Seeing is Believing? Not so!

I appreciate that in a democracy we have different parties with different ideologies. What I do not understand is how one Party can so blatantly deny the facts when they are easily verifiable and obvious for everyone to see and that there are people who believe such misrepresentations solely on ideological grounds. This curious phenomenon stands in opposition to the saying that "seeing is believing". In fact, the contrary is true, believing is seeing; corroborating the notion that we are only able to see what we already believe! Hence, I stopped arguing with people who have set and distinct opinions from mine. It is a complete waste of energy. At the same time, this has made me more alert to my own beliefs and the necessity for me to not judge too fast or be stubborn in my opinions. A healthy open-mindedness is necessary for constructive discourse.

This realization is illustrated by an article by my friend Diane Vacca who writes: "What the [Republicans] refuse to acknowledge is that since Obama took office, the budget deficit has declined by roughly $1 trillion, and we are in the longest period of sustained job growth in our history. Unemployment, which reached 10 percent in Obama’s first term, is now 5 percent, lower than when the sainted Reagan left office. Under Obama, the economy has recovered from the Great Recession, which he inherited from his predecessor, George W. Bush, significantly faster and better than any of the other major world economies."

Vacca goes on to say, "Gene Sperling, the former director of the National Economic Council, told the NY Times, “If we were back in early 2009 … with the economy losing 800,000 jobs a month and the Dow under 7,000 — and someone said that by [Obama’s] last year in office, unemployment would be 5 percent, the deficit would be under 3 percent, AIG would have turned a profit and we made all our money back on the banks, that would’ve been beyond anybody’s wildest expectations.” But most people don’t know that because the Republicans have constantly been hammering the lie that the economy is in shambles."

I would add the incredible turn around of the US automobile industry and the drop to 10% from 18% of the US population which is still without healthcare to the list of accomplishments; and this despite the hysterical opposition of the GOP to Obamacare and other Obama policies. Had the US Congress been more cooperative, the economic recovery of the last 7 years would have been even more impressive.

Source: https://dianevacca.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/donald-trumps-presidential-debut/

There is Great Power in Surrender

There is Great Power in Surrender

In our high achieving society, hard work and strife are often viewed as the means to succeeding greatly.  The concept of surrender and letting go is devalued and misunderstood as a lack or loss of control.

It is of course the opposite.  We struggle in life when we do not know who we are. The masquerade of our ego leads one to believe that since life is a jungle, we must learn to fight and compete to overcome adversity and achieve our goals.  This belief will break us down and lead us to self-destruct eventually.

It takes knowledge and acceptance of our total self to surrender and let go. True achievement comes when we forsake our forceful drive and egotistical pursuits and harness the awesome power of Universal energy and its infinite intelligence. 

Going with the flow of the river of life will take us faster to our destination than forcing our way upstream, regardless of how many detours.  And when we get there, we feel refreshed and empowered instead of stressed, broken and empty. So lose the oars, listen to your inner guidance and trust your heart. 

Wafa Faith Hallam

Happy Earth Day 2016

Remember to make Earth Day every day!

LETTING GO: The Process of Surrender and Release

- An Easy Technique for a Healthier and Happier Life -

How does it make you feel to see a toddler throwing a tantrum and screaming “I hate you” as her mom looks on mortified? Or when your teenager, your parent or your spouse argues with you and blurts out words that feel like daggers in your chest? We've all been in similar situations. When we’re afraid or hurt, we react forcefully, and often try to hurt back. ~ Why?

From the time we were born, everything we’ve been taught about our negative feelings is that they should be kept under wrap, pushed away or ignored. That constant reminder slowly turned us into walking pressure cookers. We live in a society where negative emotions are viewed as impediments to good relationships and successful careers, forgetting that they are instead valuable indicators that are there to alert us that we are straying away from our source.

The truth is that the process of surrendering to, making peace with, and letting go of our negative feelings allows us to transform our negative feelings into love and freedom, which in turn make us mentally happier and physically healthier. Furthermore, the surrender and release of the darkness inside us takes us back to the light of higher consciousness and the happy beings we are meant to be.

Ultimately, the surrendering reconnects us with our true selves making us instruments of peace and reconciliation instead of forces of discord and separation. In my personal life, the letting go process has transformed my most important relationships—especially my relationship with my daughter, which was often violently argumentative—and made me a far happier person on all fronts. 

UNDERSTANDING  EMOTIONAL PAIN AND ITS EFFECTS

      A)  We are Huge Reservoirs of Accumulated Negative Emotions. 

On the conscious and subconscious levels, we have continuously resorted to various mechanisms to fill up with negativity again and again and we do this in 4 ways:

1. Suppression and Repression: deliberately by suppressing, unconsciously by repressing; in both cases by refusing to deal with negative emotions and thinking or talking about something else.

2. Escape: resorting to activities to mask the pain with excessive drinking, socializing, television viewing, working, exercising, and other seemingly acceptable behaviors.

3. Expression: complaining, demonstrating, and venting, only go so far in releasing the pain. The endless processes of psychotherapy that can go on for years are a good example of often futile expression with limited long term resolution.

4. Denial and Projection: pretending that the feeling does not exist at all or does not belong to us.  However, un-acknowledged and un-recognized negative feelings never just disappear, we project them onto others. They morph and become that which we often hate and despise in other people.

 B) Negative feelings Generate Obsessive Thinking.

Those negative feelings accumulate and fester inside until our containers are so full that they leach into our thoughts and haunt us. Soon the mind turns into a loud chatterbox filled with endless, gloomy, and contradictory thoughts leading to increased stress, and often resulting in serious physical and mental illness.

      C)  Negativity Increases Reactivity.

Our Monkey Mind, fed by our reservoir of negativity, has now created an entity that lives inside us lurking for opportunities to feed itself and grow bigger. Carl Jung speaks of the “Shadow Self,” while Eckhart Tolle calls it the “Pain Body.” This growing entity makes us walking time-bombs. Suddenly, a situation, an event, or a remark will trigger fear, anxiety or anger. We experience the familiar fight or flight response. That entity makes us believe the enemy is the other. Jean-Paul Sartre famously said “Hell is other people,” in his play No Exit; only it is not. The enemy is within.

Isn’t it time to stop the blame game and the finger pointing that we now are witness to so clearly in our society and look at the truth in the face? The truth is everything that is causing us pain and preventing us from being our happy selves is within us. We are victims and prisoners, yes; but not of anything outside of us. Our own negative feelings are to blame, they’re our shackles. Our reactivity is the cause of the conflict inside us, which we continuously project onto others. Nobody pushes our buttons, our reactions are triggered from within as we witness and partake in outside events.

HOW DO YOU FREE YOURSELF?

Whenever you feel a negative emotion, stop and take notice. Do not run away from it. Sit with the feeling and let it be there. Accept it and do not turn it into your enemy. Identify it if you can: Feel the anxiety, anger, sadness, guilt, shame, whatever it is. Allow it in your stomach, heart, and guts.

You will feel raw and exposed, but don’t give up, instead surrender and accept the discomfort and let it run its course. It only takes a few minutes and it’s well worth it.

Within a couple of minutes, take a deep breath and ask yourself: Can I let go of this ___ (fill in the blank)? Am I ready to let it go now? Answer YES, and mean it.

Visualize your emotional pain oozing through your system and seeping out of your every pore. Say to yourself: I am now letting go of this pain of ___ right here, right now. Breathe deeply. Pause.

Then, repeat the process by asking yourself:  Do I still feel the ___?

After 2 to 3 rounds, you will feel a lighter energy in you. The negative feeling will lessen considerably even dissolve and disappear.  The whole thing takes about 10 minutes.

You will be able to go on with your day and return to whatever you were doing as if nothing had happened. The trigger is now gone and you won’t be reacting to that situation anymore.

HOW QUICKLY CAN YOU EXPECT RESULTS?

You will feel the difference often very quickly, and even if you use the technique poorly.  Although, sometimes, the pain and negativity are so deep into the subconscious that it will require multiple releasing and a few adjustments before the negativity subsides substantially and is fully released.

In all cases, Practice, Patience and Persistence will yield miraculous results in just a few weeks, if not days. Also do not judge your progress harshly, be kind, and let go of resistance.

THE TECHNIQUE OF SURRENDER AND RELEASE WORKS MIRACLES.

We all wish to be free of anger, guilt, shame, fear, and anxiety. Now you know how.

You can break bad habits, succeed in your career, improve your relationships, enjoy good health, and contribute to the creation of a harmonious and peaceful world.

All of that is eminently possible when you master the art of Letting Go. The technique is easy enough. You just have to want to change and be free of all the negativity that’s holding you back. When you do, you will feel lighter and happier and you will be more creative, more productive and more resilient.

A final word: Don't take my word for it.  Try it for yourself and see what happens!

Note:  I posted a longer article on the same topic on November 18, 2015 titled "Your Negative Feelings are to Blame (or The Secret of Lasting Happiness)."

Sources: 

-          Dr. David R. Hawkins, M.D. Ph.D. "Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender." Hay House, Inc.;      2nd ed. edition (January 15, 2014)

-          Hale Dwoskin, "The Sedona Method." Sedona Press; First Printing. edition (February 25, 2015)

Letting Go, an Easy Technique for a Happier Healthier Life - Video

Based on the book "Letting Go, The Pathway of Surrender" 

by Dr David Hawkins M.D. PhD. 

I am passionate about sharing all the tools in my "Happiness Toolbox."  Life is too short not to learn to be happy regardless of the circumstances, events or people in our lives.  This is my first installment.  You can tell I am still very nervous but I know I'll get better at it with time. So please leave me your feedback and comments.  Thanks, everyone. ;)

Identity and Belonging

IDENTITY AND BELONGING

It’s Friday the 13^th, November 2015, around 6 PM, I’m on my way to dinner at friends in East Hampton when the phone rings. I stopped my car in their driveway and answered the call.  It’s my sister from overseas. She’s crying. Something terrible happened, Paris is under a state of emergency, and France’s frontiers are closed. People are killed, it’s a massacre. My heart drops and my first question was: Islamists? Unfortunately yes, she said. 

Immediately, my thoughts go to the victims and just as quickly to the perpetrators, a group of murderous psychopaths who call themselves Muslims, and in so doing they just smeared the very identity of a huge population of some 1.7 Billion people, who follow Islam, the world’s largest and fastest growing religion. And I am one of them!

Why am I telling you this?  Because, I am often faced with calls to speak up in defense of Islam. Moderate Muslims, we are told, should make their voices heard in their condemnation of Islamic terrorism; as if their silence was an abdication of their identity. In that regard, I admit I felt some guilt myself for a long time.

Identity, however, is a complex construct that is often difficult to tease apart. Identity is also the source of much pride and prejudice for many, who live to guard theirs at all cost, and in so doing, create separation and exclusion. I have come to believe that to heal the world; we must connect with our humanity and experience our Oneness.  That is not to say, that we cannot treasure our individuality or that we need to shed the mantle of identity altogether. But I am saying we cannot value one without the other.  

After all, why should it matter what our backgrounds and origins are?  Matters of birth, race, and religion are merely accidents of geography and artificial boundaries, nothing more.  With human migration steadily rising, national identity is increasingly muddled, which flies in the face of those who still want to return to race and creed purity.

For many years, I was unsure which box, or boxes, I belonged to because I am a blend of diverse elements. This explains that my identity was often a source of confusion that I experienced as a matter of either pride or shame depending on the place and the circumstances. It could be something I openly admitted to, ignored or artfully danced around. 

I was born in Morocco, of Muslim parents, a mix of both Berber and Arab descent.  Morocco itself is struggling with its identity as it is part of Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, the Arab and the Islamic Worlds.  For many decades, Morocco was occupied by Western powers: Portugal, Spain and most recently France.  Its official language is Arabic but French is everywhere, and for all intents and purposes, its second official language. There are also different Berber dialects spoken in the rural areas.

I was educated in French schools exclusively and raised like a French girl who happened to live in a majority Muslim country. Hence, growing up, my identity was not only a source of puzzlement, it was also and mostly a burden for a young westernized woman yearning to be free and not be caged because of her gender.

Coming to America offered me the promise and opportunity to free myself from the shackles of mingled labels and limiting beliefs. I wanted to be part of the American fabric, melt in its magnificent melting pot and integrate the larger identity.  And all was good and well until 9/11… followed months later by the war in Iraq. Two events that felt like I was slapped in the face again with the same questions of identity and belonging I thought I’d left behind. 

Like a fish pulled out of the water and gasping with each breath, I felt ashamed of an identity I was sure I had shed two decades before. I became concerned about how Muslims were being perceived and troubled by the growth of Islamophobia.  I believed I couldn’t stay silent and had to speak up against the atrocities committed by Islamic extremists and the horrors they perpetrated in the name of Islam.

And so there I was, hardly a Muslim or an Arab, except for the fact that I was stamped with such labels at birth. I didn’t practice the religion and I didn’t speak the language with proficiency and I lived two thirds of my life in the US and was thence thoroughly Americanized. Still, with all its many imperfections, I did love the culture I was born in, I did value my heritage, and I did connect with its beauty, richness and vibrancy.  And so I did want to make my voice heard. I wanted to put a different face on what my fellow Americans perceived Muslims to be.

However, as I was reflecting on how best to do that, I was struck with the realization that I did not have to defend Islam. Islam does not need defending; it needs to step out of the medieval times it’s been stuck in, certainly. Otherwise, like every religious doctrine, it preaches Love, Peace, and Tolerance at its core.  Admittedly, it is also tainted with contradictions, and in some instances even advocates violence, bigotry and prejudice depending on which verse or article one happens to quote or misquote. 

I also recognized that all religious texts, without exception, share the same contradictions. Their imagery, symbolism and messages could easily be used to validate any principle and justify any action.  After all are they not all based on orally transmitted myths and beliefs? Were they not all corrupted because written centuries after their revelation by men for men for the purpose of building and consolidating power? Have they not all led to killings and massacres of some kind or another throughout human history?

So why should I want to speak up on account of my identity when the only identity that matters to me now is that I am unquestionably a member of the Human Race? And why should I defend my religion when I only believe in Love, as the only True Creed; Acceptance, as the only True Faith; and Non-Judgment, as the only True Divine Law? As much as I understand the need and beauty of preserving and celebrating our belonging to a treasured culture, a religion, or a race, I truly believe there is a belonging that's bigger and more expansive that we must never forget or overlook our humanity.

In the end, I do appreciate and recognize that diversity of cultures and identities provide the essential colors, favors and textures to any society that a homogeneous entity cannot, but they are to be celebrated as an indispensable piece of the bigger all-inclusive patchwork.  And so no group should ever be made to feel guilty for the crimes of some of its members.  Because when identity is taken as a narrow concept, it divides and isolates.  Its defense invites judgment, while comparisons lead to perceptions of good and bad, right and wrong, and I have no desire to indulge in any of that, knowing that fear, anger and retribution create more of the same.

Only the experience of our wholeness can unite and save us as a species.  Hence, I choose to preach and to speak the language of Consciousness and Non-Identity instead, or rather identity as part of a whole. 

As the world most famous Muslim poet Rumi once wrote:

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.