A GUIDE
BACK TO YOUR SELF ISA KHALWATI
THE SEED OF BEING COPYRIGHT: @ Isa Khalwati Söderström 2022 All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without written permission by the publisher. ILLUSTRATIONS & ART: Isa Khalwati Söderström BOOK DESIGN : Anna Gathu, Isa Khalwati & Hanna Zion, PRINT: ISBN: 978-91-527-4192-4
THE SEED OF BEING 1
INTRODUCTION
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COMMITMENT
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THE METHOD
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CHAPTER 1 – MIRACLES
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CHAPTER 2 – NEEDY
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CHAPTER 3 – THE JUDGE
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CHAPTER 4 – EMOTIONS
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CHAPTER 5 – BREAKTHROUGH
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CHAPTER 6 – SPROUT
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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
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REFERENCES
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION Let’s be real...most of us are walking around with a lot of negative inner dialogue, which causes us to doubt and dislike ourselves. We carry around feelings of shame and guilt, with parts of our personality that we want to hide deep down in the basement. What’s more, we think we are the only one with these thoughts, traits, habits, and feelings. Sorry to disappoint you, but we are all more or less carrying around the same inside junk. Maybe you picked up this book because you’re fed up of lying, tired of hiding, or just curious. Whatever the reason, this book offers an in-depth exploration of some aspects of your human nature. Of what made you who you think you are and discovering who you really are. This book is born out of twenty years of working with human beings and seeing, more than anything, how very much alike we are when we peel off the mask. And how endearing and humbling it is to meet there in the realness of our insecurities, our fears, our vulnerability, and our very humanness. As an affect- and meditation-oriented therapist (which basically means I believe that we need more than just “talk-therapy” to make any real, lasting change), I have been privileged to learn from some amazing therapists and mentors and work with thousands of people, both in groups and individual session settings. This work has given me some insights into how we function as human beings, and one thing that I have seen is that our emotions are an important part of our human nature and that they are essential for inner transformation. Through my work, I get to explore and talk about emotions with people of all ages and occupations. I had the privilege to be part of an affect-focused education for nurses working with cancer patients, and to my surprise very few of them, despite working in such a vulnerable moment of people’s lives, had much notion of why we humans have emotions. This got me really curious and I decided to start asking
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people “Why do you believe we have emotions?” I discovered that very few people knew why. It wasn’t something they had reflected about or learned. Mostly emotions was something that they wanted to get rid of, change or escape. As emotions are part of our human nature and no one can escape them, it seemed strange and somewhat disturbing to me that so few people knew why we have them. Having studied both psychology and psychotherapy, I know that there are countless of books written about emotions and there are as many theories, yet in reality very few people understand emotions. Do you know why we have emotions? I personally believe that feelings are an essential part of our humanness, that the dark days and emotions are as needed as the light ones, that if you embrace that, life becomes full. When you fight it you fight yourself. This lack of widespread understanding made me want to write about emotions in a way that makes sense to people. So, in this book, I will give you an opportunity to explore why we have emotions, and a very simple understanding based on my experience and studies. Don’t worry, you don’t need a degree in psychology to understand them! All you need is a little curiosity. The second thing that pushed me to write this book was a TV show about shame. It was a great exploration of how shame can cause us to sabotage our life through distorted body image, eating disorders, overachieving, not daring to relate, and so on. Issues that are commonplace and that I see all the time in my work. What struck me about the show was that no one, they interviewed experts, therapists and scientists, knew what to do about the issue of shame. They understood shame, they could explain it, but there was very little concrete help offered. Yet it’s one of the most common problems in modern life. I feel we need to understand the underlying reasons for this shame, and the critical thoughts that we aim towards our selves. In this book we will examine it closely and I will show you some fairly simple tricks to dissolve at least some of the shame that binds you.
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Thirdly, as I look around, I see people aged 17 – 70 struggling with the same problems. We think we aren’t worthy of love or we believe we have to change ourselves in order to be loved. We believe there is something wrong with us, and that if people find out who we really are, they will never love or like us again. We think that we are never enough, no matter how much we achieve, gain, learn, or prove ourselves. And we fear that if we follow our longings, our truths, and our inner wishes, we won’t belong anymore. We are living at a time when we are bombarded with images of ”perfect” lives, ”perfect” bodies, how we should be, what we should do, and how life is supposed to be. More so than at any other time in human history, information and impressions are seeping through at every moment we are awake, leaving us with a feeling of overload. Feeding our inner critic with unattainable ideals. Leading to a sense of hopelessness and sometimes even depression and despair. We feel that it’s impossible to live up to the ideal, ”perfect” lives we are exposed to daily. And more so, it alienates us from ourselves. We don’t look at ourselves in wonder, in appreciation, in gratitude for being alive. Instead, we are annoyed and disappointed that we aren’t what we’re supposed to be. This is striking across all ages, even the little ones. My own kid once said she felt that self-judgement, was all around, and how right she is. Especially in the younger generation, I see that many have little or no hope and are battling a deep sense of meaninglessness. It’s no wonder that antidepressants and plastic surgery are so mainstream. We aim many critical and harsh thoughts against ourselves and others, with the result that it gives us nothing. Just pain. Inside me I have a ROAR. It is absolutely directed to myself, but also towards society and what we humans are doing to ourselves and our planet. I believe we need a revolution, that we need to take a deep, honest look at what we hold as true. What we have been fed from such an early age that we don’t even question it anymore. We need to reclaim the aspects of our human nature that have been taken for granted, or even devalued or shamed. We need to own our humanness and stop trying to hide it, spending time and energy covering up who we truly are. 3
In this book, you’ll see that some of your beliefs (like not being good enough, not being wanted, or not having a place) might not be as true as you hold them to be. In doing so, this book will challenge you. There may be aspects of your personality that doesn’t like this, and they may find excuses and objections why you shouldn’t continue reading. Can you keep an open mind and carry on exploring yourself? By honestly and curiously investigating who we are, we can release some of our old beliefs and hang-ups, and thereby choose how we want to live. Using self-inquiry tools and challenges, we can find a way to create loving disciplines and a daily practice that helps us stay connected to our core. A person who loves themselves for their very humanness makes their own choices, follows their own rules, and cares for themselves and others in an authentic, abundant way. This is not a ”scientific book”, it is not based on research and I don’t say that I am right. I have written it from my own experience and drawn wisdom from other sources that I trust and believe in. Please find your own truth among these pages, it is very much made for you to explore and discover for yourself. The book will hopefully stir up your thoughts, awaken your curiosity further, and support you in finding a more intimate, wholesome relationship with yourself. So that you can spread what you find to those near you. So we can start releasing each other from this rat race of perfection. So we can rebel in the true meaning – which means to LOVE yourself. And not just the good stuff either, but all of you: the dark corners, the embarrassing parts, and the hidden aspects. And in doing so, setting yourself free. This is a book to bite into, to make your own, to use, to disagree with, to be honest with, to argue with, to play with, to learn with, to unleash your creativity with. To throw away when you disagree, then pick back up again when you realize you were overreacting. A book you can use to get to know yourself from many different angles. So, feel free to write and draw, to make it yours truly. There is plenty of space for notes, drawings, scribbles, and tea stains.
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THE BEING Before we move deeper into the exploration of this book, let’s re-source = going back to the source of it all. Take a moment to read through this page, then give yourself at least ten minutes to explore this meditation, you can set a timer if it helps. Make yourself comfortable, sit or lie down, and soften or close your eyes. Place your hand on your heart, on your belly, or somewhere on your body where it feels good and where you feel a little bit more connected. Take a good long breath, all the way into your belly, expanding your chest and your inside as you breathe. Softly take a few of these deep breaths. As you sense the air moving in and out, stroking your inside and expanding your body, see whether you can get a notion of something inside that is just present and still. A part of you that is always there, that is hard to describe, but noticeable. Maybe you feel it as a sensation, a certain quality of your inner body space, or maybe it’s more like a colour or a whisper. Let yourself rest with the simplicity of breathing in and out, sensing yourself for a little while. If this is new to you and you feel completely lost, busy with thoughts and to do’s, or you fall asleep, don’t worry. We are not used to connecting in this way, never taught to turn our eyes inward and sense the indescribable. This simple exercise is meant to bring you back to this ever-present being inside of you, and sometimes we need to practice. Maybe this can be your daily meditation for a week or two, and eventually you might start feeling something deeper than the chatter of the mind. Sometimes, it helps to remember a time when you were younger, when life was simpler, when you were in more contact with your body. Do you remember being connected to yourself and to nature? Whatever your experience is right now, give yourself the time to reflect, draw, question, and describe. With all the freedom, know that there is no wrong answer.
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DO Y YOU OU HA R SE E D VE A ,Y OU SENS EO RB FY EI N O G? HO U W XP ATUR ER IEN E, CE IT?
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IA T EN S E S E U R YO O D
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So, you know that as babies, we need love and care in order to survive. We don’t have a choice in the matter, as we are dependent. And let’s be real, we now know that we are not blessed with parents who are fulfilled and enlightened to their higher purpose. Most of us have caring parents, trying-their-best parents, who are carrying their past pains, traumas and unconscious learning with them. And with that comes preferences for how we should and shouldn’t behave. Mostly, these are not conscious ideas. These are rules and behaviours that your parents learned from their parents, and so on. Often, we don’t have the capacity to see the unique being who is born and let it grow into its natural self. But maybe this is exactly how it should be. In order to know who you are, you might need to experience what you are not. Think about it … just as your seed adjusts its roots to the soil it grows in, a tiny stone makes the root crooked, and the edge of the pot makes the root curve, we start adjusting to the preferences of our parents in terms of how we behave. It doesn’t take long to figure out what someone likes or dislikes, especially since kids are like sponges, whose dependency is total. In fact, it is a necessity to be able to adapt to our environment. At first, this is a wordless, thought-free adaptation, just a sense of what our mother and father prefers (the first layers of the soil, remember). As we grow older, it becomes more formulated, a thought with words: “Mommy doesn’t like it when I cry too much, so I better push it down into my belly.” It’s common that our aliveness, anger, emotions, and sounds are experienced by our environment as too much. For some of us, we may get attention by being too much, and that becomes our strategy. Whatever we pick up, we slowly start identifying ourselves as this or that. Our personality or ego starts developing. How this personality structure develops is very dependent on the environment we grow up in. The roots grow into the soil and start sucking nutrients from it (without that, it can’t grow, and neither can you). You start forming ideas about who you think you are.
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W H O YOU THI
SON
TAGE MASK A=S
IN G R E E K,
KIN D O F
SA Y S I T A LL!)
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R ( PE NA LIT Y
PER SO AR E=
YO U
NK
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CLEAR THE INNER CLUTTER I admit I’m a little obsessed with clearing out stuff. Ever since I was a kid, I liked giving away things that were unnecessary, ugly, or useless, things that took up space but didn’t add something. I can still go through my boxes or papers on the hunt for used-up things that are ready to go. But I’m not unsentimental. I remember going through my grandmother’s things when she died, and feeling sad at how little of it was personal. There were a few letters, a notebook (one after a whole life!), some really old photos, and some clothes. I am a believer in keeping the things we love, the things that are beauti ful, the things that have meaning. Well, the same goes for my idea of therapy. We learn so many things in our lives that take up space in our inner self, but don’t contribute anything good; rather they cloud our view. Before I could support myself as a therapist, I made a business out of this passion, called Making Space, where I helped people clean out their clutter. And it was never as clear as when helping someone clean out their wardrobe. They got rid of things they kept but never liked, the wrong size, the bad conscious buys, the gifts, the outgrown items, the broken, and the old. Suddenly, the clothes left were the ones they loved, that made them feel good, even gorgeous, and it was easy for them to pick and choose what to wear. It’s the same with our concepts about ourselves — we collect them in a pile without ever really taking the time to look at what they are. We get used to the energy-draining effort of keeping all this in place, keeping up the facade. A lot of what we learn growing up is for sure useful, but a lot of it is crap. Especially the ideas we carry around about ourselves. What if you could clear that inner clutter? Would you be into it?
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SADNESS The function of sadness is to prepare us for something new, to slow everything down, giving us a chance to sense ourselves and to feel. It often comes as a consequence of losing something or someone we love, of feeling emptiness or longing, or of experiencing changes in our life. Sadness releases our tears, helps us relieve pain, and activates others around us to support with love. This can actually help us adapt to a new situation and re-orient in new relationships, as well as discovering what’s important in life. Sorrow in its flow is like a wave. Sometimes, it is so strong that it washes us off our feet. Other times, it is subtle and causes a deep sense of sadness. Yet it always moves through. Sadness doesn’t stay for long though, just like the waves of the ocean, it flows in and out. It is actually fuelled with love and tenderness if we let ourselves feel it. Sadness that gets stuck in nostalgia, in memories, or when brought back again and again with the force of our thoughts, can lead us into a state of despair, blame, or shame—and that type of sadness can lead to depression. Think of breaking up with a loved one, then repeating the scenes of your relationship over and over again. Or repeating the betrayal, imagining them with someone new, tormenting ourselves. Depression is a stuck state where nothing moves, where you’re drained of hope and will. Holding onto sadness can put you into a deep hole. It sucks you right down to a place where nothing matters anymore. It might be the shame of feeling a little joy if you have just lost someone you love, and this might put you in the grip of “stuck sadness”. It might be the unforgiving inner judge blaming you for something, not letting the waves move freely… Sorrow needs to be felt and free flowing, then it is a dear friend who brings solace in a moment of pain and upheaval.
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a il ke SAD els e f N ESS
, ief l e r
an
nc esolves and leads to accepta r t i d
EPRESSION feels like hopelessness, despair, and self-hate
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WHAT ARE YOU ASHAMED OF? WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL SHAME? Take this opportunity to air out your shame. Putting words on it, and even better, sharing it with someone you trust is the best way of shrinking shame. Try it out with something small and notice what happens. If you like the result, you can go on… Regardless if you want to share it with someone, share it with yourself here.
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INTEGRITY Just like the soil needs weeding, so do we. It can seem boring, and it’s something that we tend to avoid or postpone, yet it’s the one thing that will make the plant grow up strong and healthy. If we choose to see this life as a possibility to learn and grow, to keep nourishing our soul so that it can evolve, then the inner judge becomes a friend along the way. When you’ve seen through and weeded out the lies of the judge, given back what wasn’t yours in the first place, and kept only the treasures ... when you have faced the truths of the judge ... it actually starts showing you where you are still stuck, where you still hold pain and unhealed experiences. Actually, the inner judge has always been a friend trying to keep us safe, but it wanted to go back to a time when we needed it, to our childhood, to before we moved out of our parent’s house and made it on our own. When we have peeled off the outermost, obvious layers of protection, we come to the really deep stuff. That’s where there is such wonderful potential for growth and healing. When you know you are the seed and not the soil, don’t you want to shower yourself with all the beauty, space, nourishment, love, and care that you can possibly imagine? Yet, there will probably still be a pull from the inner judge to keep us in status quo, in the old script, so we need a certain amount of self-discipline to choose a new way. Yes, I know it sounds horrible, kind of like what the inner judge was up to. In a way, it is. But it’s for the nourishment of your soul, not to keep you small. The word discipline comes from the Latin word disciplina, which means knowledge. When we have knowledge of what’s important for us, we need a certain determination to keep doing it. It’s listening to the inner voice and deeply understanding what makes us happy, satisfied, nourished, delighted, and aligned… then actually doing it. It’s that simple. And yes, it can be hard at first.
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RE-SOURCE There is so much soil that it is easy to forget that we are that tiny seed. As well as having a plan to pluck out the weeds and coming back into integrity, we need a plan to remember, to RE-SOURCE = coming back to your source = who you truly are. And you can do that by identifying what makes YOUR heart and soul sing. These are the actions that need to become such an integrated part of your life that it hurts if you don’t do them. Any plant will die without light, water, air, and nourishment to the soil. What are your essential non-negotiables for your plant to grow? This is where discipline really comes into play, since we are so darn fast at overlooking, skipping, forgetting, and avoiding. We find a great deal of excuses not to make ourselves happy. So, what ingredients is your nourishment made of? What do you need to water your plant as often as it requires? THE NON-NEGOTIABLES - RE-SOURCING Just as with the outstanding items on your integrity list, make a plan for your resource list. When and how can these ingredients become part of your everyday life? How often do you need to be watered? Now, the same warning goes here, the judge will tell you that you don’t have time, that you are selfish, that others will judge you, that you are lazy, spoiled, … blah blah blah. The truth is that when we nourish ourselves, we automatically become more satisfied human beings, and when we are more content, we treat others and the world in a more loving way. The judge’s logic is mostly exactly the opposite of what is true. (Want to explore this concept more? Read Byron Katie and test her method The Work.)
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ARE YOU READY TO BEFRIEND YOURSELF? TIRED OF YOUR INNER CRITICAL THOUGHTS?
THIS BOOKS CALLS ON YOUR WILLINGNESS TO TAKE RADICAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR LIFE.
YOU WILL DISCOVER
HOW YOUR FEELINGS AND NEEDS ARE A PART OF YOUR HUMANNESS. THAT DARKNESS IS NEEDED
AS MUCH AS LIGHT, AND IF YOU
EMBRACE IT ALL LIFE BECOMES
FULL.
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