Get Real ~ a message from Alan Cohen

Get Real ~ a message from Alan Cohen

Saturday, 1 November, 2014  (posted 18 December, 2014)

Sitting backstage at a network television studio in a large metropolitan city, I waited to go on the air for an interview. My segment was scheduled right after the noon news broadcast, which began with a gory account of a murder, then a rape, then war footage, followed by bad economic news and a political scandal.  I began to feel depressed, but consoled myself that the broadcast would get to more positive reports. It didn’t. The entire fifteen minutes was filled with gloom and doom, nothing anyone in his right mind would want to get up in the morning and face.  Eventually I just had to laugh. The news was beyond depressing. It was ridiculous. It was unbelievable. Finally, after the closing sortie of auto accidents and snarled traffic, the broadcaster announced, “. . .and now for a great new book by an author who is going to tell you how to live a happy life.”


The camera turned to me.


Suddenly I became Neo in the movie The Matrix, in which wizard Morpheus extends two open hands, a red pill in one palm and a blue pill in the other. If Neo ingests the red pill, he will awaken to his true self and the real world. If he takes the blue pill, he will remain in a familiar but oppressive world of illusions.


I sat up straight and reached for the red pill. I told the audience that love is our birthright and fear the imposter. I took a stand for living authentically in a world consumed by illusions. I told the viewers that they deserved better than the world showed them, and they held power over their lives regardless of the insanity around them.  It was the only news I knew how to broadcast.


After the program, the anchor, a highly-respected lifetime journalist, took me aside and told me, “I agree with you completely. I get depressed coming to this job. There has to be more to life than the world we are telling people there is.”


The reality we have been shown by the media and other seemingly authoritative institutions has been twisted into the polar opposite of truth, championed by people more committed to bondage than freedom. You have likely told someone about a valued vision of yours, to which he or she responded, “Get real!”  Suddenly your excitement was reduced to ashes and you either gave up your quest or you had to once again build up the courage and momentum to forge ahead. Take care to share your sacred visions with people who will empower you, not attempt to gobble your hopes in the shredder of doubt. If you have even one or two good friends who understand you and believe in you, that is sufficient. And if it seems that no one understands or supports you, Higher Power has your back. Even when you do not have faith in yourself, God has faith in you.


When most people say, “Get real,” they mean, “Get small. Get limited. Get stuck. I am trapped in my little fear-bound world, and your expansive vision is threatening to me. So I demand that you grovel in the mud with me. How dare you rock my tiny world with greater possibilities!” The premise is that success and happiness are unattainable illusions, while struggle and suffering are realities we must adjust to and live with. 


Most planetary game-changers were told, “Get real.” They were branded insane, shamed, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The Catholic Church sentenced Galileo to house arrest for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun. Soon afterward Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno proposed that the sun was a star and that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings. Giordano was convicted of heresy and burned at the stake. When the judges issued his death decree he told them, “Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.” Jonathan Swift later noted, “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him." Einstein echoed, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Every person is potentially great. Are you willing to step into your greatness, claim it, and live it?


The holiday season offers you many opportunities to get real in the presence of people who fear to get real themselves, and call you to play small with them. Regard their resistance as a call for love and an invitation for you to be authentic. When you stand for truth in the presence of illusion, you break the illusion for yourself and for everyone who subscribes to it. Your mission is to remain alive in a world preoccupied with death; to walk tall when others are compromising their integrity; to be who you are while others have forgotten who they are.


Reality is not for sissies. To live authentically in a world steeped in illusion is the gift of lifetime, spreading light in ripples from your own life to the lives of everyone you touch.




© 2014 Alan Cohen Publications - http://www.alancohen.com - Alan Cohen is the author of many popular inspirational books, including the just-released Enough Already: The Power of Radical Contentment. For more information about Alan’s other books and free daily inspirational quotes via email, visit www.alancohen.com, email info@alancohen.com, or phone 1 808 572-0001.

Unlearning Self-Loathing That’s Passed Down Through Generations By Vironika Tugaleva | Tiny Buddha

Woman Alone at Night


Unlearning Self-Loathing That’s Passed Down Through GenerationsBy Vironika Tugaleva | Tiny Buddha


“Embrace and love your body. It is the most amazing thing you will ever own.” ~Unknown


The first time I made myself throw up to feel skinny, I was five years old. My grandmother still loves to tell this story—she thinks it’s funny.


The story goes like this: I tell my grandmother my stomach feels sick. She rubs my belly. I tell her it still hurts. She asks me if I want to try the “potion.” I say, “Yes.”


The “potion,” as I realized in an unrelated context in my early twenties, was syrup of Ipecac—a strong vomit inducer. I should mention this was back in the Ukraine. My grandmother uses no such potion now and neither does most of the populace—I hope.


So, there I go drinking a whole glass. I vomit. Ten minutes later, I’m in front of the mirror, hiking up my dress to look at my stomach, saying, “Don’t I look pretty? Don’t I look thin?”


My grandmother almost rolls onto the floor laughing. She’s laughing because this little kid pulled the wool over her eyes, because my stomach didn’t really hurt. Because I’d conned her.


How could this woman, who’s from the old country, who had to share a loaf of bread with nine of her siblings, possibly understand the reasoning or the danger of throwing up your food on purpose?


Fast forward ten years, I’ve got a full blown eating disorder. I just wonder what my grandmother would have said if she’d have walked in on me, sitting on my bedroom floor, at age fifteen, surfing a pro-mia website, shoving a salt-covered wooden spoon down my throat to see if it made me gag easier.


Never in a million years would she imagine what I’d been doing and why.


My mother, however, is a different story. And so am I.


I remember, when I was about four, my mom dropping me off on my grandmother’s step warning her not to feed me too much. That would have been the worst thing—if I gained weight. My mother took many precautions to make sure this did not happen.


Of course, my grandmother didn’t listen.


And so, the precautions turned to problems. My mother’s worst fear had become a reality.


I still remember the fury with which she scolded me when she found stashed food in my room, the anger in her eyes as she tried grabbed onto my fat and my senses, trying desperately to make me understand—she was trying to help me.


No one wants a fat girl.


I remember watching her go on and off diets. I remember watching from around the corner as she put on her makeup, her creams, her mask. I remember the way she’d talk about herself as if she were an old house that she was trying to renovate, although the wood had rotten and fallen through the cracks.


I found out later much later that, although my one grandmother wouldn’t know a thing about that kind of thinking, my late grandmother, my mom’s mom, was like my mother and me. She had learned the ways of self-loathing.


It was like something happened to the women on my mom’s side of the family that didn’t happen to my dad’s side, like a program had been downloaded into our heads that said: “No one likes a fat, ugly girl, and you are one.”


In her TED talk about lexicography, Erin McKean mentions something she calls “The Ham Butt Problem.”


The Ham Butt Problem goes something like this: a woman’s cooking a ham for her family and she cuts a huge piece of butt off and throws it out. Her son sees her doing it and asks, “Why do you do that?” She answers, “Well, I don’t know, I guess because my mother always did it this way.”


So, woman calls her mother and asks her, “Mom, why’d you cut the butt off the ham when you made it?” The mother says, “Well, I don’t know, my mother did it this way.” So, both women, full of curiosity now, call grandma and ask her the same question.


Grandma laughs and says, “My pan was too small.”


And so, I learned to put on makeup, fret over my blemishes, buy creams for my face, creams for my thighs, and creams for my arms.


I learned to go on and off diets. I learned to feel ugly all the time, except when I’d put on my mask and protect myself from my horrible, natural appearance. I did what I saw done. I cut the butt off my ham because my mother cut the butt off hers.


By the time I was twenty-three, I had dyed hair, dyed eyebrows, and a whole closet full of shape-altering clothes. I had problems with addiction, co-dependent relationships, anxiety, and self-hatred so serious that it ended me up hearing voices and feeling suicidal.


Cutting the butt off my ham almost killed me.


As I picked up the broken pieces of my life, trying to put them back together, I realized that everything was too broken to glue back together. I had to start over.


And as I looked at those broken pieces lying there, I realized suddenly that all of the pain and self-destruction I had brewed in my life for almost twenty years had the same source. It was that program—that self-loathing thinking that I’d inherited from at least two generations.


As I learned to see myself in a different light, I realized the pure ignorance of that kind of thinking. How ungrateful is it to say that nature doesn’t know how to make beauty? Doesn’t nature make sunsets and rainbows and beaches? Nature made me. How could I say that was ugly? Who was I to judge?


And so, I learned to fall deeply in love with my reflections, not because of my flaws and not despite them, but because this body is a gift, because beauty is the signature of all living thing, because I am a tiny piece of the universe; how can that not be beautiful?


The more I’ve liberated myself from this programming, the more I’ve looked around at the women in my generation and felt a deep yearning to heal their pain.


They, too, are carrying the burdens of this cultural programming on their shoulders, never realizing that they’re only suffering because they were taught to suffer. There is no good reason to hate our bodies, no matter how they look.


There is no reason to spend our lives in this kind of desperate, self-hating pain.


I think that self-acceptance is the modern-day revolution, because self-loathing is modern-day oppression. I honestly believe that each person who realizes his or her own beauty changes the world.


I already know I’ve changed the world. I know because, one day, I’ll have a daughter who will watch me looking at myself in the mirror. And when she spies on me from behind the corner, as I once spied on my mother, she will not learn to be upset at her backside and to nitpick at her blemishes. She’ll learn to smile, look in her eyes, and greet her best friend.


And that, more than anything else, is what really makes a difference.


~~~
Woman by the sea image via Shutterstock
Avatar of Vironika Tugaleva
About Vironika Tugaleva


Vironika is a people lover, inspirational speaker, reformed cynic, coach, and bestselling author of the award-winning book The Love Mindset. Her work helps people develop self-awareness, cultivate peace of mind, and discover the importance of knowing, loving, and understanding themselves. You’re invited to read more about Vironika and get a free sneak preview of The Love Mindset.

Sensory overwhelm | Dana Mrkich - Evolution Revolution

Sensory overwhelm | Dana Mrkich - Evolution Revolution

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

           Sensory overwhelm. Those are just two of the many words I could use to describe the past few weeks. You may have found yourself consciously, or subconsciously, unplugging from as much of the world as possible (I definitely have been!) with less time on social media, more time at home or wanting to be at home while elsewhere, and a general feeling of being in hibernation/inner retreat mode. So many people have been sick with colds and flu’s, enforcing rest time where perhaps you wouldn’t have otherwise taken the opportunity.                

           The world is so loud right now, and is getting louder in every possible way. You might feel as if one minute we were sitting in a dimly lit room with candles and mood music, and the next someone came along, switched on all the lights to high beam, threw on some hardcore heavy metal music and ramped it to full volume.

Everyone has an opinion on everything, and is emotionally invested in those opinions. This isn’t a bad thing – it’s better than everyone being in apathy – and lord knows everyone has been told for years “speak your truth!”, and  “find your voice!” but the current manifestation of it is akin to having a room full of television sets all playing different channels at volume.

 

Whether as the one expressing or receiving a message, it is usually the case that we are expressing in that moment, or seeing in that moment, only one side of what is always a four sided box.  Yet many of us lately are boxing others, or being boxed, based on that one expression.  It feels like no-one can say or do anything without someone taking offence.  It’s as if someone has sprinkled ‘judgement’ dust in the air!

Mention being centred, and someone will jump on you saying it’s not good to repress your feelings. Talk about feeling your frustration, and you’ll receive a lecture on rising above your feelings.  Voice support for a particular plight, and there’ll be someone saying but what about this plight and that one? I caught myself having some ‘seeing only one side of the box’ moments, and it was unpleasantly uncomfortable emotionally when I realised how in that moment I was so focused on one aspect of an issue that it blinded me temporarily to the many other sides.

I was shocked because I’ve always been all about seeing all the sides (which has made for a lifetime of taking forever to make a decision!). I have not liked being judged or boxed, or to have someone being so committed to their stance that they refuse to see where someone else is coming from. That moment of being temporarily blinded to the other sides of the box, allowed me to see in a clearer way than ever how easy it is to be blinded, and to be Judgy McJudgy Pants. If you have found yourself going into judgement or being triggered by things, try to take a moment to ask yourself: okay, what sides of the box may I not be seeing here?

As the light intensifies on this planet, everything intensifies. Love and gratitude take on a whole new level, yet anything still in our shadow along with any emotions we feel or are holding, are also amplified.  So even these judgy moments, whether we’re expressing them or are being the recipients of them, are serving a purpose in the sense that they are shining a light onto other sides of the box – ultimately helping us own more of our wholeness as individuals and as a collective.  However, it takes awareness to see these moments this way. What we are instead seeing a lot of is people responding to this energy with anger, hurt, violence, depression or such overwhelm that they feel like checking out. 

The light that is here, and within you, is facilitating a massive transformation for everyone and everything on this planet, and that is a good thing but not an easy thing.  Be discerning with how you choose to participate in the current demolition site/renovation process that is our current personal and global reality. There is no right or wrong, better or worse way. Everyone has a different role to play, and your role may change from one day to the next. A burst of motivated action may give way to weeks spent hiding out from the world, only to re-emerge revitalized and refreshed. Try not to judge yourself, or others, during this process.  Everyone is at a different stage, and even that is too ‘linear’ a way to look at things suggesting some are ‘ahead’ while others are ‘behind’.  The truth is, almost all of us are ‘ahead’ in some ways yet still awakening when it comes to certain aspects within us or certain aspects of reality.

Take good care of yourself right now.  Eat, drink and do nourishing things for yourself. If the external is too noisy, take time out. For the sake of our emotional and mental health, many of us are needing right now to unplug from the old reality group consciousness, and that can leave you feeling like you are hanging out in a void, connected to nothing and no-one.  You are not in a void, but yes it feels like one because we are not used to not being attached to what was a very dense reality. 

Freedom can feel strange. It can bring up grief, and feelings of betrayal: like you are betraying those still in the old reality if you ‘unplug’. ‘Unplugging’ doesn’t mean total disconnection from global goings on. Quite to the contrary, from a clear, centred ‘unplugged from the drama/plugged into your centre/source energy’ space, you will naturally feel into things you can do be it sending a prayer of love and peace, making certain shopping or lifestyle decisions that support a healthy global community or any one of a million other ways you can use your energy for good.

You may feel you have been betrayed as the world around you doesn’t match what you thought it would look like by now. I have moments of feeling like that too, but at the end of the day when you go into your heart, and you ask your own soul: “Why are we all here? Where is all this leading?” you will receive words, guidance, a feeling or visuals to help you understand, and encourage you to keep moving forward. Don’t take my word for it, or anyone else’s, otherwise you will have nothing to hold onto in those moments when you feel disillusioned. It is so important for you to connect with your own heart, your own centre, and your own inner voice of wisdom and guidance.

All this can be summarised in just a few words really:

Love. Be in it. Give it to yourself and others. Receive it. 

That’s all.

© Dana Mrkich 2014

www.danamrkich.com