AWAKENING TO WHO YOU ARE

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you’ll discover will be wonderful.  What you’ll discover is yourself.”  Alan Alda

How do you define yourself?  Do you think of yourself first as a man or woman, as a Christian or Buddhist, as an accountant or a teacher, as a cancer survivor or as disabled person?  Who are we  beneath the appearance or the definitions we and society give us?  We are so much more.  We are infinite possibilities.

Self-Judgment

How do you let your definitions of yourself limit your life?  Were you told as a child that you weren’t very intelligent?  Did you carry that belief about yourself into adulthood?  When confronted with challenging information, are you quick to say, “Oh, that’s way over my head.  I can’t understand that sort of thing.”

We make these self-judgments in many areas of our lives.  A man I knew years ago said, “I don’t know how to have a successful relationship.  I’ve failed at every one I’ve attempted.”  Like so many people, he was afraid to try one more time, unable to see that he had learned from every relationship he had.  He judged the end result of each experience rather than valuing the gifts of the journey.

We set these standards for ourselves and if the outcome of an experience doesn’t fit our vision of it, we choose to see that as failure.  At some point, we may give up, feeling we are simply inadequate, rather than choosing to explore new possibilities in relationships, job, or life styles.  We forget that we are always evolving, always capable of learning and changing.  The negative definitions, that we and others give us, distort who we think we are.

The Mistake of Choosing Ego Over Being

 Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth states, “…when you are so identified with the voice in your head and the emotions that accompany it that you lose yourself in every thought and emotion, then you are totally identified with form (things, body) and therefore in the grip of ego….Ego arises when your sense of Beingness of “I Am,” which is formless consciousness, gets mixed up with form.  This is the meaning of identification.  This is the forgetfulness of Being…the illusion of absolute separateness that turns reality into a nightmare. ” (p. 54)

Releasing Judgment, Accepting Gifts of the Spiritual Journey

We must not to lose touch with our sense of “Beingness.”  It is who we really are.  It is not in the outer form that we discover who we are.  It is the inner “I Am” that is the core of who we are, our spiritual center where all our richest treasures lie.  We must stop the swirling dance of inner thoughts reminding us of our inadequacies and failures and choose a gentle dance that calms the mind.  Then we can see who we are without any definitions.

When you leave “the city of your comfort” and “step into the wilderness of your intuition,” you go beyond all definitions.  The intuition is not rational.  It is not form or ego.  We step into a field where the labels of this physical existence have no meaning.  There, we can find the freedom to release from our lives whatever restrictive definitions limit our growth and listen for the wisdom of Spirit within.  Unattached to ego, we surrender to the natural “wildness” of spiritual life, to the acceptance that all that matters is that we know we are worthy and part of something deeper than the physical.  As we strip away our attachment to the thought forms that tell us we are not good enough, we accept our natural spiritual state, knowing that all experiences are lessons from which we may learn.  It is not about failing or succeeding in life.  The spiritual journey is about being open to learning, and Spirit is not keeping score.

How have you discovered who you really are?

© 2011 Georganne Spruce

Related Sites:  Eckhart Tolle:  Being Judgmental, You Are Not Your Mind