Him & I

My boyfriend and I went through a rough patch recently. Living 200 miles apart, working so hard on our individual goals and ambitions, working on completely different shift patterns, on top of trying to schedule in some social time for ourselves and each other. IT IS SO DAMN HARD.

I’m grateful that we never let our difficulties get the best of us. We always try to work as a team on our problems. It’s never me against him. It is us against the problem.

Recently I taught him about Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages. We discussed what we wanted. The conversation was such a spiritually enlightening and eye-opening experience . It is crazy that what we both want is ‘Quality Time’ with each other, more than anything else. The irony is that we are so busy building our individual dreams we do not have the time to spend quality time together. We talked about this and I’m glad we are always able to have such conversations and come up with solutions. The world truly does work in mysterious ways and I’m grateful that I have chosen him to experience life with.

I feel motivated to be a better version of myself every moment I spend with him. Yes it is going to be tough, but when we both know we are working so hard for our future, it makes it all the more worth it.

Advertisement

No one told me it would be this hard

It is so difficult to focus on this present moment when I was programmed all my life to think about the: ‘what if’, ‘what next’, ‘how will it’.

I sat down to meditate today and I really struggled to hone in on the Now. I had a flood of thoughts about what I had to do next, and what I had to do tomorrow. I felt like I was physically fighting my way against thinking these thoughts which drained more of my energy.

Accept it. Don’t resist it. What I had learnt today is my thoughts do not define me. I cannot start judging myself for not being present. Actually thinking those thoughts was my present. The more I resisted, the more I hated myself for resisting. I just have to accept that that is what my mind is thinking of at this moment, be at peace with it and continue. I believe that slowly that will help to calm my mind down.

I can see that this journey to awareness and presence is going to be a long one, but I know I will get there eventually.

Silencing the thoughts

Today I practiced 12 minutes of uninterrupted silent meditation.

I initially put a timer on for 15 minutes, and aimed to continue meditating for all 15 minutes. However, my thoughts started to waver and when I opened my eyes to check the timer, 12 minutes had passed. I gave myself the credit for the 12 minutes I had practiced for, and stopped there for the day.

My ability to quieten my thoughts has improved significantly since the first time I sat in silence. This time round, I focused so much on my breathing and its rhythm, that I mentally could not divert my attention to anything else. Nonetheless, during the 12 minutes, I had visions flash before my eyes amplifying my feelings of anxiety and fear (related to my current orthopaedic job I completed a few days ago), my feelings of jealously towards certain individuals I have come across, my feelings of confusion regarding how people may be judging me.

Therefore, I wanted to take this space to reflect on all three feelings.

1) My current job on orthopaedics gave me so much anxiety and every day I walked into work with the fear of what I may have screwed up at work, what I may have missed, what someone would say to me regarding any small thing I would have done. I was not myself. When I finished my last every orthopaedic shift on Monday, I felt a sense of relief. I felt like I could breathe and be myself again. Nonetheless, when I was meditating today, I had a flood of that anxiety creep up on me. It is going to take me time to get over those negative emotions I felt during that job, but I know I will get over it.

2) I have become quite obsessive over some individuals, especially some women (and on some occasions, men) on social media. I have somewhat started to develop some kind of jealously over their lives. I do think this has stemmed from my own insecurities about myself. When I can feel these emotions take over me, I always take time to remind myself of the good person I am at my core and the person I am becoming. Therefore, now every time I feel jealous or insecure over someone, especially on social media, I actually like their post, comment something positive and/or send them a prayer. This has really helped with my sanity and it has reminded me how important it is to be kind and send nothing but love. I am not going to judge myself over my negative feelings, but I am going to work to turn that negativity into something positive for myself and all those I may have been feeling that negativity towards.

3) Today is the 27th November. Today marks Maaveerar Naal – a day when Sri Lankans Tamils come together and commemorate the lives lost during the Sri Lankan civil war, especially the lives of the innocent Tamils. This is also the same day that several members of the Tamil youth start posting and sharing remembrance posts on their social media pages. I was feeling the pressure to share my own respects to the innocent lives lost, and I also felt as if I would be judged if I did not post something. At the end of the day, I did not do anything; I did not see what purpose it was going to serve an image for the sake of following a crowd. I instead took the time to reflect on what I could do to make sure the lives lost were not in vain. I instead took the time to reflect on how I can stand out as a Tamil girl and ensure Tamils across the globe would also feel proud and motivated to carry on the Tamil culture and language for the generations to come. That is me paying respect to the lives lost. That is me finding the Maaveeran (Brave Soldier) within me. That is me falling in love with my Tamil culture yet again.

Silent meditation is really helping me break down and evaluate my thoughts. This is how I am going to silence my thoughts as well. Rather than judging myself for the thoughts I have, I have decided to analyse the thoughts that I am focused on and write about it to you. It is slowly giving me control over my thoughts, which is what I have always wanted. It is a work in progress but I am on this journey to healing my soul. Join me on this infinite journey of soul healing as well.

Distracted by the ‘Ping’

I was sat in ten minutes of silent meditation, before heading off to my night shift. I forgot to put my phone on silent. Although at the time I was annoyed at myself for this, I was glad that it happened the way it did.

My phone ‘pinged’ four times during the ten minutes. I did not once open my eyes. I tried my level best to consciously ignore it (the irony!). However, every time my phone pinged, I noticed a shift in my spiritual energy. My concentration diminished. My focus wavered. I mean, I have already been fighting against my uncontrollable series of thoughts, which is why I have started practicing silent meditation; but the phone going off every few minutes made me realise how my brain is programmed to respond to notifications. A small portion of my concentration is taken away from me every time this happens.

We do not realise how toxic our gadgets can be to our mental and spiritual growth. A simple thing like receiving notifications actually has a massive impact on our ability to be present and focus on the activity at hand. This explains why we struggle so much with mental health – we are unable to align ourselves to one state of being at any one time.

What have I learnt? Well, my mental health is important to me. For me to remain focused and present, I need to actively shut down all possible distractions. I need to learn to ‘Say No To The Ping’. This is going to be tough journey for me because I am physically attached to my phone and I have been using it as a way of diverting my mind away from my present moment negative thoughts, without realizing I am only making my situation worse. I do not know how I am going to break free from the distractions, but I know I am, and that thought alone is enough to make a start.

Silence

Today I decided to embark on the next stage of spiritual practice. The practice of silence.

I had one hour left until my night shift started. I therefore decided to sit down for 15 minutes in silence. After years of reading spiritual texts, today I decided to practice the first of many principles.

Remaining in silence was scary. I had to face all my thoughts. I became aware of how crowded my mind is with thoughts, predominantly about the future. Within the first minute of sitting in silence, I started crying. I became aware of my pent-up negative energy breaking down in the form tears. I focused on that one tear drop which rolled out of my right eye, down my right cheek, all the way down my neck, finally being soaked up by my jumper.

After the initial bout of crying, I started to calm down. I was still overwhelmed by how much I thought about the future. All my thoughts were about the ‘what ifs’, ‘what next’. I tried to calm my mind down by focusing on deep inhalation and exhalation. I managed to achieve around 20 to 30 percent stillness overall. Still got a long way to go!

What amazed me was how I got into the hang of sitting with myself in complete silence. I did not realize time fly by. I have gained the awareness that my state of constant anxiety is because of my thoughts about the future. By constantly practicing silence, and eventually meditation, I hope to calm those thoughts down, in order to create a space of stillness – the canvas for my creative growth and spiritual enlightenment.

How to start on a spiritual journey?

We are spiritual beings, already on a spiritual path. Our souls are united to the universe as one. Therefore, we do not need to search elsewhere to begin a spiritual journey. Our spiritual journey begins in the here, and now. We need to become aware and conscious of our thoughts, desires, feelings and emotions.

We live in a world right now where we love to talk and read about spirituality, thinking that this alone will grant us the right to call ourselves spiritually enlightened. The truth is that the desire to consciously embark on a spiritual journey must come from within. Books, podcasts may inspire us. That’s great, but to act on it is another story. Spirituality is an internal process, that cannot be confined to the limitations of words on a page, images/videos on social media. It is an inner awakening that occurs.

Behind this smile…

This smile holds so many secrets. Behind this smile, is endless days of exhaustion and tears; the number of days I have gone to sleep crying. I force myself to be a lot stronger than I actually am, for the fear that if I start to expose my tears, everyone/everything around me will crumble.

I always tell myself, it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to have any sort of emotion so long as we know how to process it safely and appropriately. Why do we judge ourselves so soon for any emotion we feel? Why are we so keen to label every emotion we experience? I can feel any emotion I want. After all, I am a human.

I just pray we are all kinder to each other. Judge less. Love more. Live more.