Gifts to grow
Our experience tells us that many of the disorders that we suffer can be prevented. Indeed, much of the uneasiness and dissatisfaction that we all experience daily in our lives and do not allow us to enjoy it fully, are rooted in beliefs and habits of self that we are not aware, but which we can actively intervene with appropriate guidance. Our intention is to bring light into your own internal processes so that you are who you dominate them, and not vice versa. And all this focus on your present and oriented towards your future, because only we can act now and we can only go forward.
In this section, you will find a selection of the best metaphors and ideas that circulate in the network
The self-pity: The venom of the self
The self-pity is to be in front of a table, absorbed in the coffee with milk, napkin, the buns, the spoon, without being able to look beyond the mantel, you might not realize that is a wonderful terrace, that clears the light through the trees, children playing, the clouds passing and the world beyond the small ego and has always been mysterious, fascinating and terrible. The self-pity is what separates us from the overall vision. And it turns cruel, insensitive.
Often it is coupled with guilt and a victim of that also hides the executioner. We are moving in the duality. In Gestalt is much about polarities, there is no one without the other. (…). Only the energy produced stagnant disease. (…) Why paralyzing self-pity? Because there is no world but me. An ego that is not allowed to look out for growth. Worse, an exile from the natural resources that make us react strongly and stepped up to the challenges. All of us are hundreds of them, before leaving this beautiful world, because life is to accept the struggle, pain, joy and effort of being human. (…)
Life requires courage, determination and looking forward. If there are 500 ways to wash dishes, we cannot stay where we were yesterday breaking one or the other. All we fall, the differences that define a weak or strong human lay in the speed with which we get up. Without this determination, which marks the absence of self, life is heavy as an elephant. The lack of compassion makes us light to be able to stop time and again commit the same mistakes, and enables us to keep moving, changing, following the flow of energy, the golden thread of spirit, that which will drive our conquest for conquest in reaching completion.
Mourning? Sure, we must express the pain, if not rotten, but a while, because the grief is almost always by yourself. From experience we know that the pain is not real tears. The real pain is beyond the emotions, is an act of consciousness that produces immediate and lasting effects. In the therapeutic world, it is easy to engage in self-pity and be caught there every year looking umbilicus and what is worse, making do, and justifying our lack of love with the fact that "we're in therapy." If you work with someone aware, you are not going to allow it. We may feel annoyed with their statements, but if we find someone with ethics, what a wonder!, I have had the luck to work with people like that. And from here I send a silent appreciation of the wisdom. The best way to learn is that we transmit living. The self-pity is the rope that binds us to addictions, preventing them from leaving premises, places, activities.
What will we get to face the self-pity? Being nothing. Accepting anything found mainly in the void of joy that always brings a new life.
"We make a vase of clay and the empty space on the inside makes it useful. We make
doors and windows for a place and the empty spaces make it a house. Thus, while the tangible has qualities, the intangible is what makes it useful." Lao Tse.
Self-control: The history of the nails
This is the story of a boy who had a very bad character. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost patience, should nail a nail behind the door. The first day, the boy stuck 37 nails behind the door. The weeks that followed, as he learned to control his temper, he nailed fewer nails. He discovered it was easier to control his temper nailing behind the door. Once, the day that he could control his character throughout the day came. After informing his father, he suggested withdrawing a nail every day to achieve controlling his character. The days passed and the kid was able to announce to his father that there were no more nails to remove the door. His father took him by the hand and led him to the door. He said: "You have worked hard, my son, but look at all those holes in the door … it will never again be the same. Every time you lose patience, you leave scars like those you see here."
Luck: Good luck, bad luck … Who knows?
It is told that in a very small town, a young man lived with his family. On one occasion, the best horse of the boy ran away and disappeared into the bush. The boy went to tell his father that he had bad luck but his father told him: "Good luck, bad luck … who knows?".
Within days, the horse returned bringing with it a herd of mares. He aas very happy to tell his father that he returned to say: "Good luck, bad luck … who knows?". The boy began tame mares with such bad luck that was shut due to fatigue and a broken leg. When he told his father the bad news, the father replied: "Good luck, bad luck … who knows?"
The next day, the soldiers went through the town looking for all young people to join ranks and fight wars, but our character was a useless leg opted to leave the village. He was very happy to tell his father. He said again: "Good, luck, bad luck … who knows?".
Assertiveness: Rights of the assertive person
- You have the right to not doing what people ask.
- You have the right to not responding.
- You have the right to not standing behind the troubles of others.
- You have the right to not anticipating the needs and desires of others.
- You have the right to not watching the goodwill of others.
- You have the right to not making mistakes.
- You are entitled to be final judge of your feelings and accept them as valid.
- You are entitled to have your own opinions and convictions.
- You have the right to change your mind or course of action.
- You have the right to criticism and protest unfair treatment.
- You have the right to interrupt and ask for a clarification.
- You have the right to try a change.
- You are entitled to ask for help or emotional support.
- You are entitled to feel and express pain.
- You have the right to ignore the advice of others.
- You are entitled to receive formal recognition for a job well done.
- You have the right to be alone even when others want you.
- Sometimes you have the right to be the first.
Accepting the outside: Be a Teacher
A great Sufi master of the past who was once asked what was to be a master replied: "Being a teacher is a feeling of joy that comes when a sudden obstacle. A teacher is never hurt by the way life happens. If your plans and dreams cannot be done, he thanks God and accepts what is given, with a constant state of love, gratitude, joy and happiness. He always knows, maybe not in the way he expects, what he needs at that time to get closer to God. "
Choosing feelings: "Fixing" the mind
A very elderly lady who was almost blind and recently widowed after seventy years of happy marriage, she moved to a nursing home. After hours of patient waiting in the reception, she smiled sweetly when warned that her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker out in the elevator, I provided a detailed description of her tiny room, including sheets and curtains that were hanging in her window.
"I love them" she said with the enthusiasm of a kid with a puppy. "Madam," replied, "you have not yet een the room … wait to see it." "That has nothing to do," she said. "Happiness is something you decide ahead of time. The fact that I like my room or I do not like it, it does not depend on how it is managed, it depends on how I arrange my mind. I had decided beforehand that I love it." It is a decision I take every morning to get up … These are my choices: I can spend the day in bed enumerating the difficulties I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or can I get out of bed and give thanks for the work.
Effort: The lesson of the butterfly
One day a small opening appeared in a cocoon. A man sat and observed for several hours as a butterfly was trying to move its body through that little hole. So it seemed that it had achieved no progress. It seemed it had gone as far as it could in its attempt and could not go any further.
So the man decided to help the butterfly: took a scissors and cut the rest of the cocoon, which the butterfly emerged easily. But its body was wasted, was small and the wings were crushed. The man continued to follow because he expected at any moment, the wings open and it would be able to withstand the body, which in turn would take shape.
Nothing happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life dragging a body and deformed wings.
It was never able to fly. What man in his kindness and willingness to help did not understand was that the tight cocoon and effort required for the butterfly to pass through the small opening, was the way in which life was the fluid from the body of the butterfly to reach the wings, so it would be ready to fly at the same time that was free of the cocoon. Sometimes effort is just what we need in our lives. If we are allowed to pass through our lives without obstacles, it would leave us crippled. We would not be as strong as might have been and never could fly.