Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Make sure you take some time to relax and recharge.
So...I decided to do an audio recording of one of the stories from Conscious Kids (an online mindfulness course for kids I've written). Just click on the video above to have a listen!
This was me
a few years ago (in the attached video). At least that’s who I thought I was. I
wrote songs, performed, and toured in a lot of cool places. I won some music
competitions and I received a grant to produce my own album. I was even lucky
enough to record a duet with the wonderful Daniel Lavoie on my CD. I was young,
ambitious and determined to “make it” as an artist in the music industry.
I guess
there’s nothing wrong with that, except that in my case, I eventually realized
that my relentless desire to “make it” and become a “somebody” implied that
deep down inside, I felt like it wasn’t ok to just be “a nobody”. I was searching
for something that would ultimately make me feel better. I wanted to feel
loved, accepted and validated by others. I wanted to step out of the shadows
and yell “hey! I exist!” I needed to prove that I was worthy. I truly believed
that my success as an artist would make me feel happy and content. Boy, was I
wrong!
I climbed up
the ladder of success, but the higher I got, the worse I felt. Something was
off. I couldn’t just enjoy singing and writing anymore because I became
obsessed with the game. My success or
failure rested entirely in the hands of a few key players in the music
industry: the radio stations, the record companies, the music producers, the
press agents and the media. In order to move forward in a way that was
significant, I needed their approval. In a split second, these people could
decide if I was star material, or completely worthless. This made me feel
insecure and powerless. I knew clearly by then this was not the road to
fulfilment!
I started to
look deeper for answers to my insecurities, and what I discovered was that I
had spent many years strengthening and repairing my damaged ego. I was very
attached to this idea of “me” being a girl with brown hair, an artist with
certain opinions, feelings and experiences. I had never seriously considered
that maybe we, humans, were much more than our physical form. It dawned on me
that my deep longing for love and peace could never be satisfied on a material
level. I realized that even if I played this game of society and succeeded on a
very large scale, my ego would still find a way to make me feel insecure and
dissatisfied. I would still feel like I needed to do more, be more and receive more
love and acceptance.
What about
you? Can you relate? Are you completely content with who you are right now, or
is there something in the future that you need to do, or work on, or achieve
first, before you can feel completely fulfilled and at peace?
Well, that
feeling sucks, doesn't it! It’s sort of like your self-worth and power are
largely in the hands of others, and you can never really be content in the
moment. Even when you play the game and are successful in the eyes of society,
you still feel like something’s missing, something’s not quite right yet.
I felt like
that for many years, until I finally understood who I really was. And who is
that? Well, it turns out I’m simply the light escaping through the cracks
of my ego shell. I hate to break it to you but, that’s who you are, too.
I discovered
what consciousness, or awareness, was all about, and it completely changed my
life for the better. Things started to really make sense. I started to feel
truly empowered on a whole other level. Consciousness was my ticket to real
freedom. The search for that something or someone that could fill the void was
over! What a relief to finally have some clarity.
It all comes
down to two choices. Either we stay attached to who we think we are on the
surface and we play the game of ups and downs, successes and failures,
happiness and unhappiness, me versus you; or we recognize that we are the light
shining through the cracks of our individual ego shells. When we truly see
ourselves as the light, we’re ok with the idea of being “a nobody” in society’s
eyes, because we already know the true value of who, or what, we are. We can
play the game without getting attached to the outcome. Everything becomes
lighter.
So yes, I’m
working on being the best nobody that I can be. I have learned so much over the
years and I now enjoy teaching others about consciousness and mindfulness. It’s
a humbling but incredibly beautiful and liberating journey. I believe awakening
to our essential self is our true purpose here.
This is my daughter Emma. I'm very proud of her for wanting to do this little video today. Normally on Sundays we go to the pool and this is something she enjoys very much, but she preferred to work on this video instead.
It seems like a bit of a cruel cosmic joke to be
born into this world as unified consciousness, then to grow egos that seem perfectly
justified and socially acceptable, only to realize later in life that they are
at the root of our deepest suffering. Then, once we become aware of our
shackles, we commit ourselves to unlearning everything we have ever known to be
real and meaningful. The little ‘separate self’ was just an illusion all along!
We start to let go of the idea of ‘me’ and begin to let consciousness take up
more space inside. Once again, just like when we were an infant, our life is no
longer ‘ours’, but it flows effortlessly. We are at peace, we are free, we are “home”.
Lasting peace and freedom arise when we simply allow
ourselves to Be who we truly have been right from the start. Who we truly are
has nothing to do with our personality, our story, our thoughts, our emotions,
our opinions, our deep conditionings or even our beliefs. Our egos prevent us
from accepting and surrendering to our true identity because it threatens the very
survival of our small, individual self. And who are we really? We are all part
of the one unified consciousness. Nothing could be more empowering and terrifying
than that!
“Home” is a state of being where our small self is
no longer in control. When we are truly “home”, consciousness itself takes over,
cleansing out all the remaining traces of the small, separate self that used to
inhabit and restrict our being. We can finally feel at home when we wake up and
recognize the illusion of ‘me and you’, ‘happy and unhappy’, ‘past and future’,
‘good and bad’, ‘success and failure’.
Once we realize that our small self was trapped in a
world of superficial and limiting polarities, we can willingly surrender to who
we truly are: consciousness. At this point, we are fully content being nobody.
There is nothing to prove, nothing to fight for, nothing to gain, nothing to
lose. We finally accept that we are complete simply by being. We finally stop
creating suffering for ourselves and others. We are free from the drama of the
world and our own minds. We are at peace. We are filled with joy. We are
compassionate and loving. Isn’t that what we ultimately all want?
The truth is, at this stage in our evolution, arriving
“home” is not likely to happen without an epic battle with the ego first. The ego says “why on Earth would I want to
become a nobody and give up all my attachments? I would get eaten alive in this
world.” It’s true, there is so much letting go required, so much at stake for
the little self. Our conditioning and our resistance run deep. “Home” seems
utopian and unattainable. Yet at the same time, it’s within our reach right
here, right now. We can only access it by allowing ourselves to be who we truly
are. No amount of doing will show us the way back to simply being.
Lately, our house has been a Conscious Kids factory! We've been so busy preparing our free online mindfulness course for kids that starts October 5th, 2015. Emma has been doing the illustrations for each story I write -that gets reviewed by my ex-journalist husband Rob. Emma (who has loved to draw since she was a baby) illustrates the pictures inside mandalas that she also creates from scratch. All the children who are signed up for the course will be able to colour these, so that's pretty exciting for an 11 year old!
We have families signed up from all over, from Australia, to the UK, the US, across Canada, Bulgaria and more. The world is ready for mindfulness on a big scale, I have been feeling this for some time now. I feel extremely motivated and grateful to be able to share what I have learned about consciousness / mindfulness over the past few decades with others. I know how these essential skills can better the lives of children and their families, I see it with my own children. As they grow older, Emma and Theo increasingly need a roadmap to help them navigate the unpredictable waters of their emotions, thoughts and perceptions. Writing this course has given me the opportunity to really think about the best order in which to teach the basic skills to kids. The funny thing is, the majority of adults would also benefit from learning these! For example, here are some of the questions that are answered in the course:
-What creates your emotions?
-How can you tell if your thinking has been predominantly negative or positive?
-What can you do when you feel intense, overwhelming emotions?
-What are your emotions telling you?
-When you're stuck in a negative mood, what can you do about it?
Theo, Emma (and our cat Precious) participate in brief videos we make that explain what each weekly lesson will be about. I'm already pleasantly surprised to see how simply participating in the making of these videos has helped Theo and Emma deal with bursts of emotions and moodiness! It's one thing to teach them about emotional self-regulation with words, but it's an entirely different thing to teach them with real-life examples.
When Theo and Emma act out a scene for the videos, then watch themselves back and are asked "what would be a better way of dealing with this situation?" they really get it. When a daily drama outbreak happens in our home, as it inevitably does, I simply remind the kids of what they did in the videos, and they instantly calm down and remember what they can do to make themselves feel better! I honestly didn't foresee how these little videos we are making are probably going to teach Emma and Theo more about mindfulness than the weekly stories from the course! I read each story I've written to the kids and I carefully notice if they are looking bored, not paying attention, or loving every bit of it. They are my quality control process! So far so good!
Anyway, I won't be blogging quite as much for the next little while, there's just too much to do with Conscious Kids. You can still register for the course for FREE up until October 1st, 2015. We'll see you in virtual class! Thanks for sharing, the more the merrier!
I'll have to make this post short and sweet, but the video above says it all. I'm really excited about offering this free online mindfulness course for kids that starts October 5, 2015. I'm super busy preparing everything, and it's SO much fun! The kids are excited too, and they're eager to help out. I'm really enjoying writing short creative stories that explain the mindfulness concepts simply to kids. I think another book may be in my future...you never know!
Anyway, if you have kids, and even if you don't, I hope to see you in virtual class soon! The deadline to register is October 1st, 2015. Here is the page to learn more and register.
