69: Finding Peace with my Inner Critic

In this episode of the Find Your SPARK Podcast, Brooke speaks with Adam Gross a 22 year old counseling major who lives in North London. Adam speaks about how understanding his inner critic instead of trying to change it, has helped him see his world and life differently. Below is a poem Adam wrote shortly after attending SPARK’s Young Person’s track at London’s Life 2.0 conference last June.

Universally here, not always personally reachable
Always available, just not always accessible.

Lies our peace of mind
Forever intact
Can never be damaged, dented or scratched.

A spark of infinite wisdom
Quietly whispering
Always guiding us,
Showing us where next to go,
Showing us what next to do,
Like a guiding light, and a directing compass.
Can we listen with humility?

For it is just beneath the drumming of our thinking.
Thinking of worry,
Thinking of stress
Thinking of sadness

Absorbed in the noise of the drumming
We think these feelings are substantial
That they mean something
They are a call to action
They are a meaningful sign
They signify we are broken.

What’s missed in all this,
Is the fact of our thinking
Impersonal – everyone thinks
Transient – passing, – waves of thought
Thinking that is self created – from within
Thinking that is subjective, influenced.
Thinking that we don’t have to indulge in – we can choose to feed our thinking or not.
Like the ocean is full of waves
Sometimes choppy and sometimes calm,
All of the ocean is water,
So too our entire experience of reality is thought created.

It doesn’t mean we won’t take action
For we can listen to our quiet spark of wisdom within us
The whispering voice may whisper action…
But we can act from a place of calm and respond
In a way that reflects this, rather than react, instinctively,
In line with panic in the moment.
We only need to come back to listening when we innocently forget,
When we forget about the whispering voice of wisdom within us.
We all get lost, get absorbed in the drumming of feelings from time to time.

Peace of mind isn’t the absence of adversity or sadness,
As I see it’s really about seeing circumstance for what it is,
Knowing we are beyond it.
However it looks and presently seems.

We are beyond circumstance,
We can have circumstances, but it doesn’t have to have us.
We can let go around our thinking

Seeing how we get in our own way
We can stop and start living life from a higher place of understanding.

This is not a shield life is a constant sport as the saying goes,
But understanding is the best way of handling the knocks,
Getting back up and not staying down ruminating on what only could have been.

Wherever you go
There you are,
Where ever you go,
There your spark is,
You cannot get away from it,
You can only forget it because of the drums.

Remembering the whispering of its voice of wisdom, calm and presence is just one thought away.

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