Articles by Chemory Gunko/Amara Christi

Being back in 3D world with my new awareness and insight has made seeing the stuff easier to do, and it turns the world on its head from what I used to see years ago... but it doesn't make humans easier to deal with.

In fact it makes it a little harder. With the amount we've changed and grown over the past few years, I think the thing probably driving me the most crazy is how resistant to change they are - and how much they want to stay stuck.

The ego or spiritual journey has as one of its goals that you accept death, the transience of life.

This is one of the more vague pieces of the puzzle that doesn't readily make sense.

I lived through the apartheid changeover in South Africa. In fact I turned 16 the day after the famous 1994 elections. When I entered high school, I went into a racially-integrated school because racial segregation had been lifted.

Over the past nearly 23 years I’ve watched my country and people evolve… and it has gotten ugly, largely because people are determined to hold onto the ugliness and hatred.

The Trump Thing

In between painters, a flooded house and a crazy workload, I haven’t had much of a chance to get onto social media and media to see what people are saying, but the little bit I have seen worries me enormously.

Everything I have seen so far is people spreading messaging of hatred and fear – we’re going to create our own reality with this.

How spiritual bypassing, and the accepted behavioral norms in society, breed narcissists, psychopaths and narcissistic behavior.

Spiritual Bypassing is a really interesting term introduced by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, back in the 80s.

A spiritual bypass or spiritual bypassing is a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”.

In a nutshell therefore, it’s how we use spiritual concepts to avoid dealing with the ugly truth of life that faces us sometimes.

But the even uglier truth we’re facing right now is that we live in a world riddled with ego-driven narcissistic and psychopathic behavior - and so many of us are unhappy with it.

So what are the beliefs and behaviors we engage in that enable narcissists and psychopaths to get away with the fraud and lies they are currently perpetrating?

Retrenchment, even if you have voluntarily agreed to go through with it, is a horrible experience. And the only thing worse than being retrenched is having to stand in front of people and retrench them.

Whether or not you’re expecting to hear it, the news that you’ve been retrenched hits you like a sucker punch, usually in the stomach and around the chest region. If you’re one of the unluckier ones, it can feel like your whole body has been slammed into a brick wall.

The relentless marketing and advertising drives of the last century have landed us in the midst of a world of consumers driven by instant gratification – and to be fair, advertising is completely to blame.

We often hear talk of how we, as the advertising and marketing industry, have created low self-esteem and body issues in women, but you hear a lot less about the impact of creating a world of consumers.

A simple look around you will verify the fact we do live in a world of people who do nothing but consume, consume, consume though… so much so that we have concepts like ‘retail therapy’, and people will list shopping as a hobby or preferred activity.

Is it time for the marketing and advertising industry to start paying attention to this – and is it time for us to think our moral and ethical approach to how we position product?

So the horror and difficulty of 2016 are finally behind us, and it’s time to turn to the page and start over. So how do you get ready for a new start in 2017?

You’ve made resolutions before, listed your goals, promised to quit smoking, drink less and go on diet… and somewhere just after midnight on the first, it all started slipping away.

What do you need to consider to make resolutions that stick, and return results, in 2017?