There exists out there a fairly well-known though thoroughly misunderstood religion…

…one that has been around for centuries, despite the best efforts from other parties to put it down.  In recent years, Ásatrú (or Odinism as it is sometimes referred to) is in the midst of a great reawakening, as scholars and other interested folk unravel and redefine ancient texts and folklore.  The native religion of the ancient Teutonic peoples, it has now spread in modern Western society.  No matter your thoughts on this or any other religion or tradition, Ásatrú still has one major element which rings true for us all today, in terms of how we choose to live our lives and interact with others.  The motto of Ásatrú, if you will, is this:

Hearts in the past, Minds on the present, Eyes on the future.

They are saying, in essence: yes, respect your traditional and ancestral history, build your frameworks on it, and yes, plan for the future, keep your eye on the goal.  These are so important.  But never forget to keep your mind on the present.  In ancient Nordic times this meant keeping your focus firmly on the job at hand, starting with your family, then expanding to your village, and then to your clan.  Relationships, you see, played such a large role in these environments that an entire movement was born around those ideals.

“Nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.”

You may have heard of a pseudo-disorder that has become prevalent in our post-modern society, one that is so much on the rise that people are even being treated psychologically for it: FOMO, or the Fear Of Missing Out.  We have become so connected to the virtual world, via computers and smart phones, Facebook and Whatsapp and Twitter and countless other mechanisms and mediums, that we now know more about the ‘friends’ that we’ve never met, more about celebrities that we’ll never know, than we do about our neighbours.  Just the other day, I heard about a little girl that spoke to a friend via Video Skype; her friend lived only a number of doors away.  We get so carried away with checking to see what everyone is up to that we forget the people right next to us.  We’ve all seen this one: a couple at a restaurant not talking, not sharing the moment of Tolle’s Now, simply staring into their own phones as they exercise their fear of missing out.

We are, in fact, so connected to the world around us that we miss out on those closest to us.  We become, in short, disconnected.  And what is the ultimate end-point of this disconnectedness, the attention we do not pay to our relationships while we spend our time on virtual relationships, no longer really talking, or really listening, or really paying attention to the moment we’re in?  The more we do not engage, the more discontent we become; the more discontent, the more bored we are. A passive scrolling through life is showing it effects: one would think we could spend time mentally entertaining ourselves, but we can’t.  We’ve forgotten how.  What an injustice we serve ourselves daily, allowing ourselves to be scattered all over, missing out on those precious Now moments as we bow our heads and round our shoulders, paying homage  and worship to the little screens of Instant Satisfaction.

Maybe our good Mr. Tolle can sum it up for us, once more:

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”

Love,
Marléne

Therapists and other folk that deal with the mind on a daily basis will tell us that the subconscious doesn’t understand negation.

Now, the subconscious is, as you are no doubt aware, incredibly powerful.  Not only does it control all of our involuntary functions, it is also the storehouse of every experience, emotion, thought and memory, from the time we became conscious till now.  This store of information and experience is what we base our conclusions on, our belief structures, our very world view: what is called our frame of reference.  And, they will tell us, it is not much more than an intelligent 9-year old.  This is because the subconscious takes information very literally.  If it accepts an instruction, then the instruction is acted upon, as simple as that.  What it doesn’t do, as I mentioned, is negation. ‘No’ is not a word the subconscious likes, neither is ‘don’t’.  Tell the average 5-year old not to run across the road, and all they hear is ‘run across the road’.  This is because a child, at that age, is still operating very much in tune with their subconscious: they don’t understand, nor process, negation.  As we grow older and certain regulatory processes start firing in our brains, we start processing this information on a conscious level and so we begin to understand the concept of ‘no’.  But our subconscious mind never will.

What we think and what we say as just as important when speaking to ourselves as it is when speaking to others.  Although our mother’s told us that if we have nothing good to say we should say nothing at all, if you’re not enjoying the life you want then you’re staying silent with yourself, and not giving yourself clear directions.
Your life is a mirror of what’s on your subconscious, and if you’re not living the life you want, if you’re struggling or not getting what you want, then you may need to be cleaning out that subconscious.  You need to be filling your subconscious with positive messages and giving it the clear instructions it needs.  Sir Roger Bannister, when asked how it felt to be the first to run a four-minute mile, answered: “It isn’t the first time.  I’ve done it a thousand times in my head.”

Most people make the process of achieving a goal far too complicated and this is why most will give up before actually achieving that goal.  By keeping things simple and using the power of simplicity, goals become easier to achieve.  The key is, actually, simple: break it down into smaller chunks and, with each small success, celebrate that success.  Get used to the feeling of celebrating a success; when things are simple enough to succeed, you will actually get things done.

It is up to you to put the steps into place and get the life you truly want, once and for all.  It may involve change for you, but this is a the kind of change that is positive, bringing your best self out.

Keep it simple.  Make small successes.  Celebrate the successes.  And grow.

Love,
Marléne

“No, not really…I’ve just been feeling, I don’t know, overwhelmed I think,” Maggie said, mentally shrugging off the thought as if it were a nothing thing.

“Overwhelmed how?” Sally asked.  “I mean, I know what overwhelmed is, but what is it to you?”

Maggie stared down into her tea, marshalling her thoughts, not liking being put on any kind of spot.

“I’m unsettled, and I don’t know why. It isn’t as if things are not going well. I have the same issues, I suppose, as pretty much everyone else so I ought not to complain, and don’t think that I am! But…happenings and events and things are just moving in amongst each other and all overlapping and I don’t know what else, and I constantly feel as if I am being thrown off track and I struggle to get back sometimes!”

“That’s quite an outburst,” Sally smiled. “You have a half-ton of natural abilities, you know that; why are you allowing all this self-doubt to creep in on you?”

“You think it sounds like self-doubt?”

Sally threw her hands up: “I don’t know what’s going on inside your own head, but it’s starting to sound familiar.”

“Right, Miss I’ve-got-it-all-under-control, what would you know about it?” Maggie teased.

“Look sweetie, it’s like this: yes, I know exactly what it feels like, what it’s all about, to feel out of touch with things. It seems as if everything is just on top of you and you can’t breathe…the more this happens, and the more I let it happen, the more that I start to doubt myself and my abilities. I know I can do it; I just feel…tired, I suppose, fatigued, if you know what I mean? Almost a mental tiredness, like I am out of control and…without sounding tooooo metaphysical, like I have somehow given my own power away to someone or something, or some circumstance…you know? I guess the end result is that we start doubting out abilities to cope, to make sense of things…”
“I do know…what do you do about it?” Maggie asked between rusk-crunching, wiping the fallen crumbs off the table and into her lap.

“I guess it depends,” Sally replied, “on how far down the hole you’ve fallen. Without sounding glib, keep it simple for now. The climb back up may take a little while so cut yourself a little slack and get back to some basics.”

“Like get more sleep and drink less coffee?” Maggie smiled.

“Come on, take this seriously,” Sally said. “For example, if you use an electronic diary, why not switch to a paper one? We spend too much time on our phones in any case, and I find that the mere act of writing down my tasks for the day has an almost cathartic effect. It slows me down, hon, it slows me down. It makes me focus on the proper tasks, and not the rubbish, the stuff that crowds out all of the important things.”

“So slowing down is your solution? Sounds easier said than done”

“No! No, it isn’t. Look around you,” she exclaimed, arms flailing. “Microwaves mean meals are cooked quicker. Computers mean that work is done quicker. You know, when computers became mainstream everyone thought that they’d have more time now. Work can be done quicker, so shouldn’t that mean more time throwing a ball in the garden or reading a book? No! People know you can work faster so they demand a quicker turnaround time and before you know it, all you’ve done with the extra time is to cram more work into it! No! If you’re a fast-food person, then stay away from drive-thru’s.  Stop the car, get out, go inside to order, sit down. Don’t eat in your car. You think the world can spare the extra thirty minutes it takes you to do that? Yes, I promise you, it can. What energy can it take to create a small vegetable garden and tend it daily? When you stand in a queue somewhere, what do you do? Hop onto Facebook, see who’s on Whatsapp. Queues are inevitable; thinking is not. Try just looking around you and seeing things again, instead of staring into your screen.”

“You’re not going to tell me to quit Facebook, are you?

“I did,” Sally shrugged, “and it made a difference. There is no force on earth that can create a feeling of being overwhelmed quite as well as Facebook. There is simply too much information, scrolling past at the speed of…I don’t know…the kind that is fast.”

Sally smiled: “Look, all I am saying is that Facebook has become less about sharing your life with those around you in a meaningful way than it is about a bunch of people rushing to their keyboards to regurgitate the latest string of meaningless memes. Pet videos, pictures of food, junk quizzes, forcing you to somehow interact when you should be focussing on things that matter. We rush. Slow down. Stop constantly having to perform, to present, to keep up. You don’t need it and the world will excuse you if you read a book instead of watching YouTube videos. Go back to basics. You are capable. Go plant that garden, buy that diary. There is always time for tea with friends. Just, well…think about it. ”

And so we should.

Love,
Marléne