Things I learnt this year

06 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by Anel Hamersma in Change, Life, Lifestyle Deconstruction

Tags

acceptance, chronic fatigue syndrome, contentment, dalai lama, illness, kindness

Around this time last year I got the flu.

Over the course of the next two or three months, I got it six more times. The last time I got it, it simply didn’t go away. MY body ached. I couldn’t get out of bed. I had no energy. It took about another three months before I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).

The rest of 2011 I cycled in and out of varying degrees and intensities of CFS. Sometimes it overpowered me. Sometimes it simply prowled round me like a homeless dog in a dark alleyway. Even when I felt better I knew it was always close by, and I learnt to stop saying that I’m better, because it was always just a matter of time before I wasn’t.

Still: I am deeply grateful to the illness I created this year.

It made me stop dead in my tracks – something I would never, ever have done under any other circumstances. It allowed me the time and space to really think deeply about my life, and what I’m doing with it.

After many hours of staring blankly at the roof, I figured out that my life is not defined by who I claim to be or what degree I have. My life is not defined by how much money I make or how little I have. The only thing that matters is HOW I LIVE MY LIFE, and this simple realization has allowed me enormous amounts of new freedom.

I think the Dalai Lama says it best:

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Kindness always seemed like such a basic thing to me in the past; of course I’m kind! I thought. But really, I wasn’t. My cruelty started with myself. I demanded enormous amounts of publicly visible success from myself. I set completely unobtainable standards for myself. How else would I ever feel useful and valuable without it? I pushed myself, for years. I pushed so hard I almost broke. (And perhaps I did.)

When I became aware of the places where I was being cruel to myself – when I became kinder - I stopped feeling like my job was to change everything, all the time. Acceptance came. Contentment emerged. I slowly started to ALLOW things (including me) to simply be. This small, small thing, completely changed my life.

Instead of always imposing my agenda on the world, I could start to allow the world to just be. I could watch it, study it. Most importantly, I could connect with it.

I think that my readings have changed substantially this year. They are still changing. They have become kinder. They have become more about bringing something to life than about stopping something.

Thank you to everyone who read this blog this year, and came with me on my journey. Thank you for signing up for the emails. Thank you for every comment.

Thank you to my clients, who continue to be my most penetrating teachers. Thank you for allowing me to walk a little way with you, for letting me peer out over your horizons and your valleys. It is a sacred privilege, one I am very grateful for.

May 2012 be filled with lightness.

May it give you exactly what you require.

May your ancestors bless you and protect you.

Thokoza!

PS: I’m on blogging sabbatical for the month of December. I’ll be back at the beginning of January.

Letting Go = Satisfaction = Joy

04 Monday Jul 2011

Posted by Anel Hamersma in freedom, Life, Self-Uncovery, Transformation

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

acceptance, contentment, five niyamas, Illusions by Richard Bach, santosha, satisfaction, yoga

After my post called The Great Big Itch, my friend Marie-Therese sent me a link to a term called Santosha, which is one of the Five Niyamas found in the Yoga Sutras.

Now, I have never in my life struck a yoga pose, but all this made a lot of sense to me. There must be something in that Hindi air over there:

Santosha is a state of acceptance of your current circumstances. It is a deep contentment with what you have. It is the lack of craving or needing more. It places value on what you have in the present, rather than what you might have in the future.

This satisfaction can only be achieved through letting go of things. Satisfaction by its very nature means being present and unattached. Isn’t it ironic? It’s not the Next Big Thing that will give you deep satisfaction. It is letting go of the Next Big Thing completely – in your mind and your heart, and then finally the big let go in your soul – that will bring you contentment.

When you live in a state of satisfaction, joy rises from your heart like a phoenix from the ashes. It is not the pursuit of happiness that we need to seek, but in a world of consumerism, we simply require some contentment.

This story is from “Illusions” by Richard Bach.

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river.

The current of the river swept silently over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks at the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, ‘I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.’

The other creatures laughed and said, ‘Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you shall die quicker than boredom!’

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, ‘See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!’

And the one carried in the current said, ‘I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.’

But they cried the more, ‘Saviour!’ all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.