Hmmm? I remember I used to hear that one a lot, and I used to wonder what it really meant – to know yourself?
Well, sure. I know myself. I know what I do, what I like, who my friends are – I know a lot about myself. Is there more?
One evening as I sat in a meeting with 100 others, I felt some anxiety. I knew I wanted to share with everyone, but speaking in front of a crowd has always been stressful for me. What would people think of me as I spoke? So here’s what I said…
"I’m scared. I’m afraid what you all will think of me, and it causes me to withdraw. At this moment, I’m shaking inside from that fear."
What happened next still fills me with appreciation. They applauded. Because I was being real and expressing exactly where I was, in that moment… which is all that’s ever required to learn to love yourself. Repressing or denying anything only causes more pain, more stress.
Fear was there because I was worried that someone would say something to cause me anger, upset or sorrow. I could tell that the teachers could see right through me – and I wondered what they saw. In my head was, "What are people thinking about me?"
Now, I see from an entirely different perspective. I now understand the value of "putting myself through those meetings." It is truly wonderful!
You see, by experiencing all that, you get a chance to see yourself and how you react in any given circumstance. If someone says they don’t like how you behave or what you’ve done, you get to see yourself (at first) take this personally. That can be a big one – taking things personally and worrying about what people think of you.
Conceptually, I knew that was absurd. Why should I care what people think? But in reality, what I experienced was different from the way I thought it should be. I’d find myself taking things personally and being upset. It was very real.
By allowing myself to be put in such "fearful, dreadful" circumstances, I got to see how I behave, in reality. Which is priceless. Ascending helps us go within and see the world from there. You get to see how you react, how you behave. And then you see (miracle of miracles) that you have a choice. You don’t really HAVE to react that way – it’s just been your habit for such a long time.
My desire (and the desire of all the teachers of Ascension) is not to tell people how to behave (or how not to behave.) It’s not to instruct people in the "right" or "wrong" way to live. I simply want to point it out if people are making their life hard and how they can make it simple (if they choose.)
By focusing within, whenever you’re lying down with your eyes closed, or when you’re surrounded by people and activity, you get to look at yourself. You get to "witness" exactly how you behave. At first, you find stresses because you don’t like what comes up, and you wish it would go away. But as time goes on, you find it’s OK. You learn to accept whatever comes up in any situation.
You find that there’s only one person judging you for what you’re experiencing. And that’s you! (Even though, sometimes, it looks as if the whole world is judging you, but then you get to experience that your outer world reflects your inner world. If you’re seeing the world through a "filter" of anger, the whole world seems angry.)
And then the most marvelous, exciting and beautiful thing happens. You experience, deep down, as a living reality that you choose (and always have chosen) how you react, how you behave, how you are. And when you experience THAT, then you know (again, at a deep level) that you can choose different. You can choose to make it easy.
Letting yourself be exactly as you are – is the easy way to live. Like right now, for example, I could choose to judge myself for not being able to get across to you what I’m saying properly. I could judge that I’m not a good writer. But then when I look within, I find that I’m not choosing to write because I want to persuade anyone of anything. I don’t even care if anyone "gets" what I’m saying. If people choose to make life difficult, that’s OK by me. I never want to take away anyone’s freedom of choice.
