Where Soul Meets Body

Desires contend within each of us, I think, for our bodily experience and thinking to connect with our deeper subconscious minds. We remain a mystery to ourselves, and surely the human urge is to unravel the enigma that we are to ourselves.

Where that desire is rich indeed we may be especially spiritual, considering we’re all spiritual beings. The desire we describe is a yearning for an authentic oneness of being; where we might feel what it’s like to be new.

The Thought Of Being In Unity With Ourselves

Surely being in unity with ourselves, spiritually, having that authentic oneness of knowledge of our personage, is a journey—definitely one without a destination short of bodily death.

I’m not sure I know myself much better now compared with five years ago, though, strangely, I know that to be a lie. Both portions of this statement hold partially truthful. That, of itself, is enough evidence to indicate a level of intrapersonal hiddenness within parts of myself. Because I’d be so unsure of my spiritual interconnectedness, in a felt sort of way, I remain, largely, a mystery to myself. I hope it’s not just me that feels this way. I know it’s not just me.

Where soul meets body is a desire made fruitful in the eschatological context, which is an end-time place. It dreams of completion; in marriage imagery it’s a circular band with no beginning and no end.

This is assuredly a spiritual wish; that all of what is incomplete about life would be vanquished in the perfection that, at least, the mind can imagine and wants brought to reality.

Another Thought – The End Of Pain

What if such a concept, the soul meeting its body and the body meeting its soul, was about completion from another perspective—the end of pain?

The end of pain is an existential impossibility, yet the paradox is we can imagine how marvellous it would be not to have to deal with loss and grief and the tormented emotional pain that characterises this feeling life.

For instance, parents always want to die before their children do. In empathy for their own parents they accede to their wish that they go first. There’s a generational order that we find bearable regarding death. If that order comes unstuck, somehow, and the young ones die first, we find that incredibly hard to cope with.

***

It’s an inherent wish pulsing through humanity that we might, someday, come to be authentic with ourselves; that in knowing our lives we would also come to know our inner, subconscious selves as well somehow. That’s a spiritual journey without destination along the road of truth.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Acknowledgement: to Death Cab for Cutie’s song, Soul Meets Body (Gibbard).

Finding Space for Passions

Life is in our passions and when we’re allowed time to attend to the routines of our passions life becomes abundant. If we can only have sufficient abundance—by way of regularity of our passionate routines—then joy becomes us, and we find resilience is available for boredom, discomfort and even pain and the passage there is tolerable.

Within this is contained the idea that space for passionate routine ensures a balance for life. The enjoyable counterbalances the unenjoyable, for everyone must deal with the unenjoyable.

Routine Is No Dirty Word

We only associate ‘routine’ as a bad word (perhaps because of boredom) when we see it as unstimulating. When we routinise those things that inspire us, though, we follow a calling. Life becomes filled with meaning.

Now, not only do we accept the transience of such joy, we make room for it, and we explore how we might be more involved in it.

We begin to structure life around that which brings us to life. We begin to understand that if we’re going to be the best of ourselves, not just for ourselves but for others too, then we need to be sufficiently joyful within. Doing what impassions us gets us there. It’s reason to get out of bed in the morning and to stay up late if need be.

We’re happier and those around us, as a result, are happier. Our routines have a rippling effect in the order that’s enjoyed in others’ lives.

Identifying And Implementing

If we’ve not already identified our passions and made room for them, we perhaps haven’t lived to stretch our potential yet. That, of itself, is exciting. We don’t dwell on the fact of what we’ve missed out on. It’s what’s ahead that’s important.

Our first task, through the imagination, is to brainstorm those things that bring us alive. What were we born to do? What inspires us? What would we be prepared to go to great lengths to do? What would we consider a privileged life? Most of all, what’s a challenge yet attainable?

Although we can’t have everything, there’s scope in everyone’s life to do a little (or a lot) of what impassions us.

We might finish with a list. This is not where it stops. We must learn to act, and continue acting—in courageous faith. Passions are only brought to being through consistent and tenacious action toward their end.

And the whole idea is routine; creating space within our days and weeks for more of what we love so we can endure those things we don’t love more adequately; so meaning drives us. It’s so our focus is consumed in positivity, not negativity.

***

Passionate routines are what the abundant life is all about. When we love what we do, and everyone can, we’re happier to be around, and content within; everyone wins. Life is about finding our passions and living them.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: HRIH.

Cherishing the Child Within

We’re surrounded by people. Life wouldn’t be life without relationships. They make our lives happy and miserable and all between. What if there was a simple way to increase our understanding, empathy, and patience?

One way of being more understanding of people, generally, as well as being more content in our relationships is to imagine and see the child within every person we meet and relate with—yes, including ourselves.

Each and every person we encounter is subject to the same challenge: we find ourselves emotional, and therefore back in our child states, in a flash.

Even the most emotionally intelligent of people cannot escape this psychological link with their past—with the nature of being human.

Cherishing The Child Within Our Children

Whenever we think of the child within each human being, our thoughts stray sublimely to the children in our midst. We want to observe them with a fresh appreciation.

In this mindset—empathy for the vulnerability of the child within human beings—we immediately have copious compassion, and we may even be given to guilt for less compassionate times of the past.

The truth is when we were less than compassionate we, too, were in our child states.

Cherishing the child within our children is appreciating the unique challenges of being more-or-less hemmed in to the child state.

Cherishing The Child Within Adults Around Us

No matter whom we encounter, encompassing position and privilege and poverty, chances are we are dealing—at least occasionally—with people stuck, by the situation, in their child world.

It’s a very common, many-times-a-day type of thing.

And as we include within our thoughts that people are products of their environment, ‘victims’ (or benefactors) of their personal history, a newfound compassion sweeps before our understanding. Suddenly, patience with others is not so hard. They are how they are for a reason.

Cherishing The Child Within Ourselves

If we can be compassionate with our children and with other adults, why are we not compassionate with ourselves? There are many in this boat—those taking humility too far; guilt, for one thing, convicts some that everyone’s worthy of love but themselves.

This is bad thinking. It rejects the child within, and that is a travesty for anyone.

The greatest possible favour anyone can do for themselves is to embrace the journey towards self-love, and that can only be found, truly, within the scope of God’s love for us.

***

Every single being deserves to be loved. To be truly loved means to love the child within—the utmost weakest and most vulnerable characteristic that exposes us. Love finds its way into the heart of every being that feels safe. Understanding people to a point where they feel safe with us is cherishing the child within them; the essence of their vulnerability. Then we can love them. Then we, too, can be loved.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Welcoming Your Reflective World

We don’t have to look far to come home to our narcissistic selves. If we see life full of suffering we may be undergoing a lamentable transformation. If there’s anger, just now, for the injustice ‘surely anyone can see!’ then there’s probably an unreconciled frustration, and a block to our feelings deep down, within. If we’re unstimulated regarding what we see in our world there may be little feeling going on closer to home.

Proof of this truism is cited in the following two quotes:

“A person sees in the world what they carry in their heart.”

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(Adapted for gender inclusivity)

“Just as water reflects the face,

so one human heart reflects another.”

~Proverbs 27:19 (NRSV)

Discovering The Reflective World

We’re in a good position to self-diagnose if only we can be honest about ourselves, with ourselves. This sort of psychology is not rocket science.

We may open the way to greater happiness simply by negotiating these fundamental truths—for instance, if we’re angry, why? A person battling with anger within will generally find themselves angry without; everyone else will know about it. The road-rager is taking out on the world—that innocent driver before them—what’s unreconciled within them. There’s no point in being ashamed of our anger or its consequences (though we’re sure to be, because we’ve lacked the self-control we all want to be known for). Being ashamed isn’t going to resolve our inability to manage our anger. Only by exploring the emotional source of the anger—the ‘why’—will we be able to reconcile the vehement energy bubbling away just beneath the surface.

It’s the same with our sadness, guilt, grief, and sense of abandonment. Resolving them any way we can—and there’s always a way—is the only thing making any sense.

The presence of anything negative in the emotional setting is a critical clue to the climate deep beneath, possibly even unconscious to us. Our emotions, therefore, become important reflectors of how we’re really going in life.

Working With What We’ve Got

Sometimes all we have is what we can observe; the way people are treating us, how our interactions are going, and how we’re feeling, truthfully, within.

Reflection should be an activity we can do at ease with ourselves, without pressure to think or act a certain way. It’s important when dealing with our perceptions—our view of the world that’s never 100% correct—that we weigh possibility as more pertinent than fact. It’s possible that we’re this way or that way; it’s possible that another person is this way or that way. These are just possibilities, not facts.

But possibilities are things we can work from. They get us to pause and think. The mere presentation of emotions, in us or in others as they relate to us, can indicate something we ought to know about—something we can do something about.

***

How we feel about our world reflects how we feel within about ourselves. The emotions are an important indicator. Living happier requires exploring these emotions; it’s asking why. There’s nothing to fear in exploring the emotions. A more controlled life stands to be gained.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Trusting Your Process

When it comes to living our lives we have the choice of faith, or not. What will be our modus operandi? The following pithy truth stands up to be recognised. Not in allowing things that are bad for us, did the apostle Paul elucidate this truth; no, it was for our spiritual freedom:

“For all things are yours.”

~1 Corinthians 3:21b (NRSV)

We’re free to discern our way in the faith.

The force for living life is faith and, as Christians would commend, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Trusting our processes is about finding a niche within each of us that, in connection with God’s Spirit, frees us to be decisive, frank in our way, and authentic through and through. When we trust our process, our confidence is found and firmly pocketed in humility. There is the experience of assurance. This, that is felt, can only be experienced and validated, by God, personally. No one else can say we have it or don’t have it. Only we can know—only God can confirm it to us.

Discovering And Always Rediscovering The Self

Implicit within the scope and ability to trust our process is the interest, motivation and skill of discovering and always rediscovering our essential selves. How could such an activity be boring? How could it not sweep us off our feet in stimulation?

Many might run from self-knowledge because the pain is still too much; too raw. There is still more internal work to be done before the fullness of freedom and enjoyment may be experienced.

When we can enjoy discovering and always rediscovering ourselves, making time for and enjoying reflective activities, we have the wherewithal to trust our process. This is a liberating feeling; a life aligned to its divine destiny.

Using The Key To Unlock The Door

The door to ‘All things are ours’ is unlocked by the key that is the God-anointed self-knowledge. Once we’re in correct relationship with ourselves, which assumes being in correct relationship with God, we’re able to know, with some inner abundance of surety, the spiritual direction of self-discernment. Steps toward our process are made known at the time we’re to make the step; and at each step along the divine path—always just-in-time.

Trusting our process, which is stepping by faith, is living without impedance. It springs along with the flow, finding the path and staying on it without much fuss.

We might forever look for that which we look for and feel we cannot, in completion, find it. That’s okay. We have the key in unlocking the steps in our journey; one key at a time is all that’s required, because there’s only one type of lock and it’s called ‘the present’.

***

The human urge is the liberation of soul. That yearning exists within each of us. Trusting our process is the way there. This is the life of faith; the only life. In knowing God, we must know ourselves. The opposite is also true.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

The Subjectiveness of Success

“One way to work the system is to work the system. The other way is to refuse to work it.”

~Seth Godin

True success is how we—at peace with ourselves—would define it. Not as the world, in twisting our arms behind our backs, does.

It’s good, at this point, for our spiritual survival, to reject our world’s claims on our desires for success. Instead of working the system in order to work the system, we can wrest the control and go against the flow of the popular world. Now, that is difficult.

But success must still be a valid concept, and without the world what is it?

Success may well be being as comfortable as we can in our own skin—in our identity in God.

Success As We Might Personally Define It

Predisposing success is the meaning behind it. What are our lives without purpose and meaning? When we find our purpose, and we live with meaning toward that end, success is merely milestones and time away. Success is inevitable.

Our frames for meaning are the critical issue. Are they ours or another person’s or borrowed from our world?

If we’ve allowed other people or the world to set our frames for meaning, and just about all of us have, we stand only to be disappointed. Rarely does a dream connected with another’s heart, or the world, line up with a cogent sense of meaning.

We might, otherwise, view a certain life as successful and transpose ourselves into such a life, without thinking whether it’s practical or achievable for us or not—or, pertinently, whether it’s ‘us’. Many take this route end up disappointed and envious of others’ lives, not having lived their own. Where success could have been achieved if life was viewed differently, such success is no longer available because of the choices made long ago. Yet, it’s never too late to change—and chase the dream.

Learning To Live Our Own Lives

The golden secret of life is to discern what our own hearts are telling us and to have the freedom to follow our heart, without other people or external influences forcing us another way. Many people haven’t had the choice. Their dreams were usurped from early on. They were made to live the dreams of another or to chase a mirage.

Now is the time to be released from this maze without meaning.

Learning to live our own lives, defining our own version of success, which derives meaning that only we can validate, is a secret to a blossoming life. This is about releasing the brakes on those pent-up dreams; it’s giving voice to repressed goals. When we chase it, we chase our own happiness. Only we can define our own success.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Blessings for the Sensitive

I am sensitive and, therefore, may always be touched by a certain anxiousness of being. You may or may not relate. Double this anxiousness if combined with creativity. However, the creative-sensitive person is blessed, especially, by the keenest appreciation of anxiety, the full life, for not all anxiety is bad. It depends on our perspective.

We associate anxiety with fear, mostly, and not with an innate sense of curiosity. Yes, the anxious can ameliorate some of their tension by exploring their curiosity. The world may seem larger or more intricate. Within the wealth of stimuli rests copious opportunity for exploration, if allowances for freedom can be arranged.

The Positive Side Of Sensitiveness

Sensitive people, and I say this by self-admission, tend to feel more and may be somewhat imprisoned to feeling. That’s how it feels; to be somewhat trapped. We’re not so trapped, however, but to feel is our default. We go there in a flash.

But what’s stated above is a great advantage for sensitive people. They are more in touch, to the point of being too in-touch, with their world than the insensitive are.

Whilst the sensitive person might make more out of a given social dynamic than what’s required or even there, they’re more likely to listen to people; to engage in others’ feelings; to notice what might not otherwise be discerned. This may not feel like a blessing to the one personally requited of their sensitivity, but it’s a feature of our very humanity we come to rely on and need. The world needs sensitive people.

The sensitive-creative—and all sensitive people may have a significant creative side—make, possibly, for the best artists; for ‘art’, in its myriad forms, liberates and soothes, generates feeling, and brings us alive. Perhaps we note the subversive aggression—the angry, grotesque artist, temperamental in their expression—within us and we’re angry that such indifference within our personalities exists. We may loath the fact that sensitivity clings so dearly. But this makes us passionate, enduring, capable, driven; committed.

There are a great many other positive sides regarding sensitivity that are beyond our time here.

Making The Best Of Ordinary Anxiousness

The flipside to the expanse of feeling is the experience of an underpinning anxiousness that drives our momentary sense of existence. We secretly hope for times where such anxiousness might dissipate; where we might be freed, even momentarily.

The flipside to the flipside, a great paradox, is enjoying any sense of freedom that can be reclaimed in any of those anxious moments—they do exist, those spaces for freedom. We create them. Behaviourally, we breathe. Cognitively, we imagine something different, something pleasant, something calming. Emotionally, we allow ourselves freedom for feeling. Spiritually, we enjoy God’s presence.

We expand our horizon. We’re thankful we can feel; that we can’t help feeling. How horrible it would be to be numbed. We appreciate the courage it takes to live our lives, with such alacrity for feeling.

The sensitive have the capacity for feeling, and beyond its disadvantages, there’s aptitude for creativity and burgeoning life beyond anxiousness. Abundance may certainly be closer to the sensitive than the insensitive. Such a sensitive life requires courage, and the sensitive person should celebrate their courage every day.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

To Feel or Not To Feel

Whilst to feel is to enjoy the best of life, it means also, paradoxically, that we suffer more acutely the pain. Alternatively, the thesis not to feel, to defend and deny, is a choice the majority make because feeling involves far too much risk; there’s safety in guarding against pain (guilt, shame, embarrassment, exposure, grief, loss etc).

To feel or not to feel—there’s a choice. Yet many find themselves predisposed to one or the other.

During spare moments, where there’s time to reflect, an awareness of feelings gathers about... to feel or not to feel—that’s our predicament:

***

Spare moments, indeed, out in the sun,

Forever, if ever, we know we can run,

Spare moments may bring an anxious awareness,

The knowledge, just now, of life’s unfairness.

Interceding in the space, captured anew,

The defence so typical, arriving as due,

Coming into being, enters our ‘mate’,

Quelling our feelings as if right on fate.

Choice becomes known, right about now,

To allow such defence or continue to plough,

Awareness, it comes, an overused word,

If we let it, it’ll make us free as a bird.

With courage we tackle this newfound fact,

Quickly along with it, the commitment to act,

At once we see what we may be becoming,

Indwells us because we like an image so stunning.

***

Spare moments are good in that they offer us space for thought, but this thought might occasionally degenerate into anxiety or despair, purely because an absence of things to do or think about means the mind is unoccupied—hence, the reflective imagination can take the reins.

So in this moment we may be feeling. If and when our feeling becomes too much it provokes a defence—we then have a choice; do we side with the defence entering denial or to refocus on something else, or do we ‘continue to plough’ boldly into these feelings.

Continuing To Plough – Entering Upon Further Enquiry

At times it takes a great deal of courage to progress a painful feeling, dredging deeper below into the source of the lament. As we rough up for seeding the earth within the soul, causing angst we rarely feel, we can expect to become undone emotionally. We’re unravelling ourselves in order to, at some point, reconstruct a better, more ‘stunning’ us.

This is the purpose of feeling. It’s getting to know, and developing, ourselves. Both are discreet, yet magnificent, tasks and outcomes. Whom, and how many, actually delve into themselves to such an extent—voluntarily? Only the emotionally mature, or those on that path.

To feel is freedom, notwithstanding the pain at times. To feel is to be human. To feel is to be every bit alive. To feel as we’re supposed to feel, and to be free for feeling, is to know the experience of salvation—the Presence of God. That’s because to feel is to attend to the truth.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Finding the Way Out

We found our way here (wherever ‘here’ is) because of some logical decisions of choice, and we’ve little to blame but ourselves. Harsh, it’s nevertheless true. But that’s history—what’s been already is; what’s to become is a different matter.

Time at the plate happens in the now, and that, for us, is all we have. It’s also all we need. We can reflect and learn if we want. We can consider options. But, ultimately, we can’t sit on the fence.

Even still, it appears we do as we look back over our vacillating choices for ‘this and that’ and ‘to and fro’—at the same time. We can have both things, but we’ll also have mediocrity.

This is okay if that’s what we want. Odds are, though, this is not what we, by our sensible minds, have signed up for.

Escaping The Trap

We all feel trapped from time to time. The trap pins us a certain, recurrent away. An ultimate escape may not always be practicable, like getting free of an addiction is—as we find the miraculous power, finally, sponsoring such a project.

For some traps we must develop the skill of repetitive escape. I think of it as an operant resilience. We sit in the tension of life. Diet’s the classic example. Do we ever master our cravings and appetites? Perhaps not. But we can have our health if we achieve a sensible balance, by knowing how to release ourselves from the trap, continually, habitually; powerfully.

Traps are personally vindictive. What traps us won’t necessarily trap the next person, and their issue is likely not to bother us. As traps are personal, so are the solutions.

Switching Focus For Release

Life may be characterised by traps, or equally by the methods and techniques of release. It’s up to us what we focus on in an area where no right or wrong answer exists. It can only be right or wrong for us, personally. Hence, there’s freedom.

And perhaps the method and technique of release resembles freedom more than combating the trap is.

We build our vision. We take the image produced by our imaginations and we sow into it the wish and desire for change. We make time for it to evolve. It exists floating within the bounded resolve: we can do this thing. Then we make room for it in our focus, each day, one day at a time.

***

For every trap there’s a way out. Planning furnishes the vision with rubber for the road of trepidation. By faith we can do this. For every trap there’s release. It’s up to us.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Napping Benefits and Suggestions

One of today’s biggest health problems is that of fatigue; many forms of fatigue may be helped in the simple act of napping. By definition, a nap lasts for less than 20 minutes or more than ninety, but isn’t a full rest extending into the deeper cycles of sleep. The ideal nap, especially in today’s world, lasts for between 10 and 20 minutes.

Many people who aren’t used to napping have trouble identifying with the benefits of being asleep for such a short time. I liken napping to rebooting a computer—at weary times alertness can be restored by even a few minutes of unconscious rest. Like the refreshed computer we operate faster, better, more efficiently... and happier!

Napping Benefits

1. One or two short naps per day (they may be had almost anywhere safe, and at any time) supplement the rest we don’t get during our evening sleep. If we’re shift workers, especially working nights, napping will be especially beneficial.

2. We may not have a good feel for what alertness is. We may be so tired that alertness is a distant memory. Gradually with weeks and months of napping practice behind us, we begin to learn how good it is to feel alert. I can’t think of a better felt outcome, personally, than being alert.

3. The rational, logical, reasonable mind is thwarted by tiredness. It can render us defenceless and our decision-making, and therefore our confidence, is undermined. We feel incredibly more efficient, effective, and social when we’re well rested.

4. Generally speaking, everyone can improve, to some degree, their level of felt alertness. Even the chronically sleep-deprived or those with sleep disorders should benefit from naps.

Napping Suggestions

1. Do find a quiet, relatively dark space and create a comfortable bodily position (sitting back or lying down is best).

2. Don’t fight the eyes. When we’re tired, or worse overtired, our eyes can become so rigidly open they don’t close easily. Just try to relax the eye muscles. Let the lids find their own position, empty the mind, and feel the lids heavier and the mind lighter.

3. Do set your alarm. The reassurance that you won’t oversleep reduces anxiety. Phone alarms are easy, though there’s the risk of receiving a call. A watch alarm might prove helpful. Allow a few extra minutes to fall asleep.

4. Don’t panic if you haven’t fallen asleep within five or ten minutes. To rest or have your eyes closed even for a brief period is beneficial, whether you nap or not. And when you wake, resist the idea to go back to sleep; wake yourself straight away. For me, this generates extra alertness—to spring out of bed.

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There’s hardly a better feeling than alertness. Being well rested is central to operating at our peak. A basic life skill, napping helps. It’s never too late to develop the skill. Our wellbeing may very well, as a result, abound—through such a simple act.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.