On Introverts

September 25, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I would classify myself as an introvert. But in today’s society, it’s really hard to succeed when you’re an introvert. Only extroverts really are successful, but I don’t know how to change. How can I become more extroverted?

Sincerely,

Intro Invert

Dear II,

Why do you limit yourself so? What is the use in giving yourself such a definitive label, “I am an introvert”?

This isn’t that being an introvert is limited. Even if you proclaimed “I am an extrovert”, it would still be a limitation. The very nature of a limitation is that it is a boundary. Every time you classify yourself conclusively, you put a limitation down on your potential.

Life has given you no such ceiling. You have infinite potential to explore. Making or adopting labels for yourself is like purposely imprisoning yourself.

Isn’t it true that you are not always an introvert? Sometimes, don’t you display characteristics of an extrovert? Maybe these days you have spent so long believing you are introverted that you don’t see any extrovert qualities. But just think back to when you were a young child. Sometimes were you introverted, other times were you extroverted?

People aren’t inherently one way or another. Good or bad, nice or mean, introvert or extrovert. They are always swinging from one to the next. There are not introverted or extroverted people. There are just people, who display qualities from one moment to the next.

Depending on the situation, we can choose how we wish to be. If external success is important to you, then you need to act accordingly. But there is no such rule as introverts can’t be successful.

Just drop this whole nonsense of defining yourself. You are you. You are a unique potential that can only blossom in one way: your way. You cannot be someone else, or go by some other person or textbook’s definition of you.

I don’t say go your way as a means to give you some inflated confidence. “My way or the highway!” is not what I mean. What I am saying is you must explore who you are and what it means to be you. No one else can do that for you or tell you what you are capable of.

You see, every life in this existence is unique. Every moment is unique! There has never been a moment like this one in existence, and there never will be again. Just like that, there has never been someone like you who can do what you could do, and there never will be again. That is the nature of life.

Perhaps being you means you aren’t going to earn a million dollars, or wear a suit and get a promotion, or whatever else you see as success. But it could mean you do something no other human being has ever done before.

Don’t look at your life in terms of material success. Whatever you accumulate around you is not your life. They can add something interesting to it, but essentially, your life is only as good as your inner experience.

Rather than trying to define yourself in narrow ways, as an introvert or extrovert, as a man or a woman, by your race or culture…simply just spend time trying to blossom yourself. Do what feels right for you, just do it well and with absolute dedication and focus.

There are any number of people out there have taken seemingly odd things and been successful. There are people who carve rocks, paint leaves, create their own instruments out of garbage…like this, countless people. They did not become successful because they had some fantastic idea. They became successful simply because they devoted themselves to what they were doing.

When we see a success, we are not impressed by the fact they can hit a golf ball or whatever. We are impressed because we understand that to be that proficient at anything takes a tremendous amount of devotion to the process.

So don’t ask how to be successful or how to become more extroverted. Simply drop all these labels. Just look at yourself. What makes you happy? What brings you beauty and joy? How is it you want to express this life that you are?

Whatever you decide to do, do not worry about success. Just simply dive into the process, with absolute devotion. Be dedicated, consistent, focused, in love with it! Results will come for sure. How can they not?

Society has taught you to be goal oriented. Always chase some pursuit, and change whatever you need to change to get there. But where the hell are you trying to get to? Even if you reach the target, again you will look for another.

But if you devote yourself to the process, it is an end within itself. There is nowhere to reach, you are already there, every step of the way. It stops being about achievement and starts being about expression.

So express your life beyond classifications. Simply look at what you truly wish to do, it doesn’t matter what it is. Then do it, as fully and involved as you can. Now ask me, does it matter if you are an extrovert or an introvert? Such thoughts will not even come up for you.

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 Worry

September 23, 2019September 23, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have an issue with worry. I am always worried about something. How can I stop worrying so much?

Worry Wart

Dear WW,

Worry gives you something to do, but it never actually accomplishes anything. You worry because you are unsure of what life might bring. In an effort to avoid that uncertainty, all that happens is you don’t live.

It is hard for people to accept that they cannot control life. People, situations, and time are all outside of your control. They never go the way you want. Once in a while, they may happen somewhat like you hoped. But never 100%, and never because you were in total control.

We are not in charge of what hand we are dealt. Only for what we do with what we are given. Life brings us each moment without prejudice. But I want you to understand, you won’t always be given a moment.

What I am saying is that you are mortal. There will come a time where you experience your last moment on this planet. You may think it’s somewhere off in the future, but the reality is, you never know. Today could be that last day. Do you truly want to waste it worrying?

Worry will not change the outcome. It will only change your experience of life and make it worse. The one thing that is absolutely 100% in your control, which is your inner experience, you throw away every time you worry.

So you can’t control the outside. Then you feel the next step is to worry about it. Now you have made the inside a problem too. The outside was uncertain, and it could go any way, even ways you can’t imagine. But the inside world, which should be entirely up to you – any possibility of it being pleasant vanishes with worry.

Some people like to imagine “I worry because I care” or “I worry because I see things clearly”. It is not true.

Worry has no use. If it was at least useful, we could claim that there was a point to it. But what is the point in endlessly fixating on problems? Does it solve them?

In the aspect of caring, does it increase your compassion or does it increase your judgment? In the aspect of clarity, does it enhance your perception or does it limit your perception?

No, if you truly cared, then you could always focus on that compassion. Even if you don’t take any action, at least within yourself you can feel for someone else’s struggle. This is not a useless exercise; it makes you more inclusive.

If you truly wanted clarity, then you would understand something very simple: that you cannot sit in your mind and imagine something and then pretend it’s true. It doesn’t matter how much data you’ve gathered.

If you are worried about yourself or someone else, the only way to gain clarity is to admit that you don’t understand everything. Then only will you seek and will truth arise. You can’t understand anything with a conclusion drawn. Worrying is just drawing more and more conclusions.

Worry is something that you manufacture. You base it on a whole bunch of psychological accumulation that has no basis in reality. It’s time to move out of illusion.

Don’t try to get rid of worry. It won’t work. The nature of your mind is that whatever you tell it, whether it’s to do something or not to do something, it will do.

Instead, simply just start accepting things as they are. Be such a way that whatever life brings you, even if initially you react with worry, take a step back and embrace it, include it, and learn from it. Accept everything that comes in life.

You see, what may or may not happen in life is not a question of good or bad. There is no such thing as a good or bad moment. There is just this moment. If you are wise, you will take the moment as a precious gift and make your experience of it as pleasant as possible. For now, that means dissolving your worry by accepting things as they come.

But how to accept the moment as it is? It’s not about being perfect. Simply, each moment just remind yourself that the next moment is not a guarantee. Anyway that is the truth. If you go on like this, constantly remembering that life is sacred and you are mortal, accepting what comes will be natural.

Still maybe you are not convinced. Why accept things that are unpleasant? They are not unpleasant, but for the sake of argument, I’ll agree with you. The reality is, for a tree to bear fruit, it first had to go through literal shit, didn’t it? Shit certainly doesn’t smell or taste like an apple. But somehow, an apple comes.

Like this, stop worrying about what life brings you. Stop expecting this fruit or that fruit. Just whatever life brings, remember that even though things might seem worth worrying about now, it could be the soil from which something beautiful grows.

See, it’s really your choice. If you go on worrying, nothing ever takes root. You will miss every opportunity for your life to bear fruit because you are so worried about what may or may not happen. If it happens you suffer, if it doesn’t happen you suffer.

But if you just take life as it is, you will be astonished how many fruits you were missing out on, and how each moment is bursting with them.

Or as the song goes “Don’t worry. Be Happy!”

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 Transformation

September 20, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have been trying to work on my personal growth for some time now. I practice being more present, more at ease, more grateful, so many things, but it is always fleeting. Nothing seems to be sticking. I feel like I am slowly changing in some ways but it’s not very satisfying. Am I wasting my time?

Sincerely,

Working Hard is Hardly Working

Dear WHIHW,

First I want you to understand that practicing a quality does not mean you will become that quality. You may feel confused as I know I have spoken much about practicing joy, forgiveness, gratitude, so many things. But it will not work.

The practice cannot be done in order to achieve a result. If you go on faking a smile all day all that will happen is your jaw will hurt and people will wonder what the hell is wrong with you.

You see, it’s like trying to force a bush to grow it’s flower right now, simply because you want to enjoy it’s fragrance. The best you will be able to do is put some perfume on a plastic flower and fake it. Tell me, is this satisfying?

The whole point of the practice is not in the direction of “I want this to happen”. Practice itself is a quality. Practice is about being unwavering, disciplined, focused, to stay in one direction. Just be devoted to the process, not the result.

No matter what you practice, whether it is a sport or an instrument or a meditation, the real important thing is not that you get better at this one individual aspect. That will only take you so far, and it will never satisfy you.

The important thing is that you are learning how to be present with something and pour your life into it absolutely. In this way, you break past the barriers of who you are, which is of utmost importance when trying to grow, isn’t it?

So if you go on practicing one quality at a time, hoping that quality will somehow stick and will be enough, you will only have plastic flowers in your garden. Incremental change is good enough for day to day situations. Even plastic flowers have a use. But when it comes to your experience of life, only transformation will suffice.

What I am saying is that there is a huge difference between change and transformation. Change means you can always change back. It is unstable.

Transformation means something old must die, and something new is born. It’s like shedding a skin, or like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Either way, there is no going back.

Do you want personal growth? Or do you want total transformation? You see, you will never be content with growth. Let’s look at an example:

If you get the job you want today, in a few weeks or months, you will look for a better position. If you get that, you will look to run the company. If you get that, you will want to again expand. There is never a point where you are done. It is like this with every aspect of your life.

Obviously something inside you is longing for something boundless. It is impossible to get there the way you are going.

It’s like this: When you were a child did anyone ever ask you how high you could count? Maybe you said 100, or 1000, or 1,000,000. But even then you knew, you could always add 1 to it.

This is what you are trying to do right now. By counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5….you are hoping to reach infinity. By practicing smiling everyday, you are hoping to become happy. By saying thank you every day, you are hoping to become grateful.

You have to flip this around. This isn’t about pursuit. To pursue infinity, or the boundless nature within you, you can never reach it. It will always be one step away.

This is about making your very expression of life joy, or gratitude, or whatever. In the same way the flower isn’t trying to give off it’s fragrance, you must simply express your life effortlessly, without prejudice, to everything.

“But how the hell do I do that?”

It’s like asking “How do I be?” You simply are, there is no other way to it. A fish isn’t wet because it tries to be wet, it is wet because it is in the ocean.

It is not a logical or rational step, it is simply a free fall. It’s like falling in love – you didn’t sit down one day and logically map out why you should love someone. No, you just fell.

This is why all the practice you are doing. To practice joy or being grateful is not about gaining those qualities. It is about dismantling all the barriers you have made for yourself that are preventing you from simply being here. Because once you are just simply present, there is nothing to be done. You just fall, and you are there. It is a natural consequence. You have transformed.

It may seem strange, to practice being grateful but not expect to become grateful. Just think of all the practices like a tool to break down your limitations. Just get good at using the tool. The gratitude is helping break down your nonsense. Just like the joy or anything else you practice.

You have so many illusions, prejudices, preferences, traumas, hurt, expectations, excuses…so many things in the way of simply being here. But when you just are willing to drop all those things and set them aside, life floods into you. The very nature of your existence cannot be denied to you.

When the source of creation touches you like this, you are forever transformed. Your business isn’t with trying to grow into something. Your business is just diving into the process of growth, no matter where it takes you.

When the time comes, the flower will blossom within, and not because you made it blossom. No, you will bloom and transform simply because you made the right soil, and there is not other way it could go.

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 Integrity

September 18, 2019September 18, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have a really hard time following through on things. People will ask me to do something and I will forget or just procrastinate. I will try to stick with a goal or a project but I have so many I’ve quit early or are half finished. What can I do?

Sincerely,

No Follow Through

Dear NFT,

Integrity is a quality that is sorely missing in most people today. Many people are willing to talk big, but few have the necessary discipline, consistency, and will to see their words into action.

But integrity in and of itself is not just those things. Do you know someone, or perhaps you are like this, where they will become very excited when talking about a vision or skill they have? But upon closer examination, have you found these people have little to no success in these areas?

People who are truly successful have a sort of silent success about them. What I mean is whether someone is watching or not is irrelevant, they work towards their vision with the same intensity.

Integrity doesn’t work if you only have it when someone else is watching. Integrity is about how you have decided to be, regardless of the external situation.

I want you to closely observe yourself. Let’s say for example you wish your neighborhood had less litter. Do you go around picking up each piece you see? Or perhaps you simply become irritated every time you see someone litter or you see garbage on the ground.

If your vision truly mattered to you, then it wouldn’t matter who was watching, who was responsible for it, you would work towards your vision. You must be in such a way that every step you take in this life works towards your vision. That is integrity.

But you have so many excuses:

“It’s not my fault, I didn’t litter”

“I’m enabling others if I clean up after them”

“This is just a surface level solution, the city needs to do something!”

Like this you have infinite excuses. Maybe all those things you said are true. But it is irrelevant. The moment you start blaming everyone else for something that you want to see changed, you handicap yourself from being able to do anything. Convenient isn’t it? You can feel better than everyone else and judge them, and all by doing absolutely nothing.

But couldn’t you tackle all those points you made too? You would if it truly mattered to you.

Some people have a vision and just see problems. Others, see opportunities. The ones who see the opportunities are those silently successful people.

If your thoughts, words, and actions are in alignment, then you have integrity. If those three things are one and the same, then results and success are inevitable. No matter what life brings you, you will accomplish what you set out to do.

Maybe it doesn’t go exactly the way you planned – in fact, for sure it won’t. But with integrity, tell me, the only question is when you get there, isn’t it? Your results will be an inevitability simply because you have decided that you will strive no matter what. Nothing can stop you.

So few people are capable of this level of integrity – that what they say, they will do. If you had a goal of becoming healthy, perhaps you decide you will go on some fad diet for 2 or 3 months. But even though you know that you are what you eat, that this very body is just food you accumulated, you go on fooling yourself with these band-aid fixes.

Your life is something that is precious, it must be managed on a daily basis.

So what if today, you simply decided – from now on, until the day I die, I will eat healthier. Not as some statement or goal, but within yourself, you have decided to move from unhealthiness towards healthiness, no exception.

With this level of integrity, you will do what is necessary. Whatever your first step is, you will take. Whether it’s portion sizes, exercise, quit smoking, whatever – you will naturally take that first step. Then, the next one you will take also, and so on. It is not magic or wishful thinking – you just simply must have the integrity.

When you approach it like this, you only take the steps you are ready for. You don’t fool yourself by forcing everything at once. Such change will never last. It will be fleeting.

This is why diets don’t work. You must establish health by putting down roots, growing the tree, nurturing it. Then only the flower of health will blossom. This is transformation; there’s not going back.

See, this isn’t about the plan, or the journey, or the tools, or whatever. Those will come as needed or you will find them when needed. This is simply about trajectory. Integrity is unconditionally sticking to your trajectory.

You have decided that you will move in one direction, not out of stubbornness, but out of a deep sense of focus. In fact, you will be far more flexible with a steady trajectory, because you will be willing to do whatever it takes within yourself to get there.

But if every moment you change your mind, drop what you are doing, become distracted, there is no hope. If I tried to cook a meal but every two minutes I turn off the stove, dinner will never come. I will feel like I am cooking, but any fool can see that the way I am going is a waste of time.

So stop wasting your time. Integrity means simply, once and for all, being decisive. It doesn’t even matter what choice you make. What matters is you make it consciously. Set your trajectory, even in small ways. Then adhere to it and do not waver.

If you can bring integrity into your life, all the hard work you do will actually yield something. Everyone else will think it’s luck or magic, but you will know it’s really quite simple: Whatever you decide to do, you will do. That is integrity.

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 Jealousy

September 16, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have a friend who doesn’t seem to have his life figured out. He has very little money, can never keep a steady job, isn’t married. He seems to have nothing really. Though he claims he is happy but I worry about his future. Why can’t he seem to figure out the basic things in life that the rest of have accepted and work so hard at?

Sincerely,

Friend in Need

Dear FIN,

He says he is happy. So what’s the issue?

Tell me, did you come to this planet with some sort of checklist – get a job, get money, get married, etc? Obviously not, and neither did he. On top of that, are you some kind of authority on life? Especially, are you some authority on HIS life?

You are playing a very dangerous game with yourself. You think that you know what’s best for someone else. Now, based on this inflated sense of self, you go on trying to tell someone else how to best live their own life.

The real question isn’t about him. Sure, maybe you genuinely care about him. But the reality is your worrying about him is not coming from a place of concern. It is coming because you feel threatened by his very way of being.

The real question is with you. Let’s say you have the job, the money, the spouse, all of it. But are you any happier? Did these things all guarantee your happiness? Nothing wrong with having those things. Nothing wrong not having them either.

If you go on in life thinking that you can create happiness for yourself by gathering it from your external surroundings, it not only doesn’t work that way, but you are existing like a parasite, extracting it from everyone and everything. Would anyone want to be around someone like that?

Unhappy people who seek happiness from outside themselves are extremely dangerous to be around. They constantly drain those around them. Your friend seems to have found a way to be happy by his own nature. Just within himself, regardless of what he has or doesn’t have, he has figured this one thing out – that his happiness is determined by him, not by anyone else.

See, your friend may very well be a success. He just has measured it in a much more sensible way. You cannot measure success based on what others are doing. You can only measure success by comparison to your own journey.

So maybe your friend doesn’t have all that you have, but he has decided to be a success within himself. He wants to be established in who he is in, so that his happiness is his own making.

Deep down, you understand that it is not your job, your money, or your spouse, or any other damn thing you have accumulated that is making you happy. Maybe short term, it can bring some joy. But the reality is your happiness is manufactured within you only. Even if something external happens, the happiness is inside you! Nowhere else.

But for some reason, you have gone on trying to find something that is inside you somewhere else. Why would you try to find something that is right here somewhere else? It is ridiculous isn’t it?

Now, on top of you seeking your happiness like some pursuit – it is not a pursuit, it is an expression of who you are – you now feel you are the authority on everyone else’s happiness too. Please humble yourself and see the truth.

Your friend may be more successful than you when it comes to happiness. You may be more successful in material ways, but none of those things truly matter. If you cannot do those things joyfully, then you are simply enslaved by them.

You have only two choices when you see someone who is more successful than you: Either you can be jealous, or you can grow.

Because you are working so hard to be better, but doing it outside in approach, you only want other people to be happy if they do it your way too. But your way isn’t working. So now, your friend comes along, and not only is he happier than you, but he is not doing any of the things you are struggling so hard to do. How rude of him!

Your whole way you have done your life is now threatened by him. It’s time to stop compulsively being jealous and actively trying to drag him into your nonsense. It’s time to learn and grow.

If you see someone who is doing something better than you, if you are wise, you will grow. If you are compulsive and arrogant, you will become jealous and try to change them. People are not your business to change. Your business is with yourself.

Your friend says he is happy? But maybe you are still too skeptical and jealous to buy it. Well, maybe it’s time you sat down with him, and asked him to share with you why. Maybe it’s time to experience what has worked for him. If he truly is a failing life on all levels, then you will know only by being with him with an open mind, won’t you?

But if he truly is established within himself, then you have a tremendous possibility to grow and learn how to do the same. Either way, you will have options. The way you are trying to do things now, all that will happen is you will become more self-righteous and he will want to be around you less and less.

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 Suffering

September 13, 2019September 12, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Why is there suffering? What is the point? Why couldn’t existence have no suffering?

Sincerely,

Enough Suffering Already

Dear ESA,

Pain exists. Not suffering.

Why do I say this? Suffering is entirely something you made up. Pain exists for sure. But suffering is not real.

Obviously it feels real for you and many others. We have all experienced suffering. You might think I am just arguing semantics, but it is deeper than that.

There are some things in life that are beyond your control. Anything external, anything that happens to you, this is always a question mark. So many variables determine what life hands you.

But what you make out of it, that is always entirely up to you, is it not?

So pain is an inevitability. Sometimes, it is just going to happen. No one goes their whole life without experiencing pain. But suffering is entirely an interpretation.

Is an interpretation the truth? Is it reality? No, an interpretation is how you choose to see something. You see it through your lens, your filters, your judgments. It has no basis in reality whatsoever.

So why waste time asking such a question like what is the point of suffering? You created it! Just stop doing it!

You see, you need to learn to see life just as it is, beyond your prejudices and judgments. You see pain as bad. You think it has no use. So then, you suffer.

You are afraid of pain, so you walk more cautiously, more hesitantly, but you can never avoid pain forever. You act as though all this caution will guarantee you safety, but in the end, you wind up getting hurt sooner or later. This isn’t some sad hopeless fate, it is just reality.

When things have the proper amount of friction and struggle, they grow stronger. Too little struggle, too much struggle, both are death sentences. If life is to thrive, pain is a great tool.

Understand that pain is not as bad as you think it is. I’m not talking about taking pain and embracing it like a sadist. No, I am simply saying that pain has a function. If you didn’t feel pain, you would just pull of your whole body piece by piece. Just look at your fingernails for example. Any body part that you don’t feel pain, you are willing to drop it like a piece of clothing; it’s of no consequence to you.

So pain serves a purpose: to make you appreciate the value of your body for self preservation. It’s simply a signal. There’s nothing good or bad about it, it’s just serving a function, to help you survive.

So maybe you should ask me, why is there pain at all? Can’t we just all grow without it? Well brother, I didn’t make this universe, that’s just the way it is. You may as well ask why we breathe air instead of fire.

But at least I can say suffering is totally pointless and within your capacity to end. Suffering is just an exaggeration. It comes from a deep lack of awareness and consciousness.

If you were aware that your body is a gift, and that you are mortal, you wouldn’t need to suffer when you feel pain. But because your mortality has not sunk into yet, every moment you walk as though you have time to waste.

Tell me, did you come with some guarantee for how long you will live? Is there any sticker on you that says your expiry date?

Yet you walk around as though you will die of old age in some cushy peaceful way, as though it’s guaranteed. Now, every time pain comes, a very real and jarring reminder of your mortality sinks in. So you suffer simply because you are avoiding the truth about your life: that it is ever so brief and precious.

I don’t say this to scare you. All things die. Death is not the worst thing that can happen. It is only because of death that so many things are created in this existence. Nothing is ever wasted in this cosmos. All death is a transition point from one expression of life to another.

But imagine if you lived forever. That would truly be terrible. What would be the point? No, death is the only thing that makes you seek in this life, to make you explore your ultimate nature, to knock some sense into you! Pain? that’s just a small little reminder once in a while for you. Accept it in this way, to help you grow, and it goes from suffering to blessing.

So whatever life brings you, weather its pain or its protection, you accept it with grace and humility. It’s no small thing to be alive and here right now. If you are wise, you will take pain and grow with no hesitation. You don’t need to seek it, but when it comes, make the most of it.

But if you are wanting to avoid life, then suffering is unavoidable. If you think you can go about life endlessly seeing things through your psychological ideas of good and bad (and that includes this stupid idea of pain being bad) well, you will suffer for sure.

Try to move beyond your preferences. Try to stop labeling everything as good and bad, raising things on pedestals, looking down on other things. Just simply observe life as it is.

See the use in everything and everyone. You will see, nothing in this creation is a mistake or out of place. You will see, suffering has always been a creation of your mind. Because of your fixation on the petty creations of your mind, you have been missing out on this boundless creation happening in every moment.

So why does this existence have suffering? Quite simply it doesn’t. The existence with no suffering you wish existed already exists. You just keep creating suffering for yourself when there’s no need. Time to end that silly game, no?

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 Ambition

September 11, 2019September 11, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

No matter what I achieve in my life, I seem to be perpetually unsatisfied. Goals and ambitions get achieved and then a few days later I feel unfulfilled again. I feel like I am just moving from one distraction to the next, trying to get by each day. Where is the joy and beauty and meaning in all this? Is life just an endless movement from one pointless goal to the next?

Sincerely,

What’s the Bloody Point

Dear WTBP,

Anything that you do repetitively if not done with the proper intensity and focus will become dull over time. Just try it now. Just sit there, and say the words “Boo Boo Boo” over and over again, without any sense of involvement. It will become dull for sure.

Your endless ambition has become like this. You set some target, then reach it, then set another, then another, then another…It becomes dull. Why? Because your focus has become entirely about the goal and what you can get out of it, not in the process.

If you do not involve yourself intensely in the process, life will just become dull for you. Thinking only of achievements, results, rewards will not give you any sort of meaning. They will only bring temporary satisfaction, which will become more and more fleeting as time goes by.

Eventually, you will keep on increasing the difficulty of your goals, but it won’t make a difference. Because the process feels repetitive, you will become dull.

What you are practicing by not paying attention to the process is dullness. You are making what should be a beautiful journey into something you want to rush through and force your way through. So in a hurry are you to get the fruits of your labour you are willing to destroy the entire tree. But the tree provides much you could enjoy.

No matter what ambition you have set for yourself in your life, the focus should not be on that ambition. It should always be on the process. The process is your very life! That’s where you meaning is!

Let’s say for example you set an ambition of getting perfect marks on your final exam for school. First of all, you must be honest with yourself. Is what you want truly better marks? Or is what you want to be more intelligent? Is what you want to be more knowledgeable, or capable?

If your whole focus is just on the result, getting 100% – what is going to happen? You will just memorize a bunch of data and forget it after the exam. But if you instead focus on increasing your capability – then every step of the way you will learn and grow.

The very nature of life is that it wants to endlessly evolve. This is not something you have decided as an individual human being. This is just the way life is. This is the way the whole creation is. The only way to satisfy it is to give it something infinite, something boundless, and the only way to that is to stop limiting yourself.

It doesn’t matter what your ambition is. Do not get distracted by the result you seek. It is a limitation. Why are you so fixated on a limitation? Or do you not think an ambition is a limit?

Nature has set no sort of limit to your potential. For each and every person on this planet, there is an inner genius. Maybe you don’t have the capacity to be the next world champion boxer. But maybe you do have the capacity to do something else as equally spectacular in a different realm.

Your potential is infinite. So why are you going on endlessly fixing some stupid and arbitrary target for yourself? Why are you drawing a line and saying that that’s the boundary? Goals and ambition are fine as a device or as a tool. But they can never be an end in and of themselves.

You should set an ambition so wildly unattainable that you could not possibly achieve it in your life. Then you should strive to make it happen with the utmost intensity and sincerity. Why? Because only when you are not focused on results do you give results a chance to flourish.

Pursuing results are not your concern. How you express this life in each moment is your concern.

The process is all you have control over. I know people have been telling you in this society to have goals and pursue them, but life is not a pursuit. The only pursuit is you are heading to the grave. Every minute your life is ticking away!

If you realized this, then you would truly only do what mattered to you. You would not be so stupid as to set some silly goals for yourself and believe they will make you happy. Nothing you ever accomplish will make you happy. Happiness is a quality that you exude no matter what you are doing. It is not a reward for what you do.

This is why again and again I say devote yourself to the process. No matter what life brings you, it is always in your control to keep yourself the way you wish. If you want your experience of life to be pleasant, that is 100% in your hands. What life brings you however, is never up to you.

Leave the results up to life. If you devote yourself to the process, if you focus on your growth and evolution and conscious being rather than the result, then I guarantee you 100% results will happen. You won’t get to choose which results, but they will happen. Things you couldn’t even imagine may happen!

When the unimaginable is always possible, it is a very stifled way to approach life to only strive for what you can imagine.

In your life, has it ever gone the way you have imagined it? Definitely not. And thank goodness it didn’t! You should have realized by now, what you think you wanted more than anything at one time often later turns out to be a true blessing to have never received.

Ambition has become too common in today’s world and look where it is getting us. Very few are happier or more peaceful, but everyone is ambitious. It is time to shift our attention.

Focus on your life. Focus on each moment. Focus on your growth, your journey. Stop trying to extract meaning from short term results. Just simply shift your attention to what you are doing along the way.

The only ambition you truly need in this life is to grow. To flower, to become more conscious, to live joyfully and beautifully. The only motivation you need is that you are mortal, and life is precious. If that is all you remind yourself of, I promise you, life will transform exponentially for you.

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 Profound Experiences

September 9, 2019September 9, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have tried being more spiritual and seeking, but still I haven’t touched anything profound. I’ve had moments here and there that were more emotional, but other people seem to be having something much deeper happen to them. What am I missing? Why does it seem to work for others but not for me?

Sincerely,

Untouched By the Divine

Dear UBTD,

One thing that is a bit counter intuitive, is you cannot try to be more spiritual or try to seek more. It sounds hopeless when phrased like this, but bear with me.

Seeking isn’t something you can practice. Just like being joyful, or loving, or peaceful, or anything else. These are certain qualities. They are a consequence of proper action, they are not an action themselves.

We are talking in some ways about cause and effect. If you want a certain result, you must do the right thing. This is the way of the cosmos. It doesn’t matter if you are a good person or a bad person, a criminal or a saint – only if you do the right thing will the right things happen for you. Existence is not judgmental.

If you want to be a seeker, then the first thing you must have is the genuineness to admit that there are things you do not understand. If you draw conclusions about life, then try to seek, it is not going to work. But this is what most people are doing who claim to seek.

When you were a child, you genuinely didn’t know a damn thing. Every time you opened your eyes, there was a world of wonder in front of you. Every tree, bird, stone, car, person, lamppost, every damn thing you encountered was a new world to explore.

Curiosity and wonder reigned supreme then. You had no idea about anything, and it was fantastic! But then you got a bit older, a bit more certain…

What you know is a very finite and minuscule amount. Only what you don’t know is boundless. What is boundless is the divine, is the beyond, is god, is whatever you want to call it.

But you have become so strongly attached and identified with the little that you know. Then, based on that tiny tiny amount you know, you are drawing all sorts of moronic conclusions about everything.

You look at a tree now, and you just spit out what you know. It gives you some air, it provides some shade, you can use it for it’s wood, and that’s it. Nothing else worth knowing, you know everything you think matters, so now there’s no point in paying anymore attention to it. Like this, your conclusions go on and on with everything, and you get dull and bored with life.

You can never know anything in this universe in it’s entirety. Even if you spent your whole life examining a single vein on a single leaf on a single branch of a single tree, you still would know next to nothing about it. So rich and infinite is everything in this existence, but for some reason, you’ve traded curiosity and wonder for conclusions and boredom.

What a complete and utter shame! You are missing out on so much, not because it is being hidden from you, or other people are better equipped than you. No, you are only missing out because you are not genuine enough to realize that what you know is so incredibly insignificant that it’s not even worth mentioning.

Stop living your life through the limited psychological conclusions you have drawn. Existence gave you no limitations to your ability to experience, but then you box your vision so that you only have a narrow slit to look through! From that you try to become some expert on life. It’s not going to work that way.

Again, only if you do the right things will the right things happen. So you want to be a seeker? Stop trying to seek. Just admit you are a damn fool! Then quite naturally, you will seek. You won’t have to try, you just will seek.

You want to be joyful, don’t try to be joyful. Simply understand joy is a consequence of ease. Relax, you have nowhere to be and nothing to do. Simply be here and settle. Joy will naturally come.

You want to be peaceful, don’t try to be peaceful. Have you ever noticed that your breath is directly tied to your level of stress or peace? You rapidly breathe, you trigger your survival mechanism, and stress is a natural consequence. Like this, so many things are overstimulating you in life, and you wonder why you are stressful? Just simply breathe, slow down. Peace is then inevitable.

You are putting the cart before the horse always. You want a result, and you want it now, so you think you can sit there and force it. You want the fruit but you don’t want to go through the business of planting the tree and nurturing it. Good luck with that.

Results happen by themselves if you simply devote yourself to the process. Your business is with the tree, not with what flowers and fruits it brings. That is the trees business, but you can enjoy them when they arrive. You just see that the tree grows beautifully.

Have you ever just tried, even for one day in your life, for 24 hours, to just breathe consciously, steadily, gracefully? If you just did this one thing, you would not believe how many of your so called problems and obstacles would just vanish.

Don’t waste your time diving into your nonsense trying to dismantle these obstacles. All of your barriers are self created. You made them. And they require your constant maintenance to exist. Simply by not feeding them, they crumble on their own.

What I am saying is you must simply just be here. Be present. Whether it is the way out of your problems, or the doorway to the divine, neither are going to happen by you forcing them. Just be present with this slice of time, this moment.

“But True Self, every time I sit and try to be present, so many thoughts…!”

Look, if you are struggling to simply just be here, then focus on something. That is why there are so many tools you can use. You can utter a chant, you can focus on your breath, you can perform a ritual, whatever.

If you can’t be present by just sitting, then use some other action to focus in on. The key is just that you must be consistent, your attention must be unwavering. Otherwise it’s like trying to cook a meal but every 20 seconds you turn the stove off and on again.

Yes, your mind may wander, yes so many things might happen. But you just keep practicing being unwavering. Focus on just one thing, and just be with it. Breath is always here, even if you have nothing else. Breath will also make you realize your mortality, and if that happens, that profound experience you are looking for will not be far away.

The divine is everywhere. I don’t say this as a religious statement or dogma. Divine is life. Life is everywhere. Is there anything that is not life? Even emptiness is life! You are after all mostly empty space, are you not?

When something is everywhere, you don’t need to do anything to see it. It is like being in an ocean. Then you ask me, how to I find some water? The problem isn’t that the water is hiding from you, the problem is you have stopped noticing something that is everywhere, all the time.

This is why you can’t make something profound or divine happen to you. It is always happening, even right now. You just need to take off the blinders, and simply be here. In order to do that, you just must be present. That is all it takes.

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 Intelligence

September 6, 2019September 6, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I feel like I am an intelligent person. I look around and people are similar to me. They seem to have received similar education, have similar intelligence. But people everywhere are doing incredible unintelligent things to themselves, others, this planet…

If we’re so smart then why can’t we all come together and make this world a better place? What is wrong with our intelligence?

Sincerely,

Smart But Not Smart

Dear SBNS,

There is nothing wrong with your intelligence, or anyone’s intelligence. Your intelligence is a tool. Any tool is only as good as the person who is using it, no?

First I want you to understand there are different kinds of intelligence. You may have a degree, someone else may be a dancer, another may know how to grow tomatoes. Each of these takes an incredible amount of intelligence. If we measure everyone by the same academic standards, we will miss out on a person’s true genius.

Each person is unique in this existence. Every moment, every atom, every damn last thing in this existence is unique. Each one has it’s own unique potential. Unfortunately, today’s standard of intelligence has merely become about how much information you can puree and pour into someone’s skull.

Some people may be suited for this and excel. But if you try a one size fits all approach, you will stifle and stagnant the vast majority. Each person needs to be taught how to explore their own genius.

You see, the very nature of intelligence is that it is only as good as your perception. The more you can perceive, the more you have available to you. It would be better to work on enhancing your perception of life than it would be to see how much information you can regurgitate.

So that is the first thing: Not to judge everyone by the same standard. Intelligence is individual. Look at a person for what they are, not compared to you or someone else. Provide them with what they need to uniquely flower.

The next thing you need to understand is how intelligence works. It is not just one thing, or how you think, or your mind. Your intellect is a sharp tool, ready to dissect this existence. That tool is held and guided by your identity, and your identity is made up entirely of your accumulated experiences and genetics.

Largely, your identity has been made by accident. Then you pick up that knife and start flailing it around, trying to use it to fix everything. It’s a very dangerous way to approach life, for yourself and others. Not very graceful or safe.

When I say your intellect is a sharp tool, what I mean is you are always using it to categorize everything. You see one thing, and immediately your mind will try to dissect it and break it down, won’t it? It only functions by slicing everything in two.

For example, if it is hot right now, you only know that by comparison to cold. Just like this, you see a tree, and your intellect says “it’s big not small, it’s green not red, it’s a plant not an animal….” On and on like this it dissects everything.

And those conclusions you draw about that tree, they are not just empirical observations. You will also say “I like this tree because it’s big, and green. I don’t like small red trees.” This is the work of our identity. All your likes and dislikes decide how you use your intellect to categorize what you experience.

The only reason you decided you like big and green trees and not red small trees is because somewhere in your life, you had some experiences that shaped your identity. You decided arbitrarily to like this thing and not that thing.

These opinions you have stick to your knife like when you cut a cake. Your mind because more and more of a burden and turns against you. It’s time to recognize it’s limitations and clean it up.

What I am saying is none of this, from your data you’ve gathered to the identity, to the intellect, have any basis in reality. They are all psychological. They are not existential. In other words, they are not real. They are interpretations only, not the truth.

To enhance you perception means to see things as they are. Beyond your likes and dislikes, your opinions, your identity, all of it. Just to simply see everything as it is. Don’t raise anything on a pedestal. Don’t look down on anything either. If you can do this one thing, you will enhance your perception.

When you start seeing everything the way it is, instead of through the filter of your psychological opinions, truth is obvious and apparent. It requires very little effort. But the best direction to focus your perception is not outward, it is inward.

Try to see yourself the way you are. Drop all your likes and dislikes. See them for the bondage that they are. Then your true genius will really begin to blossom. When this happens, naturally you will see the outside for what it is also.

That is the intelligence you want to get in touch with. The non-discriminatory aspect that can see things clearly. Your intellect, identity, all the data that feeds it, these are all only good for your survival.

But when it comes to knowing the true nature of your existence, they are utterly useless. They will not get you there. No matter how much you use them, they are incapable of showing you the truth. It’s like trying to use a boat to fly in the air. It just won’t work.

All this may seem so far away. You probably strongly identify with your thoughts and emotions, your identity, all your data. But the truth is, you are not those things. You are more than just your psychological nonsense.

There is an intelligence within you that is actually running the show. It is the source of all creation in this existence. It is in everything, even the emptiness.

It is what makes sure you are breathing, metabolizing, and much more more. It does not need your intervention to do any of it. It is pure consciousness.

As always, turning in is the only way out. Otherwise, you will try to use your mind for everything. You will try to fix the world by stabbing at it with your mind. But you need to operate from a place that unifies, not something that dissects, if you truly want to make this world a better place.

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 Success

September 4, 2019September 4, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

How do I become more successful in life? For some people it seems so easy: money, relationships, career…they all have it figured out. What am I missing?

Sincerely,

Suck at Success

Dear SAS,

First of all, let’s get out of the comparison game. If you go on comparing yourself endlessly to those around you, you will always feel inadequate. This has nothing to do with how you are compared to someone else.

If we compared you to someone who had less, wouldn’t you seem a success in their eyes? Would they not give anything to be at your level of success even? So many people in this world are struggling far more than you.

But I’m not going to chastise you for not appreciating what you have already. That’s not a solution to your question. But it is important that you stop comparing and start appreciating what you have, for no other reason than your experience of life will be more profound.

Let us look at this issue of success not compared to anyone or anything else, but just that you have a desire to be more successful than you are.

When you say success, all you are saying is that you want your surroundings to be pleasant for your experience of life. You may give it so many different names, but essentially it is just that.

The only problem is, has anything external ever gone 100% the way you wanted? Have you ever had a plan in your head that went exactly 100% the way you imagined? Even one moment, out of all the moments in your life?

The issue with trying to fix the external is there are too many variables. You can never make the result happen 100% the way you want. You may get close from time to time, but you can never predict or prepare for everything.

That too, look at where your predictions and preparations are coming from – the information that you have gathered. Essentially, your memory. Can you recall even a single memory 100% accurately in it’s entirety?

So you are using your inaccurate memory to plan and prepare for external results which by their very nature can never go 100% your way. Seems a bit foolish, doesn’t it?

This is not to say I am against planning or preparing. I just want you to understand it’s limitations. There is a better way to go, if you’d only drop this fixation on what you define as success.

Right now, you see a specific result as success. You make a goal – I want to earn one million dollars. Then even if you go from earning forty thousand to fifty thousand, you will feel like a failure. On top of that, you have eliminated any possibility of you earning beyond one million.

By becoming obsessed with a particular result, you take 10,000 open doors and shut them, leaving only one.

Life has set no upper limit to your potential. Why are you doing such stupid things? If you are willing and intensely involved, you can accomplish things people have never done before!

Is not each human being uniquely qualified to do something no one else has ever done? You may not be able to do what your neighbour can do, but that is not that point. For sure, your potential is boundless.

Instead of being results fixated, be devoted absolutely to the process. The goal is just a target. Use it to motivate you if you wish, but it is not an end in and of itself. If you are willing to learn, to grow, to involve yourself in each step of the process, guaranteed results will happen, just maybe not the results your limited imagination conjured.

Right now the issue is, you want the fruit but you don’t want to grow the tree. Life doesn’t work that way. You look at other people and see them enjoying the fruits of their labour, but you ignore the huge tree they spent years growing to yield the fruit.

You want success? Success is the fruit. You grow the tree. You work on your intensity, your involvement, your joy, your growing, your gratitude…Why? Because that is all that is in your control.

The external is never in your control 100%. But how you are, no matter what life gives you, that is entirely up to you. That is the tree.

So along the way to getting your fruit of success, you must plant seeds, you must water them, nourish them, give them sunlight, help them grow, and most importantly, you must wait. When the time is right, fruit is a natural consequence of your effort.

Who knows, you might even get flowers along with the fruit! But the fruit and flowers aren’t even the whole story. The joy of taking care of that sapling, the pride of watching it bloom, the shade that it provides you…There is so much also to be reaped in the journey.

You see, success isn’t about what you pursue. It is about your experience of pursuing it. Life is about expression, not pursuit. Devote yourself entirely to the process, and you will see every moment of your life is the fruit of success. What a shame to miss out on 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 Humility

September 2, 2019September 2, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

There is a lot of talk these days about self esteem, self confidence, self love. How important are these qualities? Is high esteem or low esteem better?

Sincerely,

Running out of Esteem

Dear ROOE,

I would say too many people think way too damn highly of themselves. I would also say too many people think way too damn lowly of themselves. Neither of these are going to work for your life.

You think you are god’s special little child and the savior of this planet, you are going to wind up saying and doing a whole lot of stupid things aren’t you?

Similarly, you think you are worthless, and what are you capable of? Only misery for yourself. What you believe psychologically has no relevance in reality.

When we talk about self worth, we are really talking about what you believe about yourself. You are not seeing yourself just the way you are. If you did, you would naturally love yourself, and all of creation. There would be no need for self-worth because you would see the worth of all of existence, including you.

But now instead, you are seeing yourself as a distorted image, through the filter of your identity, then drawing all kinds of conclusions about life.

Whether it’s a good distortion or a bad distortion is a stupid argument; would you rather see things through a clean window or a smudged window? “No, but this smudge is so pretty….” Do you see how silly it sounds?

You want clarity in your life, then a clean window is best to look through. But every time you make up some nonsense about who you are, you obscure what you see.

I want you to understand that there is a difference between what you psychologically decide about your life and what existentially is true. Truth requires no support from you. It exists whether you think it does or not.

But your self worth, self esteem, self confidence, self love! These things require so much maintenance from you. They are not existentially true, nor relevant.

As a coping mechanism, because life has become too stressful or too challenging, people start talking about all kinds of ways to boost the self. Or, they go the other way. Life has ground them too much into a pulp and so now they think poorly of themselves.

But what is the existential truth? The truth is, you can take a single drop of rain and spend your whole life, even 10,000 lifetimes studying it. But will you ever know it in it’s entirety?

When existence is like this, that even the tiniest aspects of creation can be infinitely delved into, what makes you think that you are worthy of high self worth? Everything in this creation is infinitely unknowable.

Also, what makes you think you are worthy of low self worth? Did creation somehow mess up with you, and you are the one mistake that doesn’t have infinite potential?

Stop fixating so much on what you think of yourself. It is a trap. A giant trap that will keep you from experiencing life right now the way it is, beyond good and bad, beyond your likes and dislikes. Just life, as it is, unsullied by your opinion.

If you want to know that single drop of rain, you must be willing to see it fresh. But if you go to that drop of rain with all your ideas about it, it will be impossible for you to know it. Only by admitting that what you know is far far less than what you don’t know will you be able to learn something new.

What I am trying to say is that what you think you know about this universe is so little. It is not even a drop in the bucket. To say that would be giving it too much value. You know damn near nothing. Your unknowing is boundless. But what you know can only ever be limited.

If you stop identifying with what you think you know, and instead start identifying with your boundless nature, life will open up for you in a fantastic way. You will start seeing everything just as it is, as unlimited possibility, potential. You sense of wonder will expand. Your experience of life will be more profound.

But how is your nature boundless? One thing is your physical body is only a small fraction of who you are. In fact, you are mostly held together by empty space. Just like this cosmos, over 99% of you is emptiness, unknowable.

When it comes to identifying with this aspect of yourself, the emptiness, the boundless, that which is not physical but is the vast majority of who you are – you cannot go with silly ideas about yourself one way or the other. Good or bad, high or low, what you think of yourself is not going to help you.

You must go with humility. Because if you even touched this aspect of yourself for a second, you would realize that this creation is up to far more than you can imagine. Your business is not to fix this existence by giving yourself high or low self worth. This existence does not need your fixing.

Your business is just to humble yourself. Not because you should fear god or pray for answers or some other such thing. Drop all your ideas. Just humble yourself because this creation is so vast, so complex, so intricate! To even be here is a beautiful mystery and blessing.

Humility is the obvious path when you do not know something and want to know. You don’t know something, but you start boasting you do. You don’t know something, but you start playing the victim. Now do you see that this is not about your self-worth?

Humility has become a corrupted word today, because people think it means to put yourself down. I am saying humility is just about recognizing the truth – that you are a tiny tiny tiny fraction of a sliver of a drop in this cosmos.

If you want to understand life the way it is, start with yourself! Live with humility, because in reality you are barely a speck. That truth should not shackle you or make you feel bad. If how small your place and time in this universe fully penetrates you, it will be utterly liberating. Existence will have no choice but to flood into you, opening doors you never knew about.

Practice humility. Treat each moment as something precious and larger than who you are. Anyway that is the truth. You will get it, if not now, for sure your last moment you will understand how precious life is. But what a waste when you can know it now.

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

Hiatus Announcement

August 2, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self will be on hiatus for the month of August. Regular updates M/W/F will resume the first week of September.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

On Falling Out of Love

August 2, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

How can I fall out of love? Falling in love seems so simple, but after going through heartbreak, it seems so tough to move on. There is always so much pain, anger, grief, denial, you name it!

Sincerely,

Heartbreak Hotel

Dear HH,

You can only fall into something. You cannot fall out of something. The whole reason it is so easy to fall in love is because gravity does all the work. If you were skydiving, it’s easy to fall isn’t it? But you want to fly back up, you need something to work against the gravity don’t you?

In this case the gravity is just the biological need to reproduce. Nature doesn’t care whether you are in love or not, it only wants you to reproduce.

I want you to understand that if you keep getting heartbroken over and over the only thing that will happen is that you start becoming weary and protective of yourself. Every time you move into a new situation you will trust less and less to avoid the potential heartbreak. This is no way to live.

So what am I saying? I am always going on and on about being vulnerable to life, but now I am telling you that if you keep loving like this, you will just cause more nonsense for yourself. So which is it then?

Yes you must be vulnerable to life. What you are doing is not about vulnerability. Because you feel intense emotion, you think you are being vulnerable. But quite the opposite is happening.

You want to be able to do something intense and avoid the consequences of the action. Your definition of love is to totally entangle yourself with another person. Whether it is physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, socially, whatever – you want two to become one, don’t you?

This is all the hollywood and novels that have given you a very skewed definition of love.

Someone must complete you. That is most people’s definition of love. I am saying, what is so missing from you that you need completion? Anything you need is within you, why do you need to extract it from someone else?

If one day you see someone beautiful and think “This is it, the one true love for me“, and you are overcome with feelings of bliss, where is this bliss happening? Is the person sitting there shooting beams of bliss at you?

Obviously, you are manufacturing this bliss within you. You’ve just added an extra step. First someone must come to be the object of your affection, then you generate the feeling you seek. This is an inefficient and unrealistic way to approach your own happiness.

If every time in this life you need to feel something – happiness, joy, sadness, anger, any damn emotion – you rely on the external people or situation to create it within you, then you are just an accident. All that you experience is just because you accidentally stumble upon it.

First you must take your life into your own hands. Love is not happening because of someone. It is happening within you. Love is what you are, not who you are with.

Your love should not be hoarded for one person. You should exude it to all beings. Look upon the whole earth and all that is in it with the same love you would give your very own child. That is love. Whatever you are doing is just nature’s drive to reproduce with some decoration added.

I’m not trying to take all the fun and beauty out of relationships. I am not against romance. This is just a matter of how things work. If you depend on the external to dictate how you feel, you are always headed for heartbreak.

Why is this so? Well, has anyone ever done anything 100% the way you wanted them to? Yet you have all these expectations for the person you care about most, on how they should make you feel. They can never live up to all of it. It is cruel of you to treat them like this, labeling it as love.

You are not asking how to fall out of love. After totally entrapping and entangling yourself at every level with someone, and creating a thousand different expectations and conclusions about them, you ask “How can I undo this quickly?”

Do you see how silly this sounds? You made your bed, now you must lie in it.

You can not avoid cause and effect. You decided to entangle yourself. Now you must untangle. You don’t have to actively do anything. Time will take care of it if you just simply stop feeding all these entanglements. In fact, that alone is the fastest way.

All the opinions you have about how the relationship was, who they are, how they should or shouldn’t have treated you, all that analysis you must stop entertaining. It will come up from time to time in your mind. Simply let it pass.

Anyway it is all false. No one is how you see them in your mind. They are who they are, not what you think they are. They were always that way, but you dressed them up because it made you feel good.

The question isn’t about falling out of love because it was never really love in the first place. I’m not saying that there wasn’t any genuine love for the person there, of course there was always that seed. But because of all the nonsense you expected, it never blossomed into unbridled, unconditional love. That is the only way love can be.

What you must learn to do is throw yourself totally into life, intensely, but at the same time not become entangled in it. Involvement without entanglement, I have said again and again, this is the way.

How to accomplish this means that you must allow people to be free. They are not yours to label, yours to decide how they should be or treat you or to be with you or not. In order for you to love someone, it requires nothing of them. It requires no action from you either. Simply in your heart, love them.

Practice being like this. Live fully, but when a relationship doesn’t go the way you want and ends, be at peace with it. Thank them, forgive them, honour them, cry if you want even, but continue to love them as you love all.

Your time to be together is over, that is normal and natural. Now something new will happen. That is the way of life.

Don’t carry your past with you into every new situation. Experience each new relationship with vulnerability and openness, and don’t hold onto to any of it, ever.

Totally vulnerable. Never entangled. This is the answer you seek. Falling out of love is never going to happen. You are love! You cannot fall out of what you are.

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 Preferences

July 31, 2019July 31, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I find myself getting bogged down by my job. I punch in and punch out but I long for something more. I love my personal growth and spiritual process, but I feel like I have to do the necessary evil of earning a living. Why is it like this? Why can’t we all just be on the spiritual path full time? I don’t want to waste my life!

Sincerely,

Part Time Seeker Full Time Worker

Dear PTSFTW,

You don’t want to waste your life? Tell me, what about it is a waste?

You are speaking as though survival is somehow some evil thing that you must abolish so that you can be more spiritual. I’m saying that survival is just as important as all your other spiritual practice.

The issue is not that you must earn a living and it is taking away from your precious growth. The issue is that you have chosen a certain level of survival in this life, and you have decided that you must earn a certain living a certain way. Now, even though it was all your choice, you complain as though someone has put a gun to your head and demanded it.

There is nothing stopping you from going full time spirituality! You could do it right now, leave everything behind, and go sit on a mountain somewhere. If that is what is truly in your heart, then you should go.

But all of that is not necessary. Spirituality is not hidden at the top of the mountain. It is in every atom in this existence, in every moment. It is even in your job. But you don’t see it that way because you do it unconsciously, uninvolved. Spiritual process doesn’t end when you punch in and start when you punch out of your job!

The whole reason the truth of your existence eludes you is not because your job is in the way. Nothing is in the way except your own idea that this is somehow better than that.

Preferences are the basis of your whole enslavement. I want you to understand this deeply.

The moment you decide that one thing is better than an other, or that you prefer something else than what is happening right now, you have distorted your perception of reality.

This is because as soon as you prefer, you cannot see things as they are or enjoy things as they are. All that happens is you create endless criteria for you to enjoy life that almost never gets fulfilled anyway.

Tell me, can you change what is happening right now? You might want to say yes, but you cannot. Your actions now may affect what happens next. But right now is done. It is decided. Nothing you do in this moment can change this moment.

If you see this moment as somehow wrong, or something that must be overcome, you have trapped yourself. If you think this moment is a problem to be solved, you cannot solve it! There is no way to change what is now.

Like this, you have preferences in every moment. It’s raining but you want sun. You’re neck hurts but you want no pain. You’re tired and you want to sleep. Whatever it is, you always look to the next moment.

Then the next moment arrives. Let’s say you get what you want. The sun shines, your pain is gone, you are full of energy, but you won’t be satisfied. You will then look to the next moment finding something else that you wish was different.

You have been doing this your entire life. It has been one long timeline of you just looking to the future for something better than now. You should have learned, that eventually you have to be okay with what is right here, right now.

At some point it is just up to you to be content, and not up to existence to provide you with everything you think you need to be content.

Your job is not a burden or in the way. Learn to include it as a part of your spiritual process. What’s stopping you? If you can’t take something that you do 8+ hours a day every day and be more conscious in it, then what hope do you have with the rest of your life? You work more than almost anything, it’s a perfect opportunity to be spiritual isn’t it?

But because you prefer to not work, work is a problem. It’s time to stop this silly game. Even if you quit your job, something else will get in the way for you. The problem is not out there with your situation. The problem is in you. The problem is your preferences!

Learn to prefer whatever is already happening. No matter what life gives you, accept it, include it, and use it. Life gives you a blessing, you accept it with grace and you grow. Life gives you a challenge, you accept that with gratitude and you grow. No matter what, you grow!

You can always plan for the future, but there are never any guarantees. When the moment arrives and you find yourself wishing it was different, instead stop. Practice accepting it and including it. You can’t change it anyway.

Otherwise all you will do is waste your life. Don’t sit around whining and complaining through the challenges of life. The soil is just as important as the flower.

This is really what spirituality is about. That whether it is a blade of grass or a forest, or a bathroom or a church, or a speck of dust or a galaxy, all life is important. They are all different for sure. But all of it is just as divine as the next.

Yes, I just said a bathroom is as divine as a church. They both have different functions obviously. But both are important, aren’t they? In fact, if both close down, people will be far less patient about the bathroom, believe me.

Your survival is divine too. It evolved over countless millennia to bring life to this planet. Don’t you think then that your survival mechanism needs to be handled consciously?

In today’s society, jobs are our survival. Earning a living or not is a life or death scenario for most people. If you do not bring consciousness into your work, then it will always be a struggle to survive. But if you are conscious, you have the ability to immerse yourself, involve yourself, to enjoy yourself.

Everything you do in this life must be done consciously. Everything! No exceptions. Nothing in this existence is out of place. No moment is wrong. You must be involved, no matter what, fully, to each moment of your life.

It’s not about perfection. It’s about practice. There’s no need to prefer something over another. You are alive. That is more than enough reason to celebrate existence, and nothing needs to be different for you to do so.

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 Hopelessness

July 29, 2019July 29, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Lately I’ve been feeling a bit apathetic and hopeless. I look at the world and see so many problems, and nothing we do to help seems to make any sort of meaningful impact quickly enough. It make me not want to do anything at all. How can I get over this feeling AND do something that actually matters?

Sincerely,

Hopelessness Monster

Dear HM,

I want you to understand that nothing you do ever truly matters in the grand scheme of things.

That’s a pretty defeatist and nihilistic way of stating things, but it’s not necessarily a negative statement.

You are just a speck in this universe. Even the earth in this universe, with all it’s trillions and trillions of life forms, is just a speck also. Our entire galaxy, also just one speck among countless. Even if our entire galaxy vanished tonight, the universe would go on just fine.

We are all just on this planet acting out a certain drama, a play. There is nothing truly significant about this drama, but still, it matters to you. Even though it doesn’t matter in the universe’s larger plan, it still matters to those who are living the drama.

All our actions have consequences. Even our very thoughts matter; they are like the iron hot hammer blows on a sculpture, shaping our identity, dictating our reactions and compulsions.

It is important that you understand the rules of this play. That you understand that everything you think, speak, and do, it all shapes your experience of life. And even though one little person’s experience isn’t going to affect the universe, it’s still your experience, and it matters for you. So you should make the most of it. If you don’t understand this now, you will when your last breath leaves your body.

We are all connected in more ways than most realize. Forget whatever you think you know about god or oneness, I will just say it in simple terms: you are not on this planet, you are the planet, aren’t you?

Everything that happens to you is happening to this planet and vice versa, because they are one and the same. What I am saying is that you better make your inner experience of life one that is beautiful, because it affects everything around you too.

So you’re feeling hopeless. You look at this world and see a lot of problems. It is true, there is immense suffering going on right now. I’m not even speaking of natural occurrences that are unavoidable. Simply looking at the standard for how humanity is, we cause great suffering to each other, the other life on this planet, and to the very planet itself.

But now you look at all the problems and say “What can I do, it’s all so futile!”

You are just making excuses so you don’t have to act. To help would mean to be vulnerable. To feel what is happening out there. To start a process of giving back, when most of your life has just been about taking.

The truth is life becomes exponentially more beautiful for you the more you give back. This isn’t a philosophy or a morality, it is just the reality. An empty cup receives the most water.

The more you make it so that you are not the most important thing in this universe, the more you are in alignment with reality. Making your life perfect at any cost, that is not reality, that is all psychological nonsense. How you treat everything is how you treat yourself.

So now you’ve created this psychological high ground for yourself – you can see all that’s wrong, so you can feel better than everyone else. But you do nothing about it, because you also see that you can’t solve it all. It’s all a big game you are playing with yourself to avoid responsibility.

Do you think that the world needs to be perfect before you can help? Do you think that society should be different, people should be different, the laws should be different, industry should be different…should everything change to become extra convenient for you? Then, will you act?

Life is the way it is. It is not right, it is not wrong. It just is. We have the hand we have been dealt in this life. Will you make the most of it, that is the only question.

You cannot sit around your whole life waiting for the external circumstance to be ideal. The reality is, it is ideal for something right now, isn’t it? It might not be ideal for some quick solution that solves everything, but it is ready for some level of action. It is perfectly ready for you to do something, if you were only willing to meet life where it’s at.

There are no such thing as the quick solutions you are seeking. The longer something takes, the longer it will last. You build a foundation through your actions and it will yield results that have a much more lasting impact.

Stop distracting yourself with all this nonsense of “the best solution”. There is only what you can do, now. As time goes on and you put in the effort, more opportunities will open up. If you work intelligently, efficiently, maybe it can happen more quickly.

But the most important aspect is that you simply do something. If you do nothing, nothing ever happens.

Society is such that we are all complicit simply by living our lives. The suffering that occurs in this world is built into the day to day chores we all go through. The food we eat, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, all of it is created with a great deal of suffering.

It’s simply not enough anymore to do nothing and claim “I am at least not actively making things worse“. Unfortunately, we all are taking so much simply by living.

You can’t possibly in your life give more than you’ve taken. But you can give something. If every person gives something back, to something they care about, then as a planet, we create a foundation from which many big changes can occur.

So get off your butt and help in some way that you care about. There are already millions out there doing their part, what’s your excuse?

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 Harmony

July 26, 2019July 29, 2019 ~ SE ~ 1 Comment

Dear True Self,

How can I live a more harmonious life? Be more in harmony with others?

Sincerely,

One Part Harmony

Dear OPH,

Words like “harmony” get thrown around a lot. There are so many buzzwords that people use when they are working on their spirituality. Even spirituality is a sort of buzzword!

Why I am saying this is because I want you to take whatever definition you have about harmony and throw it away. I don’t care if the definition is correct even, I want you to just drop it entirely.

Did you drop it? Are you willing to just be open, and hear what harmony actually means?

It is important that you are open, because if you are not receptive, then you cannot receive. I don’t want you to even compare your definition to what I am about to tell you and say “See, I was right!” or “Yeah, my definition was similar!”. I don’t want you to compare it all. Just fresh, as if you have never heard about it before, experience it.

Harmony is a certain arrangement. Music has harmony. And music is just sound. If the sound isn’t arranged properly, then we experience it as noise. But if we arrange sounds in a certain way, we call it music. If those sounds are arranged in a mathematically perfect way, we call that harmony.

In many ways, the harmony you are looking for in your life – it’s just a certain arrangement of your energy with other energies. It’s like making music. It’s how you are compatible with the life around you. Do you compliment it or are you creating dissonance?

It could be the people you know, the environment, the work you do, whatever. But if you are living in harmony, then you find a way to arrange your energy so that you are working with others, not against.

When I say energy, I don’t want you to start imagining all kinds of fanciful things. I’m not talking about some big secret divine cosmic energy. Just simply put, all things are energy, are they not? All matter is just energy, at it’s fundamental form. And all that energy is just manifesting as patterns.

Over here, there is energy in the pattern of a rock. Over there, it’s in the pattern of a bee. Over there, it’s you or me or your cat. But it’s all essentially just energy.

Now you do not have the skill or the ability to reshape your energies and suddenly become something else. But all the processes that are happening within you are energy based.

Your body, your thoughts, your emotions – these are the three dimensions of life for sure you can say you have experienced. You might talk about soul or spirit or something but the truth is you cannot ever prove that. So let’s just stick to those three.

Those three dimensions also are just energy arranged in a certain way. What I mean by this is your thoughts, your feelings, your words, your actions – these are the musical notes. They must all be singing the same song, or all you will have is noise.

When someone sings a harmony, they are a supporting role, you know? The singer is doing the main melody, but you come in and enrich it all by supporting. Like this you can make harmony, supporting others with all that you are.

In every thought, word, deed, you must strive to make life a more beautiful and peaceful experience. This universe is not at some big struggle, so why are you?

Everything is happening following the path of least resistance. Like this too, you must move through life, joyfully, easily, gratefully. That is harmony.

But you have been conditioned to do the opposite. Since you were a child you were taught to compete with everyone and everything. You measured your worth only by someone else being less than you. You had to be first at everything to feel value.

Can you possibly ever be at ease with life if you are always at odds with it? If you are endlessly competing and comparing yourself to everyone and everything, there is no hope for the path of least resistance. Harmony will never come. It will always elude you.

So I’ve talked about your energies and now you might think you can go sit and imagine your energies flowing out like a fountain or something. That’s all fine if it makes you feel better, but I want you to understand that the fastest way for you to achieve harmony is not through some psychological fantasy. It is through experiential reality.

Psychological things have no basis in reality. They only happen in your head. Put your attention to how you are and how that affects the life around you.

Okay, so how to do that? Well, you cannot practice making your energy more harmonious. What you can do however, is drop this compulsive nature you have towards competition. This is the real poison in your system. You must remove this poison so the energy can move freely.

The energy of your life or this universe doesn’t need your assistance in order to find harmony. That is the basic principle of energy, is that it always will settle to where it is at ease. It will always naturally find harmony. All it needs is for you to stop interfering with it. For most, that means when they die!

While you are alive you must learn how to live harmoniously. So that means stop competing. Stop basing the value of your life only in comparison to another. Just be happy and grateful for your own life.

You are lucky to be here, as you. In all the history of the universe and the unwritten history to come, there will never be another you. Only you can live your life. It is unique, and it is yours. It is better to be a bumbling version of yourself than a perfect version of someone else.

Harmony is just how you are working to support others, not how everyone else is supposed to help you.

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 Fighting

July 24, 2019July 23, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Lately I’ve been having less patience for people who aren’t conscious. It’s no secret we are destroying the planet and that there is a lot of injustice out there – but I get into arguments all the time with people who disagree with me and don’t seem to want to lift a finger. People are calling me confrontational, but I feel like I have to get in their face when there’s so much at stake. Am I wrong here?

Sincerely,

In Your Face

Dear IYF,

We all have the capacity for fighting. There is a warrior within us who is ready to take action, do what needs doing. But when this warrior isn’t used properly, they wind up doing more damage than good, both to themselves and others.

If you do not have something to fight for, you will wind up fighting everyone you know. What I am saying is, it is better to fight for something than against someone.

It doesn’t matter how noble or worthy your cause is. If you use it as an excuse to fight others, you are already lost.

How many people have their been like you throughout history, fighting for something they believe in, only to do so much harm to everyone? The maximum amount of pain and suffering has been caused only by people just like you, convinced they are right and that gives them license to fight.

It is not the cause itself that I want you to pay attention to. Forget your crusade. It doesn’t matter if your crusade is righteous or that you are on the right side of history here. Your business is not with these distractions. Your business is with your own nonsense, your own insecurities and defensiveness, your own compulsions.

Somewhere within you there is a piece that feels lacking. It feels incomplete, it feels like it needs something to fill it. This is what most people refer to as their purpose in life. I want you to know that there is no such thing as your purpose. Your very life is a purpose unto itself, serving a much larger picture. But you have the freedom to act how you wish.

So take a look at how you are acting. How you act is your life’s work, isn’t it? Are you making people’s experience more beautiful? Is your experience even any more beautiful, the way you are acting? Hell, is it even effective?

No, you are acting in a very naive way. In a world so full of problems as you so aptly described, why would you choose to add to it?

Is you arguing with or confronting people helping bring them over to your side? You are making it worse, alienating them and solidifying them firmly on the other side of the issue to you.

Before you even talk to them you decide they are your enemy. Now what choice do they have other than to put their armor on and raise their walls?

I’m not talking about the other extreme as the solution. I’m not saying you go babysit them, hold their hand, and coax them along to your way. I’m saying that it has nothing to do with them.

First you look at yourself. First you fix yourself. First you become a shining beacon and example of what is possible. I guarantee you that people will flock to you. People will gather around you, wanting to be invigorated by your spirit, wanting to take up the same fight. Far more work will get done to help with the issues you care about if you work on yourself.

All this fighting others you are doing, it is just a silly distraction. A distraction for you to feel superior, to feel like you’re accomplishing something, to cement your place within your tribe. You have an identity now as a warrior, and it’s ramping out of control.

You need to put your fierce warrior spirit to good use, or it will consume you and you will just be a bully to anyone who disagrees with you, browbeating them into submission. Conquering is one way to win. But inclusion is far superior, because they join your cause.

There are some people who will never come around. There are others than just want to be included but are afraid of the discomfort of such a journey. The former is beyond your ability to influence anyway. But the latter is your only hope, and so you must be the type of warrior they would follow.

You are actually a problem to the world if you do not have something to fight for. So take up those causes that you care about, and start attracting like minded people and solving them. Stop wasting all this time arguing with others. All you are doing is feeding your own ego.

All that warrior energy can be used to be of service to this planet and all that are on it. It breaks my heart to see warriors fighting other people when they could be doing so much to help. You need not defeat anyone, only use that intensity to help solve the myriad issues that face us. Do you see how you are just making excuses for your inaction by projecting onto others?

The greatest warriors know that their most challenging opponent is their own compulsive self. Work on yourself first. Stop annoying everyone else with pointless arguments and start inspiring them with your action instead.

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 Acknowledgement

July 22, 2019July 21, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I was never really noticed or recognized much when I was younger. It has followed me into adulthood.

Even though I know I have a lot to be recognized for be it in work or family, I find myself being overlooked or underappreciated constantly. Am I asking too much to be noticed once in a while, acknowledged? I just feel like I’m not valued.

Sincerely,

On Notice

Dear ON,

When you were a child, you probably liked candy. Now, of course, your parents and teachers all limited the amount you could have. But I bet at least once you ate more than they allowed.

At the time, it seemed like a fantastic idea, didn’t it? You could eat as much as you want, and it would be amazing! Then the tummy starts to hurt and well, in retrospect…

Maybe this exact scenario didn’t happen to you. But for sure, there was some moment in your life where in hindsight you saw that perhaps something that you really desired turned out to not be what you wanted at all.

My point is you lack perspective.

If you could understand that what you want right now may not actually be what’s best for you, then you would see that your compulsiveness is what’s driving your desire here.

You were wounded when you were younger – you became invisible, overlooked. It has become such a deep desire of yours for this recognition that you do not care who gives it or where it comes from.

It’s kind of like being starving. Truly starving. Most have never actually experienced what it means to really be at death’s edge, no food, no energy. Sure, you’ve been hungry. But starving?

I want you to understand the lengths a starving person would go to for food. They would eat just about damn near anything. They would do just about damn near anything. Why? Because it’s no longer about preference, it’s about necessity. It’s something they need in order to keep on surviving. Any means necessary is the name of the game.

Like this, you have become starved for recognition. So when anyone throws it to you, you take it and devour it. You don’t have time to notice whether they have poisoned it or are mocking you or whether it’s genuine. All that matters is you receive it. Your psychological survival has become dependent on it.

You should not go about seeking recognition. If you have earned it, it will come naturally. If you are a painter and you have just started painting, at first, you are going to be terrible. If you ask people in those early months “How is it?” you will just get platitudes or ridicule.

But if you just devote yourself to the process of improving, after some time, people will come to you with praise. Naturally, they will acknowledge you, because it will be evident that what you have done is worth praising.

Am I saying that you are just some schlub who’s done nothing praiseworthy? Is this a reality check?

What I am saying is that you need to be more aware of where this praise is coming from. Praise that is either charity or bribery is not something you want or need. That will sabotage you in the long run. It will make you complacent, make you think you’re further along than you are, make you stagnant.

Praise must be genuine. So in order for it to be genuine, you must drop this desire to be praised.

The reality is you are probably being praised for many things. But because you feel so wounded, you don’t recognize them. You have some specific things that you want to be praised for, things that you feel you’ve earned. I want you to peg yourself down a few notches.

Humility needs to enter your core. Tell me, if in order for you to help people, do your job, create something, perform any action in life, you require praise from others, is this a genuine way of being? It’s so inauthentic; everything you do has strings attached now.

You must do these things not because of what you will receive, but because of what you will learn along the way. Do them because of the opportunity for you to grow. Do them because they make your life more beautiful. If praise comes, it comes.

To be truly humble means to have perspective. To see that there is a larger process going on. There is a bigger picture than you just trying to sap acknowledgement from everything.

See yourself as forever a student of life, learning more about yourself and everything in each moment. That way, even when the praise comes, you won’t need it. You will already know in your heart you’ve earned it, even if no one else does.

If you paint that beautiful masterpiece and no one ever sees it, still, it will be praiseworthy within because of all you the ways you had to grow to make it.

Don’t seek praise and then act. It’s like putting the cart before the horse. First, you act with humility. Acknowledgement will follow, but you won’t care either way. You have a direction and purpose, that will be more fulfilling than any praise someone else can give you.

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 Numbness

July 19, 2019July 18, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Lately I’ve been having a hard time being present or involved in anything. I feel kind of numb to it all, and whether something is happy or sad I just don’t seem to give a crap. Is something wrong with me?

Sincerely,

Numb-er One

Dear N1,

Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing is right with you. This isn’t a question of right or wrong. This is a matter of the life within you growing or not, and it can’t grow if you are numb.

You feel numb to this existence, an existence that is bursting with ecstasy in every moment. That’s not wrong or right, it’s just unfortunate. Your experience of life could be so much more than it is.

Now how can you know that this existence is bursting at the seams, full of wonder? Is it all just some fairy tale?

I want you to think back to a moment when you felt absolutely ecstatic about anything. For sure you felt this way at least once as a child, eating your first ice cream or petting your first animal or something. I want you to recall how intense that bliss was, so pure and unbridled.

Where was this joy coming from? Where did it happen, where was it created? Only within you. You were the maker of that experience. Something external came and triggered you maybe, but in the end, you manufactured the experience.

What if I told you every moment of your life could be like this? Maybe you won’t believe me, but what if I told you at least the majority of your life could feel like that?

I want you to understand that nothing in your experience is happening outside of you. It is all only happening within you. If you hear something, the sound doesn’t exist outside of you as far as you are concerned. The only reason you even know it’s there is because the hair in your ears vibrate sympathetically and your mind fills in the rest.

You create the sound inside you. Like this, everything you digest through your senses, you create it inside you. The whole existence is only inside of you!

Why does any of this matter? Well, it is important you understand that your experience is 100% in your hands. If you are making your whole reality, then you can for sure make it a more beautiful one.

What life gives you, that’s not up to you. But how that experience is for you, that is all your making.

Maybe you are lousy at making things into a good experience at this age. Too many times you have been burdened by life and now you only feel something good if something tremendous happens to you.

But you are capable of being however you wish to be in this moment. Tell me, if every day you practiced being grateful when someone did something that bothered you, do you not believe in time that you would become a more grateful person? Do you not think that eventually you would learn to be more patient, accepting, unmoved by others?

You have not practiced how you want to be. I’m not asking you who you want to be, what you want to do with your life. Only how you want to be when you do it.

Ultimately, we all want the same thing: for our experience of life to be meaningful, the highest level of beauty. But everyday you just move through life waiting for it to happen to you. Of course eventually life will become numb.

You must involve yourself in life with absolute intensity. Right now, one common thing for all people is they are capable of feeling intense emotion. We have all felt it, either in anger or sadness or joy or whatever.

If you want this numbness to go away, you must start to dive back into life. The little experiences you must look at with the intensity of a child seeing it for the first time. Start with the things you actually appreciate.

Practice this every time you see a leaf, a bird, someone you love, sunshine, a gift, whatever makes you feel pleasant, start there and dive in more intensely. Allow yourself to grow that pleasantness into higher and higher levels. A thought into a smile into a grin into laughter into tears and beyond!

You see, you have been practicing keeping life at bay for so long. You have been practicing dialing down your intensity, because you are afraid of being hurt. I am saying that this road will for sure only lead to one thing, regret. Regret will hurt more than any hurt you are currently avoiding.

So start practicing the opposite of numbness – being intensely involved in small things. The truth is they are not small things. You may take them for granted, but they matter to you.

If tomorrow you woke up and couldn’t see, suddenly your eyes would matter.

If tomorrow you woke up and someone you loved was gone, suddenly they would matter.

If I told you that you won’t wake up tomorrow! Suddenly, everything would matter.

If you behaved like this, that it was the last time you would experience this moment, what would you do?

You cannot change this moment, it is the way it is. But how you experience that moment, if it’s going to be your last, you would want to make it the damn most beautiful thing no matter what it was, wouldn’t you?

So remember that this life you have and take for granted is temporary. All the things in your life you have allowed yourself to become numb to, remember they are temporary.

If you want your numbness to go, it’s time to practice living life full on. Dive into this moment and all the little moments that make up your life. Make your intensity of emotion so free that even looking at a bumblebee brings you tears of joy.

That is the intensity of life you are aiming for. That is what the existence is already vibrating at. Just dial yourself up to match it and you will see it was all in your hands all along.

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 Boundaries

July 17, 2019July 16, 2019 ~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have a hard time setting boundaries with people and situations in life. I either let people get too involved or I become too caught up in things and it always ends in misery and disaster. How can I protect myself better and set proper boundaries?

Sincerely,

Boundaries Abound

Dear BA,

Life has come and caused you some trouble. Here and there it has chewed you up, spit you out, and you have become weary and cautious. So now you ask, “How can I be involved in life without being involved?” This will only result in you not living your life.

You want security from the hard things in life, or you want to avoid them entirely. Do not approach your life this way, trying to shield yourself, protect yourself, remove yourself from all risk. At the end of your days, you will only have regret.

There is no avoiding life. Did you come to this planet to simply avoid life until you die? Did you come to see how much you could avoid experiencing? How much you could protect yourself, how many walls you could put up?

Or did you come here to see how much you could experience, how beautiful you could make that experience? What you are given is not up to you. But what you make of it, that is always in your hands.

There are no such thing as boundaries. There is no such thing as security. No guarantees in this life except that one day you will die. You came here with nothing, you can take nothing with you.

Every single thing that happens in this life is a bonus isn’t it? It’s all extra, it’s all more than you started with. So you prefer this thing over that thing, that’s your problem. But the reality is that no matter what life gives you, it is more than you started with. It takes nothing from you, it only reclaims you when your time is up!

I’m not interested in telling you how to avoid your life. I’m not interested in directing you on how to draw boundaries. I’m interested in opening you up so that as much life happens to you as possible!

Tell me, some things that you thought were wonderful in your life, did they later turn out to be a huge problem? Or other things that were problems at first, did they later turn out to be a huge blessing?

Do you see the danger in trying to decide before hand what you allow to penetrate your existence? You cannot know what the experience will truly mean in the long run right now. Only in retrospect can you know. Predictions are pointless and you are wrong the majority of the time. Please see this.

You think you have it all figured out. Because X happened in the past, it means I should avoid Y. This sort of equation is simply false. You know it is false. The past can never predict the future. Only time will tell.

This isn’t about letting people walk all over you, or become entangled in everything. That is different. This is just about setting the proper foundation. You must be vulnerable to all life has to offer.

Whatever happens to you in any moment, you must include it in your experience. From this place, life is possible. But with security and boundaries as the foundation, only not living a full life is possible.

Tell me, when you try to resist something, doesn’t it only wind up getting worse? If you try to stop thinking something, you will just think it even more. If you try to resist an emotion, you will only suppress it and make it worse.

Simply allow life to happen to you. You will see that everything comes and goes if you stop resisting it. You will also see that avoidance, boundaries, resistance – these are surefire ways to become entangled in the very thing you are trying to protect yourself from.

This is why all your boundary setting is not working. What is the use of a boundary if you haven’t worked on not becoming entangled?

What I am saying is your way is not working. It is not effective even in protecting yourself, which is the whole reason you are doing it! Nothing will ever protect you the way you are seeking. It is time to surrender to all life gives you.

But how to do so without becoming so damaged by everything?

This is the key to experiencing life: involvement without entanglement.

Just experience life. All of it.

Yes, some of it will be painful. That’s not your business.

Your business is with how you are when those things happen. In a painful situation, you can learn and grow and become wise. But if you aim for security and safety, all that will happen is you will not be any wiser and carry hurt with you. Then you are just a walking sabotage.

You are not truly seeking boundaries. What you are seeking is just a way to live this life fully without becoming so burdened by everything. For that you don’t need boundaries. Literally, you need no boundaries. That is what is required.

Work on being more vulnerable to life and all it offers you. I’m not saying seek trouble or put yourself in situations that are toxic.

I’m saying put your work into letting things go when they goes. Whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant, when it is time for it to pass let it pass. If you work on experiencing life like this, then setting boundaries won’t be an issue anymore.

Why? Because you will finally understand that nobody else has the privilege of making your experience good or bad except you. When you are like this, that only you are the master of your own experience, then you won’t need to bother with boundaries.

No matter what happens, you let it happen, and you make the most of 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

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