It Was All a Big Lie

-Mindfulness Bites-

It Was All a Big Lie

by Lise Villeneuve

Up until my mid-twenties, my goal in life was to fit in and chase the things or opportunities that would supposedly make me happy. Like everyone else my age, I was just trying to figure things out. It was a jungle out there. I learned by following the example of the majority. I learned things like "the right career and the right relationships will make me happy." These beliefs seemed to make perfect sense at the time, so I didn't question them. I also learned that the external world and other people had the power to make me feel angry, stressed, sad, anxious, happy, fearful...etc. I accepted this belief, not realizing that by doing so, I had given away my power to a completely unpredictable and confused world. From that moment on, my inner peace depended entirely on external circumstances. I felt increasingly anxious and disconnected.

Another belief I adopted by default was "I should avoid pain and discomfort at all costs, because these are likely to mess up my life." Nobody I knew ever talked about facing negative feelings, but if I ever wanted to drown my sorrows in beer, or get distracted with a party, shopping or a movie, I always had plenty of company. As a young ambitious student and musician, I had always been taught to focus on my future. That's where my happiness was to be found: somewhere down the road. So I waited and waited for it until I started to suspect that it was all a big lie.

From my mid-twenties to the present moment, I have been unlearning all these distorted and damaging beliefs. I have been rewriting the programming, undoing the conditioning that carved such deep grooves in my psyche. It's truly shocking to see that almost everything I believed was completely backwards. The widely accepted beliefs that promised happiness were the ones that led me straight to hell. This slow unravelling, this shedding of false beliefs is was has brought me the greatest levels of peace, well being and clarity today.

I have selected a few quotes from some of my favourite teachers. Some of these may surprise you, because they go against some of the widely accepted beliefs I was talking about. Read them with an open mind and see if they go against what you have accepted as true. Feel free to share your comments below.

Wishing you true, lasting peace

Lise
www.lisevilleneuve.com

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The Real Source of our Negative Emotions & Stress

"The rationalizing mind prefers to keep the true causes of emotion out of awareness and utilizes the mechanism of projection to do this. It blames events or other people for "causing" a feeling and views itself as the helpless innocent victim of external causes. "They made me angry." "He got me upset." "It scared me.""World events are the cause of my anxiety." Actually, it's the exact opposite. The suppressed and repressed feelings seek an outlet and utilize the events as triggers and excuses to vent themselves. We are like pressure-cookers ready to release steam when the opportunity arises. Our triggers are set and ready to go off. In psychiatry, this mechanism is called displacement. It is because we are angry that events "make" us angry. If, through constant surrendering, we have let go of the pent-up store of anger, it is very difficult and, in fact, even impossible for anyone of any situation to "make" us angry. The same, therefore, goes for all other negative feelings once they have been surrendered."

-David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph. D, Letting go, The Pathway of Surrender (p.17)

"There is much attention and publicity given to the subject of stress without a real understanding of its essential nature. (...) The real source of "stress" is actually internal; it is not external, as people would like to believe. The readiness to react with fear, for instance, depends on how much fear is already present within to be triggered by a stimulus. The more fear we have on the inside, the more our perception of the world is changed to a fearful, guarded expectancy. To the fearful person, this world is a terrifying place. To the angry person, this world is a chaos of frustration and vexation.(...) What we are holding inside colors our world. The basic rule is that we focus on what we have repressed. (...) Stress results from the accumulated pressure of our repressed and suppressed feelings. The pressure seeks relief, and so external events only trigger what we have been holding down, both consciously and unconsciously."

-David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph. D, Letting go, The Pathway of Surrender (p.15)

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Conflicts in Relationships

"The truth is that your partner is your mirror. He or she always reflects you back to yourself. If you think there's a flaw in him, that flaw is in you. It has to be in you, because he's nothing more than your story. You are always what you judge in him to be in the moment. There's no exception to his. You are your own suffering. You are your own happiness." 

-Byron Katie, A Mind At Home With Itself (p.238)

"When you realize that there's no such thing as a self or an other, you realize that all human relationships are reflections in the mirror. It's not you that people like or dislike; it's their stories of you. They aren't attacking you or leaving you; they're attacking or leaving who they believe you are. What does any of that have to do with you? You're their projection, just as they are yours. Realizing this makes it easy not to be affected by praise or blame.(...) If someone rejects you, he could only do that because you don't match his beliefs about how he wants the world to be. (...) If he criticizes you, and you take that personally, you're the one who hurt you. The story you impose onto his criticism is where the pain begins. You're arguing with reality, and you lose."

-Byron Katie, A Mind At Home With Itself (p.153)

"Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there."

-Byron Katie, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

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Avoiding Discomfort and Painful Feelings

"We have tried everything to get rid of suffering. We have gone everywhere to get rid of suffering. We have bought everything to get rid of it. We have ingested everything to get rid of it. Finally, when one has tried enough, there arises the possibility of spiritual maturity with the willingness to stop the futile attempt to get rid of it and, instead, to actually experience suffering. In that momentous instant, there is the realization of that which is beyond suffering, of that which is untouched by suffering.. There is the realization of who one truly is. "

-Gangaji

"We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."

-Pema Chödron, When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Hard Times

"And so, there's the ebb and flow. If you are at this one point of the cycle, there's no use in crying about it because the cycle will cycle itself out. By surrendering to whatever is cycling up, it eventually disappears. You disappear it by choosing to be one with it and refusing to want to change it as it arises. Do this continuously, no matter what, nonstop."

-David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

"Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know."

-Pema Chödron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

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Finding Peace

"As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve. and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love - even the most simple action."

-Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is."

-Eckhart Tolle

"When you believe a thought that argues with reality, you're confused"

-Byron Katie, A Mind At Home With Itself 

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment."

-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Things I Wish I Knew: The Paradox of Pain

Things I Wish I Knew:The Paradox of Pain

I wasn’t consciously aware of it, but I have been searching my entire life for something I only recently discovered. How different things could have been had I known this earlier on! So much unnecessary suffering could have been avoided. I wasn’t even aware that I was trying to escape my pain at any cost.

Just Fitting In

Like everyone else around me, I was just doing whatever I could to avoid feeling those queasy, raw, edgy feelings of discomfort whenever they showed up. Denial, projection, repression and suppression were my strategies of choice to run away and escape from those negative feelings. I kept myself as busy and distracted as I possibly could in order to ignore or numb the underlying pain. I was fortunate enough to have a fairly normal childhood with no major trauma, yet the pain had been building up over the years, simply as a condition of living in a world that encourages and rewards disowning and projecting our negative feelings onto others.

What Problem?

Since I didn’t even know there was a problem - this denied pain I was carrying around everywhere was preventing me from experiencing true joy and inner peace - how was I to know there was a solution that could dramatically improve my quality of life? Why wasn’t I taught this simple solution in elementary school, or in University, when I got my psychology degree? Maybe it was best that I discover these things on my own, when I was ready to truly hear them. After all, I believe everything in this universe unfolds in perfect divine order. My journey into the heart of consciousness has allowed me to grow, to unlearn and to peel off many of the layers of protection I had built around myself. Now, I am happy to be able to share what I have discovered with others. And what is that?

The Exact Opposite Of What We Do

The pathway to true freedom and inner peace is so simple, yet it is counterintuitive and rather uncomfortable. We are all wired to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. Evolutionarily, this has ensured our survival. However, we are now at a stage in our evolution that allows us to soar beyond mere survival. Now more than ever before, we have the potential to thrive. We can reach levels of bliss that allow us to transcend the drama and suffering of this world. But for that, we have to stop running from our pain. There is no other way around it. We have to willingly welcome our pain and then let it go. We can learn to see pain for what it is – trapped emotions from our past – not who we are.

Breaking Free

As unpleasant and challenging as it may appear, we can all find the courage to face those uncomfortable feelings that make us squirm, hide, run, blame, judge, and sabotage ourselves. Once we become aware of the many avoidance behaviors or crutches we desperately cling to in order to push the pain away (keeping busy, alcohol, food, sex, television, isolation, projection onto others...etc), we can start to crack the walls of the prison that has been keeping our pain inside all these years. We can stop reacting to life from a place of fear and instead start to see our triggers as opportunities, or invitations to actively release the hurt we have been carrying inside for too long.

Run, Forrest, Run!

So when that queasy, edgy feeling returns, we can stay present with it instead of trying to make it go away. We can observe what’s happening inside our body and let the emotions come out instead of running from them, or demanding that people or circumstances stop poking us where it hurts. Once the negative feelings have been released and we feel ok again inside, all our energy becomes available for problem solving, for simply enjoying the moment or for actively creating the reality we choose.

Healing From The Inside Out

It takes a while to get used to it, but this process of facing and surrendering our pain can be embraced daily. At first it might feel strange and terrifying, but as you keep releasing the negative feelings and then consciously refocus attention on positive things that allow you to feel good, you will heal your life from the inside out. When we are brave enough to face our pain, we eventually become fearless. When we are fearless, all the boundaries and limits we set around ourselves crumble. Paradoxically, fully feeling and releasing our pain is the quickest way to end our individual and collective suffering.

So there you have it. Now I know... and so do you! Thanks for having taken the time to read!

With Love,

Lise

www.lisevilleneuve.com

What In The World Are We Teaching Our Kids?

This is my daughter Emma when she was 4. Today, she’s 11. She has good days and bad days. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed being a mom. If you have kids, I’m sure you can relate! Our children are growing up in a complex world, to say the least.

I often ask myself how I can help Emma feel secure in a world filled with daily unpredictable atrocities? How can I help her to feel grounded in a materialistic world that rewards spending time on electronic devices and in shopping malls more than playing outside? How can I help her to feel joyful and relaxed in a world that rewards productivity and performance at any cost? How can I help Emma to be loving and compassionate towards others in a world that encourages competition, power struggles and the survival of the fittest? How can I help her to feel energized and balanced in a world that has lost touch with what real food is and encourages her to take a pill to fix the symptoms of disease! How can I best prepare her for the future in a world that preaches the benefits of knowledge and education, but fails to ask these fundamental questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose? Was I meant to suffer or can I be happy? What is true happiness? How can I find lasting joy and peace in this complex world?

As parents, we go out of our way to sign up our kids for soccer, swimming, dancing, drama, music...which are all great, but let’s face it, something fundamental is still missing in their lives. Are we teaching them how to fit into the system so they can “win” at this game of life, or are we helping them to figure out how to be truly happy? Do we know how to be truly happy ourselves? What kind of example are we setting for them?

What I want for Emma is for her to be able to think outside the box. I want her to see beyond the illusions of this fearful world she was born into. I hope to raise her awareness so that she’s able to stop creating more suffering for herself and others and instead, she can concentrate on healing our planet. I want to teach her how to tap into her inner-wisdom. Ultimately, I want her to remember that her happiness comes from within. She’s not a victim of her circumstances. Neither are you, nor your children. But to change our perception of the world, we first have to change the perception of who we think we are. It’s time to awaken!

I wrote Conscious Kids (online mindfulness lessons) for Emma. It won’t change the world, but it’s a small step in the right direction. If you’d like to receive the weekly mindfulness lessons, you can sign up here (deadline is Feb 1^st, 2016): http://www.lisevilleneuve.com/#!consciouskids/ckgl

Blessings,

Lise

www.lisevilleneuve.com

I Feel Completely Inadequate...

Disclaimer:

I hope I'm not getting too annoying with the increasing frequency of my blogging, but lately the inspiration has been pouring out of me, so I'm just allowing it to take form here. I really do enjoy writing, despite the fact that English is my second language and words don't always come as easily as French. Yet, something is pushing me to continue in this direction right now.

I want to take this time to thank you for being here, whoever you are! I really have no clue who reads my posts, all I know is that the numbers are increasing daily and I'm honoured that you're here. So don't be shy to contact me directly if you feel inclined to, I'd love to hear from you! (my contact info is on www.lisevilleneuve.com or you can post comments directly on this blog.)

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I Feel Completely Inadequate...

After having worked with many different people as a coach / counsellor, I can say with certainty that most of us feel like we are inadequate, myself included. We feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with us. We just don't fit in, we never have, and we're afraid that sooner or later, someone will figure us out! So what do we do? In order to avoid facing this threatening feeling of lack and these dark emotions that rest at the core of our being, we run like hell. Your ego is probably denying this right now!

Many of us spend our entire lives running away from our true, whole, Selves, because we (our egos) believe that we are not enough and never will be. Bullshit. We run from the pain of our past that we refuse to feel and instead bury deep inside, naively hoping that it will never resurface. We are experts at keeping ourselves distracted from our inner-world by finding something, anything to DO. Standing still is not an option because once our mind gets bored, it starts to wander into our forbidden zones. Being alone often presents the same threat. Does this sound familiar to you?

From this false premise that we are not good enough just as human beings, we build a lifetime of protective layers -such as the roles we hide behind, the career that defines us, the daily dramas that allow us to point the finger out there, the various successes that make us feel like we are temporarily important. But do they really make us feel like we're worthy? For how long? The ego is never fully satisfied. Before we know it, we're craving the next new thing, thrill, relationship...etc. There's nothing wrong with wanting these things, but few of us realize WHY we really want them. If we're brutally honest, we'll see that it's to keep ourselves distracted from this deep, unconscious belief that we're simply inadequate. Maybe by doing more, by being more, we'll feel better someday? What will it take, what will you have to do to finally get there? When will it be enough?

If we want to feel happy and at peace with ourselves, the first step is to realize that we've probably been looking in the wrong direction -outward. We have to come back to those disowned parts of ourselves and gently embrace them again. We have to find the courage to face our demons from the past. Emotions get stored in the body and can turn into discomfort or disease if they are not released. The truth is, we are already whole and worthy right now, even with all our imperfections. Don't let the ego fool you! The bulk of our healing work has to do with peeling off our multiple protective layers and allowing ourselves to feel ALL our emotions -especially the unpleasant, frightening ones.

So whenever you hear that little voice that pressures you to DO more, BE more, GET more, KNOW more, just tell it to ph*que off. Pardon my French. If whatever you desire is coming from a place of passion, enthusiasm, and joy, then that's your heart speaking to you. Go for it! You are beautiful just the way you are. Always remember that.

Warmly,

Lise
Health Coach / Reiki Master
www.lisevilleneuve.com

Shit Happens. Are We Going To Let it Control Us?

I was in Cuba a couple weeks ago, splashing around in the warm, turquoise waters of the Caribbean. Our little group was discussing what makes a good vacation. Was it the hotel amenities? The food? The company? The beach? We concluded that a combination of all these things made somewhat of a difference on our overall level of enjoyment, but the most determinant variable was our state of mind. Were we committed to having a good time from the start, or were we ready to complain at the first inconvenience?

Before booking this trip, we all read the Trip Advisor reviews to have a better idea of the environment we were about to immerse ourselves in, but the truth is, we never have full control over our circumstances, no matter how much we prepare ourselves. Shit happens. This rule doesn't just apply to our vacations, obviously, it applies to our daily life. The good news is that even though we have limited control over our external circumstances, we have full control over what happens in our inner-landscape. By inner-landscape, I mean our thoughts, our emotions, our perceptions and our reactions.

Let me illustrate this with an example. First, we think a thought (such as "this hotel room sucks, I got ripped off"). Thoughts automatically translate into emotions in our body, so we may suddenly start to feel frustrated, even angry. Now all our perceptions become tainted with this anger, so we're more likely to notice more things that justify and increase our frustration. "I can't believe they gave me this crappy room, I don't want to be stuck in this dump, it will ruin my vacation." Next thing we know, we are yelling at the reception, having a full-blown tantrum that doesn't get us anywhere because no other rooms are available!

Thankfully, the story didn't end up like this for me, but I did have a below-average room in Cuba. The air-conditioner, safe and fridge were out of order, the room was full of mosquitoes and was on the first level, which was very loud with no view at all. I didn't feel good in this room, so I decided to use this negative situation to my advantage. I learned fairly recently that any time we are feeling bad and don't like what's going on around us, it's a golden opportunity to clearly affirm what we would like to experience instead. It takes a little effort to remember this at times, but our thoughts really do create our reality, so staying stuck in negativity and complaining about what we don't like only brings us more of what we are focusing on -bad things!

I began to imagine myself in a nicer, quieter room, higher up, with a beautiful view of the ocean. That felt good, and I truly believed it was possible to make this happen. I calmly went to the reception, explained my case, but was told there were no other rooms available. They told me to try my luck again tomorrow. I did, and was very pleased to be upgraded to the top floor, corner room with no neighbours, ocean view, with a complimentary bottle of Rhum! The maid even made beautiful swans, boats and animals with the towels every day! I was very grateful for this turn of events, it made my vacation even better than I decided it was going to be!

So I got upgraded, no big deal right? The point I'm trying to make here is that I could have arrived at this same result more aggressively, by complaining, by resisting, by raising my voice, by thinking and feeling thoughts/emotions that are unpleasant and create unnecessary stress for myself and others. That was a choice I had. Acting up and being demanding doesn't mean we'll get what we want faster, on the contrary. We're not naturally conditioned to act this way, but if we're able to be crystal clear about what we want instead of resisting the hand that's been given to us, we actually have more power to alter our circumstances.

So when the food is repetitive and cold, the mosquitoes are eating us alive and the pool smells like sewage, we still have control over how we are going to interpret our reality! Can we actively do something to change our situation? If the answer is yes, we can focus on taking action without falling into the trap of negativity, complaining and resistance. If the answer is no, we might as well focus on something that will make us feel better, unless we want to attract more negative circumstances our way! It's a matter of perception.

What determines if we are going to be happy or unhappy is not actually the events and circumstances that are occurring in our lives, it's always our personal interpretation of these events! We can have complete control over our inner-landscape if we learn to observe and tame our monkey-mind. Once we master this, nobody / nothing has the power to make us react any more. I'll let you know when I get there! It may take a couple more lifetimes! ;)

Warmly,

Lise
Health Coach and Reiki Master
www.lisevilleneuve.com