Category Archives: physical body

November 22, 2017

610. The Mirror Process: Changing How I Look at Myself and Others

By Marlen

 

I watched a couple of videos from SOUL about the mirror process which is based on how we tend to judge, compare ourselves to other people based on certain appearances and expression that we judge as being better than our own or us lacking what we see in others, and I could relate a lot to what Sunette explained based on her own experience related to this.

What I recently found is that even if I thought I had worked through this kind of physical appearance self judgment, I definitely faced new aspects of it based on how I related in an instant to a certain woman that I got to meet and how intense this reaction was which certainly too me aback, shifting the way that I experienced myself in one single moment from being the regular comfortable self to suddenly feeling super heavy, stifled and generally tense where I could feel that any smile that I was able to muster in that moment was mostly coming out of the politics of meeting someone for the first time, but I knew that I wasn’t myself in that moment, I knew that I was in fact experiencing a mini-possession that was entirely based on how I defined someone’s appearance to be ‘everything that I am not’ as the ‘opposite’ of myself and regarding that appearance and expression as the epitome of being a graceful, beautiful and feminine woman.

Now, this is about experiencing jealousy and envy based on thinking and perceiving in my head that ‘this is what a female should look like’ and in that by default going back to assuming, thinking and perceiving that I’m not that, I’m not good looking enough, that I don’t have such fine-toned and perfectly shaped body – which I’ve defined as a tiny/small body structure and slim body – and how I immediately got a bit impressed by how this person would have a smile on their face and almost radiating such graceful expression that I judged as overwhelming or ‘too much for my taste,’ which mostly has to do with being intimidated by such ability that some people have to appear almost radiant to my eyes and my perception, almost like beaming with joy or happiness or simple grace that turns it all into an elusive expression for me.

This is also because of how I had previously judged that kind of people in my past and had not entirely resolved my judgments, which led me to see those expressions as fake or not genuine, etc. But! I later on found how these were my ‘defense mechanisms’ to make another ‘less than me’ and project and define all these negative associations to immediately ‘protect’ me from looking back at myself as the origin of every single one of these definitions, assumptions and judgments that I had concocted in a matter of minutes that such interaction lasted, and that was enough for me to have to take care of this whole stifling reaction within me based on appearances, judgments, ideals, projections that led me to feel insecure, less than, seeing myself as totally incapable of ‘ever being someone like that’ which I’ll be sharing how I’ve been walking through this in order to ground each aspect back to reality.

So what I had to do was to first understand and remind myself that every single judgment, idea, perception and experience was a creation of my own, and that I had to realize that whenever I am going into this insta-comparison towards other women based on appearances it means that there are points where I have yet to work on embracing my own physical body as is, my own bone structure, physical form, shape, weight and general appearance as is, because there is no way we can ever change how those essential aspects of our body look like, and no matter how much we would ‘like’ to look in a particular way, it’s physically impossible to do so – and instead the question would be what am I imagining, perceiving or thinking that I would ‘feel’ or ‘express’ differently if I had certain shape or form in my physical body, with a particular skin type or color of eyes or hair and overall looks? And why would I create such scenario within me to create a conflict within me as a hypothetical situation that is not realistic at all?

If I answer that then I would feel more comfortable, graceful and joyful in my expression, then I can already see where am I not living those words as myself because of believing that ‘It doesn’t suit my physical body’ or ‘I am not beautiful enough to express myself like that’ or ‘I am not fit enough to wear such clothes’ and so forth.

Here it’s also convenient to say how I’ve learned a lot from other people walking similar processes in their own lives and bodies and how I’ve taken note of many aspects they’ve shared in relation to appreciating their body, there’s Matti who has shared and walked this point as well as Anna Brix, she has been very open in walking her process to embrace her physical body and I suggest checking them out to see how they walked their points.

I realized that I also have to learn to appreciate seeing certain types of people and acknowledge when they are in fact appearing as beautiful to me or others. This applies to both males and females and see it for what they are, when people have a particular physiognomy that one can regard as beautiful and see it for what it is, a pleasing aesthetic experience. Though in this, also not to reduce the entirety of a person to an aesthetic experience, this doesn’t mean that I have to ‘be that’ or ‘look like that’ in order to be ‘pleasing’ to my eyes or others’ eyes. This is about changing who I am behind how I decide to look at myself and others.

That’s where the point of change comes in as well where I am the one that has to change how I relate to people at first sight, from remaining at a very superficial level of seeing shapes and colors and forms and defining them as beautiful or not – or whether I acknowledge that as the ‘first impression’ that it is and move towards getting to know the person and see who they are as an individual, rather than going away with that first judgment of ‘oh they are beautiful, they are so graceful and joyful, I am not any of that’ and immediately going into an inferiority and self-diminishing position that I created in my own mind and so making it a limiting experience for myself, because it prevents me from actually getting to know the person.

So I had to take a moment to write this situation out and write all the self-forgiveness related to every single judgment, belief, fear, desire, perception that I created that led me to have such an overwhelming reaction to seeing this person for the first time and also ‘caging’ the person in a particular ‘type of person’ that I would not regularly decide to approach or relate to in my life based on the sense of inferiority I would create myself when in the presence of someone that looks and behaves in a similar way, which I turned into negative judgments as a way to see myself ‘above’ that – that’s another mind-construct there that I had to understand in order to see how I perpetuate this inferiority and superiority based on my own judgments and perceptions, and forgive myself for that.

I’ve realized within this all how I am the one that is perpetuating this kind of appearance-judgments in my own mind and how I activate them in an almost instant manner where I am constantly assessing ‘where I stand’ in comparison to other females in my environment, especially related as well to females and fear of loss when it comes to relationships at the same time, where I then fear that my partner would ‘prefer a certain kind/type of body’ and that I am ‘not that for them’ and in doing so, create a plethora of ideas, beliefs, imaginations that I create solely on assuming that ‘I am not perfect enough in my physical body, I am not that pretty, I am not that feminine, I am not that graceful’ based on a comparison made towards another female that I judged to be embodying that in their expression, and assuming that ‘that is more desirable for a man’.

So, how I proceeded to assist me to walk this point is writing all of these judgments out and self forgive them one by one, so that I could see and understand I was the only one that decided to make myself inferior and so uncomfortable in the presence of another human being. I knew that I would not be ‘okay’ within myself until I could walk through this point and actually face the person at least a second time to test out my living corrections, which I got to do and actually get to interact with them for more than 5 minutes – lol – and focus on easing myself in my body, being comfortable and embracing who I am in my body and in my expression in the moment – that means stopping any judgments in my mind.

What did that practically entail? I had to decide to get the idea of me having to ‘be like her’ out of my mind. I had to remind myself of my individual expression which comes in the shape, form and type of body that I have, the face that I have, the weight that I have, the bone structure that I have, the color of eyes, hair and type of skin that I have and that in no way could I keep tormenting myself with aspiring to ‘look like’ another person in any way. It would be like a certain kind/type of tree wanting to become another kind of tree, namely a pine wanting to be like a palm – that is the basic analogy I can remind myself of whenever I am going into this body/appearance comparison, which means I have to embrace me being this particular type and kind of body that I have which I have been aware I can embrace and enjoy as myself and how I can be particularly fine within me and my expression whenever I am not desiring to be someone completely different in order to fulfill an idea or belief of ‘what I would prefer to look like,’ which is again, based on my own limitations of what I’ve defined as beautiful or aesthetically pleasing.

So the real change takes place when I stop focusing on judging myself, my looks, my demeanor ‘when compared to’ other females that I’ve particularly defined as more gentle, feminine and graceful. This also means that I had to instead look at how am I living those words in my own way already or where I can expand my expression and embrace ways of expressing that I’ve suppressed because of thinking that it looks ‘fake’ or not genuine’ – not realizing that I am the only one that knows ‘who I am’ behind any smile, any expression through voice tonality, gestures and words. That’s my self-honesty point and within this, I saw that I am expressing such femininity in my own particular way already and how I simply have to let go of expressing a particular ‘form’ or ‘idea’ of femininity linked to a particular physical appearance that I have defined as ‘more feminine’ that my own, which means: I can embody femininity in my own particular way.

Same with joy, I am aware how I can express joy in a boundless manner yet in a different way than if compared to that particular person in such moment, which means that, of course! I’d always be setting up myself for ‘failure’ whenever I start comparing myself to anyone else for that matter based on how I am living certain words and how they are living certain words or aspects within themselves. This is an interesting trick we create in our minds where we are always setting up ourselves to feel ‘less than’ when trying to ‘have exactly the same’ that others have, instead of simply focusing on what we are/have and seeing what we can develop within ourselves, within our own particular body and expression, because that’s ultimately what individuality is all about, not attempting to ‘be just like someone else’ in form, shape and expression, but learn to see others as sources of words and expressions that we can mirror back to ourselves to see what can I learn from them? How can I express such words in my own body and living experience?

An example is how based on how I had judged similar ‘kinds of people’ in the past, I got to experience my own backlash in that moment based on how I had defined me as not being able to be ‘genuinely’ expressing myself in a joyous and graceful manner without ‘faking’ it a bit – but I’ve realized that it all has to do with how I decide to stand in relation to particular words and expressions and how I had for the most part judged such expressions as ‘fake’ based on my own perceived inability to express them myself. But, once that I got to see how I can in fact enjoy and express myself and how I can relate to people, I can see that I am already being quite comfortable and joyful in my expression, it simply won’t be expressed ‘the same way’ as I can see it in other people, and that’s OK lol.

It’s astounding how much we can keep ourselves stuck in our heads trying to be like/look like ‘somebody else’ which is a pointless thing to do or even attempt; although yes some do go to that point with all current surgeries and stuff like that and I’m not judging it, because now I understand how far we can take ourselves to do something like that to ‘look the same’ as someone else and how it is all driven by an idea, belief or perception of how we think we will FEEL about ourselves IF having this/that physical appearance, while in fact it all exists within ourselves.

We each have the power to decide how we feel, experience and express ourselves within our one and only physical body that I definitely have to, for once and for all, stop seeing as an image presentation that can be ‘compared’ to others, and start acknowledging it as the marvel of life it in fact is, where the skin and structure of the body is only a part of it, yet there’s so much more to this that we are that enables us to live and not only in a ‘basic vital’ manner, it enables us to have the ability to embody/live and express words, actions, decisions, intentions and creations.

That’s how I want to establish my relationship with my physical body, not to cage it or define it in a particular form, shape, color, weight, bone structure or skin type, but seeing it as the actual breathing body of life that I am embodying in order to give myself the opportunity to actually live in it/as it, which means, stopping for once and for all perpetuating the judgments, the comparisons, the envy and jealousy towards other bodies and their appearance and instead focus on seeing me as the life that I can express and live every single moment of every day.

This sounds easy as a solution, but the actual challenging part is to physically change my experience, my expression in those moments where comparison and envy are rearing their head within me and remind myself every single time of the decision to focus on myself as a person that lives and expresses, to expand from the limited immediate definitions and judgments based on what I immediately see through my eyes and go one step further to generate interest and consideration to see what other people are all about, getting to know them, talk to them without being comparing myself to them every single moment. This is the challenging part, but in the situation that I’ve shared here I realized that ‘the next day’ after I had processed a lot of these points through writing, I was able to change my behavior towards that person and be more at ease. This resonant or personality of ‘inferiority’ experience wasn’t completely diffused/gone in that moment, but it definitely was quite a change from feeling heavy, stuck, stifled towards the other person to a more flowy and expressive self which is more like ‘me’ on a regular basis.

What I’ve found in terms of these points that I’ve faced with both males and females is that we tend to essentially make everything that we see as a potential expression within ourselves a source of desire, which is why towards males it led me to ‘desire them’ as in experiencing attraction – which is something I’ve walked in detail at the beginning of this year as well – or towards females in the form of jealousy, envy and comparison, which is more related to wanting to ‘be like them/look like them’ so that ultimately I could be liked/desired/wanted by males the same way I assume/perceive that other males would find them attractive. But, who is in fact defining all of this? I am! Therefore that means that I can change who I am in relation to seeing males and females and comparing myself to other beings in the form of ‘lack’ or ‘desire’ and instead move into seeing: What can I learn from them? How can I expand my own expression and life by integrating a word/living action that I see they are living in their own lives?

So, just as I did with males and instead of seeing them as ‘objects of desire’ because of particular words and expressions they portray, I can do the same with women where instead of immediately seeing myself as either ‘more’ or ‘less than’ someone based on judgments, ideas or perceptions – no matter how subtle or overwhelming – I can always take the point back to myself, work through my emotional reactions towards it, understand them as my creation and originating from me – not anything or anyone else, not society, not stereotypes but my own mind and judgments – and within that rather learning to see, embrace and appreciate someone else for the totality of who they are.

There are times where people tend to say that we have to only focus on what’s ‘in the inside’ and nevermind the outside, but I consider that’s also diminishing or relegating the physical body to a ‘lesser’ stance. It makes one push aside the image factor and make it ‘less than’ the actions, words and expressions that a person represents, instead of seeing a person as the totality of who they are as a body, mind, expression as a whole, no need to make one aspect more than the other. It really all boils down to how I relate to myself and my physical body, whether I am still living in judgment towards myself or whether I am more focusing on living me, living in the flesh/body that I am and using it – for a lack of a better word – to live and express the person that I am in the process of creating as myself.

By doing so, I learn to see people as an expression of their individual and particular body, mind and being and see them as sources of inspiration – when it applies – to see what expressions I am admiring, liking or enjoying in them that I can see I can integrate or incorporate into my own life and day to day experience. That makes me see people as equals, as living bodies that I can always learn from in one way or another, that I can get to know and understand rather than keeping myself at a very limited experience of judging certain appearances and expressions, go into an emotional experience of ‘lacking that’ or ‘desiring that’ and separating myself from that person… yep, that’s not the way to go here.

I also acknowledge that as much as I got taken over by this experience, I also I had the diligence to work on it as soon as I was able to, because I could not be ok within myself and my physical experience based on that reaction, so that’s also based on how I am living that honor and regard towards myself as a living being that understands how stiffing, uncomfortable and generally destructive it is to remain in that kind of reaction and separation towards another human being. And it was sincerely a relief to test my own decision to see them as a person – rather than a source of qualities ‘I don’t possess’ – and relate to the person in a very different manner.

Of course there’s much more to learn and change myself when it comes to seeing these ‘resonant symbols’ as women particularly that I have tended to compare myself to for most of my life, and in that remind myself of the basic steps I’ve shared in this blog related to recognizing, appreciating and embracing individual’s expressions in the totality of who they are, getting to know them – if the opportunity arises – and rather using those moments whenever I am seeing I am about to get possessed by the comparison-judgment reaction into a reminder of embracing me, which implies understanding that equality also means embracing each one’s particular and unique bodies, expressions and living experiences as they are, starting with my own.

Thanks for reading and check these SOUL videos out to understand more about the mirror process for yourself:

The Mirror Process

The Mirror Practice – Part 2

  

Self-Honesty

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

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July 26, 2017

589. Exigency towards my body

By Marlen

Or changing the relationship of despotism towards my physical body   to one of humbleness and consideration

I’ve found the latest recordings Redefining Physical – The Crucifixion of Jesus – Part 109 and Redefining Physical (Part 2) – The Crucifixion of Jesus – Part 110 from Eqafe.com very supportive to open up aspects that I had not questioned before in relation to judgments towards my physical body beyond appearance. I’d say that one of the most common ways to judge ourselves is definitely related to how our body looks, but there are many other aspects that I had not particularly questioned or looked at as such which I’ll write about here.  

I’ve noticed a form of exigency that I’ve imposed onto my physical body when it comes to the times when I’ve gotten sick or when my body is simply not at what I’ve come to define ‘being at my 100%’ and I am feeling weak, having certain unstable experience in my body that emerges ‘out of nowhere’ wherein I then go into a ‘low’ experience within me, desiring to be alright, wanting to be ‘done with’ whatever disturbance is going on in my body and in a way victimizing myself within a desire to be fully fine and ‘back to normal’ without really questioning or seeing how whatever my body is going through is in fact an outflow of whatever I’ve caused onto it, whether it is a sickness, discomfort, pain = it’s been all self-created, which doesn’t also mean it’s all ‘bad’ either, it’s definitely beyond morality.

I can identify this experience as a form of exigency because who I am in that relationship is one of ‘demanding’ my body to be alright, as if it was doing ‘its thing’ out of nowhere when in fact, every single time I have any form of sickness or physical adjustments it is a result of processes, sicknesses or things that I have most likely not been aware of that I’ve caused onto my body.

In this I have also reflected how much I take my health for granted and what I’ve now come to define as ‘being at my 100%’ experience where there are no pains, I feel stable and with sufficient energy to do more physically engaging activities.

During the past weeks I definitely wasn’t at my 100% and it became a very unpredictable situation where I did notice that I was kind of going into worry about my physical body, where I also wanted to just ‘be back to normal’ the next day and waking up every day just wanting to feel fine again, strong, stable, without any wobbliness or dizziness and whatnot. Well, that took some time to completely go away and I then had to understand that whatever my body was going through it was part of what I’ve caused onto it, therefore nothing just ‘happens’ out of nowhere, but I’m always the cause of it.

Here then there’s a layer of victimization and so blame towards the body as if my body was ‘causing me’ to not be at that 100% of stability and so becoming an ‘obstacle’ to my usual routine and activities, instead of rather changing that relationship to acknowledging how I am the cause and origin of such physical experiences and realizing that the first thing I can do is focus on remaining stable within me and rather embracing the processes that my body is going through, otherwise within going into an emotional experience of disempowerment, I’d be adding even more strain to the ongoing processes that my body is going through to stabilize itself, which is what it naturally always does by itself.

It also says a lot about my level of self-awareness that I cannot be fully aware of what processes my physical body is going through; meaning we have been so disconnected from ours body/our physicality that we only exist at a very superficial level of our mind, being and body relationship, while the body is in fact the wise one part of ourselves that regulates itself and is automatically living and breathing for us, because just like it was said in that one recording: “If we were transformed into this physical existence, would we have lasted as long?” which is a great quote to understand how the physical itself has been able to survive, adapt, change, evolve in every way possible in spite of what we’ve imposed onto the physical as our bodies, the world, existence… every single particle that we are made of.

So listening to these recordings was very supportive to become more aware of this kind of relationship I’ve built with my body. It also prompted me to acknowledge how I have not yet forgiven myself for all the damage, disruption, attacks and constant ‘cannibalism’ that I’ve imposed onto my physical body in the name of surviving as a demanding and exigent ego that in essence has taken my life and physical body for granted.

I only get to become aware of taking my body for granted whenever I’m sick, where I then compare my sick-state to that of ‘being healthy’ and go into a wallowing in sickness, feeling disempowered, getting irritated, frustrated at ‘the sickness’ feeling like ‘the body is failing at me’ instead of acknowledging how the body is doing its thing in order to get back to stability and how such disease, sickness, discomfort, ailment, problem at a physical body is always accepted and allowed and self-created: there’s truly nothing or no one to blame or victimize myself to.

That’s an empowering and sobering realization considering how ever since I was a little child, I’ve always seen or associated sickness to a weakness, something that prevented me from ‘going to school and missing out one day of activities!’ lol- or currently how it ‘stops me from being productive,’ from ‘following my usual routine’ which indicates also the many times that I would also disregard the physical signs of ‘having to slow down’ because of moving myself/driving myself through the need to ‘be productive all the time’ and ‘push boundaries’ without considering my physical body.

In these past weeks, my physical experience showed me that even if I would have ‘wanted to’ be doing my things at the ‘usual pace’ that I do them, I would not have been able to, I simply couldn’t, which was an interesting experience as well, like a physical ‘slowing down’ which I described in the previous blog.

Currently I see that as a momentary experience that is no longer a constant but more like a state of being I am now aware I can ‘slow myself down to’ in my mind and realize how it’s not that it ‘goes away’ ever, because that’s a physical state of being. It’s more like I have to slow down and step out of my ‘mind-drive’ in order to exist at that ‘slowing down’ mode, which I am now practicing also even while ‘moving fast’ which I was able to try out today after some two weeks of not being able to do so.

This period of time has also assisted me to understand what it means to ‘be with my body, assist my body’ which I had also associated with taking ‘extra’ stuff to assist healing it, but the reality is that I maybe didn’t even need that, I just needed to embrace the physical process it was going through and not become emotional as in being ‘waiting for it to get back to normal’ and getting desperate for that in the meantime… best way I can help is by being stable and let go of my mental exigency over my body.

I’ve had this kind of experiences every now and then where I’ve learned to consider my body and not putting it through a form of strain through wanting to fulfill a routine for example, or over-exerting myself within an idea of ‘needing to exercise’ but, there are times where I’m now seeing how my body indicates ‘hey take it easy’ and I’ve been learning to do so, but I also now have to be ok with the process, with the time it takes to recover, heal, readjust or whatever else it is going through.

Throughout this process of developing self-awareness as the life that I am I’ve realized how much I had a relationship of despotism towards my body, using it more as ‘the vehicle’ to satisfy my mind’s needs and not really fully being ‘with it/as it’ in every step of the way, which yes, is disrespectful and hasn’t been an honorable relationship at all. But, it is not like ‘it’s too late’ to do it either, I’ve got to be gentle with realizing that I am probably for the first time at a conscious level realizing all of these things that I had noticed through walking a physical consequence, but hadn’t yet made such an aware decision to equalize myself to my physical, not only through ‘stopping judgments’ towards it, but more so in understanding its processes, to not judge its ways to ‘figure things out,’ the ways it ‘processes things’ and the way it adjusts after all that I put it through to get back to a relative homeostasis.

This also requires me to be humble in acknowledging that unless I am perfectly aware of how I am producing all of these weaknesses, deficiencies, ‘low phases’ at a physical body level, I can only assist myself by breathing and ‘slowing down’ within me and without, not going into disempowerment, being considerate and genuinely taking things easy, because there’s definitely that ‘itch’ to want to ‘get back to normal’ and it feels like forcing cold muscles to run from the get go, it just doesn’t feel right or the adequate thing to do.

Another point is how I’ve been the kind of person that would be astounded at how other people would speak of being aware of very specific details of what ‘their body likes’ and what ‘sits well with the body’ and I haven’t had such kind of awareness developed or relationship with my body to know exactly what ‘it likes or dislikes,’ to me I believed I required some kind of ‘extra sensibility’ that I seem to not possess, therefore perceiving that there was something that I was ‘missing out’ in that or that there was something ‘flawed’ within my relationship to my body for not being aware of such things.

The reality is that I cannot crave or desire to have the same physical body awareness that other people have developed within their body and lives, we cannot compare that at all and each body/being/mind relationship is unique in itself. So this is another point that I have to let go of, a comparison point in relation to wondering ‘hmm why is my body not letting me know what it likes, or how come ‘they’ are aware of such things in their body and I am not?’ type of comparison, which makes no sense because over time it builds this relationship of further separation towards ‘the body’ instead of realizing that I am already my physical body, it is a part of me that I have to in fact embrace, stop judging as ‘weird’ in its functioning, stop seeing it as ‘weak’ whenever it is going through processes to strengthen itself, to readjust to the changes I am walking through at times at a mind/being level and so be able to pay attention to how I am doing.

An example is not eating complex foods when being in such physical ‘wobbliness’ as I call it, where there are these ups and downs with many symptoms, and also to not become emotional about it, but instead use those moments to be quiet, stable within me, while knowing my body is doing its thing, which requires me to live patience and consideration. It also becomes a humbleness point to see how I cannot take my life for granted, I cannot take my health for granted, I cannot take the next breath for granted.

If there’s something I constantly look at is the fragility of life which at times I deal with in the form of instant imaginations that create some fatal outcome that would end up my life in various situations. I’ve learned to breathe through that and not entertain them, not be ‘impressed’ by it within fear, but simply acknowledging how ‘fragile’ our lives can be and how we cannot have control over everything about ‘our lives,’ which is also humbling.

All in all I’ve been working on learning how to live or stand equal to my body, understanding what that means and for the first time bring ‘my body’ to the forefront and seeing ‘who I am’ towards it, rather than always seeing it as this ‘background thing’ that I’ve used to satisfy whatever I’ve set myself to do/create within the starting point of my mind only. To sum up, it’s about time I create a relationship of honor, regard, respect, appreciation to the organism it is, beyond what I superficially see with my eyes, and until I am able to fully stand one and equal with it in all ways, I walk in humbleness within it/as it. J

 

Thanks for reading

 

Live Drawing 2007

 

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

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