know thyself
If you’ve read my blogs on intuition and dreaming then you’ll see that I have a deep connection to my inner world and this allows me to navigate life with trust and a sense of inner peace.
The reason I started taking such an interest in my inner world was because as a young woman I noticed that I was contradictory in many ways - I was travelling the world, doing incredibly adventurous things, and yet I was often full of anxiety, self-criticism, fear. The way other people saw me was the opposite of how I felt and I wondered how and why this could be. At the same time, I was living in Hong Kong and spent a couple of years working in bars and restaurants there with travellers from around the globe. I had all kinds of friends but ultimately a lot of these people seemed to lose themselves in drug taking or criminal activities and I wondered what it was in people that could make them lose their way like this.
It was at this time that I developed an interest in understanding myself and human nature and I think that as a result my consciousness in many areas of health, wellbeing and basic psychology grew (please note that I have no formal training in psychology; my understanding arises from observation of self and others).
When I look back on my life I can see that I have been through stages of learning about myself though developing an awareness of my mind. The first stage was about simply seeing thoughts for what they are - thoughts. Recognising that thoughts are just thoughts, they aren’t the truth of who I am. So when I was feeling anxious or my mind was taking me places that were perpetuating a kind of negative self-talk, I began to become aware of the type of thoughts I was having, and then I could offer a different thought, one that was more supportive, kind or loving towards myself or the situation.
It sounds really simple, and it is, but it also requires you to not be completely identified with your thinking mind and your ego. Unless you have the awareness to see your thoughts as just thoughts, you will be taken on a ride by them; your ego, personality and conditioned mind will dominate how you perceive the world and obscure the subtler levels of intelligence available to you.
When I was in my early twenties, I had my first experience of seeing myself as a conditioned self. It was brilliant the way it happened - I had had a fight with my boyfriend and had reacted in a particular way, by pushing him away (not literally, but emotionally), in a really specific kind of way that I hadn’t done before. Some time later, I was at my mum’s house and we had a disagreement about something and she reacted towards me in exactly the same way as I had reacted towards my boyfriend previously, I mean, it was identical! It was so clearly the same response that it awoke me to the fact that I must have learned that from my mum, that I had been conditioned without me even realising and it had presented itself as a pattern of behaviour within myself. It was a truly awakening experience for me. I was then able to look around my life and ask myself - ok, so what else doesn’t really ‘belong’ to me? Where can I bring awareness to other parts of my conditioning?
These 2 realisations became the basis for developing a deeper understanding of myself over many years. Learning to recognise the quality of my thoughts and maintaining an awareness of my mind and how it could subtly and powerfully influence my behaviour brought me great personal benefit. Noticing repetitive patterns of behaviour that came up again and again was similarly very powerful - learning to be aware without judgement, by simply observing, reduced the power my conditioning had over me. This was enhanced by my Vipassana meditation practice which then took me to even greater levels of understanding and inner peace.
We are all conditioned, from the moment we are born into this world: we arrive with our own unique blueprint of expression and then are consistently influenced and conditioned by the people, culture, society, education system, economic reality, class structures, religious ideas, etc that surround us. By the time we emerge as young adults we have layer upon layer upon layer of conditioning. Some of this conditioning will be helpful to our lives, keeping us safe and helping us to move about society as good citizens (or not, as the case may be), but a lot of it is baggage that hinders and prevents expression of our true uniqueness. By learning to see yourself more consciously, through recognising your thoughts, behaviours, judgements, etc as conditioned responses to life, you start to unravel the structures in your mind that keep you limited, and you open to a far more powerful form of consciousness.
I know this through my own direct experience of life. My focus as an adult has always been on “what makes us healthy, whole, at peace within?” I have been dedicated to a conscious practice of self awareness for more than 2 decades and it has shown me that there is so much more to what we are capable of perceiving, understanding and knowing. And that there are deeper layers to our health and wellbeing than we are usually aware of.
I have deep compassion and an ability to perceive truth and understanding of others which has allowed me to help people, sometimes complete strangers, find healing within. My path is of the healing, mystical journey and becoming more conscious has helped me to help others in these areas… but whatever path you are on - whether you are an artist, a truck driver, a cleaner, a student, unemployed, feeling completely lost in life… it doesn’t matter what you do - by becoming more conscious you will bring a greater flow of vitality, creativity, compassion, wisdom and joy to whatever you do.
