Tag: learning

On Success

~ 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

~ 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

On Preferences

~ 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 Harmony

~ 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

~ 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

~ 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

~ 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

~ 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

On Rejection

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I get rejected a lot, be it in social situations or romantic relationships. I don’t take rejection well and it’s affecting my mood, self worth, and I’m becoming more and more depressed and angry every time I face rejection. How can I stop feeling so rejected, and even better, how can I be more accepted?

Sincerely,

Rejected and Dejected

Dear RAD,

Absolutely no one is rejecting you. You are getting this silly notion that when things don’t go the way you desire, that you have been rejected. No, it’s just that there is no plan you can ever have that guarantees what you want.

Has there ever been a moment in your life where you could control all the variables and ensure the outcome you wanted? Even up until the last minute, even if it ultimately wound up going your way, it was never a for sure thing, was it?

Additionally, I want you to take a look at your behaviour. If you treat others in such a way that you ensure the outcome you want, that is the definition of manipulation. Is this truly how you wish to be, a manipulative person?

You see the real issue here is that whether you receive acceptance or rejection, if you behaved in a manipulative way to get it, then it will always turn sour over time.

When you put your happiness in other people’s control, you are enslaving yourself. You want the attention of the person you admire or that man or woman you are attracted to. So they accept you and you feel great, they reject you and you feel lousy, but both ways you are a slave, aren’t you? You gave them total control over how you feel.

I am saying why are you putting your self worth, your self esteem, your very happiness into the hands of what you cannot control? Why would you give that power to someone else when you are the only one who can make that happen for you?

This endless cycle of acceptance and rejection will slowly eat away at you. Even if you received acceptance more than rejection, you would still be a prisoner, only the bars are made of gold. It’s not much of a difference, believe me. The moment you realize you are trapped, you will want out.

Take back your power. More importantly, take responsibility for your own life. Do not give anyone or anything else the privilege of deciding your worth, your mood, your being.

Make it so you are who you are by your design, by your choice! Make it so no matter what life gives you, you take it and you grow. This is the only way out of your enslavement.

I could sit here preaching to you about self acceptance and self love, but I am telling you even that is not necessary. If you are committed to your own growth, anyway you will wind up accepting and loving more and more as you grow. You do not need to work on it.

What you do need to work on is being committed to being conscious, taking accountability for the way you are!

If you ask that person out and they say no, you grow!

If you ask that person out and they say yes, you grow!

If you ask them out and they spit at you, laugh at you, cry, embrace you, run away…it doesn’t matter what they do, you grow!

This isn’t just some hallmark card philosophy, if someone rejects you it truly is a gift! It is a clear sign to move in a different direction, instead of wasting more of your precious life.

And if they accept you, it is not the end of the road for you! You have not made it and there’s no where to go. It is only the beginning. Do you see how it is all a gift if you stop wanting one outcome over the other?

If you make your life like this, that your commitment is unwavering, you won’t have to work on taking rejection better, or being more accepted or being more accepting. You will realize quite quickly that only by accepting all that life brings can you grow most quickly.

Once you start practicing accepting life the way it is, the acceptance goes both ways. As you accept life, you accept yourself, you accept others. Acceptance grows within you. Because it is not dependent on the situation or other people, it is stable.

I want you to understand that in this moment, everything in your experience is accepting you. It is welcoming you, it is cradling you in it’s lap. If the sun didn’t do this, if the sky didn’t do this, if the earth didn’t do this, where would you be?

Everything in this cosmos has included you, and yet you see it as rejection. You are totally included in this universe, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Stop focusing so much on the dramas of life and start to identify with the life process that is pouring into you in every moment.

Don’t waste your life caught in this game of acceptance and rejection! It is a losing battle either way. You may fool yourself from time to time, but overall you will feel unsatisfied, even if you get everything you ever desired.

Instead just be with this moment, the way it is. Don’t see things as bad or good, acceptance or rejection, up or down, easy or difficult! Just every moment for what it is:

Opportunity. Possibility. Unlimited potential.

That is the truth of your nature, of the power that you are giving away. Switch your narrative and stop worrying so damn much what other people think. Just take whatever they give you with grace and humility.

Life is your making.

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 Stubbornness

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I can be really stubborn sometimes and refuse to change. How can I become more flexible?

Sincerely,

Stub Born This Way

Dear SBTW,

I want you to understand what stubbornness is. Essentially, it means that you have planted your stake into the ground and are not willing to move.

Tell me, are there certain situations where this is a useful quality?

The problem is not your stubbornness, the problem is your stubbornness is working against you, preventing your from growing. If it worked for you, you would not be complaining about it.

Let’s say you are stubborn when someone at your work tells you to do your job differently. You refuse, becoming defensive, and the situation becomes dramatic.

It’s so easy in a circumstance like that to just react. The thing about stubbornness is once it kicks in, it is almost impossible to undo. Have you ever tried to reason with a stubborn person who has made up their mind? You may as well beat your head against a brick wall!

So you are a slave to this reaction, and once you react it’s too late to change. But I want you to understand that you could just as easily choose to be flexible and adaptive. If you were as stubborn about being defensive as you were about your own personal growth, imagine how fast it would happen!

Why is it so much easier to choose to be angry, rigid, unwilling? Only because you have practiced it so much of course. How about you practice being stubborn in more useful ways, ways that actually serve you?

But the word stubbornness is loaded. You only associate it as a negative quality. When it is working for you, we may call it by different names.

Let’s say you are absolutely stubborn about meditating daily. You refuse to miss it. In this sort of scenario, your stubbornness is no longer stubbornness. It is discipline, consistency, focus. Essentially you are unwavering.

Can you imagine digging a well, but every time you dig a few feet, you change your mind and dig somewhere else? You will never find water this way. Only with consistent work in one focused direction will you know if your effort was worth it or not.

Like this you are digging a well within yourself to tap into your ultimate nature. But you keep on changing your mind. At the first sign of friction your stubbornness comes in and you drop your shovel and pout! Is this any way to progress?

You ask about how to be more flexible, but I want you to understand that if stubbornness is truly a practiced quality of yours, then being flexible will not help.

You will make a lot of talk about wanting to be flexible, but you know just as I do that if in a moment you want to be inflexible, then nothing is going to change that. So don’t waste time practicing flexibility.

You must shift your stubbornness so it serves you, then you will naturally be flexible.

The way to make this shift is to decide, right here and now. Use all that stubborn energy you have honed for years, and finally, today, make this one choice:

That your personal growth is more important than your defensiveness.

If you can make this one choice in this moment, then you have the power to stick to it better than most. Not everyone is as practiced as you are at being stubborn. There is power there. Channel it in this way, so that no matter what happens, you make the most out of the situation and grow!

Tell me, if you are unwavering and consistently stubborn about your growth, can any situation in life ever be a hindrance? If you have decided that your growth outweighs your reactions and compulsiveness, then even if you initially react defensively, you are not stuck. You have created a new river for that stubbornness to flow into so it doesn’t cause you to stagnate.

This is really not as complicated as you believe it to be. Simply put, can you avoid change?

Obviously, you cannot. Life will constantly be changing outside of you. But even within you, life is always changing. For as long as you live, you cannot avoid change, even if you sit by yourself like a recluse.

So what the heck is the point in being stubborn in any direction other than one that embraces change? Being stubborn and resisting change which is going to happen anyway? Doesn’t it sound so stupid to try to avoid the inevitable?

So embrace change. Accept that you may still react stubbornly. But decide right now that you want to grow and learn more than you want to be stubborn and stagnate. As you practice, the reactions will lessen, and you moving consciously through situations will increase.

When that happens, your growth will rise exponentially, and you will wonder how you were ever so stubborn in the first 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 Being Considerate

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Why does it matter how I treat others? Isn’t everyone supposed to be responsible for themselves? If you are on this spiritual path, shouldn’t your own self growth be the most important thing? As I grow more and more I feel like I don’t have time to be babysitting everyone’s reactions.

Sincerely,

Adventures in Babysitting

Dear AIB,

You are right.

Does that surprise you, that I agree with you?

I cannot argue with your logic. Everyone is responsible for themselves. It is not your place to take credit or blame for another’s actions anymore than they should for yours.

There is nothing stopping you from acting this way, with only your own self improvement as the singular focus. If you have to hurt or harm others to get there even I cannot argue with you. Life itself is like this, with one being feeding off another to live. It happens all the time.

You see, you can do whatever you feel you must do. It’s not an issue of morality or ethics, if you are truly committed to your own self growth you should have that sort of focus. Nothing will stop you from reaching it and you will do anything – this kind of commitment is paramount.

Instead of arguing with you I simply want you to understand something.

Let’s say all your dreams come true. After all your struggle and all the people you’ve hurt either through action or inaction along the way, you end up where you desire. At oneness, enlightenment, at your ultimate potential, god, whatever you wish to call it – you will realize that all that pain you caused was totally unnecessary.

You see, existence is hiding nothing from you. If you wish to explore the full depth of being human, there are no rules and regulations. All the rules you have made up are exactly that – you made them up.

If you decide you must hurt people to get where you need to, that will be your reality. It’s your choice. That’s your freedom. I am only asking why you would choose to add to the suffering of an already deeply troubled world.

To be one with this existence does not require anything. You have a lot of your own bullshit in the way, so you think it requires you dropping all that bullshit at any cost.

Along the way to dropping all your nonsense, you may do a lot of things, and justify much of it. But in the end, if you make it to that zenith, you will see you could have done all of this in a way that was more beautiful for yourself and everyone else and still got there.

I want you to imagine you are climbing a mountain. Now every once in a while, the mountain has some other mountaineers on it. They are going to slow, too clumsily, essentially they are slowing you down. Now you can either help them up, go around them, or cut their chords and then they are no longer an issue.

So what do you do? Do you start cutting all their chords, racing to the top? Tell me, what is the point of being one with existence if you are taking people out along the way as if they aren’t a part of this oneness? Do you really think that when you feel that oneness you won’t suddenly be flooded with the weight of all that harm you caused?

Anyway you will make it to the top of the mountain, but was it really necessary to hurt those people who were struggling just like you? They are your brothers and sisters in this journey, not your obstacle.

Similarly, does it serve you to go up the mountain as a basketcase? Stressed out, looking for a fight, ready to cause harm? Will that make the journey enjoyable for you or anyone else? It is already a difficult journey, why add to it’s difficulty? This is a surefire way to never make it to the top.

You could go up the mountain peacefully, calmly, joyfully! You could do anything you want with the other mountaineers, but at the very least you can leave them alone – this costs you nothing.

I am not talking about suddenly becoming some altruist. I am not talking about doing the right thing and helping everyone along the way. You do not need to do any such thing.

What I am saying is that this is about simply being considerate.

I want you to consider that every action has a consequence. You can never avoid this simple truth. Sometimes in life it may be necessary to take actions that aren’t so pretty. But what’s most important is how you are when you take said actions.

Is it not in your best interest to make life as beautiful for yourself and others as possible? Is it not in your best interest to leave this world better than you found it?

Do you somehow think that a part of you doesn’t go into everything you affect? Every time you interact with anything in your experience, a part of you is now gone, is it not?

Your very life energies are constantly exuding from you, and become reborn within everything they touch! Nothing is ever destroyed or lost, only transferred, transformed, transmuted.

So how you are when you act in this world truly matters. Everything you interact with is your legacy. If you can feel this deeply within you, you would never waste a moment harming anything any more than you already have. You would only harm when it is absolutely necessary.

Sometimes in life we are presented with people who challenge us. You act according to the situation. That is fine. That is the smart thing to do. But that should never be your focus.

You be considerate at the very least. If you are wise, you will be kind to all, making your legacy that everything that every came into your experience was better off for meeting you.

Understand that your actions affect everything around you and act in consideration of that affect. This is not because you owe anyone anything, it is simply because anyway your actions have that affect, this way you get to consciously make that affect best for all.

And when you act in a considerate way towards others, it goes both ways. So too do you become a considerate being.

In other words, as you give it you receive it.

Take this advice or leave it, I cannot say that your way will not work. It very well may work. But I can guarantee this:

In the end, you will know deeply that your responsibility was always to walk this life with the utmost consideration for all.

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 Time

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I don’t want to rush, and I don’t want to postpone. How can I know when the right time to act is?

Sincerely,

Time and Place for Everything

Dear TAPFE,

There is no right time to act. There is also no wrong time to act. There is simply and bluntly, only now.

This may not be a useful solution for you. I say it because perhaps it will stir you – make you realize your time on this planet is borrowed. That you are mortal, and the right time you keep rushing into or waiting for is not guaranteed.

Tell me, can you guarantee me that you will be here in one day, one hour, one minute, even one second? Life has not given you any such guarantees. The only thing you can say for sure is that you are here, now, in this indivisible moment.

If you can realize your own mortality, that will not only stop this whole game you are playing of debating when is the right to act – it will also inspire you to simply act.

You see, you are not truly asking me about how to know when to act. You are asking me how to control the outcome of your life. Life cannot be controlled. You can not manage your external situation 100%, not now, not ever.

What you can do is manage your internal self. You can make yourself into the kind of person who is vulnerable yet stable, strong yet kind, driven and passionate without losing exuberance! This is always in your control.

This is the only way to prepare for life. You prepare yourself, not the outside.

Every external situation will require a certain action. Depending on the circumstance, you must act accordingly. But this isn’t about trying to act in a specific way to guarantee an outcome. This is about how you are, who you are, when you perform that action.

You must learn to act. Just to simply act. Not to act to gain or avoid a result. Just act! Your life itself is one huge act.

But what is the point of acting if not for some outcome? The point is just that you are here, alive, right now! There is no greater outcome for you! Tell me, what is the most important thing happening in your existence right now? Is it not that you are alive and conscious and experiencing life?

The time for you to live is already ripe for you, there is no need to wait or rush.

All this right time to act is just a story you have told yourself to avoid involving yourself in life. Even though you know that how involved you are equates to how alive you feel, still, you cling to this story.

Whether you are postponing or rushing is just an illusion. Tell me, does each action you perform not have a consequence, a reverberation? Is there any way to act in this life where you can avoid causality?

Of course that is a stupid question of me to ask. Of course everything you do ripples. So this is just about accepting this and not becoming obsessed with how those ripples move. Instead focus on how you are, what quality you are exuding into this world, and then and only then act.

Whenever you move through life unconsciously, you are doing it reactively. The two are one in the same. A reactive being can never ultimately create a better world for themselves or others.

Instead bring consciousness into the equation. Before making any action, you keep yourself how you wish. Be loving, be joyful, be grateful, hell, even be angry if you want!

The point is you choose, then you act, and you observe the whole process. It won’t take you long to realize that striving to keep yourself at anything but the highest level of pleasantness is just unnecessary.

It may seem strange at first, just acting. What does that even look like? It means in some ways surrendering your own desires. To be willing to just act; whatever life throws at you doesn’t matter, you act according to the situation only.

But in another way, it is absolute freedom. You become so internally dedicated to growing your inner way of being that no matter what life throws at you, you accept it’s consequences and embrace it. Nothing life does can shake this dedication within you. You are absolutely free in this way.

Let’s say you decide that no matter what, you will practice gratitude. You wake up and you brush your teeth with gratitude, you eat your breakfast with gratitude, you drive through traffic with gratitude, you get yelled at by your boss with gratitude, you do all of it with gratitude. Gratitude will become who you are.

Now, perhaps you were short for time, so eating breakfast needed to be quicker one day. Then another day you had more time, so you took your time. Maybe your boss yelled at you and you decide it’s time to leave the job.

None of those actions are the point. You act intelligently depending on the situation, but your gratitude is unwavering. Can you see the point I am trying to make, that all this “right time to act” is just a distraction for you?

If you have already decided within yourself how you want to be, who cares what life brings you, it is all a gift for you to explore yourself!

Time itself is an illusion. The past is a poorly remembered memory, the future is an inaccurate fantasy in your mind. You only have now. It doesn’t matter what is happening around you in this moment. Make the moment beautiful internally for you. It is always the right time to act like that.

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 Wisdom

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have been following many different spiritual traditions and teachers over the past several years. I am really passionate about growing on this path so I follow all of them! They all have so much wisdom to read and hear about. But sometimes they contradict, sometimes they agree, and I am becoming a bit confused. How do I know who has the right answers?

Sincerely,

Confused Learner

Dear CL,

I would like to share with you a zen story.

There was a martial arts student in the village. He approached his teacher and asked him, “Master, I want to learn more quickly. In addition to learning from you, I want to learn another style from another teacher. What do you think, is it a good idea?”

The master simply replied, “The hunter who chases two rabbits catches neither”.

I want you to understand this story is not meant to discourage you from seeking or learning. It is to slap some sense into you and point out the trap you are placing yourself in constantly.

If you want to accomplish anything in this life, without the necessary focus, direction, time, and consistency, it stands little chance of happening, does it not?

If you wish to learn how to play an instrument for example, having 10 teachers is not going to make you go any faster. Only your dedication to growth is what matters.

It is true, you should have a good teacher. That will help greatly on the path. But even the most enlightened of teachers will not be able to help someone who is trapped in their own nonsense and refuses to listen fully.

You asked how to know who has the right answers. You should not be seeking anyone with answers. You should only be listening to those who show you a way out of your ignorance. Answers will not help you, only a path will.

You can open up any bible, any gita, any philosophy text, or watch recordings of enlightened beings, or go see them alive today even! But drowning yourself in information is not going to liberate you.

Information is not wisdom. Knowing others and the situation and how to respond is wisdom. Knowing yourself however, is enlightenment.

You said yourself, there are so many enlightened beings that have shared their wisdom. You are not in some shortage of knowledge. It would be different if no one had ever walked this earth that was enlightened, and we had no way out of our nonsense.

But this is not the case. You have lots to choose from. So, you must learn to pick one and follow their teachings consistently. This is not because one person has all the answers. This is not about them at all.

Any guru who is worth their salt will always offer you a way. Some process, some tools of transformation, some path for you to walk that will help liberate you. But it is you who walk it, you who is transforming, not them.

If you are walking one path, then get distracted and change to another path, then come back to the first path, then get distracted again, it will take a long time to get to the destination will it not? In fact, you may never get there with all this meandering.

So sticking with one guru is like walking an internal path. You are learning how to drop all your attachments, all your patterns, all your nonsense, so that you can make room to see yourself and this existence the way it is.

But if your whole desire is not to drop these things, but instead to gather and hoard information from every guru out there, you will not only be spinning your tires going nowhere, you will make it exponentially harder to transform yourself.

With just a bunch of useless information and no experiential change, you will become a fool. A fool who has convinced themselves they are growing and are more spiritual simply because of all the words they have heard and read.

These words mean absolutely nothing. In fact, everything you have ever read or heard is garbage. Unless those words have encouraged you to turn inward, what use are they? Just entertainment, something you can share at a gathering to sound smart or spiritual.

Only experience matters. If you have some Jesus story about being kind, does it mean anything if you are not kind? If you have some Buddha story about being unattached, what use is it if you are entangled in your own thoughts and emotions?

Those stories need to become lessons. They will only become lessons if you practice them, turning them into a living, breathing, walking experience for you.

This is why the consistency of following one process, and being totally devoted to the process. Because the more you meander, the longer it takes. The more you accumulate, the harder it is to be free.

When you get to a place in your life where you are finally ready to just accept that this is how all life functions – with consistent, pointed growth only – then it is time to embrace the teacher who most resonates with you and surrender to the process.

This surrendering is not an enslavement. It is the ultimate freedom. You will be learning to be free of your anxiety, free of your attachments, free of all that which has been limiting you.

If it is time to move on from a teacher, you will know. If the next step in the journey is here, it will feel effortless to move on. Eventually however, you must get to a place where you lose the desire for teachers and being taught all together, and learn to see everything in this existence as your teacher.

That is the crux of where your desire to learn from so many teachers is coming from. However, it is not a conscious process. It is compulsive and a way for you to distract yourself.

If you consciously start to see every leaf, every person, every smell, every damn little thing in this existence as being larger than you, then you will learn to listen more carefully, and you will see what all this enlightenment fuss really is about.

Do you see how it has nothing to do with how many teachers you have? Everyone is here to offer you a lesson if you only learned how to listen. Picking one guru is about learning how to listen to everything. That is what they are truly teaching you.

It’s not about picking one thing to become a fanatic and draw millions of conclusions about life so you can say you have all the answers. This is just about learning how to grow.

So pick one path for now, and walk it totally, fully, without wavering. As time passes, you will become more receptive to everything and all it is teaching you in every moment.

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 Joy

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

You’ve said before the importance of being joyful and how it is generated from within, not dependent on outside circumstances. But sometimes life can be very challenging and it is so hard to be joyful. It feels forced, almost obscene, to be smiling when you’re in pain or hurting. I don’t think joy is an appropriate reaction to when you’re being abused or mistreated. How can being joyful even be possible in times like that?

Sincerely,

Joy Vey

Dear JV,

Joy will never happen as a reaction to an unpleasant situation. This is because reactions by their very nature are situation dependent.

The issue is right now your emotions are not happening when you want them to, nor the way you want them to, isn’t it? If you had the skill to choose how you wanted to be, no matter the situation, the choice is obvious – you would only want the most pleasant experience within.

But you have not developed such a skill. You are not a conscious being. Maybe from time to time you are living more consciously. Perhaps you are growing, and each day living a bit less reactive, a bit less compulsive. But believe me when I say the vast majority of the planet, including you, is not even conscious a fraction of a percent of the day.

Do you disagree? Surely you must be at least 50% conscious? Or maybe you aren’t so arrogant, surely you are at least 1% or 2% conscious?

Let’s say you are walking through a restaurant. Tell me, from the time it takes to walk through the door to sit at your table, how much of your experience is conscious? Are you consciously deciding to listen to the sounds of the kitchen? To smell the food as it cooks? To actively see everything in your vision from the periphery to what’s in front of you? Of course not, your mind is stuck on some past memory or future fantasy.

You are not consciously doing almost any of it. But I guarantee that your body and mind are recording everything. They are experiencing every little disturbance around you and digesting it through your senses. Whether you like it or not, almost all of your experience is unconscious.

The solution is not to somehow become less sensitive. This will not serve you, it will only make you dull. The solution is to be less reactive, and you decide what sticks and what goes through you. That way you will have the capacity to handle the totality of life with exuberance.

So now you find yourself in a pleasant situation. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the wind is gentle, people smile at you, suddenly you feel so joyful! Just like that your body and mind have digested your world and you react appropriately, with joy.

Then later you find yourself in an unpleasant situation. The clouds are gray, the traffic is roaring, people frown at you, suddenly you feel irritable. In the same way, the body and mind digest your world and you react appropriately, with unpleasantness.

Do you want to keep living like this, a slave to the external? Because if so, then you will be a slave to your compulsiveness, to your reactions. Happiness will never be in your hands, and will always be fleeting.

This is not about faking joy. This is not about forcing happiness. You are right, trying to live like this will not work. It is totally inappropriate.

This is about responding with joy, not reacting with joy. This an important distinction.

If something unpleasant happens, you will almost guaranteed react unpleasantly. You’ve already reacted, you cannot change that. But you can now choose to respond to this reaction with joy.

I’m not saying be happy about what’s happening, to become sadistic and enjoy whatever torturous thing you are going through. This isn’t about what has happened to you. What has happened has happened. You must live out the consequences.

I am saying can you live with these consequences, can you live with this moment the way it is, and be joyful, no matter what way it is? Can you drop your endless criteria for every moment and just be happy to be here, to be alive?

Shift your focus from the external drama to your internal world. Something unpleasant happened, okay. Now will you make the most of it? Accept that it happened, and turn it into the soil needed for growth. Then till that soil joyfully.

Don’t sit there saying “Okay, this will pass and become something good, I just have to get through it…” What is happening is not good or bad. It just is. If you wait for it to pass into something better, that better thing will just pass too and you will repeat this cycle over and over.

Stop paying attention to the detail of the situation. Just look at it like this, and this alone:

It is up to you if you want to grow or not, and up to you if you want to grow joyfully or not.

This is the only choice. But I promise you, one way or another, life will make you grow. You cannot avoid it.

This isn’t just about when you’re miserable. Even when you are experiencing something pleasant, you must recognize that it too is just a reaction and something you must take the reins on.

What I mean by this is that if you are happy when something good happens and unhappy when something bad happens, then both situations are a prison. One is not better than the other just because you felt better in one.

Your reactive behavior is the prison! One’s bars are made of gold, the other iron, but only a fool would place himself in either. You must strive to be free from it.

So when I tell you to practice joy, that life truly is as simple as being happy, what I mean isn’t that you lie to yourself with a stupid grin saying everything is fine when clearly inside you do not feel that way.

What I am saying is that you need to learn how to respond with joy. You need to continually practice responding to both pleasant and unpleasant situations the way you want.

My wish is that life is in your hands and you become free from the bonds of reactivity.

So why joy? If all you must do is practice responding, can’t you choose to respond any way you wish? Won’t that be just as good?

It’s true, you can. If you really want to choose to be angry, or sad, or any other way, that is your freedom. Go ahead and choose it!

But trust me, eventually you will laugh at yourself when you realize that raking yourself over the coals was never necessary, you could have anyway done any situation joyfully.

Practicing responding in spite of your reacting is the real work here. I’m just suggesting you can do so joyfully, because every being deserves to be happy. You are no exception.

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 Projection

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I notice that I project my own issues onto others all the time. For example if I am feeling unattractive I will comment on someone else’s appearance. Or if I see someone who is not working hard at work, I am just avoiding my own lack of effort.

Is it wrong to comment on things that you know need fixing if you haven’t fixed them yourself? What if I see something they don’t see and it could help them?

Sincerely,

Projecting and Deflecting

Dear PAD,

Everything you do is a projection. You have no authority to be telling anyone to do anything.

Do you think you are seeing the world as it is? Pure, unfiltered, without any of your own ideas attached?

When you see something, you only see it the way your body interprets it, no? You are limited by your own senses in this regard always. If you were a dog you would see less but smell more. If you were a bee you could see ultraviolet light and so much would suddenly be in your perception that wasn’t before.

You are only capable of experiencing a narrow bandwith of what exists in this cosmos through your senses. Within that narrow range of perception you have, you are only experiencing a sliver of what is happening in any given moment.

What I am saying is that you know far less than you think you do. You know next to nothing. And you think you know what’s best for others?

But it goes farther than just the limitations of your senses. You have a whole psychological structure within you that you are constantly seeing the world through. For every person you know, you have a different mask. For every situation, you have a pre-planned personality you fall back to.

So not only do you know next to nothing, what you do think you know isn’t even accurate! It is always through the foggy filter of identity and personality.

You have so many agendas, so many things you are trying to get out of the other every time you are “helping” them. No, you are just avoiding yourself.

This is why everything you do is a projection. Is this meant to make you feel hopeless, or meant to excuse you from all your actions? No, it is just meant to bring you down to reality.

It’s a good thing that everything is a projection. This means that all of existence is a mirror for you, showing you what lies in you. This means existence is hiding nothing from you.

All your issues, all your obstacles, all the barriers to being happy you have within yourself, they are reflected in how you see others. Take advantage of this! In this way, everyone and everything is screaming at you telling you what’s in the way of your bliss.

Accept that you project onto others in each moment. When you feel the inclination that maybe you are not projecting, you must realize you are definitely projecting and dig deeper to find out how.

Start there, and only once you have embodied this truth should you concern yourself with what others are doing.

You see, the crux of all of your problems in life is really only stemming from this one lack of understanding. Whether it is a marital problem, a career problem, a friendship problem, a money problem – whatever it may be – it is only such a struggle because you think that fixing the external will somehow fix the internal.

Your whole existence is only happening inside of you. Even when you look at something, you are seeing it through your mind only.

In this same way, if something joyful happens to you – let’s say you win a new house – where is the joy created? Was it in the new house? Was it in the prize? No, the joy is only happening within you. You manufacture it.

If you were such that no matter what happens in life, you are pleasant, then this issue of projection won’t be an issue. What is there to project? You are pleasant, so only pleasantness!

You cannot avoid projection if you are a compulsive person. The reality is the way you keep yourself matters. If you are unconscious, and living in a reactive way, then you will expect that everything around you needs fixing. Then and only then can you be happy. This is a silly and unachievable way to live.

But if you make yourself pleasant, for no reason at all other than you want your existence to be joyful, then you will exude that around you. You don’t pick and choose who gets your joy, it just comes out of you naturally.

To exude who you are is the other side of projection. The reality is you are always exuding yourself to others, just when it is not serving you we call it projection. But it is the same thing. You cannot turn it off.

Since it cannot be turned off, you best make yourself pleasant! Not only is that what is best for you, it is what is best for others. Tell me, if you could be around a pleasant person or an unpleasant one, which would you prefer?

Unhappy people are always trying to tell other people how to be. Happy people need nothing from anyone. But if you are unhappy, you will only look at how to manipulate every situation so that you are happy.

You cannot extract happiness from your surroundings. Even if you could, would you want to live like such a leech? It is not necessary, you are capable of being blissful all by yourself, no outside help needed!

It is time you turned inward. If you are looking at your little world and see so many issues, then the issue is first and foremost with you. That you think you somehow have the answer for everyone else’s problems when you can’t even take care of your inner nature is the epitome of hubris.

First fix yourself. Take a look at who you are! There is so much beauty and potential within you. This is your only duty, your only purpose, to tap into this. If you can tap into that boundless well, helping people won’t be an issue anymore. It will be totally natural for you.

In other words: You cannot create a more peaceful, joyful, or loving world without first making yourself a more peaceful, joyful, and loving person.

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 Boredom

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I find myself bored with life lately. Everything seems so dull, the same. Even trying new things I have just this sense of “meh” about it all. How can I become more enthusiastic about life?

Sincerely,

Life’s a Bore

Dear LAB,

First I must ask you, where is your boredom happening? Is it the boredom with life, or the boredom with yourself?

If you think it is life that is the source of your boredom, then it is time for a wake up call.

There is nothing boring about life. There is also nothing exciting about life. Whether you are excited or bored is only happening because of how you decide to be in any moment.

Why is it that one person can be absolutely over the moon when flying in a plane, while another is terrified, and another is bored or indifferent? Is it the plane’s fault, or the act of flying that is the source of their experience?

Each person chooses their own internal experience. If you go around in life expecting external situations to be the source of your happiness, then you are just a reactive human being. There is no choice, you just keep on being triggered by life, a slave to it’s cause and effect.

But if you can make yourself so that no matter what happens in life, you are the way you wish to be, then you are in command of your own life! Tell me, if you were in command of how you experience life, wouldn’t you want to choose the highest level of experience for yourself?

See, this is all a matter of perspective. You obviously don’t want the worst level of experience in your life, or a dull level of experience, or even a satisfactory level of experience. Your very nature is that you will always want to expand the beauty in your life. When you reach one peak, you will soon long for the next.

But you are not involved in life. You are simply coasting, one moment to the next. You have become so bored that even when pleasant things happen you don’t feel anything.

But I promise you, if life came and started grinding you a bit, squeezing you and kicking you, suddenly you would not be bored. You would be miserable, but certainly it would not be boring.

When boredom sets into you like this, you seem to forget that you are capable of overcoming it. When life is miserable you are clearly capable of being totally involved in your misery. So what, can you only be involved in life when it is miserable?

It seems that most people can only know pure involvement when they utterly sad, destroyed, scared. It is a shame, because the same is possible with joy, beauty, freedom.

Boredom is inevitable when you are not willing to be involved. The easiest way to be involved is to start paying attention to all that is worth celebrating.

Life itself is a celebration. All around you, there is so much activity – the sun is rising, the people you care about are all here today, you are alive today even! The birds are flying, the trees are breathing, everywhere you look, some piece of life has overcome great strife to be thriving in this moment.

You take for granted all the things that are happening right now. Is it not worth celebrating these things? Your aliveness, other’s aliveness, all of it?

Maybe you feel like you are incapable of celebrating all that life has to offer. But you were once a young child, and all of life was a celebration. Every little pebble you saw was worth looking at. Like this you moved through life, with a sense of wonder about it all, and every moment you learned something new, and it was worth celebrating.

Do you think that now that you are older you’ve got it all figured out? You’ve seen pebbles too many times, so you know all there is to know? You could spend 10,000 lifetimes looking at even one pebble and not know it in it’s entirety.

Do you see why this is a matter of perspective? Life has not suddenly taken away opportunities from you. It is not hiding the interesting things from you, or taken away your capacity to be involved, or your ability to be curious and celebratory.

All of life is interesting damnit! You’re bored? Of what I say?! What in this existence is possibly boring to you?

Nothing about life is boring. It is all magnificent if you only paid attention.

The issue is not with life, it is only with you.

The only way out of your boredom is to start living. You don’t have to suddenly start dancing in the street, but it sure would help.

You have all these rules in your life of the way you feel you must behave. But the truth is you can be any way you want. You want to sing on the train? You want to smile at the trees? You want to dress silly? Whatever you want, you can do, there is no one stopping you. However you think an enthusiastic person would be in life, you can be like that!

You don’t have to do any of these things however. Celebrating life does not mean that you have to take any external action. Just in your own heart, you own experience, celebrate each moment. It can be entirely internal, because everything is only happening within you anyway.

As a human you have the ability to feel either end of the spectrum with life. You can feel total apathy or total wonder. It is entirely up to you. It’s not that one end is better or worse than the other. It is just that life has given you as a human the power to choose how your life is.

Just that fact alone – that life is entirely your making – that is worth celebrating. You need no other reason to celebrate.

If you can make the quality of celebration a part of who you are, in every step you take, there will be no question of boredom. Don’t try to be enthusiastic because you will need some reason. Just for no reason at all other than you are alive, celebrate!

Basically what I am saying is just do anything. Pick anything, and celebrate it. What have you got to lose; your way clearly isn’t working.

Try it. Go for a walk and every step treat it like it is a celebration. By the end of that walk, you’ll either be smiling, laughing, or crying. But you won’t be bored, and you will see how stupid it is to choose to be bored when you could literally choose anything else.

Life is ticking away, don’t wait until you’re dying or dead to suddenly want to live.

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 Priorities

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have a hard time prioritizing in my life. I find myself so busy with things that I am just going from one thing to the next hoping for the house of cards to not topple! Even things that I know are important, like taking care of my health, seem to fall aside due to how busy I am. How can I make the right things a priority?

Sincerely,

First Things Last

Dear FTL,

Life can not be handled via some spreadsheet to refer to. You can’t say “This is my #1 priority, this is my #2, #3…” because life will not let you get away with such rudimentary thinking. What is a priority will always change depending on the moment.

This doesn’t mean that you must constantly be shifting your focus. It just means that you must accept that life is fresh and unique in every moment. Whatever the situation requires you must do, there is no other answer.

That may be a scary realization, but it’s the truth. There is no plan you can ever have that guarantees anything. You may be able to torture yourself and prolong the toppling for some time, but inevitably, everything has it’s time to fall. Learn to accept these times with grace.

But I know this won’t be a satisfying answer, so let’s take a look at “priorities” further.

Right now, your priorities are largely focused on external things. Maybe it’s your job, or your spouse. Maybe it’s your car, or maybe it’s your home. Maybe it’s your children, maybe it’s your appearance. It’s probably many of these things and more.

There is nothing wrong with these things. These are all part of life and yours to experience as you wish. But they themselves are not your life, they are just opportunities.

Life is what is within you. Life is you!

No matter what happens externally, you only experience it within yourself. It doesn’t matter if you win the lottery or go bankrupt, how you are within determines the quality of your experience does it not? Two people can experience the same thing and both have opposite reactions.

When this is the case, does it truly matter what life brings you? Whether a boon or a challenge, is it not your freedom to choose how you want to experience it?

I am asking you, what determines the quality of your life? Is it the stuff that happens to you or is it how you choose to be no matter what happens?

Do not waste time prioritizing the outside when your entire life is determined by how you are inside!

You ask what is the right thing to prioritize? The answer is simple: YOU.

You must make yourself in such a way that you are the master of your own destiny. This doesn’t mean that you get everything you want out of life by manipulating everything. It just means that whatever life gives, you are capable of having the kind of experience you wish.

Right now, you are not like this. If someone compliments you, you will become very happy. Maybe you will act humble, but you are so happy to be accepted. Then if someone criticizes you, you become defensive or sad. You hate being rejected.

Like this your entire life has been playing out. Just flitting from one moment of acceptance to another moment of rejection. Just crossing your fingers and hoping life will treat you the way you want is not a good plan.

You must break free of this endless cycle in life. If you do not bring consciousness into your being, you will forever be at the mercy of the external.

Prioritizing should take almost no effort. It is natural to prioritize when you shift your focus inward.

If you learn to explore your inner nature and truly ask yourself what kind of experience you want in this life, prioritizing will not be an issue.

Let’s say you look in your heart and realize you always wanted to be a dancer. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you leave your life behind and tomorrow you go sign up at the local theatre and perform ballet. But to be a dancer means a certain discipline, a certain strength, a certain rhythm, peak health and physicality, and much more.

Reckless people just drop all their current duties and chase after their dreams as if they will come true. You have to have the maturity to do the work required also.

If you are willing to work on what you want in life, then you will naturally prioritize. But how to know your hearts desire?

Often people think finding their true purpose in life is some big event or realization. It can be, but really it’s never something that is too far away. Your hearts desire underlays all that you are currently doing. In your work, your relationships, your hobbies, there will be qualities or clues that all point towards it.

And even if you find out you want to be a dancer or whatever, that too will just evolve into something else.

Most people are too afraid in this life to explore what they truly want and to work for it. To do that would mean they might fail, or worse they may succeed and there will be nowhere to go. Both of these are excuses that will not make you happy.

You want to know how to figure out what you want from life? It’s really easy, just remember that you are going to die.

Time is finite for you on this earth. You are so distracted with your external dramas that now you even want to waste more energy prioritizing which drama should drain you the most!

When you work on what you truly want in this life, it is never draining. It fuels you. The body may need rest, but your will to explore it will never leave you lacking. There are any number of people accomplishing incredible things in this world and enjoying every moment. That could and should be you.

Do not underestimate the fact that you are mortal. It is everything. With that one small realization, you wouldn’t even need to ask your true self for advice anymore. You would understand there is no time to waste, that your life is precious. You would start your life’s work this instant!

Your life’s work is exactly that: It’s your life, your work! Every moment you breathe should be working towards what you wish for most in this life.

Right now you may think this all sounds selfish. It is absolutely selfish, and people need to be more selfish.

If selfishness means you must work towards your ultimate nature, then that is the best thing you can do for this world.

The world has any number of people as you currently are, so focused on so called priorities that they have no time to be conscious. This cumulatively has caused immense suffering to yourself and others and the planet.

But if you work towards your ultimate nature, your heart’s desire, whatever you want to call it – then you will be exuding a grace that helps shape the world within you and around you for the better.

You talk about prioritizing as though you just want to be able to manage life. Stop setting such a low bar. Explore who you are and you won’t just be able to manage things – you will be able to make them shine.

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 Giving

~ SE ~ 1 Comment

Dear True Self,

I consider myself to be a caring and generous person. For example, if someone I know is in need of money, I will often lend it to them. However, there are some friends that don’t pay me back, or borrow my things without returning them, or they damage my stuff.

I want to help but it feels like I am being taken advantage of. What should I do?

Sincerely,

Get What You Give

Dear GWYG,

You speak as though you are giving, but then your actions do not reflect giving at all. They reflect an invisible contract, one that only you seem to know about. If you give with expectation of some return, it’s not a gift, it’s an investment.

First of all, you must take responsibility for your expectations. If you want the other to follow certain requirements before you give them something, then you must communicate that.

Then, you must let them know the consequences of not adhering to your contract.

Finally, if they don’t follow through, you must be willing to follow through on your consequence.

I am not suggesting you treat every transaction you have so rigidly, but you need to respect that people cannot read your mind, and you need to respect yourself enough to not enable people who misuse generosity.

This is the common sense practical answer, and it may suffice you in general dealings.

However, this isn’t really about making invisible contracts visible. Doing so is considerate of other’s needs and your needs, and you should always behave in a way that makes life simpler and more beautiful for yourself and others. But in and of itself, it’s not the solution.

This is about the nature of giving that lies within you.

Within you there is clearly a strong desire to give. It is an expression of your true self. But it has been tainted by your fear. Fear of losing what you give, fear of being taken advantage of, fear of being vulnerable.

When you give, you must give in such a way that you expect nothing. The act of giving alone should be your focus.

If you closely examine life, you will see that everything is giving in this manner. Take our star for example. The sun is giving us the very source of our life is it not? Without it, there is no earth, no water, no land, no air, no you!

But the sun hasn’t put conditions on you receiving its gifts. It just exudes, constantly giving. Its whole life is an act of giving. Up until it’s very last moment it will be giving. Then again, even in death, it’s remnants will become the fertile soil from which a new system will form.

In this same way, you must give yourself. Give yourself in such a way that each moment you enrich the lives of everyone and everything around you.

It may sound as though this will be draining or taxing. But giving does not cost you anything. This is not that you must constantly sacrifice yourself for some greater good. It is just that anyway your life is being spent here on this planet. In some way or another, it is being used up, isn’t it?

If you live out of fear of what may happen, then you will always be hoarding and reserving your existence. But this is not a natural way to be. If the sun struggled and tried to hold on to it’s energy, the results would be catastrophic.

No, you must simply give. Whatever the moment requires, you give. Giving opens you up in a way where this existence can just flow in.

If you are full, you can receive nothing. You are full of expectations based from fear. So you claim to “give”, but you are not giving anything of value, only drama. I ask you, are you truly helping anyone when you give in this way?

Giving is a natural way of being. It should be like exhaling. You don’t exhale and then tell the trees “Okay, now you must exhale your oxygen for me, or else!” The tree is just giving 100%, it will give you what you need with or without your contract.

So don’t treat your other transactions in life any different. Just give. Trust that in doing so, you will open up space within yourself. With that openness, life will have no choice but to come flooding into you.

The person you helped may never repay you. But it’s not about that. You should have no concern about what you receive. Only have concern for how much you give.

The more you give, the more you shed. You shed your expectations, your attachments, your fears…Every time you give, you immediately receive the best gift possible, the loss of things which do not serve you!

That alone would be enough. Just to shed all this nonsense we have would be so grand. But life is even better than that. You give, you shed, and then more beauty can come and permeate your existence, because you are receptive.

Treat life like there is no such thing as receiving, only giving. It’s a beautiful way to live that quickly drops your limitations and allows you to grow.

Every time you interact with someone or something, you give. Give your attention, give your energy, give your love, give your compassion, give the very best of yourself. Do not hoard it! Give it to your enemies, give it to your friends, give it to strangers! You giving does not require anything from anyone else.

You will slowly start to see that just as you are giving, so is all of life. So every raindrop, every breath, every hug, every scowl, every rock, every argument, every damn thing – you will treat as a gift too.

If you treat giving as some sort of altruism, you will just create more nonsense for yourself. You will call yourself a good person because you help out, but everything you give comes at a price, even if the price is not money.

You want to give? Then GIVE. Give the best gift you can, yourself. Strive to give the very deepest resonance of who you are in every moment. Be the embodiment of all the best you wish to see in the world.

That is the only form of giving that exists. Anything else you do is not giving, it is just your fear masquerading as 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 Selfishness

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I sometimes find myself behaving very selfishly. When I am struggling or in pain, I tend to only think of myself. How can I become less selfish?

Sincerely,

Selfish Allergy

Dear SA,

Why do you do anything that you do in life? I know, it’s a big question.

For example, your job why do you work there? Or your spouse, why are you with them? Your relationships, your career, your hobbies, your thoughts, literally anything and everything, why do any of it?

You might say I work to feed my family. I am with my spouse because I care about them and want them to be happy. I want you to get a reality check if this is what you think.

Everything you do is selfish. Everything you do is in your self interest.

Under all the surface reasons, you only do any of these things in your life because you feel they will make your experience of life more meaningful, happier, or easier. You may dress it up and mask it as altruism, but please see that it is not.

You are always selfish and behaving selfishly. This is not to chastise you or scold you. This is not to take away from any love you feel for your family, or from the genuine joyful memories you have. Those are all fine. This is just the default state people are in.

When unconscious, you are only capable of behaving selfishly.

You mentioned being in pain or struggling as a trigger for selfishness. You could not be more correct. This desire to make your life better than it currently is, to move out of the struggle and pain, that is the very basis of selfishness.

Basically what I am saying is your entire life is a struggle, therefore it has all been selfish.

When I say that your entire life is a struggle, what I mean is that you are never satisfied with the way things are. Most people have not lived even one moment and been satisfied. Not because life gave them a peaceful moment, but because it was there choice to be that way, regardless of what life threw – few people live like this.

If you are not satisfied with this moment the way it is, you will always be struggling, longing, pushing to find something better. Because you are only concerned with your experience of life becoming better, what other recourse is there but selfishness?

You won’t be able to become less selfish. It is every human being’s desire to evolve, to expand, to grow. You can never avoid this. If you achieve one milestone in life, it may satisfy you for a moment, but pretty soon the longing for the next milestone will come.

Instead, I want you to see that the basis of your entire life is selfishness. But this need not be a bad thing.

The only time when selfishness is an issue is when it is making the experience of others and the environment around you worse.

So the real question isn’t how to become less selfish. The real question is how to live in such a way that you leave this planet and all the people you encountered along the way better off than you found them?

Right now, the problem is you see yourself as an island. You have an identity, a self-image, that is deeply rooted and layered. You think that with this identity, you are special, unique, and without it, you are nothing.

So you cling to this identity, constantly making choices to deepen it, not to shed it. This separates you further and further, isolating you instead of unifying you with existence.

The reality is if I stripped away everything you call as you – all your titles, your attachment to you relationships, your preferences, all of it – you would still be 100% unique in this universe. That is because there are no two moments in this existence that have ever been identical, and there never will be.

When the source of who you are is built like this, there really is no need for such an obsession with being a unique special little snowflake. This identity you are so clinging to is the only obstacle.

Instead, if you want your life to enhance everything around you, you must learn to stop identifying with all the labels in your mind and start seeing things as they are.

If you paid close attention, you would see that you are not functioning independently. You think your respiratory system is just from your nostrils to your lungs, but the other half of it is in the trees, is it not?

In this way, you are connected to all of existence. Everything is constantly giving you life – not just air to breathe, but your very life essence! You also are constantly exuding your life energy in an ever reciprocating unity.

If you saw the tree as part of you rather than separate from you, tell me, would you every dare harm it?

Now in the same way, if you saw your spouse, your boss, your neighbour, the dog, whoever or whatever, as part of you, where is the question of ever making things worse?

If you start practicing being more inclusive, seeing everything as a part of you, you will naturally nurture it. It will be effortless. You have your selfish nature to thank for that.

If you are built to be selfish, then just see everything as you! You will automatically do what’s best for all.

All it takes to see others as yourself is to stop giving so much importance to what you think you are.

Every time you think you are a mother, or a brother, or an employee, or a citizen, or a warrior, or a poet, etc – just remind yourself that you are none of those things. It will take some work, but eventually you will stop identifying so strongly with all your masks.

If you constantly are labeling yourself in life, you limit yourself. This is a true crime. You are boundless potential, each moment you can choose however you want to be. Life has given you no labels, you are free to be any way you wish!

Whatever petty definition you give yourself in your mind will never be as good as that truth.

So start including all of existence within you, because you are worthy to include them. In this practice of absolute inclusion, your selfishness will no longer be an issue.

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 Personal Growth

~ SE

Dear True Self,

I feel like there’s always something in the way of my personal and spiritual growth. Even if I work on one thing, pretty soon some other thing will be in the way. Today it might be my anger, tomorrow it is my judgment, the next day it is my laziness, and so on. Even things I think I’ve overcome sometimes return!

What’s the point of all this inner work if the same cycles and nonsense keep repeating?

Sincerely,

Always Something in the Way

Dear ASITW,

You are viewing your inner evolution as though there is some point to reach. As if there is an end point, a checkpoint where we can turn and look at you and say “He’s made it!”

Your potential is limitless. This is because you are life, and life is unbounded, infinitely expanding in nature. The only end point for what you call you is death. Then maybe we can say you made it!

The cycles keep on endlessly repeating not as some punishment. That is just the way of life. No one has told you to look at them as tedious, repetitive, annoying, frustrating, or whatever negative connotation you’ve assigned to them. They just simply are.

Every year this planet revolves around the sun. Every year, there is a summer, autumn, winter, and spring. The planet does not say to itself, “Okay, after the 7,835,652nd trip around the sun, then we’ve done it! It will just be spring forever!”

There are no good or bad seasons in your life. There are only seasons.

You don’t get to decide what seasons this planet is in. Similarly, you cannot control what happens in your life 100%. You can only manage how you are. That is your freedom.

Life will constantly give you a process to help you grow, evolve, transform. Whether you do or not, well, that’s your choice. On this you can always be certain.

You see your enlightenment is not at the end of some process. Enlightenment IS the process. It is packed into each moment, not at the end of some path.

To see that there is nowhere to get to, that everything you need or could ever want is happening right now – this is all it is.

You have decided to live your life from the perspective that you are not complete, are lacking, and need to figure it out. So you view everything as an obstacle. This is not true. Life is complete as it is, in every manifestation, including you.

I’m not saying this to make you feel special. It is just the beauty of life. You are complete as you are, right now.

But it doesn’t feel that way. Hence why you keep playing games, keep repeating cycles, keep on struggling. So how to feel that way?

I am telling you that what you need to overcome isn’t your anger. It isn’t your judgment. It isn’t your laziness. It isn’t whatever flavour of the week it’s decided to present as. What you need to overcome is your perspective.

Until you learn to stop looking at life as right and wrong, this or that, left or right, good and bad, etc, the cycles of struggle keep on happening.

One day you feel good because it spring within you. Then the next day the season changes and it is autumn, but you don’t like shedding, so you fight it wondering why life is always picking on you. Then it changes. Again it changes. And again, again, again.

You are a slave to the cycles of life because you live compulsively. Your perspective will always be to divide everything into what you prefer and don’t prefer, and when that happens, you are lost, there is no ease anymore. There can only be struggle.

The compulsive way within you will always be to judge everything into it’s categories. It is an accidental way of existing. Only by consciously being here, in this moment, do you have any power for the cycles to stop.

Tell me, which gives you more power to be the way you want – compulsion or being conscious?

Obviously only being conscious can do this.

So do not work on yourself. Do not work on the challenges life brings. If you think that by doing enough work that you will achieve your growth, just stop right now. There is no point unless you treat every moment as your opportunity.

Whether life is difficult or pleasant, you must always strive to drop your limited perspective and see it fresh each time. That is the only work you need to do.

Don’t assume this moment is good because you feel happy and that moment was bad because you were unhappy. They are just moments. Don’t assume that because you did work during the difficult times that the good times are your reward. Life is not a game of work and reward. Life just is.

You have two choices: Treat every moment as a beautiful process, or treat every moment as a beautiful result. Either way is fine, because the truth is life is always both at the same time, holding hands, indivisible.

If you are still not convinced, then I’ll make it as simple as possible:

Every moment in life is unique. There was never a moment like it before and never will be again. So tell me, if that’s true, how the hell are you seeing it as the same thing repeating? More importantly, why? It’s a bit of a stupid and unrealistic perspective to choose isn’t 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.