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This year, Americans are projected to spend $18.9 billion on Valentine’s Day gifts, which just goes to show you what a powerful force Love is. Because, more than anything else, Love is about presents. Indeed, from the time of cave people, archeologists have found fossils of heart shaped boxes filled with an assortment of the most delectable bits of mammoth meat.
But, seriously, that $18.9 billion figure is a fact. Has Valentine’s Day gone the way of Christmas – a virtuous sentiment that’s turned in a shopping frenzy? I know enough people who already hate Valentine’s Day because they’re single, and they feel like the world is rubbing it in their faces. The last thing they need is this crazy degree of over-the-top spending to fan the flames of their irritation.
Well, I’m here to fight for the true spirit of Valentine’s Day. Or, what I want to be the true spirit of Valentine’s Day – a celebration of Love in all its forms. Not just the edible underwear kind. A celebration of real Love doesn’t leave anyone out and it doesn’t cost a penny. And if it rubs anything in your face, consider yourself lucky.
As I alluded to in my last article, I had an especially introspective period about 15 years ago, during which I tapped into my unconscious and discovered some deep truths and fears. I had the sense that what I was unearthing wasn’t unique to me, but common to all of humankind. Carl Jung called this realm the collective unconscious, and he described it as a facet of our consciousness that is shared by everyone.
What I found here were some very basic fears: the fear of loving, the fear of being loved, and the fear of the loss of love. It all comes down to the last one, doesn’t it? When we think of what humans fear the most, death often comes to mind, but much of what scares us about death is the idea of the loss of love: losing everything we love about the world and our life, losing everyone’s love for us, and for those we love to lose us and our love for them.
It’s all an expression of the sad belief that Love is a capricious and conditional thing, and that humans are sort of in control of it. But this belief and the resulting fear we have around Love, which so squelches our experience and expression of it, results mainly from one central, subconscious confusion – that approval is Love. Approval is a crappy substitute for Love, though.
There’s a distinct difference between wanting and getting approval versus wanting and experiencing Love. See if you can bring to mind someone whose approval you want (maybe even your own), and then let just let yourself feel, in your body, what it’s like to want someone’s approval. It’s an unresolved sort of feeling, like we might not be altogether okay if we don’t get something that only they can give. For me, it’s an unpleasant yearning feeling. A subservient feeling.
When we tune in to this feeling – wanting the world to approve of us – it’s clear that following it isn’t going to serve our highest potential or make us feel truly satisfied. Even if we succeed at getting lots and lots of approval, it doesn’t quench the want of approval.
So, why do you think we’re going to spend $18.9 billion on Valentine’s Day presents? I’d guess that it has a bit more to do with approval than with Love. But, don’t let me stop you from getting flowers for someone special. I like calla lilies, by the way. Preferably a mix of white and colored ones, and maybe a massage as well.
However, just remember that Love cares nothing for flowers – at least not more than it does for anything else. Every one of us has the ability to consciously experience Love at will, to allow Love into all parts of ourselves, to withhold no Love from ourselves or others, and to actively Love every part of life. This makes approval a paltry goal in comparison. And this, my friends, is a devotion that’s worthy of a holiday.
Love the One You’re With,
Dr. Peter Borten
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There’s so much talk in the natural health world about ways to cleanse our bodies, but so little about how to cleanse our minds. I’d suggest that most of us need more of the latter than the former. We recently ran our Rituals for Living program, in which we offered daily recommendations for mind and body wellness, and one of the prescriptions was to forgive someone. A subscriber wrote us to ask, essentially, “But how? How do you forgive someone who did something that feels unforgiveable?” In responding to her, it occurred to me that I’ve had this conversation with dozens of patients over the years, and that perhaps by turning it into an article, more people could benefit from it. So, here it is, the most fundamental step to cleansing the mind: Forgiveness.
1. Recognize that most people are just confused children (or at least we can be when we're emotional). Our bodies have gotten bigger and older looking, but inside we're the same consciousness we've always been, still looking to get our needs met, still wanting everyone's approval, still perhaps wanting to cause hurt when we get hurt, and just trying our best to make things work using the tools we have.
In the process, we often cause pain for others. If you’ve been on the receiving end, it may be worth considering that the perpetrator of the hurt was acting out of confusion: not really understanding that they could get their needs met without hurting someone else, not really understanding the impact of their actions, not really conscious of the love that's always available to them, and not really understanding their connectedness to you. This may not make their actions okay for you, but hopefully it makes forgiveness more of an option.
2. Consider that lifelong punishment may be unreasonable. If it's your intention to withhold forgiveness of someone (possibly yourself) for the rest of your life, maybe this qualifies as "cruel and unusual." It's a uniquely human thing to hold a grudge and never let it go. If a baby lion gets too rough with its mom, it gets a swat and then it's over with. Humans, on the other hand, like to stay mad at each other for a long, long time, and it's unnatural. Have your reaction - really have it - accept it, and be done with it.
3. View forgiveness as something we do for ourselves as much as for the other person. When we withhold forgiveness of others we basically take on the job of administering an ongoing punishment, so we're playing warden in the mental prison we're keeping them in, and it demands energy and mental "bandwidth." Do we really want to give our energy and peace of mind away to the very person we believe wronged us? Does corrupting our peace and restricting our inner freedom make the situation better in any way?
Resentment is an emotional poison in our system. Even if we don’t want to do anything nice for the person we’ve been resenting, for our own sake we need to get that poison out. The nice part is that it will bring us immediate relief. We get to quit that warden job and detox from the poison in the same act.
4. See forgiveness not as a single act, but as an ongoing commitment. Often, it's not possible for us to just pronounce someone forgiven and have that be the end of it. Instead, we might need to make a commitment with ourselves that from now on we’re going to recognize any time we’re harboring resentment toward them and let it go. And every time we notice that we’ve picked it back up, we’re going to let it go again. We’re not going to analyze why we picked it up again, we’re not going to scold ourselves for having picked it up again, and we’re not going to indulge in the resentment again. We’re just going to drop it (forgive them again) as efficiently as possible. And we’ll immediately feel lighter.
5. If you feel so emotional that forgiveness seems impossible, choose anger over despair. As soon as you have enough distance from the situation to wonder, “What do I do with this intense emotion I’m carrying around?” remember that anger can more easily be transformed into action and determination than hurt and sadness can. So, find the part of you that is angry about whatever happened.
This adversarial part of you insists to yourself (and probably others) that someone did something wrong. That something shouldn’t have happened that did happen. And simultaneously, that we, from our current perspective, are right about this. Perhaps you build your case in the shower and while driving.
The thing is, when we’re stuck in being right, we block our movement forward in life. We diminish our own perspective. We keep ourselves from seeing the big picture of what will get us most efficiently to a life of happiness and fulfillment.
You can hang out in this “he/she was wrong to do this” place forever, but if this is about something someone did to you, in a way they’re still sticking it to you as long as you live in this mindset. As long as you continue to sideline your life and happiness for this mental argument, they’re still hurting you. As long as you replay these conversations and events, you reopen your own wound.
The river of life continues to flow, but you're clinging to a rock called "This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen.” The silly part is that you're not really stuck in a fight. The whole one-sided thing is happening in your mind, where it’s only you who continues to get punished. You who pretends that there’s value in carrying on with it, sorting it out, perpetuating a fight that the other party isn’t present for, corrupting your own happiness and potential, corrupting the quality of presence you have with others, and investing energy into something that will never give you back anything.
If the best you can muster is anger and the desire to cause hurt, then the ideal way to stick it to the other person would be to not let him have any more of your soul than you’ve already given; instead, pull back all the energy you're giving them - divesting completely. Forgive completely so that they don't get the tiniest bit of your consciousness anymore. Eventually the need to withdraw your energy will be replaced with a more equanimous neutrality.
Let me know what happens. I love hearing about people’s struggles and triumphs with forgiveness.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => An End of the Year Cleanse
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When my wife was a teenager, her stepmother one day advised her that if she didn’t have anything nice to say to someone, she could instead try saying, thank you. Not long thereafter, my wife directed some teenage angst at her stepmom, who got red in the face and responded, “Thank you!” before exiting the room.
At Thanksgiving, I’m reminded of the many flavors of gratitude and the interesting power of the words thank you. These words come up with kind of an unusual frequency in our household, and it’s not because we don’t have anything nice to say to each other.
A major contributor to the rise of thank yous in our home is the fact that my wife and I have been trying for the past few years to teach them to our four year old daughter. She’s at an age when saying thank you is not yet natural. It’s a behavior to be memorized and executed habitually so that your parents don’t get fussy. On Halloween I had to keep reminding her, “There are just two things you need to remember to say – ‘trick or treat’ and ‘thank you.’”
I catch myself sometimes flashing a sheepish look at generous adults as I prompt her with, “What do you say, Sailor?” Later I might tell her, “I don’t want to have to keep reminding you to say thank you.” But that’s not really the way I want to teach her the specialness of these words. I don’t want her to say thank you out of guilt. I don’t want her to say it just because it’s polite. I don’t want her to learn that a steady stream of thank yous is the way to avoid any disruption to the process of gift unwrapping or trick-or-treating.
I want her to say it because she feels it.
When thank you issues from your heart because you feel gratitude, the last thing on your mind is what effect it might have on the other person. It seems a misuse of these words to hope to get something – even better rapport – in return for saying them. On the other hand, it seems silly to reserve them just for special occasions, unless you recognize that your day is full of them.
Sometimes a more calculated use of thank you can still feel earnest, such as when you encounter difficulties. Maybe it doesn’t arise spontaneously when things don’t go the way you want them to. Perhaps thank you is the last sentiment on your mind when, for instance, you find out you’re going to miss a day of your vacation because of a booking error. Instead, maybe you’re thinking, this sucks.
But, the smooth flow of life proceeds by some fairly binary rules. There’s acceptance and resistance, yes and no. Whether we think, this sucks, or, this isn’t what I wanted, or, this isn’t fair, or simply, no, we resist the reality of things, we generate struggle, friction, and conflict. I’m not saying we shouldn’t allow ourselves to think and feel these things (because, of course, that would be saying no on another level). But, this attitude is the equivalent of paddling against the current. What if we just get back into the flow and utilize the trajectory of life, but gently steer toward a happy outcome?
When, on the other hand, we think, yes, or, I’m game, or, let’s see where this leads me, or, I’m open, or… thank you, something very different happens. Not just in our internal experience; the world actually responds differently to us. If you look an obstacle in the face and say, thank you, you deflate its power to bully you. You state your anticipation of an outcome you’ll be grateful for. This Thanksgiving, why not try saying thank you not just for the good stuff, but for the challenges, too.
Thank you – for everything,
Peter and Briana Borten and everyone at The Dragontree
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This year, Americans are projected to spend $18.9 billion on Valentine’s Day gifts, which just goes to show you what a powerful force Love is. Because, more than anything else, Love is about presents. Indeed, from the time of cave people, archeologists have found fossils of heart shaped boxes filled with an assortment of the most delectable bits of mammoth meat.
But, seriously, that $18.9 billion figure is a fact. Has Valentine’s Day gone the way of Christmas – a virtuous sentiment that’s turned in a shopping frenzy? I know enough people who already hate Valentine’s Day because they’re single, and they feel like the world is rubbing it in their faces. The last thing they need is this crazy degree of over-the-top spending to fan the flames of their irritation.
Well, I’m here to fight for the true spirit of Valentine’s Day. Or, what I want to be the true spirit of Valentine’s Day – a celebration of Love in all its forms. Not just the edible underwear kind. A celebration of real Love doesn’t leave anyone out and it doesn’t cost a penny. And if it rubs anything in your face, consider yourself lucky.
As I alluded to in my last article, I had an especially introspective period about 15 years ago, during which I tapped into my unconscious and discovered some deep truths and fears. I had the sense that what I was unearthing wasn’t unique to me, but common to all of humankind. Carl Jung called this realm the collective unconscious, and he described it as a facet of our consciousness that is shared by everyone.
What I found here were some very basic fears: the fear of loving, the fear of being loved, and the fear of the loss of love. It all comes down to the last one, doesn’t it? When we think of what humans fear the most, death often comes to mind, but much of what scares us about death is the idea of the loss of love: losing everything we love about the world and our life, losing everyone’s love for us, and for those we love to lose us and our love for them.
It’s all an expression of the sad belief that Love is a capricious and conditional thing, and that humans are sort of in control of it. But this belief and the resulting fear we have around Love, which so squelches our experience and expression of it, results mainly from one central, subconscious confusion – that approval is Love. Approval is a crappy substitute for Love, though.
There’s a distinct difference between wanting and getting approval versus wanting and experiencing Love. See if you can bring to mind someone whose approval you want (maybe even your own), and then let just let yourself feel, in your body, what it’s like to want someone’s approval. It’s an unresolved sort of feeling, like we might not be altogether okay if we don’t get something that only they can give. For me, it’s an unpleasant yearning feeling. A subservient feeling.
When we tune in to this feeling – wanting the world to approve of us – it’s clear that following it isn’t going to serve our highest potential or make us feel truly satisfied. Even if we succeed at getting lots and lots of approval, it doesn’t quench the want of approval.
So, why do you think we’re going to spend $18.9 billion on Valentine’s Day presents? I’d guess that it has a bit more to do with approval than with Love. But, don’t let me stop you from getting flowers for someone special. I like calla lilies, by the way. Preferably a mix of white and colored ones, and maybe a massage as well.
However, just remember that Love cares nothing for flowers – at least not more than it does for anything else. Every one of us has the ability to consciously experience Love at will, to allow Love into all parts of ourselves, to withhold no Love from ourselves or others, and to actively Love every part of life. This makes approval a paltry goal in comparison. And this, my friends, is a devotion that’s worthy of a holiday.
Love the One You’re With,
Dr. Peter Borten
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awesomeness…that person was me….Marianne…I am free..
this is a beautiful reminder…i would like to have a bracelet or even a stone with this mantra; are they available
Thanks, Ludy. I don’t know where this picture came from, but we do not sell anything with this phrase on it. I would maybe look on Etsy.