New website :)

Hi everyone,

 

I just wanted to let you know that I’ve got a new blog/website, which is a bit more profesh and snazzy. So if you’d like to have a look it’s http://www.jadedoherty.com

 

Thanks!

 

Lots of love,

Jade xx

Stop trying to make yourself wrong

Hello peeps,

One thing I’ve noticed recently is where I haven’t been making myself wrong, and as a result I’m starting to be aware of how often I try to make myself wrong. Personally, I find it easier if I’m the one who’s in the wrong. If I’m wrong, I can change, or apologise or ‘work on myself’. But if someone else is wrong? Then what? Maybe they won’t change,  maybe they won’t apologise and maybe they won’t work on their stuff.

I had an example of this on Friday morning. The 12th of October is a holiday in Spain, like it is in the USA, related to Christopher Columbus (or Cristobal Colon as they call him here). It’s basically National Spain Day, and as a result everyone gets a day off and a in this case, a long weekend. Apart from me! I don’t get Bank Holidays off, so, as I was leaving my building to totter off to work, I was greeted by the evidence of someone’s night out. Apparently it was a wild, or at least a drunken one, as in the lobby was a huge, steaming pile of sick!

Dodging the sick, and being careful not to get any on my beloved, glittery boots, I went off to work hoping that by the time I got home it would have been cleaned up. Mais non. It was still there. And it was still there on Saturday. And today.

This is such an obvious example of someone being out of order. Firstly, don’t vom in the lobby. It’s not cool. Vom in your house all you want, but not in the communal areas, okay? And secondly, if you do vomit everywhere, I guess it could happen to the best of us, clean it up!

I was aware that normally I’d try to find ways to excuse it away, to stop the phantom vomiter from being wrong. Or more than being wrong, I’d try to absolve them of their responsibility for their actions. I’d think things like ‘Oh, they must not have realised that their sick is proudly displayed for everyone to enjoy’, or ‘They must have gone away for the weekend and haven’t had the chance to clean it up’, or any other situation I could think of to prevent myself from feeling that the other person was out of order.

And, even more than not trying to make the other person right, I complained about it! Now, us British people usually suffer everything with a stiff upper lip. We complain, but to each other, never to the person who ‘wronged’ us, nor to a person in a position of power. We might, if we are raging about something, write a strongly worded letter. But that’s about it.

So, imagine my surprise when I saw myself sending a text to my landlady (still didn’t have the balls to do it over the phone, but it’s a start!) telling her that there’s sick in the entrance, it’s disgusting, and asking when is it going to be cleaned up. Even when she called me and tried to sidetrack me by telling me not to leave the main door open, I stayed strong, and told that I don’t, but with the vomit on the floor I might have to so that the building doesn’t stink.

I know it might sound really small and obvious, but for me it was quite a difference. I normally feel like I absorb the responsibility of  a situation to either prevent the other person from having deal with their responsibility or to prevent a situation from (as I see it) falling apart.

Over responsibility is most definitely one of my ‘things’, which means that I either get left with, or in some way take on, the responsibility in any given situation. In fact, in my family we laugh that when my parents used to ask ‘who made this mess/broke this glass/did something else that we’re angry about’,  and when it wasn’t me, I used to say ‘It wasn’t me, but you can blame me if you want’. See, I’ve been over responsible and a bit pious since day one!

This over responsibility means that I’m often ‘right’, and nearly always have the moral high ground, but equally end up feeling heavy and annoyed at feeling like I have to do things I don’t want to or pick up the slack when others have dropped the ball.

But in this situation, and in a few others that have occurred during the last week or so, I haven’t. I felt like I left the responsibility, in the form of sick, right where it was and didn’t claim it as my own. Of course I could have cleaned it up, but it didn’t feel like mine to clean up.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this. In life, we all play roles. One of mine is being responsible, and because of this I very often get paired with people who are irresponsible. Which means they get to play out being irresponsible, whilst I play out my normal role of being responsible. And it’s really not a role that I like. Playing this role makes me feel very unimportant, untaken care of and very put upon.

Most of the women I know play at being responsible too. In their relationships and in general. And I think we especially play out this over responsibility/not allowing the other person to be wrong, with people we know.

When we know someone, when we know their history and their experiences, it’s very easy to explain away their behaviour by referring to their history; ‘oh, he’s not rude, it’s just that his dad didn’t hug him’, or ‘it’s not that she’s being a bitch, it’s just that her last boyfriend was an idiot’. Have you noticed that we don’t do this the other way around? We never try to negate someone’s being awesome by referring to their history. When was the last time you said ‘oh, it’s not that he has integrity, it’s just that his dad brought him up really well’ or ‘she’s not a good person, she just has a really nice life’?!

If you’re going to discount someone’s lameness by blaming it on their history, at least be consistent and discount someone’s awesomeness by blaming it on their history too!

It’s not that I think we should blame everything on other people, or that we should be irresponsible just to prove a point. It’s more about not making yourself wrong. If someone is rude or horrible to me, I always try to find out what I must have done to have provoked such a reaction, try to see it from their point of view, or tried to see where they were acting unconsciously due to whatever reasons they may have. Or, and this is the one I do most often, to say ‘well, they’re entitled to act how they want, but why am I affected? Why do I care?’.

Which on the one hand does mean that I get to address loads of things, but it also means that I often get treated in ways that I don’t want to be treated, don’t stand up for myself, never have a go at someone for being rude to me and always end up absorbing the situation. By which  I mean if someone says something nasty to me, instead of calling them on it, asking them why they said it, bursting into tears or telling them to ‘fuck off’, I carry the situation, I’m the one who feels bad about it and the other person never experiences my true reaction, and as such never takes responsibility for what they did.

Well not anymore! Now that I’ve said it on the internet it means it’s true! No longer shall I take responsibility for things that aren’t mine. If someone drops the ball, or loses something, or fucks up, and I don’t genuinely want to help, I won’t. I naturally like helping people, but doing it when you don’t want to is just another way of being dishonest, except it’s to yourself. Next time someone says something that I find rude, or out of order, I’m going to tell them. Not necessarily in a harsh and rude way, but I’m not going to carry the burden of their aggression.

I often find wisdom in football, and this week has been no exception. Spain is super into football gossip, and the newspapers have been reporting that in Real Madrid (one of the biggest teams in the world for those of you not well versed in football), the manager, Jose Mourinho, and the vice-captain Sergio Ramos don’t get on. That Sergio Ramos has been telling Jose Mourinho that he’s not happy with how he’s doing things and so on. About this subject, Sergio Ramos said something along the lines of ‘well, if I don’t like something, or have someothing to say, why would I shut myself up?’. So thank you Señor Ramos. Indeed, why would you shut yourself up?

It’s not noble or good to not tell people what you think. Maybe you end up being out of order, maybe you end up upsetting the other person, maybe you end up falling out, but I think firstly it’s a risk we have to take, and secondly you do yourself a a disservice by keeping everything in, and you end up being a liar. To others, but more importantly to yourself.

So, going back to the title of this post, stop making yourself wrong. Stop taking responsibility for things that aren’t yours. Of course use any time you have a reaction to something as an opportunity to look at why, but don’t use self inquiry as an excuse to not confront someone about something. Take responsibility for your feelings, but not for the rest of the world’s.

There’s nothing good, or holy about never having a go at someone. You’re not a better person because you don’t express anger, or sadness. Your journal isn’t the one who upset you, so don’t let your journal be the only one you tell!

It’s a risk. If, like me, you’ve never it before, you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I know how a situation will end if I take responsibility for it, or if I’m the one who’s wrong. It’s the same as what always happens. The status quo is maintained and a false sense of everything being okay continues. But equally, I feel unhappy in the situation and any potential intimacy  that either was there, or could have developed, is lost due to my dishonesty in the situation.

So people, I have a challenge for you. This week I’m going to try to be really aware of where I make myself wrong, or where I try to explain away other people’s actions. And stop. It’s a bit scary, and I might not always notice, or, if and when I express something outwards rather than internalising it, it might be a bit clumsy because I’m not used to it, but I need to get the hang of not being responsible for everything and letting a situation unfold as it naturally would and letting people experience the natural consequences of their actions.

And I’d like to invite you to do the same. If you’re overly responsible, join me in letting go of the responsibility and not making yourself wrong.

And if you’ve already mastered this, then look for another pattern that you’ve got, another role that you play and try seeing what happens when you don’t play it.

Night night, and good luck!

xxxx

Oh new boots, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

So, about 2 weeks ago I was meandering around Seville when I saw them. The most wonderful, fabulous, glittery boots I had ever seen. It was love at first sight. Unfortunately, my monetary means didn’t match my love for the best boots in the world, so I vowed to return when I had the funds to liberate the boots from the boring confinement of the shop, and to explore the world with them.

 

That day was Wednesday. Straight after work, I skipped along the yellow brick road, all the way to the shop (it’s called Fosco if anyone’s interested) and bought the boots my heart had been hankering after for 2 long weeks! They were everything I’d hoped they’d be; comfy, awesome and glittery.

 

The next day I proudly wore them to work and not so subtly brought them up in every conversation.It went a bit like this:

“Hi Jade. How are you?”

“Good. I have new boots! LOOK!!!”

I’m so smooth and subtle.

 

But one thing I’d hadn’t banked on was what they would do to my walk, in and to turn to how I feel and act.

 

You see, I have a problem with my feet where they go in on the inner part of the foot much more than they should. This has a knock on affect on my knees and hips, and I think causes my hips to be kind of closed. I do sometimes wear insoles but for the past 5 years or so I’ve spent my time convincing myself it’s not a problem.

 

This also affects the way I walk. I’ve been (rightly) accused of shuffling (thanks mum), and don’t really lift my feet up when I walk, giving me a childish, shuffly gait. Lovely.

 

But, with my new rootin’, tootin’ boots I walk like a WOMAN! I didn’t realise it at first, but then I caught sight of myself strutting my stuff around Seville, and thought “¡Olé! I’m totes walking like a woman and not a stroppy toddler!” I feel taller (well, that’s partly because of the heel), more confident and strangely enough, more present in my life.

 

I didn’t realise that such a simple, materialistic thing could make such a difference to how I feel about myself. Not because of the ‘new stuff rush’ one gets, or because they’ve momentarily sedated the burning pain of believing I’m a separate person, but because they’ve changed the way I move. The way I walk. And in turn, the way I feel.

 

They quite literally don’t allow me to shuffle. I try to slide shuffle and it just doesn’t work. In fact, it almost makes me fall over. But not shuffling and walking properly makes a massive difference to how I experience the world. I feel like an adult. You know, the kind of adult who would complain if their food was crap and send it back, rather than hide their head in shame when their mum does it.

 

You see, I’m 23. And whilst I’m not ‘old-old’, I’m definitely starting to knock on the door of adulthood. Quite a few people that I went to school with have children. My friends are starting to move in with their boyfriends. My students are generally younger than me (when I started teaching I was often the youngest person in the class. My students used to amazed that I was only 21 AND spoke such good English!). But I still feel like I’m about 16/17. So it’s definitely time to start toying with dressing, acting and walking like an adult.

 

I think we can often overlook very simple, and basic solutions to problems. I’m not saying that fabulous boots are the key to happiness and Enlightenment, but having good, basic items in your life definitely helps.

 

I’ve done tonnes of work on this whole growing up malarky. Hours of delving into what keeps me young, ranging from one off events at school to my relationship with my dad to karmic conditioning, and have always been reluctant/unable to adult up. And then, low and behold, these boots strut into my life and have pushed me into woman-ness.

 

Sometimes I think we overanalyse, and overspiritualise our lives. Like say if you have massive boobs. I mean massive to the point where they start to hurt your back and mess up your posture. You could spend years trying to come to peace with your big boobs, trying to see that they are not you they are just your body, or asking yourself why they annoy you. Or, you could get an industrial bra that supports them, or get them reduced. I’m not saying that every problem can be solved by plastic surgery, but sometimes it’s gotta help, and sometimes very physical solutions to problems work just as well as ‘deep’, spiritual ones.

 

Or, sometimes I notice myself being all moody and nihilistic, my normal way of handling this would be to take my ridiculous ramblings super seriously and conclude that the world is stupid. Or I could get a beer with a friend, have some tapas, have a laugh and remember that life is actually pretty fun and that the world isn’t such a bad place.

 

One thing I’ve noticed in Seville is that the people are very well-to-do and a bit conservative. In Spain, the sevillanos have a reputation of being ‘pijos’ and ‘chulos’, or ‘posh’ and ‘cocky’. And it’s kind of true. Men bop around with sideburns, light blue shirts and jumpers casually draped around their shoulders in an ‘anyone for tennis?’ kinda way. The women are nearly always immaculately put together, are rarely out of heels and always wear nicely cut clothes. And the children! You have not seen well dressed children until you’ve been to Seville on a Sunday. Little girls with cute dresses, nice shoes and colour coordinated bows in their well conditioned hair, whilst the boys look like little gentlemen in shirts, shoes and hair with a side parting.

 

But the thing is, for the most part, they seem happy. You see grandparents, their children and the grandkids sitting in a square all having a laugh. People don’t look rushed. The kids look happy. They are seriously unyogic; bullfighting’s still quite popular, a lot of people smoke and drink and football is as much a religion as Catholicism. But, they (or so I think) are happy.

 

So the point I’d like to make, asides from announcing my new boots to the internet, is that sometimes it’s the super simple things that can make a difference. Sometimes going out, flirting and dancing your arse off is more effective than a workshop on movement. Sometimes a beer and a relaxing chat with a friend is better than a session with a therapist. Sometimes we don’t have to travel miles to find a community, we can hang out with friends. And sometimes a new pair of boots can turn you into a woman.

 

My boots and I wish you all a happy Sunday,

 

XXX

 

 

 

 

What is normal, anyways?

Thanks to my job, I get to meet loads of people. In the last month I’ve met about 60 new people. And not just meet as in I’ve bought a coffee  from them, I mean meet as in spent time with them. Got to know them and tried to remember their names.

 

Obviously meeting a lot of people entails encountering lots of different personalities and ways of being. I have, however, noticed myself saying “Oh my days. Why can’t people just be normal?!” Suddenly I say ‘normal’ as a compliment, as if being normal is what everyone should strive for.

 

But now I’m thinking what is normal? When I say “why can’t people just be normal?” am I actually saying “Why can’t people just be fucked up in exactly the same way as I am?”.

 

I think I might be.

 

We all have our definition of normal, that varies from culture to culture, from family to family and from person to person. I remember when I first went out in Greece. I all eagerly got to the club at about 11pm, found it empty and then went home and concluded that the night life in Greece was shit and that Greeks didn’t know how to party. Little did I know all the cool Greeks were still having dinner, and wouldn’t rock up to the club until 3am, where they would proceed to party until the sun came up, whilst judgemental little guiri tourist me was tucked up in bed. Now who is shit at partying?!

 

That’s just a silly cultural example, but I think we spend a lot of time trying to find people who think like us. We might say that someone who thinks like us is normal, or interesting, or that we just click. But, maybe what we’re really saying is ‘so and so’s twisted, warped view of the world is just like mine, and this makes me like them’.

 

I’m guessing that ‘normal’ doesn’t really exist. Everyone has their own way of being, and some will work with our ways, and others won’t.

 

But I think I need to stop calling people ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’. ‘Jade-friendly’ or ‘not Jade-friendly’ would be a truer and more accurate judgement.

On not being liked

Good Evening Cyber-Friends,

Today, I want to talk about a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and that topic is not being liked. Chances are we’ve all not been liked, and have in turn not liked, so are familiar with the concept.

Well, a few days ago I found out that someone I work with doesn’t like me. Cue shocked and horrified gasps, if you please. Apparently this person thinks I’m arrogant and rude because I walked away when he was talking to me, this one time. I don’t remember if I did or didn’t, so let’s presume that I did indeed walk away when this guy was talking to me, and let’s add “forgetful” to my list of faults for good measure.

 

I don’t want to talk about whether or not this guy is right to dislike me, he clearly has his own reasons and feels justified in not being my biggest fan, and neither do I want to “poor me” at you and make you feel sorry for me.

 

The truth is that I find it quite funny to not be liked. It sounds strange, but there’s something quite freeing about knowing that someone doesn’t like you. It makes me wonder how I can play with it. Should I always go and sit with this guy and disturb his alone time? Should I start a conversation and then abruptly leave it? Should I talk about how popular I am, or ask to borrow money? The possibilities are limitless!

 

I was surprised to notice that I didn’t take it personally. I just thought “if that one occasion is what he’s basing his opinion on, and not all the other the conversations or interactions that we’ve had, then it says more about him than it does about me”. I think I’m normally really nice to people (if all you’ve read are my recoveringyogi posts, I do, however, understand why you may beg to differ) so to be liked, to not have achieved my goal of putting everyone at ease, is kind of fun. The sky hasn’t fallen down, World War 3 hasn’t broken out, in fact nothing about my world has changed.

 

I’m not a better or a worse person that I was before I found this out, I’m not happier or sadder, or even nicer or less nice. Nothing in my world has changed. The only thing that’s different is that I know that there exists a big, fat ego that doesn’t like my big, fat ego. Which is fine.

 

The thing is, our likes and dislikes say much more about us, than they do the object of our attention. If we both see a tree, I might find it ugly and you might find it beautiful, but the tree itself is exactly the same, and that we’re discussing is how we relate to the tree, rather than anything intrinsic to the tree. Like art, we generally accept that art makes different people see or feel difference things, but that the artwork in question is neither better nor worse depending on people’s reactions. In that sense, I think people are a lot like a work of art. They provoke different reactions in different people, even when they act in exactly the same way.

 

I read in an Adyashanti book (I don’t remember which one) about this very topic. In it, he said that when someone says “I love you”, they are actually talking more about their internal state than than they are about you and your lovability.

 

If I say “I love you” I’m expressing something about me, not about you. Whilst it is nice to know that we are loved, my loving you doesn’t make you better or worse, and “I love you” a statement that only gives information about the speaker. Kind of like saying “I’m hot” or “I’m hungry”, we’re just expressing something about us, not about the other person.

 

All this leads me to believe that life really isn’t that personal. Everyone’s just poodling about, trying to live their lives as best they can, carrying a fuckload of conditioning and beliefs with them, that are sometimes hurt and sometimes soothed by the other sets of well meaning, conditioning carrying people that they meet.

 

So next time you don’t like someone, remember that this is more about you than them and ask yourself why rather than just deciding that they’re a bitch. And next time someone doesn’t like you remember that their opinion doesn’t make a tiny bit of difference to who you are.

xxx

“If God Invited You To A Party”

Greetings lovely people,

Now, I’m not usually one for quotes or poems, but this particular poem by Hafiz has been a fav of mine for a while, and I stumbled upon it again last night when I was feeling a bit sorry for myself.

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 I know
There is no one in this world

Who
Is not upon
His Jeweled Dance
Floor

I love this poem for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I love the way Hafiz points out that we would treat people differently if we thought they were God’s specially chosen guest. I notice this when Amma comes to London. From the time that she arrives until the time that she leaves, I feel that everything happens with Grace, or in accordance with Life. If there’s traffic on the way to see her I think “Oh, this gives me an opportunity to see where I get stressed”, if someone’s rude to me I see it as a chance to to see how I react and what reacts.

I remember once going to get some food from a stall in the hall. I was umming and ahhing about what to get; curry, onion bhaji, super chocolately chocolate cake? I finally decided on the monster chocolate cake and went up to buy it, feeling like a bit of fatty. I asked for it, and the boy working behind the stool went “OOH! More?!” I just laughed and found it funny that this boy had reflected back to me pretty much what I’d been thinking about my somewhat piggy choice of dinner. Normally I’d have been super pissed off at the judgmental little dweeb commenting on my food choice, but because I felt that everything was happening as it should, I really didn’t mind.

However, I so often forget that something bigger than me is running the show. Suddenly people start to get on my nerves, I think a situation should be different from how it is, but most of all I think that little ol’ me is in control. If I could remember, or know that I’m just a guest at God’s Party and that everything that happens is merely part of it, I think I’d not only enjoy the party more, but be able to see the wisdom, lessons and opportunities to wake up that are provided by these divine party games.

And secondly, and this is what really inspired this post, when reading the poem again last night, I realised that not only is everyone invited to the party and is meant to be there, but so am I.

I think a lot of us, somewhere deep down feel unwelcome on Earth. But, if we can remember that we are 100% welcome, and invited to the party we call life, I think we’d find life a lot more enjoyable.

One of my ‘things’ is to think that I have to work really hard, be perfect and be super nice in order to justify my place on Earth. But reading this poem helped me to see (for now anyways!) that I’m completely welcome and invited to be here. Just as I am. In fact, you could say that my presence is required. I wasn’t invited by mistake, I didn’t sneak in, or blag my way onto the list as a plus one.

I should treat myself as a VIP who has nothing to hide, or change, or improve.

I am a special guest on his jewelled dance floor.

And so are you.

xx

Tell your comfort zone to sling its hook

Hello, or should I say ‘hola’, little blog blog.

First of all, I’ve been shockingly rubbish at blogging or writing ANYTHING lately. I got to a point where I felt like what I was writing wasn’t very good, and I didn’t want to just blog shit for the sake of it. You know the saying, if you can’t say anything witty-funny-enlightening-and-deep, don’t say anything at all.

Before I start, I’d just like to tell y’all a bit of what I’ve been up to since I last blogged. Basically, I swapped the vibrancy and greyness of London for the heat and ‘arte’ of Seville. I’m now teaching English for a Government programme to Spanish University students.

Sounds snazzy, but in reality it involves hearing ‘people is’ and ‘I am agree’ about 100 times a day and trying wake tired people up. In the the 46 degree sevillano heat.

Pleasantries done; let’s talk about comfort zones.

I’m starting to see how vital it is for human beings to expand their comfort zones, and to do something different, something new, something a bit out of the mould.

In my (pre-mentioned) job, I get to meet LOADS of people. We have 15 new students every week, which means that so far I’ve taught about 150 students in about 14 weeks. One of the biggest thing I’ve noticed is the difference going out of one’s comfort zone makes to a person.

The people I’ve met who have travelled, or worked, or who immigrated to Spain, or have an interesting hobby that they’re really into are infinitely more interesting than the ones who have only ever studied a degree that they don’t love but think it will get them a decent job, who’ve never worked, or lived abroad, or done anything differently to the lives their parents lived at their age.

I know for me as well that the time I’ve spent living in Spain has been really transformative and has forced me to grow up more than 3 years at University ever did. And I think it’s because it’s a bit difficult. A lot different and makes me rely on myself. Given that my Spanish ain’t that bien, everything I do here pushes me out of my comfort zone. Looking for a flat? Out of comfort zone. Asking for directions? Out of comfort zone. Even going shopping can end up resembling a game of articulate; ‘I’m looking for a thing, that you put on your skin if you have a cut…ah yes. Plasters!’.

I’m starting to think if you don’t push yourself you never move past the point when you stopped doing different things. If you’re living exactly the same life that you lived 10 years ago, chances are you haven’t developed since then. Again, looking at the students that I teach. Some of them are the same as me, 23 for your information, but live the same lives that they lived when they were 15, and thus seem like 15 year olds. They still live at home, in the same lil’ village, with the same friends, same places and have never had to cook for themselves or find their way in a new situation. And it shows.

Stepping out of your comfort zone doesn’t have to mean moving countries. It could be trying a new sport, or learning a language, or travelling, or meeting new people. Anything that enriches your life and causes you to develop new skills.

I think it’s also important to not stop. If I stay in Seville for the next 10 years, carry on teaching English, live in the same flat, eat the same food, then I’ll be pretty much the same at 33 as I am now. I think it’s easy to make one big jump and then to think that’s it. I’ve made my changes, I don’t need to do anything else. Or we get overly attached to feeling settled and start to value that over new experiences.

Of course what stepping out of your comfort zone looks like can change. For me it’s travelling, but even travelling can become routine. Maybe in 10 years time getting married and buying a house will push me out of comfort zone, whereas rocking up in a new city won’t. Comfort zones can get subtler and less obvious.

I think having the courage to step out of your comfort zone is vital not only for personal, but also spiritual development. I notice that quite often I work through an issue and feel great. For a while. But there always comes a point where it’s necessary to re-evaluate and take a leap into something new.

I think this is part of what gets people stuck in something bordering on religious dogma when it comes to spirituality. They reach a certain point, be it with regards to a yoga practice, meditation methods, diets, people, or a state, and think that’s it and never go any further.

Maybe they’re teachers who discover something, teach it, and then stop developing. Pretty soon something that was revolutionary becomes the norm and people start to ‘overtake’ them in terms of awakening.

Or, they get dogmatic about the way they live their life and what once pushed and challenged them now becomes their cage. I see this most often in people who discover that they have an ego, and then spend their time getting to go know their ego and issues. This can of course be very empowering and necessary. But unless you start letting go of your issues and conditioning what was useful, starts to become self indulgent. Rather than developing, you have exactly the same issues and the only difference is that you know them really well, and start to really believe in them. Which is not good!

Just to give an almost obligatory sporting analogy. The training that athlete does as a child, will push them. For the level they’re at. But they can’t expect to win gold (Olympics shout out!) if they continue to do the same training they did as a child. They have to increase the difficulty as soon as what they’re currently doing gets easy.

So, to finish. It’s super important to do step out of your comfort zone. To grow, to learn, to fall flat on your face and get back up. But don’t presume that what was once out of your comfort zone always will be. If life starts to feel a bit samey, or if you notice yourself feeling reluctant to do something new, if routine becomes your focus, it’s time to shake it up and step it up a notch.

Also, me and my lovely mumma, who is way more enlightened, interesting, funny and knowledgable that I could ever hope to be, are thinking about making videos about all aspects of spirituality and personal development, but with a super down to earth everyday language kind of vibe, and I was wondering if there was anything that you’d be particularly interested to hear about. So far I’m thinking of topics like ‘Conditioning’ focusing on what it is and what to do about how. Or ‘How to look at and let go of issues’. As well as specific topics on very common issues like ‘Shame’ and ‘Rejection’

If you have any ideas/requests let me know in the comments section or send me a message to jadedoherty@msn.com

Thanks!

Hasta luego!

Xxxxxx

Oh, so life just isn’t that personal?

 I had a reading done by a Vedic Astrologer last week, and after the session I really started to wonder if anything in life, the life that I proudly call MINE, is personal? Am I making choices or am I merely walking down the path that I’ve always been destined to follow? Is it worth trying to change my ‘defects’ or should I just acknowledge that are meant to be there?

On the one hand I felt so reassured and comforted by what he said, but on the other hand it made me wonder ‘what’s the point?’. For example, he told me that I’m very prone to saying ‘yes’ to things. I think he said that I have a ‘yes gate’ which means that my first impulse when asked a question is to say ‘yes’ to it. This might sound like a really good, life embracing kind of thing. But as I experience it, I end agreeing to stay late at work/help people with essays/run errands/generally do things I don’t want to do.

The astrologer told me that what I need to do is to give myself time to make decisions, to say ‘let me think about it and I’ll get back to you’. At no point did he say this was a problem, that I should work on it, that I should try and do anything about it. It was so matter of fact, like a stylist saying ‘you have pale skin so this colour suits you more than that one’.

I now feel a bit stuck between working on issues, dissecting them and seeing through, and shrugging my shoulders, checking my chart and saying ‘ah yeah, look, it says here that this is what I’m like’.

Another strange aspect of the reading was being told things that I thought really personal choices, opinions and tastes, were actually written in the stars. I lived in Spain for about 6 months, in Seville and Madrid. I wasn’t a massive fan of Madrid, but loved Seville. Since being back in England, I can’t get Seville out of my head. I feel the city’s presence, like it‘s following me, and then disappears just when I turn around.

 

I thought that this was a really personal thing. That I liked my friends there, that I liked the food, I enjoyed being warm, the people were friendly and so on. Mais non. The astrologer did an astro-location reading, looking for the best places in the world for me to live and, yup you guessed it, Seville (along with Goa, whoowhoo!) is the best place for me to live. Something to do with my rising star being in Seville at the time I was born, meaning that I feel most like myself there.  So this affinity that I feel to Seville is less of a choice and more just an inevitable fact.

On and on he went with things that I thought were just ideas or personal preferences. This was both reassuring and disconcerting. I simultaneously felt a deep feeling of relief that I was on the right track and the feeling that ‘I’ wasn’t on a track at all, there was merely a dance unfolding that matched up to a certain time of birth or set of dance moves.

 The main thing that this reading showed me was to trust my instincts. I can’t say that I was told anything that I didn’t know, but having an objective observer spell it out in black and white made me feel more sure of what I felt. The point is, when something’s right for us, we know it. We feel it. We feel inexplicably pulled towards it. We feel the connection, or pulsation towards it first, and then we try and find logical reasons to justify and explain something that we can never know.

Our feelings are there to guide us. They come from a place beyond the mind, beyond logic, beyond clearly laid out arguments. They are the way that we find our way around. That feeling of ‘yes’ and forward movement that comes over us when something is for us, and that feeling of ‘no’ and contraction that we feel when something isn’t. This isn’t the same feeling as wanting something, or liking something. These impulses are not personal in the sense of belonging to someone, or being based on opinion or personality. They are the force that, if left to its own devices, would effortlessly guide and allow life to express itself in the way it wishes to. It takes practise to learn how to subtly read our feelings, but if we can listen to ourselves we don’t have to spend so much time and wasted effort  trying to mentally work everything out.

We all have an internal navigation system, we may as well use it.

Listening to the Silence

A little while ago I was on a plane, listening to some music, and really wished that I had a track called ‘Silence’, which would just play Silence into my ears. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the sound of children’s laughter, but sometimes nothing sounds better than Silence.

In the Silence, I can hear myself. I can hear the bit that knows, but that gets drowned out by the bit that thinks. We have to be still and quiet to listen to that part of ourselves, and often it’s really difficult when we’re surrounded by noise, even if it’s enjoyable noise, all the time.

I’m the classic person who likes to play music all the time. Be it Beyonce or Krishna Das, Run the World (GIRLS!) or Om Namah Shivaya, I like to have music on. When walking, when pottering around, when getting dressed, even when showering. I love to cover up the infinite Silence with pretty sounds.

Sometimes this is great, losing yourself in music is amazing. But sometimes, I use it as a distraction. There’s something a bit intimidating about deep and expansive Silence. Yet, Silence is something that we all need.

In the Silence we can just be. We can relax. Thoughts can arise, and then disappear like figures on a screen. We can hear ourselves, we can hear what we want, what we need, what’s bothering us, what we’re moved to do.

Silence is the mother of sound. It’s always there, just underneath the noise. All sound arises from and then returns to Silence. When it’s too noisy, we feel that the Silence has been lost. But it’s always there. In the same way that the sky can be covered by clouds, Silence can be covered by noise, but none the less remains a constant presence.

We’re a lot like the sky. Can you imagine the sky thinking it’s a cloud? It sounds absurd that the huge, vast sky would believe itself to be a tiny, transitory cloud.  We are the sky, or the Silence that thinks it’s a cloud or some noise, forgetting that the cloud and noise exist within what we are.

Thoughts will come and go. Some are more persistent, or recognised than others. But they all arise within something far vaster and more real than they are. If we can stay with the Silence, or be the sky, then thoughts become clouds that just come and go.

We might not want them to be there, but we know that we are not them. And that makes it easier to address them. We know that we are not this thought, and therefore have lose nothing when we let go of it.

It has less charge, less pull. It becomes an occurrence, rather than we are. We perceive it, rather than identifying with it.

What we hear, and how we perceive Life, depends on where we put our attention. If we put our attention into the noise, of course that’s what we’ll hear. We’ll hear babies crying, alarms going off, people having animated conversations and the world will feel like a noisy and overwhelming place, full of thoughts and issues that all demand our immediate attention.

But if we can put, and keep, our attention in the Silence, then we can hear ourselves as we truly are. We can see Life arising and then returning. We can relax. We can be.

Living Softly

‘Life is hard’, we are told. ‘I like to work hard, play hard’ we proudly declare. ‘Nothing great was ever achieved without hard work’ is something I’ve been told by everyone from teachers to postcards. But what’s so great about ‘hard’? What’s our obsession with the demanding, difficult, tiring nature of ‘hard’?

Life really shouldn’t be hard. Our bodies pretty much take care of themselves, we’ve got to help them out but they breathe, pump and regenerate without us having to tell them to do so.

The Earth is (or should I say was) a naturally abundant place. When you sit back and look at the majesty of the Earth it leaves you speechless. Sunsets, mountains, trees, seas, rainbows, blossom, breezes; the Earth can delight and tickle the senses like no other. If we just left the Earth to its own devices and stopped trying to impose our hard logic on its soft wildness, I’m pretty sure the Earth would take care of us too.

Even Spirituality doesn’t need to be done in a ‘hard’ way. My greatest desire is experience life with as few filters as possible. To move, laugh and cry spontaneously without judgment or expectation, and that can only happen by being soft and allowing myself to be vulnerable.

Being soft and gentle is one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves. This doesn’t mean being wimpy and passive, there is definitely a strength that comes with softness, with vulnerability, with allowing yourself to open.

One of my favorite things ever is seeing men with babies. Nothing makes my knees melt and my ovaries jump like seeing a man lovingly holding his child. There’s a tenderness and truth that comes with this that I think is both irresistible and heartwarming. A gentle strength that is far more powerful than loud shouting or fighting.

It’s great testament to man’s ability to deceive and believe, that we think that life is, and should be, hard. If something is easy we don’t feel like we’ve achieved anything. If an opportunity just lands in our laps we think we don’t deserve it, or conversely that it’s not worth anything.

But as the Great Bear Baloo said, ‘you’re trying too hard’. There’s skill and effort involved with living an effortless life. I often work with children and was surprised to notice that I sometimes leave feeling that the day’s been too easy, or that I didn’t work hard enough. Then I realized I’d gotten better at working with kids, and therefore didn’t need to work hard, and that I could enjoy this ease rather than trying to find more ways to make my life hard.

When something is right for you, it’s easy. When it’s too hard, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at why. It’s not necessarily that it’s the wrong path or opportunity, but at least one piece in the puzzle is out of place.

I think that if we could change our expectation of life being hard and difficult to being soft and easy, we’d be so much happier. Difficulties would be an aberration that showed that we had an issue to look at, rather than the norm.

We’d live the lives that we truly want, not the lives that come with grinding our knuckles to the ground. We still might do a lot of work, but it wouldn’t be hard. A singer who loves singing and sings for 10 hours a day doesn’t feel like they’re working hard, they’re just doing what they love. For one who hates singing, 2 hours of singing is going to feel hard and difficult.

Let’s soften up, let’s let the strength, power and wisdom that comes with that softness have a chance to be in the driving seat. Because I don’t know about you, but working hard certainly isn’t getting me anywhere.