Passage through the
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The Self
Knowing Who You Are
Being who we now are becomes the affirmation, the intention, and the prayer. What eventually manifests is our self, along with the relationships, occupations, and environments that support us - effortlessly.
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Author David Hoefer
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Become What You Are Author David Hoefer says, "I appreciate Watts insights into who we are, really." ISBN: 1570629404 |
THREE: The Way of Zen; Nature, Man, and Woman; Psychotherapy East and West I found Watts scholarly depiction of Zen Buddhism, Art, and Religion to be insightful and profound - very much worth the read. ISBN: 0394419049 |
The Gnostic Gospels Pagels makes profound comparisons between early and orthodox Christianity. It provides perspective for the beliefs, attitudes and reactions I find myself engulfed in. ISBN: 0394502787 |
Practicing The Power of Now Tolle s insight and constructive exercises support the awareness that takes us from who we are trying to become to being our true self and knowing it. ISBN: 0340822538 |
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Stillness Speaks A good book that will help you appreciate Tolle s numerous reflections on awareness and the self. ISBN: 0340829745 |
Tao Te Ching Perhaps the most meaningful translation of the Tao ever written. ISBN: 0061142662 |
Essential Rumi This twelfth century poet eloquently expresses the experience of awareness, and is a pleasure to read. ISBN: 0062509586 |
The Awakening of Intelligence A profound discussion on thought, ego, and awareness. ISBN: 0380456745 |
I often think of myself as a planet floating through space. I have a characteristic orbit, but I do not take my orbit personally. My orbit has to do with laws of physics relating to my density, speed and relationship to other heavenly bodies - it has nothing to do with who I am.
In like manner what I am in life has nothing to do with me either. What I am has more to do with the influences effecting me and my awareness of those influences. A trap seen is no longer a trap. A manipulation understood is no longer a manipulation - the negative inference no longer creates a personal affect. I stop reacting when I know the source of my reaction.
Knowing how we "should" be implies an awareness of ourselves that we are somehow unable to achieve. The normal reaction to falling short is to try harder. We are like the dog who has wrapped his chain around the post until he cannot move - trying to attack a stranger.
Studies in illumination historically include endless definitions of what consciousness is - so that we will know what can be achieved and when we have achieved it. But I do not have to believe in love to experience it. I do not have to believe in unity to experience oneness. My belief in what it should be actually biases my experience of what it is.
Descriptions of ego and ego states and levels of awareness only provide us with another measure that we invariably fall short of. Trying to match an external definition with our unfolding experience interferes with being who and what we are now. The illusory chain we are wrapped around never unravels.
Rather than focusing on goals to be attained, I prefer looking to the dynamics that keep us from being who we already know that we are - I prefer experience over definition. When I speak of understanding, it is of the influences and conditions entrapping us - reinforcing themselves in our own reactions.
Whatever in the past created a negative effect, awareness now creates a positive effect - intimidation loses sway over my trajectory and falls into uselessness. With decreasing interference my orbit of its own accord, changes from an ellipse to a circle. I discover being by experiencing it. The only remaining influence is truth.
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© 2011 John Clark Craig and
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