How To Deal With Loneliness

Follow these simple steps for when you’re feeling lonely or depressed or fearful or anxious or angry….or…

1) Stop whatever else you’re doing and go very still and inner – like you’re listening for something inside yourself somewhere…what’s that?

2) Meanwhile, remove the label of ‘lonely’ or ’sad’ or ‘blue’ (or whatever you thought you were feeling like) and imagine you’re having a new feeling no one’s ever had before and you’re curious about it. A new and unique sensation. You don’t even know if it’s positive or negative feeling, it’s just…this curious feeling… fascinating. Even wonder what colour it might be, and what flavour it is…

3) Then feel it as if it’s neutral, ‘label-less’, just interesting for a minute (or longer if you get into it, it can be a portal to all kinds of releases and forgivenesses).

4) Then when you’re ready, consider calling the feeling LOVE and imagine that it’s maybe one of the 1000 names of the Goddess. LOVE has many flavours, some of them edgy or tender. They don’t all always feel comfy, some are truly intense, even overwhelming. Experiment with feeling it as LOVE for a bit.

5) Now start feeling ecstatic that you are such an evolved ninja alchemist and you are really fucking growing – that you would even do this is such grace – and exclaim THIS IS FUCKING AMAZING and put on some of your favourite loud music and dance it!

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Loving The Bruised Purple Of The Cloud

Whenever you are agonising about what you should have done or what might happen, remember that those thoughts are merely your well-meaning (yet misguided) mind trying to save you from the feeling of a passing mood cloud. When a mood cloud is passing through and it feels edgy or a bit uncomfortable, the mind thinks that if it can find a matching storyline to solve then it can make the edgy feeling go away. This is all because we instructed our Mind long ago to make sure we never felt anything uncomfortable or edgy. The great turn around happens when you become a human who is willing, even fascinated, to feel their edgy feelings. When that happens you can just say “oooh a mood cloud…oof that’s a big one” and feel it fully without asking ‘why?’. Asking ‘why’ comes from the belief that if I’m feeling edgy or fearful then something’s wrong. But nothing is wrong! There are just passing cloud moods, on and off for everyone.

Always feeling happy and never feeling passing clouds is a fantasy. We expect clouds. We don’t try to solve them or look at them as indications that something’s wrong or that something needs fixing or getting rid of. We turn towards them with appreciation and friendliness as they pass, without getting sucked into a mental drama about something (usually irrelevant) to solve.

The less willing we are to feel and savour the bruised purple pf the cloud, the more we will be endlessly headfucking as an unconscious way to not feel the cloud.

Feeling the cloud IS self-love. Turn towards it. Welcome it and appreciate its colours and textures as it passes and the next ray of sunshine won’t be far behind.

(and then another cloud)

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‘Egos Trying to Act More Like Souls’ and how I feel right now

What I’m noticing right now is that, to me, a lot of this ‘path teaching’ business is trying to hook in those who want to get ‘enlightened’ as quickly as possible, no different from the accomplishment-driven brainwashing of the ego’s early conditioning. I actually saw an advert today for an ‘Accelerate Your Spiritual Growth’ workshop. SO paradoxical!

The part of us that IS enlightened doesn’t care a jot for getting anywhere quickly, accomplishing something huge, getting to any imagined finish-lines. It’s just…right…here….now…..in one single fully conscious breath, here we are…whenever you want it. I find it dodgy to use the slave-driven ego as a way to hook in customers because the whole notion of selling that paradigm is actually taking folks in the opposite direction. Recently I’ve been wondering about all the games and techniques I teach on my workshops and I want to be really careful to facilitate the natural, friendly part of us that is just…Presence…not busy….just loving and peaceful….not recounting the suffering stories and events….or needing to achieve something special, like enlightenment….just the gentle, friendly part that is right here…..let’s take one breath together now….and here we are….simple…

….to me enlightenment is loving ourselves without the expectations, or self-disappointments of ‘somewhere to get to’…just the permission to be totally relaxed in the here and now with no to-do lists invading the moment…even if what’s around in the present moment is edgy or unexpected or challenging, still a continuous base level of undistracted friendliness and surrender to whatever’s going on, including the urge to help what’s going on if that’s an option, including it all….

….so that Presence which I can feel behind all the busyness of my self-cherishing life, that quiet place where my name and my individual experiences, and all I’ve learned, and all that I think and strategise and control, are meaning-less, just no big deal, they are affectionately loved but not made a big deal of any more than the whining or tantrums of a toddler….(it’s expected to do that sometimes and we allow it patiently without feeding it……) ….that gentle Presence behind my name which gives a loving context to all the touchy drama IS the real gift that I feel we’re here to deliver…and I feel careful that I now want to make sure my games and processes aren’t just teaching finish-line driven egos to behave more like Souls.

Now, games and new habits can create a lifestyle where there’s so much Presence and patience and tender humour that the old distractions and sucker-punches of triggery, reactive, adrenaline-driven parts of the day are no longer battled but just accepted without drama, even big waves, felt hugely, but still just passing through, not held and examined and ‘kept so close’…..and when they’re allowed to come and go without a big to-do, our natural, upwelling fountain of inspiration and generosity and genius just gushes out of us effortlessly…innately…

…so I want us to more, when we gather in our groups, to feel together that Presence that affectionately observes our busy ego running around and has zero expectation of need for it to be any different. It’s expected to be volatile, like the sea being some days calm and some days choppy or even stormy at times….it’s the sea, we never expect it to be other than it is….so when big waves come in our lives, we don’t jump into an attitude of shock and ‘oh no! something’s wrong!’…No….we just say ‘ooh that was a big one’, and even ‘ouch that was strong…wait a sec…’ and just let it rise and fall in us without resistance.

It’s the resistance of the ‘controlling bodyguard’ in us that wants us to never have to endure any discomfort that blocks tough waves coming through and actually makes them more painful and last longer…with analysis, and control, and complaint, and rejection of the feeling….once again….go soft, Be the Presence that just watches it patiently as it rises and falls….(and fully feels compassion for the ouch of it if it’s a painful one)….

Let’s let go of the idea of any accelerated Path to Enlightenment – let’s just really be willing to feel, without fuss, the big and small waves of this moment, fully, savouring all of it with fascination, no agenda to get rid of anything or escape anything….or get somewhere else other than here….

….where are you going on your path? we’re already right here…just being in Presence where we don’t need our names or ‘what we do’ or ‘what we’ve achieved’….and there we notice there’s no clear edge where you end and I begin…

www.jamiecatto.com

It’s not Hannibal Lecter it’s Anthony Hopkins

Some people believe that a major function of a human life and this whole 3D ‘reality’ we inhabit is like a theme park of experience offering us a kind of soul-curriculum. In this model, every person we meet and everything that ‘happens to us’ arises from a sophisticated and beautifully crafted design to mirror us, illuminate us, and, when framed correctly, invite us back to wholeness and healing. It can be very powerful to see our lives this way, as a benevolent series of messages and sign-posts sent to train and evolve us.

Some take this concept even further and believe that before we incarnate as humans, maybe when we are in heaven’s waiting room about to come down to the EarthWorld theme park, we choose certain things that we want to work on in this lifetime or challenges we want to face or experiences we want to immerse ourselves in during the game. Some of these ‘set-ups’ are very intense and so, for those ones in particular, we choose our best friends up in the spirit world to come and play the most difficult roles such as those of our enemies or the abusive or challenging people in our lives.

While we’re setting up these scenarios we might ask one of our closest pals to play the role of our alcoholic mother or violent father or nightmare ex-spouse, and here on Earth they do it SO so convincingly that when we die and return back to heaven’s depressurisation chamber, this ‘best mate’ who’s been ‘playing’ our enemy peels off their rubber mask with a gleeful facial expression and says ‘Hey it was me all along! Remember?’ and we put our hands on our heads and go ‘Oh my fucking God!! That was the most unbelievable performance! It was method! It was was Lawrence fucking Olivier!!’ and we all marvel and fall about laughing.

So somebody who is in your life, someone you might describe as a Hannibal Lecter – from this other point of view is not Hannibal Lecter at all but Anthony Hopkins. From this standpoint you can marvel at their performance, their unswerving attention to detail and total convincingness.

If you’d like some homework, choose someone who until now you always considered an enemy or a huge challenge, and look at them through this lens. Then grab a pen and write them the most glowing, appreciative, theatre review of their stunning performance, maybe even including some of the most difficult episodes you’ve had with them as ‘stand-out scenes’.

Who, in your life, is carrying off an Oscar Winning villain’s performance?

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Music Is The Space Between The Notes

I want you to let go of worldy concerns for a little

that’s what i mean by feminise

no doing

or thinking

or planning

or strategising

or solving

that to me is all masculine essence

busy-ness

i want space for you

listening without answering

empty

dissolving the busy You and all her/his concepts and concerns

drop it

for a week

and be someone who’s not interested in the whole story, where its going, how it all fits together

and watch the movie

instead of trying to write and direct it

that’s the clearest way I can say it to you

music is the space between the notes

www.jamiecatto.com

The Warm, Soft Creature That You Are

it’s weirdly synchronistic for me that at exactly the same time I’m premiering my brand new MOJO BLAST! – Take Everything To The Next Level For This New Chapter workshop in Amsterdam this week, I’ve also been living among packing boxes and bin liners as I moved house this week and stepped gingerly into a totally different home and Chapter. So I’ve been mulling what it means to me and as squishy as it sounds, I’ve concluded that this next chunk, hopefully for us all, is one of letting in more love, letting life be simpler and easier and getting off the striving wagon. I love that poem…how does it go?….’you don’t need to crawl a thousand miles on your knees through broken glass, just give the warm creature that you are what it loves…’? Something like that, if I had internet while talking to you I could call it up but this new place has no wifi yet. It’s been very freeing for me, someone who does so much stuff online, to have the excuse to do a lot less work this week while I transition. Allowing myself space to procrastinate and go slow has yielded all kinds of creative and personal illuminations while I’ve been pottering about, looking in boxes…Self-love is one of the squirmiest, slipperiest concepts on this Twin Trail path we’re all on. We’ve really been indoctrinated that fully allowing and welcoming the good things we enjoy and serving ourselves might be greedy or selfish or ‘too ego’. The unconsciously delivered shamings from our earlier lives have distorted how we look after ourselves and allow ourselves to enjoy being loved-up, or even let it in at all. I’m consciously dissolving that ice-wall now and including myself more in the circle of ‘those who deserve wicked things to happen to them and to be loved-up on a regular basis’. Does that make you feel funny somewhere in your body? The idea of being in that circle….or are you smiling to yourself that you are well in that circle already and listing your gratitudes?

What does giving the soft, warm creature that you are what it loves mean to you? Could you allow that in a bit more?

(I feel a new Facebook Group coming on…..or a face cream, I’m not sure….)

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workshops, coaching, mentoring, lightning

If You Haven’t Found Your Passion Yet

A popular misconception about ‘going out there and following your passion’ is that you have to know what your passion is before you start. I saw a great talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote the bestselling book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, about how guilty she felt having given talks urging people to follow their passion and ‘just do it’, not realising that there were people in the audience who simply hadn’t found their passion, didn’t know what it was, and felt like a failure every time someone told them to ‘just follow their passion’. What should the people who don’t know what their passion is, or don’t believe they even have one, do?

You can see the talk here: http://www.supersoul.tv/supersoul-sessions/elizabeth-gilbert-flight-hummingbird-curiosity

Do we all have to know what our passion is before we take action? I would say ‘no’.

I’d like to offer a different route which i believe is efficient for people who haven’t found their passion and innate drive yet. I suggest that if you don’t know exactly what your passion is then dedicate some scheduled action to the nearest thing you can think of to what interests or moves you, and instead of relying on the passion to instigate or lead the action, take some creative action on something which is in the area of what you love, which is perhaps the closest thing you can think of, even if you are unskilled in it at present. You may find that the passion grows with the action once you’ve given some time to it and sprouts little leaves as you go along.

What I’m saying is that the passion can grow out of the action instead of be the instigating spark and a gradually increasing momentum of fulfilment grows out of nothing, out of the bare ground once you get started. This certainly takes a bit more vulnerability as you don’t have the uplifting wave of inspiration to get you started and it is essential to have no attachment to the outcome of your actions, but the passion and drive can often birth itself very powerfully once we surrender to the pessimism and get on with it.

Those people who stagnate believing that unless their passion is driving them that there’s nothing worth giving their time to, forget this second option.

One of the traps here is that it’s easy to believe that the project or action is there to make us feel good, to fulfil us. Don’t get me wrong, there is an abundance of inspiration and ‘being fed’ that will unfold once the project or activity is underway, but it’s not that activity’s job to ‘give us’ the nice passionate, driven feeling. We can’t burden our art or our missions with the responsibility of ‘making us feel good’. Nothing good springs from that expectation. There’s a reason the old cliche says ‘you get out what you put in.’ The projects and missions which succeed are the ones where we are of service, even devotional, to the thing we’re doing. We pour ourselves into it and sooner or later it gives us back satisfaction or even, on a lucky day, something approaching a Masterpiece.

So if you’re one of those people who don’t feel you’ve found your passion, don’t use this as a reason to not take any action. We can’t always wait for the trumpet call of inspiration. Make a start, even a small one.

It’s also important to avoid setting ourselves up for failure by aiming for unrealistic expectations like ‘I want to be a Master painter’ or ‘I want to be a World famous pianist’. Yes, it is good to have goals but when they are too big we can daunt ourselves with an unclimbable mountain and give up when we realise how long this is going to take. Try this: paint one little picture. Learn how to play just one piece on the piano. Then, if you enjoyed it, try another, and another, and before you know it, you’re working with your passion!

If you’re a bit of a control freak you might find this challenging because to allow the genius of a Masterpiece to come through you have to surrender. The usual ego-mind that solves your daily problems has to take more of a back-seat when you take creative action so if you’re feeling controlling or unsafe then you can easily sabotage getting started too.

Negativity and lack of self-belief can masquerade as ‘truth’ but don’t buy into it. You might be a budding genius or you might be hopeless at what you’ve chosen. You won’t know until you make a start. And if it’s not for you then try something else. No drama.

Negativity or a flat day can be really deceptive. Sometimes, when i feel good and relaxed, I think of the book I’m reading and get a wave of joy at returning to it, or even just thinking of it, but sometimes when I feel a bit depressed or pessimistic, I think of the same book and it gives me no pleasure wave at all. Has the book changed? No. Only my outlook that day.

Some days just feel flat. It’s not that we don’t feel passionate about our project but sometimes we think of it, on a flat day, and when we don’t feel that spark of excitement we blame our project as if it’s not interesting any more, and it’s only really our lens, on a low day, that makes us feel negative, nothing to do with the project at all. Don’t get suckered!

Start with one achievable thing. Learn one piano piece. Paint one small picture. Set up one meeting with someone you’d like to collaborate with and brainstorm over coffee. Just…one…thing. We don’t create our projects all at once in one giant leap, we chip away at them little by little. We take the next step, then the next and then the next, and it either leads to something we’re happy with, or it doesn’t. There are no guarantees.

And even if you never discover one thing that totally inspires you, you may be a person who is inspired by numerous things for short periods. Is that ok with you? It’s fine with me. You might be turned on by ’passion for life itself in all its magnificent directions’ as Elizabeth Gilbert says in her talk. Not everyone has to find one single thing that sustains their excitement for a whole lifetime.

Lastly I’d like to warn us all about impatience. In Chinese medicine, impatience lives in the Heart. It is the result of our Heart-chi not flowing freely. And guess what the virtue is to unblock that channel….giving, compassion, generosity. It is when we give ourselves to our projects with patience and no expectations that we get fed by them and inspired to carry on. So make a start, without burdening yourself with huge expectations, just do one small thing in the direction of your interest, and allow the little sapling to sprout tiny leaves. If you enjoy what you’re doing, before you know it, there will be fruit.

Come and join us for a weekend and discover what turns you on…INSANELY GIFTED this weekend in London or weekends and days in Bath, Oxford, Devon, Bristol, Chester, Kent, Amsterdam and Nepal…

 

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