You Cannot Both Experience Life and Live Life

When we go into experiences as feelings and emotions within ourselves, we subconsciously seek to validate the experience through interpreting situations and events in our environment. It is by no chance or luck that our interpretations will exactly confirm our experience. 

Let us look at an example:

If we are feeling confident in a moment, we will act in certain ways, gaining certain feedback from our environment, or simply interpreting situations and events in our environment that will confirm that yes, I am confident, I am for example: loud, boisterous, direct, hold a certainty in what I say, people like me, agree with me and I have influence over others-  or however one has defined confidence and being confident throughout one’s life. 

I’m speaking here of confidence as an experience and not a living expression of confidence. A living expression of confidence as Self would be where one stands regardless of one’s internal experience, whereas an experience of confidence is one where one feels confident in a moment, and for that moment one changes and acts out confidently, but when the experience changes, to one of insecurity, uncertainty or doubt for example, one will also change and now live out this new experience.

This may all seem well and fine, even normal in fact; but have a look at what it is we are accepting and allowing through this seemingly simple or normal participation in experiences and experiencing:

We are actually accepting and allowing an experience to direct us, to be the director of our thoughts, words and deeds. An experience of ‘confidence’ may fly under the radar as it is a positive experience that one may enjoy, but the point remains that we have given away our self-responsibility as our ability to direct ourselves in thought, words and deed, we have given it away to an experience. 

This implies that this is our protocol when it comes to experiences, which then implies that this is how we will behave within both positive and negative experiences. 

Let us now have a look at the flip side of the coin – the negative. 

An example of a negative experience would be one of insecurity, jealousy, unworthiness, feeling left out, or any other such negative experience. Now we will look to confirm and validate this experience by acting out in certain ways or interpreting situations and events in our environment that will tell us that yes, we are not secure, we are less-than, we are not worthy, we are left out. We will, for example, not speak up, participate less in an interaction, or self-isolate depending on the negative experience, and by our own actions make the experience real in physical reality, thus confirming our experience (and eventually, over time, manifesting the experience as the reality of who we are).

What is happening here is that we are actually manipulating ourselves and manipulating our realities to generate internal experiences through acting and interpreting situations and events to confirm and validate the very experiences we have created within ourselves. The question to ask here is, what would happen, what would reality be if we were to instead direct ourselves to be present in the moment as it is? Another question to ask is, why do I trust this experience over and above trusting myself as the director and the decision-maker of my life?

The interesting aspect of this entire play-out is that we have in fact designed it for and as ourselves – it is pre-programmed, for and by us. We do this over time and throughout our lives, where we decide how we behave when we are confident, jealous, insecure etc… for example: when I am insecure, I become quiet, defensive and push people away, when I am confident, I become loud, boisterous and certain. 

The question to ask here is: what is it that we are creating ourselves as over time? I would answer here that what we are creating is limitation – self-limitation where we limit ourselves to certain pre-determined scripts. These scripts evolve more and more into themselves until they become who we are in fact, as we are the creators of ourselves. Within this, we end up closing the doors on the vast potential and opportunities Life has to offer, and stick to our pre-programmed paths, bouncing back and forth between seeking out positive experiences and avoiding negative experiences. We will chase positive experiences, avoiding situations, events or people that do not confirm our positive experience – situations, events and people that could have been keys for us to develop, grow, overcome and transcend our limitations, but instead we chose to trust and follow the desired experience and remain on a fast track to nowhere. Conversely, we even go so far as to fear the negative experiences we accept and allow ourselves to create, going into an anticipation of them and thus creating and generating degrees of anxiety as we fear repeating the negative script we have written for ourselves. 

Within all of this, what we are in fact doing is experiencing life, and not Living Life. We are choosing by our acceptances and allowances to, instead of living in real time, real reality in the moment, live in a very small experience that takes place in isolation inside that tiny kingdom between our two ears – our mind. 

What we tend to miss within all of this is the fact that the entire play out, both positive and negative, is us seeking out to fulfill our own self-interest as a constant confirmation that we are right and correct – wether it feels good or bad, “at least I am right (righteous)”/”at least I am in control”/”I knew it!” (at least we are god/all powerful somewhere) – but to what end?

We are trying and attempting to experience something more than what is Here. In this, we are making the statement that Life, as it exists, is not enough. I am not enough. There must be something more. I must be something more. This is the effect experience has upon us, where the self-aggrandizing and self-diminishment has us existing as experience only, and not Life, not Living. And not only are we not actually Living, but we are missing reality – the reality that is playing out on this earth. We are too preoccupied in our own minds and experiences that we can overlook abject poverty, environmental atrocities, disregard our neighbours and our fellow man as our tunnel vision blinds us to focus on but ONE thing – our experience. 

It is like living in a movie or a story book where regardless of if self is the hero or the victim – self is the main character (one that lacks substance or any REAL character).

What is the alternative?

An alternative can be that we stand up as Self-Trust in and as Who We Are, letting go of our addiction to experience to instead live moment-by-moment, breath-by-breath as we accumulate moments of self-direction to now create ourselves as the directive-principle of Who We Are. Within this, we are not missing out on Life unfolding before our very eyes – where our participation in reality now becomes constructive, our interactions become open and dynamic, we see what is really in fact Here and what needs to be done. We open ourselves up to face and walk through situations and events as they are – thus allowing and in fact placing the foundations in for self-growth, self-expansion and self-development, challenging our limitations and proving to ourselves what we are capable of. In this, becoming someone that honours, respects and regards Self - where one actually Lives Life in such a way that now Honours Life, because once you see Life and yourself as a participant, the responsibility becomes undeniable, as it is you, and you are it. Life is Us, and We are Life, One and Equal.

Purchasing Self-Expression: The Perfect Perpetual Industry

I had an experience in my life where I moved from a corporate office environment in Canada, to a farm in South Africa, and then to a mountain town in Panama where I work from home. With these changes came some serious wardrobe changes, where my clothes from one environment were pretty much useless in the next one.

The interesting thing I noted was how the clothing and accessory changes changed my experience of myself. Where, in the office I would be quite fancy, with jewelry that matched my outfit, hair done, sometimes even with the nails and definitely makeup. I felt quite glamorous and professional, and a fresh new outfit would have me walking into the office full of confidence.

On the farm and in Panama, my clothing became purely practical. I noticed I felt I was now lacking certain experiences. I felt less confident, slower and less vibrant. I had to learn how to live these expressions now in Who I Was, because I could no longer simply purchase them from a store.  

With the glamour point which links in to the consumerism point, for me what I see is where an entire industry has been built around people seeking to fulfill desires – desires which have arisen from us not accepting and allowing ourselves to live certain expressions, and so separating ourselves from those expressions, leaving us feeling ‘unfulfilled’.

We then seek to fulfill ourselves through the experience a product or lifestyle (or any external experience) will apparently give us, which will obviously never be enough as we are not living it for ourselves. So we keep bouncing back and forth from one polarity to the other – from fulfilled (only temporarily as an experience) to unfulfilled (the reality of Self through separating Self from living self-expression) – thus creating the perfect industry: the more money you have, the more you can spend on attempting fulfillment. The more glamour in this case, the more the person is showing how unfulfilled they actually are, and so have to keep paying to keep the feeding the experience.

The cool part is that you can look at what desire the product represents that we are seeking to fulfill, and then see how that can be lived as a living expression of Self instead, thus creating actual self-fulfillment – where glamour can then become an act self-expression (which means if it were lost or taken away, we would not change).

The not so cool part is that until we fulfill ourselves as living expressions, we will be consumers of experience, consuming Life as the resources of the earth in self-interest as we seek to fulfill our desires that we ourselves created in the first place through separation.

Finding My Self-Expression

One of the keys to releasing the accumulated energy of OCD has been to learn about and live self-expression. This self-expression as Who I Really Am, beneath the layers of anxiety, fear, anticipation, urgency, rush, avoidance, control and so many other internal experiences, seems to be buried so deep that I feel I cannot access it. 

The question I am left wondering is – Who Am I beyond or beneath OCD? It has become so much a part of what I do, how I behave and what I express that I have built an entire self-definition, self-image, self-identification and self-belief system around it. This has become integrated as fact, the reality of me so much so that it feels like I have to breathe and dig before I can find Who I Really Am, what I have to say, what I actually enjoy and like, and what expressions are Here for me in moments. 

It has become a moment-to-moment practice, to recognize what is Here for me and where it is coming from – it is a practice in self-awareness. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear expressing myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear feeling vulnerable in moments where I am expressing myself, where I bind my expression to others and in that, feel ‘hurt’ if my expression is seemingly ‘not accepted’, which indicates that what I was expressing was conditional, only allowed on the condition that it is accepted, ‘appreciated’, acknowledged, understood by those around me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place conditions on my self-expression, abdicating my self-responsibility of Who I Am onto others, placing them in the position to ‘make’ me as my apparent self-expression feel accepted, comfortable and safe, instead of ME embracing and accepting myself – seeing and realizing that it is my own reactions that I am fearing, and so instead creating a safe space or safe haven within myself, and expressing me from there.

I forgive myself that I have not recognized the fact that if it is truly self-expression, it is Here regardless of how it is received – that simply does not matter or have a role in what or how I am expressing myself – except for practical assessments based in physical reality – understanding that I cannot always fully express myself in certain places or at certain times – withholding for practical reasons and not because of or due to internal reactions – wherein I can still recognize and see what is here for me, and can alter it if required, knowing that I am not compromising myself or my expression, but rather considering the Whole and everyone Here as me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that any reaction I am in will automatically contaminate my self-expression and so I should not speak, instead of trusting myself that I can correct my expression in the moments where I act, living self-forgiveness and self-correction within and through living application.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that I must ‘wait’ until I have no reactions within me before I speak or express, thinking and believing that only then, when I am completely clear and ‘pure’ – only then can I express me, not seeing or realizing that I will then wait forever, because unless I apply and correct – nothing will move.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to condition myself to fearing self-expression, thinking and believing myself to have been ‘born in sin’ – where my self-expression is necessarily wrong and bad and must be contorted, controlled and altered to fit in to the acceptable standards, norm and culture of human interaction.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hesitate for a moment before I express me, wherein, in that hesitation, instead of checking myself in a quantum moment as “placing a guard before my mouth”, I instead go into reaction and accept/allow myself to participate and then be over-taken by the reaction wherein I then suppress my self-expression in that moment, losing a moment forever.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing moments, instead of embracing all of me, including my mistakes, letting the moment go within remembering the lesson, and using the mis-take to learn and apply myself differently the next time, thus practicing and perfection my self-expression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to experience my self-expression as ‘unsafe’, wherein I think I need a ‘safe’ environment in which to express me, thus limiting my self-expression to how I feel as my mood (DOOM) as feelings and emotions, thus once again placing conditions upon my self-expression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive my self-expression and the self-expression of others as ‘unsafe’ because it is unpredictable, it is not something that can be controlled – and thus it is a threat to consciousness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe myself to be consciousness, wherein when something ‘threatens’ consciousness existence and control, I feel as though ‘I’ am threatened as Who I Really Am, instead of seeing that it is the ‘I’ of the mind that is only required to step down, within the trust that ‘I’ as my stand as Who I Am, Where I Am and Why I am within my process of self-development (position and location) is willing and able to stand equally as I realize, develop, grow and create myself Here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to victimize myself within my self-expression, where there is an inherent blame, expectation and demand on my environment and those in it to do or be something FOR ME, within the misconception that something outside of myself must create, do or be something first, before I can express me Here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame things outside of myself,

instead of trusting and honouring me as my expression.