How to access your inner self – the real you – and why it is so important.
So many problems which people have stem from the lack of integration and congruence between their inner self and their conscious mind.
Simply speaking – what’s going on in the head doesn’t match up with what’s going on deep down inside.
The society which we have grown up in tends to encourage us to repress who we really are on the inside. The effects of this are so strong that they can be likened to a pickled egg. For those who don’t know, pickled eggs are hard-boiled eggs which have been pickled in vinegar, usually in a jar. When eaten you can taste the egg, and also the vinegar which permeates the whole of the egg. Now I know this is an unusual example (metaphor), however if you were an egg you would probably think that the vinegar is part of your natural nature. The vinegar is something that you would be so used to, and something which affected every part of your being. Societal archetypes and conditioning can be like this.
This article is not the place for an in-depth treatise on a societal conditioning, rather it is about undoing the negative effects of your conditioning. I am more concerned about solutions and positive results, than the reasons for problems. Whilst I have an in-depth understanding of the reasons, which can at times be very useful, the reasons are very much secondary to what really matters in life which is freedom from things which hold us back. I am wary of over analysing – the paralysis of analysis.
If you do not access and deal with your inner self appropriately then you will continue to suffer from the effects for the rest of your life. Blunt and simple I know, but it is one of the key natural laws of personal development just as gravity is one of the key natural laws of physics; and these natural laws all work whether we believe in them or not, whether we pay any attention to them or not.
Truth can at times be very uncomfortable, however when it is embraced in the right way it can lead to tremendous growth and peace. So you really need to ask yourself; whether you want to continue as you are, or whether you want to have life transforming change? When you think about it, many or even most people, do not change great deal in their lifetime. An example of this is when you meet someone that you have not seen for many years and they still have similar habits and ways of being to what they had when you knew them all those years before.
Part of peoples’ problem with internal change is that most are unaware of its potential. They have no idea that it is possible to live a life that is rich, creative and fulfilling. The Nirvana of course is being able to know peace and contentment no matter what the circumstances – this is a lofty goal and attained by only a few, however the journey from “zero” has many stages, with an increasing sense of peace and happiness. You do not need to be an adept (highly skilled) to experience a much richer life.
Many things which we do in daily life actually stem from a desire to quiet the internal feelings and thoughts which we don’t like. This is one reason why alcohol is so popular, illicit drugs are endemic, and a whole host of other unhealthy or negative things occur in our lives. So many of us use crutches to get us through life. So many of us have moods that are influenced by the weather for example. Let’s be blunt; how stupid is that? Do we really want to be a person who is controlled by the weather? Because that’s what it is really about – to use the weather as an example; if we find it depressing then we are subject to the weather’s control. (Note: I realize that there is a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder – SAD – however I am addressing the effect of weather on mood in general sense.)
I meet so many people who long for Friday, (Thank God it’s Friday!), so many people who are incredibly focused on the negative. These people come from all walks of life and all levels of educational, financial, and personal achievement. It is all incredibly sad, especially when the real truth of life is that there is so much joy and peace available. And no, you don’t need to become a hermit, religious, weird or join a commune. You just need to find out the truth – what really works, and then implement it; take action.
So what does work? How do I access my inner being and live authentically?
I use the word authentically for a number of reasons, two of which are that authenticity is a fundamental key to inner freedom and the other that living authentically is one of the accurate ways of describing a life which is lived in a way which manifests inner bliss.
We need to be a real. A real person relating to other real people. I will give you an example from my own personal life which will help you conceptualize and understand what I mean.
Back in 1998 – 1999 I was single and looking for a long-term relationship with a female. I had realized that Internet dating was a key methodology to achieving my goal (which is something else I will write articles about down the track). Back in those days Internet dating had a negative stigma about it, whereas today it is something which is very much socially acceptable. I did not worry about the stigma, because I could see that in truth (and not my own opinion) the stigma was misguided. I focused on achieving my goal, which was meeting a suitable person. Over the years I had developed from an incredibly shy and emotionally dysfunctional person into a very different personality. One of the reasons for this is that I have become aware of the need for authenticity and practise it on a daily basis. I had also freed my mind from much of the societal conditioning which would have hindered me ordinarily.
One of the problems with the old way of dating is the limited supply. Limited supply of prospective partners encourages people to fall for the temptation of “he/she will do”. “I had better stick with this person because I won’t get anyone better” and so on. Whilst this way of thinking is not good, regardless of whether or not a larger pool of “resources” is available, it is much easier to avoid if you correct the supply problem. And by the way, perfectionism is not a good trait either.
I decided to write an advert seeking a partner. I made sure that everything I wrote was true – you see, one thing I wanted to do was to put off – repel – everybody who would not be a good match. I would have done this anyway even if the Internet was not available, however because the Internet resource pool was so large, it did make it a lot easier to contemplate. Another aspect to my advert was that I wrote it in such a way as to be attractive to the kinds of people I was looking for, and yet unattractive to the sort of people I wasn’t. Simply speaking, I decided to seek what I really wanted. Because I had previously developed my psyche so that I was aware of who I was as a person and what I wanted deep down, it was much easier to know what I wanted. If you do not get in touch with how you really think on the inside, then your head will tell you all sorts of stuff which is not the real you. The follow-on effect of this is that you will manifest all that bad stuff to other people and they will never know who you really are. How can that be the basis of a good relationship?
Examples of poor relationships are rampant. We have all heard of common stories about how a wife for example did not “know her husband was like that“. Now, his “like that” might not be something bad or illegal, however it could be relationship breaking as far as the lady he married is concerned. And the ironic thing is that the husband may not have known he was like that when he got married. Shocking, but true for so many.
Back to my personal example….. my advert then, was a real person looking for a real person. These days more people are familiar, or at least have heard of, the Law of attraction; which of course is one of fundamental reasons why my dating efforts worked. Had I not been the real me I shudder at the thought of whom I might have attracted. (I could have ended up with someone like my ghastly stepmother!)
It takes courage to be real and honest with another person. If we are afraid of loss, it is something that is very hard to do. We need to face our fears, many of which are deeply rooted in the internal.
As we are authentic and start to feed that aspect of our being, things will be able to start to grow in the way they should. We may come across areas that we need to fix – bad habits, nasty ways of thinking, all sorts of things. We need to keep tilling our internal soil, uprooting the weeds and sowing good seed.
This article, whilst it contains some deeper aspects, only scrapes the surface of this whole issue. If you do not deal with the internal, then it will deal with you. One of the key ways to access and heal the internal is through the visual – I will be writing more on this method in due course. You will find other articles about this in my blog.
And in case you’re wondering, I met a lady through the advert I placed online in late 1999, we met face-to-face in early 2000, and have been living together since then. We got married in 2004. My wife is a beautiful woman – see photo at the end of this article. More importantly, she is beautiful on the inside….and this isn’t just my opinion. I receive regular feedback in various forms from astute and varied third parties about what a lovely person she is. (Such a good job that I didn’t listen to all the sceptics (septics), naysayers and doom merchants who warned me back in 98/99 that the Internet was a bad place to meet people and that I was at risk of meeting an “axe murderer”.)
To me, one of the key essences of a good relationship, is being the right person. To do that you have to work on the internal. Too many people are looking for the right person without realising that good relationships are about being the right person first.
My Wife
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Note: In case anyone reading this is wondering where they too can obtain a similar corset, my wife obtained it from Absolute Corsets. Service was very good indeed and they were very thorough. Her fully fashioned stockings came from StockingsHQ. Stockings HQ have world class service and a fantastic range.
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