1. August 2021 • Katja Laurien
Eventually we’re all on the spiritual path for one reason: healing. Inspired by romanticized ideas of spirituality, we think that being healed means we’re constantly living in bliss. Life is suddenly one big party, we only encounter friendly people, everyone likes us and negative emotions are vague memories from the past. I would lie if I would say that this isn’t exactly the idea with which I embarked on the spiritual journey.
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7. February 2021 • Katja Laurien
Are you familiar with this nagging feeling that you’re not doing enough? I’m not talking about the times that you’re procrastinating, but about having this feeling hanging like a dark cloud above your life. I actually thought I had moved past this feeling, but during the lockdowns in 2020 I found out that it wasn’t over yet…When the lockdowns started I was a waitress and therefore couldn’t work for an extended period of time.
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2. August 2020 • Katja Laurien
This is the second part of a series of posts which intend to help you seeing through life’s illusions. These posts are based on the work of the Dutch psychologist Ingeborg Bosch, who has developed the Past Reality Integration (PRI) Therapy which I personally find highly effective. In order to see through the illusion, you first have to start by understanding and recognizing your defense mechanisms which I described in the last post.
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5. July 2020 • Katja Laurien
The past months I’ve gone through an emotionally very turbulent period. This was not the first roller coaster I’d been through, but the fact that I couldn’t really pinpoint the problem, made it very confusing to me. I didn’t really understand what was going one with me, but I wisely decided to switch off my brain and just watch my thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Thanks to my dedicated meditation practice, it was not that difficult to stay in the observing mode.
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1. September 2019 • Katja Laurien
I have a confession to make: I can sometimes be really mean and nasty. It seems like an inner devil gets hold of me and makes me say and do things I later regret. Obviously, I’ve always had my “dark shadow sides” (I mean, who doesn’t?!), but being on the spiritual path has challenged my relationship with my dark sides; writing posts on spirituality has even nearly blocked my relationship with my shadow.
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7. July 2019 • Katja Laurien
This post is not necessarily meant for people who just think a lot. Here I am specifically talking about the monkey mind: The uncontrollable mind that seems to drag you from one horror-scenario to another and puts the worst scenario on repeat.
Trying to stop this internal chatter is in vain as long as you don’t understand the root of this mind-circus. The monkey mind is in fact just a very useful trick of the ego.
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7. April 2019 • Katja Laurien
When we feel stuck we basically want to make a move, but we just don’t know in which direction. We want to bring about change in our lives, but we have no clue what we should do. We feel restless and lost, full of doubts and fears. Maybe we felt some kind of positive energy at some point, a vibe that led us to bring about change in our lives. But instead of positivity we feel shame and self-judgement due to our inability to take action and make progress.
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3. March 2019 • Katja Laurien
Shame is human, it’s natural and it can be very healthy! Yes, if you deal with your shame in a conscious way it can actually be a cleansing proces. Shame becomes toxic when you either ignore it or allow it to take control over you. They key is to actively and consciously face your shame and feel it. And that’s exactly the goal of writing this post: facing my own shame and let it wash all over me.
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3. February 2019 • Katja Laurien
I think it’s important to have a very close look at perfectionism. Why? Because it’s one of the nasty personality traits that can be advertised as virtues. People seem to find it fancy to be a perfectionist, often mention it as their weaknesses during a job interview. Yes, it is a weakness and we should treat it as such.
If we would all be aware of the fact that perfectionism is nothing more than ego’s disguise of its lack of self-esteem, there wouldn’t be anything glamorous about it anymore.
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6. January 2019 • Katja Laurien
If you hear voices in your head, no worries. You’re not crazy, we all hear them. Hearing them better and clearer is even a sign of increased sanity. There are so many voices in our head (the ego, the higher Self, the inner child, the inner critic etc.) it seems like there’s an entire village in our heads. Distinguishing between these voices helps us to control them and to stay sane.
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