Do you ever get caught in an endless loop of questions in your mind that keep you awake at night and make you feel like you’re on a hamster wheel not getting anywhere? Feel like you’re on an emotional roller coaster and just want it to stop? Question everything and whether you’re making the right choices. Do you want to go to a psychic or your smartest friend to get some answers or reassurance? Worry about what’s going to happen next? Sometimes it can feel like you’re going crazy and you can’t even concentrate on anything else till you get some comfort about the future. So let’s explore this issue candidly.
WHAT IS CRAZY?
My definition of crazy is pretty simple. You’re over-identified with your personality. Period. It’s called ego. When you listen to it all the time and take it too seriously, you’re going to go crazy ’cause that’s the ego’s job… more and more and more stress under the disguise of it actually seeming like it’s going to fix everything… through more thinking! It’s an addiction. So, essentially, unless you’re enlightened, yes, you’re crazy to whatever degree you take things personally. And that’s ok. It’s the duality of the Star Wars series… good versus evil. I believe sin is thinking. If you’re free of thinking, you’re automatically free of sin. Just my take.
WHAT TO DO?
Now that you know you’re crazy, then what? I recommend you do a regular exercise or tool that helps you calm or tame your wild mind (our “pain body” as Eckhart Tolle calls it). I have some amazing resources on my resources page for this. One is Byron Katie’s work. Another wonderful exercise is talked about in Matt Kahn’s video on Youtube called “Respecting the Shadow”. You can do it every time you’re upset to help you come back to your authentic self… your energy body. The real you is where you are peaceful, expansive, and free. And you’re able to think more clearly. If you can stay in this state, your ego becomes enslaved by your authentic self and actually becomes its fuel. But it takes breaking the habit of entertaining the ego.
RESPECTING THE SHADOW EXERCISE
1) Identify a word or phrase for what you’re feeling
2) Check out where and how you feel the feeling in your body… any physical sensations
3) In your mind’s eye, picture all the ways you react to people and things in your environment when you feel this way. How do you act, talk, avoid, get angry, kick things, yell, cry, hide, lash out, etc.
4) In your mind’s eye, picture all the ways people react to you when you’re feeling this way. How do people respond to you when you’re in this mood?
5) Immerse yourself in the entire experience of this feeling. How it feels in your body, how you treat others, how others treat you, then see just how much power this feeling has over you when it’s present in your reality.
6) Take all that energy off of you and set it out in front of you like an energy child and say to it, “I respect your power”
If you still have a negative feeling or phrase after you’ve done this set, do it again with the next feeling. And do it again with the next. Do it until you feel peace. This peace is your authentic self… the real you. You pass the ego at your core. This is where you can choose to reside a majority of the time and this can become a habit if you practice this exercise every single time you feel upset about anything. Your upset can actually point you to your freedom in this way. Once you get in the habit of it, you may only need to do this exercise once or twice a week. Most of the time, you’ll be pretty chill.
PITFALLS
Too many people try to distract themselves, use affirmations they don’t really believe in, or try to think positively. The problem is, if you’re somehow telling yourself that your negative emotions aren’t ok, then you’re going to suppress that feeling and it’s going to act out inappropriately sometime when you least expect it. You really don’t want that.
And, sometimes, we’re tempted to take shortcuts and, when you learn something, you try to jump to a conclusion and say, “Oh, yes, I get this!” and then you start just dismissing and skipping over steps thinking you’ve got a quicker way to the punch line. This is a trap of the ego! Don’t fall for it. It’s super important you do the full exercise as it’s designed. Go through the actual work of it to reap the benefits. In its own time, it will go faster, and you will experience deeper epiphanies and breakthroughs. But don’t cheat yourself and don’t avoid doing it. I would use a tool either every day or every time I get upset. Be very diligent for a while to make it a habit and to make doing it easy.
EMERGENCIES
When you do your due diligence in this way, when you encounter an emergency, you’re able to dive right into it without having to look it up or figure out how to go deeper with it than ever before. After you’ve practiced a freedom tool for a while, you will experience such amazing freedom it’s hard to fathom. And you will make peace with your past. You’ll start to laugh at everything and nothing irritates you. It becomes really hard for someone to rattle or insult you. You become impenetrable, invulnerable, and untouchable.
LEARN TO RELY ON SELF-SOOTHING
If you don’t do the work to free yourself, you will suffer. It’s that simple. And you will fall apart and heavily rely on other people to make you feel better, rely on psychics to give you answers that reassure you, etc. It’s a whole other freedom to be able to go inside for reassurance (self-soothe) and to learn to rely on your own intuition.
FINAL RECOMMENDATION
I highly recommend Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth” to help you discover true freedom. But you can’t read it like any other book. Read each sentence over and over until you truly understand it then goes forward. If he gives you an exercise, go try it and see if it’s true. Don’t just assume. Test it out. And don’t go forward until you really get what he said. The book has the energy to it that can help transform, and even enlighten, you.
