Hello Everyone,
My first “Hello” to all of you is from Georgia’s magical and fairy-tale autumn atmosphere, where nature embraces, winks, and smiles at you, offering little surprises around every corner.
Our lives here are made colorful with the red and blue cardinal birds, squirrels that constantly carry and bury something into the ground,. Chipmunks that chase each other, deer, possums, hawks, herds of geese, are like the next-door neighbor that you meet and greet every day.
After living in one of the most crowded metropolises in the world for many years, Istanbul, life’s twists and turns, brought me to Georgia. What seemed to be a small joke of life on me turned out to be a gift where I started enjoying a quieter life and a natural environment, which allowed me to devote more energy and time to the subjects I used to consider as a hobby.
I have been practising dentistry in Istanbul for twenty-two years at what I simply call a `daily running` pace. At the beginning of my professional life, I partook in various trainings to improve professionally and to communicate better with people. At first, these helped me grow, but as I gained more experience, I realized an improved connection with my inner world. My life became more manageable. In addition, some health problems (IBS, blood pressure, breathing, stenosis, anxiety) started to disappear. As a result, I started living a more balanced and healthy life leading to a noticeable improvement in my quality of and how I experienced life.
Over time, I had the chance to share some of the techniques I learned with others andwitnesed the positive who witnessed the positive tranformations they underwent. I saw people’s internal dynamics change positively, leading to their `outward` atmosphere and inner selves transforming to help them and their loved ones to live happier and more fulfilling lives.
Through my column here, I hope to share some of these techniques and experiences with all of you and, from time to time, present methods that perhaps you can apply to your own lives.
Let’s start by looking at ourselves: as human beings, we feel, know, and are aware that we have a different level of consciousness beyond our five senses. However, we may not be able to identify, define, actively understand or be aware of what that consciousness means or even how to use this space of awareness. This `space` to be our subliminal unconscious. In this space, we can find data/information from our genetic code, human past, family or social background, and more. In addition, this space may include social norms, restrictions, cultural and behavioral templates, that can dictate how we live. We can consider this our repository of data and records that define our humanity or human nature. However, it does not end there! We also have another consciousness space that covers all of this, called our `self-entity. `
The unconscious and self-entity are parts of a holistic system that constitutes our overall psyche. We can think of these pieces as a set of intertwining and ever-growing spheres, where each new sphere growth can cover all the knowledge and experiences, etc., of the previous one. This is truly a critical statement as within each sphere is a definition of our total psyche, and we only start having `self` problems in life when we have parts of the spheres begin to `fight` with each other.
For example, we start a diet, but we can’t keep it going; we want to lose weight, but on the contrary, we eat more, start reacting to events that we usually would not make a fuss about, and start making decisions that we will usually regret later. In reality, if we could control the `unconscious mind` with our conscious mind, we can then start to behave in the opposite way to achieve what we want in a more positive manner. In fact, it is believed that some of the diseases/illnesses we go through in life result from the psychological clashes of these inner parts that we actually might have control over.
This means that the more harmonious our inner parts work, the healthier and stronger we are. We might even say that one of the purposes of our life journey is to become more integrated with our inner selves and to achieve inner harmony to improve our quality of life.
In light of all this, why do we assume that most of our thoughts are our ideas? We listen to the many thoughts and `noises` that pass through our minds during the day. Still, we can’t differentiate between which sentences belong to our natural essence/inner self vs. which belongs to our mothers, fathers, or even our school teacher.
So until our next meeting here, I invite you to look at your inner self carefully, listen to those inner thoughts, sentences, and voices, and take the first step towards self-awareness of who you are really listening to.
If you wish, you can contact me at gamzegulmus@gmail.com and share your observations about your inner voice.
Stay with love…
Gamze Dagtasoglu Gulmus
