Last time I shared that I learnt that the spiritual one is the last of four stages of self-growth. This is where you arrive when you have engaged in the physical, mental and emotional ones first. And even though I don’t think you can only engage with spirituality when you have arrived at that point – one can be in touch with spirituality at any point in their life – it still makes sense to explore the ones before that as well. So let’s talk about what I learnt about emotions…
How you go through life – this includes your childhood and relationship with your parents, your friends, your time in school, relationships with other people, travel and work – determines how you respond to certain situations. It depends what someone went through (physically, mentally, spiritually, and especially emotionally) that determines how they react to situations. This is why some people have more anxiety than others for example. I listened to Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-canadian physician and author. Someone who I consider very wise and warm, someone with a good heart. He explained a few things that I think are worth sharing!
About diseases and suffering
First thing that impressed me was when he said: “People that develop chronic diseases are the ones that have suppressed their own true selves for the sake of being accepted by others”. I know that diseases always carry spiritual messages for us and are indicators that we live against our purpose and destiny. Something else he said is that no kid is born with the desire to suppress themselves or trying to please others. If they do, it’s because they had to learn it for others to accept them. Usually by their parents.
About a person’s value
I feel like I hear discussions about one’s value everywhere. Constantly being in a sate of trying to raise my value and feeling the need to justify it at the same time. So, when he said the following, it really got to me. He said that most people are working so much in order to feel needed by other people. Because we have a natural craving of acceptance by others, we need to feel valued by others in order to be happy. “If in your childhood you were given the feeling that you were valued just by your existence, then you don’t have to keep proving yourself afterwards. But if you don’t have that sense then you have to feel important. So, the sense of needing to be important stems from the lack of it during childhood”.
Personally, I think (and I’m spending so much time trying to figure this out) that advancing in the emotional state means living a life that is true to yourself in order to be free from other people’s expectations. “Your value is intrinsic, it shouldn’t come from how smart you are, how hard you work, how cute or cuddly or handsome or funny you are”, is something else he said, that calmed my soul a little (paraphrased).
About the danger of not living a life true to yourself
“If I need to impress someone else, I live in their mind, instead of in myself” is something else that he said that stuck with me. I know for a fact that most of society does this, as do I. It’s a biological need of us to feel accepted by others. Which is why we sometimes go out of our way to prove that we are worthy of their approval. Yet, I think it is an important part of being in touch with one’s soul to live a life that suits us. Why else would we have an intuition that tells us what we should and shouldn’t do. Still, we choose to ignore it sometimes in order to fit in. I’ll close this chapter with another quote of his, okay? “Today’s society is addicted to impressing others. We are dependent on it, but so we are robbing ourselves.”
About suppressing our emotions
Expressing our emotions is inevitable to our well-being and necessary for our health. But not many people actually do it or even know how to do it, because in childhood their parents told them not to. To this Gabor Maté said that, in fact, ‘no infant lacks the ability to express their emotions. So when they do, it’s because they learnt it’. He emphasized that play is what makes us happy, during childhood and later on as well. The secret for being happy, is figuring how we can integrate play into our daily lives. “People sacrifice their playfulness and their joy in order to be accepted”.
About regret
The main topic of this very interesting interview that they did (that I recommend you watch) was the five main regrets of the dying, which I partly wrote about above. To finish this eventually I have one last thing that Maté said that left an impression on me. ‘Regret is a lack of self-forgiveness’. In my opinion, to be able to grow in life is making peace with your past and accepting yourself the way you are. And maybe you can use this text (and the video of course, the name is: “We learn it too late” – 5 Regrets Trapping people from a life of Purpose & Meaning) as a tool to slowly, but surely move in that direction.
Love, Valentina <3
