Tag: receptivity

On Patterns

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I find I keep having the same thoughts over and over again. I also find I am repeating some of the same behaviours too and like I am stuck in a pattern. How do I change this?

Sincerely,

Pitter Pattern

Dear PP,

When you say you are stuck in patterns, essentially you are saying life has become repetitive. When life becomes repetitive, it is impossible to be receptive. Without receptivity, there really is no life.

So how to stop being repetitive? How to break patterns?

The first thing is recognizing the patterns. It seems at some level, you are doing this. That is fantastic!

The next thing is to understand why we created these patterns at all. If you observe nature, you will see, everything is happening in cycles. The earth around the sun, the trees shedding and growing, even the cellular functions in you are all following cycles or patterns.

The same is true for your thoughts, your emotions, your energies. It is not only the physiology that is like this. But why is it so?

Whenever you perform anything unconsciously, it will be cyclical in nature. That is the default state of existence. Things are always ebbing and flowing from one state to another. What you call as birth and death is simply a cycle, happening ad infinitum, to all things in this cosmos.

We may call it by different names – a flower blooming and wilting, rain pooling and evaporating, etc. But essentially there is only one cycle: birth and death.

This is the fundamental law all things in this universe follow. So when you move through life without consciousness, simply reacting to everything, of course you will be stuck in this pattern.

When I say you are reacting to everything, I don’t mean that you are getting upset about everything. I mean that you are not consciously choosing how you wish to be. You are not responding. Responding is the opposite of reacting.

You see, to be a human being means that you have the ability to think, feel, and act however you wish. If you don’t harness this, then you will be like every other creature, simply reacting to everything based on your programming.

But if you choose in any moment to respond, then the cycle is broken! It is really that simple.

The beautiful thing about all these patterns and cycles you are endlessly repeating is that you don’t actually have to do anything to stop them. If you simply just stop – stop feeding them, stop encouraging them, stop enabling them – they will slough off on their own.

All these patterns are only happening because you have left nature with no choice. You are a conscious human being, the very peak of evolution on this planet. But when you don’t exercise that consciousness, nature falls back on its cycles.

So the good news is this isn’t all that complicated. If you were someone who didn’t even know you were stuck in a pattern, it would be much harder to help you. But when you are aware that things are cyclical, all you have to do is stop and they go away.

Haven’t you noticed that these things take a tremendous amount of effort on your part to maintain? They may feel like they are running with a mind of their own, but it is only because of their momentum. If you just slow it down and stop it, it’s over. In that emptiness, you can choose what you want to do different, if anything.

The problem isn’t with the behaviour or the thoughts. The problem is they are repeating over and over and you want to be in control of them, not the other way around. Even if you have the same thoughts and behaviours, so long as you are the one choosing them, it’s not an issue.

The more conscious you become, the more these patterns will shed. The more conscious you become, the more aware you will be of how many patterns you are stuck in. Believe me, it is far more than you can imagine.

Just try it for even 1 hour – do everything consciously. It will be extremely difficult. When you can finally understand that the majority of your life is happening unconsciously, it will dawn on you that most of your life you are just running on auto pilot. You aren’t really living your life at all.

To be alive means that you are conscious, aware, involved. To break unconscious patterns, all you have to do is increase the effort into responding to life. Respond to everything. Everything is your responsibility.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

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

On Helping Others

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

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

Sincerely,

Helping Handicapped

Dear HH,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,

Your True Self

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

On Offering

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

In this world it seems like people are obsessed only with what they can take. So few of us actually give our time and offer any service to others. Is humanity truly so corrupt? How can we overcome this selfishness and contribute more than we take?

Sincerely,

Give or Take

Dear GOT,

First of all I must stop this notion of humanity. There is no how can “we” overcome, there is only how can “you” overcome. There’s no need to project your sentiments onto all of humanity, first you deal with yourself.

Second I want you to understand that what you ask is impossible. You can spend your entire life in service to others and still you will have taken far more than you ever gave. This is because you have nothing to give that was ever yours to begin with.

Everything you call you, from your body or your mind or your emotions, you only have it because you took it from this planet. And believe me, one day you will be giving it all back.

From the air you breathe to the food you eat, you are always taking something from this planet in order to live. But feeling alive, feeling satisfied, feeling nourished is another matter entirely. This does not depend on what you take. This solely depends on how you offer your life.

I am careful here with how I word this, because I don’t want you to think that this is some numbers game. “If I offer 10,000 things in my life, then I will shed all my karma and become enlightened!”

You can never give back enough to undo all you’ve taken. No one can. This isn’t about the amount you offer. This is about making your very life into an offering.

If you can live life in such a way that with each step, you are an offering to all that is around you, then you will become receptive on a level you cannot imagine.

I want you to try, for even the next hour or so – just in every second of these next few hours, be of service. Offer yourself to everything around you.

What I mean by this is when you look at the home you are in, offer your respect. Take the steps in this house towards your door with a level of care and attention that you would in a temple.

Step to the door and walk outside. Give the strangers you see a smile, offer your joy to them.

Look up at the sun and offer your most sincere thanks for how it is providing you with life constantly.

Like this go about every moment thinking only of what you can offer. It’s not about what you are giving. That you gave a dollar to a homeless man or helped an old woman cross the street is not the point. When you did those things, was the quality of your being an offering? Not just those things either, it has to be consistent, with each breath you must strive.

You turn your very presence into one of offering. You don’t need to do anything external.

Establish yourself so that there is no way you can even exist without contributing. Make your whole life a contribution.

I know this may all sound so futile. If we take more than we give by our very nature, what is the use of turning yourself into an offering?

The use in it is just this: You don’t have to do anything and life will anyway give you something. In every moment, even if you just sit not wanting anything, it will give you air, sunlight, sound, smells, sights, so much. There is no action required by you when it comes to taking. Taking is passive. You are wasting energy doing something that will anyway happen.

Instead put your energy into emptying yourself. You become receptive only by turning into an offering. In each moment, you offer and empty yourself. The glass that is empty can receive the most.

If you can commit yourself like this, even for just those few hours, to being an offering to everything in your experience, just watch and see how satisfied you become. See how full you feel. It will be far greater than any fullness you have felt from actively taking.

If you can decide that you are not the most important thing in this existence, then offering yourself will not be difficult. And with that offering comes receptivity. Life will shove so much into you.

You have no idea how much life is offering in every moment. How receptive to it you are is all that truly is missing.

The real poetry lies in that only by mirroring life can you touch the source of life. From your perspective, life is constantly offering to you. From the rest of creation’s perspective, you are an offering to it. So live like it!

Whether you realize it or not, just the way life is always offering to you, you are offering yourself to life. Make it into a conscious, living, breathing process for you in each moment, and watch how fulfilled your life becomes.

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 Emptiness

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Sometimes I feel like I’ve only got so much room in my mind for things I learn. Like there’s a hard-drive limit or capacity of sorts. I tend to remember the most useless information about tv shows or other distractions, but then have a hard time recalling important info.

How do I prioritize what I retain? How do I ensure I remember the useful stuff more often?

Sincerely,

Random Access Memory

Dear RAM,

You are a masterful recorder of information. First you must drop the notion that somehow you have a poor memory.

What you have is a lack of consciousness while simultaneously being too full of yourself. Time to switch the two: You need to be full of consciousness and lacking yourself.

Let me ask you, is your body and mind a gathering?

Your mind gathers impressions through it’s five senses, the body is just a gathering of food that you have consumed. In this way, the body and mind are always recording everything in your experience, in great detail.

The reality is that your body and mind are masterful at recording what you take in. Everything is being recorded and stored. You don’t always have the ability to recall that information immediately, but it is there.

So the issue isn’t with a poor memory. And it’s probably a good thing you don’t have immediate access to everything. Most people can’t even handle what little they do remember! Their minds are always driving them crazy, imagine being able to remember every little thing.

You ask about how to prioritize what you retain – you must first understand that when you are unconscious, you are incapable of prioritizing. If you are not present with what is happening in any given moment, tell me, how can you prioritize?

You may be walking past a fragrant rose but your mind is thinking about your next paycheque or your last paycheque or some other such nonsense. For sure the fragrance hits you, and your body registers it, but it’s not a priority for you in that moment.

Only if you move through life consciously will you have the ability to prioritize. But you are too full of your own dramas!

Being conscious in any moment gives you the power to choose how you want to be. If you are compulsive, you have no choice and are just operating based on all the bull you’re full of.

If you’re conscious you can choose to become empty – this is a must if you want to receive any thing this universe has to offer.

You are the most receptive when you are empty. Let’s say you have a jar full of sand. I tell you I will fill your jar with money. How much sand would you want in that jar before I start filling it?

Obviously, an empty jar is the best jar for receiving money. In this same way, existence is constantly giving you so much. It is giving you your very life! The air you breathe, the very life energies you need to exist are constantly being poured into you. If it weren’t so,  you couldn’t be here even for a moment.

When you make yourself empty like the jar, you become as receptive as possible. When in such a receptive state, nothing needs to be done. Just simply go and be wherever the information is you want to receive, and you will receive it.

I know you might be wondering how any of this will magically give you a better memory or better accessibility to your memory. The truth is, this isn’t about any of that.

In life you cannot just skip over steps. If you want to cook a stew, there are steps that have to be followed in a particular order. If you skip turning on the burner, definitely nothing is getting cooked.

Being totally empty, or at the very least as empty as possible, is like turning on the burner. It is a most basic, most necessary, fundamental step in receiving anything.

So before you start worrying about your memory, make yourself as receptive as possible by being as empty as possible. You will see that naturally you will take the next steps towards enhancing your perception and prioritizing what you retain.

Being full of yourself will only serve you to impress people with random information. It is a good entertainment, but it will not get you in touch with all you are capable of. Your memory is far more robust than you realize – emptiness is like a key that unlocks 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.