Overcoming suffering

by Karen Lang, posted in Uncategorized

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

Why is it that suffering is our greatest motivation to change?  When we get the call from our doctor to tell us we have cancer, or told that we have been made Redundant or our  husband of 30 years, decides to leave us.

Suffering blesses us with a willingness to let go of the ways in which we normally react.  When all the ways we have learnt over the years to deal with stress, no longer works, it causes us to let got of whatever it is that we have been clinging to, and do things differently.

It takes courage to change the way we have lived before suffering came along.  You may not be able to change the diagnosis, or divorce or the drama, but you can change your perception and experience through this suffering.

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.” –  Paul Coelho

People used to say to me after losing our son Nathan “You have every right to stay in a place of pain or depression, for what happened to you is devastating.”  But what I recognised, as many do when they are suffering, is that staying in that deep place of pain doesn’t help or change your situation.

When we react to suffering in our usual way and it doesn’t work, we have to go to a deeper place within ourselves and discover who we really are, rather than who we are in this tragedy.  I questioned everything about my life after Nathan died, my entire identity was taken from me and in order to survive, I needed to discover, who I would become through this suffering.

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” – Kahlil Gibran

How do you find this deeper place?  You must become still in your pain.  Practicing meditation and Yoga, will take you beyond the chatter and the chaos of your emotions and will allow you to witness your feelings and slowly let them go.

Each day is a lifelong practice of decision-making and creating.  Only you, can make this decision to go deeper.  By accepting your situation overtime without judgement, you will start to feel stronger, and understand your true nature and potential.

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what my heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.” – Charles Dickens

Make Changes today

by Karen Lang, posted in Uncategorized

“To make a change, you must have a new thought.  To cement the change, you must take action.” Keith J. Cunningham

Our ego creates stories to “convince us that we cannot be at peace now or cannot be fully ourself now … The ego says: Maybe at some point in the future I can be at peace — if this, that, or the other happens, or I obtain this or become that. Or it says: I can never be at peace because of something that has happened to me in the past.”

When we become aware of our thought patterns and take responsibility to create them differently, we can slowly begin to see the changes that will alter our destiny.

Although that seems easy enough, because we are addicted to our identity, we will struggle to convince our ego that this new thought pattern will benefit our future.  Your ego will fight you on every level, convincing you, that your life is comfortable, convincing you, that stepping out of this identity is too difficult when you are familiar with the outcome to every situation.

“You have to wake up and believe that change needs to happen in your life; there are old wounds directing our lives in destructive ways, and it is only by facing and releasing these old patterns that we can live with greater freedom and joy. To not work on these old wounds and simply be with the moment as it is, is not acceptance … it’s delusion. There is work to do more than to simply “surrender to what is.”  Eckhart Tolle

“The acceptance of suffering is a journey into death. Facing deep suffering, allowing it to be, taking your attention into it, is to enter death consciously. When you have died this death, you realize that there is no death, and there is nothing to fear. Only the ego dies.” – Eckhart Tolle

When we allow our ego identity to die, we can then move forward into our true self and see how we have limited ourselves on this journey.  Taking the first step is always the hardest.

Write down the areas in your life you would like to see change.  Become aware of your thoughts and how they teach you to stay in this old identity.  Learn to be still with these thoughts as they come in, and work on changing them to positive loving ones.

Challenge yourself to let go in one area of your life.  Practice love and acceptance for yourself.  Acceptance of ourselves and others, frees us to make the right decisions in life, allowing better outcomes.

Feed your soul with non-judgment, with love and with acceptance…this is what will starve the Ego, this is what will let GO of the EGO.

Unravelling Anxiety

by Karen Lang, posted in Uncategorized

“It has been said that our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of it’s sorrow, but only empties today of it’s strength.” – Charles Spurgeon

For those of us who have experienced anxiety, you will know, it is not a feeling you wish to keep.

Family and friends often tell you “Don’t worry so much” or “Things will work out” and as helpful as these words seem, they don’t help you feel less anxious.  What I have found is that it’s much more useful to own your anxiety – to observe its patterns, to look at what might be setting it off, and then to find ways to work with it.

Anxiety can be a powerful teacher.  It can show you where you’re hiding your stress or holding unprocessed emotions.  It might even remind you that there’s something you need to take care of.  Most important, anxiety often signals the need for growth or for some inner shift.

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems” – Epitetus

Anxiety is our body’s way to warn us that something isn’t balanced in our life, and if we ignore the early signs, it can lead to very scary anxiety attacks or feelings of isolation and fear.  When the anxiety becomes acute, the intense activity in your brain can make it difficult to think creatively, much less change the situation you are in.

Most anxiety comes from childhood conditioning where you may have felt powerless to cope and often begins at a time when you may not have felt safe to acknowledge your anxiousness.

“Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far.” – Jodi Picoult

It’s only when you are willing to bring consciousness to your anxiety, to pay attention to the bodily sensations it brings, the thoughts that go along with it, and the situations that trigger it, that you can begin to learn from it.  We have the power to take control and understand anxiety and to embrace fear.

Become aware of how you feel when the anxiousness comes over you.  What part of you tightens when you feel nervous? Note what kind of mental dialogue you are having with yourself during this attack.

When you face your anxiety head first and not with fear, you will find that your anxiety is usually based on lies that you have told yourself over-time.  No-one I know has died of an anxiety attack and even though some attacks end up in the hospital, it is always because they thought they were going to die.

Yoga, breathing exercises and meditation are all wonderful techniques in helping us release built up emotion and fear.  When you use feelings of anxiety as a signal to let go, you begin to discover ways to free this energy from our mind and from old emotional patterning.

“Why do anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering”.  – Eckhart Tolle

So learn to be present and aware.  Fear not of the future, but rather that you are not living fully in this moment.

Mending your heart

by Karen Lang, posted in Understanding and Listening to ourselves

Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi

Mending the heart so that it is able to love fully is the basis of all healing.

We all need love as the essential core of our lives, and if painful wounds have closed the heart off from receiving love, it is important to revive it.

If you can learn to love yourself and all the flaws, you can love other people so much better. And that makes you so happy.  – Kristin Chenoweth

Developing compassion for ourselves and others who are not able to love us in the way we desire is the awareness of an awakened heart.  It is not easy to forgive and let go of hurt and rejection.

If we feel a need to limit love by placing conditions on it and controlling the way in which it comes to us, we will never know the complete experience of deep love.  When we keep our past hurts locked inside, we block energy coming in and out.  Until we unblock this pain, we will continue to limit this freedom of love to ourselves and others.

It’s no secret that we tend to look for flaws within ourselves and that we’re our own worst critics. We always find something that we don’t like and even catch ourselves saying, “I’m not good enough, not beautiful enough, not smart enough.”   Become aware of these thoughts coming in and make an effort each day to turn them into positive thoughts.

“I am my own biggest critic. Before anyone else has criticized me, I have already criticized myself. But for the rest of my life, I am going to be with me and I don’t want to spend my life with someone who is always critical. So I am going to stop being my own critic. It’s high time that I accept all the great things about me.”- C JoyBell

Forgiving and letting go of our rigid beliefs, opens our hearts and allows joy, peace and love to fully enter our life.  When we surrender our past, we start to adopt a new thought process and we allow the ultimate reality to carry us through.

Good relationships nourish us and feed us.  They teach us how valuable love is in our lives and ask that we honor those who bring us joy, honesty and trust.

“The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.” –  Steve Maraboli

A relaxation practice

by Karen Lang, posted in Uncategorized

“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” -Amit Ray

Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed.  Sit comfortably.  Close your eyes and alow yourself to relax by taking three deep breaths in and letting go of all tension as you exhale slowly with long, slow outbreaths.

Continue breathing deeply and let your breath wash right through you as you see in your mind’s eye, a path leading down to a beach.

Feel the warmth of the path underfoot and feel your body sigh as you step onto the beach and walk onto the warm sand.

See the deep blue water of the ocean stretched out before you and the bright blue of the sky.  The sun is shining and it feels good to be there.

Now imagine you are sitting on the beach gazing out at the vastness of the ocean and if you have had thoughts of anxiety or worry, imagine you are rolling them all into a ball.  Now throw the ball into the water and watch your thoughts and anxiety being carried out to sea.

As they vanish, feel at peace and enjoy lazing on the beach a little longer.

When you feel ready, take one more deep breath and see yourself walking back along the path.  Feel peace and calm come over you and open your eyes.

Making time for meditation and breathing each day, will allow clarity in your life amongst the noise and busyness.  It will give you peace to make the right decisions in life and lead you on a better journey.

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub. – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross