Self

A quote from page 136 of The Untethered Soul:

"If you are willing to let go, you'll fall back and it will open into an ocean of energy.  You will become filled with a light that has no darkness, with a peace that passeth all understanding.  You will then walk through every moment of your daily life with the flow of this inner force sustaining you, feeding you, and guiding you from deep within. You will have thoughts, emotions, and a self-concept floating around in inner space, but they will be just one small part of what you experience.  You will not identify with anything outside of Self."  

Please join me this week in letting go of identifying with the false self.  It is not you.

Surrender to your Highest Self and let it guide you.

taking the journey to peace

If you have a copy of The Untethered Soul, check out the last 2 paragraphs of Chapter 14 Letting Go of False Solidity on pp. 136-137.  Here are a couple of lines:

“If you want permanent peace, permanent joy, and permanent happiness, you have to get through to the other side of the inner turmoil. You can experience a life in which waves of love rush up inside of you any time you want.  It is the nature of your being.  You simply have to go to the other side of the psyche.  You do that by letting go of the tendency to cling.  You do it by not using the mind to build false solidity.  You just decide once and for all, to take the journey by constantly letting go.”  (TUS, p. 136) 

 

Letting go of the false self that we have built is scary.  The reason we have built this self-concept is to give us a (false) sense of security (i.e., delude ourselves into thinking that we are in control of what is happening in our lives in order to avoid feeling fear or vulnerability).

The way to get to the peace that passeth all understanding is to witness the false self and let the pain/fear pass through. 

I am ready to dive into this kind of letting go.  I’ve been noticing when my mind rationalizes and tries to make sense of happenings in my life so that I can feel comfortable.  If I am not alert I will habitually do whatever leads to feeling comfortable on the inside.  Sometimes I try to think my way through situations in order to avoid feelings of pain.  I may take a comment that someone else has made and try to make them wrong in my mind so that I feel better.  At other times I try to figure out how to fix things so that I can try to prevent whatever the unwanted situation is from happening in the future.     

I find it helpful to remind myself that God is in charge.  Whatever the situation is I give it to God and I bring my awareness back to whatever thoughts and feelings I am holding onto and let them go.   

Instead of looking for inner comfort, I am retraining myself to accept whatever I am experiencing and when that is uncomfortable I say to myself “Good! This is my false self that I am bumping into.  I see it, I feel it, and I choose to let it dissolve.  This will help me get to the other side which is where I want to be…living my life as True Self.”  

Take no thought

Whenever I am having a worrisome or unwanted thought, it is so freeing to remind myself that those thoughts are not real...my thoughts are just the ramblings of the neurotic roommate…they are not based on fact…they are not reality.  I remind myself often that I do not need to pay attention to my thoughts.   For example, if a worrisome thought about finances pops up I remind myself that my ego does not have the answers to my financial status and that God is my source of all that I need.  If the feeling of worry persists I allow it to be and I relax my body.  Sometimes the feeling moves through me.  If it does not, I continue to allow it to be but I do not feed it with additional thoughts of worry.  

The same can be applied to thoughts about health, relationships…

I practice not listening to my mind, no matter what it is saying.  As I let go of worrisome thoughts, judgments, commentary about what is or isn’t happening, what I expect, what I think I need, and conclusions that I have drawn my life seems less complicated.

It is not productive to deal with the incessant chatter of my mind.  It is productive to deal with what is right in front of me.  I deal with life with much more clarity when I let go of the chatter in my mind. 

Michele Longo O’Donnell:

If we remove from our mind a thought that has kept us from realizing the Presence of Spirit, then because we have provided space for it, Spirit will move into that space provided. It will appear in whatever way or form that will correct the human condition.

ALL problems are caused by the mind

Michael Singer says that  "ALL problems are caused by the mind."

Adyashanti says "We are so busy and obsessed with our restless thinking about everything and everyone that we have mistaken our thinking about everything and everyone for everything and everyone.  This tendency to take our thoughts to be real is what keeps the dream state intact and keeps us trapped within its domain of unconsciousness and strife.  To many people the very idea that what is is more real than all of their beliefs and opinions about what is is hard to believe." (The Way of Liberation, p. 15)

Adya presents an example, if you think everyone should be nice than by all means be nice, however, when you impose that belief onto others and hold it as objective reality (i.e., people should be nice to each other) than you are not dealing with reality and you will suffer.  What is reality is that people are not always nice.  So when that happens deal with it but let go of the belief that things should be otherwise.

Our minds (e.g., the way we see things, the meaning we give to situations, the conclusions that we draw, the judgments and opinions that we hold) cause our problems.  It is when we let go of the conclusions to our story, and, the beliefs and expectations about what should be happening that we feel lighter, less burdened.  

God gave us a gift called life and a beautiful world in which to enjoy our lives.  But most of the time we live in our minds not in the world.  When we are so focused on making the world and our lives (including the people in our lives) fit our specific ideas we miss all of the beauty and the joy.  

The way out is to remember that we are the experiencer of life.  Accept what is.  Deal with what is right in front of you.  Let go of the judgments, conclusions, expectations and enjoy the ride.

“It will be done to you according to what you believe.”

If we look at how our lives are showing up we will see what we really believe.  The areas of our lives that are showing up as lack, limitation, struggle, fear are clues to what we are holding onto which blocks us from experiencing our Oneness with God, from Awakening.

For me it is not about making my life work so that I can be happy.  It is about looking at where my life is not working so that I can see what beliefs I am holding onto that aren’t Truth.  These beliefs are ideas of the psyche not God.

 

My ego does not always want to let go of it's beliefs.  So I pray…God help me to let go of that which no longer serves me so that I may stand firmly in the awareness of my True Self.  May Your will be done in, as, and through my life.

And so it is.