Breakups?

Another question is ... two people want to mutually end a relationship but one person ends it before the other; causing immense pain and heartbreak ... how do you deal with it and what advice can you give in 10 stages? ... wow ... putting me through my paces today ... I'm no relationship expert but ...here's my reply:

If both parties wanted to mutually end the relationship that tells us something has been wrong for quite some time. Under normal circumstances (whatever they may be) if the people involved are rationally sound, they wouldn’t decide to end a relationship just for the sake of it nor out of the blue nor on a whim.

The fact that they both wanted to end the relationship also tells us that both parties felt incompatible with each other for whatever reasons. They shared a common feeling that things weren’t working between them and that neither party was happy. In that knowledge, one would assume that their rational mind knows the best thing for them to do is separate.

So, although I appreciate the fact that every break up has its consequences, if a person, who wants to break up from their partner, feels distressed and heartbroken over “being dumped first” rather than being the one “doing the dumping” it’s not a mourning for the relationship as much as it is a matter of pride and ego being hurt.

So, maybe steps 1, 2 and 3 should be:

1) An analysis the relationship to create a realisation, and eventual awareness/acceptance of what was wrong and why there was a mutual desire to end it.

Awareness, acknowledgement and acceptance are tools for empowerment.

2) Create an understanding that we’re not going to be compatible with all the people we encounter in life. Many people come into our lives for a specific reason at a specific moment in time when we need them or when they need to teach us something. Or, perhaps, they appear when they need us to teach them something. People come and go from our lives, very few stay for a long duration.
Incompatibility doesn’t mean unworthy, unlovable or undesirable. This should be reinforced in the wounded party.

3) Getting the injured party to admit that the breakup is, in fact, mutually beneficial. There is no “dumping” and “being dumped”.Looking at the relationship realistically, if they both wanted to end it but neither one had taken the dreaded initiative to do so, who knows how long the suffering and pretense would have carried on for. They would have ended up making each others‘ lives a misery. So, ending it was a positive thing.

Steps 4 through to 10 should be about:

- Taking time to learn to be with one’s self and love one’s own self. It’s a new chapter in a new phase of life. It can be written any which way even if that means reinventing one’s self. This is a phase for reflection and introspection. Spending quality time with friends and family.

Having a life re-assessment. Creating new happiness within one’s self.After all, we cannot rely on others to create our happiness nor should we enter a relationship with the idea that someone else is going to make us happy. That’s a lot of responsibility to hand over to someone else. When they fail to live up to our expectations, we feel they’ve failed us. We feel let down and hurt and, eventually, we repeat the same mistakes again and again.

If we’re already happy when we meet someone, their presence in our life will be complimentary to it and not a necessity.

Finding new hobbies/interests, join clubs and find passions in life that are both enjoyable and lead to meeting new people.

Eventually finding the positive lessons learned from the broken relationship, forgiving the wrong and letting go.

Travelling, broadening horizons and doing all the things you feel you can’t do when you’re in a relationship.

Meeting someone new and moving on. Everything in life has a certain amount of risk but never taking a risk means never discovering new opportunites and life really is too short to shut all doors.

Of course, Rome wasn't built in a day. Nor would anyone work through these stages in 5 minutes. Everyone progresses at their own pace in life and just as well. It would be boring if we were all the same.

One global love

Why do we auto-destruct?

So, someone asks why we continue to carry out repetitive destructive behaviour even when we are pretty well informed about the negative effects this behaviour can have on our lives and especially when we know this behaviour can compromise our health. My reply ...

Sadly, in today’s society, many people choose to turn away from “reality” as it is. Too much knowledge can be just as dangerous as not enough.

Unfortunately, it’s human nature to switch off to what we don’t want to hear because it’s too painful or because we don’t want to accept it as a truth or because, in some cases, the bad things become our comfort. We feel safe with them and as damaging as they are, we don’t want to let go of them. Nor do we wish to deprive ourselves of them because we’d feel cheated of something or, perhaps, neglected.
In today’s society, everything has become so readily available and so easily obtainable that we don’t like to deny ourselves anything. Maybe the blame here should lay with clever media marketing techniques that make people believe they’re inferior if something is lacking in their lives. It’s become common practice to look at what we don’t have instead of appreciating, and be grateful, for what we do have.

Having a society of content, grateful people doesn’t make good economics. Only people who feel they aren’t adequate enough will seek happiness and comfort in “things” outside themselves. It’s a subtle form of manipulation, and control, to get people to buy things and to behave in certain ways.
When I say “things” it could be anything that creates a temporary illusion of happiness. Temporary is the key word here, and this is why so many people continue with repetitive destructive behaviour in search of another fleeting moment of happiness.

Lasting happiness can only come from within. It can never be found outside one’s own self and nothing, and no-one, can ever be responsible for the creation of it. Yet, we continue to pass up on this responsibility and seek comfort elsewhere; like food. Its aromas and flavours remind us of people, places, events. It could be anything from a full Sunday roast with loving granny and grandpa, with whom we felt safe and loved, to an ice-cream on the pier, as a child, when the family was having a blissful day out. For a child, there are no cares in the world, no responsibilities. Everything is easy. There are no life decisions to be made.

Hence, the repetition of destructive behaviour that takes us back, consciously or unconsciously, to a carefree time in our life makes us escape for a while from the harsh reality of being an adult. I’m not saying that every case is the same because every individual is unique but it’s definitely something to consider.

Treat yourselves kindly dear ones. One global love

Don't fly Vueling Airlines

On May the 21st, 2015, I flew into Roma Fiumicino in order to catch a connecting Vueling flight from Fiumicino to Malaga due to leave within 90 minutes from my arrival. When I arrived in Terminal 3, I couldn't find my flight on the board. So, I asked an airport official who sent me to Terminal 1.

At Terminal 1, they sent me to Terminal 2. When I finally arrived at the Vueling check in desk, a very rude Vueling employee informed me that my flight was cancelled and rescheduled to fly from Roma Ciampino. Not knowing the airport nor how to get there, I asked for help and was denied any. Vueling claimed it was not their responsibility to get me to the new airport.

With only 55 minutes left to catch my flight, extremely stressed out and in a panic, I had to hurry through the airport, which led me to fall and break my foot. Nobody came to my assistance, not even Vueling. So, with a broken foot I had to make my way to a taxi, which cost me 60 euros to get to Ciampino.

Upon arrival at the check in desk in Ciampino, unable to stand or walk any further, I sat on the baggage belt and tried to ask the Vueling representative, at the desk, for airport assistance and help. He told me to wait in the queue. To which, at this point, and in so much pain, I told him that even if I could get up (which I couldn't) I wasn't going to until I got some help.

After some muttering under his breath, he arranged airport assistance, and without offering any help at all, told me to go and sit on chairs that were at least 4 meters away from the desk until the assistance could arrive. Anyone who has ever broken their foot will appreciate the agony of moving at all let alone that distance.

The only people who were mildly helpful were the cabin crew because they could see the pain I was in throughout the flight. They even gave me a complaint form to fill in.

The very next day, after arriving back in Spain, I was hospitalised, my leg put in plaster and given sick leave from work. In all, to the day I will be able to go back to work, I will have lost 1250€ in earnings, not to mention the pain, stress and frustration of not being able to move for the last few weeks.

I contacted Vueling, demanding some form of compensation and their response was to refund me 40€ and deny their responsibilities by hiding behind legal jargon. This is absolutely shameful.

I will NEVER recommend this airline to anyone. As they don't look after their clients, they don't deserve to have any.

Wars serve no purpose.

Wars and armies are created for no other purpose than to increase the power and greed of the elite in a country. We are led to believe we need armies to protect ourselves and our countries and yet, I question who the enemy really is.

The elite create enemies in our minds so that we may fear each other and hate one another. In reality, it is not within our nature to hate. Hatred is a state of mind. It's an emotion we create in response to something. It doesn't flow freely or naturally through our veins.

As physical human beings we are born from an act of love - the love shared between two people. As spiritual human beings we are born of an immense creative force that is infinite and all loving. At no point in our existence is there ever a destructive force. It is not who we are.

Every human being on this planet comes into the world the same way and every human being on this planet comes from a Higher source. We are ALL exactly the same.

However, we let fear mongers convince us we are different, we let them use their skilled marketing techniques to make us believe we should fear each other. We feed their thirst for blood and their desire to control every single resource on this planet.

"They" sell the army to our youth as if it was some romantic drama of heroism and courage. Yet, ask any person, with a conscience, who has been to war and killed another human being and they will pour their heart out in search of forgiveness from their creator for the lives they have taken directly or indirectly. If there is a God in their world, they will more likely think they are going straight to hell for their sins.

The truth is, our armies brainwash our youth and I'm not talking on a local scale. I'm talking on a global scale; everywhere around the world. They pick them young so they can manipulate them and command them at will; like puppets. They use clever psychological techniques to place our youth into such painful and enduring conditions that they would do anything to please. They feed them false ideologies.

The world frowns upon a Dominatrix but the government is no different to a Domina training a slave. They beat and they yell and they turn a slave's mind inside out until there is nothing left but the will to serve and the desire to be the best. The human being is lost under a complete spell until a huge trauma makes them emerge back into the reality of who they are.

Then, as if waking from one nightmare into another, they discover they are nobody. Without the army, they have no identity, no mission, no-one to tell them what to do. They're lost until someone comes along and reaches out a hand to drag them out of the pit they've been hiding in; waiting, letting life pass them by.

War serves no purpose ... no purpose at all except to render service to the elite's gran scheme and make slaves of free men who otherwise might be great creators or masters of another destiny.
War is not the answer. Armies are not the answer. If everyone, everywhere, refused to sign up to an army, there would be no fighting anywhere in the world because nobody would be prepared to do it.

I'm not so naive to think that we could live in utopia but I do believe we can live together in peace. I do believe that if all religions of the world united and if "ALL" extremism in beliefs, desires, greed, politics and consumerism were abolished, the world would no longer need wars. Armies might take on a new constructive role instead of being destructive.

Love each other people. It is the only answer.

Loss and Love

It’s coming up to another end of year and, as per every year, albeit this year a little earlier than usual for some unknown reason, I start to evaluate everything that has happened and everything that, potentially, is yet to come - not only with regards to my life but, also, with regards to my life in respect to everything and everyone around me.

This year, more than usual, there seems to have been a lot of loss around me. Or, maybe the older we get, the more natural it becomes for people to start departing this plain. Many people I have had the pleasure of exchanging views with and walking the path with, for a while now, virtually and otherwise, have passed into the realm of peace. Many others, as I type, are going through some kind of suffering; whether it be illness, inability to survive in a world where money has become an essential part of living, natural disasters or heartbreak.
The point is, everyone on this planet suffers with something.

As a lot of you know, even though I accept death as just another step in our evolutionary process, I have been struggling with my own grief for the last 4 years after the death of someone who was like a baby sister, a daughter and a friend. I grasped at every single memory, wept on every occasion and, even, went as radically far as up rooting; leaving a perfectly good life in Madeira to retreat to Spain. Yet, nothing eased the pain except the slow acceptance of the cycle of life and time even when it seems to be at its cruelest.

The truth is, there is no such thing as a cruel life. Life is what we make it and we end up with what we attract. Every thought produces an action. Every action creates a pattern and every pattern draws us to what we want; whether we truly want it or not. What we invest our energy into is what we will ultimately attract. We, basically, get what we focus on. We create every aspect of our lives and we choose who to have in it.

People argue that they don’t attract bad people, or disasters, into their lives, but they do. Whatever you put our into the world, is what you will get back. If you think negative and behave negatively, you will attract negativity and negative people. If you think positively and behave positively, you will attract goodness and everything that is positive for your life.
The best part about all this is that we choose. Nobody chooses for us.

When we close ourselves off in a dark hole, and trust me, I know because I did it for a year while I was still in Madeira and a another year after I came to Spain, everything around us becomes dark. Maybe through the trauma or the great shock we receive, we become blind to everything and everyone around us because it’s almost as if we’re looking at an invisible brick wall that stands between the sorrow we feel and the happiness that awaits us on the other side. The best bit is that a part of us wants to see over the wall and experience that happiness while another part of us wants to continue to wallow in sorrow.  

I hear you ask why we would wish to wallow in our sorrow and pain when it’s so destructive for us. Well, for one, because it’s easier to become the victim in our own self pity than it is to stand strong and be happy.  Two, whilst we are a victim, people show us loving kindness and attention, and three, most people have a complex of some kind and for some absurd reason, they feel unworthy of love and happiness and, thus, feel guilty at feeling joy at such a sad time. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a conscious feeling but, none the less, it’s there. Let’s not forget, as well, that in a kind of sadistic way, our pain becomes our comfort. It becomes a safe place where we can hide and not have to face the world.

As far as loss goes, of anyone or anything, we need to remember that nothing in life is permanent. Everything is subject to change. Chatting about the cruelty of life and people being snatched away from us, I recently said to a friend on Facebook
that nobody is snatched from anybody. It may feel that way but, in truth, we all have a time to come into this world and a time to leave. It’s the Kalachakra of life (according to Buddhism).  We all come here with a purpose and our purposes may be very different to one another. When we have achieved that purpose, we depart. We carry on with our journey; leaving others to carry on with theirs. What we need to accept is that every single hello must end with a goodbye of some kind because everyone has their own journey to travel, and sadly, we must travel it alone.

Of course, along our path, on this beautiful journey of life, we meet many people. Some stay in our lives for long periods of time and some just walk a short distance with us. We will never forget some people and others, we will forget the minute they're gone. We grieve the loss, but what we should do instead is rejoice the time we shared together, good or bad, rejoice for what we learned, rejoice for the strength a situation gave us, rejoice because we changed our way of thinking, we became a little wiser, a little more patient, a little more flexible or even a little more loving and compassionate. Everyone on our path taught us something. When we look back without the emotions attached to a person or a situation, we find that we grew more with what, apparently, seemed bad than with what apparently seemed like roses and poetry. 

We focus too much on the negative. Instead, we should think about the positive. First and foremost, for me it’s an honour and a blessing that someone else would want to share our journey and walk our path with us, whether it’s for a day, a month, a year or a lifetime. Since we all have the free will to choose to do as we please, some more than others of course, I consider it of the highest honour that another human being chooses to be my friend, my lover, my partner and a life long influence, because even long after that person has chosen to leave my life, the influence remains and the lessons learned never leave me. In this time of virtual friendships, it’s even more of an honour that someone you’e never met would want to be there for you and share in your life. 

At some point during everyone’s life, someone has loved them without being retributed, how lucky is that? Usually when it happens we are not mature enough to appreciate it. Just think how lucky it is to love someone who doesn’t love you back. It shows you are capable of loving without receiving; that you can give without expecting anything in return. Of course, we get too involved in the despair of it all, and the selfishness of expecting them to love us right back, to truly understand what a blessing it is. If only we could harness that love, control it and direct it at every human being on this planet and help them, in some way, without expecting anything in return. What a wonderful world we would create. 

Anyone who has ever been shown love or shown love is truly lucky. Some people will live their entire life without knowing what love, kindness and compassion are. Even when someone treats us badly, rips us off or tries to hurt us, we are lucky. Those people are teaching us to be wise and cautious. They help to improve our sense of understanding of this materialistic world we live in, which helps us to navigate our way through all obstacles we encounter. If we could stop for a moment and see those people as our teachers, we could smile at the whole situation instead of causing grievous bodily harm to ourselves with stress, anger and impotence.

As for losing things, well, the trick is to never be attached to something so much that you can’t live without it. Nothing lasts, and as many disasters have proven to us, it only takes a split second for everything to be reclaimed by mother nature. Nothing is truly ours anyway. As I discovered, first hand, when I had my near death experience, we take nothing with us into the next phase of being; literally nothing. 

Owning possessions has become a way for clever corporations to make you a slave for their ever increasing bank account. Things have become a way to keep people distracted, amused and separated. With more, or less, things, we believe in a so called differential social class. We compete with each other for the bigger, the best and the newest. It’s only because we believe in this social class that it exists, because, believe it or not, we are all the same. No amount of possessions and no fictitious social standing is going to protect anyone from disease, illness or death.

Owning as many possessions as possible has been sold, to us, as a reward system for the hard labour we endure in order to buy things. Marketing campaigns are so psychologically clever that we crave things before they come on the market. We queue for hours to buy, buy, buy. We’ve allowed ourselves to become slaves of things to such a point that we’ve put their importance above that of human lives. In fact, we’ve become immune to the loss of life.

We are slaves to TV; mind-washed by fear and always fighting for something or other; whether it be physically (as in war), emotionally (as in spiritual) or mentally (as in intellectually and politically.) 

I think it’s time we all realise just how much impact we have on one another and I think it’s time we make some conscious decisions about whether that impact is positive or not. I influence you, you influence your friend, your friend influences their friend and before you know it the whole world has been touched by one person. Be responsible in your choices, your thoughts and your actions, please, for all our sakes.

One global love

Dolphin watching

Sera Monastery - Lhasa