Have you ever wondered why self-help and healing strategies do not always work – even when practised diligently and even by their own teachers? This has often bothered me, especially when I have seen close friends work hard at these techniques and then not achieve the new life or health they want. Sometimes my friends have been not only disappointed but have also, tragically, even felt stung and ashamed by their lack of success. These negative feelings and thoughts arise, I want to suggest, because people do not have the full picture of what is going on when they strive to fulfil their potential and use these self-help strategies. They do not see what is beneath the surface – the unseen realities.
So let me create a couple of fables to help explain.
Facing reality
The first is about a young beech tree. This beautiful young tree was very happy to be part of his small forest, growing with his friends and family, passing through the seasons, providing a home for small creatures. Then one day he began to develop some self-awareness.
‘I’m not just part of the forest,’ he thought, ‘I am also a unique me, a unique tree.’
That autumn he decided that he did not want to lose his leaves like the rest of his beech tree family. ‘I have my own unique consciousness. I decide my own fate. I shall keep my leaves green and vibrant through the winter.’ He focused and focused and willed himself, using mantra and affirmations, to retain his foliage. I am green and vibrant. I am green and vibrant.
But he lost his leaves. They turned golden and fell to the ground.
The next year he decided that he wanted to be the tallest tree in his forest and carry the most beechnuts. He concentrated hard to deepen his roots and extend his branches and stretch his DNA. He indeed grew an extra few feet but still there were older beech trees far taller and the giant Douglas fir dwarfed them all.
Then the following year the weather system blew in some polluting acid rain from northern industrial Europe. Along with all other trees in his forest, unable to avoid the environmental realities, he suffered the burning effects of the pollution and took some years to recover.
For all his willpower he could not avoid the realities of nature.
Beneath the surface
The second fable turns our attention to Antarctica and to a beautiful young penguin who was sitting on top of a small and icy mound. She was a proud and haughty penguin and felt that she too was a unique individual. She had hatched on an ice shelf along with several thousand others in her colony and had slid and slithered with all her cousins down to the ocean, but she knew deep down that she was special and had a unique destiny.
‘I will create my own life,’ she knew. ‘I will not only swim. I will fly!’
Bravely she left her colony and set off on her own. She was determined and wilful and waddled for many miles, finally reaching a small mountain. This, she knew, she felt it in her bones, was the magic place! If she could only reach the peak she would then be able to fly. After more days of gruelling struggle, she reached the mountaintop.
‘Now I shall fly!’
She put her all her will and intention into her desire to become airborne. Nothing happened. She remained earth-bound. Dismayed she collapsed on to the ground and fell into a fitful sleep from which she was awoken by terrible cracking and grinding noises. The earth and ice beneath her were moving.
‘If I cannot fly, I will use my will to stop the earth moving,’ she thought. But her thoughts were, sadly, useless. She looked around. To her dismay she saw that she was, in fact, sitting on the peak of an enormous iceberg floating off into the ocean, leaving behind the landmass and her fellow creatures.
‘Stop! Stop!’ she cried. But the iceberg floated away to its own inevitable destiny.
Penguins cannot fly and the major mass of an iceberg is beneath the surface.
Powerful forces
Returning now to self-help strategies for achieving perfect health and wealth. The insights are clear. The unseen problem with these strategies is that they rarely look at the deeper realities and conditions. In fact, many unseen forces influence our physical health and our material conditions.
How many of us are like a tiny penguin sitting on an iceberg, trying to alter our situation, but unaware that the most important realities are below our conscious awareness?
Beneath our desire for a healthier and happier life is a massive substratum of powerful forces: personal karma, family karma, collective karma, unconscious emotions, feelings and histories. All of these cannot just be transformed by, for example, the repetition of an affirmation no matter how diligently or purely it is repeated. Even when we commit fully to deep transformation and do the hard work of personal growth, we will almost always meet the forces of our past.
How many of us are also like the beech tree, wanting the impossible and trying to escape the rhythms and waves of nature and the forces of our environment?
When we focus on our health we cannot for example avoid the reality that we belong to the vast interdependent collective of humanity, nature and cosmos. The actual atoms and molecules of our bodies, for example, do not belong individually to us, but belong to the Earth. This means that, regardless of our unique individual identities, our bodies share the collective conditions of all carbon-based creatures. So illnesses like cancer may arise simply from the contact of our bodies with the toxins of our surroundings. Or epidemics may overwhelm us. Just as beech trees shed their leaves in Autumn, so we too are embedded in nature and our environment.
Spiritual beings
Of course, there are also miracles, growth and development that transcend these collective realities. But in general penguins do not fly!
The real miracle, glory and majesty of being human is that we are also spiritual beings. This means that we have real control over and are sovereigns of our own consciousness and hearts. Regardless of our circumstances or health, we have the absolute freedom to develop spiritually: to grow our love, our awareness, our compassion.
So even when we are not succeeding at self-help strategies to improve our material conditions, we can still develop our spirituality. More compassion, more consciousness. True healing, development and fulfilment.
The wise beech tree and the contented penguin.
All my love, William
For William’s public workshops and presentations visit www.williambloom.com
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I understand the concept William is trying to portray in his analogy of a beech tree, but it was not the best choice of tree. Beech trees often don’t lose their leaf load, but the leaves become dead weight to the plant over the winter for reasons not fully understood by plant anatomists. Now being left to carry dead weight is another story….
Thank y0u William so much for the reality of your article, it makes so much sense and you know that it is indeed the truth when you read it.
It is wonderful to be able to read something that makes sense of the things you know that there is another meaning, but we get caught up in our little desirous minds.
When things don’t make sense there is quite simply light to be shed on it, to uncover the true nature of events in our life.
As long as our hearts and minds are open to receive this light and have the right intention, we are then open to transform our lives for real, without our willpower which is so very limited and short-sighted as you say.
Thank you for writing, so that we can all receive.
Love
Fiona
These are good analogies but do not address where the original ideas came from that people strive and strain to fulfill. The fact that vast numbers of people are trying(and obviously failing) to achieve the impossible is surely down to the plethora of self-help material out there that tells them that ANYTHING they set their will to is possible. There are certain publications that should carry mental and physical health warnings.
*sigh*
The first stage is always to know yourself through and through and then you will know what is real, what is possible and what is an illusion.
Terry Pratchett writes of something called First Sight and Second Thoughts in his book The Wee Free men. First sight is seeing things as they truly are, not how we want them to be or how we think would suit us better. Second Thoughts are those thoughts that examine what we see with First Sight carefully and logically. These ideas appear in many of his novels, but since The Wee Free Men is ostensibly a children’s book it is expressed in a clear and accessible for all.
Fantastic post and read,
Thank you for being :0) X .
Soull.
Very interesting take.
At last, someone speaking sense about affirmations. They are, of course, very beneficial but not usually enough on their own, because, as William says, we can never see the whole picture. Not only do we have our own karma, we have family, group and national karma and a whole host of other forces at work at the same time so it’s no wonder that it seems often they don’t work. It’s more to do with timing; when certain events have unfolded; when the fruit is ripe, etc. Alice Bailey, through the ascended master Djwal Khul, speaks of this in her books.
Thank you..
I developed Chronic Pain over 9 years ago after a car accident, which was the start of a very long and expensive healing journey. Trying over 23 healing therapies and techniques, whereas they have all probably helped at some stage, I am still seemingly in the same place with the physical pain.
It has often left me feeling that I’m doing it wrong or not enough or not good enough which isactually really distructive, leading to the belief that it is me that’s wrong, not enough, or not good enough, deserving enough or spiritual enough. I accept in my rational mind that this isn’t the case but sometimes the self pressure and expectation can lead to a big hard bump back to earth when it doesn’t ‘work.’ To me, the very phrase ‘self help,’ gives the implication that if it doesn’t work it’s down to you.
All this said, they say it’s the journey and not the destination and my spiritual beliefs and have experienced drmatically expanded understanding, knowledge, compassion, tollerance and gained clarity of what I think about life and death and God and myself. Seeing as this has always fascinated me since I was a child and had constant questions, I do think there is a strong element of me having called in my current situation. I have met amazing people and now know I have allies which can’t always be seen but are there and helping. My reaction to apparent ‘bad’ news or hopeless situations are now taken over with a deep breath and a knowing that everything happens ultimately for my best, followed by asking for help and guidance. Most of all, I’ve learned trust in the process of life and I hadn’t had such a long, scary, painful journey, I wouldn’t know I have any of these resorces.
Thank you William for another insightful article.
Those of us in spiritual work need to be mindful of how we use ‘those spiritual terms’ “it must be your Karma” It would not have happened if……….” and my favourite creating your reality. But who is doing the creating, ones unconscious based on unresolved issues, Ones Higher Self ,or even The Divine. We are always learning, but at specific times we are in training, and at any moment too we can be drafted, and that can bring on a whole lot of extra work, karma and training.
Affirmations do not work for me, I find no resonance with the concept, and neither does my Higher Self, so each to his own
.
So dear souls, in the midst of these trying times, let’s not forget to play and have fun, after all The Divine does.
This is such a well written article. Thank you, William.
There are forces that we cannot control such as our family genetics. Yet sometimes books and articles are written in a way that can make us feel guilty if we do not achieve goals which may well be unattainable. The pursuit of them can give a sense of failure, causing a lot of frustration & lowering of self esteem. Don’t get bogged down with it all. If it is not working move on. As Shiana says ‘play & have fun’.
If you can let go and not be rigid I have found from experience that you are far more likely to achieve. Also don’t forget to ask the angels for help!
More compassion, more consciousness. Amen to that! Feeling so depeleted following twelve years of personal and family challenges, I took myself off in the new year for a few days’ DIY retreat in a holiday cottage. By the end of this period of reflection, contemplation and walking out in the beauties of nature, I came to the same conclusion as you, William. We have to remain realistic about what it is to be a human being and somehow learn to celebrate oursleves and each other (complete with all foibles, flaws and limitations). The work of many lifetimes here, I feel … Blessings and thanks.
Well done William, I don’t believe in self-help theories either, because you really cannot force yourself to believe in something that your entire life has taught you is simply not true. Every cell in your body knows if you are happy or depressed or in love, but they also know when you are lying to them and trotting out an affirmation in the pious hope that it will change your life . Knowing the metaphysical reasons for what is ailing you or messing up your life can be very useful however. Capturing negative thought patterns, be they conscious or unconscious can be the beginning of turning your life and your health around. Not by putting a unrealistic affirmation in their place but , by acknowledging them and then gradually working your way back, along the continuum towards positive thinking. How would this have helped the tree or the little penguin? Well I guess that neither of them loved themselves for who they really were and both needed to travel along the continuum from discontent and towards contentment.
Surely ‘self-help’ is a misnomer. We can seek, we can be open to receive but help comes from the Divine, God, the Creator.
Blessings to all of you. May you find the joy and peace you are looking for.