Venturing beyond the woo-woo stigmata
If becoming more self-aware by practising mindfulness through focusing your attention on your own internal guidance system so you can discern consciously what you do and don’t want to tell yourself is somehow spooky to you and falls under some prejudged woo-woo category, then don’t look at it that way. Stopping the monkey chatter to hear your own self-talk is the most important aspect of the self-discovery journey, simply because much of what you say to yourself on a subliminal level if you bother to listen is from childhood through parental, cultural and societal conditioning that was imposed upon the sponge-like Theta learning state of your developing brain, be it good or bad.
I learned the hard way that what I was saying to myself well into my adult life was very self-destructive and no matter how perfect I tried to become, I was never good enough…UNTIL! Until I stopped to hear the lies of uselessness and objectifying that had been forced upon me in my particular dysfunctional environment, which is not to say I didn’t learn some life skills, but I was routinely treated as a thing or a means to someone else’s success rather than a person. The problem with learning to allow people treat you badly doesn’t allow much room for nice folk to treat you well because the program will run the perspective that everyone wants something from you and always has a hidden agenda; it creates a huge cycle of distrust that gets reinforced with every betrayal…UNTIL! Until you are able to pull back the emotion of distrust far enough from another person, learn to place real trust on yourself and recognize the degree of control you have in any situation where trust is a factor in relating to another person.
However, at the same time in my elementary school years through my escapism I read stories about heroes and wonder and magic that allowed me to see another side of life that I wanted to believe in and actually made more sense to me. By the way, I still have the 10-volume 1938 set of The Junior Classics by Collier that I read as a kid growing up and the covers of my favourites are clearly worn with the titles always resounding in my head: Wonder & Magic, Myths & Legends and Hero Tales, whereas the book of Fairy Tales was popular for everyone else.
Don’t spook out your mother
Although I delighted in my own broad-minded imagination as a playful kid of eleven-ish, I only now realize perhaps my mother never bothered to read the same books from that volume set that I did, which is why she got really spooked out when I found what I later came to learn was her Amethyst bracelet. I still recall the day I spotted a nickel in the dirt by the wooden walkway and then in my curiosity to find more I felt myself being ‘lead’ by some kind of instinct or sense of flow that brought me to dig in the wood chips that were used as insulation at a certain spot under the house and there it was: treasure. I was so excited to tell her when she arrived home from work, but instead of celebration and gratitude I got the look of near horror as she accused me of taking it from her jewellery box. In my defence I explained the scenario just as it happened and in the end she calmed into the notion that a crow might have taken it through an open window, but she never looked at me the same again, so that experience basically quelled my insightful energy in its mid-development stage and stunted my awareness for several years.
Getting back to awareness basics
Self-talk may happen on the inner sub-conscious level in the brain, but the actions they cause in the body’s nervous system happen in the outer world where what you believe about yourself is readily revealed in how you treat yourself and others in any given situation or life challenge. This is where there is so much complacency for a perspective that is accepted as a normal way of life that is merely so because it’s familiar, healthy or not. Many people will never venture from familiarity and have no inner desire to experience life better, but for some of us being the best version of ourselves we can be for own sense of happiness is a life worth pursuing and it’s the sense that something is missing that usually starts the journey.
What’s missing can be found in a Concoction of Life Qualities that evoke the profound depth and breadth of Harmony, Belonging, Abundance, Compassion, Fulfillment, Oneness and Freedom; all qualities of the universal life force that is inherent in all of us at birth and expands as we mature. At some point in practising self-awareness the general feelings of Bliss and Nirvana then become natural and familiar states because in the calm limbic state of zero stress, hormones such as Endorphins and Oxycontin are released and even the newness of this euphoric energy is enough to spook people out like a new drug. Further, the heart-brain cohesiveness connection has a magnetic element that attracts same-spirited people and opportunities that creates even more natural ecstasy, which is often where the woo-woo factor comes because it’s not so easily explained, so don’t bother. Always go with the flow when you find it and learn to soak it up and luxuriate in it to rinse off any doubt or skepticism – being in the flow of your own ‘highness’ is the sweet spot you’ve been looking for, so get used to it as a way of life.
The right tool for the job of awareness
Whether you use simple meditation like I do or incorporate the advanced technology of brainwave entrainment audios, the goal remains the same and the hardest part of my decades-long search for that ‘something missing’ was to even know precisely WHAT I was even looking for on a conscious level. I mostly sensed I was somehow being victimized by a lot of lies I was living and now I can see from my own experience in overcoming the energies of anxiety, low self-esteem, mistrust, loss, unlovable and lack that were imprinted on my character as a child. Through Meditation and then by adding Ho’oponopono, I was able to become more of my authentic self by facing those often painful lies and find my own truth underneath them all.
I am a human ‘being’ and can choose to nurture the qualities I want to ‘be’ that are already inside me waiting for me to experience when I have readied myself.