Who's afraid of the big bad...self-help wolf? Simple solutions and other modern miracles

I love love love that we are (according to my local bookstore) now calling the self-help section at our local bookstore…the Mindfulness Section.  The Spirit Section.   Nouveau names for wisdom as old as time.  Speaking of this hallowed section of the store once located solely in the back right-hand corner next to the “Gardening” section: it's now apparent that long gone are the days of the stinky low self-esteem stigma of the Self Help section.  No siree Bob.  In fact quite the opposite.  

These days, hanging around this section no longer makes you feel tarred and feathered with the "damaged" brush.  It doesn't bring up the old connotations of forever frazzled singletons desperately seeking solutions as to why they can’t find love (Why Men Love Bitches anyone? Insert enormous eye-roll here), or middle-aged men in “lycra suits” (I have no idea what these abominations are called other than “hideous”) seeking answers to their pending mid-life crisis (The Game).  Note to self gentlemen, as an aside: what the answer is NOT to a mid-life crisis is buying a road bike that costs as more than the average person's car, and then parading around cafes in what I describe as “urban underpants” drinking matcha lattes.  Please, just no.  Someone make it end.

Anyway, I digress… 

For me, the self help section of the bookstore is like my own personal soul porn section.  Let that sink in for a hot minute.  Soul porn.  Roaw.  Hello kitty.  It ignites both my brain and soul simultaneously, meeting both my intellectual and spiritual needs at a beautifully basic and elemental level.    The voices of so many wise spirit pioneers contained in the pages of so many beautiful books crowded into a small shelf space; the possibilities are infinite, the potential for growth and space is immense, if you just crack the door open ever so slightly to allow your soul light to sneak in.   It's the birthplace of many people's spiritual beginning, but more on that later.

When you first feel the call to something greater than your physical self and all the associated material attainment, it’s what I imagine heroin would be like for the first time (times one million)…everything in your body and brain lights up and the euphoria is out of this world. Incidentally this is the very reason I have never tried heroin.  Go on then to imagine this feeling without the need for mind altering chemicals:  rather just your soul saying “YEEEEEEEEEEES, FINALLY!  Now show me to the nearest exit outta here, it is f**king DARK own here, I am good to GO!”.   You know, imagine prison breaking your own soul.  Alcatraz style.  Voting your own shadow off the island.  Pretty radical huh? 

So, you have your own “come to Jesus moment”, whether for you it’s upside down in yoga class desperately trying to stop your stomach from smothering you in shoulder stand, or from seeing Mary in Accounting have a nuclear meltdown at the Level 3 photocopier over the stapler function failing (again). It's different for everyone.  But what's similar to us all, is that it's the moment when you realise you need a little extra something-something to alleviate your constant companion of pain or relief from it’s oppressive opposite, numbness.   It’s that point you may think to yourself, “maybe, I’ll give this self-help thing a try, maybe it’s not all Men Are From Mars, Women are from Venus (FFS, really?) bullshit after all.   Well then, come on in kids, the water is warm.

Then once you have identified the need, then comes the bigger question… Where do you start? These days there is so much out there,  so many gurus, shamans, teachers and spiritual “experts”, it’s hard not to be confused and confounded, as well as excited and overwhelmed.   

My advice to you in the early days is so simple it borders on embarrassingly obvious.  Maybe steer yourself away from the self-help section for a hot minute while you listen to this carefully.   I promise you can come back to it later, you can literally gorge on all the Course in Miracles you can get your hands on, when you've got your training wheels on.  But this piece of advice is gold. 

Start super slowly. 

Baby steps kiddies. Baby steps.   You got to crawl before you walk.

My personal journey (oh that word makes my skin crawl - urgh) was a little less measured, definitely slightly less graceful, truth be told.  Honestly, I threw myself at the ways of the woo woo (hereonafter my only word for “general spirituality” of any kind) like a fat kid on a Smartie.  I guzzled down everything esoteric I could get my greedy little hands on.   Without pausing for breath, to chew or savour the flavor.  Nope, I shoved it all in at a rate that was startling and choked it down without stopping to experience what any of it meant for me.

I, Miss Cook, literally “shame ate” spirituality. 

I HAD AT IT ALL. At once.  As you can imagine, subsequently, I got a real belly ache and a wild case of woo woo indigestion.  Surprise surprise.   I was more confused after a year in the woo woo community, get into my issues, “finding myself”, than I was when I went in.  Sure, I had learned a lot, but I also burned a lot of beautiful things to the ground trying to shed my shadow.

You see, my problem, with the magic of hindsight, was that I made so much change so quickly without stopping to take stock of what I had done, and what it meant.  I quit my job, sold almost everything I owned, packed my bags and left everyone I loved behind for a life “unchained”.   I went to find “me”.  As a result of all that rapid change, I had a LOT of time on my hands sans employment with no sense of self, particularly how all this change impacted me or what I really needed, and so what I wound up with was all these exposed, seeping and gaping wounds that I had to cover/fill/bandage them with something.  What better than the woo?

So like a good little piggy in woo woo mud; I smothered myself in it.  Literally covered myself from head to toe.  And you know what happened?  I got a whole lot of mud in places where dirt should never be, that took forever to get out, AND I was so covered in different kinds of mud from all different places that I couldn’t tell if I was Arthur or Martha.  I didn’t know which bits of  all the tantra, Buddhism, yogic philosophy, breathwork or shamanic exploration were working, and what was most definitely not.  

I was so desperately confused.  I have quite literally spent the last year making sense of all the magnificence I learned the year before in Bali, India and other flung places of wondrous wisdom.   And…ladies and gentlemen…this was my full time job.  Finding “me” was my sole occupation for two whole years.   Jesus, imagine balancing this with an actual life, kids and a mortgage.  Abort.  ABORT!!!!!

So, if I can pass one thing on, just one thing only, it’s this: go slow.  Make like a snail.  Sliding along at a glacial pace through the woo woo wilderness.  One slippery spiritual micro-slide at a time. 

Keep it simple to start with. 

Steer clear of surrounding yourself with solutions to problems you don’t know whether you have or not.

Step back from all the hype, and bring it down to brass tacks.

Just breathe. 

One gentle breath at a time.  In and out.   Out and in.  Softly, don’t force it (if I had a dollar for everytime I tried to shove my breath in and out of my body I would be Donald f**king Trump).   Easy does it.  Breathe in, Breathe out.

If you can, do this out in nature with your feet in the dirt/grass/sand.  Whether it’s stationary or in motion (like a walk), just spend 5 minutes alone with your breath, alone, on the daily.   It’s free, it’s freeing and it’s freedom.   Build up to more, but no cheating.  No ipod, no phone, no distractions, no guided meditations.  You don’t need to go to a class to do this (I will go into more advance solutions and other techniques shortly), you don’t need to pay, you just need to say to yourself that in this moment, you are the most important thing, and deserving of your own undivided attention for 5 minutes.   Mums and Dads, I am told that this little 5 minutes practice equates to at least 1 hour of screaming into a tea towel.  Try it.

Let’s just take our time, enjoy how it feels to treat yourself as a priority, feeling what it feels like for breathing to be the only thing you have to focus on for just 5 minutes.

Thoughts will come and thoughts will go, but in the words of the extraordinary Pema Chödrön (who changed my life), “start where you are”, because really, if  you don’t start there, you’ll never really start at all.   She suggests that everytime you have a thought, gently say to yourself “thinking” and let it drift away.  Don’t wrestle it, don’t try and throat punch it, just gently see it come and see it go, and be patient with yourself when this happens over and over and over again. 

If you stick with it, you WILL notice it becomes easier, and you soften into how good it feels to just breathe.  Allow for a teeny weeny bit more space in your rib cage for a bit more love, and when you think you got that, come back and see me, and we can take it from there. 

We have all the time in the world.  So let’s make like snails, and take it slow. 

Hope this helps; I cannot wait to wade through all the woo woo with you, but I reckon, this is one basic step that you gotta get down pat first. 

Love, light and gingerbread cookies (that felt right there).

Miss Cook

xoxo

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AUTHOR’S POST SCRIPT:

Wait wait wait, stop.  Before you  go, just hold on just a second. I don’t think I made enough of the whole “soul porn” concept earlier…I mean, have I just invented something extraordinary to light up the hearts of even the hardest hedge fund Harvey, potentially bringing them to heel as the feet of the ascended masters and beloved earthly teachers in a way that no amount of blow and hookers could? 

Maybe, just maybe, I’m on to something here.  All the frazzled and fried corporate kids (of whom I was once a poster child), follow me, I reckon I might have some soul solutions for you if you stick around long enough.

Could SOUL PORN be the next BIG thing? Jesus.  This is it. 

Heard it hear first kids – remind me to patent trademark the sh*t out of that later.   SOUL PORN has arrived.