On Simplicity

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I find life to be so complicated sometimes. People can be so difficult, earning a living is challenging, being healthy…it’s like life is just one big mess I have to handle constantly! Why isn’t life more easy or simple? Why is life so difficult?

Sincerely,

Hard Knock Life

Dear HKL,

First of all, who told you life is complicated and difficult? Was that decreed from the heavens when you popped out of your mother’s womb?

It is important for you to remember that all the rules you have about life in your head, you made them up. They did not come from outside you.

Nature has it’s own rules. Rules like gravity for example. But all the rules you have about your life – they are not nature’s rules. You created them, live by them, and are frustrated because they are unfair rules. It’s a bit stupid, isn’t it? If you made them, just unmake them!

When you were a child, you did this constantly. Life was one big playground, and you made up rules all the time. But when one game was over, you dropped those rules and moved onto the next.

But now as an adult, you have forgotten that you are still playing a game. This game you have decided is the only game you want to play. The game of survival – relationships, work, health, whatever. You think the rules are set and have come from elsewhere, but I assure you, they are all inside you.

Nothing wrong with playing the survival game. But if you play it, at least play it well! Play it joyfully!

You can make up any rules you want for the way you live life. That is the beauty of it. Life is incredibly simple when you realize that what goes on in your head is entirely up to you. You can create whatever life you wish!

But when you insist that no, these are the rules, they are immutable, and they are unfair – well that is a recipe for frustration and misery for sure.

You see the biggest obstacle people have in their lives is not that life is challenging. It’s just that they take their own made up rules far too seriously.

You ever heard the saying keep it simple stupid? Good words to live by!

Just understand that you cannot control what life brings you – it may even give you something really crazy! But how you use what it gives you, how you approach it – that is up to you. Keep it simple! Enjoy it and have fun with it!

Another way to say this is, if life gives you something easy and pleasant, then best to approach it joyfully. But if life gives you something challenging, then tell me, should you approach it gravely and with no joy? You need joy and simplicity even more then, don’t you?

The truth is life is not giving you boons or curses. It is just giving you what it gives you. If you observe life, it is always following the path of least resistance. If something has come to you, it came there not because of some divine or devilish plan. It came because that was the best and simplest course for it to follow.

Similarly, you must approach life with as little resistance as possible. The simplest course for you to take in your life is a pleasant one. There is substantial evidence today to show you that approaching life joyfully and playfully is better for you – both internally and in terms of outward success.

In order for you to be pleasant about what life brings, you must be open to whatever it brings. How closed off you are determines how difficult the situation is.

So quit being so damn serious. What is so complex about earning a living or starting a family? Every single creature on this planet does it! Even an insect! You should be able to do it extremely joyfully and easily since you are a human – the most sophisticated creature here.

So play more. Drop your silly rules. Make up new ones. Smile!

No one has put a gun to your head and forced you to live your life the way you are living it. Trust me, everyone is too preoccupied with their own nonsense to give you such attention!

You are free – always remember this. You are free to live as you wish. Take responsibility for that. If life is hard, it’s because of you. If life is easy, it’s because of you. This is not about blame or credit, it’s about total freedom. Your life is entirely your making. Best to make the most of it!

Sincerely,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Equality

~ SE

Dear True Self,

How do I learn to treat people more equally? Sometimes I find I even falter and can act in privileged ways.

Sincerely,

Equal Signs

Dear ES,

It is a popular idea that people must be treated equally. But is that truly what we should strive for?

Let’s say in school there is a child with long legs and another one with shorter legs. Then we tell them to race in equal conditions. Is this really equality, or inequality?

Every single thing in this universe is unique. No two are alike. So why treat everything the same? If you treat everything the same, you are bound for friction. There are no rules you can follow that will be a blanket that cover all interactions.

This moment is unique and no other will ever come like it nor has any like it come before. If you want something to succeed, to thrive, then you need to look at it individually and create the right conditions.

If you treat a tomato plant in a garden the same as your potatoes, for sure one won’t grow or both! When it comes to managing the outside world, according to the situation, you must act. Never fool yourself that any less will work.

Inside yourself however, it is extremely important to not become prejudiced. When I say prejudiced I don’t just mean looking down on others. I mean that you should not look up at others or look down on others. Both are distortions of reality.

We’ve established that in order for things to succeed, then you must manage the situation correctly. Tell me, if you have something on a pedestal or are snubbing your nose at something, what hope is there of it succeeding? You must see things as they are.

There is an inherent trap in seeing things the way they are. Still your mind may trick you and you will start categorize everything. “This person is a man so they are stronger than a woman. This person is in school so they are smarter than a farmer.” Like this you will go on and on forming conclusions where there are none.

What is the truth? Some men are strong, some aren’t. Many people in school are utter fools but the intelligence it takes to run a farm is of a different kind! Seeing things as they are means dropping your conclusions and just being present.

But it’s not just about broad statements. Everyone is dynamic, no one is statically one way all the time. In one moment, a person can act one way. In the next, they can be another way. A person who has been weak their whole life can suddenly act with strength.

We live in an amazing existence where there are countless possibilities in each moment! Give everything a chance to surprise you.

This is all equality really should be. Just within yourself, stop drawing conclusions about all you experience. Each moment needs to be treated as fresh and new, because it is! That is the only fair and intelligent way to be.

If within yourself you don’t look up or look down on anything, do I need to teach you to be sensitive to other people’s struggles or to be mindful of your privileges? No, simply because you give people space to show you who they are in each moment, acting judgmentally will not even be an issue.

You can drive yourself crazy in today’s society because if you endlessly compare yourself to others of course you will be privileged. Even poor people in the west are richer than many people in the world! Comparison will only skew your perception.

Instead, why can’t you just assume nothing and see for yourself what the moment holds? Life will be more exciting, more fruitful! People will appreciate that room you give them and won’t even think of equality because they will feel free around you.

At the crux of it, this is all people want. They want the freedom to be themselves. Tell me, would you rather have to act the way that I determine you should be, or would you rather be yourself and be accepted and included for it?

So see people as they are in each moment. No looking up or down on anyone. That alone will have the consequence of freedom for yourself and others around you. Then equality is not even something you have to create, it is just something that is there.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Control

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Sometimes I tend to get too worked up and excited about things. How can I better control myself?

Sincerely,

Losing Control

Dear LC,

If god appeared before you right now and granted you a wish, would you wish for more control or would you wish to have more excitement about life?

I want you to understand only people who are afraid of suffering ask to restrict and limit things. Those who want to live should seek to expand their life.

Now perhaps when you get excited, later on you have a mood swing. You go from excited to burnt out or happy to sad. That’s different. That is because you are living with unawareness. Whenever you do things unconsciously, things become cyclical.

You shouldn’t seek to limit your experience of life. How involved you are, how enthusiastic you are – that determines how alive you feel, doesn’t it? Or put differently, the more uninvolved and reserved you approach life, the less meaningful the experience.

Rather than seek ways to control yourself, seek ways to enhance your capability. Seek ways to make your thought and emotion more balanced. If you improve your capability, then you can be as enthusiastic as you wish. But if you work on control, you will just wind yourself up tight.

Have you ever noticed the more you try to control your excitement, the more it builds up pressure? If you don’t express it in that moment, it will come out in some other way, perhaps as anger or sadness. So control isn’t even a solution because you still will have the same issue you are trying to avoid. It just adds to the problem.

Did you come here to this earth to live or not? That is the real question. If you came here to live, then you must live. You must explore life fully and totally.

Yes, that may mean taking risks. It may mean that you burn out here and there. But trying to control your whole life and living piece by piece is truly a tragedy. It will be a wasted life that you will regret in the end.

Better to live enthusiastically and suffer those consequences here and there than to live reserved. You can always be observant and pay attention to your own life. You can learn to look within.

So what, you were enthusiastic today but tomorrow you were sensitive and in tears! At least now you know you went past your capability and can expand that. But if you never push to that boundary, you will never learn and will regress.

Control is an absolute and utter illusion. You cannot control anything! The more you try to control yourself, the more out of control you will become.

Do not be so afraid to live your life. It doesn’t matter what other people think. It doesn’t matter if you get hurt here or there. I am saying that anyway if you do get hurt, control will not help. It will make your hurt even worse.

Conscious involvement, your enthusiasm – it needs to grow! It needs to flourish and face it’s frictions and become deeper and more resilient. So seek ways to make yourself more capable and balanced within, and not at the expense of your involvement and enthusiasm. You need not shut off your enthusiasm to do it.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Silence and Stillness

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I like to unwind by watching tv or going on my phone. I also really enjoy socializing and chatting and things of that nature. But you’re always talking about silence and stillness. Is it so wrong to want to enjoy life? Why must we just sit all the time doing nothing?

Sincerely,

Nothing Doing

Dear ND,

First of all, this isn’t about pitting silence and stillness vs conversation and activity. There’s nothing wrong with watching TV or socializing or whatever. But you must understand in life, unless you do the right things, the right things will not happen. Everything has a consequence.

Try not to look at this in terms of what is right or what is wrong. Just simply observe and see things as they are. For example, do you do your best listening when you are talking or when you are silent? Similarly, if you are still, you will be more involved in the myriad of activities that are going on within you and around you in every moment.

I’m not saying you must sit around all the time doing nothing. You can do that if you wish. I’m not telling you what to do. I am telling you only that whatever you do, do it consciously. Involve yourself totally.

You must also consider the overstimulation that you are experiencing every day. From the moment you get up to the moment you fall asleep, your senses are being bombarded by so many sights, sounds, stimuli. Those all leave impressions in your body and mind. If you do not give that momentum a chance to settle, it just keeps on ramping up and pretty soon your life becomes a huge burden.

Enjoy the things in life that you wish to. In fact I encourage it. But as you enjoy them, start to pay more attention to the effect it has. Just sit and watch a movie in a theater and see for yourself how it leaves impressions of sound, colour, imagery, and more in your system. See for yourself if even for hours after the movie is over, you still can’t help thinking about it.

You must be in control of your thoughts and emotions, not the other way around. If anything in this world can simply come and leave a mark on you then you are living an enslaved existence. You should be the one who decides what you think and feel, not someone or anything else!

In today’s fast paced world, it is just simple arithmetic that causes me to recommend silence and stillness. Other than sleep, you spend all your time constantly stimulated. This puts you in survival mode, which is extremely stressful on the system. Things like nature used to counteract that for us, but we don’t spend nearly enough time in it to have a balancing effect. So, you need to learn to sit and be silent.

Even giving yourself 20 minutes of stillness a day can have a profound effect on your life. It won’t diminish the quality of your hobbies or interactions, it will make you more capable and enrich them.

When you learn to carry that silence and stillness within you wherever you go, then it won’t matter how stimulating the outside world is. You can be totally involved but it won’t impress upon you. Involvement without entanglement is everything.

Right now, you are incapable of being involved in anything without becoming mixed up in it. You must learn to be stable within yourself, then only will life become truly profound for you.

Silence and stillness are a beautiful experience in life. To deny yourself them through distractions and addictions is really a crippling way to live. You may feel you are unwinding, and it may even give you short term joy. But in the long run, the feeling is impermanent, and you are compelled to pick it up again and again.

Your joy and happiness are manufactured within you, not because of some outside thing that is happening. Learn to be the master of your own joy. Carry it within you always rather than scrounging for it piecemeal. For that to happen, stillness and silence are your doorways.

You see stillness and silence should not be misinterpreted as doing nothing. There is tremendous activity happening in stillness and silence. If you totally involve yourself in silence, you will hear more than you ever have. When you totally involve yourself in stillness, you will experience far more than you ever have too!

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Willingness

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

How important is it to stand up for yourself and your convictions? In my life I feel like I’ve let people walk all over me but now I’m starting to change that.

Sincerely,

Taking a Stand

Dear TAS,

Whenever you are deprived of something in life, that becomes the most important thing to you. Please take a close look and you will see that is the case with just about everyone.

Let’s take your electricity in your home for example. You don’t think about it at all really – only when the bill comes! But everyday you are turning so many things on and off and you depend on it. Let’s say even for 5 minutes the power goes off. Isn’t it suddenly the most important thing in your life?

It is like this with just about everything in your life – it doesn’t have to be even things you need for survival. It could be your big toe or your eyebrows, the same is true.

So in your life you have lived a certain way, which has been too skewed to one side of the coin. For too much of it you lacked self worth, confidence, esteem, whatever you wish to call it. So now after so long without it, of course you crave it. It is like thirst when you have not drank for 3 days. All you think of is water.

Most people have not truly been thirsty. If you had to go even one day without water you would suffer immensely, believe me. If you are so thirsty that you are willing to kill for it, then when water does come, you tend to overdo it. You will gorge yourself and choke and struggle. Then after you have been quenched for some time, if you didn’t learn anything, water will be meaningless to you again.

Don’t put too much emphasis on these kind of urges that come from deprivation. The issue is not that you lack conviction – the issue is that you decided to make rules for yourself on how you must be.

At some point, you decided it is better or safer for you to let people walk all over you. You became attached to this identity. There was no rule written in the stars that said you must be this way.

I’m sure many opportunities have come in your life where conviction was the appropriate response. I’m sure there are many others also where perhaps conceding was more appropriate. You cannot make up a rule and expect it to work for you all the time. In each moment, thus you must act accordingly.

There’s no point in you swinging like a pendulum from being a pushover to pushing people over. It is a destructive way to be and will take it’s toll on you. Just simply be present in the moment and behave according to what it demands. If you are unsure what to do, best to move gently then until you do!

But how to be present and in the moment? You see, you cannot force being present. If you sit here saying “I am present and here in this moment” all that will happen is you will be repeating words to yourself and for sure you will miss the moment.

If you want to be present, then you must be willing. Willingness is the most important quality for you to have in your life. Without it, everything becomes torture.

Don’t worry too much about what life brings you. Instead be willing to explore whatever it brings you. For sure it will bring you something. A wise person will take a challenging moment and turn it into growth at least. But if you are unwilling, is there any hope of this? All that will happen is you will suffer and complain.

Now, similarly to being present, you cannot just sit there and say “I am willing!” It doesn’t work like that. To be willing, you must open yourself up to whatever is happening. Admit that this moment is neither good or bad, it just is. Then be willing to see it as it is.

Like that you must break down all the stupid little conclusions you have drawn for yourself. When you drop them, willingness is just inevitable. When you accept that this cosmos is a much bigger happening that whatever interpretation you can make in your mind, then your walls just collapse.

When you stop interpreting you start experiencing. But if you are unwilling to drop all these stupid conclusions you draw, what can anyone do with you?

Have you ever seen a doctor try to heal an unwilling patient? Like that, you are going through life! No matter how good the treatment is, if you are unwilling, there is no hope.

So don’t get distracted flipping between your extremes. Work on crumbling all your silly rules and becoming willing.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Altruism

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

What is better, altruism or selfishness? You are always talking about focusing on one’s own self, but isn’t that the reason the world is in such tatters?

Sincerely,

All True Isms

Dear ATI,

First of all, you have pitted altruism and selfishness as though they are absolute opposites. Life is not built in such polarizing ways. What you see as opposites are just in an internal dance with each other, inseparable and unified.

Let us first define these terms – altruism and selfishness. Because you will have your own ideas and society has it’s own definition of these, we are dealing with a lot of conclusions in your mind.

Today we look at selfishness as thinking only of one’s self especially at the expense of everyone and everything else. We then look at altruism as putting everyone and everything else as more important than you. I am not for or against either of these.

If you are insecure, have all kids of psychological games going on in your head, then even if on the surface you appear selfish or altruistic, inside you could be the opposite, couldn’t you?

For example, are there not many so called altruistic people that are self righteous? Are there not people who use there altruism as a way of feeling superior to others? So suddenly even being altruistic can be selfish!

So being altruistic isn’t better. I’m sure there are people who even if they gave you a gift you wouldn’t want to touch it because you would get tangled up in all the strings attached to it.

Similarly, there are many people who solely focus on themselves – but they are not doing it at the expense of anyone or anything. They are simply trying to be the best version of themselves they can be – that is the best gift you can contribute to the world, isn’t it? In that sense, they are absolutely altruistic! Most people are one big problem in this world. But a selfish person in this definition is one of the few who isn’t.

Don’t look at life in such black and white terms. What you label yourself as has no basis in reality. You can wear a costume and be totally different underneath. You can act selfish but be altruistic and you can act altruistic and be selfish.

You must take a look at yourself. If it is your path, your way to contribute and give to others, and that helps you come in touch with your inner nature, then use it. If simply sitting and not involving yourself or compromising yourself to others is your way, then use that.

What I am saying is that the quality with which you do things is what matters, not how you categorize yourself.

If you truly wish to be altruistic, then you must learn to become the quality of giving. Your very life must be a contribution. In your job, in your relationships, in your family – whatever sphere you are in, are you not contributing to other people?

You must make that contribution one that betters all. If you simply learn to be joyful of your own nature, without needing the external to make you happy, then for sure you will contribute well to everything.

But if you truly wish to be selfish, then you must also not get caught in the trap of “I can do whatever I what because my life is all that matters!” Yes, you must do your journey your way. There is no other way. But do not delude yourself into thinking you are the most important thing in this cosmos.

You are just one small minuscule speck of life. There is a much larger existence happening all around you. You don’t need to contribute to it as an altruist. But if you decide not to involve yourself with others, then you must be willing to be by yourself, unattached to the outside but totally involved with your own process.

This isn’t about right or wrong. This is just that if you think you can walk around with arrogance and confidence that you only have to look out for number 1, you will get entangled and enslaved by everything. Humility is of the utmost importance whether you are an altruist or selfish.

Internally, you cannot make conclusions about yourself. You may appear on the surface to be one way or the other. But no matter what way you choose to be on the surface, your life is always only happening within you.

So choose selfishness or altruism, it doesn’t matter. But inside, you must be a living contribution to this world. You are connected to everything. You could not be here without it contributing to you either.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Perfection

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I consider myself to be a perfectionist. Everything I do I endeavour for it to be done as perfectly as possible. Some people say I am obsessive or too nit picky. Is it wrong to want to do things as best as possible?

Sincerely,

Pop Goes Perfection

Dear PGP,

Let me tell you an old Zen story:

There was a monk who lived at a monastery and was placed in charge of the gardens. Because he loved the plants so much, he meticulously performed his job for hours.

There was another temple across from this monastery where an old Zen Master lived. One day, he watched this monk perform his duties with great attention from across the way.

When the monk had finished that day, he remarked to the old master how beautiful everything was now. The master replied,

“Yes, but there is something missing. Please carry me to that tree.”

The monk helped the old master to the tree. The master then proceeded to shake the tree, showering leaves all over the garden. “There” he said, “You can put me back down now.”

What is perfection? It is simply by your limited definition isn’t it? What may be perfectly heaven for you could be someone else’s ultimate hell, couldn’t it?

If you feel a deep compulsion or addiction towards perfection, then that is not well-being, it is sickness. To consciously perform your duties is fine – but you must not be attached to the outcome.

Being dedicated to the process is all that matters. Enjoy every step along the way of whatever action you perform. Do it fully, consciously, with the utmost involvement. That is the only thing that truly matters. But this idea that if you do X, Y, and Z, then it equals perfection, is just a psychological game.

You have created rules for how you live. In those rules, you have decided that things need to be a particular way for you to be comfortable. Now, all these rules have become so important for you that you think that anything that follows them is perfection and anything that doesn’t needs to be fixed.

All that has happened is you have gone from seeing the splendor and beauty in the way things are and instead see everything as a problem that needs solving. Do not flatter yourself. Even if the entire universe was broken, are you somehow the most qualified to fix it?

You can tend to a garden your whole life, and it is not a wasted life. Tending a garden takes tremendous care. You have to manage so many factors, but if you do, there is potential for many great results.

But if you don’t manage those factors even for 1 or 2 days, the whole garden becomes at risk, doesn’t it? This is your plan, your design, your efforts – constant meticulous effort for minuscule fragile reward.

Now take a look at a forest. Even if you leave it alone for ten million years, will it not thrive insatiably? It does not need your interference. In fact, if you want it to not thrive, for sure your interference is the culprit!

That is nature’s way. It is wild, doesn’t care about your personal rules or agendas, and it flourishes in the most effective way. It may not give you the particular result you want, but it will for sure yield far more results than you ever will.

I don’t say all this so that you suddenly become some unkempt lazy person who just thinks that life will somehow take care of you magically. I am saying that you must be as devoted to the process as that forest is.

Every single seed and sapling and tree in that forest is focused on it’s growth. It doesn’t have some desire to grow in a particular way or shape or style. Simply it is devoted to the processes it needs to be – to absorb sunlight, nutrients, etc.

Like this, you must forget about being results focused. Forget about perfection. Instead be as involved as possible in your process. Every day that goes by, no matter what life gives you, make the most of it and dive in!

Perfection is not a target to be reached. Life is not perfect because it follows some made up rules. Life is perfect because in every moment, it pushes forward, with absolute attention and totality. You must do the same.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Being Flexible

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have a hard time being flexible to things I don’t enjoy in life. I get caught up in my preferences and become unhappy. How can I become more flexible?

Sincerely,

Infuriated and Inflexible

Dear IAI,

Let’s say your body is stiff. How did it become that way? You took certain actions and the result is stiffness, no?

Similarly, in the mind rigidity can happen. It to is just a consequence of certain actions.

A flexible mind will make for a flexible life. But you cannot force the mind to be flexible. You must create the right conditions, then, flexibility is inevitable.

Have you ever noticed that when you are joyful, you are very flexible? You are willing to do just about anything. But when you are unhappy, you will draw a line in the sand and put up a wall. This is all that is happening.

You can’t do anything to become flexible to things you don’t enjoy. It is impossible. Flexibility requires your joy. Simply, you must enjoy life, whatever it brings. But right now you have made yourself such a way that your happiness depends on everything except you.

Take a deep look – you become happy only if something external goes the way you want. You got the job you wanted, you got a compliment, the person you like gave you attention. Only then are you happy. This is ultimate slavery, isn’t it?

When your happiness is manufactured within you, why are you seeking it outside of yourself? When you have a bank account with millions of dollars in it, why would you suddenly start looking for pennies on the street?

This is all that has happened to you. You think that happiness comes from the outside. So you have made preferences – I like this situation, so I am flexible. I don’t like this situation, so I am rigid. Your preferences are the very basis of your enslavement.

Am I saying you must become some kind of freak, loving torture and misery? No, I am simply saying that whatever life brings you, no matter how challenging it is, you must learn to be happy of your own nature.

Your happiness should be independent of the circumstance. You see, if you have a difficult situation, it is already bad enough. But now you become unhappy about it, so you are rigid. What was one problem has now multiplied.

You cannot control what life gives you, but how you carry what it gives you is entirely up to you. Will you carry it joyfully? Or will you resist it, fight it, suppress it? The deeper you bury it, the more it will grow.

Become open to life. No matter what it throws at you, simply be happy with it. Don’t mind whether it’s good or bad or easy or difficult. Just be happy to be here, alive, breathing. It is simply a matter of perspective.

If you truly care about your well being, then just change your outlook. When life is good you can enjoy it. When life is difficult, you can strive to grow and learn and enjoy that also. What’s the big issue?

When is there ever a good reason not to be pleasant and joyful about life? In easy times, definitely you want to be joyful. In difficult times, you need it even more don’t you?

You multiply your problems in life and exaggerate them when you become unhappy. This is why I say to practice being joyful. I’m not saying walk around smiling like a grinning idiot at everything, just that there is always something worth celebrating in every moment.

Joy too is just a consequence. Accepting life as it is is the practice. You cannot force joy by saying to yourself “I am joyful, I am joyful!!!!”

When you learn to not have preferences, to simply take whatever life gives you and go with it, ease becomes inevitable. When ease is there, the system will be joyful, be it body or mind. When you are joyful being flexible is natural.

So don’t try to force flexibility. If you force a muscle to become flexible when it is rigid, all that will happen is you will damage it. So you cannot become flexible in the mind when you are unhappy. You will just torture yourself.

Instead, simply learn to accept the moment as is, appreciating it. The rest will follow.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Questions

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have so many questions burning in my mind all the time. I try to meditate, try to read teachings, but always I have a million questions. What will it take to get the answer?

Sincerely,

Question Everything

Dear QE,

Questions…you must understand the limitations.

A question is a good place to start for one who is seeking their ultimate well being. When you are wanting to improve your life in some way, you seek answers somewhere. You have some question in your mind that you feel must be answered.

But have you found, every time you find and answer and think “this is it!” eventually it is not enough and you have more questions?

You see, your questions should move you in such a way that they provide clarity and direction. They should aim for truth, not conclusions.

Thousands of answers can be given to even a single question. Depending on your perspective, you can argue something from any direction. I’m sure you have seen politicians take the exact same data and somehow make it fit their reasoning, even when the other party uses it to achieve the opposite.

Conclusions are a waste of your time since they are interpretive. What is interpreted is not reality, it is just your psychological nonsense. Truth works on all levels of life.

Conclusions will not bring you truth or clarity. They will only narrow your experience of life. They will fix boundaries around your existence that do not exist. Then you will naturally want to break free of them. This is why there is no answer that will satisfy you, and questions will keep on coming.

There is this problem in most people that they believe they can pin down life into one sentence or one question or answer and it will complete their existence. Life doesn’t work like that. It cannot be pinned down.

Even the tiniest objects in this universe can be examined infinitely. That is the depth of this universe, of this life. There is no single answer. There is only the experience of that boundlessness.

The very place where you are asking questions from (your mind) is incapable of experiencing anything in it’s entirety. By it’s very nature it wants to dissect everything. It will never allow you to experience the whole picture, because it can’t.

So you ask a question from your mind, and any answer you receive will be of the mind too. Your mind cannot get you there any more than a boat can get you to the moon. It is simply impossible. That is the limitation of your mind.

But in the experiential dimension of life, the answer, so to speak, is there. It is pulsing and thriving in every moment of this existence. When you can move beyond the need for conclusions and simply be here with things as they are, questions and answers become meaningless.

What is the use of answering your questions when instead we can burn up all the questions? What use will an answer be if you are sitting here in tears and ecstasy experiencing the true nature of this existence?

So do not ask questions expecting an answer. Ask questions in such a way that you become part of a process. The way a seed moves from sapling to flower to fruit, you too must burn those questions as fuel to grow.

If you are willing to be a process, then you are willing to be life. That is all life is. Life in every moment is an ever unfolding process. It is constantly growing and constantly flowering. You cannot conclude anything about it.

It’s like this: When that tree is growing, is the ultimate result the flower? Why aren’t its putting down roots just as phenomenal? Or it branching, or sprouting, or shedding? You see, all of those things are results in their own right, just as the flower is.

If you can see all life like this, one big process where growth and flowering are inseparable, indistinguishable – what use are your questions? Conclusions can never take you to this perception. Your mind can never provide you with the answer you seek.

If you have questions that is fine. But do not become obsessed with answers. You will just keep on drawing conclusions and imprisoning yourself.

Instead, work on yourself. In the myriad questions that have been asked here, am I not always hammering away at you that you must turn inward? That your experience of life is entirely within you?

Be devoted to the process that is your life. There are no answers; you just simply have to explore the fullness of what it means to be alive.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Consciousness

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

You often talk about doing things consciously and how that’s the difference in life. But what is consciousness? How can we be more conscious?

Sincerely,

Confused About Consciousness

Dear CAC,

Consciousness is not really that complicated. The only issue is most people are confusing how alert they are for consciousness. Alertness is about survival – using your senses in a keen way to ensure your safety. But alertness is not a requirement of life. I’m sure you have seen many unalert people somehow manage to survive!

Consciousness is simply always on. It is a requirement for life to even exist. Or rather, consciousness is life; they are not separate.

If it is always on, the only question is how intense it is. How conscious you are determines how alive you feel, doesn’t it? When you are asleep, you are still technically alive and conscious – but it has been dialed down so much that you become unaware of so many things. Your experience of life becomes practically nonexistent.

Inversely, the more consciously you perform any activity in life, the higher your level of experience. It’s like turning up the speaker to 11 – then you get the maximum effect.

Even the most seemingly mundane things in life can become fantastic and beautiful simply by your level of involvement.

The only issue is that you have a psychological drama going on in your head. By it’s very definition, anything psychological is only ever something you made up, or at best, it is an inaccurate interpretation. Either way, you are not seeing life as it is.

Through this filter, you see things based on so many idiotic preferences – I like this, I don’t like that, that is red, that is blue, this is big, that is small. I want you to please let this sink in – none of those conclusions are real. Those conclusions have no meaning.

The truth is, life itself has no meaning at all. Meaning is something that can only be created in your mind, it does not exist independently of you. Life has no meaning, but life is phenomenal. Those two statements coexist in no contradiction.

It is not meaningful that the sun rises every morning – but it is phenomenal. It is not meaningful that even a tiny speck of dust can be examined infinitely – but it is phenomenal. Your life is not meaningful in any way – but it is phenomenal.

When you were a child, you were like this. Everything was just fantastic! Every stick on the ground, every leaf on the wind, just about every damn thing had your undivided involvement and attention.

But somewhere along the way, you traded this all for conclusions about everything. Somewhere, you decided that life isn’t good enough as is, so you gotta be the one who will pin it down and define it better. Life will not let you get away with such nonsense.

When you are stuck in your silly ideas about life, you instead carve up the universe, deciding what is meaningful and what isn’t. The only reason you get such stupid ideas is because you have gotten too attached to your memory.

Through your memory you draw all your idiotic conclusions – what you like and dislike is only because of what you remember. But memory itself is not a bad thing. Without memory, you would never be able to evolve and learn, constantly falling for the same traps endlessly. That would be a truly cruel existence.

Consciousness is essentially this – do you use your memory as a solid foundation, or do you carry it on your back like a burden? The more you dial up your consciousness, the more loosely you cling to your memory, and the greater your experience of life.

If you can keep some distance between your memory and you, then you will use it instead of it using you.

So how to dial up your consciousness? How to shed this attachment to memory? The beautiful thing about life is that if you simply stop polluting yourself with so much garbage and stop clinging to it like it’s precious, it will shed itself.

It takes tremendous effort on your part to cling to all this memory. You carry it all on your back; that takes a huge amount of involvement from you! By simply stopping from piling on more, it will fluff off.

If you just become more involved in life, then you don’t have to actively shed your attachments to memory or try to be conscious. Just in every little way, become an active participant in your life! Whether it’s sweeping the floor or raising a child, treat it with the same level of intensity and involvement.

If you treat each moment of life like this – that it is all equally precious – consciousness is not an issue. It is an inevitability. The only rub is, it won’t happen on it’s own.

The opposite of consciousness is reactivity – you will compulsive react to everything in life, like a slave to your own programming. To break this enslavement is the only real choice you have in this existence.

But life won’t make you more conscious by accident. You have to decide, in this moment and each moment, how involved will you be? That is what it means to have free will, to be human. It’s not about what you choose. It’s simply that you consciously choose it.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Choosing Sides

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

There are so many issues that seem to divide us all. Political issues, religious issues, moral issues – people can’t even agree on reversing our climate issues! When the world is so divided, is there any hope for our future? Why are some people so stuck in their ways?

Sincerely,

Divided We Fall

Dear DWF,

The issue is people are so damn identified with everything. Including you.

You wear your clothes a certain way, someone else wears different clothes that seem ugly to you, immediately you have stopped including them, haven’t you? You’ve pitted yourself against them over something so trivial.

I’m not saying you’re doing it consciously. And that’s the problem. Unconsciously you are constantly dividing your life into camps based on an all the ways you accidentally identify with everything.

Forget all the different ways you are categorizing this. Political, moral, whatever – essentially, you have formed your identity around some boundary that you created or you let society impose on you. It’s that simple.

Tell me, where do all these boundaries you have drawn exist? Do they exist in the outside naturally? Did nature draw lines everywhere saying “left wing on this side, right wing on that side”? No, nature has only fixed one boundary for you, and that you will understand when you take your last breath. Otherwise it has given you absolute freedom.

So these boundaries don’t exist independently of you. They exist only within you. You made them up!

It’s true, people will never agree on anything collectively. You cannot name a single topic where 100% of the people agree. And that is okay. That is part of the diversity of life, and not you or anyone else is ever going to change it.

But because you have come with all your identifications, you arrive to every situation with a closed mind. You enter with a glass filled to the brim – tell me, can it fit any more into it?

So with your mind already made up you go into each situation. Is this a wise way to be? Can anything new happen here? No, this is the way of fools. Only a fool acts based on things that aren’t real.

What’s not real you ask? The past is just memory. The future is just an imagining. Neither exist here and now. Here and now, you must be open, otherwise you are not living in reality!

If you are not open in this moment the way it is and have already picked a side, then you are doomed to suffer. It doesn’t matter if the side you picked is right morally or scientifically or whatever. You must approach each moment with openness and humility.

You choose a side and it’s already daunting enough to work on what you want to change.  Now you also have to fight everyone who you have deemed to be on the other side. Why are you dividing everyone into camps?

Why are you focusing so much on all the problems? Essentially it boils down to this: Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? Don’t dress it up anymore than that.

No matter what the situation, you make the most of it. You work towards your vision. If you truly believe it is right, then even if it means it will never be accomplished in your lifetime, you work towards it anyway. A person who plants a tree does not get to benefit from it’s shade. But others will, and they won’t care what side you were on, only that the tree is there!

The world is a large place. Though there may be many who seem like they are on the other side of you, there are countless that are willing to work with you on what you feel matters. Very few people stand in your way actively sabotaging. You’re not that special!

But isn’t it convenient to have an opinion on everything and do nothing? You are on the left side and yell at the right, they are on the right and yell at the left, but nobody is lifting a finger.

My point is all this endless divisive thinking is just a distraction for you. If you truly care about something, then you use whatever means you can to make it happen. You don’t get to decide what the state of this moment is. But you get to decide how you are in the moment.

It’s up to you – keep looking at the world as divided, and that is all you will see. You will become negative and cynical and take very little meaningful action. Or you can see where there is opening, and and plant some seeds there and tend to them. The world needs more of the latter.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

 

 

On Finding Solutions

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

There’s a lot of problems facing the future of humanity and I have become very discouraged. Governments all seem so corrupt and unwilling to do anything but help the most wealthy and privileged. Why is it so hard for them to take action? Is it really just greed?

Sincerely,

Govern Mental

Dear GM,

It is true there are a lot of problems facing the world. Humanity has grown to such numbers and continues to grow that we have put tremendous strain on this planet, ourselves, and other creatures.

However, no matter what the situation is in life, there is always some action that can be taken. There are always solutions. What you are asking is “Why doesn’t someone else solve all these problems for us?”

Unless a solution works for all parties involved, it is not a solution. It will always create imbalance and people will always seek ways to deeply exploit those imbalances. This isn’t greed or right or wrong. It is simply how we are. Whenever a human is any situation, they always seek to break past it’s limitations. They look for openings to grow.

The only thing is, we have been going about our survival as a species with very little consciousness. It mostly happens by accident, and as a result, we see those imbalances everywhere. Now, because the world is more connected than ever and our population is so large, it is in our face much more.

So you might argue that’s why we elect our governments – so that they can create that conscious plan. But if you want true governance, then you must be involved.

Tell me, has there ever been a government that has fixes everything alone? When things were difficult, when things were easy, did they do it all? Are they ever successful?

So what makes you think all of a sudden this government is going to do it? You are living in a fantasy land because it’s convenient. If you always have someone to point the finger and blame, you never have to lift a finger.

I want you to understand that in everyone’s own mind, they have a story, and they are the hero. You are the hero of your story, and that politician or whatever is in theirs as well. Governments are not making some calculated effort to destroy the world because they want to be evil.

Yes, money is a huge factor in all of this. But that is not a bad thing. The only issue is we have structured our system in such a way that there are too few with too much and too many with too little.

This is where all the anger and resentment comes from. You can point your finger at the government or the rich man or the corporation and blame them. You may even be justified in it. But tell me, does that finger pointing in the long run solve anything?

Right now, if you live in North America, you are richer than the vast majority of people on this planet. They might look at you and wonder how you could earn even $20,000 a year and somehow still not have any to spare for people like them. To them, you are evil and not lifting a finger. But to you, you’re poor.

Blame gets us nowhere. You must work with what you have when you have it.

By setting aside differences and working together, with compassion and understanding, with willingness and openness – then only do real solutions happen.

If you truly want to help our future as a species, then you must seek win-win solutions. You must be inclusive, not exclusive.

There is no reason why ecology and economy can’t go hand in hand. I’m not talking about half-measures or compromises. I’m talking about building solutions that are sustainable and beneficial for everyone.

The solution has to work at all levels – for the companies, for the government, for the citizens, for the soil, the trees, the water, the air, the animals, the insects…all of it! Without exception.

If you want results, then you must learn to work with the governments of the day as they are. If you keep dreaming that “in 4 or 5 years when we re-elect, then our saviours will come”, you will be trapped in an endless cycle and by then in it will be too late to do anything. Anyway then you will have to work with what you have.

So take a look at the yourself. Take a look at your municipality, your community, your area, your nation, your planet! See where you are capable of creating solutions that work for all those interests. Then do the work.

You are uniquely qualified in some way, aren’t you? You can do something that helps everyone in a way that no one else can. It’s time to stop stifling your potential and capacity to help just because you are angry.

Turn that intensity into a desire to work together. Not because working together is the high ground or morally better. Simply because it is more effective at creating solutions.

It’s time now more than ever to work together, especially with those you blame. There are people right now all over the world doing just that. But more need to step beyond their anger if we truly want to change the course of humanity. Think and act win-win. Now is the time.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Helping Others

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have grown a lot and worked on myself a great deal. I feel now when I look at people that I have a genuine desire to help them, but I find people do not seem to really want to change. What can I do to get through to them?

Sincerely,

Helping Handicapped

Dear HH,

You help someone where they are at. Not where you wish them to be.

If that one simple thing sinks into you, then helping others is not a complex endeavour. According to your capability and their willingness, you help them. What is so hard about that?

The issue right now is you see someone and see problems. You decide that you are the only one who can fix it. They must be fixed the way you see them. This is not coming from a place of compassion, but from a place of competitiveness. Your insecurity makes you want to be the one to “get through to them”.

I want you to sincerely look at where you are in your life right now. You claim to have grown a lot; this is fantastic! Now tell me, to get to this place now, how many stupid, idiotic, and problematic things did you do? Was your journey perfect?

What authority or experience do you have to decide what somebody’s potential is? Do you have any way of determining that what they are going through right now is good or bad for their growth?

If you are truly in the business of helping others, then whatever way people are, you will use it for their growth. It is that simple.

It’s so easy to say to someone “You must be like this. You must change in the way I see as best“. This puts you in a superior position and removes all accountability from you. They fail and you avoid the blame, they succeed and you take the credit. Good deal for you, isn’t it?

If you do not have the skill to help someone no matter what state they are in, then best to simply leave them to live their life. You just exist in such a way that people are better for having encountered you. Be an exuberant, joyful life. That alone will help, without you having to do anything specific.

You being critical of others and forcing your way on them is not going to help anyone, least of all you. People do not want to be told what to do. They want to get there by their own hand. To help someone is an art, a dance, and skill does not come simply because you have “grown more than them”.

So that’s the first bit – you. Your capability to help must be honed, or barring that, you must be a blessing to all you encounter. Without that, you have no business helping.

The second bit is their willingness, their receptivity. But still, this requires your keen perception.

Helping someone is not about forcing them to a realization or an action. Helping someone is planting a seed.

People come to you with all kinds of boundaries and excuses and barriers set up. They want a beautiful flower to grow, but they have paved over everything with concrete. Where to plant the seed?

You can grab a hammer and force the pavement open, plop the seed down, then leave. But this is a destructive approach, and what’s more, you do it without their consent. Even if the flower grows, they have no appreciation for it and will pave over it again, simply because it was born without their consent.

But if you just be with them, and guide them towards cracking their own pavement – breaking down their own excuses in other words – then the soil is exposed, but they were the ones to expose it. Do not underestimate the importance of their involvement.

Then, you can plant the seed. Even better if you give them the seed and they plant it themselves!

All of this is metaphor, but it also isn’t. Every conversation you have is functioning in this way, isn’t it? To help is just this very process of dissolving excuses and boundaries and exposing the soil. It is about freedom and growth.

When they are the ones to break down their own nonsense, their growth is much faster and lasts. They are capable of transformation. If you want to help,  you guide them through this, provide them with the tools, support them whatever way they need in that moment.

Every moment is different. Whether a person is making poor choices or good choices is irrelevant. No one can say for sure what can grow from the actions we take today. So deal with each person as they are in that moment.

Don’t see people the way you wish they were. You will be incapable of helping. Who knows what they will flower into! They may do something no one else has ever dreamed!

You want to help, then simply meet them where they are at. Drop this notion that they are not receptive. Something is always reachable and possible in each moment. You are the fool for acting as though you know best and it’s their issue.

Help or don’t help, either is fine. But if you must help, then help them as they are. That is the only way.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Identity

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

My mind is always wandering. I try to meditate or quiet the mind but it feels impossible and eventually it drifts. I’ve heard people say to just witness the thoughts but I still get dragged into them. Nothing seems to work! How can I restrain my thoughts?

Sincerely,

Too Thought To Handle

Dear TTTH,

Your mind never wanders. It doesn’t leave you and go somewhere. Your mind, just like your body, is always here, with you. You are a complete package and it all has to go together.

So the mind cannot wander; it is not something that is acting separately from you. The mind is with you, here, but it is thinking about something else. It is thinking about something that either happened or has yet to happen. That is all it can do – fantasy or memory. Both are inaccurate, always.

It is always so convenient to blame some aspect of ourselves. When we do great, we take credit “I accomplished this! Go me!”

When life gets a little tricky, then the blame starts – “It is this person’s fault, or the situation’s fault, or it is my mind, not me!”

How your experience of life is within you is only your responsibility, no one else’s. So let’s place the responsibility where it actually is. Your mind isn’t the culprit.

Your mind is simply a tool. That tool functions best when it is sharp and clear. When wielded like this, it will penetrate existence and reveal to you truth. But when it is dull and confused, it will only become one big mess.

The problem with that mess is that you will believe it’s truth. You will call that mess your psychological structure, or your personality, and will become so heavily attached to it. You will depend on it so much that you will fight to keep it there even if it means complete and utter confusion.

This is what is happening to you. You think you have an issue with your mind, but you don’t. The real issue is with all your identifications.

When you become too heavily identified with everything in life, it determines the quality of your thoughts. Your thoughts in and of themselves are not random. Are they not happening based solely and how you identify yourself?

You sit and try to meditate and the thoughts come. They will always be of your house or your work or your partner or your possessions. They will always be about something that you use to define you.

You have so  many identifications – even the way you style your hair or the clothes you wear have become your identity. But you have made this your boundary. It is not nature’s boundary for you.

You could be any way you wish in any moment. Have any hairstyle, any clothes, and personality! But no, you are too heavily identified to have freedom.

So the very nature of your thoughts is based on your identity. It is the source.

Tell me, can you restrain the mind? Try it right now – try not to think. All that will happen is you will think even more about trying not to think. That is the nature of the mind. It always is multiplying whatever you give it. Restraint will never work.

But if you simply start dropping your identifications – or even better, stop creating new ones all the time – you will see, clarity will come.

It’s like you ate some really spicy food and now you have diarrhea. Tell me, can you restrain it? Is that the solution? It’s not going to work. All that will happen is that mess will explode in your shorts. Just like this, you have mental diarrhea, and when you restrain it builds up pressure. You can’t hold it back. It is impossible.

If you want to stop the diarrhea you have to eat better food, or at the very least stop eating the bad food. Stop identifying so heavily with everything and just experience it the way it is. You will see the mind will just take a backseat.

Thoughts are always there so long as you have identity. But there is a world of difference between thinking and thoughts. When you sit and try to meditate, thoughts will come passively. But when you start actively feeding them by thinking about them, that’s when they get out of control.

You do not need to think, even if your thoughts are there. For now, this is all that is meant by being the witness to your thoughts. It’s not about restraint or control. Just don’t feed them as much and they won’t grow.

But the real solution is just to stop identifying with every little thing. Any identity you have made for yourself is a lie anyway. It is something that you made up, it only exists in your head. In reality, all you are is a lump of this earth, and believe me, she will reclaim her lump. It doesn’t matter what fanciful identity you made.

A lie always needs your constant intervention in order to stay up. If you just stop, it will crumble on it’s own. So when new situations occur, pay attention to how you are identifying with them, and practice dropping them before they stick to you.

All you need to do for your identity to crumble is stop making new identifications. Then without any effort, even the old ones will fall off. Once that happens, thoughts will not be an issue.

In life we must learn that if we want a particular result, we have to deal with the cause, not the effect. You want to deal with your thoughts, then you deal with your identity.

If you try to deal with your thoughts by stopping your thoughts, it will be like pulling weeds. They will always grow back because you are always nurturing them, and you’ll be endlessly pulling.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Consequences

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Whenever a question is asked you often speak about going inward, not outward. That’s all fine, but what about managing the external? How does one create a pleasant atmosphere for themselves, one where they can thrive? Surely the external matters to some extent.

Sincerely,

Inside Looking Out

Dear ILO,

People feel like managing their external situation is some big undertaking. Is your life truly so complex?

What is it you are trying to manage – work, a relationship, a family, a home? Every other insect, bird, fish, or animal on this planet does the same damn things without nearly as much fuss. It’s not actually such a big deal.

Perhaps you want a certain level of these things. You have set some standards for these things – but that is your business. Your standard of these things could be anywhere, but you fixed them in such a way that they are difficult.

But let’s just humour you for a moment. Let’s say you get a genie and he grants you wishes. You wish for what? Money, promotion, bigger house, better car, better marriage…? He grants you all these wishes and more.

For how long will you be satisfied? A day? A week? A month? At some point, will you not become dissatisfied?

You keep thinking that by fixing the outside you’re going to fix the inside. This has never worked for anyone and will never work for anyone. Just take a look at the world. Haven’t we tried solving almost every problem by fixing the outside. If we fix the outside anymore than we already have there won’t be a planet left pretty soon!

You want pleasant surroundings you say. Your external experience is simply a reflection of your inner experience, isn’t it? Perhaps you disagree, that it is only because of something someone else did that you are the way you are. Let’s take a look at this. Are you a victim or are you in charge?

Have you ever been in a situation where everyone was happy and joyful but you were miserable? The external situation was perfect, but it doesn’t matter because you were feeling cranky that day.

Or perhaps a day where you were feeling fantastic, and all of your friends and family were having problems. You were able to continue feeling great and unaffected by their nonsense.

My point is that if you do not have peace in yourself, you will not have peace in your surroundings. It doesn’t matter how conducive the situation is to your growth, if you are not receptive, it doesn’t matter.

Letting the outside situation dictate how you are inside is absolute enslavement. If you had a remote control that controlled your experience of life, but then you hand it over to me, isn’t that slavery? Now I am in total control over how you are within. I decide if you are happy or sad or whatever. Anxiety and stress is natural in such a situation.

You cannot decide how the external goes. It is always out of your control. Only according to your intelligence and capability can you manage it to some extent. You can even manage it well. But never exactly the way you want 100% of the time.

At least the inside must be 100% in your control. Why give other people the power over you that they can decide how you feel inside? Why are you giving the remote that is in your hands to every last stranger you encounter?

Individual people must manage themselves. It is the only thing that they can manage. If this one thing sinks into you, that you are responsible for your own experience, then you will see your surroundings will get better.

Let’s say for example you are at work and someone is particularly miserable that day. Tell me, do you want to be around this person? Please understand that everyone else feels the exact same way about you.

Focus on making yourself into the highest expression of your life that you can. Be such a way that everyone that meets you is better for encountering you. Then your situation will transform. But if you think that by fixing someone or something else that you will transform, think again.

You said that to some extent the external matters. Yes, it does. To some extent it does matter. But not in the way you think. It’s not that you will be happy if only the outside was different.

This is all you need to know about perfectly managing any situation you are in:

Do whatever you want. It doesn’t even matter if it is something “good” or something “bad”. But you must do it fully, involved in it totally. No matter what the consequences of those actions, be willing to accept them and include them absolutely.

It’s simple, but not easy. Every action has an effect. That is the way of this cosmos. Nothing is exempt from it. So your actions have consequences. If you are willing to accept the consequences and not be in denial or run from them, then truly, you can do whatever you want.

But if you want to do whatever you want but then cry or get angry when it doesn’t give you exactly what you imagined, you will suffer.

A wise person will understand that when they don’t know the full depth and breath of the consequences of an action they may take, it is best to walk a little bit more gently.

So don’t fixate too much on the outside – act, accept the consequences whatever they are. The real solution to the outside is inside. You waste your life by thinking it can ever be the other way around.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Illusion

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Is life really an illusion? We’ve all read masters who have said life is a dream or maya. Is it true? What is the point of all this if life isn’t real?

Sincerely,

Life is But a Dream

Dear LIBAD,

Right now you only know life one way: through the filter of your mind. Overwhelmingly, well over 99% of your day is just an interpretation of your thoughts. You project all you think onto each moment.

You see, people read too many scriptures and stories and hear things like “All existence is an illusion, a dream, a maya!” But this is not meant to define existence, it is meant to destroy your projection so you can see things clearly.

Do not become so attached to this question “Is life real or not?” It’s real for you, isn’t it? If it doesn’t feel real, shall I come and poke you with a blade? You won’t be asking such a foolish question then for sure.

This is not about whether existence is real or not. It is real or it isn’t real is irrelevant. It is happening for you, in this moment. That is all that is important. The only question is, are you experiencing it as it is, or as a projection through your own filters?

Thinking about life is not life. Your thoughts have nothing to do with reality. Right now, you can think anything you want, but it is always limited. Your thoughts are like this, constantly trying to draw lines where there aren’t any. You are drawing conclusions when none exist.

Tell me, can you have a single thought that isn’t a conclusion? Even if you have the thought “I will not make conclusions” that in and of itself is a conclusion! The mind is a useful tool for your survival, but when it comes to experiencing life for what it is, it can never work.

The truth is, existence has no boundaries. There are no conclusions to be made. Only your mind makes them. A person is not good or bad because you decide it. A tree is not big or small, a river is not fast or slow – these are all just conclusions you drew for your convenience.

A person just is. A tree just is. A river too, just is. There is nothing to define about it. Even naming these things separately has no basis in reality. You have decided “That is a tree, and this is me. We are separate.”

You have a respiratory system yes? Well, without the tree, does your respiratory system exist? In many ways, the tree is the other half of your respiratory system. So are you really that separate?

Like this, everything in existence is connected. Constantly entwined with everything else. Not a single atom is spared. Fundamentally, all the physical existence we see is just the same energy. Science has shown you that matter is simply energy arranged in a certain way. In short, everything is energy. Everything is the same.

I don’t say all this to give you more to fantasize about. I don’t want you to imagine we are all one and heavenly and start drifting into more thought! You must experience it to know it; otherwise it is just a story.

I say this because I want you to understand that your experience of life right now is not real. It is only through the filter of your mind, and your mind always draws conclusions where none exist.

It’s like wearing a pair of red-tinted glasses. You will think existence is red. You will proclaim it loudly. You will be so certain and definitive about it! But if you take off the glasses, clearly you will see, existence is not red.

If you can learn to move from your psychological experience to an existential experience of life, it’s like taking off those glasses. Suddenly, everything is so obvious and clear. Existence is not the dream or illusion. Your psychological structure is.

Perhaps those masters should have said “Psychological structure is an illusion!” But that doesn’t have the same ring to it!

Life is real. Existence is real. There is a way that it is unfurling in each moment that is total, inclusive, united. All this is happening as individual manifestations, but all fundamentally the same energy, just playing out eternally.

Your thoughts are the dream. Your identity is the illusion. Your psychological structure is the maya. You have spent too long wearing those glasses and you have forgotten what life really is.

This is why all this constant talk of being conscious, being present. If you can learn to just put down those glasses, even for just a millisecond, you will finally see things clearly. Once that happens, you will strive for you own liberation from your dream.

Life has always been real. Your mind will always be an illusion. Your mind can never get you from illusion to truth in the same way those red-tinted glasses can never show you anything except red. Your glasses can’t liberate you from your glasses! So your question isn’t the issue. Just do this one thing:

Move from interpretation and projection to involvement and experience. This is the key to waking up from the dream. Learn to just be in the moment as is. Involve yourself totally in whatever is happening. No matter what life brings, include it and experience it.

It’s time to wake up from the dream. Do not put so much importance on your thoughts. They can never show you the total picture.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Education

~ SE ~ 1 Comment

Dear True Self,

I am a bit worried about the way our education system works. I feel like my kids are all being bombarded enough already by overstimulating media, but then at school they are just being forced to memorize endless knowledge. They even ask me what the point of all this memorization is when they can google everything. Is there a better way for them to learn or is the education system fine?

Sincerely,

Too Cool For School

Dear TCFS,

There must be an important distinction made between information, knowledge, and wisdom. Information is simply data. Knowledge is a certain accumulation and access of that data. Wisdom is the ability to apply all of this in a meaningful way. Very few people are wise.

Unfortunately today we equate intelligence with information. The more information you have, the smarter you are. But it is all nonsense.

You go to school and get your PhD, stand next to a farmer and feel good. You can ask them if they know the square root of pi, and when they say no you can feel smart. You can tell them the dates of famous events in history. On and on you can spout information. But the farmer has intelligence too and do things you cannot. In fact, it takes far more intelligence to do what he does.

The reality is the time has already come where information is obsolete. You can ask any question and find the answer in ten seconds with your smart phone. What are you going to do with all this information you’ve been gathering?

In the same way that factory production took physical labour out of the hands of people and into the hands of machines, accumulation and access of information will go to the machines.

Every time machines come and make life less laborious for humans, the unions and workers will protest. But please see, they are not protesting that the technology is bad. They are protesting because they are worried about their livelihood, their survival.

It is definitely much better for a human being to not have to do tons of backbreaking labour all day. If a machine can do it, it means the person is freed up to explore something beyond their survival.

Unfortunately, humanity has never got out of this mentality, that we need to struggle to survive. So now physical labour isn’t seen as the requirement for work, but how much information you carry is.

So the burden of carrying all this information also takes its toll. If you did not have to waste so many years memorizing endless information, but instead could explore the deepest aspects of your own individual genius, wouldn’t this be a good thing?

The nice thing is that we are sitting on a threshold. When finally we reach a point where how much data you have gathered is redundant, people are going to have no choice but to explore something else. Now more than ever, people must learn to turn inward.

Education started as a means of creating a skilled work force. Back when this happened, it was about factory line labour. We are still very much in this mode. A young mind should not be burdened and stressed by dumping copious data into it. This will not make the child smarter, only more enslaved.

Why take a human being who has their own potential and try to form them into some pre-molded shape? It is an absolute crime to their humanity.

Every single human being naturally explores their inner genius. It is not a big complex endeavour to discover this. If you simply leave a child alone, they will anyway explore it. Even before the child can speak, you can observe this. Put two children of the same age together and give them the same toys. They will both play with them in a completely unique way, won’t they?

This is what I mean by their inner genius being natural. It should not be the role of our schools to bombard them with as much information as possible. It should be to make them more capable of exploring what they know and manifesting it into something new. After all, your children should do something you never dreamed of, not the same nonsense as you.

Perhaps this desire to dump as much data into our children as possible comes from some deep fear of them missing out. Children today have more data crammed at them than ever, but tell me, are they any happier? Every child today seems to have some form of mental issue or health issue, especially in the west.

Enhancing the tools of an individual’s perception is really what the core of education should be. If you help someone become more perceptive, then they will naturally find a way no matter the situation. If you only give them data, which by its very nature is limited, then they can only draw from that. And they will find, just as you have time and time again that no matter how much information they have, it alone has not made them any more capable.

Rather than focus education so much on the limited – which is data – why not focus instead on the limitless – their potential? Whichever way it goes, help them go that way.

What would you rather have – your head crammed full of information, or to be more perceptive and capable? It makes absolutely no sense to focus so much on information when it is becoming so obsolete.

When a person is liberated of burden, whether it’s physical or mental or emotional or whatever, they become free to explore what matters. This is the whole point of creating a life isn’t it? That you want that life to thrive and to live beautifully? But every day out of fear of their survival, we are destroying that capacity to thrive.

Simply put, how much information you have does not lead to well being. It never can. Only by enhancing who you are can that happen. To enhance a child or anyone else, you don’t need to add anything extra. You don’t need to give them as much information as possible. This makes them less capable.

If we can shift from information to perception, education would takes leaps and bounds forward and we would see geniuses blossom all over the place. Intelligence is not about data. If we can understand that for our children, we can set them up for success.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Motivation

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I’m finding it very difficult lately to stay motivated at work. It feels so dull and boring and like I’m dragging myself there everyday. How can I get more motivated?

Sincerely,

Feeling Unmotivated

Dear FU,

Where does your sense of dullness and boredom come from? Let’s sincerely look at it.

Do some people at your job feel as you do? Do others feel the opposite, extremely motivated and productive?

Like this, look at anything in your life. Are you not capable of turning just about anything dull? Similarly, are there not other things you do that others may find dull that excite you?

People are capable of suffering just about anything. They can suffer both boons and curses. What I am getting at is that the source of your lack of motivation does not come from the outside. If different people can take the same situation and have such different experiences, clearly it has nothing to do with the situation. It has only to do with how you are.

You are manufacturing everything in your life. Every way you think, feel, and experience is all determined by you. The external situation is merely a play, it happens as it happens. But how you experience it is up to you entirely.

So it’s not your work that has become dull. It is not your work’s fault that you are unmotivated. In fact, motivation is a really useless thing to pour your energy into.

Motivation is for people who can’t be bothered to stay on a trajectory. They need constant injections of energy from the outside in order to stay on any one task. Some people even call coffee their motivation, you know?

If you constantly need something external in order to function, is that motivation or addiction?

So drop this idea that you need to be motivated. You do not. This has nothing to do with motivation. Motivation is fleeting and will come and go. It should not determine the quality of your experience.

There is a natural part of you that wants to expand. Life is like this, always looking to evolve. This part of you can never be silenced. It is in essence what it means to be a life in this cosmos.

When you are in a constant state of expansion, every time you hit a boundary, you want to break it. But at your job, you aren’t always capable of changing everything to suit your needs, and neither should that be in your power.

So you hit that boundary, and because of your survival mechanism, you sit there begrudgingly. Monotonously you do your job day in day out, finding no sense of joy. You are too afraid to lose what you have made.

It’s like you used a boat to get you across a river, but now you don’t want to get rid of the boat. But there is a mountain to climb, so you carry the boat with you on your back. What a burden this will be.

Tell me, when you first got that job, weren’t you excited? Applying for different positions and finally getting into your career must have been quite an experience. But now, that same job is not a source of joy. The job is the same as when you started. It is not the jobs fault. It is only you that is unhappy.

This constant desire within you to expand, no matter what you achieve, you will always find the next boundary. Even if you get everything you could wish for right now, will you be satisfied? Of course you will not be, and will look to something else.

Instead of letting this desire run compulsively in you, if you brought it into your conscious wakeful experience, your life would suddenly become wondrous. Do I mean some kind of miraculous or magical change will happen?

No, what I am saying is that if you bring this desire to constantly expand and evolve into each moment, what else can happen except a sense of wonder? If you approach life like this, you will constantly seek opportunity for growth instead of settling for security.

Settling for security will not work anyway. You are right now experiencing this. You want more, but don’t want to give up your comfort. So you keep doing the same thing every day expecting motivation or a vacation or some other external thing to fix your problem. This is insanity. Nothing will change if you keep doing things the same.

So how to suddenly bring this sense of wonder into your being? What is the trick or technique? First, you need to understand that you are a completely ignorant and minuscule part of this cosmos.

Many enlightened and spiritual teachers have said throughout the ages that you are insignificant. Nowadays, self esteem is such a big deal for people because they have none, so if you tell them they are nothing, they get upset.

The point of reminding you of your insignificance is not to make you feel bad. When you understand that you are just a small part of a much larger happening, you will naturally realize that you have no idea about just about anything in this damn existence.

Even with all the knowledge and experience you have, tell me, is there more that you do know or more that you don’t know? Obviously what you don’t know is infinitely larger than what you do know. Yet, you choose to so heavily attach yourself to your knowledge.

You go into every situation looking to draw conclusions based on your knowledge about it. As soon as you do that, you eliminate all possibility of any growth. Like this, you have drawn many conclusions about your work. That you must perform it a certain way, at a certain level, that you must do it the same way you’ve been doing it.

When you were a child, you didn’t have such conclusions. Everything was your playground. You would find a rock and be amazed by it’s shape and size and texture. Now, you see rocks and they are just rocks. Like this, you have traded you wonder for drawing conclusions.

New things will always be exciting. But eventually, that will fade. Don’t become a thrill seeker, endlessly trying to find new things. It will not satisfy you. Instead, be satisfied with what is here right now in front of you. But instead of going through it with dullness, stop your conclusions and approach it playfully.

Life is what you make of it. There is no rule that says you must be bored. Don’t look at this in terms of being motivated at a boring job. The job is not boring. Nothing is boring. Therefore you don’t need motivation.

Instead, simply take that job, or any other moment in your life, and approach it with a sense of playfulness. Drop the serious conclusions you have about everything. Become more playful and curious about life. Motivation is unnecessary.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Walls

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I feel as I am becoming more conscious in my life, I want to do more things to help people in this world. There are so many problems everywhere and it feels criminal to do nothing. But I am struggling as every time I try to help or take action, I am met with so many walls, both in the world and within people. How can I get past these walls and accomplish what I envision?

Sincerely,

Another Brick in the Wall

Dear ABITW,

I want you to understand that though your desire to help others may feel like you are doing the right thing, it is not coming from the right source. Right now, it is deeply rooted in your sense of identity, which is very limited.

Currently your identity sees you as the solution and everything else as the problem. You are the one to fix everything? There are no walls where you are seeing them. You have placed a wall between you and everything and are one side. Now you wonder why everywhere you look there is a wall.

When you see things like this and what’s worse you empower it with some belief that you are truly doing something that’s best for everyone, you are only going to cause a lot of trouble for the people and world around you. Why this is, is simply because you made your whole approach exclusive instead of inclusive.

Exclusivity means declaring “These are my boundaries. This is what I will include, this is what I won’t”. It is only putting up walls. Inclusivity means you have dropped your boundaries and will include whatever comes as it is. How are you to help people or this world if you won’t include them? How when you are behind a wall where no one can reach you?

So one thing is for you to start becoming more inclusive. No matter what way the world is or people are, you just include them. You don’t have to take any action. This is about the quality of inclusiveness you carry within.

Whatever life brings you, accept it, include it, and make the most of it. This is all you can ever do. Anything else you think you can do through exclusivity is just an illusion and will waste your time and energy.

It’s like this:

You wake up and find yourself in a totally enclosed square room. In front of you are two doors. The one on the left is open. The one and the right is locked and barred and nailed shut. But you wanna go through the door on the right for some reason.

So you put so much time and energy into opening it. You don’t have the keys, you don’t have a cutter, you don’t have a hammer – but somehow you think you’re going to open that door. Even if you did open the door, you would have to destroy it. It would be a destructive process, and it’s not even your door! It doesn’t belong to you!

Then, when you inevitably fail, you wonder “Why was this door so difficult to open, it may as well be a wall, it should be easier…”

Or you could just go through the open door.

Why would anyone choose to trouble themselves with a hopeless situation? You only keep finding walls in everyone and everything because you have something you are trying to figure out or prove within yourself. It’s not necessary or compassionate to use other people destructively as a means for your own growth.

This is why I say it’s all about your entanglement with your limited identity.

It is extremely important in life that you understand that results are not your concern. Your concern is only with the process. The process is the open door. The result is a closed door.

The result may or may not happen – that depends on how devoted you are to the process. But whether it happens or not is irrelevant because if you are totally involved in the process, something will result for sure.

You want the fruit but you don’t want the tree. Life doesn’t work that way.

But a process is always there, always available. Sure, you may not be able to solve all the worlds problems today or even tomorrow. But for sure, you are capable of doing something right now. If you aren’t so entangled with your walls, you will see what can be done and do it.

All we can do is what is possible in this moment. Existence have given you countless possibilities in every moment. But you find the one or two things that you cannot do and become obsessed with them and complain when they don’t work out.

There infinite open doors if you’d only look. Be sensible and go through open doors. Don’t try to break down what you see as walls. It is all a psychological game that is keeping you from seeing things the way they are.

Other people and society may have walls. That’s not your business. Look where there are openings. That is the only place where any results can happen. You don’t plant a seed in the concrete, you plant in the soil.

You don’t walk through walls, you walk through openings. Let go of your attachments to solving problems. Just find an opening and pour yourself into the process. You will see, more change will happen more quickly than when you were busting down walls.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Doing Things Naturally

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Can you please explain the difference between doing something naturally and doing something compulsively? Sometimes I think I am doing something naturally, but then I wonder if it is compulsive.

Compulsively Natural

Dear CN,

The issue is words often carry too much baggage. We use words like “natural” and what does that mean? Tell me, is there any way to exist other than naturally? Are you a plastic life form, an imitation?

No matter what you do, you are naturally doing it. It’s like the term “be in the moment”. Where the hell else can you be? So let’s rephrase this question.

How do you define aliveness? How alive you are is just a matter of how awake and how involved you are. If you are asleep, as far as you’re concerned, until you wake up nothing exists.

Or lets say you are daydreaming while doing something, like washing the dishes. You are totally uninvolved in what you are doing and drifting off into some thought. Similarly, lack of involvement makes that moment feel like a waste.

There is this nagging idea within you that somehow by involving yourself in the mundane that life will be boring. So you drift into memories or fantasies, neither of which exist. But in actuality, life is not so boring or serious. There is so much pleasure to be had simply by involving yourself in whatever is happening, no matter how seemingly boring it is.

So, when you are awake and involved, you feel the most alive. Being awake alone is not enough, you must be involved as well. The deeper your involvement, the more alive you will feel.

Essentially, your experience of life is only as rich and meaningful as your conscious involvement.

Now, when you are daydreaming or drifting into some thought, totally uninvolved, your system relies on it’s default programming. You can call this your compulsion. Your compulsion is always based on your tendencies.

It’s a good thing we have compulsion. If we didn’t, then it would be like you were asleep! But it’s just a survival mechanism. As a human being, survival will never satisfy you. This is why the whole question of “natural” vs “compulsive”. You want more than just to compulsively go about things. You want more than just a life of surviving.

Now you are asking how to know when you are doing something naturally vs compulsively. This is simply a matter of involvement. Be totally involved. Bring your conscious attention to the task at hand, and deepen the experience.

How to involve yourself? Start with your body. Involve the senses. If you are doing those dishes, feel the water on your hands. Bring this level of involvement into as many activities as you can. Compulsion disappears the more involved you become.

Perhaps you have some notion that there is just some natural way to be doing things, where you don’t need to be conscious at all. Somehow, the life within you just takes the wheel and everything magically works out.

It’s true, the source of creation throbs within you. But when it comes to the physical world we live in, there is no substitute for conscious involvement. In any case, one way to touch that source is through ever deepening involvement.

Become a big “YES” to each moment in life. No matter what is thrown at you, do it as  deeply you can. That will of course take your involvement and attention, won’t it? There won’t be any issue of compulsion if you simply approach life like this: How involved I am is how alive I am.

You see, there are two existences happening. There is the creation that is here not because of anything you did. It was here before you and will be here after you. Then there is the creation you have in your mind. The whole point of involvement is you step out of the illusion in your head and into the reality all around in each moment.

Your mind is just a mess of psychological conclusions. They help make sense of the world for your survival, but they have absolutely no basis in reality. Your thoughts are an interpretation, they can never be the real thing.

When you are in your head and uninvolved, you are a spectator to your own life. When you are involved, you are a participant. That is the difference.

Stop being involved in your head and spectating your life. Instead, flip it and just be a witness to the thoughts and involve yourself in life.

So all this talk of natural or compulsive is simply moving from the dimension of the illusion of the mind to the presentness of the moment. See life the way it is. Involvement is the way.

One last thing: Doing things naturally does not mean trying to be perfect or doing things correctly. You don’t have to try to wash the dishes, just be present with what is happening while you wash them.

It’s about experiencing the journey to it’s fullest depth. For that, more involvement equals being more natural.

Just involve yourself more and more in each little moment. That is all it takes to do things naturally.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise