Reframe Your SELF

For over two millennia at least, authentic ancient traditions have been telling us that as individuals we're frequently making a very subtle yet devastating mistake in our lives...

We're incorrectly identifying our SELF!  Yes, it sounds counter-intuitive, but in fact it's not.  In the modern Western world, especially, we're taught from infancy to identify our SELF with our brain, our thoughts and our emotions.  That's right, Descartes has won - we're all taught to believe his maxim, "I think, therefore I am".  

In fact, though, your true "self", your deepest "essence" is none of these things.  It's not your brain, nor is it the mindstream of endless thought running through your head, nor is it the emotions attached to those thoughts or welling up from deep within.  You HAVE a brain, thoughts and emotions, but you are not any one of them, nor any combination of them.

If you believe your brain, thoughts and emotions constitute your personal identity, then you automatically reduce your body to the role of a simple transportation system, a "biological golf cart" if you will.  And this unleashes a host of obstacles in your life and will suck your RESILIENCE dry:

• You will live in your head
• Therefore you will reduce the role of the body to that of a transportation system
• This will induce a pattern of chest breathing, which in turn will push energy higher into your torso and head, leaving you increasingly vulnerable to negative emotional states
• This disrupts the entire human energy system and leads to emotional imbalance
• Chest breathing also has physical consequences, in that it fails to detoxify the major organs as abdominal breathing does 
• It also leads to emotional incompetence - the tendency to either repress emotion or act it out.  Both tendencies leave you as the slave of your emotional world.
• Until you "get back in your body", you'll never master your emotions 

The only way out of this sad state of affairs is to engage in a meditative process.  This allows you to observe the mindstream and realize by your own experience that neither your thoughts nor your emotions are the REAL you.  It also puts your consciousness back inside your body where it belongs instead of letting it wander aimlessly in the world of the senses looking for something to ease the pain.  And there is nothing more painful than repressing emotion.

If you're making this fundamental "anthropological" mistake of identifying your Self with your brain, what you're really doing is reducing who you are to a bunch of acquired, observable characteristics, to the conditioning you've inherited from your society.  You are SO much more than that.


Now here I could get all poetic on you and tell you you're in the image and likeness of God, you're the Buddha nature or you're a being of light.  All of these are true, in that your real capacities exceed anything you've likely experienced.  But in the end, you have to discover all this for yourself or it has no value, it's just more useless information.

So the first step to recovering your personal resilience is to take your consciousness within, where you'll discover the real YOU over time and free yourself from bondage to your mindstream and emotions.  You'll stop living in a past you can't change or a future that's not here yet and discover the joy of being "present" to the "now".


And once you've done that, you're ready for the next step in your healing...

~Dr. Symeon Rodger

Body Image Propaganda: Are YOU a Victim?

For those of us who work within the emerging field of energy psychology, there are few emotional issues that we run into with our clients as frequently as "self-image" and especially "body-image" - the "my body isn't good enough" syndrome.  

Truthfully, though, as an Orthodox Christian priest with a couple of decades of pastoral counseling experience, I can tell you it was no different.  Thanks in part to the media, we're living through a bizarre period in history where almost everyone seems to think there's something wrong with how then look.  


And it's quite bizarre when you think about it - women are trying to attract guys by making themselves thinner and slimmer, not realizing that we guys prefer cuddling flesh to cuddling skin and bone.  And the guys are trying to look like body builders, not realizing that the vast majority of women find the body builder physique repulsive.  

Naturally, the most vulnerable segment of the population is the youth, and especially the females.  The statistics on the video below may not surprise you, but they should at least give you something to think about, and you may want to share it and discuss it with your own kids:









Lest you think that the women are the only victims of this propaganda barrage, think again - the guys suffer from it too, just in slightly different ways.  Here's a look at the problem from the male side of the house:










So, however you cut it, we're a culture with a huge self-image problem.  The mild cases lead to unnecessary mental anguish and wasted time (consider that statistic about the average woman spending over two years of her lifetime doing her hair alone!), while the severe cases can head toward depression, eating disorders and death.
 

Not a pretty picture, but one we need to take seriously if we're to become more resilient ourselves and prevent the young people around us from being sucked in to the media-created illusions they're being bombarded with.  

So if you think this post or the videos we've featured her could help anyone you know, please feel free to pass it on!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger 

Resilience Tip: Change Your Emotional State Instantly

How do you FEEL right now?  I mean "feel" in the emotional sense. How do you feel? Think about it and come up with a one word answer for yourself.


Have you got that answer? Good. Now, did you know you can INSTANTLY change your emotional state? Would you like to do that now?


You have at your disposal 24/7 an instrument that enables you to alter your emotional state at will. It's called...


...your body.


Don't believe me? If you're feeling tired, do just two minutes of stretches, push-ups and squats and I guarantee you'll feel totally energized!  Feeling down or discouraged? Straighten up, look up and reach up with your hands palm up as high as you can reach. Do that for two minutes and I guarantee you'll feel better. ...unless you're grimly determined to wallow in self-pity, of course ;-)


Make a habit of putting a smile on your face as soon as you get up in the morning. Do this simple exercise and you'll notice a huge difference.


So remember, if you want to influence your mind and emotions, start with your physical body! Using your body to regulate your emotional states will gradually build new neural pathways to a healthier emotional life.



~ Dr. Symeon Rodger


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