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Dear Reader,
In this article I want to discuss a topic that on its basis is simple but also difficult to understand and assimilate (or at least I found it hard enough). Since childhood we get used to the idea that there is always a person who knows something more and we are the students who will learn from him. Indeed, someone is toilet train us, teaches us how to write and read, how to play a sport or a musical instrument or how to speak a foreign language. A teacher essentially transfers knowledge (a bunch of organised information) about a particular subject to someone else, in the same way that he himself learned that knowledge from someone else. This knowledge can lead to the acquisition of a skill or not. How many of us have tried as children to learn something new and for whatever reason we did not continue it enough to take this knowledge and perhaps develop that particular skill? But what happens when the field of knowledge is life itself, how we manage ourselves, situations, others, etc. ? Who is our teacher then and on what knowledge we will base our life skills to live the life that we want? The first teachers in our lives are our parents and the immediate environment in which we are being raised. We copy their behaviours, we learn from them what is considered to be good or bad, what is permitted and what is not, what is beneficial and what is harmful, how much to trust ourselves and how much others, what we can do and what we can not etc. So we consciously and unconsciously create a first internal handbook on how we can live our lives. Certainly, a great role is played by the temperament, the qualities of the individual for what exactly manual he will create; twins growing up in the same environment they will have different reactions to it and will write different chapters about it. This manual contains information (opinions, ways, etc.) that we may agree on or not agree with but we likely use in our everyday life without realising it, like the grammar rules in our language that we do not think about but we apply them daily. As we grow older and getting to know ourselves through our experiences, we begin to realise what is in our handbook and if we no longer agree with what it says we start to erase and write something else, a new information in its place. This can be done consciously or unconsciously and from that moment onward we can see that by rewriting our book we create and awaken the teacher within us. This is the inner voice, the competent authority within us that in conjunction with our soul (deeper existence) it draws from our experiences the lessons that are personally useful for us and our lives. For example, if we have learned from our various experiences that 'it is not good to fully trust people because they will betray you', then in our relationships we will always keep a part of us out of the relationship for fear of trusting the other completely and letting go. In fact, every relationship, everything with which connect reflects our relationship with different parts of ourselves (which is not static). With whatever colours, shapes and scents we depict the external world, we use the same for some parts of the internal. It Is a profound relief (for me it was at least) to realise that every action involves simultaneously a reaction. When someone listens to or helps someone does not just do it for the sake of the other-that may be the original motive-and also for his own benefit. Similarly, when one seems to 'take only' from others then he tries to fill in some empty space and at the same time he gives the opportunity to the other who mainly gives to find out for himself how much he gives, if he appreciates them and if he also wants to himself to take respectively. Continuing these thoughts, we discover that a teacher in the sense of the person who shows us something new, can be anyone and anything around us precisely because it shows us another side of the world, another side of ourselves. We may not like this parts of us, we may not be accustomed to, we may feel uncomfortable about them and they may be conflicting with what is already written in our manual, but yet they are as true as any other part that we know of ourselves.. With all the new methods of self-exploration, personal development, self-search, healing etc I feel that we often forget that the main 'critic', teacher, priest, companion and supporter who filters his experiences for his benefit lives deep within us, can take any form and is capable of anything. With Love, Panos
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Dear Reader,
I wanted to write this article a long ago and relates to my observations and experiences living in the greek reality. It certainly contains my own perceptions and feelings based on my own experiences and my innate interest in 'why' people do the things they do. Growing up in Greece I was always finding it difficult to understand how in such a country with rich natural beauty and resources can live people who often grumble, are not happy, do harm to themselves with smoking, drinking etc and often show lack of respect for their neighbour and their environment. This reality was the only thing I knew of and I always had objections with and only when I experienced another reality, that of England I saw that things could be different. To clarify that by the term 'reality' I mean the creation, structure, organisation and operation of a society and its prevalent mentality. Every constructed reality, a society consisting of some people who gathered to compose a whole base of certain rules, has its qualities, strengths and lessons to improve. England has its own and Greece has others, just like two children in one class, in a school we call Earth. In England I learned that people can advance professionally based on their value, knowledge and skills rather than on who they know, I learned that people from all over the world with any differences such as religion, skin colour, sexuality etc. can coexist peacefully and respect one another, I learned that there can be dialogue between people and that the truth never belongs to one but there are many truths, I learned that the assumption of 'I can't' hides in it either the 'I don't want to' or the 'I don't know how' and I've learned that if you don't try, you'll never know the outcome. Certainly the list of the things I learned is much bigger and consists of soft and hard lessons. Returning to Greece I knew I was leaving behind this reality and some of those rules that I would so miss because they put my life in order. Also, I knew that all these lessons would go through tests on whether or not they were assimilated, sort of like a a surprise test in the classroom I mentioned above. So I had to confront and manage a self in an internal Greece, as I remembered Greece to be and one self as I am now in an external Greece that exists now. I am interested in focusing on the micro-cosmic space of man and not on discussing complex social phenomena. It is with great interest that I often try to decode or give an adequate answer to the question on how the modern greek man chooses to live like this and manage his country in this way. Clearly the reasons are many but I ended up with one that I think is among the main and it is that of trust. If we think for a moment on the dynamic of a (forgive me but I refer to the norm, not the mediocre) Greek family then we find that a child does not learn to trust himself, his neighbour, the society. Since one's parents provide everything, and on the other hand, society is manipulated for the benefit of the child, then the child learns to create external egocentric bases wherever he can. Behaviours such as parking on disabled ramps, driving without a helmet, appointing and priority of acquaintances, overriding waiting queues, tax evasion, etc. indicate that the person has not learned to stand within his own boundaries, in his responsibility towards himself and towards the other, to respect the concept of law and society. In a society where its citizens do not follow the laws made to survive and live together that have been created by those who they have elected, it is a society of teenagers who does not know where to go and what it wants, it is blindly angry with the other as a cause of its misery, does not see a bigger picture and is ultimately not stable in its development. As long as the mirror remains covered and becoming an adult is a work only for others, then we will continue to live in a jungle where one will throw their banana peels to the other and wait for someone else to pick them up. With Love, Panos Dear reader,
This text arises again from observations and experiences of recent days but does not focus on a particular subject other than that of life. It's probably those moments when thoughts just want to come out, like when we try to put some books in a library based on their subjects. Observing the various unpleasant recent events with significant losses of lives, it is evident- in the eyes of some at least-that we live the end of an era and the beginning of another. Apart from our relationship with matter, there seems to be a call for change of how we relate with ourselves, others and the environment we live in. Information is increasingly disclosed which logically shakes our faith in institutions, certain individuals, organisations, governments, corporations, both nationally or internationally. I have previously discussed how man during the evolution of his spirit arrived to consider himself an overlord of the Earth, plundering her resources and putting all the living matter in his service. From evolutionary beings we have come to become a synonym of God on earth deciding what will happen to us, others and the environment. Thus, we give more right to some people than others, we eat what we want because we can, we kill or restrict what does not agree with us, we do not pay attention to anything that does not affect us directly, we create and destroy at will. I have no intention to draw a total ' black image ' of the present world, on the contrary, to discuss what I see as reality which might not easily get discussed, in a similar way that depression or a difficult experience in a family remains 'unseen' because it is very difficult to manage and process for the family. As overlords, then, people lost control and ended up looking for solutions to problems that we constantly create ourselves and the way we have chosen to live by. Clearly everyone is free to choose the way that he and his team want to live, but what happens when this way ends up hurting and destroying the lives of others (people, animals, etc.)? War would be one of the answers: fighting against each other for their right to free choice and free life. In a way this is the history of man who, through a constant friction, fought another for his predominance and when one prevailed his 'law', 'right and 'truth' became the 'law', the 'right', the 'true' of all. The law of the jungle in all its glory. I do not want to speak in terms of morality here because it is a concept often abused by man and used in his terms and, therefore, it has largely lost the wholeness of its meaning. I find the words 'faith' and 'value' a little more useful here. We believed in the value of money, over goods, We believed in the value of lying with benefits over truth, We believed in the value of the ephemeral versus the sustainable, We believed in the value of happiness versus the totality of emotions, We believed in the value of external life versus the internal, We believed in the value of people with qualities over humanity, We believed in the value of affirmation versus exploration, We believed in the value of the manufactured versus the natural, We believed in the value of perfection versus learning from errors and forgiveness, We believed in the value of loneliness versus connection, We believed in the value of matter versus spirit, We believed in the value of futility versus awe and gratitude. And yet nothing of what we believed to be of value is in itself evil or has bad consequences. The overvaluation of one versus the other is what brings an imbalance and calls for another collective lesson. Our spiritual essence, our multidimensional and (seemingly) contradictory existence, our deep need for completeness and creation, equality and respect for all, the self-worth of everything, the love, the awe and sacredness of all life forms do not exist due to the human law but are of the natural/divine law. They exist within each one of us independently, if we consciously believe them or not and no one but ourselves can take them away or define them for us. We manifest them in our lives in earth when we believe them. We always have the free choice and its consequences... With Love, Panos P.S. Forgive me if I have included you against your will with the use of 'we' versus 'man', but I wanted to make the text more intimate. Dear reader,
Today's article stems from my observation and personal experiences, of course, in recent times and it concerns the concept of synchronisation. We have all experienced times when something is changing, some of the relationships we feel are not being useful, things that connects us to our dear ones are not there anymore, somehow as if we did not feel as fulfilled with some relationships as before. The truth is that everything around us as well as ourselves are in a constant change whether we realise it or not. Our body, the weather, a distance travelled, a job, a relationship nothing is the same every day and every moment. Whatever castles and constructions we build to maintain a sense of security and stability quickly or slowly we realise that the sense is relative and temporary, especially in regard to ourselves, as our experiences to a lesser or greater extent affect and shape us. A change may occur intentionally or unintentionally, i.e. we have deliberately chosen it or might come from someone else or from the outside environment, such as a dismissal. In both cases, there is a question of processing the change, the emotions that are created and the options we have to respond to it. Every change entails a small death, a loss, something ends and something begins in a very close time in the perpetual cycle of life. Anything that exists around and within us emits a certain frequency, a wave, a vibration. There has long been a great deal of interest in scientific research such as the work of D. Hawkins to measure the vibration of objects and human beings. Specifically, he studied the vibrations of emotions in people by creating a spectrum of levels of consciousness (there are many such models that describe the spectrum of the consciousness like the one of K. Wilber) from shame and guilt as the lowest frequencies to love, joy, calmness and enlightenment with the highest frequencies (https://veritaspub.com/product/map-of-consciousness-dr-david-hawkins/). Think only of how we are when we feel fear and how when we feel acceptance. In the former the space around us closes down, we confine ourselves, we turn within, our breath becomes shorter and shallow while in the latter we have more space to move, spread, breathe deeper and for more time. So our sense of self and at the same time what we can do changes. I do not comment here on the feelings as inferior as superior but different as to their frequency as waves. Let us now imagine the same phenomenon happening between people, that is, a person experiencing long periods of fear, guilt and apathy and may not recognise and accept them and they come into contact with someone who is more often in courage, neutrality and joy. It is plausible that these two people at first sight either they were classmates at school, or colleagues for years, or lovers they are not compatible as they will experience different emotional states, so the space and the possibilities around them will not be the same. There is of course also the possibility to listen to each other and to be interested in different emotional states,where they come from and thus maintain their connection while changing for the benefit of both sides. He who feels anger can allow himself to express it and, thus, resolve it and the other who seeks only the joy to let himself feel also other feelings, not so 'pleasant' which are part of his human nature. Emotions are energy in motion so I think that all people experience all the emotions and either they express them (whatever the cost of vulnerability is etc) and they transform them, or they hold them inside and store them (often these stored feelings create the environment internally for disease development). In either our relationship to ourselves, or in our relationships with others, we are not completely honest about what we feel, what happens to us, how we think about the relationship, what we need, etc. then we hide from us, the other and the relationship part of our feelings so a part of ourselves. If it is done continuously then we actually end up showing (perhaps even experiencing) someone else and not our real self or the other. That is why many relationships end abruptly or badly because the gap in information between the two parties is huge and they have not shown both who they are, what they feel and what they want. Of course this needs trust and love for the other and the relationship and it is a threatening process when someone has not learned to do it. For me there is no right and wrong in relationships, because that calls for a 'judge', a perpetrator and a victim and I do not know for sure their criteria, but there is a desire or not to learn with that person or someone else. With Love, Panos |
Panos GoumalatsosCounsellor/Psychotherapist, Archives
March 2023
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