Skanky soul gift for Christmas

December 4, 2014  |  ibrainmapadmin

Lately I’ve been cranky, irritable, yes activated.

It doesn’t matter what triggered the activation. What matters is that I got stuck in it. I didn’t see it coming and I couldn’t see that I was caught in a spin cycle of activation. I was lost inside myself like a ship lost in rough seas without compass or rudder, rocking wildly and aimlessly for days.

It always astounds me how we can become lost in activation. How we can fail to recognize it. But activation is a shape shifter. And Christmas is a great time for activation. It’s loaded with triggers. Christmas can be like an emotional schoolies, dangerous for your psychological health, but it can be fun if you take a few precautions.

When I’m activated my psyche, my soul, is a real skank. Skanky soul. She’s a first cousin to the inner bitchy chick for those who met her a few weeks ago. Mind and emotions talk like “trailer trash,” snarling and spitting like a wild thing. Talk dirty. It’s embarrassing. It’s great for my writing though, brings a strong sassy voice into play who says what she thinks and gives as good as she gets, whips up a storm around her, action packed.

But back in my soul things are not so good. This skanky activation leaves my soul tattered and a bit rank, a bit like the smell of the front bar of a country pub on Saturday morning before the cleaner has been. So after recognizing it as activation and doing some or all of the things I suggest in my book, i-brainmap, freeing your brain for happiness to move through activation, I need to cleanse my inner being.

One approach to bathing the soul and getting rid of bad smells in the psyche is a Metta (loving kindness) Intensive.

If your soul gets skanky over Christmas for any reason and you need to wash off the trashy feeling, here is my recipe for a Metta Intensive. Of course the original recipe was the Buddha’s and I have only changed it a little bit.

Doing a Metta Intensive is like resetting the brain’s compass if it gets stuck in the trailer park or the back alley, the Bronx. How Americanized is my psyche! Anyway if you are stuck on some nasty thinking or your soul feels a bit stinky and needs a good wash, try this recipe.

Metta Intensive recipe

= Start with remembering the beautiful in you. Allow your attention to rest on the loveliness that is inside you. It is the radiant quality that’s in you since birth.

If it seems to be on a distant horizon and you have to climb three mountain ranges and fight dragons and demons to get there you could try this instead: Reflect on some moments in your life when you were kind, when you did something good or that you’re proud of, in a personal way rather than worldly achievements.

If you still can’t come up with anything, allow you attention to rest on your longing to be happy, your desire to be free or at peace.

Add a gentle smile, because you want this to be a body practice too. As you know if you want to change the brain you have to include the body.

If you need extra help, you could try placing a hand on your heart and then your other hand on top and stroke your skin gently, this can release Oxytocin and tell your brain everything is beautiful in its own way, even you, and feel the love.

= Next, find some words for the intention you want to set to give your brain an orientation, like setting the coordinates of your ship of foolishness, which is carrying that skanky soul, so it knows which direction to head (the ship not the skank).

These are the ones I use for starters:

May I be happy and free from suffering

May I live in peace and safety

May I know the spaciousness of love, (metta – loving kindness)

Create some statements that fit with the qualities you want to cultivate that feel genuine for you at the moment.

If your soul is really battered and burnt then you might spend a few weeks on this meditation, sending metta to yourself. Yes, a few weeks, months or years.

Metta is like the flow of clear water. It begins in your heart and only when your own heart has filled or is filling can if flow to others. So, take as long as you need to fill yourself and drink a deep draught of loving kindness for yourself. It is a gift, allow yourself to receive it.

If you really have trouble saying those things to yourself you can imagine some loving friends or family saying them to you, with you receiving the words as they hold and reflect your loveliness, like witnesses to your radiance.

For example you could imagine a circle of dear friends sitting around you saying to you, may you be happy and free from suffering…… Let it in, allow your heart to open to receive the gift of loving kindness, drench yourself in it, swim in it until you laugh like a three year old dancing in the rain.

= Now if you’re up for it, when your own beautiful has been remembered and you feel your radiant heart pulsing with love, you can send metta out into the world.

Begin by sending it to those you love and respect, friends and family, or mentors and teachers.

Don’t confuse romantic or erotic love with it. Metta has no attachment it is a spacious love that’s freely given. Loving kindness asks nothing.

Next send it to people that you feel neutral towards, perhaps the bus driver or the young person at the check out. Experiment.

Then begin to send it to more difficult people. Don’t start with the most difficult person in your life.

Let the metta radiate out from you. If your skanky souls stomps back in, in her Ugg-boots, and starts in with her trashy mouth, just go back to the beginning and find the loveliness in yourself, the beautiful in you, dive into it, and drink its sweetness. Take your time.

Then when you feel refreshed come back to holding the more difficult people in your life and sending them loving kindness.

If that skanky soul starts screaming at you demanding to know, “why should I forgive them, love them, they cause me nothin but trouble, don’t deserve no lovin’?” with a few expletives thrown in, remember this isn’t about the other person.

Metta is like giving the soul, mind, body, emotions a good cleanse. You’re not doing it for them. You’re doing it to feel free and happy. Because to hold onto hatred or revenge, anger or fear, meanness, is like contorting your own innards to hold that skank inside you. It can never bring you happiness but enslaves you to dark emotions and unhappiness, or whatever is festering in that skanky soul.

If you do metta with expectations that it will change the other person, its not loving kindness that you’re doing. Loving kindness isn’t about changing another person. It’s not even really about changing yourself. It’s like stepping back into the flow of life with a mind and soul large enough to allow everything to flow through you, so you can keep moving with a gentle smile inside and out, because loving kindness lets it all through without judging or holding on, but with a gentle acceptance.

Practicing metta doesn’t mean putting up with abuse or unacceptable behavior. It’s finding a steadfast place in yourself, like a secret and lovely garden where you can rest. And from this place you act and speak, including standing up for yourself or walking away from what is unacceptable. But turning your back or speaking your truth, are not acts of hatred or revenge, but acts of love.

So there is my recipe for a Metta Intensive in case you get stuck in some old business over the festive season and need a good soul bath to bring back your loveliness.

Damn it takes some practice though, and that skanky soul bitch isn’t one bit happy about it.

May you be happy and free from suffering and may your Christmas be filled with the radiance of the heart.