The Art of Knowing Myself

Art is something personal don’t you think? We are all born with the ability to create and become an artist in whatever discipline we choose.

None greater than being your own artist discovering the lifelong shape of who you are. That means always being willing to know and learn about you. It is without exception the greatest journey of your life. It’s about experimenting with experience. It’s not about getting it wrong or right but merely learning about what feels good and what doesn’t and adapting towards more inner happiness through the choice of healing and growth.

In relationship, is where we get to chisel our greatness according to our surroundings. If you are into Bruce Lipton you will know that his exciting discoveries show that we are the product of our environment and that disease is predominantly a response to negative life patterns not so much about genetics or hereditary conditions.

As an esteemed cell biologist Bruce experimented with healthy cells, placing them in unhealthy conditions and watched as the cells withered and died within days. Ground breaking but something I feel is inherently right.

I watch people in session and in situations with partners, family, friends or colleagues who are allowing their inner light to wither, bringing stress related illness and yet with unconscious action they keep themselves chained to whatever they are experiencing, kidding themselves that worse things happen at sea!

My point here is about the observation of your responses to life and living environment within your emotional, mental and physical bodies. What are the millions of bits of information coming at you every second, telling you? And what about your response and subsequent reactions? This is where the art of knowing yourself lies. In the interpretation and translation into word and movement, creating the picture of who you are in relation to your environment.

The difference between mastering the art of you or not, is your level of consciousness, which for me is awareness. How aware are you of what you radiate to the world? It’s only in the reflection of the way others behave back that gives you a strong indicator of what you are giving out. E.G Wake up grumpy and all interactions for that day are likely to be full of grumpiness. Simples! So in the noticing “Oh I feel really grumpy”, there are two choices. Carry on manifesting negative energy radiators or change your thinking and what you give out.

Master the art of not tampering with your experience

I can hear some of you saying, “Yeah I know all that!” But do you often sit with what you are experiencing, fully allow the emotions around it without interfering and then move forward into healthier more loving action towards yourself then others?

I am reading an awesome book called The Unfolding Now by A. H. Almaas. Almaas discusses the “hands off!” approach to your experience. Easy to say, one of the toughest things to do. Rarely do we fully allow any experience and not tamper with it. The majority of us will inject heaps of feelings such as wanting, needing, resisting, rejecting, hurting around it. If something feels good, we crave more of it. If something doesn’t feel good we resist, judge, blame blah! This is part of mastering the art of knowing yourself.

Allow your experience. Just as it comes in all its raw form. Sit in it and feel it fully. There are many layers within it often which will jerk you around like a fairground ride but underneath is the True Nature of what is really here. Try it and don’t beat yourself up because that’s you interfering with the experience again! Arghh!

Appropriate loving action

Simply being with your experience is ok, but appropriate action is often required due to the requirement to relate with partners, family etc.

So there you are busily interfering with your latest experience. Your beliefs, values and opinions swing you into reaction born from the stories that are forming in the mind. The ego is busy barking instructions about who is not doing things right and this/that should/ should not be happening. It’s like a fish wife! You find yourself reacting from a place of filtered stories that perhaps are so far away from your True Nature, Source, Essence (you probably have your own name for it!). Is there any wonder that there is so much relational trouble on the planet?

Mastering the art of loving action is “work in progress” and won’t ever be perfect. Get real with that right now. Know that it is perfectly normal to have “stinky” thoughts, feelings and moments in your existence as well as fantastic heart bursting ones. Eckhart Tolle in his exquisite book, The Power of Now, talks about honouring the low energy (times) in your life. Ebb and flow is all part of the inhale and exhale of the Universe. You can’t have expansion without contraction.

I am about to spend 10 days in a Vipassana meditation retreat in Herefordshire again. This extreme sport of meditation (10 hours a day!) teaches that the impermanence of life and nature requires us to get in the flow and surrender to what is. In silence you learn to sit and observe your body and mind and all the colourful ways it chooses to show you how it works. The best practise I have ever had for my artwork! Nothing to do, nothing to say, but observe.

Practising loving action is about learning when’s best to do communicate. In time of ebb, chances are our bodies will be full of unhelpful chemicals that will heighten and dramatise our responses. Not the best time to have a heart to heart about something that is really pissing you off!

I encourage clients to learn their own way of self managing through the ebbs but if you want to learn to communicate in an authentic, boundaried, self honouring way that respects yourself in relationship, please give me a call.

Your life is richer when you come from a place of love. We all have crap that surfaces in response to others but as Byron Katie says “it’s yours 100%.” Master the art of knowing yourself. I promise, pots of inner gold await.