who I am – completely unapologetically and unself-consciously

I’m interested in creating a life for myself that I love, and this requires courage because I find myself constantly having to break new ground. There is definitely fear when you’re breaking from everything you once knew and learning to think for yourself, when familiarity ceases to exist and you constantly find yourself out of your comfort zone… However the interesting thing is that you also find things like courage and joy and great love. And you’re guaranteed to grow like never before.

Regarding self-awareness, the first thing I want to do this week is to bring back my meditation practice. I don’t meditate for very long stretches of time, but the regularity of the practice (twice a day, immediately upon waking and just before bed) is something that really grounds me and helps me when I’m going through periods of great change. I love change because I love the feeling of growth, but some changes can be incredibly difficult to deal with. I feel that meditation really helps this process – probably in ways that I can’t really understand! All I know is that it works really well for me and I usually recommend it to people.

Reading this definition of self-awareness as opposed to self-consciousness is what started me thinking about the topic:

“Self -awareness is really about an internal locus of control. It is making decisions and trusting your own intuition. Self-consciousness very often is defined as having an unusually high focus on what others think of you. People who are self-conscious very often have difficulty in making decisions and taking actions. They are prone to a great deal of guilt and shame – based behaviors Consequently, self-awareness is simply a healthier approach to dealing with issues. Remember, you are not your thoughts , feelings, or experiences; you are the awareness of each of those.”
- from this excellent article on selfcounseling.com

I want to remember and be aware that I am not this body, but the power that animates this body. The awareness that moves it. I am not the thoughts but the thinker. I want to learn how to use my mind constructively, and perhaps more importantly – I don’t always want to be in my mind. There is so much more to life than just mind. Even though I love using my mind to read, consider and process things, I really want to experience life fully and do other things that make me feel good.

I’m going to stick with these two topics till this Sunday – a little longer than a week, but I feel like I really want a good amount of time to focus on courage & self-awareness because they are so important to me at this point in time. I will write as frequently as I can – I hope to discover something new every day.

Joy & Acceptance (Part 2)

An online friend of mine, James, shared these two wonderful excerpts with me. First:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame,
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. Nothing is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

I love the line ‘Just keep going. Nothing is final.’ – it makes it easier to accept what I cannot understand and more importantly, to keep moving. Not frantically or out of fear, but to just keep watching as things unfold. Nothing is final – my evaluation of the past keeps constantly changing with whatever new understanding I gain in the present, and the present moment itself keeps changing.

Then there’s this:

“Pain in life is inevitable but suffering is not. Pain is what the world does to you, suffering is what you do to yourself. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”
- a commentary on the Noble Eightfold Path

I definitely agree with this. I’m learning to accept pain and negative thoughts as inevitable but most importantly I’m learning to let them go.

And I was just reading an excerpt from Rob Brezny’s ‘Pronoia’, when this really stood out to me:

“So I’m curious, my fellow creators. Since you and I are in charge of making a New Earth — not just breaking down the dying culture — where do we begin? What stories do we want at the heart of our experiments? What questions will be our oracles?

Here’s what I say: In the New Earth we’re creating, we will ridicule the cult of doom and gloom, and embrace the cause of zoom and boom. We will laugh at the stupidity of evil and hate; we will summon the brilliance to praise and create.

No matter how upside down it all may appear, we will have no fear, because we know this big secret: All of creation is conspiring to shower us with blessings. Life is crazily in love with us — brazenly and innocently in love with us.

The universe always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.”

Joy & Acceptance (Part 1)

“I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me.  It is a splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
- G.B. Shaw (via this excellent article by Jonathan Fields)

My definition of joy is high activity – sometimes classified as ‘hard work’. I don’t like the term ‘hard work’ however, because it implies that you’re forcing yourself to do something. I think work should be  a natural outpouring of wanting to be fully involved and engaged in life. Yes, it is hard sometimes – like everything else in life.

A brief Twitter exchange with @JoshuaGuffey the other night was pretty illuminating – he mentioned that according to Shinzen Young ”suffering = resistance TIMES pain”.

I accept the present moment as it is – I see no need to change it. However unpleasant the emotion I am experiencing is, I choose to observe it, to be with it and to understand it. Sometimes this understanding only comes much later. Acceptance is easier now that I have more faith in life itself and it’s ability to support me. For a long time I believed that I had to fight it to get what I want. No longer. I now try to remember that everything happens in its own time. I try to have patience.

So, I’ve been a lot less stressed out this week than I was last week. Work was a lot easier this week and I feel like I’m actually making progress and finally getting up to speed with things.

Wrap-up of 1: Gratitude & Giving

I feel like I’ve learned to see the world more in terms of how I can add to it as opposed to my conditioned thought patterns of what I can take. In one of the first few posts I made, someone on Facebook commented that it’s really the focus on taking which leads us to feeling drained. I have to say that I agree with this. I think about giving now, and how good it makes me feel – especially how it makes me feel more connected to others. The fear of giving more than I can doesn’t seem to be grounded in reality.

I also always pause to enjoy whatever is around me – no matter how small. Even if it’s just the fact that I love this neighbourhood that I’m currently staying in, or the fact that trees in winter are beautiful.

This week: Joy & Acceptance

I want to experience joy in everything that I do (especially work!). I want to enjoy the process of things rather than always be focussed on the result. I want to enjoy life as I’m living it and not just postpone all my enjoyment for the future. I want to be inspired here and now.

I also want to be able to accept the events and circumstances that I cannot change. I’m tired of fighting against life and it’s time now to just go with the flow and have faith in the momentum that I’ve built up – even if what’s going on in the moment is unpleasant. Not everything is within my control anyway, and I want to let go of always having such a strong expectation for the world to make sense or to conform to thinking and perception. The world is as it is and it’s not always exactly what I want it to be. Maybe if I stop and listen I can gain new understanding, instead of constantly forging ahead.

I really want to live fully – in full appreciation of everything as it is around me.

Gratitude & Giving (part 5)

Today I’ve been feeling rather split in half. Part of me is under extreme pressure and the other part is ready to just fly free – to fly completely free like never before. I wonder if breakthroughs generally come from feeling so caught between two huge, opposing influences. I hope so, because I feel like I’m on the precipice of something major.

This focus on personal development has slowed my thought process down quite a lot – I’m more aware of my thoughts now, which is sometimes scary because I realize I’m repeatedly thinking a lot of things that are not good or that downright make me feel bad. Every time I encounter such a thought, I’m reminded of something Louise L. Hay keeps repeating in her excellent book You Can Heal Your Life: “It’s only a thought, and thoughts can be changed.” And when your thoughts change, so does your life.

My resolve is stronger, I think, also because I’m in a situation where I really have no choice but to make it past a major blockage that has been around for quite a while now. I know that I will get through this no matter how difficult it is. I also keep reminding myself that whatever discomfort I experience is only temporary.

Being grateful now also encompasses self-love and self-appreciation. I keep noticing and affirming the positive changes in myself. I also try to accept my negative traits – naturally, being in this world we can’t be perfect. I don’t want to even try to be perfect anymore because it’s such a huge waste of time. I just want to be. Maybe I am approaching being able to finally really love myself – because I see that this love is not a result of being perfect or being outstanding. It’s just a simple caring for myself, seeing the good and fully accepting the bad. Again I’m reminded of Louise L. Hay as she mentions that every single person on this planet deals with self-hatred in some form or another.

Found this quote on a MetroCard the other night:

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
- Arthur Schopenhauer

I do feel that true gratitude is simply being able to see the world as it truly is – a miracle.

Gratitude & Giving (part 4)

Honestly, I feel like it’s a pretty huge jump in thinking and acting to shift one’s focus from caring only about taking what I need from the world to focussing on what I’m adding to it. It felt really, really difficult the first half of the week but now that I’m in the second half it’s getting better. Today I realized there was a certain joy in just participating and giving unconditionally – just to be in that flow of energy rather than constantly feeling blocked.

Everything flowed better today, I felt more creative and more inspired and I’m sure that this has something to do with shifting my focus.

I feel like I’m undoing a lot of subconscious patterning that I have no use for anymore (namely the constant focus on lack and scarcity). As a result I’m finally feeling substantially less pressured and stressed out today than I have been the first few days that I started this project.