Emotional Wellness | Rohini Ross - Part 6

Avoid Activism Fatigue and Burnout in General

Recently in the Mastermind group I belong to, we were discussing the profound impact the understanding of the Three Principles has had on our lives. In the conversation, I became more aware of how clarifying the understanding is and how impactful the practical implications of it are. Particularly with respect to me being more content and navigating my life and my emotional experience with more grace and ease.   This understanding seems particularly important during this time of upset, consternation, and stress related to the current political climate in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. I find the increase in activism,...

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What a Relief — You Are Perfect Exactly As You Are!

Have you ever seen a self-help book or personal growth seminar that isn't focused on changing you? Every piece of marketing material that comes my way is tantalizing me to improve myself. The lure of being a better me with better thinking, better feelings, better achievements, and a better consciousness used to be so compelling, but it was also damaging. It painfully reinforced my belief that I was broken, damaged, and not good enough exactly as I was.   There are very few teachers telling people they are perfect exactly as they are. Not enough reassuring us there is no need to change,...

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Relationship Rescue: Don’t Take Your Arguments Seriously

When I am upset, the whole world looks different. Before, I would react to my perceptions and try and fix things from a place of disturbance. If my relationship looked like a problem, I would work on that. This usually resulted in fireworks and not of the sexual kind. If work was looking like a challenge, I would consume myself with trying to figure it out. This left me feeling stressed, discouraged, and hopeless, as I would mentally wear myself out from the unproductive spinning of my negative thoughts.   In the past, I have been overly focused on the shifting experience...

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Taking the Plank Out of My Eye — Nothing Can Disturb My Peace Other than My Thinking

When I scrolled through my emails recently, I saw one from an established coach listed as personal. The email title was my name. When I open the email, it said, "Do you have space for a new coaching client, Rohini?" I have seen this email before. I remember it.   Six months ago, I was speaking with a new coach developing his practice. We were discussing how his business was going, and he was very excited that he had received a personal email from this coach asking him if he was interested in new coaching client. He assumed the email was specific...

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I do not want to love myself — I want to know myself as love.

Working as a therapist and a coach, clients often share with me an intention of feeling worthy and having good self-esteem. In the past, I might have supported them with identifying the misunderstandings in their consciousness responsible for their painful feelings of not being good enough. This certainly provides respite, and helps clients see their beliefs as false. It allows them to let them go of the limited thinking and experience a more accurate understanding of themselves. Working with the content of thought and clarifying it so a deeper realization can emerge is healing. However, there is another way to address...

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Slow and Steady is Fine if You Are a Tortoise, but What if You Have the Temperament and Constitution of a Hare?

After returning from London, I got a sinus infection that left me with very low energy. I found myself only able to do essential tasks. I rested a lot, watched tv, and read novels. I didn’t even eat that much. I survived mostly on soup that I made in a huge batch and kept simmering on the stove. My husband and eldest daughter were still in London, and fortunately, my youngest daughter is old enough to fend for herself. As I emerge from the experience, I notice how relaxed I feel, and even though I am feeling better, I don’t...

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Debt Collector Madness, and Owning the Infinite, Creative Power of Thought

  Life is an illusion, but we play it as real. — Sydney Banks   I randomly picked up an envelope in the large pile of mail I had waiting for me upon returning from my trip. It looked innocuous enough, and as good a place as any to start. However, when I opened it, I was stunned. It was a letter from a collection agency stating that I owe thousands of dollars in taxes to the State of Colorado.   I have neither lived in Colorado nor worked in Colorado. I have been a happy, tax paying resident of California for over twenty years....

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The Unsexy Experience of Insecurity and the Joy of Setting Myself Free

Coming back from the One Solution conference on such a high and feeling so inspired has been juxtaposed with self-judgment. Questions like, “What am I doing with my life?” “Why am I not doing more?” “Look at what everyone else is doing?” have been accompanied by waking up with a free floating feeling of dread and stomach sinking rushes of anxiety. I don’t know if this is related to jet lag, peri-menopause, adrenal fatigue, or perhaps all of the above, but I do know that how I relate to these feelings is what matters.   I can experience them as an acute...

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Stop Trying to Escape Your Humanness and Surrender to Your Loving Essence

If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world. — Sydney Banks   Wellbeing and peace exist within us. They are a state of mind, a level of consciousness, we can all experience. The only thing that gets in the way of us residing in that state of mind is when we get gripped by anxious thoughts that take us out of our natural capacity for equanimity. When this happens there is no doing needed. We can simply relax and let our thoughts settle so we can fall back into our natural...

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We Are All in Recovery — Recovery of Our True Selves

I went to a workshop this week with Dr. Gabor Maté speaking about addiction. Maté spoke about the relationship between the trauma of unmet primary attachment needs and addiction. He defined the essence of trauma as not what happens to us, but the result of an internal disconnection from the body and the awareness of emotions. He sees what happens internally as creating trauma. He did not stay within the traditional realm of psychology in order to address the trauma. Instead, he quoted an unnamed spiritual teacher in California as saying, “The greater calamity is the lost connection with your...

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