360 degrees of freedom

This is my collage for my affirmation board the final step in the exercise Carla set this week.

See my previous posting today for the affirmations themselves.

Carla called this exercise Your Zen Suitcase™ - I called it Zen Luggage saying I objected to the trademark - but then I realised the real reason why... on March 5th (the day before Carla started her "Wings 4 You Coaching" blog) Jim and I had been to the zoo. In the centre of the collage, carrying, not a suitcase but a rucksack, and acting as my sherpa, is Jim at the zoo. He is proving that his wingspan is wide though not quite as wide as the biggest birds - behind his head the sign says "Spread Your Wings" - his head is covering the Y....

I am glad I spotted this synchronicity!

Jim's support is one of the things I'd like to acknowledge and affirm, something that I value very much. I'm very glad that he is in my life.

I've also included: chocolate, a Zen zafu with art supplies on it and a magnet, someone else's lucky old shoe, a photo taken using a fisheye, a faceted bead that creates another effect, a completed crossword (mostly done by Jim!), a camera and a few other things that seemed appropriate.

P.S. This is my 360th post on this blog - hence the title of this post.

Looking for Answers

On Monday I didn't get all that far with Carla's exercise so I'm having another go now. Here's a magically bubbling mug of cocoa for you whilst I delve into my mind once more.

Metaphors to make more literal, the ones that I feel apply to my life right now:

Tornado, Dragon, Knight, Stranger, Fate

Tornado - air that spins with great force

Air is often said to be the element of the talker, the intellect, the analytical. And I can definitely see how a tornado that spins, but within which I can find a still centre is my mind. When it spins and I'm not in the centre I'm thrown all over the place! When I'm in the still centre I can stay calm no matter what.

Qualities: strong , still-centred, able to talk to anyone

Affirmations:

I am very good at talking to strangers.
I have a calm centre.
I can listen well too.
My mind is one of my strengths.
Words have power.

Dragon - mythical, powerful, cold blooded, fire-breathing, gold-hoarding, flying, cave-dwelling riddler

Well that expansion of dragon covers all the elements and more... I remember reading that we all have a lizard brain... I see this as an instinctive aspect. Intuitive too. I used to draw pictures of a dragon called Boot. And I also have an old boot charm that I sometimes wear. Its meant to be lucky I think though I've no idea why. On the hoarding, I prefer to hoard artist supplies to gold.

I am intuitive.
I am one of the most complex animals on this planet; a human!
I am creative.
I have the great good fortune to own many artist supplies.
I have ancient roots.

Knight - crusader, armour-plated, defensive, aggressive fighter

I see this as my apparently rational self. Sometimes over-rational. And certainly at times over defensive... It has good sides though. The Knight in me is at its best when its applying its logic appropriately and solving the riddles set by the guardians of strange places!

I have a strong intellect.
I am able to do problem solving in an abstract way.
I can be logical.
I can do useful analysis.
My mind is a tool that has been trained, via mathematics, to work as a pattern-finder.

Stranger - seeing everything as new, through the eyes of a stranger

This is the ability to see things as though never seen before. I love it when I do this! Many of the values of things like drawing for me are to put me into this state where I love what I see everything has beauty. This is the part of me that revels in synchronicity!

I am able to see with the eyes of love, the eyes of an artist, the eyes of a child.
I can draw and when I draw I see things differently.
I love to create splashy paintings and then see what is there to be seen.
I adore synchronicities and revel in them.
I am curious and love to explore.

Fate - the fixed path, lack of choice

This is the one I'm most ambivalent about finding the positives in. And yes ambivalence seems exactly the right word here. Like most people I act as though I can decide and that my decisions make a difference. And like most people I expect others to do the same.

But... but given our inability to know the consequences of our choices how much choice do we really have? Its only in hindsight that we can truly say we'd rather have done something else and yet even then we cannot know that the outcome would have been better, we cannot wind the clock back and try the other road.

I've gone into deep metaphysics, philosophy and science searching for the answer to this one and worryingly, from that rational choice-making Knight's point of view, there isn't much to support the concept of "freedom of choice" except for our own earnest belief and desire that we have it!

So the challenge here is to see what the positives are that might be drawn out of the view that indeed we are fated to be and do whatever it is we are and do... I'll word this one differently, because of my ambivalence:

Fate brings me humility, all my achievements just are.
Fate brings me compassion, others are swept up and helpless.
Fate brings me forgiveness, others have no choice.
Fate brings me self-forgiveness, I need not blame myself just as I no longer blame others.
Fate brings me surrender, there is no need to fight so why not enjoy life as it is!


Whew - tough exercise, Carla!

Windows on Reality

Yesterday I posted about doing affirmations the HK way. The HK ones tend to be goals which we are aiming towards though worded as though already present.

Today I'll do the affirmations Carla's way. The ones she's suggesting we pack into our Zen Luggage (she calls it something with a trademark attached so I'm sidestepping that name!) are about affirming where we are now. A very good idea. I've found in the past that one of the things that's sometimes caused me problems is a sort of feeling of having rejected myself in my attempts to make changes. Now I know that everything changes all the time so the point of aiming isn't to reject where we are starting from now but to get where we want to go and to enjoy the journey.

Last week I said I wasn't going to go public on my inner thoughts but having had a a few days to think about it I've decided I will. So first here are the lines I came up with in answer to last week's prompts:

In my dreams I am a superman or woman
Any sex or shape or power
In my dreams I am a stranger in a strange land
In my dreams the loos have hidden meaning
The privacy of the privy is paramount
In my dreams I can't always do anything
Doing spoils the dream and I'm left in the blank part between, behind the scenes

In the mirror I am a tornado swirling ready to sweep everything away
unless I sit within the still centre

In my stories I am swept along by fate, unable to find my voice, regain consciousness and lose weight

In my fears I am a dragon coming to get me.

In my past I was a knight fighting the dragon
But it was me I fought!

The first task this week is to make these images more literal. First I thought maybe I ought to confess to an aspect of literalness that won't be apparent to most of you. My previous husband's name was Knight, so I used to be Mrs Knight... and one of my favourite images to draw, paint etc. used to be dragons. Here is one I made when my name was Knight:


It was stenciled onto tiles and then fired which means I can date it to 1992 as that's when I was painting tiles. Just around the time I got ill with M.E. for the first time.

One of my key images with M.E. was that I was fighting my own body in someway... I had no idea when I wrote the poem that I'd make that connection here.

I'd got this far when I took a break and happened to pick up this book:


Its one I got ages ago from the Amnesty bookshop and have kept on meaning to return as I've struggled to read it. My bookmark is still only on page 18 despite another attempt spurred on by the recent dreadful happenings in Tibet.

I felt both a reluctance and curiosity to see if I could get a message from it now. I opened it at random to this page:


And my eyes were immediately drawn to the sentence:

As for Younghusband, he was knighted....

Well the husband of my youth, my "young husband", was indeed as I've just mentioned called Knight... but really I was the one who was "knighted" since I married him and became a knight. Then I looked at the opposite page and discovered that Younghusband had been some sort of British military type in Tibet but on his last day in Lhasa he had a mystic revelation in the mountains when he realised the divinity that is within everyone and following which he said he now considered no man an enemy. The wikipedia page on him fails to mention this revelation... sticking to a rather Christian line that is at odds with this page in Virtual Tibet, though it does mention that he killed many Tibetans in his campaign.

Now more curious about this book I looked at another random page and discovered that China has been bringing pressure to bear on American companies. In particular Hollywood over "Seven Years in Tibet" and Apple over the use of the image of the Dalai Lama in an advertising campaign, Think Different, which also featured Einstein and other luminaries.

I felt I needed a walk at this point so I went to the local shops. There in the Amnesty bookshop I got this great selection of books:



And look I actually found a copy of Seven Years in Tibet! Its old (1953) and falling to bits but quite readable. The other three books are much newer. Indeed the Nick Bantock books are like new. Those two are books I've long wanted having come across them on a trip to the US but costing more than I wanted to pay at the time... Today I got all four of these books for £7.30 and the joy of knowing that I'm reusing them and contributing to Amnesty all at once.

So I haven't quite finished Carla's exercise for this week but I'm enjoying the journey!

Freeing ourselves from negative thought patterns

These monkeys looked to me to be quite unhappy in their cage... with the only real trees those reflected in the glass. But I couldn't see into their minds... maybe they were actually looking out at the flamingos and thinking how lucky they themselves were to be in such a secure place.

This morning I wrote a long email to someone about affirmations and in particular about how one can test for them using kinesiology self-test questioning. I then went to Carla's wings4you site and found that she too was focusing on affirmations. So I decided this synchronicity was encouraging me to go a little more public on the self-test method of checking and using them.

If you are interested in learning how to to self-test the best reference on the web, that I know of, is on the Perelandra site. You need to have mastered this before learning how to use it to self-test affirmations. Incidentally I use a different method so I'm not saying this is the only, or even the best method, just one that is relatively easy to learn without the commitment I made to train as a Health Kinesiologist.

Self-testing opens up a great communication channel with your body. Some cautions though, there are some things you cannot expect to be able to self-test accurately - for instance no-one I know has yet managed to correctly test the lottery numbers in advance - it is in general dodgy to self-test future events, but random ones are the most dodgy. It is best to use self test for accessing your own body's information and responses. Again you still need to be cautious. For instance if I tested that it was appropriate for me to eat arsenic I still wouldn't! So keep your common sense intact.

Testing for appropriate affirmations is a really good use of self-test.

First what is an affirmation?

An affirmation is always worded positively and in the present tense. It is usually also short and succinct. Most affirmations contain the word "I" or "me" or similar, e.g. "I am happy" or "Happiness flows up from the earth through my whole body" though some are much less personal, for instance "Life is good". Once you have the wording you then test a schedule for its use. For instance a common pattern is to say the affirmation out loud 10 times on waking and before sleep every day for a fortnight. Another is to look into the mirror to say it every morning.

Using self-test one first checks that it is appropriate to test for an affirmation now. There are plenty of reasons that it may not be appropriate - it may be that a different method would suit you better right now, maybe a visualisation or a vision statement or something which changes everyday and is not a fixed repeated affirmation. However if you do get that it is appropriate the next thing is to find the exact words.

You may have a specific example in mind. For instance you may have a list of affirmations such as those in Louise Hay's book "You can Heal Your Life". If you are drawn to using one or more of those, use these questions to check it / them.

Using self-test to check with your body:

• Is this an appropriate affirmation for me to use?


• Is there a more appropriate one from this list?
  


• Should I look on another page?
  

There are times when what seems like an obviously good affirmation is not appropriate. For instance the example of "I am happy" may in fact cause too much stress and repeating it may not be the best thing to do right now. It may be that a statement such as "I allow myself to feel and release the grief within me" would be far more beneficial. Feeling grief whilst grieving is not being negative!

Sometimes the affirmation could be improved by a minor change in the wording. For instance here are some example affirmations from Louis Proto's Self-Healing:

1. I feel stronger with every moment that passes.
2. With every breath I feel more alive.
3. I feel well, I look well, I am well.
4. I deserve to be radiantly healthy.

Say you are drawn to the 2nd affirmation in the list - With every breath I feel more alive - you've tested its a good starting point but your testing shows the need to change it, ask which word to focus on changing. Point to each in turn until you get a yes to "Change this one?" Let's say the word to focus on changing is "I".

Should we reword it without an I in it?

For instance:

With every breath my body feels more alive,

or

With every breath life flows into me.

Should we keep the I and change the order?

For instance:

I feel more alive with each breath.

Or

I breathe and feel life flowing through me.

As you can see the possibilities are endless and it really does help to use self-test to get the best possible version for your own use.

If you are struggling with this stage, ask if any of the affirmations you've come up with are "good enough". It may be that after a few days of using a good enough affirmation you find a variation that you test is better. This is the advantage of self-testing and not relying on someone else to find the words for you.

A Health Kinesiologist will normally test affirmations from scratch but they have other tools to help them, not least useful lists of words to test from.

I sometimes "see" affirmations for other people in a sort of semi-legible writing in the air... you may find you too can get them that way too.

Once you have the wording that is most suited to you right now also check what the best way to use it is.

Does it matter how I say it?

If yes, then check whether out loud / silently, eyes open / closed, standing in front of a mirror, reading it etc.

How many times?

Check how many times to repeat it each time. Some bodies are very particular and like this to be an exact number. So if you come up with say, 14, then say it exactly 14 times when you say it.

Should I use it in a fixed schedule?

If so, then test how often a day and at what times to say it. These may be fixed times like 10.20 am or event times like on waking, before lunch, after dinner, on turning the light out to go to sleep. Write it out and put it in the best places to remind you to say it at these times.

If not, is this more like a mantra, something to think/say whenever possible? If so, test whether it would help to write it out and put it up in various places where you'll see it.

How long do you need to keep this up?

It could be, that to be effective, this affirmation will need repeating to this schedule for days, weeks even months! Test this now.

Should I measure how long to use this affirmation in days? Weeks? Months?

More than 1 day/week/month? More than 2?

When you think you've got the wording right, the timing and method and length of use right, etc. ask

Is there anything else I need to know?

If there is then start asking questions like, does it matter where I am? Does it matter how I say it? E.g. Loudly? Whispered? Sing it? Write it? Do I need to keep it private? Would it be best if I kept my notes visible only to me? Do I need to retest my schedule after a certain time? Etc. Generally none of these extra conditions do matter but if they do, then you need to know.


I am glad I learnt to use self-test.
I find self-test very beneficial.
Self-test is a great tool.

Affirmations increase the positive self-talk in my head.
I feel happy. I am happy. I radiate happiness.
Every cell in my body is happy.

:-)