What is going on inside me?
a) The thoughts and feelings (my conscious mind). These tend to predominant our day
b) The intellect or our conscience. This tells us what is right/wrong or true/false. It can discern/discriminate between what is going on within you as opposed to what is happening outside of you. It needs to be sharp for this.
c) The subconscious, the memory bank of all our experiences. When certain situations occur/people come before us they can act as triggers for the subconscious to ‘throw up’ thoughts and feelings into our minds and we over-react.
“What happens isn’t as important as how I respond to what has happened.”
When an incident happens it is the game of a second, either I will react as I always do or my intellect will come into play and I will respond based on my awareness of ‘Who I am’ and my aim in life. However I react or respond is stored in my memory bank (subconscious) re-enforcing the old pattern or creating a new one. Also, after the event I am left with the feeling of my reaction/response and I take this with me into the next moment. What do you want to take with you?
The reaction
When we see or hear something we don’t like and it triggers a memory in our subconscious, we re-experience this in our conscious mind; in our thoughts and feelings. When this happens we tend to either: blame the trigger (project) or re-suppress (blame ourselves), either way I am no longer the ‘master of myself’. You can be sure that when your reaction is out of proportion to the event that something in the subconscious has been triggered, what comes up is the energy that what we have suppressed from the original experience.
The biggest trigger of all for most of us is other people. People can trigger the best in us and these are the people we like to be around. Then there are the ones that ‘push your buttons’. We need these people too though as they help us to clear and master our subconscious. Whoever it is that ‘pushes your buttons’ is exactly the right person for you right now, our enemy becomes our best friend so to speak.
Responding
When you touch your truth you know.
A) Who am I?
First, recognize ‘who I am’.
I am a spiritual being inhabiting this physical form and my spiritual qualities are peace, truth, love, wisdom and joy.
Second, do you accept this?
Third, to move back into my essence as from here I am able to respond to life in a peaceful, wise, loving and joyful way.
To journey back to my essence: I need to reflect on spiritual truths and meditate on my spiritual qualities of peace, love and happiness, with the aim of experiencing these qualities. This doesn’t mean that I ignore all the ‘rest,’ it means that I empower myself to deal with the ‘rest’ using these qualities.
“In meditation my conscious aim is to sit in my peace and to stabilize myself in this. This is a peace that is my own and not dependent on anything external.”
B) Clarify your aim in life:
1) What is success to me?
The job/house/possessions or how you live? To be peaceful and loving in adverse situations can be the meaning of success.
2) What is my self-respect based on?
We tend to primarily base this on ‘externals’. If my self-respect is based on ‘doing,’ for example, then the clue is that when something goes ‘wrong’ or someone does not appreciate what I have done I get upset or angry. In contrast, when I base it on ‘who I am’; on my true identity and not an ego-based one; on my original qualities and not just learnt skills then when something happens I don’t shake. This is real self-respect, to value myself independently, as I know myself to be a peaceful being, a loving being and a joyful being in truth.
C) A pushed button?
When things comes up and we feel that we can’t deal with them we need to be mindful not to either re-suppress or project. What is needed is to realize it, as then we can let it go and become free from this bit of our past. Sit with yourself –not distracting yourself, blaming yourself or others. Talk to yourself lovingly; dialogue with understanding. See the ‘goodness’ of the feeling; what you can learn or realise from it. See things as coming to say goodbye ,as a chance to clean out the subconscious and to progress towards your aim.
“To learn to be able to remain peaceful in any situation is real self-mastery and to achieve this we need an empowered intellect. We empower our intellect when we consciously experience our truth and reflect on truth and wisdom. We dis-empower and weaken our intellects every time we have a negative thought about ourselves or others; when we are letting the past influence us or by worrying about the future. Not worrying about the future doesn’t mean not to plan for the future it means that I am not in a panic over it.”
