From Fear to Freedom
Non-loving feelings are like rogue waves in the ocean. Appearing out of nowhere and swelling to enormous proportions, they take away our breath and toss us around until we lose track of which way is up.
As Hafiz wrote centuries ago, there are consequences to these destructive forces:
Selections from I Know The Way You Can Get
Hafiz
O, I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:
Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.
—–
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.
– Selections from I Know The Way You Can Get
To me, fear is the most insidious non-loving feeling of all. Fear of death, fear of financial ruin, fear of not looking good enough – it springs from the mind like a predator pouncing on its prey, beguiling us into believing that there is such a thing as failure. In reality, you cannot take a picture of fear or feel the texture of failure because they don’t exist outside of the mind. Whenever you feel fear, remember that your mind is creating it and remember that what you think is what you get.
Do the thing you fear most, and the death of fear is certain.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
In order to reach a state of quiet confidence filled with Love where nothing can bother us, we must change our minds, not simply our behavior. If you begin to detach yourself from your mind, you also begin to detach yourself from these non-loving feelings.
I have found that can be as simple as remembering to be authentic.
That means loving who you already are and not caring if you look good walking down the street or if you look silly slipping on a patch of ice. Someone who is authentic is comfortable in her own skin, because she knows it’s the only skin that she will ever have.
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved
for what you are not.
―André Gide, Autumn Leaves
Q: How can I rid myself of non-loving feelings?
There is something you can do to banish the non-loving feelings from your heart, and that something is nothing.
Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to mis-create and have not allowed me to guide it.
– A Course in Miracles
If you think of yourself as nothing, then nothing will bother you. What other people think about you is their business, it’s none of yours. That means you will not want approval from anybody else. You will not need any person or any thing to feel secure.
I leave you with a quote on this theme from one of the greatest spiritual leaders alive today. I hope it will inform your day and get you thinking:
There is nothing to trust seeking happiness from outside, you will only become exhausted with suffering,
which is without satisfaction and without end.
– His Holiness, the Dalai Lama
Denise K. Bonnaig, Esq.
Authentique Coaching
(646) 483-4737
denise@authentiquecoaching.com
Memories of Meditation and Mindfulness
All of man’s difficulties are caused by his inability to sit, quietly, in a room by himself.
–Blaise Pascal
Back in 2005 I was at a Baron Baptiste Power Yoga event in Rhinebeck, New York. During the lunch break, I saw there was another group sharing the venue with us. There were so many of them, and they all ate their lunch in silence! I eventually got to talk with a few of them and I asked what they were doing there. They were attending a Mindfulness Meditation retreat led by a medical doctor named Jon Kabat-Zinn. They recommended that I check out his book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through 
Mindfulness.
I rushed to the bookstore and devoured the book. I later learned that Mr. Kabat-Zinn would be doing a book-signing at the bookstore that evening, and I decided I must go and meet the man. I stood on the line for over an hour, with the book in hand and full of emotion. When I finally got to meet him, even though the line was long, he spent some time with me.
I told him that I practiced yoga but I had trouble with the resting pose. I said “I am just restless, I think I feel like I’m wasting my time. I want to work out, not just sit there.” He listened to me, encouraged me, and personalized my book, writing “May this be the door in,” in addition to the stamp he imprinted on everyone’s books: May your mindfulness practice grow and flower and nourish your life from moment to moment and from day to day. It was just so beautiful. That was back in May, 2005. And that’s when I truly started to meditate.
Be – don’t try to become.
– Osho
If you ask me now, seven years later, “What is the meaning of meditation?” I would just say it’s the art of quieting the mind. But how is that possible? Scientists say we have 6,000 thoughts a day, so how can we eliminate those thoughts? What I suggest to my students is that once you sit in meditation, all you need to do is check in with your Self, with the present, with what is happening now.
At first it might not be easy. My very first meditation when sitting down was really painful. My nose itched, I was restless, I was aching and my mind kept wandering on and on. Why was that happening? It was happening because I was pretty much results-oriented. In order to do something, I needed to know where it would lead to. I needed some specific results. I felt that just sitting down and doing nothing was such a waste of time. That’s how ignorant I used to be.
It’s not so much about doing as about being.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
In stillness there is really no thinking. Thoughts evaporate because they become meaningless to you – no matter what those thoughts are. Non-duality is so important because our world is the world of contradictions. Black, white. Good, bad. Beautiful, ugly. I meditate to get away from that and the independence I achieve brings me to a oneness, and from oneness to non-limitations, and from non-limitations to abundance everywhere.
Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.
– Eckhart Tolle
Like everyone else, sometimes I am faced with outrageous tuition to pay or other devastating bills, and I always find my solution by meditating. “How am I going to pay that bill?” I ask myself, in a non-judgmental way. I say yes to it. I love the bill and I’m OK with it. Guess what? Somehow I’ll get the funds to pay. I’m going to make that tuition. I’m going to do this and pay it all. Somehow I will find the funds. I know that I always come up with it. Whatever it is.
Meditation to me is priceless. If I don’t meditate first thing in the morning, I won’t get out of my bed.
If every 8-year-old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.
-Dalai Lama
How do we get to that point? You have to say to yourself that meditation is something that is very, very important – not just to you, but for the world. It requires some discipline. It can’t be, “Oh I’ll do that once in awhile.” Just like the muddy water in a puddle needs time to settle before the water become clear, you have to let your practice of meditation take its course to settle your reckless thoughts, consistently, for a long time.
And that’s where my coaching comes in. Because if your mind is full of clutter, if you have so many nagging things from the past, that are haunting you, if you’re not living in the now, in the present moment, how can you find stillness?
Through release techniques, through rebooting your mental “operating system”, you and I will quiet the turbulent waters and let the mud settle down until there is nothing but you – on top of all your problems.