Stand up.
Put the soles of your feet on the ground, sit upright, brace yourself and stand. I just taught you how to physically stand up.
Although involving somewhat of a different process, standing up mentally––not pitying yourself, not comparing yourself to other people, not creating unattainable goals that will make you feel unworthy or less than, not valuing the external over the internal qualities––is just as easy.
Everyone is capable of this.
While everyone is capable of this, not everyone has the will to make such drastic, yet necessary, changes, and not everyone knows where to begin. With the help of Gary Zukav’s The Seat of the Soul, I have put together three key mental prerequisites that are personally helping me, and that I think everyone should have when they finally decide to stand up the f**k up.
Release the control “external powers have”
First, practice with releasing the control “external powers” have over you.
This prerequisite stems directly from Zukav’s book which discusses the benefits of a spiritually aware life over one dictated by the five senses (Zukav). The external powers, what can be owned or stolen (money, social status, material objects), these things are entirely valued on the basis of your senses. The happiness that is derived from having external powers is rooted in someone else’s lack of them. We enjoy having money because we know what can happen to us without it. We like validation because it makes us feel something good that we do not know how to feel on our own. We like owning things because it makes us feel closer to those who already have that thing in their possession and further from those who do not. These examples display why we value these external powers; we fear the vulnerability that having less than someone else creates.
Zukav goes on to speak on “authentic powers.” These powers, which he says should be replaced with the external ones, originate from aligning your personality with your soul (Zukav). I will not go any further with this concept because not all people will agree on some of the points he makes about spirituality and the higher capacity of human existence. However, the relinquishment of your external powers is something that will help us stand up for the benefit of ourselves and for others. The better we recognize just how similar we are to one another through our fears of being less than and our fears of being vulnerable, the less we compare ourselves. The less we view our lives as better than someone else’s just because we have tangible material and statuses that we assign meaning and importance to.
Meditation
The next step is meditation.
Just as there is a fear in being vulnerable, there is a fear in being alone (I could argue that this idea circles back to the fear of vulnerability but that is a conversation for another day). Imagine being forced to exist for one whole month as the only person on this planet. I assume for most, myself included, this thought made you a bit uncomfortable. If it did not, then you have already fulfilled this step and I am envious. Being by yourself, and I do not just mean being physically away from other people, but being alone with yourself and with your mind can be challenging. It is challenging. The human brain is capable of storing so many thoughts, and at a point that becomes an issue because of how difficult it is to sort through and efficiently divide our attention to any one of these thoughts at a given time.
Existing as a woman in this world, as a woman in America, as a young woman, as a young woman in college, these few categories introduce thousands of different thoughts themselves. Mix those categories with the other communities you belong to, add in your responsibilities, add in any friend or family drama you may be experiencing, add in any self struggles you may be dealing with, add in your desires, add in your fears and discomforts etc… All of these thoughts can really harm someone if they do not know how to exist alone with them. Meditation will teach you how, it has taught me how. There are quite a few free guided meditation platforms you could utilize. If you wish to go further, coming from a Buddhist background, there is a very long history of meditation and its benefits that you could investigate. Meditation is not only in Buddhist culture, but in Hindu and other monotheistic religions as well. To stand up, you must first free your mind of what is preventing you from doing so.
Give yourself credit
The final step, and what I identify as the most important, is to give yourself credit.
Once you have let go of these external powers and have adopted meditation as a daily practice, recognize that you have done great and challenging things to better your life and relationship with the world. We spend much of our existence striving for something better or something other than what is current or stationary in our lives. Glisten in your achievements. Sit there for some time, recognize what you have created, and appreciate it.
Now you know how to stand up.
Zukav, Gary. The Seat of the Soul. Simon & Schuster, 1989.