Who you are is not a mystery but a very available truth, which you have access to if you would allow yourself to inquire into it deeply enough. The more time you spend with yourself, allowing your awareness to touch every aspect of you fully, the more you know yourself as who you are and this is the first step towards finding freedom from the prison of confused/conflicted living. Don’t try to lose yourself in distractions, you will only delay your freedom this way – take the time to find yourself, to really know yourself as this human expression. Your essential truth is that you are the one universal consciousness, but your present truth, in your waking state, is that you are a human expression and unless you know yourself fully as this physical expression you can never quite feel aligned with your wholeness.
Let go of judgments and find out your natural make-up
As you were growing up, you took in several perspectives from the people around you, from your culture, from the media and from the teachings you had access to. You took in some of these perspectives and made it your “conditioning” by imbuing belief in it. You took in standards on what is the “right way” of being and what is the wrong way of being, from the people around you. In the mixture of all this external conditioning, you started disconnecting with yourself and started orienting towards the standards set by others. This was the start of a conflicted life, the start of confusion.
If your mind is clouded with external conditioning, it’s very likely that it has disconnected fully with its natural make-up or natural proclivity. Such a mind is always in a state of dissatisfaction because it does not feel connected with itself. A lot of judgments are created in the mind owing to the external conditioning present in it, all the beliefs and perspectives that you took in from the “outside” cumulatively create a structure of judgment within. This cloud of judgment can prevent you from fully connecting with yourself as you are. To really find your natural make-up it’s important to find the courage to let go of the all the judgments and bring in a mindset of complete openness to really knowing yourself as you are.
Living a life of alignment
It’s so common to hear people constantly say “Something’s missing in my life”, they may not even know what it is. What’s missing is “alignment” with oneself, because when you are totally aligned with yourself it’s not possible to feel a sense of incompleteness. However, you must first really know yourself as who you are before you can line-up with yourself. Knowing yourself is challenging enough, but aligning with yourself can present a lot more challenges especially in a mind that is clouded with judgments created by external conditioning.
Bringing in a deep “awareness” to your inner space is the way to really knowing yourself. It can take time before you fully penetrate all aspects of you (may be a few months or an year) once you start bringing in awareness consciously. This journey of knowing yourself can be extremely interesting, it can feel like a total adventure, and it can also present several challenges because you may not always want to “accept” who you find yourself to be and thus try to live in denial of it. A high level of honestly, openness and authenticity is required, in many cases, to face up to who you really are as this human expression – and the challenge is that you have to bring this awareness to all the various facets of your physicality (after all we humans are multi-facets beings with many different dimensions to us).
Once you have truly identified your natural make-up you will be very clear about your preferences, attitude, outlook, approach, priorities and way of being. A lot of indecisions will melt away in this knowing. Actually, this self-knowing by itself opens the pathway towards an alignment – though it does require a deep level of commitment, initially, to stand true to yourself. It does take some initial courage to accept and align with yourself without allowing the outside pressures to dictate you. But one you make this conscious choice towards aligning with yourself, your life stream just takes over from there and you constantly start feeling guided and inspired in your movements. This is the beginning of a fulfilling life lived in alignment with your wholeness.
Sen what would you say is the best route to know oneself? In my mind I think sitting in calm and quiet and waiting for it to come to the surface is a good thing to practice and I have started doing it. I have found lately that when the mind goes crazy, the best thing to do is not to fight it but it to “let it go”, almost like a wailing infant, for which a parent does nothing but wait for him to tire/calm down.
Sitting in silence allows you to observe the mind without distractions and hence is one the best ways to get to know the natural make-up of your brain. To “know oneself” as this human expression is to know one’s mind fully and to align with its natural way of being instead of trying to force it to be some other way. One needs to be really open and non-judgmental to recognize the natural make-up of their mind, any form of judgment can act as resistance to knowing one’s true human expression.
It’s true that in your essence you are the universal consciousness which is pure positive energy, but your mind/brain is a “creation” in it and this mind is a programmed machine or neural network which has a particular make-up or design which is natural to it. You must understand that each human mind has a particular way of being and thus has a uniqueness to it. It’s important to stop trying to make to conform to some standard of “good” or “holiness” created the external society, and understand its natural movement. A lot of people try to force their mind to be holy or all loving, when in truth a human mind cannot ever be such an exemplified avatar of holiness. The mind is designed to see contrast, to come up with preferences, to have likes and dislikes, to have certain human drives and inclinations, to have sensuality – to force it to be some form of idealistic holiness is to defeat it’s very purpose. The preferences and desires in your mind create the base for new realities and thus allow expansion in life, so it’s really misplaced when a person tries to suppress the natural movement of their mind and force certain standards of holiness on it.
The only reason your mind is “wailing” is because you are not aligned with it fully and it’s just shouting out this conflicted experience that it’s having. Once you align with your mind, it will not be wailing at you, rather you would feel totally in harmony with it. It’s so important to realize that humanness is humanness, it’s not divinity or holiness. So many people feel conflicted because they are trying to run away from their physicality, from the “human nature” of their mind with it imperfections, drives and quirks. There is a perfection in the imperfection of humanness, which only gets revealed when one totally aligns with it after letting go of all the resistance and judgements.
Hi Sen
I feel as if I’m getting closer to who I am authentically but still struggle with conflicting preferences and indecision. My main issue is clarity of purpose – I know I want a life full of creativity, discovery, exploration,deep connection – I have a vague sense of what this may look like but nothing clear. I worry that although I feel I’m getting closer to feeling more authentic in this way, that by doing “nothing” and not clearly knowing what I want I will end up drifting and slowly will go back to a more inauthentic way of life for me, based on other people’s/society’s preferences and conditioning. If I do not clearly know what I want, how do I get there?
For example, when I go to the gym, I have an overall goal of running for 30mins. I’m not attached to the goal, it’s just something to aim towards. At the moment I am achieving 20 mins, once I feel comfortable and confident in this, I set a new goal of 21 mins the next day and achieve it etc I make steady progress, having a loose overall goal of what I want to achieve. I can see progress – it’s not the goal itself that I enjoy – but it’s the fact that I can see improvement, feel healthier, am developing confidence in being able to set a goal and achieve it consistently. I know the overall goal, and can break it down into small sizeable steps to get there.
But what happens when I don’t have a clear picture of where I want to go? It’s not so much that I need to know, part of the attraction is the unknown. But if I don’t know where I want to go how do I stay on track? Won’t it be too easy to drift back into old inauthentic ways if I don’t have a clear vision? I’ve quit a job that I was unhappy in and am now taking time out to do things I enjoy and live in a way that suits me – a more freelance lifestyle where I can choose when and where I work, eat healthier, have less stress, go slower… I’m listening more and more to my intuition and internal signals. But money is an issue, I’m living off savings, and the pressure to have money to survive may mean i go back to work that I can do but isn’t what I’m passionate about. I’m worried that I will then re-enter a cycle of misery again – knowing this is not a life I want but not knowing how to create a life I do want because I can’t visualise it. I’m concerned about entering the workforce again and being surrounded by other people who accept this as normal and thus causing tension for me in my struggle against this way of thinking.
How can one survive without getting into debt whilst transitioning to a more authentic life? Do I need to accept that I may need to straddle 2 worlds – i.e. go back into work whilst working out what I want to do? Is this not a step backwards? Or should I be more patient and wait for clarity to come (but get into debt whilst waiting) so that my next step will be more in line with what I want to do?
When you are in alignment with yourself, or rather with the pull of your life-stream, the right actions come through effortlessly – it can be in the form of planning, setting goals, getting organized, making schedules, setting up some future plans etc Actions are not what changes, what changes is the “vibration” that’s causing the action. In a disconnected state, it’s usually the vibration of “fear, lack or hatred” that fuels our actions, while in the connected state (or what I call a state of wholeness), which comes through letting go of the negative ego, it always the vibration of “joy, love and wholeness” that fuels our actions – fear no longer stays as the motivational force for our actions. Of course all fear driven actions are inherently counter-productive either in the short run or long run, because the vibration that fuels the action is what gets reflected in the reality constructed out of these actions (this is how creation in this universe, which follows law of attraction).
As you started connecting with yourself, you found yourself inspired to move out of realities that felt in-congruent with your natural expression. And also felt energy coming into you to take right actions like pursuing your work-out goals. In this state of connection, I am sure you sense an effortless momentum in your actions. I am sure you can sense your health coming into harmony, in the same way your finances and relationships will also come into harmony – because the energy that creates worlds is now working effortlessly through you in your state of allowing.
Rest assured that you will not be moved into any negative realities in this state of being, since debt feels negative to your being it’s not what your reality will move into. A solution is already manifest non-physically through your desire for financial stability, and this solution is taking shape through the energy movement of the totality. The experience is that close to 99% of your manifestation takes shape physically before you are presented with the solid evidence of it and that completes the rest 1%. So even if you are not aware of any evidence of a solution coming through, rest assured that a solution is in the process of taking shape and the “timing” is also taken care of by the intelligence of your life movement. As you mentioned, you still have some savings that are tiding you through, and so life is has not created any “chaos” for you – it will move you into a harmonious situation which will allow a financial stability in your life. All “chaotic” situations are created from actions stemming out of the chronic negativity of the mind, left on its own your life-stream always moves in a deep harmony and wisdom which does not create chaos, or crisis, of any form. The right action you need to take will be made evident to you at just the right time, you need to stay in a total trust of your life-stream’s intelligence irrespective of the fears of the mind.
Thank you