Empowering the Emergence of True Self

I realized yesterday that every moment I have a choice.  My choice is about who I am allowing to run my life.  I can either allow my small, limited self, or ego/personality to run the show, or I can ASK for my UNLIMITED SELF or ESSENCE to intervene.

The tricky thing is that my UNLIMITED SELF will not intervene until I consciously ASK for its guidance and help.  I have to ASK for whatever it is that I want or need.  This requires some conscious awareness on my part.  I have to become aware of what I want and need first.

How do I know what I want and need?  I have to spend some quiet time with myself to listen to my deeper heart, and to notice any discomfort or un-ease that is telling me that I want or need something.  If I tune into myself daily, then I can listen more deeply, and get in touch with my wants and needs without necessarily having discomfort or un-ease.

The body is our messenger.  I can always tune in or check in with my body sensations to tell me or show me what I need to know about myself.  For more on the body as messenger, see my blog post:  The Treasure Map on this site.

For me, I also had to feel worthy enough to ask my UNLIMITED SELF to intervene in my life.  When we don’t feel worthy, we will have trouble asking our UNLIMITED SELF, loved ones, friends and co-workers for what we want and need.  See my blog post:  Being Worthy on this site.

As you know, life is a process, and it takes the desire and willingness to practice listening to know who we are more deeply.  I know this is why I came here to know myself as my UNLIMITED SELF, and to learn to accept, embrace and love my limited self.

Here’s to your Journey fellow travelers!  http://bit.ly/hDKDoF

Ever notice that it’s hard to find good couple role models for healthy relationships?  I have realized that we are all conned by the media to believe that romantic relationships are a certain way.  Nobody ever said that being in a relationship is hard work, except for Harville Hendrix, the author of Getting The Love You Want.  In Harville’s book on page 76-77, he talks about the ten characteristics of a conscious marriage or relationship.

We think of a relationship as a way to get our needs and desires fulfilled.  I am now aware that our relationships have a much higher purpose than just fulfilling our personal needs and desires. Relationship is like a giant mirror that shows us what is unresolved or unintegrated inside – at the core of who we are.  It shows us the fundamental architecture of how our unresolved childhood issues form the subconscious beliefs and fears that currently manifest in our lives and relationships.

When this first started happening to me in my relationship, I got scared and ran away.  I didn’t want to see these ‘ugly’ things about myself.  It was not pleasant!  Now I’m back in my relationship, being courageous and working through these issues that have impacted my entire life.  I’m learning a great deal about myself, and things that I didn’t understand before are now making sense.

Because I learned to believe that I was not good enough as a child (not in my conscious awareness), I have spent much of my life hiding who I thought I was out of fear that others might find out.  I cheated myself out of countless opportunities because of this sub-conscious belief.   The good news is that now that I am aware of this, I can choose to go forward and allow others to see the real me, not this false idea or image of who I thought I was.  I can now come out of hiding and share my gifts and talents with the world. Interestingly, as I feel ready to put myself out into the world, opportunities are coming to me effortlessly.

So back to the relationship.  It is because I am engaged in my love relationship that these healing experiences are coming to me.  Eckert Tolle in his book, The Power of Now writes about the enlightened relationship as a spiritual practice that brings up our unconsciousness into the light.  We can then be aware and work through the unresolved issues, fears and false beliefs.  I have not done this deep internal work on my own.  I highly recommend seeking professional assistance if you are struggling in your life or with your relationship.       http://www.AustinOnTrackCounseling.com

The good news is that our Presence or Essence, our true nature is intact – perfect, whole and complete.  This is the truth regardless of the traumas or wounds one has endured in life.  No matter how dysfunctional  or wounding our past was, who we truly are is whole and complete.

We all seem to have some version of unworthiness, not OK-ness in our psychological make up.  This comes from the fact that as infants, our parents could not mirror back all of our feelings or experiences to us.  For example, say you were experiencing absolute joy and awe about life as a baby, but your mother or father was anxious or depressed.  It would be unlikely that they could mirror that joy back to you.

When babies don’t get mirrored, they get anxious and uncomfortable which results in shutting down whatever made the caregiver uncomfortable.  So we learn to cut off parts of our essential self that seem unacceptable to our parents or caregivers.  This is how we form our personalities.

Our personality is not who we are, it is a construct of adaptability.  We adapt ourselves to fit what seems acceptable so we can survive within our environment.  The personality is a mask or false self we create to be acceptable.  We mold ourselves to gain the best results.  This is a mechanism for survival, however, if unexamined, it continues to run the show when we are adults.  We don’t realize that we are operating out of a facade and not being our authentic self.  This is the journey back to ourselves.

The reality is that these precious parts of ourselves that we deem unacceptable are not really unacceptable to our caregivers, they just have not opened to those places within themselves.  But as infants or children, we cannot see that this is not about us.  We cannot see that this is the other person’s issue, not ours.

So as we journey back to our true nature by being present to ourselves, we have the opportunity to mirror the feelings that come up from the past.  By sitting in Presence, we can allow whatever was not mirrored and disowned to surface and become re-integrated within ourselves.

The good news – it is not too late to give that inner child what s/he needs.  We can allow our Presence to do the parenting, to do the work.  All we have to do is show up with our awareness, and experience what we notice inside with non-resistance and non-judgement.  It takes practice like anything else.  Enjoy being Present!  Here’s to the Real you!

The truth is, we are all worthy of great love and success and vibrant health and all good things, no matter how we feel or what we think about it!  We don’t even have to prove that we are worthy by doing more, or changing anything about ourselves.

I have stopped myself my whole life.  I couldn’t put my finger on why or what it was, but something inside of me put the brakes on being, doing or having what I wanted.  I am realizing that deep in my core, there is a belief of unworthiness that keeps me from going for what I want.  In fact, I have a belief that there is something missing or wrong with me.

Now that I am aware of this belief, I can sit with the painful feelings that this belief brings up in me.  As I sit with these feelings, and allow them to be there instead of resisting them (which is what I have always done), I am able to release and integrate that part I had cut off from myself.  Then I feel connected and peaceful inside.

Think about what you want in life.  Do you feel worthy, or do you stop yourself from being, doing and having what you want?

This morning I was feeling very alone. As I tuned into my body I felt some sadness. I felt a discomfort in my solar plexus and below, like around my second chakra. I was thinking, life is bleak. These feelings seemed very old and familiar to me. I realized that I felt this way as a child in my family around the age of 10.

We had to move from the house I loved into a dingy duplex. I left the school and the friends I loved to go to a new school where I was a stranger. My sister got sick and Mom went to be with her for 6 weeks or so. My Dad was depressed and not well physically. Life felt bleak. That’s what I was feeling this morning as I looked out on the grey winter sky and the freezing temperature on my thermometer.

As I sat with myself and allowed those feelings and thoughts to be there I began to feel lighter. My body convulsed a bit and I felt some kind of a release. After a few minutes, I felt motivated to start my day.

Whenever you feel off somehow, sit with yourself and tune into your body. Give your body a few minutes to reveal what your emotional or physical discomfort is about. Your body will give you the information. And if you will bring your non-judgmental attention to your body, that old unresolved energy will be integrated, and you will be free from that stuck energy holding you back.

Have you ever noticed how we humans tend to make up stories without checking out the facts?  We start doing this when we are very young.  When we are very small, our brain is not fully developed to think through things logically, and so we draw conclusions about ourselves and the world around us that are not the truth.  As adults, we don’t realize we are carrying these false assumptions until we have an ah-ha moment and discover what we believe.  Then we have the opportunity to change our faulty beliefs.

Even as an adult, I find myself making up stories about people based on my own beliefs.  Perhaps I see a very rich person that I don’t know at all.  I might decide something about that person based on my own beliefs regarding rich people.  Or, I decide what my partner is thinking about me based on the look on his face, or his tone.  Most of the time, what he is thinking has nothing to do with me.

It’s important for us to observe what we are saying and believing about ourselves and others.  To do this, I try to be aware of myself when I am feeling uneasy and starting to make up stuff.  It is usually about what I think others are thinking about me, or about the way I am thinking about others.

Another good way to deal with our assumptions is to ask the other person if what we are thinking is true for them.  This involves being somewhat vulnerable.  I say, I am making up a story that you think…  is this true?  The other person will either validate what I am thinking or debunk it.

The most insidious stories are about myself.  Stuff I decided about myself maybe even before I could talk.  I decided that I was not good enough for my mother’s love based on how my mother acted toward me.  I thought if I could be perfect, then she would love me.  It was futile, my mother didn’t love me any more for my perfection.  I learned much later that the way my mother behaved had nothing to do with me.  She was unhappy and depressed in her life.  But as a small child, everything was about me in my own mind.  I was the center of the universe, and I took everything personally (which is what children naturally do)!

So here is another tip:  remember that most things are not personal – we all have our own issues and problems and we all react.  Let’s not take the reactions of others personally, or blame our own reactions on those around us.  Have fun with this!  Be light with yourself and play the game of self-discovery.

The body is not what we think it is.  The body is a vehicle for us to live in on this physical plane of existence.  Its purpose is to help us get back to who we really are, our true self, our true nature.  The way our body does this is by allowing us to feel and integrate the past.  The body carries every moment we have ever experienced in time and space.   It provides us with the ability to feel.  Our feelings are not the ultimate truth, but they lead us to that truth.

We abandoned the body when we moved our conscious awareness out of the feeling realm and into the mental realm – we learned to live in our heads literally.  We have learned to dis-trust our bodies.  We feel betrayed by our bodies when something in them goes wrong.  Nothing is wrong, what is happening is that the body is showing us, reflecting back to us our blocks, our challenges that we came to this life to resolve.  The body is reflecting back to us what we need to know to move forward in our evolution.  Our bodies are the ultimate biofeedback device!

We have confused our body with our Self.  Our body is our tour guide back to our true nature, our Self.  Our bodies are in total and complete service to us to point the way back home.  We ignore the signs and signals that our bodies give us every moment of every day.  Most of us have no clue that we are living in a treasure chest, and the buried treasure is within us.  Our bodies are showing us where the treasure lies, but we choose not to look or listen.

We think that the discomfort, pain and dis-ease we experience in the body are the problem, and we have to fix them.  We kill the message with painkillers, and we often kill the messenger too.  Our pain and symptoms have been defined as dis-eases and dis-orders that we need to medicate and manage.  We lost sight of the deeper truths, and focus our attention on avoiding or getting rid of the discomfort that we feel in our bodies.  We have no idea that  this discomfort, dis-ease, and pain, is pointing the way to our freedom.  The discomfort, pain and dis-ease that we feel are the messengers that show us how to get back to Presence.  Let’s learn how to experience the messengers and find our buried treasure!

The holidays are a time for being with people we love.  For many, the holidays are stressful.  Sometimes being with relatives can be an unpleasant experience.

Let’s look at what can make being around relatives unpleasant.  Reactions and projections are a major contributor to our unpleasant feelings.  A reaction is any discomfort we might feel inside.  It could be physical, mental or emotional discomfort.  A reaction might be triggered by being around another person, the thought of having to see someone, or going to a certain event.

What we typically do when we feel discomfort is to attribute its cause to an outside source like a person, situation or substance.  This is called projection. I’d like to challenge us to stop looking for the source of our discomfort outside ourselves (projection), and instead, go into the experience of the discomfort to find the inner source.

Lets say that every time we are with a particular person, we feel tense or uncomfortable.  I suggest seeing that person as a mirror who is showing us something about ourselves.  What is the story about this person in our mind. How is that a reflection of us?  What are we projecting and not owning as our own?  Remember, the source of our power is within us.  When we blame people and situations outside of ourselves, and make them the source or our discomfort, we lose our power and become victims.

This is an opportunity to discover the true source of our reactions.  The person catalyst outside ourselves is not the source.  They are the messenger who is showing us where to look.  We need to take time to give attention to our reactions.

Maybe we have a pain in our gut, or we feel angry, sad or afraid.  Let’s take time to sit down and tune into what we are experiencing in our body.  Let’s tell ourselves that the person outside of us is not the cause of our discomfort.  They are bringing up our unintegrated emotions that are seeking our attention and awareness.  Let’s go into our discomfort and feel it with openness and curiosity.  Let’s be accepting and compassionate with ourselves.  Any judgment or criticism will thwart our ability to perceive the truth, and prevent the emotional energy from moving through and being integrated.

Be aware that feelings are always in the body, so let’s feel and notice the sensations in our bodies.  We can breathe to help us move through the discomfort we feel.  Connected breathing is a very good way to move energy up and out.  We connect our inhale and exhale with no gap in between.  We stay with the discomfort until we feel a release or relief. Sometimes this can take less then a minute.

Remember, as long as we blame someone or something outside ourselves for our reaction, we will never find its true source.  I challenge all of us to practice owning our reactions now so that by the time the holidays roll around, we can experience more joy, peace and gratitude in our experiences.

Peace on Earth and goodwill to each one of us!

For more in depth support with something challenging you this holiday season, get Lynne’s contact information at www.AustinOnTrackCounseling.com.