Alan Watts.
We hear the statement "just be yourself" so often
What in the world does that mean?
What if someone is nasty to others? What if you manipulate people in order to harm them - cheating, cruelty, lying? Does someone who is a racist or a murderer being themselves? Or for that matter, is Donald Trump being himself when he promotes racial division or hatred?
In my quest for answers I've found that it's very much possible to "be yourself" simply because when you cheat or hate you are not being yourself in the true sense.
Our true self is who we are when we let go of all the stories, labels and judgements that we have placed upon ourselves. It is who we are without the masks and the pretentiousness. We are ourselves when we dis-robe from other people's stuff that we have taken on.
So how do we uncover our true nature, beyond the beliefs we have collected from our parents, schools and society?
I have a few suggestions:
1. Be child-like.
Watch a child, running, jumping, playing, just free to be.....how little they care about what others think. My 3year old grandson's moment of abandon and joy is when he can run out of the bathroom naked! Needless to say, he creates ripples of laughter in the whole house.
We play roles to fit into society and we suppress our true nature out of fear of what others think. The "socialised you" is fearful of judgement - not the real you.
2. Be aware of your thoughts.
Psychologists say we have approximately 90,000 thoughts in a day and most of them are negative. These are conditioned patterns of thinking and our beliefs take shape around these patterns. We have so many unconscious beliefs that we have taken on over the years that are handed down to us by somebody else and we believe that is who are.
Become aware of the quality of your thoughts.
Thoughts come and go....just allow them without getting attached. As one of my gurus said, "the trick is to be in it but not of it"! We are more than our negative patterns of thinking would ever allow us to believe.
3. Follow your intuition.
When you start following the little nudges you get, you will have hopped on to the magic carpet of awesomeness! For me, it started with recognising a continual feeling of restlessness....something kept telling me I had to follow the beat of another drummer. That was the day I started my study of self-exploration and spiritual psychology, that lead me to where I am today.
So, ask yourself, "Am I living out the best idea of who I should be?"
For me it was and remains a basic psychological need.
And when you can answer that you will be amazed and wonder how you could have ever been anything else but you!
Until next time.....
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