December 08 – Getting to Know yourSelf: In order to set your True Self free, you must have the Courage both to acknowledge It and Care for It. So this morning, take 3 minutes and listen without interruption to your own heartbeat … Then, go to a mirror and look into your own pupils without interruption for 2 minutes (one minute per pupil). See the True Self within your body – residing at the “core” of your mind (what many call the “Heart”) … Finally, for one more minute, while still looking into your own eyes, extend both unconditional Love & complete acceptance to that True Self.

This one was surprisingly profound for me, especially the three minutes of listening to my own heartbeat* – so much so that I extended that exercise for many minutes past the suggested three. Along with simply listening to the heart itself (and being re-amazed about its tireless quest to keep my body alive), I also listened to my heartbeat while watching a laptop slide-show of various pictures of myself. This enabled me to more clearly re-realize that my True Self is simply “riding along” inside my fleshly body; that my identity as “Scott” (or even “Scaughdt”) is not who I truly am, but rather a self-generated personality I use to communicate with other self-generated identities. Who I truly am is actually better reflected by what I do in any given moment, as opposed to what I call myself or what I believe about my world or what I say to others.

*I was fortunate enough to be staying with a friend who owned a stethoscope, and yet I also found that sitting very still with my fingers in both ears worked as well. If nothing else, the intended effect of the exercise is provided by sitting quietly with a hand over your heart and feeling it beat.

And then at some point I realized that I was not only listening to my actual heartbeat, but that I could also feel what my heart was constantly whispering to me in every moment of my life:

… that I am more than my seemingly separate self; that I am just as intimately connected to others as my heart is directly connected to my body’s living.

… that I am a walking miracle – filled to the brim with both consciousness and Love; that I can pause in any moment & set my primitively selfish instincts aside to then replace them with selflessly Kind choices.

… that I have a Purpose here in this life; that I Am am a powerful Force for Good whenever I choose to act accordingly.

I closed my eyes and let these freshly rediscovered Truths sink deep into my consciousness – the essence of my Soul.

This felt very very very Right …

And then the second phase of the day’s tasks commenced: actually Seeing that True Self.

On its surface, my ego thought that simply staring into my own pupils for any length of time would have no positive affect on my State of Being; that it would be necessary to somehow couple this exercise with some sort of “enlightened thinking” in order to experience any profound benefit. With all due respect to that ego, I humbly tested its theory – purposefully staring at my own pupils without thinking anything “positive” or “awakened” at all. And to my ego’s great surprise, alone the act of staring deeply into my own “Soul windows” brought a deep-seated sense of Inner Peace. I think it came from me simply choosing to see beyond my fleshly form – that this altered focus (from self to “Soul”) was enough to remove all personal fears & desires from my awareness. This brought me a measure of deep Peace, and also opened a portal to me actually seeing a Truth that we can all feel any time we wish: that there is more – much more – to every conscious being than initially meets the eye.

And finally, I was to extend this True Self, this prime-mover of my existence, a steady stream of unconditional acceptance. This proved a bit problematic for the first few moments. After all, if my True Self is actually within my fleshly body and if it actually exists beyond the separate personality that my ego had formulated and named “Scott”, then to whom (or to what) could I send this Love?

Ultimately, this conundrum proved irrelevant, as I experienced that every time I beamed Love to my body’s image in the mirror, I was actually beaming Love to the True Self that this body transports.

And how did I feel this pure Love before I sent it? We do have to “possess” something before we can give it away, right?  Initially,  I thought about the being in my life for whom my ego has the most “love” (it could be a lover or a parent or a best friend).  And once this feeling of Caring welled up to a “misty-eyed” level*, I consciously shifted my focus to the understanding that this very feeling IS my True Self; that how it feels to adore another being IS how our True Selves always ARE.

I concluded today’s task by shifting my focus one more time, away from feeling Love for another particular being (even myself) and towards feeling a raw, unlimited blast of Gratitude for Life itself; a gratitude simply for having been blessed with the gift of an existence that is both conscious (self-aware & free to choose) and conscient (within every higher mammal, the deeper understanding that selflessly Caring for another is the only potent way to truly Care for yourself).  It was neat to note that both  the purity & the intensity of this Love could be “measured” by the degree to which my pupils dilated while sending it outward.

The renewed awareness of this incredible “miracle” has inspired me to go forth and act accordingly … Care to come along?

See You when I see you …

… and until then, be Now!

Scaughdt

Filed under: 366 Days of Kindness by Scaughdt