Managing Your Self
Lesson 9: Creative self-expression
1. What Limits Us?
Exercise One
2. Limiting Beliefs
3. Releasing Your Self From Limitations
4. Common Obstacles to Success
5. Being a Victim
6. Fear of Making Mistakes
7. Doubts and Resistance
8. Disappointment and Dissatisfaction
9. Lack of Energy
10. Stress
11. External Obstacles
1. Unlimited Choice
We are going to explore what it means to express your self more fully, in a way that is true to who you are, inside. What makes you unique? What makes you you? How do you express your self in the most creative, progressive, and authentic way? How do you work with what you are given?
We began this course with a discussion of how it is "all about you." Everything you experience, and how you interpret and respond to it, is about you. It relates to you. There is a flow towards you, a flow of information, sensation, and perception. Similarly, there is a flow from you, out into the world. That may be called your self-expression.
Your self-expression may be free and creative, or not. If not, you can change it.
The idea is to find a kind of self-expression which truly expresses who you are. Many people are content to have their "self-expression" be largely determined by their response to the world-at-large. In other words, rather than acting from within themselves, they react to the world they perceive, their interpretation of it, and the pressures, expectations, and demands placed on them.
There are two basic personality types: extroverted and introverted. Extroverted types know themselves more by what they experience in the outer world, sensory perceptions, relationships, and external feedback. Introverted types know themselves more by their inner experience, their abstract sense of connections, interrelationships, and ideas.
Beyond this basic distinction in how we relate to the world, we rely upon our critical thinking or intuitive abilities, our feelings or our thoughts, our judgments or our direct perceptions. These are all personality traits which we tend to carry throughout our lives; they are not so much a choice we make in the moment, as a way we generally express ourselves all the time.
These personality traits are not hierarchical; one is not better than another; they are simply the varieties of self-expression that we may have. It is when we make them absolute, rigid, unchanging, that we close ourselves off to a more free and creative self-expression. Instead of spending our life, time, and energy defending our personality traits, our egos, or our concept of our self, we can simply allow a more free and true self expression.
It is good to know your strengths, so that you can rely upon them, but it is also good to balance your strengths so that you draw more fully upon all of your capabilities. Relying upon only what you know can be very restrictive, especially if it is limited to your personality or ego. The self is not the ego, the personality, the body, the emotions, or the thoughts you have. It is deeper than that. It is your inner consciousness, your being.
You are unlimited, in your deeper self. When you express your true self, it may be shaped or structured by personality traits, but it needs to be as free from habit, conditioning, programming, and external determinants of behavior as possible. Habit is almost the exact opposite of self-expression. Habit removes choice. True self-expression allows unlimited choice.
Self-expression is creative, informative, and unpredictable. There may be those who say that all of our actions are predetermined, but we prefer to believe that we have free will and can choose to say yes or no to anything at any given moment. If we are asked to raise our hand, no one can say who will raise one hand or the other; it is not predictable. So, we think of life as an opportunity for free and creative self-expression, venturing into the unknown, learning who we are and what we are capable of doing.
You may have inbuilt tendencies that you bring with you, which structure your personality or your sense of what you can do. But, more important than this, is what you actually do about it.
2. As You Think
As you think, so is your world. This doesn't mean the world is as you think it is, or that you need to think the way the world-at-large wants you to think. It simply means that the way you think of yourself is expressed in your immediate environment, in your life, in your world.
Most people have an investment in the way they think — the way they think things are. It seems to work for them. And they learn to make their immediate environment, especially where they live, a reflection of who they think they are. They can get very "good" at making everything in their immediate world be the way they want it to be, the way they expect it to be.
This is not necessarily the truest form of self-expression. It's just the way you think.
There isn't anything essentially "right" about anything you think, anything you feel, or the way you like things to be. It is just the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you like it.
It's an individual preference or choice, nothing more, nothing less.
This may be liberating for some people, but challenging for others. It means that you are free to manifest what you like, that you already manifest what you think in your life, and that it is not set in concrete. You can change anything you like, or do not like. It is a choice you make.
The quality of your life reflects the quality of your thoughts and feelings and beliefs about yourself. If you want to know what those thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are, look at your life, look at your immediate environment. Look at where you live, and see whether it is open or not, inviting or not, organized or not, clean or not, formal or not, creative or not, artistic or not, warm or not, loving or not, you or not. If it isn't "you," how do you see yourself — your thinking, feeling, and beliefs about yourself — to be different? If it is a reflection of how you are, is that the way you really want to be?
You can change the quality of your thoughts, and change the quality of your life.
You can change the quality of your feelings, and change the quality of your life.
You can change the quality of your beliefs about yourself, and change the quality of your life.
It isn't hard to do. You just have to realize that you can do this. It is within your ability, no matter who you are, no matter what your circumstances in life.
You can make a better choice. Always. And it starts with awareness.
We have already discussed how to be aware of your self-talk, notice thoughts and beliefs that are self-negating, and change those thoughts or beliefs to their positive opposite. Instead of being self-defeating in nature, your thoughts will be more supportive and uplifting. You will make better choices, in accordance with what is more progressive and good for you, rather than the opposite.
We have also discussed how to be aware of so-called negative feelings, emotions that keep you from a place of inner peace, confidence, and stability. Instead of suppressing these emotions, or believing in them, or dumping them on others in a form of drama, you can learn to clear these feelings. You can learn to be aware of them and let them pass from you. You can make a better choice, and not have emotions drive your thinking, your choices, or your life.
Finally, we have observed that if you think well of yourself, but negatively of others — by holding resentments, judgments, blame — you are actually thinking less of your self. It is self-negating to hold on to past hurts, or to make anything anyone has done to you bigger than you are. The truth is, you are the larger influence in your own life; you have the power to choose what to have in your experience. You may not choose everything that happens to you, but you can choose what you do in response to it. Learn to make a positive choice, one that truly uplifts you.
3. Organize Yourself
If the environment in which you live demonstrates the general state of mind you are in, you can make your environment more orderly and experience a better state of mind. It works both ways.
When we talk about "order" we do not mean complying with the general expectations of others, or society, or anyone other than yourself. The idea isn't to have a living environment which proves how well socialized you have become, how well you have accepted and been shaped by the expectations, mores, values, and style of others. It's a lot simpler than that.
The idea is to see what truly serves you, and what does not.
You create two piles or two lists or otherwise separate everything in your space into things that truly serve you, and which you need, and those which do not truly serve you, here, now.
Then you take the things that do not serve you here and now, and put them somewhere else. Somewhere out of sight. Or, if you have no need of them, get rid of them. Allow them to be somewhere else.
Next, assuming you are now only surrounded by things which serve you, help you to do what you need to do, uplift you, or inspire you, you can organize among them.
You can organize based upon priority of use or need. Place the things that you need less often, which are less important, or which you do not need to have immediately in front of you, farther from you. Put them away from you, on shelves, in closets, in drawers, and so on.
As you go through the process of identifying what is most important to have near you, you can place those things in their own order of priority. Anything that is urgent needs to be right in front of you, where you cannot miss it. Place everything of lesser importance, urgency, or utility a bit further from you on your desk, in a drawer, and so on. Consider if things are useful, and how. Do you need to use them — and do you actually use them — or are they just considered useful by others, or were they thought to be useful by you in the past? Make your decisions based upon here, now.
When you organize, it is a good time to let go of the old and bring in the new. It is a good time to notice your attachments to things, or if you are putting part of yourself in the things you have. People who have a hard time letting go of things — material things — have often invested themselves in these things. You may need to ask if you own things, of if they own you?
Some people are owned by their possessions; they have mortgaged themselves and their lives to service a debt. Millions of people have bought things they thought they needed, only to declare bankruptcy as a result. Part of organizing is being realistic. It is self-deception not self-respect that leads a person to compromise themselves, to bring themselves down, while they imagine that they are raising themselves higher. Only you can discern for your self — and you really do need to do this — whether you are truly being served by what you have or want, or not.
Realize, it does not necessarily serve you to get everything you want, to hold on to everything you have, or to invest your self in things. Organize your life so that you are not caught up in it, so that you can stand back from it, in a place of balance, security, and peace of mind.
4. The Higher Self
Everything you experience relates to you, or you relate to it. Everything changes. The one thing which is unchanging, which is a stable place to stand in the midst of unexpected or unimagined change, is in your inner being. Being is unchanging. It is your inner essence. It is who you are.
We express ourselves based upon how we know ourselves to be. If you believe your self to "be" your physical body, your thoughts, your feelings, or your desires, then you will be caught up in a constant struggle to protect yourself. Because all of these are changing all the time, your self-concept has no permanence, no stability. Anything or anyone that causes you to go through changes may be perceived as a kind of threat.
There is a much better way of being, and way of living. It has nothing to do with protecting your ego, or your ego-emotional investments in all the things you have accumulated in your life, which you mistakenly identify your self with. You are none of those. When you defend your ego, you are basically defending all of your illusions about who you are. Reality — or the truth — might come in at any time, and burst that bubble. Just think of the choices people make out of ego: the purchases they make, choosing to live beyond their means, relationships they enter, living out of fantasy rather than authenticity — their illusions may be shattered by reality, an act of nature, or a sudden loss. People are forced by such circumstances to question what really matters to them, or who they really are. It is much better to pursue this before such things occur in our lives, to come closer to what is true to us.
If your thoughts, desires, beliefs, choices, and actions are in agreement — if you live a very controlled existence — do not assume that you are being true to your self, or that you have solved all your problems. You may have erroneously narrowed your world and your choices as a way of dealing with the unknown, uncertainly, or change. Most people do this, and if, for the briefest moment they step out of the prison they have built for themselves, they have to reach for headache or pain medication. Their true self, their higher self, is so totally suppressed that they live in a state of pain or nearness to pain, in a place of stress and distress, in worry, doubt, and fear, and still refuse to be aware that something is not right — in them.
You can do that to yourself your entire life, and never question it, because society has conditioned you not to question anything, least of all who you are and what you are doing to yourself. Instead, society provides endless false solutions to your problems, to take away the pain of realizing that something is wrong. So you can keep on living in a way that is wrong.
If you define who you are — take your identity — from your career, what happens when you change career or retire? Defining who you are by anything outside of you — which includes your approval by others, your body, how rich you are, or your social position — only makes you more insecure. It separates you from the ground of your own inner being.
Is your life — who you are — defined by your pursuit of money, power, sex, material goods, influence, authority, position, social status, or acceptance by others? This is all ego, and none of it is true self-expression. The better way of being and living is to know yourself as your true inner being, and no longer identify yourself with or cater to the ego.
The ego doesn't like to hear this. It would be happy for you to spend your whole life pursuing what satisfies your ego, without any care for what is ultimately fulfilling to you, and who you are on a deeper level of your being. An entire life can be wasted in ego pursuits, without you ever knowing or respecting who you truly are inside. A life can be spent compensating for your lack of inner knowledge or self-worth, by accumulating all manner of worldly things to tell you who you are — external things to tell you who you are inside. This does not work. Every way in which you define yourself by external things only diminishes your inner self-expression, self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-worth. Worth does not come from outside you. It is not a product of what you do or what you get, outside you.
Your inner being, your true self, already knows this. It is just the ego, cultivated by society so that you conformed and went along with the herd since birth, which overrides the voice of the higher self. The ego is louder, brassier, more demanding, petulant, and forceful in its ways. It demands to be pleased, with sensual pleasures, drama, material rewards, approval, and recognition. It is like a really bad Hollywood actor, with no sense of self, craving the approval of others.
None of this is true to your inner self. The true inner self needs no such external validations. In fact, everything that "validates" the ego, invalidates the true, authentic, inner self.
Unless you learn to find and act from the calm, clear, non-egotistical, unemotional, higher self, every choice and action in your life will cater to the lesser choice of egotism. And it doesn't matter how "creative" or "free" or "successful" you might imagine you are, all of your choices and actions will be within the wrong context, and in some way be untrue to you. People, in our society, which is so out of touch with who we really are and which incessantly demands that we be who we are not, live their entire lives this way. It is as if they are living a dream, dreaming they are awake, rather than truly being awake. Even if you think you are having a nice dream, you should know that it is a dream and may have little to do with reality.
Think of the innocent child that you may have been, at an early age. What happened to that free, creative, questioning, exploring, playful, fun, happy being? It is still there, within you. And it is much closer to who you really are than what the world has made you be.
Think of all of the most noble and good and free qualities you could possibly have. And realize, you really do have those qualities; you are, perhaps, just not aware of them. You have, within you, all the love, joy, creativity, peace, wisdom, and goodness you could ever hope for. Know that this is who you are, your true inner being, and that it is available to you now. You need to know that in order to choose to live from there, now and always.
5. All You Can Be
This is a visualization process in which you will create an image of who you are, who you want to be. And, rather than referring all of your choices in life to your past programming or conditioning, you will be able to refer to this higher sense of who you truly are.
Please read through the entire process, and then close your eyes and begin.
Exercise One: Close your eyes, take a deep breath and
relax on the exhale. Take another breath and add a second to
the exhale, so it takes another second. Take another breath,
and add another second to the exhale. Do this five times.
Relax. Picture yourself walking along a beach on your
own private island. It is a beautiful day, the sun is out
but it is not oppressive or too hot. There is a gentle
breeze off the water, fresh and clean. The air is moist with
fragrances, but not too humid. It feels right.
You see your lounge chair above the beach, under a tree,
and go and recline in it. It is completely relaxing, and you
look out upon the water, and feel the peace and depths of the
water.
After a while, you get up and go up to your cabin above
the beach. It looks out upon the water, and a gentle breeze
blows back the sheer white curtains. You step inside and it
feels familiar to you, a place where you can completely relax
and be yourself. You find a place to sit and look around the
room. It has lovely furnishings, paintings, and decoration,
just enough to make you feel comfortable and welcome. There
are candles lit, and the room has a soft golden-white glow.
It feels warm and inviting.
You sit and close your eyes and think of everything good
in your life. You think of every time you shined, every time
you felt good about yourself, every time you felt you were
being who you were. And you gather those thoughts and their
energy to you, so that you feel more happy with your self, more
energized, more in touch with who you are and how you want to
be in the world.
You realize that everything you experienced that let you
feel joy and peace and love and contentment was simply a way
for you to notice those qualities within you. You realize
that they have always been within you. You just looked to
things outside you, to see them within you. But they were
there all along. And they have never left you.
You sit quietly and remind yourself, "Peace is with
me now." "Joy is with me now." "Love
is with me now." "My highest good is with me
now." Take a few deep breaths and relax as you
exhale. Breathe in these qualities of your true being.
Feel them within you. And know that they are there
whenever you take time to look, to be aware of them, within
you.
If there is anything you want more of, in your life, in
you, picture it. See it in your mind. See it in you.
See it happening for you. When you are done, mentally see
yourself walking down to the beach and walking along by the
water. When you are ready, become more aware of your body,
and the room around you; rub your hands together, and gently
open your eyes.
Realize, this is a place in you from which to create and live and be all that you truly want. And it is available to you any time you wish to go there.
Your life experience can be created from a free, creative, and uplifting space, rather than the undue limitations of past experience. You are free to be who you truly are. Live from there.
6. Stop and Go
Assume that you have a higher sense of who you are, and how you want to be in your life. Now it comes down to how to go about it, what you do.
The idea is to do something different.
Change your mind, change the choices you make, change your behavior.
In many cases, this means not only seeing something better for yourself, and choosing it intentionally, but also letting go of or getting past some old or habitual behavior.
Here is how to do that. Whenever you find yourself in — become aware of — an old or habitual pattern of behavior which is not aligned with your highest sense of who you are and what you want in your life, stop. Simply stop for a moment, for a few seconds, and notice the behavior. Notice the habit pattern. Notice the energy that is driving you. Simply stopping for a moment, to step back and be aware of your self — in the midst of your behavior — will help you to become more aware of your power to choose, here, now. Your power to choose is always in the present moment. Sometimes you need to clear some space for your self to step into the now, to be more present.
When we say "stop," we don't mean trying to resist or fight a behavior you no longer want. It isn't about resisting or struggling with your behavior; it isn't trying to force something upon yourself. It is simply stopping for a few seconds to be aware of what you are doing. It is looking at your self, as well as your behavior. Habitual behavior removes you from awareness; taking a few moments to be self-aware puts you back into your present moment experience.
Choice comes from this present moment awareness. Power comes from present moment awareness. You have the power to choose. That is all it is. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now that you have a vision of how you want to be, and you are aware of something that is not in accordance with how you truly want to be, you can choose differently.
You actually need to give yourself, or allow, or welcome, or find, a different choice. Find what it is that you want, and choose that. Choose to experience that. If you need to find it within you, don't go looking for it outside of you. You need to replace the habitual choice with a better choice, a more free, creative, and uplifting one. A choice which allows you to more fully experience the qualities of your inner being: peace, joy, love, goodness.
One good choice to make, is to do something for someone else. It doesn't have to be anyone you know; it doesn't have to be helping directly; it can be indirectly, or it can be something that helps a number of people. The idea isn't to get recognition or any reward for what you are doing. You simply choose to do it because it allows you to be in a better place in your own being. And, it helps others. This is a real win-win situation. Instead of external approval you will experience a great deal of inner validation. And you will come closer to who you truly want to know yourself to be.
Realize, your choices need to be real. You can imagine all you like, but when it comes to making choices, here, now, in the "real world," you need to do what allows you to experience what you want. You can't replace a habitual pattern or behavior with a nice thought, or an expectation, or words. You have to experience something better, or else the choice remains an empty one. It must be real, not just fantasy or illusion or self-deception.
Visualization and affirmation work when they are not just fantasy, when you can relate to them. For example, if you believe "No one loves me," the better thought or affirmation might be, "I am lovable as I am" — not "Everyone loves me." "Everyone loves me" is, for basically everyone in this world, simply not true, and nothing you can control or make happen. Believing this or affirming it or visualizing it does not make it true. So, in choosing to better know and express your true self, realize that excessive fantasy may be just another habit pattern. You already have enough wonderful qualities that are essential to your inner being, which are real and good and true. You don't need to fantasize about, try to control, or seek to manifest something different from that. It would not necessarily be true to who you are, even if it was a "nice dream."
It is much better to make real changes in your life, than imaginary ones in your mind. Until you change your behavior, and do something different and better, it is fantasy. The other part of finding what you are looking for, within you, and creating from there, is that you actually need to do something different.
7. Do or Do Not
Do, or do not. There is no "try."
There is no, "I'll try to be happy," "I'll try to do better," "I'll try to think better of my self."
"Try" is only an excuse not to do.
You can do what you want.
The truth is, you can do anything you want.
There is no such thing as a true motivation that comes from outside of you.
The only true motivation comes from within you.
Do you know and honor your self now, enough, to do what you really want to do?
Do you know that doing what you know to do sets you free, and not doing it keeps you bound?
Of all the things we may have told you that you could do, that you are able to do, which might serve you, we cannot do anything at all to motivate you to do anything. Not one thing.
That is your own power; it is not ours. We do not have that power in your life. You do.
You will only choose what you believe has value for you. If something truly has value for you, it is a matter of choosing it — and not choosing something else.
Choosing to "not do" is a choice, too; it has consequences, effects, rewards, payoffs.
You lose something no matter how you decide, whether you do or do not.
No one can tell you what to do or not do. That decision is yours, always.
Do you know how to commit yourself to a decision? Do you know that you are already committed to every decision or choice you have ever made — unless and until you choose otherwise?
Are you aware, now, that every choice you make — regardless of how you choose or what you choose or why you choose — has consequences?
Every choice you make, to do or to not do, has consequences.
Every choice you make makes a difference, to you and everyone else.
Don't you owe it to yourself to choose well?
There are two paths in life. There is one set of choices which leads where you truly want to go, higher, better, happier, more whole — it leads to you. The other does not.
You choose.
Choose well.
8. Hope
Hope is a good thing.
Never let anything or anyone get between you and the hope in your heart.
Hope is an inner knowing of a higher good, the highest good of all.
Hope is not merely an expectation about the future, or a wish that we might have what we want or desire.
Hope is an expression of the deepest level of who you are.
On some level, you know, you are certain, that there is nothing that can separate you from your highest good. You know that whatever appears to do so, is illusory, temporary, transient, without substance, unreal.
Hope is a deep appreciation of what is real and right and good and true to you, on a deep level.
It is knowing that what is real and good exists, on some level, whether you can see it in front of you or not. Do not give in to the pressures of skepticism, which declare that nothing exists other than what you can see or what can be measured by scientific instruments. The most important and valuable and uplifting things in life cannot be measured by any external devices or scientific experiments. They are to be found within you. Things like beauty, goodness, truth, love, joy.
When we speak of hope, we mean an inner experience of goodness which does not depend upon anything outside of you. Do not try to make it dependent upon anything outside you. You wouldn't make your hope dependent upon which way the wind was blowing, would you? You wouldn't give up hope if the sun were hidden behind the clouds, and the day was dark and gray, would you?
Why make your hope dependent upon anything outside of you — including the "proof" that your hope is valid?
The world outside of you does its best to invalidate you, your hopes, and your dreams. Why would you expect it to somehow confirm your hopes and dreams? Those are for you.
A good way to think of your hopes and dreams is like little seeds, which can grow into something wonderful. The way they grow is by you nourishing them, respecting them, taking care of them, not by your pulling them out of the ground to examine how they are doing, or to let someone else do so.
Do not let anyone — and that means anyone, any authority figure, no matter what power or authority or role they claim in your life — rip your hopes or dreams from the ground of your being.
You can deal with anything in this world, if you keep your hope alive, within you. People have done so, in the most horrendous circumstances.
It is hope which is noble, not suffering. There are those who say that suffering makes us what we are, that it is good and valuable. We completely disagree with that. We say that what is noble already lives within you. It is already in your heart, and you do not need to suffer in order to appreciate it.
Hope is ennobling, suffering is enabling. Hope lifts you out of the most dreadful circumstances; suffering just keeps you in bondage to them.
If you take only one thing from this course, let it be: all you need, to stand strongly and deal with everything outside of you, is within you, now.
Honor that, honor your self, and don't go looking for what you need to find within you, outside of you.
Hope is an unshakable belief in a greater good, that you can find it and know it within you.
You can.
9. Deepness
In our modern, increasingly superficial society, "That's deep" is a put-down intended to ridicule anything with depth, including people.
It seems that each day people become more superficial, more hurried, more stressed, more in pain, more unhappy, more conflicted, and yet they do not want to know why. They do not know what it means to be different, or do not care.
Relationships are so superficial these days, that "hooking up" to have totally meaningless sex with someone is seen as being a good thing. People have no awareness of the depth of human feeling, no sense of meaning or value, no idea at all what they are doing on this planet. And so all the choices they make in their lives are just as superficial and meaningless. Except that they are not meaningless: they have consequences. The fact that you may have no idea what you are doing, does not mean that what you do has no consequences. It does. For you and others, too.
Society sells you superficiality, fashion, a beer that tells you "it doesn't get any better than this." And, with the abandonment of truth, meaning, and purpose by your society, by your family, by your educators, by your peers, by you, your life loses all meaning.
Then you imagine you are living. You imagine you are living when all you are doing is making believe. You see the endless sources of entertainment, sports, pornography, hell worlds in video games where people get to kill each other endlessly, night after night. And people think that that is just as good as being alive, as having a true sense of being; they imagine their fantasies, self-delusions, and self-degradation are good for them. They haven't got a clue.
There are endless forces working against your ever waking up, your ever seeing your life for what it is, or your ever having the power to choose differently. Society has multi-billion dollar industries working night and day to keep you asleep, dreaming that you are awake. Most people go through their entire lives without ever once coming closer to who they truly are; they live on the surface of life, on the superficial waves of desire, emotion, ego, and illusion.
The more you identify with thoughts, feelings, or desires, the larger they loom in your consciousness. They take on a "depth" of their own, no matter how unreal that might be. In other words, the more you get into them, the more they get into you. You lose your self in them. All you need do is look at people who spend ten hours every night in video games, to get an idea what we mean. They are deep into something, but it is not real, good, true, purposeful, meaningful, or integrating. Rather, it is exactly the opposite. But people take their illusions for real life.
When we speak of deepness, the deep self, we are not talking about something dark or murky, something you get lost in. We are talking about finding your self, your true self — beyond the morass of ego, emotion, darkness and delusion. We are talking about an ocean of being, an ocean of light, the true source of who we are. We have to disassociate ourselves from mistaken notions of who we are, to appreciate who we truly are, in our deepness.
Think of your self as an ocean of consciousness, a vast consciousness, with few limitations. In your essence, in your unboundedness, you are vast. You are like the ocean. In your depths you are calm, quiet, secure, whole, and complete. Your nature is Being. Who you are is more about Being than "doing."
All the experiences you have are like waves on the surface of the ocean. Some may have deeper currents, but none of your experiences match the depth of your Being. They are waves upon the surface. Thoughts, feelings, and desires are all waves on the surface. The have energy and movement, direction and intention, origin and destination. But, they are never more than waves upon the surface. They do not reach or move you from your place of Being.
The way you are displaced from the fullness and dignity of your Being, is by misidentifying yourself with surface waves. In misidentifying yourself with much smaller things, you lose the sense of — or experience of — your self without limits, your unboundedness. You think, and you think you are your thoughts. You feel, and you feel you are your emotions. You desire, and you think you are your desires. You are not.
If you do not know who you are, or learn to find that within you, everything you do falls in the category of "living a lie" rather than "being true to your self." Every choice or decision you make. All your life. If you want to know who you are, you need to step out of all the play-acting in which you act as who you are not. You need to get past your ego and your emotions. You will know you are moving in the right direction when you feel a deeper sense of self, deeper awareness, deeper feeling, a deeper sense of meaning or purpose, and deeper access to your creative, intuitive self.
This is not about becoming who you think you should be, or who we think you should be. It is about being who you are. Either you see the value in that or you don't. Either you are willing to move to something more, better, higher, or you are not. Either you will honor your self in your choices and actions or not. It is entirely your choice. And you do choose, at every moment.
Choose well.
10. Opportunity
We don't go through life entirely on our own. Learning to solve problems, make decisions, and choose what is right, good, and true for you, does not exclude the rest of the world.
In order to learn to be more true to your self, to learn who you really are, you need to step back from the world a bit. That is mainly because we are so caught up in the roles we play in our lives, from the beginning. And, unless we step back and take a look at who we are, who we have become, and who we imagine we should be, we can go through life without ever coming close to who we truly are, inside — or fully expressing it.
The opportunity to express who we are comes in relation to others and the world-at-large.
Creative self-expression means finding a place to stand within you, where you are self-aware, self-directed, self-confident, and in touch with who you are — and then acting from there.
You will find that the more simply you are who you are, who you come to know your self to be, and the more simply you express who you are, the more real your life will be. It won't matter what anyone else says or does, as much as it matters what you say and do. This doesn't mean being egotistical or arrogant or thinking you know it all. Rather, it means you have an internal frame of reference, and you are validated within yourself, so that you are much less invalidated by anyone or anything outside you.
As you express what you really think, feel, and intend, in a simple and truthful way, you will find that the quality of your life is transformed. Realizing, speaking, and acting on your truth connects you with real ways of manifesting it in your life. Truth connects you with reality, opportunity for greater success, progress, and change. This takes practice. Most people lie to themselves (and others) much of the time, to prop up their illusions, to aggrandize themselves, to cover up their weaknesses, to keep from feeling, to "protect" themselves from disapproval or rejection, guilt or shame. Expressing "the lie" only perpetuates it, so that you live it. The lies we tell ourselves connect us with illusions, unreality, and a state of impasse. We cannot "flow" through the lies we tell ourselves — who we are is trapped in those lies, no matter how "creative" we may become in telling, justifying, excusing, rationalizing, or expressing our lies. It takes a great deal of energy to suppress the truth, within us.
True opportunity for change, growth, and progress comes from the simplest way in which we tell ourselves the truth, at each moment. Here. Now.
In the past, we may have "learned" how to be with other people, in family, relationships, school, work, in a state of compromise, where we acted as they expected us to act. We learned to fear disapproval or rejection by others. You might need to unlearn that behavior. It takes time.
Every moment is an opportunity to be more true to who you are, and, as a result, be more true and real to everyone else. Every moment is an opportunity to choose to tell yourself and others the truth. Every moment is an opportunity to come from a place of truth, love, and simplicity, within you.
As you become more self-aware, you will naturally find ways to express yourself more fully, more freely, more creatively, more rewardingly. Simply be open to what you see, feel, hear, know. Opportunities for progressive change will come. In fact, they will be hard to resist.
When you are out there in the world-at-large, be true to who you are. In relationships, be true to who you are; don't feel compelled to be what someone is looking for, rather than who you really are; don't try to connect with others on the basis of mutual illusions. In work, be as true to who you are as you can be; don't take your identity from your work, or your sense of worth from things outside you. Hold to your inner self, your inner worth, in all that you do.
Honor your self in all that you do, and honor others as well.
That is the true basis for being with, relating to, working with, and growing with others.
See everything you do as an opportunity to find more happiness, peace, love, and wisdom within you. The opportunity may come from being with others, but those qualities come from within you.
Realize, if you are doing something that keeps you from experiencing those qualities within you, you may need to be doing something else. Opportunity means the willingness to change, to choose something different.
11. Completion
There is something about the nature of success which requires completion.
By completion we mean a final resolution, finishing point, achievement, closure, or sense of fulfillment.
Although we acknowledge the whole creative process at every point, and we do not suggest being fixated on a goal to the exclusion of realizing how successful you are at each stage, we have to allow the greater sense of fulfillment which accompanies completion of the process.
Even a work of art is not really anything until it is complete. Completion is not just a point at which the artist decides it is done, but a point at which others can recognize and appreciate the fullness or wholeness of the work. Completion is in a sense arbitrary, but in a larger sense, it is not. It is something you know, and others know, too.
So, there is value in persevering at something until completion. Some people leave a string of uncompleted tasks behind them, as they merely go from one thing to the next, never completing anything. This is not really very fulfilling; it is a pattern of being unable to complete things. Perhaps there is a feeling that when you are finished with something, you will be sad, you will lose your creative sense of aliveness, you will lose what you have done or have to let go of it. Leaving something incomplete is a way of continuing to hold on to it. But, this isn't really very workable.
If you are in the process of accomplishing something, whatever it might be, in terms of learning something, creating something, or assessing your progress, remember that in the middle, everything can look like a failure. Don't judge the value, meaning, or worthiness of anything by how it is in the middle, while it is incomplete. Make a decision to get to a place of completion with it. And, that doesn't mean simply abandoning it as a way of avoiding getting to completion.
The way you create greater opportunities for yourself is not by rejecting prior opportunities, but by acknowledging them, working with them, learning from them, gaining value from them. If you disallow opportunities — including the opportunity to learn from your experience — you are not really preparing yourself for greater success. It is more like preparing yourself for failure. And, who really wants to do that?
Some people are afraid of success. They are afraid of the change which is inherent in completion, the change that means moving on to something else, something new, something unknown or uncertain. That is a part of completion. You finish with what you know, what you can do, and then you are ready to step out into what you don't know. Completion of what you know brings you to the unknown, again. This can bring up some fear, or a person may at some point decide to simply remain where they are, and not venture greater success.
Completion does not mean finding your perfect comfort zone and remaining in it. This is why retirement is not all it is said to be. There is a need — an irrepressible need — to continue to creatively express, to participate, to be involved, to learn, to grow, to make a difference with your life. At no point are you finished with that, not unless you give up.
Realize, there is always a higher purpose in living, at any age. There is always something more to learn, something more to contribute, something more to find enjoyment and satisfaction in. Completion is not an end. It is a new beginning.