Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,
A time to feel calm and think clearly.
I'm Claire Downham,
The Queen of Calm,
A Transformational Life Coach.
I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying,
And I want to prevent you from having to do the same.
The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state,
Which is calm and clarity.
Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity.
There's nothing else to do.
Now let's relax into today's episode.
So today is an exploration into the truth,
As all my sessions are,
But this is about feelings and how we have been guided to see by innocent people who are trying to help that feelings are something to be controlled and that it seems that we could get to a place where we don't experience any of the,
Well,
Any of certain feelings,
Of course,
Because we want,
Don't we,
We desire to experience more happiness and joy and calm.
That's a direction in which we are seeking,
But it really is the seeking,
Ironically,
That is taking us away from connecting to the truth about who we really are.
So the model,
Well,
Not the model,
The truth about human beings is that they are born whole and well and perfect,
Full of calm and confidence and resilience and peace and calm.
And I know as I'm saying those words,
Those are the things that we think we have to seek outside of us.
Those are the things we're looking for,
Aren't we?
And in that seeking,
What we're trying to do is not experience the opposite.
We don't want to feel,
I'm not sure what the opposite of resilience is,
But anyway,
We don't want to feel not confident.
We don't want to feel stressed.
We don't want to feel anxious or worried or upset about things.
So we go looking outside of us to find a solution to that.
And I spent a long time looking for the way to solve my feelings,
To have less of the ones that I didn't like.
And that brought into my world a lot of noise,
A lot of extra thinking about the thing that I didn't like.
And I don't know if you've noticed what happens when you think a lot about something that you don't want.
You see more of it.
You see more of it.
It narrows down what you can see in the world and you tend to see more of those things that you don't want.
It's just how it works.
So if we even start to look inside to who we really are and we start with this idea that we're born perfect,
Whole and well,
And then we learn to think.
And then once we've learned to think some things that we don't like that are creating unpleasant feelings that we don't like,
Then we go outside another layer.
So if you can imagine there's this perfect,
Perfect ball of light that let's say that we are born as.
And then there's,
As we go through life,
We learn to think some things about ourselves.
We start to experience feelings that we don't like.
And that's a layer over the top of this shining light.
It's a big black,
Horrible cloud.
But that cloud is made of thought.
It's not a solid thing.
It's light.
It's not solid.
It's not that this light has been somehow broken or smashed or damaged in some way.
The light's always there.
The light is always in here.
Never ever goes away.
And then there's the layer of thinking,
But this is just gas.
It's not solid.
It's thought.
It can change in a second.
It only takes a moment.
But then on top of that,
And I don't have a third hand,
I'll use my head.
And the way I'm demonstrating this,
We then put another layer over the top of that by going and looking outside of us for the answer,
By seeking outside of us the thing that we think we want.
That what we want is to stop those unpleasant feelings,
Isn't it?
But the unpleasant feelings are created through thought.
And then if we're thinking we need to do something,
Tools,
Techniques,
Strategies,
Poking around in the past,
Dealing with trauma or working through our issues or whatever it is,
That's more thinking.
So now you've got this perfect light covered by two,
At least two layers.
Let's face it,
There's a lot more than two layers going on there.
That perfect,
Perfect being is then shrouded by layer upon layer,
More layers of thinking.
Anything that puts more thought into you,
Into your awareness,
Into your consciousness is going to take you further away from connecting to that light that you are.
The weather's a beautiful analogy to this.
Clouds have the capacity to come in and out like clouds.
And really when we try to manipulate the weather,
We just make a mess.
As we would if in real life we tried to manipulate the weather with a big probe or a satellite or something like that,
We would make a mess,
Even more of a mess than we've already made of the world and our environment.
So it doesn't make sense to do that,
Does it?
It doesn't make sense to mess about with the weather,
But we think we've to mess about with our own weather all the time.
And what that does is take us further and further away.
Now what happens at first if we stop seeking to stop feeling,
If we stop looking in the direction of the idea that we can stop feeling is initially we might feel some feelings we've not felt for a while,
But the thing to know about feelings is they're a truth about being human.
And if you don't see that it is human to feel every kind of feeling,
I don't care what they are,
They're worth your experience in them and you're a human,
Then that must be normal.
It must be part of being human.
It must be,
Otherwise you wouldn't be doing it as a human being.
I wouldn't be feeling those feelings as a human being.
The thing is if we're always trying to stop those feelings,
We've just got more thought,
More busyness,
More overwhelm and less connection to the calm and the clarity and all those things that are always inside us.
It's the busy mindedness.
It's thought that's taking us away from calm.
Less thought equates to calm.
It's a really simple equation.
But if we're trying to manage our feelings,
If we're trying to stop feeling certain feelings,
Let's say we said we never ever wanted to feel anger again or sadness or fear or anxiety or worry and we never wanted to feel that again,
That would be us telling ourselves a lie and then trying to live a lie.
And what's coming to mind is that if you've ever had to tell a lie,
Like even a white lie,
Like I've planned surprise parties before now or surprise holidays and things like that,
It feels uncomfortable,
Doesn't it?
Like it feels off because all the time you know,
Even though it's a white lie and it's for something nice,
It doesn't feel nice kind of telling that lie over and over again.
I surprised my fiance by getting him a laptop for his 50th birthday,
Which was a few weeks ago.
And I got everybody in my family to contribute a bit towards this laptop so that it was a gift from everybody rather than getting lots of bits of stuff he didn't want.
And every time he kind of mentioned,
Oh,
My laptop's really slow and I wish I had a new one and now it was just,
I felt this feeling because I had this thinking about the fact I was lying to him.
Now,
If you're living the lie that you can stop yourself feeling,
You're going to feel that because you're butting up against fact.
And any time we butt up against the truth and fact,
We feel discomfort.
And I'm not saying stop all the things you do to help yourself right now.
It's just an invitation to start looking in a different direction to see that actually that which you are seeking is inside you and always has been.
And with less thought,
You are more likely to connect to that.
Thank you so much for listening.
There's nothing to do now,
But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.
Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.
This has been the Calmcast with Clare Downham,
Queen of Calm.
Take care and keep listening.
