We cannot control learning. One cannot control or predict what another learns. A teacher can bring a lesson to the class, but she cannot upload her thoughts into the student’s brains. What each individual student will take away from the same lesson will be as different and unique as they themselves are. How one processes the information presenting before us, even we ourselves cannot know.
I can go into a class thinking today I will learn how correctly to do a body curl, but what I will actually learn in that class I do not actually know, and sometimes do not even come to the realization of said learning perhaps until many years later, if that. Not only does everyone’s brain work differently, but how we relate to something is not dependent on the content or how our brain works, but on our history, our experiences, our own insights. This is why 1000 people can read the same book yet take something very different away from it and what that will be is a mystery to all, Except Allah. He alone knows why He brings the experiences that He does to us. He alone knows why we need those experiences, and He alone knows exactly what we will gain from each and every experience and also when we will gain it. Sometimes it is not till years later that an article finally makes sense to us or becomes “relevant” for us. So not only do we have to trust in every experience brought to us, that there is a reason for it and also trust in the timing of each thing to be necessary and precise; but also, we have to not assume that everyone learnt the same thing from the same lecture, or book or experience. Thus it is a good practice also to hear out what another has to say about a book that you may have already read for yourself. In the same way, every homeopath you will go to, every doctor you will go to, every herbalist you will go to, will all hear and understand different things of and about your health. You can tell the exact same story, in exactly the same words with exactly the same expressions undertones etc to 50 homeopaths and they will all take way something different from your story; like in a student clinic setting for example. Each will pick up on different things based on their understanding, their experiences and their insights, (and mind you, not their understanding of the art of homeopathy, rather their understanding of you and your story! Their understanding, thus use of homeopathy is an entirely different aspect). That said, not only what someone picks up on is different, but actually, with each individual homeopath you may go to, you will express your story in a slightly different way. Why, because of our gut connection. Our gut is a fascinating thing, it eludes us of things that we are not aware of, it conveys things that words cannot, it inspires in us ideas that we did not know existed. When we sometimes meet someone, without quite knowing how, we know that this person will understand me when I say this. We may barely know this person, like a homeopath we have not visited before, or an acquaintance at work whom we have a polite relationship with, not a deep connection with; but we somehow unknowingly why, just know that this person will understand me when I say this. This is our gut connection, our aura’s connecting, our energies exchanging. Sometimes a client may be trying to explain to me their timeline or their feelings, and without them knowing my timeline/experiences they strike a chord with mine. They say something which I know exactly, because I too have experienced it. Even more interestingly, they then don’t even go into it too much, as somehow, they too know that I have just understood it, that it is been heard – not their words, but their story has been heard. As a homeopath, we go beyond the words that come out of our client’s mouth. We listen to the story that they are trying to convey to us. It’s important to note here, that the story that one tells through their words, is not always necessarily the story that those actual words are narrating. For example, “I got bit by a dog” is not saying, “I got bit by a dog”, its saying so much more than that. There is fear, there is anger, there is worry, there is pain. Sometimes, not all those feelings can be expressed into words, but each sits in our eyes, in our fidgeting, in our expressions, in our body language; but most importantly it is felt through the invisible connection that our energies make. When we sit with our crying child in our arms, we try to sooth them, but we also try to “listen in” to what she is quietly conveying to us: the loud bang was painful to my ears, the loud bang caused a disturbance in my soul, the loud bang left me shaking and unsettled, I feel scared, I feel unsure, I feel worried, I feel too much that I do not know how to cope with... And we, the mother, in turn in our cuddles and warm embrace, in our soft soothing humming, addresses to all those silent cries, not just the vocal one. When someone says “I never cry”, they are not saying that they have never experienced sadness, or grief or they have nothing to cry for or about in their life. No, it is actually the very opposite. There is grief, its silent grief. They are “salted over” in grief, they cannot release those “salty thoughts” through salty tears… These examples above though, are still not based on personal insight, rather just from the general homeopathic perspective. Personal connection goes even a step further than this. When a person tells one a story, and they have lived a similar experience then the listener knows not just of the obvious emotions said, or disclosed but even the very subtle and deep ones that only one who has lived said experience can know. If for example a person feels betrayed by a close loved one, they may feel like they have been “stabbed in the back” or “stabbed straight up right in the heart” by that person, there may be shock and horror, anger and hatred, sorrow and grief, emotions which can be picked up quite strongly, but there are some other ones deep hidden under the layers of these stronger ones, a longing to undo the betrayal, a sympathy to forgive the betrayal, a hatred of oneself, a pain that pangs through your heart which simultaneously wants to forgive and forget but also cannot forgive and forget, a battle of feelings which do not really have words; all you know is that there is pain, a lot of it. Feelings which muddy with each other and overflow and overwhelm your whole existence. You feel let down by that person, by yourself, for allowing this to happen, for putting so much trust and hope and expectations on the other person, on your relationship, and you end up with a broken heart that bleeds pure agonising pain. Now no matter what may happen, no matter how much apology, no matter how much regret and remorse may come to mend it, that heart can never go back to being the same again. Even if its “brokenness” were to mend, the scar can never go away, it will always remain as a reminder to never trust and open your heart in that way to anyone ever again… Some people might react by putting up a wall around their heart, others may react by reclusing into oneself, another by hating their ownself and blaming themselves, feeling that they are the wrong doer that they deserved to be treated in this way because they are not good enough causing them to be remorseful of themselves. And sometimes they can go through all of these actions and end up in a dark space of depression where life no longer feels worth living and suicide and/or self-harm the only road visible in this dark never-ending night. Only one who has slummed so low themselves can understand the true torture and torment of the soul from the moment of betrayal through to the steps proceeding suicide. The dark thoughts that haunt these broken souls can remain unsaid in a company who has experienced the same and yet still be heard. The inexperienced often think that you can spot a depressed soul a mile out, but actually, to the surprise of most, most that bite that bullet shock the world as to their state. Many suicide deaths could not have been seen coming, why, because with most you cannot tell that they are depressed and in such a dark space. Smiles beam from their brave faces, kindness drips from there essences and colour encompasses and cloaks their minds darkness. They may even eat “normally”. You see we have some stereotypical images of depression, and where those impressions may also hold true, they are not the only image of depression. Because why one gets dragged into depression makes a big difference. Our actions, our body’s “breakdown” all disclose our story. Most of us have a very Allopathic view of illnesses. You see, Allopathy, busies itself with just the illness, but homeopathy wants to listen into why and it does so by understand each person’s individual symptoms. Everyone experience “high blood pressure” say, in a slightly different way, or “diabetes” or in the above case, depression. What has led one on to that road, determines how that “illness” plays out within us; for it is not the “illness” that ails us, but the happening in our timeline that led us to it that actually ails us. It is not the gallstones that we need to be “cured” from, but that in our life that made us so “bitter”. When I hear “gallstones” I immediately think “bitterness” then I start thinking about all the emotions and events related to their timeline that could have led them down the path to bitterness; it is these emotions and these events that need addressing to “address” the gallstones. How we think, what we experience, how we feel, how we interpret, process, understand and deal with life all mould our being and make us who we are. We are all unique and individual, no two people are the same, no two person’s stories are the same, no two people will live and come out of life in the same way. Why we experience things, why we get connected with the individuals we do, how we know what we know, how we learn what we learn, how we communicate and how we know how and what we communicate and more, are all part of the hidden knowledge that Allah SWT, alone only has. What our life and our journey through life is meant to bring to us, to others and this world we will never fully know; we can try all we want to capture and understand and explain, but all we will end up with is mere snippets of this puzzle. Allah Alone is The All Knowing, All Planning, All Seeing, All Controlling, All Creating, The EverLiving and Eternal, Rabbil Aalameen. HE Alone Knows what and who we are, what when and who we need and how we need it. Subhan Allah! Alhumdulillah! Allah-o-Akber! Allah-o-Akber! Allah-o-Akber! Allah-o-Akber Oh Allah, I submit. I submit to you Allah and all your plans for me, indeed you are The All Knowing and The Best and Only True Planner; please guide me in the best way that only You know how.
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Over the past couple of decades I have suffered from depression several times, sometimes very severe and other times less so, but suffer I did nonetheless. On several occasions I used Homeopathy to “cure” my depression and “cure” it it did, or so I thought, until now. Surely the cloud of depression dissipated and I managed to get on better with my day to day life. But as life rolled on so did with it the cloud of depression roll on back in. Every time I took Homeopathy for it I did feel as though I had “healed” from it and most likely I did heal from said depression. As a homeopath would describe it, that layer that had formed had gotten removed. But had I actually really cured my depression? If it keeps coming back, even though in different forms as the remedies needed displayed, can I truly say I have cured it?
Let’s take a closer and deeper look at this shall we… Yes clinically the depression I was suffering from in all the different occasions each time cleared with homeopathy, but the question is: why if I have cleared the layer of depression does it keep coming back? Do I just have a depressive personality? Do I have a depression tendency? Or it is just the ups and downs of a depression patient as an allopathic practitioner would tell you. Or is it the maintaining cause as a homeopath would say? Well, let’s explore my life from a bird’s eye view a little for some perspective. Each time I went into depression, was because of certain triggers; then I would take homeopathy, which helped me come out of it. But then what did I do after coming out of it? Did I remove the trigger from my life? Did I change how I reacted to the trigger to prevent the same consequences? Did I change my life in any way to prevent the trigger from being a trigger and still triggering me. The answer, as any one may easily guess, to all of these questions is “NO”. I did not remove the trigger; I did not change my reaction to the trigger; nor did I change myself in any way to prevent the trigger from being a trigger. Thus, it’s no surprise really that I kept going back into depression. The flavour of the depression may have been different each time, but that is about all that truly had changed over these past two decades… Here in lies the problem. I did not learn anything from my depression… I was on a boat on a stormy sea, I fell into the water, somehow I managed to pull myself back up on to my boat, but what did I do then? I did not complete the journey, I did not change how I handled the storm, so all I kept doing was falling back into the sea and rescuing myself over and over again. There was no progress. Thus I came to realise this now: I keep getting thrown overboard into the stormy sea, because I keep doing the same things again and again; I am not learning from my mistakes; I am not progressing in any direction on my journey, just staying stuck. This is not healing myself; this is not curing myself; this is still symptom management. After deep reflection I have come to the understanding that merely removing the triggers (or trigger people) from ones’ life is also not true healing, that is just being an ostrich – how many people is one to “run away from”? We cannot run and hide away from our problems. It is not the people that is the problem, but us with not being able to “cope” with the problem being present to us by these triggers. I’ll explain it in another way: why is it that certain character types; or certain traits; or certain habits of people trigger us? Are they really the worse traits on earth? Are they really the only bad traits? Are they the same traits that trigger everyone else as well? NO. Every person gets triggered by different things. Sometimes the things that trigger us might not be the worst possible traits on earth, but they still trigger us. Sometimes there may be some other traits that we do feel are also bad, maybe even just as bad as our triggering ones are, but we don’t get triggered by them. Why? It is because of our history. What we have been through, who we are, what our belief systems are that determine what triggers one and what does not. Any trait that triggers us in any way is because of us and not the trait itself. The problem is not with one trait or the other, but within us. [That is not to say that its ok to have bad traits; or that an evil act per say should not be condemned; or that it can be pardoned. Just because it is not the actual act itself, but what it does to us because of our history, that is causing us a problem does not make the bad actions O.K. NO. By no means is this an excuse for any wrong doers to keep doing their wrongs. NO. Bad traits or evil acts are not excusable and the perpetrators have to be accountable for their ill doings, which they will be to ALLAH SWT. This matter being discussed here is not about them or their actions. This matter is about us and us getting triggered.] Again let me explain this in another angle. If act 1 triggers us but not act 2, why does act 2 not trigger us? They are both equally bad. Why can we “tolerate” or brush past act 2 but not act 1, despite our condemning both acts equally. It’s because somewhere deep inside act 1 has hit a nerve of ours and act 2 has not. So why has act 1 hit a nerve and not act 2? The answer to this question can only be found in our story of life. Sometimes we can find this answer with relative ease, other times maybe even deep psychotherapy might not be able to reach that far into our core. But the question is, do we need to reach the this answer or have we already reached an answer that is sufficient to proceed with remedying the situation? Does it matter what in our history made this nerve active? Is the solution not still to make it un-active? Yes if we can pinpoint it great it may help break the cycle sooner however, even if we don’t, it does not mean that the cycle itself cannot still be broken. Therefore whether we can deduce exactly the moment and incident that activated this nerve or not is neither here nor there, the point is to understand that said actions hit said nerves. Now what needs to be done is our neural pathways need to be rewritten to prevent us from going down the same neural pathways and hitting said nerve. Is that even possible I hear you ask? Yes it really is. Our brains are not fixed, new neurons can be created and new pathways laid, but we have to actively chose to walk a different path and not let us keep slipping down the same pathways. How can this be done? Well the first and most important step is to recognise that this needs to be done; for we cannot chose to walk a different path if we do not realise that it is our default path wherein the problem lies. Once this has been understood and our triggers identified then comes the long hard uphill slog of actively choosing a different path to set into our brains. But it is actually not as difficult as it may sound! It just calls for persistence. Understanding ourselves is quite useful in this, if we can understand what part exactly about our trigger is causing us suffering then we can work backwards and teach ourselves not to let that take hold upon us. Like pointing a torch upon the shadows in the dark can relieve us from any fearful thoughts; pinpointing that it is (for example) the lack of ones’ freedom, felt from the others’ dominating and controlling nature, that is causing ones’ suffering can then give rise to the idea for creating a space and place for ones’ freedom. We cannot change or control another’s actions; a dominating person will continue to try and dominate that is their personality, we cannot change it, but one can change how the others’ action affects them. By understanding that one craves their freedom which is being challenged and robbed through said actions which is affecting one negatively, they now have a better chance to fight for it. That does not mean a literal fight, but more a stand against the injustice. It always helps to know what we are fighting for; what chance do we have in a fight we do not know we are in? Once one has identified where the problem with a certain trait lies for them, then every time that trait presents itself they have to actively choose a different course of action to prevent the suffering that they feel from it, (for example, using the above scenario: refusing to be ruled by and dictated upon by another persons’ insecurities or ideals, being ok to set in boundaries and being content by them being placed, restores a space and place for ones’ freedoms). Do this enough times that it becomes second nature and hey presto the trait no longer presents itself as a problem for us, despite the trait itself still actively co-existing with us. So you see, it is not just merely recovering from a fall that one needs to do, they need to heal and seal – recover, learn and grow from said fall so to not repeat it again in order for them to actually be cured from the fall. Complete the journey of every challenge life presents to you. Don’t stay stranded in the middle of the sea; for if you stay stranded, I promise you, you will just keep staying stranded. There are no rescue boats upon these seas; there are no heroes in these stories; this is your life’s journey and you can only keep moving forward in it if you so choose to do so, otherwise you will keep re-living the same mistakes over and over again – like being trapped in a time loop. Let’s truly heal from our trauma and cure ourselves from them. Don’t run from yours triggers, learn and grow to co-exist with them in peace, that’s is where true healing lies. MUCH, MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL, Meher Andleeb Eqbal |
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