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Understanding Yourself
Self-Inquiry |
Foundation Four
I will take steps to know myself and to have that knowledge become a living truth in my life.
I resolve to know myself, to fearlessly question my assumptions and the deep-seated concepts I have about myself, to understand my underlying beliefs, priorities, fears, and desires, and to become aware of the subconscious forces that shape my thinking and determine my actions and reactions to life.
I will put my knowledge into action; I will “walk the walk and talk the talk,” for knowledge is a burden if it doesn’t positively inform my life … I am grateful for all the knowledge that has come to me, and those who have generously shared their knowledge with me; and the best way I can express my gratitude is by honoring that knowledge, by having it become a living truth that uplifts my life and brings benefit to this world.
What is Moving You?
What is motivating you? What is prompting your actions? Are your intentions inspired by the positive and loving qualities of Spirit or by the negative states of fear, guilt, insecurity, selfishness, or misplaced obligation? It’s your task to find out. It’s your task to know what is motivating you and, if need be, create new motivations for your actions that are in line with Spirit and the pure positivity of your own nature.
Who am I?
Doing self-inquiry by asking questions such as, “Who am I?” or “What is true for me?”—or pondering any question about your nature—puts you into the right relationship with life. It puts you in a position of not knowing, of openness to possibilities that you have heretofore overlooked or have not considered. Few people dare to question the core beliefs they have about themselves because those beliefs are protected by one’s identity structure and a wall of fear—and that wall is thick and obstinate, and must be dismantled brick by brick. This is not an easy process. It requires strength, support, and perseverance. It requires us to make “a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves.” But it also requires that we be open, accepting, and gentle with ourselves. When doing the difficult work on yourself always remember: “Handle with Care.”
Removal of Subconscious Blocks
All of us have had incidents of physical and emotional pain that result in “trauma blocks” which, in the course of our development, get energetically buried or entombed in our subconscious mind. These blocks, though we are not directly aware of them, alter our experience of life and diminish our own aliveness. They lower the vibration of our entire psyche, use up our vital life-energy, and fearfully distort our actions and reactions to life. They bring about disease. All spiritual advance is undermined by the presence of these deep-seated trauma blocks and any complete program of spiritual and human development involves their systematic removal. This removal brings about a release of the emotional charge (associated with the original trauma) which then lightens our life and frees up all the life-energy that was heretofore used to hold that charge in place.
Exposure of these subconscious trauma blocks to the light of our own consciousness—through a systematic, one-on-one process or persistent self-inquiry—is one way these blocks can be uncovered and discharged. We can’t remove these blocks by running away from them or pushing them deeper into our subconscious mind; the only way to fully exorcise these embedded traumas is to shine the light of awareness on them and face them, now, from a place of safety, strength, and support.
Removal of these embedded trauma blocks is a long, systematic process that is never really complete; but every step we take, every trauma or painful incident that we remove from our subconscious mind moves us toward freedom, toward a truer sense of ourselves, and toward a more joyous experience of life.
People gifted in the art of removing trauma blocks (or what might be seen as DNA-embedded emotions) can be of great assistance in helping a person remove blocks that they are not aware of, including traumas that are too deep or painful to recall or traumas involving ancestors.
Clearly seeing our specific beliefs about ourselves is of crucial importance because so much of our suffering is based on unconsciously holding on to these beliefs without ever questioning their validity. Until we see these beliefs clearly and repeatedly—the beliefs that make up the basic story line of “me”—they will continue to dictate how we fell and act. … The first phase of practice is not limited to simply looking at our beliefs. We also need to become aware of and observe our most frequent emotional reactions. Do you know yours? Is it anger? Anxiety or fear? Confusion? … Eventually, we have to move from simply observing our emotions and fears to actually entering into them, or residing in them, experientially—which means to feel them fully in the body. … Residing in an emotion occurs when we feel the physical experience nonconceptually—that is, without being hooked into the storyline of thoughts, the storyline of “me." (Bayda, Zen Heart, p. 8-9)
Supplemental
(In this process) I accept myself just as I am, holding that nothing is wrong with me and nothing about me needs to be fixed.
Accepting yourself as you are, without “buying into” the nagging and ill-conceived sense that something is wrong with you, that something needs to be fixed—or worse yet, that you are unworthy—is a major step on the path of living a true life. Enough with all this must-miss striving, improving, fixing, comparing, and getting down on yourself for this or that shortcoming. Put all that aside for now and just see if you can accept yourself as you are, even with all your so-called flaws. Even with your “flaws” you are still an individual expression of Spirit. Maybe those “flaws” are part of a greater perfection that you don’t yet understand. Maybe the acceptance of those “flaws” from a place of wholeness and perfection is very the path to freedom, the essential work you need to do in order to realize your true worth. Remember, the moon need not be full in order to shine.
True creativity and fulfillment in life begins with the wholehearted acceptance of yourself—all of yourself—along with the wholehearted acceptance of whatever experience the Universe is bringing you in this moment. It is this running away from yourself, the belittlement of yourself, the ignorance of your true value and worth, and the nonstop effort to alter your present experience and fix your outer conditions that steer you in the wrong direction. So, first, be yourself, love and accept yourself—just as you are, just as Infinite Spirit accepts you—then do as you may, then everything shall be added unto you.
Greenlighting / The Power of "Yes"
The term “greenlighting" (as first employed by Saniel Bonder) refers to the total acceptance of who you are; it’s giving the green light to yourself, exactly as you are. It’s also about the embrace of whatever experience you are having without trying to change it, run from it, reject it, or mentalize it away. It’s the total acceptance of yourself, and life, as it is, right now. We might also call this "the power of 'yes'."
As you may discover, when you don’t accept yourself, when you reject the unwanted parts of yourself, when you avoid what you are actually experiencing you create a negative spiral in your life (which puts you out of sync with the all-accepting nature of Spirit). The pain of rejecting yourself and running from your pain is often more painful and persistent than the pain you are so desperately trying to avoid. So don’t run, don’t hide from your experience or from any part of yourself. Give whatever is coming up for you the green light. Just let it be. Feel it. Experience it. Be it. Don’t try to change it or fix it. Don’t avoid it or supplant it with some reactive commentary that is constantly telling you about your experience. Experience it as it is, without a reaction, without a commentary, without a sense of “me.” Just be with it. Just feel the physical sensation in your body. Just behold it from a place of wholeness, a place of pure awareness and unconditional love.
God is always giving you the green light—He is lovingly embracing all of you, every aspect of your being. You cannot truly do God’s will unless you give yourself the green light as well, unless you lovingly accept the all of yourself, just as you are. Why is this so? Because it’s God’s will that you lovingly accept all of yourself, just as you are—exactly as He lovingly accepts the all of you, just as you are. Now, tell me, how can you do God’s will by doing something different from God’s will?
God’s Power is Infinite. This concept is difficult to grasp; it means that God can do anything. He exists in total freedom. The Sufis hold that God creates this entire universe from nothing a billion times a second. There is no movement, just a billion different creations of the whole universe in a second, and that creates the appearance of movement. A Being of Infinite Power can create all universes—every star, every planet, every atom—from nothing, a billion times a second. He can create anything He wants; and He always creates exactly what He wants. And what is He choosing to create right now?—you, exactly as you are. He is pouring the entirety of His being into you and choosing you to be exactly who you are, exactly as He is creating you now. That is His will; He can have no other will. If you desire to do God’s will then begin by wholeheartedly embracing the whole of who you are, and the whole of Life, just as God Himself is doing right now.
God is giving you more than a green light; He is giving you life itself. He is pouring the whole of His love, power, aliveness, and beauty into you right now. If God, as you understand Him to be, does not accept you, the all of you, exactly as you are, with unconditional love and without judgment—and wish that you be exactly as you are right now—then you’ve got the wrong version of God. You’ve got the wrong understanding of who you really are and how thus universe works.
If it were God’s Will that you be different from who you are right now, you’d be different from who you are right now. Everything, exactly as it is showing up right now, is God’s will. Even your non-acceptance of who you are right now is God’s will. Even your desire to be different from who you are right now is God’s will. Even your not knowing who you are right now is God’s will. It is your task to know all this for yourself, to wholeheartedly embrace everything that is showing up in your life right now, even your resistance to everything that is showing up in your life right now.
Embrace Life from Where You Are
So long as you do not accept something for what it is (and keep trying to run from it, or change it, or obscure it with busy-ness, or spiritualize it into oblivion, or drown it out with mind-altering substances) it will continue to have power over you. It will continue to shape the conditions of your life. You are actively engaging with it by your rejection of it, and so it will persist. Only by accepting it, by consciously experiencing it, by giving it the green light will it transform on its own. … While you cannot change every condition you can begin to strip conditions of the power they have over you by accepting them from a place of wholeness, by not using up all your energy in your struggle against them. The mere acceptance of something from a place of wholeness brings about the alchemy that ultimately changes it, that brings in in deeper alignment with Spirit.
Everything in your life is here to teach you something about yourself; it is showing you where an inner shift could take place. So, it’s not so much about changing the outer condition, per se—even though that can be quite beneficial—it’s more about changing the consciousness within yourself that is giving rise to those conditions in the first place.
The true power that you have, in every situation in life, is the ability to accept Life as it is, from a position of wholeness, from a position of oneness, from the knowingness that you are the unchanging awareness upon which every experience of your life is founded. You, as pure awareness, are the one true constant of your ever-changing life, unaffected by condition, undiminished by thought, unshaken by emotion. Change if you may, improve things if you are so inclined, but always remain aware of who you are in the process, always give the green light to the essence of who you are and to Life itself.
Creating from a Place of Wholeness
How can I accept myself as I am—feeling that nothing is wrong with me and that nothing needs to be fixed—but still feel a need to take action to improve my life and my conditions?
If you are an individualized manifestation of Spirit, if you are Spirit operating on the plane of the particular—if “as above, so below”—then the laws that govern Universal Spirit are the same laws that govern your life. So, how does Spirit create or “improve” things? Does Spirit do this from a sense of lack? From a sense that something is missing or that something needs improving? From a sense that something is wrong with itself and that it needs to create something in order to fix what is wrong? No. Spirit creates from an overflow of love and abundance. So why should your approach be any different? Fixing what is broken, gaining what is missing, or filling what is lacking is the constant motivation behind a human being’s attempt at life. But how can a human being truly live or realize his greatness by acting in a way that is contrary to the laws of Nature and the Creative Power itself? He can’t. How can a person further experience the qualities of Spirit in himself by operating in a way contrary to Spirit? He can’t.
If you feel inspired to act then act. If you want to change things then change things but do it in a way that’s in resonance with Spirit, do it in a way that leads to positive change and transformation. It’s okay to want to improve your conditions but try to do it from a place of wholeness, a place of unity with Spirit, a place of total acceptance of yourself rather than from a place of need or lack or self-disapproval.
Spirit is always positive and always creates from the positive. Spirit’s motivation to create is never to get what is missing but always to expand upon what is there, to expand upon its wholeness, to experience more and more of Itself and its qualities. Spirit’s own sense of itself—as love, beauty, abundance, fullness, etc.—is its starting-point. Creation begins from there. It should be the same for a human being—he should begin with his wholeness, his divine qualities, not with the notion that something is wrong or missing.
I think St. Augustine summed it up when he said, “First love, then act.” First be as Spirit—realizing your essential self as love, joy, aliveness, fullness, etc.—then act.
If you can’t act with love, if you can’t act as Spirit acts, that’s okay. Don’t get down on yourself. Just, gently, keep inclining yourself in that direction. If you feel a lack and are prompted to act to improve things then that’s what you should do. That’s what’s coming up for you. Acknowledge that. Honor that. If you can act from a state of love and abundance that would be good; if not, keep inclining yourself in that direction. Always accept yourself; always give yourself total permission to be yourself, whatever you are doing.
Quotes
In discovering who we really are, we come to recognize that these qualities are not the result of the effort of a separate person, but are naturally present in who we are before we identify ourselves as a separate person. Who we are is naturally loving, accepting, deeply relaxed, and always at peace, never attached to any form, and who we are has never been seeking anything. It is naturally nonjudgmental, choiceless, and always free from identification. It is the ocean, always at rest even amidst the storm of life, forever deeply allowing every wave without judgement, resistance, or attachment. The end of the search of a lifetime is not a future goal, but who we already are.
(Jeff Foster, The Deepest Acceptance, p. 65)
We are complete in ourselves; and the reason why we fail to realize this is because we do not understand how far our “true self” extends. … We rightly say that every person is Universal Spirit expressed as an individual consciousness; and if this is so, then each individual consciousness must find the Universal Spirit to be the infinite expression of himself. It is this part of the “Self” that we so often leave out in our estimate of who we are; and consequently we look upon ourselves as limited and suffering human beings when we might better think of ourselves as archangels.
(Thomas Troward, The Hidden Power)
Letting Go vs Letting Be
Trying to let go is, in a subtle way, the same as trying to get rid of the things we don't like, especially the thoughts and feelings we find difficult to feel. We're seeing them as the enemy and wanting life to be different.
Letting be may sound similar, but it is actually quite different. Letting be means we don't try to drop it (let it go), nor do we try to alter it or force ourselves to accept it. Rather we simply acknowledge what's there and say "yes" to it, which means we're willing to feel it, just as it is. We don't have to like it, nor, on the other hand, do we have to view it as an obstacle or an enemy--we just have to be willing to experience exactly what our life is right now. (Ezra Bayda, The Authentic Life, p. 95)
__________________ ◊ ◊ ◊ __________________
I will take steps to know myself and to have that knowledge become a living truth in my life.
I resolve to know myself, to fearlessly question my assumptions and the deep-seated concepts I have about myself, to understand my underlying beliefs, priorities, fears, and desires, and to become aware of the subconscious forces that shape my thinking and determine my actions and reactions to life.
I will put my knowledge into action; I will “walk the walk and talk the talk,” for knowledge is a burden if it doesn’t positively inform my life … I am grateful for all the knowledge that has come to me, and those who have generously shared their knowledge with me; and the best way I can express my gratitude is by honoring that knowledge, by having it become a living truth that uplifts my life and brings benefit to this world.
What is Moving You?
What is motivating you? What is prompting your actions? Are your intentions inspired by the positive and loving qualities of Spirit or by the negative states of fear, guilt, insecurity, selfishness, or misplaced obligation? It’s your task to find out. It’s your task to know what is motivating you and, if need be, create new motivations for your actions that are in line with Spirit and the pure positivity of your own nature.
Who am I?
Doing self-inquiry by asking questions such as, “Who am I?” or “What is true for me?”—or pondering any question about your nature—puts you into the right relationship with life. It puts you in a position of not knowing, of openness to possibilities that you have heretofore overlooked or have not considered. Few people dare to question the core beliefs they have about themselves because those beliefs are protected by one’s identity structure and a wall of fear—and that wall is thick and obstinate, and must be dismantled brick by brick. This is not an easy process. It requires strength, support, and perseverance. It requires us to make “a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves.” But it also requires that we be open, accepting, and gentle with ourselves. When doing the difficult work on yourself always remember: “Handle with Care.”
Removal of Subconscious Blocks
All of us have had incidents of physical and emotional pain that result in “trauma blocks” which, in the course of our development, get energetically buried or entombed in our subconscious mind. These blocks, though we are not directly aware of them, alter our experience of life and diminish our own aliveness. They lower the vibration of our entire psyche, use up our vital life-energy, and fearfully distort our actions and reactions to life. They bring about disease. All spiritual advance is undermined by the presence of these deep-seated trauma blocks and any complete program of spiritual and human development involves their systematic removal. This removal brings about a release of the emotional charge (associated with the original trauma) which then lightens our life and frees up all the life-energy that was heretofore used to hold that charge in place.
Exposure of these subconscious trauma blocks to the light of our own consciousness—through a systematic, one-on-one process or persistent self-inquiry—is one way these blocks can be uncovered and discharged. We can’t remove these blocks by running away from them or pushing them deeper into our subconscious mind; the only way to fully exorcise these embedded traumas is to shine the light of awareness on them and face them, now, from a place of safety, strength, and support.
Removal of these embedded trauma blocks is a long, systematic process that is never really complete; but every step we take, every trauma or painful incident that we remove from our subconscious mind moves us toward freedom, toward a truer sense of ourselves, and toward a more joyous experience of life.
People gifted in the art of removing trauma blocks (or what might be seen as DNA-embedded emotions) can be of great assistance in helping a person remove blocks that they are not aware of, including traumas that are too deep or painful to recall or traumas involving ancestors.
Clearly seeing our specific beliefs about ourselves is of crucial importance because so much of our suffering is based on unconsciously holding on to these beliefs without ever questioning their validity. Until we see these beliefs clearly and repeatedly—the beliefs that make up the basic story line of “me”—they will continue to dictate how we fell and act. … The first phase of practice is not limited to simply looking at our beliefs. We also need to become aware of and observe our most frequent emotional reactions. Do you know yours? Is it anger? Anxiety or fear? Confusion? … Eventually, we have to move from simply observing our emotions and fears to actually entering into them, or residing in them, experientially—which means to feel them fully in the body. … Residing in an emotion occurs when we feel the physical experience nonconceptually—that is, without being hooked into the storyline of thoughts, the storyline of “me." (Bayda, Zen Heart, p. 8-9)
Supplemental
(In this process) I accept myself just as I am, holding that nothing is wrong with me and nothing about me needs to be fixed.
Accepting yourself as you are, without “buying into” the nagging and ill-conceived sense that something is wrong with you, that something needs to be fixed—or worse yet, that you are unworthy—is a major step on the path of living a true life. Enough with all this must-miss striving, improving, fixing, comparing, and getting down on yourself for this or that shortcoming. Put all that aside for now and just see if you can accept yourself as you are, even with all your so-called flaws. Even with your “flaws” you are still an individual expression of Spirit. Maybe those “flaws” are part of a greater perfection that you don’t yet understand. Maybe the acceptance of those “flaws” from a place of wholeness and perfection is very the path to freedom, the essential work you need to do in order to realize your true worth. Remember, the moon need not be full in order to shine.
True creativity and fulfillment in life begins with the wholehearted acceptance of yourself—all of yourself—along with the wholehearted acceptance of whatever experience the Universe is bringing you in this moment. It is this running away from yourself, the belittlement of yourself, the ignorance of your true value and worth, and the nonstop effort to alter your present experience and fix your outer conditions that steer you in the wrong direction. So, first, be yourself, love and accept yourself—just as you are, just as Infinite Spirit accepts you—then do as you may, then everything shall be added unto you.
Greenlighting / The Power of "Yes"
The term “greenlighting" (as first employed by Saniel Bonder) refers to the total acceptance of who you are; it’s giving the green light to yourself, exactly as you are. It’s also about the embrace of whatever experience you are having without trying to change it, run from it, reject it, or mentalize it away. It’s the total acceptance of yourself, and life, as it is, right now. We might also call this "the power of 'yes'."
As you may discover, when you don’t accept yourself, when you reject the unwanted parts of yourself, when you avoid what you are actually experiencing you create a negative spiral in your life (which puts you out of sync with the all-accepting nature of Spirit). The pain of rejecting yourself and running from your pain is often more painful and persistent than the pain you are so desperately trying to avoid. So don’t run, don’t hide from your experience or from any part of yourself. Give whatever is coming up for you the green light. Just let it be. Feel it. Experience it. Be it. Don’t try to change it or fix it. Don’t avoid it or supplant it with some reactive commentary that is constantly telling you about your experience. Experience it as it is, without a reaction, without a commentary, without a sense of “me.” Just be with it. Just feel the physical sensation in your body. Just behold it from a place of wholeness, a place of pure awareness and unconditional love.
God is always giving you the green light—He is lovingly embracing all of you, every aspect of your being. You cannot truly do God’s will unless you give yourself the green light as well, unless you lovingly accept the all of yourself, just as you are. Why is this so? Because it’s God’s will that you lovingly accept all of yourself, just as you are—exactly as He lovingly accepts the all of you, just as you are. Now, tell me, how can you do God’s will by doing something different from God’s will?
God’s Power is Infinite. This concept is difficult to grasp; it means that God can do anything. He exists in total freedom. The Sufis hold that God creates this entire universe from nothing a billion times a second. There is no movement, just a billion different creations of the whole universe in a second, and that creates the appearance of movement. A Being of Infinite Power can create all universes—every star, every planet, every atom—from nothing, a billion times a second. He can create anything He wants; and He always creates exactly what He wants. And what is He choosing to create right now?—you, exactly as you are. He is pouring the entirety of His being into you and choosing you to be exactly who you are, exactly as He is creating you now. That is His will; He can have no other will. If you desire to do God’s will then begin by wholeheartedly embracing the whole of who you are, and the whole of Life, just as God Himself is doing right now.
God is giving you more than a green light; He is giving you life itself. He is pouring the whole of His love, power, aliveness, and beauty into you right now. If God, as you understand Him to be, does not accept you, the all of you, exactly as you are, with unconditional love and without judgment—and wish that you be exactly as you are right now—then you’ve got the wrong version of God. You’ve got the wrong understanding of who you really are and how thus universe works.
If it were God’s Will that you be different from who you are right now, you’d be different from who you are right now. Everything, exactly as it is showing up right now, is God’s will. Even your non-acceptance of who you are right now is God’s will. Even your desire to be different from who you are right now is God’s will. Even your not knowing who you are right now is God’s will. It is your task to know all this for yourself, to wholeheartedly embrace everything that is showing up in your life right now, even your resistance to everything that is showing up in your life right now.
Embrace Life from Where You Are
So long as you do not accept something for what it is (and keep trying to run from it, or change it, or obscure it with busy-ness, or spiritualize it into oblivion, or drown it out with mind-altering substances) it will continue to have power over you. It will continue to shape the conditions of your life. You are actively engaging with it by your rejection of it, and so it will persist. Only by accepting it, by consciously experiencing it, by giving it the green light will it transform on its own. … While you cannot change every condition you can begin to strip conditions of the power they have over you by accepting them from a place of wholeness, by not using up all your energy in your struggle against them. The mere acceptance of something from a place of wholeness brings about the alchemy that ultimately changes it, that brings in in deeper alignment with Spirit.
Everything in your life is here to teach you something about yourself; it is showing you where an inner shift could take place. So, it’s not so much about changing the outer condition, per se—even though that can be quite beneficial—it’s more about changing the consciousness within yourself that is giving rise to those conditions in the first place.
The true power that you have, in every situation in life, is the ability to accept Life as it is, from a position of wholeness, from a position of oneness, from the knowingness that you are the unchanging awareness upon which every experience of your life is founded. You, as pure awareness, are the one true constant of your ever-changing life, unaffected by condition, undiminished by thought, unshaken by emotion. Change if you may, improve things if you are so inclined, but always remain aware of who you are in the process, always give the green light to the essence of who you are and to Life itself.
Creating from a Place of Wholeness
How can I accept myself as I am—feeling that nothing is wrong with me and that nothing needs to be fixed—but still feel a need to take action to improve my life and my conditions?
If you are an individualized manifestation of Spirit, if you are Spirit operating on the plane of the particular—if “as above, so below”—then the laws that govern Universal Spirit are the same laws that govern your life. So, how does Spirit create or “improve” things? Does Spirit do this from a sense of lack? From a sense that something is missing or that something needs improving? From a sense that something is wrong with itself and that it needs to create something in order to fix what is wrong? No. Spirit creates from an overflow of love and abundance. So why should your approach be any different? Fixing what is broken, gaining what is missing, or filling what is lacking is the constant motivation behind a human being’s attempt at life. But how can a human being truly live or realize his greatness by acting in a way that is contrary to the laws of Nature and the Creative Power itself? He can’t. How can a person further experience the qualities of Spirit in himself by operating in a way contrary to Spirit? He can’t.
If you feel inspired to act then act. If you want to change things then change things but do it in a way that’s in resonance with Spirit, do it in a way that leads to positive change and transformation. It’s okay to want to improve your conditions but try to do it from a place of wholeness, a place of unity with Spirit, a place of total acceptance of yourself rather than from a place of need or lack or self-disapproval.
Spirit is always positive and always creates from the positive. Spirit’s motivation to create is never to get what is missing but always to expand upon what is there, to expand upon its wholeness, to experience more and more of Itself and its qualities. Spirit’s own sense of itself—as love, beauty, abundance, fullness, etc.—is its starting-point. Creation begins from there. It should be the same for a human being—he should begin with his wholeness, his divine qualities, not with the notion that something is wrong or missing.
I think St. Augustine summed it up when he said, “First love, then act.” First be as Spirit—realizing your essential self as love, joy, aliveness, fullness, etc.—then act.
If you can’t act with love, if you can’t act as Spirit acts, that’s okay. Don’t get down on yourself. Just, gently, keep inclining yourself in that direction. If you feel a lack and are prompted to act to improve things then that’s what you should do. That’s what’s coming up for you. Acknowledge that. Honor that. If you can act from a state of love and abundance that would be good; if not, keep inclining yourself in that direction. Always accept yourself; always give yourself total permission to be yourself, whatever you are doing.
Quotes
In discovering who we really are, we come to recognize that these qualities are not the result of the effort of a separate person, but are naturally present in who we are before we identify ourselves as a separate person. Who we are is naturally loving, accepting, deeply relaxed, and always at peace, never attached to any form, and who we are has never been seeking anything. It is naturally nonjudgmental, choiceless, and always free from identification. It is the ocean, always at rest even amidst the storm of life, forever deeply allowing every wave without judgement, resistance, or attachment. The end of the search of a lifetime is not a future goal, but who we already are.
(Jeff Foster, The Deepest Acceptance, p. 65)
We are complete in ourselves; and the reason why we fail to realize this is because we do not understand how far our “true self” extends. … We rightly say that every person is Universal Spirit expressed as an individual consciousness; and if this is so, then each individual consciousness must find the Universal Spirit to be the infinite expression of himself. It is this part of the “Self” that we so often leave out in our estimate of who we are; and consequently we look upon ourselves as limited and suffering human beings when we might better think of ourselves as archangels.
(Thomas Troward, The Hidden Power)
Letting Go vs Letting Be
Trying to let go is, in a subtle way, the same as trying to get rid of the things we don't like, especially the thoughts and feelings we find difficult to feel. We're seeing them as the enemy and wanting life to be different.
Letting be may sound similar, but it is actually quite different. Letting be means we don't try to drop it (let it go), nor do we try to alter it or force ourselves to accept it. Rather we simply acknowledge what's there and say "yes" to it, which means we're willing to feel it, just as it is. We don't have to like it, nor, on the other hand, do we have to view it as an obstacle or an enemy--we just have to be willing to experience exactly what our life is right now. (Ezra Bayda, The Authentic Life, p. 95)
__________________ ◊ ◊ ◊ __________________
