Look Inside to Self for Guidance

“Look inside to Self for guidance” follows “be silent always – take a breath before you speak”.  Please read the following blogs for context:

Be Silent Always (When is Silence Real?) 

Be Silent Always (2)

 Take a Breath Before You Speak 

Take a Breath Before You Speak (2) 

 

When you look inside to SELF for guidance, which ‘Self’ are you looking to? The self-interested self, or the Self that stands within responsibility, that stands within principle, within integrity, within respect, the one that stands as what is Best for All?

Can you stand as the Tree of Life that gives unconditionally, expecting nothing in return?

Can you stand as responsibility, taking SELF-responsibility and taking responsibility for your environment as an extension of yourself?  Responsibility leaves no time for self-interest.

Can you give as you would like to receive, without first receiving?

It is vitally important to first learn how to be silent always – because as soon as your mind becomes busy, you are already in self-interest. Within this, you cannot trust yourSELF to guide you, because you are living as a ‘self’ that is out for its own gain. This means that anything that comes from this self will be a manipulation, seeking profits and avoiding losses. Seeking positive experience and avoiding negative experience. Within this, self disregards everything in one’s reality as ‘self’ becomes the center of the universe, not seeing and realizing the consequence one is creating, or, seeing it and not really caring, being ‘ok’ with the consequence, so long as it is happening to another (not remembering we are One, and we are Equal, so creating consequence in the life of another is at the same time creating your own consequence, either directly and immediately, or indirectly and/or over time).

When you take a breath before you speak, you have a moment to clear yourself, to be self-honest, to see through your own manipulation and consider the Whole. You have a moment to bring in CARE, CONSIDERATION, RESPECT and REGARD for not only yourself, but for everyone your words might affect. You have this timeless moment to look to Self for Guidance. Your best Self. You Self that Stands as what is Best for All.

In this, there is at first an inner battle that takes place, as we have been taught through the education system, the money system and social systems to look out for ourselves, ensure our own survival at the sake of others, to be the one that climbs the ladder of success to provide for self and one’s own. There is very little consideration for ‘the other’, ‘them’, they are seen as the competition, and their diminishment is your gain. See how we live this out in our own minds in the small ways in our lives, how we do not see my success as your success, your happiness as my happiness. We have very much separated ourselves into ‘us’ vs ‘them’, ‘me’ vs ‘you’. This is so well-known that it is cliché, but have we ever really taken a look at how in actually live the correction?

Within this battle of the selves, when looking inside to one’s Best Self for guidance, what I have found is that in the beginning, when choosing the path of Best for All there is an immense fear. This fear is an indicator that one is in fact functioning according to principles, possibly for the first time. This is functioning without feeling, emoting or experiencing. The fear comes like a firewall as in one’s words and actions one is deliberately giving up self-interest, which has been linked to survival. One is deliberately NOT feeding one’s ego, which has been linked to survival. One is deliberately giving up ‘experience’ as personal wants and desires (see this blog for context: You Cannot Both Experience Life and Live Life), which has been linked to living and being alive.

However, everything that is being given up is based in survival and experience, instead of in Life, Living and Real Fulfillment in the physical, which is a slow, breath-by-breath creational process rooted in actual action taken over time. We have been living in fear and survival for so long now, that anything that does not align with this feels like it is going against our best interest, our living and our survival – and the feeling is strong, as it is in our programming, in our neuro-pathways, it is in our DNA – and changing this involves a deep and profound change that will challenge you on these levels of existence that have gone untouched for far too long. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use self-interest as my guide in what I do, how I think and what I say.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that feelings and emotions must guide me in order to ensure my survival and my enjoyment in this life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to pursue gain as my guide, where my thoughts, words and deeds are being guided by my wants and desires that benefit only me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to link feelings and emotions to survival.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to link ego to survival.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to link experience to living.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that I NEED to experience something in order to live, to feel alive.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have trusted a self I had built and created in self-interest, in unawareness, without consideration, honour, respect and regard for others, for the Whole, for the bigger picture and the long term.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to turn a blind eye to the direct link between living from a starting point of self-interest and the consequence I have seen in my life, not linking the two, but instead trusting in hope for some change or solution to present itself, instead of BEING the solution and the change for and as myself and so others.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see and realize the importance of a clear starting point within and without, clearing the inner and the outer as Who I Am within myself and Who I Am in my reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to look to others for guidance, trusting them, and copying without discernment which means I have not taken complete self-responsibility, which can then lead to blame.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to use others as examples only, where I take the best of them and then look inside myself for how I can live those words as me, in my way within and as my expression, where only I can be my guide in the decisions and choices I make, the words I choose to speak and the actions I take.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear looking inside Self for guidance due to the self-responsibility this entails, where my mistakes and fuckups are my own, the consequences I may create are my own, where there is no backdoor of blame, where actual learning must be applied, lived and patterned into the deepest levels of myself, which is a process of patience, repetition, trust and time.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to guide myself towards actions that honour what is Best for All, but have instead fallen to fear and not wanting to give up my self-interest, looking for short-term gains as experience and not looking at the long-term creational process that involves the betterment of everyone.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trust fear over Life.

I forgive myself that I have NOT accepted and allowed myself to see and realize that trusting Life is an active and not a passive process.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see and realize that trusting Life involves letting go of the old while birthing the new, and that this process can be painful from both angles.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want proof as ‘receiving’ before I give, believing within this that my giving is of no consequence, is unappreciated, is empty, instead of seeing and realizing the self-fulfillment I create when I give as an expression of myself, where the giving is at the same time receiving as I give to others as myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear pain both physical and emotional, to fear fear, and to fear death, instead of seeing and realizing that at this point these things are an inevitability to be faced, that they can be faced as they are not greater than Who I am as my expression, as Life, and so I decide to face them as a creational process or a destructive and diminishing process.

I commit myself to let go of the self as self-interest as fear, feelings, emotions and personal gain as my guide.

I commit myself to look inside mySELF for guidance, to the Self that stands, that knows, that sees what is Best for All and what is not.

 

 

 

 

Be Silent Always (2)

 

 

This blog is continued from Be Silent Always (What is Real Silence?)

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realize that the inner storms, the inner turmoil, the dis-ease, and the emotional states that I experience within myself are caused by the mind-noise, the lack of silence, the missed moments, the accumulation of seemingly insignificant thoughts that arise in moments, and within this:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to suppress the accumulated consequence that I myself created through not remaining silent always as a real silence, not seeing and realizing the self-fulfilling prophecy of creating the very emotional states and inner turmoil, which ends up bogging me down physically and emotionally, when all along all I had to do was be Here, in each moment, like a fresh moment and a blank slate in each breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to hang on to the mind-noise as inner chatter, repeating thoughts, repeating the same patterns over and over, reacting in the same ways over and over. Not seeing and realizing how easy it actually is to just stop, to let it all go, to take a breath and begin anew, forgive myself and move on.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see and realize that when I am alone, there should be silence except for practical planning and direct seeing of my environment, and that anything other than this is mind-noise which always accumulates into a negative consequence with a destructive effect in myself, in my life or in the lives of others (as myself) eventually.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to hang onto positive thoughts when I know this creates a polarity which compromises me eventually.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to hang on to negative thoughts as it destroys me immediately.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to hang on to thoughts and become addicted to thoughts and thinking instead of taking a breath and walking through the slight pull every time I stop myself from participating in thoughts.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that inner-silence/remaining silent always is boring, and that within this I should be stimulated, constantly buzzing to keep me distracted and pre-occupied in a tiny bubble where all of my time and focus is invested on controlling the inner-experience that I myself am disrupting with polarized thought.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear letting go of the control I experience when I accept/allow myself to manipulate myself with positive and negative thoughts, not seeing and realizing that I am not actually in control, the thoughts move too quickly, and so I am constantly only playing catch-up and damage-control, trying to maintain and subdue the stress levels, the anxiety levels, the fear levels, the insecurity, the uncertainty – all of the conditions I have conditioned my body into over a lifetime – thus proving to myself that actual control does not exist, only Self-Expression in the moment can carry one through on the cutting edge of time – real time, timelessness, the unpredictable, the unplanned, the things cannot be prepared for. Only Self-Expression does not accumulate destructive consequence.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that being silent is without sound, not seeing and realizing that Life is sound, and there will be sounds, and the only ‘noise’ is reacting to those sounds.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I cannot be silent always.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that I can’t stop my reactions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that I cannot quite my mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that I cannot do something if I have not already done it before.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that a quiet mind is impossible.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when my mind is quiet, I enjoy myself more.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realize that when my mind is quiet, I laugh more.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see and realize that when my mind is quiet I do more of the things that I know will benefit me, and within that self-consideration, I find fulfillment.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see and realize that when my mind is quiet, I can consider others more, and that within that consideration I find fulfillment.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see and realize that when my mind is quiet, I consider what is Best for All.

Daily Osho Card Reading - Day 21 of 21: THE SOURCE

"When we speak of being "grounded" or "centered" it is this Source we are talking about. When we begin a creative project, it is this Source that we tune in to. This card reminds us that there is a vast reservoir of energy available to us. And that we tap into it not by thinking and planning but by getting grounded, centered, and silent enough to be in contact with the Source. It is within each of us, like a personal, individual sun giving us life and nourishment. Pure energy, pulsating, available, it is ready to give us anything we need to accomplish something, and ready to welcome us back home when we want to rest. So whether you are beginning something new and need inspiration right now, or you've just finished something and want to rest, go to the Source. It's always waiting for you, and you don't even have to step out of your house to find it."

This is very cool timing for this card, as I am about to begin a complex project that I have been slightly resisting, yet at the same time preparing myself for, now feeling nothing but ready for it. The tendency I noticed is to look at a large task and become overwhelmed by it's complexity and enormity, bringing all of it right here and placing potentially hundreds of hours of work in my mind as if I will have to experience it all at once.

The thing about long-term projects or big tasks is that they can only happen one step at a time. So bringing in any extra steps, potentialities, projections etc... is really of no use. The image on the card represents this quite well, where there is a strong and defined focal point, and on the outside there are snake-like forms, almost resembling sperm, looking like they are trying to penetrate that core in order to plant the seeds of distraction, resistance, thoughts, ideas and beliefs.

Within the card's description I am seeing the process of developing focus, stability and groundedness within and through pushing and practicing tapping into the 'source' of self, that life essence that brings passion and motivation. This reminds me of a recording done on EQAFE, called Recognizing Your Life Signature, explaining how to practice this point of nurturing and growing that life thread or essence, as it is something that has to be practiced in, applied in awareness, and does not just come to us 'naturally' due to the nature and relationship we have developed with our minds.

Practicing in one's life essence, or in other words 'tapping into source', is something rather new to me, something that requires a process walked in awareness in order to discover for self, step-by-step. I can see that I am right now primed for it, I feel it, I see the first steps, and now it is a matter of pushing forward to dive in and do it.

I have been dancing around this point for a while, seeing that I am ready but instead of diving in, doing all the little tasks around the point, still 'preparing', 'setting myself up to begin', until finally, there is nothing standing in between me and just getting started. I had a few false starts already, but have since corrected them and re-aligned my starting point. I also see the tendency of the mind to now create more distractions, entertainments, other 'feel good' experiences to place between myself and really getting down to doing something for real.

So now, there is nothing more I need to do but to get started, tap into that source to make this project a life project within which I get to discover parts of myself that I have not yet dared venture into before. A new process, a new path of creation, another step in my process of eternal self-discovery and birthing myself here as life in the physical. I am ready.

Osho Card Reading: SORROW - day 18 of 21

"The image is of Ananda, the cousin and disciple of Gautam Buddha. He was at Buddha's side constantly, attending to his every need for forty-two years. When Buddha died, the story is told that Ananda was still at his side, weeping. The other disciples chastised him for his misunderstanding: Buddha had died absolutely fulfilled; he should be rejoicing. But Ananda said, "You misunderstand. I'm weeping not for him but for myself, because for all these years I have been constantly at his side but I have still not attained." Ananda stayed awake for the whole night, meditating deeply and feeling his pain and sorrow. By the morning, it is said, he was enlightened. Times of great sorrow have the potential to be times of great transformation. But in order for transformation to happen we must go deep, to the very roots of our pain, and experience it as it is, without blame or self-pity."

The intention I was holding within myself today was about a point of resistance I am experiencing in relation to asking someone to do something with me, for me, that I know they do not necessarily want to do, but I need them to do it so that I can advance on a project. It has always been a weakness of mine, where I will take it to the point of, ‘if you don’t want to do it then forget about it, I’ll find someone else’. But the reality is that, sometimes there isn’t someone else, and sometimes we have to face to music of ‘putting someone out’ because we need support.

Looking a little deeper behind the point, I see that it actually involves not wanting to annoy or displease people, always wanting to remain on people’s good side, not wanting to upset the relationship. If the relationship were to become upset I would in fact feel pain and sorrow, as the card states, but not for the right reasons. ‘People pleasing’ is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It seems nice and pleasant, but at the same time, it diminishes self and the other, because in a way, it is manipulative and controlling instead of being self-honest in a relationship.

The point of people pleasing is to get people to like you, and not dislike you. There is a fear that if they dislike you, it is s if a part of you becomes invalidated, as if part of you is lost or has been taken away. If you are liked, then life is good, everything must be in order, you check out according to others.

But the thing is, when I reflect back on my life, how many times have I not spoken, have I seen something and did not point it out, or have I suppressed my expression for fear of it upsetting someone else outside myself. The fear of conflict and the desire to please. This dependency upon the pleasing and approval of others is like Ananda’s dependency on the Buddha, where there is the belief that, without this other person, I cannot be this or that. That without pleasing people I cannot be liked and accepted, if I upset people I may be ostracized and rejected, people will talk in hushed whispers behind my back and not give me a chance to speak and explain myself. Without me explaining myself, gossip and rumors will take over until others think I am something completely different to what I am.

Another reality check is that I cannot control what others think of me. I have power over who I am and making sure that I am consistent in my thoughts, actions words and deeds by aligning them within principles – doing what’s best for all, which includes myself, placing myself in the shoes of others, listening, HEARING different perspectives – and trust that, within this consistency, Who I Am will come though, and I can stand within that and not be moved by any gossip or backchat.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear pushing others when I need something from them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear pushing others because I fear they will say no and then I will be powerless to move forward in my endeavour.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel powerless in situations where I must cooperate, preferring instead to work alone, instead of learning the tools, techniques and skills of working within a group, speaking up, compromising, organising and arranging, knowing that things might not go exactly how I had planned, but that they will still move.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a dynamic of dependency and approval, where I think/believe/perceive that I cannot advance if I do not have all the control, thus going into helplessness and powerlessness when I need to work something out with someone else.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to interpret even the smallest signs of resistance from another to help me out when I need it as signs of insurmountable defeat. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want/need/desire to control a thing instead of strengthening my skills or working well with others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think/believe/perceive I can only get something done if I am controlling it, not seeing/realizing and understanding that the starting point of this control is the belief that I cannot confront and overcome my fear of displeasing another/conflict/putting another out for me. A triple whammy of fears.

When and as I see that I am not moving on a project due to fear of conflict/displeasing/putting others out, I stop, and I breathe. I remind myself that I am:

1-     Creating consequences in my life such as stress and anxiety because my project is not moving.

2-     Accepting and allowing the fear within me to supersede what is best for all as me, because it is halting a project and halting my self-development as well as diminishing myself through unnecessary consequences and reactions.

3-     Diminishing myself due to fears that are self-created.

4-     Diminishing the self-trust I have worked hard to develop by accepting/allowing fear to stand more steadfast than Who I Am.

I bring myself back to self-direction by reminding myself that Who I Am will always be stronger and stand more steadfast than any thought/feeling/emotion from myself or anybody else, because Who I Am is  something , and can be something real, that stands the test of time so long as I am consistent in my application.

Interesting how the self forgiveness statement revealed an even deeper level of control from a starting point of fear – the fear that I cannot stand in the face of conflict, displeasing and putting others out. Right in the middle of writing this blog I became so fed-up with this fear that I literally walked out and went to the person who’s assistance I needed. I went in to it knowing it could go either way, so I was ready for any answer, and in the end, got what I needed, and actually had quite an enjoyable time with the person. It just goes to show how rarely reality matches up with our expectations!

So, like in the card, I must sometimes face some hard truths of myself, walking the consequences of what I have accepted and allowed myself to be and become, and from within the darkest moments and low points, to see the opportunity for growth and transformation. I will red flag this: when experiencing a low, ask myself, what is the transformation required here?

And always remember, this too shall pass, so we'd better make the most of every moment, so that we can carry new gifts into the next moment in order to build and strengthen ourselves in the present, releasing the burdens of the past.