Tag Archives: truth

Sensing Inner Energy

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Inner Energies

Different elements of a given internal environment can have different energies to them, awareness of which can inform you about where you are.

As you begin to explore the inner world, you may notice that different aspects of it are composed of different types or kinds of energy. There is a unique flavor or “signature” to everything you come across, and it’s this energy that can inspire the forms we see inner entities take in our visions of them.

Take for instance a vision of a lush, green, open landscape, on a sunny day. The landscape itself might have an energy to it, representing, if you sense it, feelings of ease, openness, relaxation and an energized mood. As your awareness explores the landscape, you might sense these aspects, and might be able to explore them with greater specificity: the sun might be inner brightness, the grass has a soft comfortable sense to it, the earth below a solid, stalwartness. And maybe over there, a forest with a sense of mystery and relaxed ease, or the sky, full of a spirit of openness and freedom. You might see a bunny hop over to where you are in this picture, and sense its simple curiosity, as it explores, and goes on its way.

The experience of the inner world, then, can be explored in this way – sensing, with simple awareness, the elements of your inner reality, shifting between images and the energy behind them whenever you choose. Continue reading →

Silverblade’s Guide to Discerning the Truth

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Rebecca Silverblade's Guide to Discerning the Truth

Rebecca Silverblade is another one of my inner characters. She embodies such traits as presence, precision, discernment, and the ability to handle situations without reacting to them. And one thing where precision can serve an important purpose is in discerning the truth from falsehood. This doesn’t just include facts, but also things like the truth of what’s important, the truth of how to act, and the truth of the basis for one’s own emotions and emotional responses. For example, on an inner level, I’ve found that she’s been able to give invaluable perspective at times of confusion or self-doubt.

Like was explained in Creativity’s Guide to Problem-Solving, the below guide was written by way of me trying to let the perspective, embodied by Silverblade, speak on the subject of how to discern the truth. This topic was the prompt, basically, and what follows is my sense of how “she” handled, or would handle, speaking on it.

 

SBGuideT1So you want to discern the truth, do you?

SBGuideT2I suppose you expect me to give you some hint, or proffer some guidance, is that it? This is called a “guide”, after all – I would hardly expect you to expect any less.

SBGuideT3And here it is – the question of the truth. An inquiring mind, looking for it. And what truth are you looking for, pray tell? Continue reading →

The Utility and Fun of Not Knowing

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Sometimes you just don't know

There are so many things you don’t really know. But hey, that makes life more of an adventure!

“God”, “Love”, “Spirituality”, “Enlightenment” – Do you really know what these words mean? I sure don’t.

“Food”, “Toy”, “Chair”, “Sky” – Maybe you know what these mean? I sure don’t.

Now, for any of the words above I could tell you what they approximately mean to me, right now, or what I think other people usually mean when they say them. But I don’t really know what they mean. Every word means something different to everyone else, and, at least for me, even personal definitions can change by the day, even the moment. Even just the mood you’re in can determine what meaning you attribute to things. Think of all the countless poems about roses. We don’t even know what things will mean to us the next instant. So, can you see how fruitless it is to try and pin down the meaning of any word? Think of all the words that have multiple meanings in the dictionary. The word “set” has 119 different definitions!

But I’m not here to talk about words – I’m here to talk about not knowing.

Continue reading →

Becoming at Peace with Your Own Path

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Maybe you’ve been perturbed at someone who seems to know a lot more than you do. Yep, even today I felt the same way. And I know it’s not always just because of jealousy, but because the way they live their life makes you reflect on your own path.

“Is my way wrong? Am I missing something?” These were the kinds of questions I was asking myself.

Sometimes I worry about these things. I wonder if there might be something, just outside of my awareness, that if I was aware of it, it would make a huge difference in my life.

Then people come by who seem to have it all figured out, like they’ve found the thing, and yet, what they say doesn’t seem helpful to me at all. Frustrating!

Continue reading →

Self-Deceit: Falling for an Illusion

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“No, I’m not a coward. Come on man, that talk just isn’t cool. Lighten up a bit will ya? Come on, look at this illusion instead.”

Hey guys, I’ve been meaning to make a post on Self-Deceit for a while now. Addressing this aspect of one’s self is so crucial to seeing the things inside one’s self clearly.

Oftentimes, when looking inside one’s self, you can see a lot of embarrassing things. Cowardice, fear, insecurities, anger, superiority, pride and cruelty. Self-deceit doesn’t want you to see these things.

You see, he can team up with Deceit to try and make your life as easy as possible. Deceit wants to plan out life so it’s easy, and Self-Deceit fools you into thinking it is. After all, if every time you look for your inner demons you see nothing “bad”, you’ll quit worrying about it and believe you’re awesome instead!

Like this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYws8biwOYc

That’s how that part of you talks (you normally experience it as thinking). To him, criticism is “uncool”, and it would rather live in a world full of people who don’t question him than ever consider his own cowardice. And that’s what he is, when you come down to it.

A coward.

So where is this guy in you? Any time you insist that you are a particular way you like, and deny that you are bad in any way, with thoughts like “I’m pretty darn cool.”, “Wow I’m smart, yeah!”, “No no I’m not a coward.”, or “I’m Innocent, seriously!”, this is the indication of self-deceit trying to have power over you, and trick you.

And maybe you’re not cowardly (most of the time). But why insist on it? Why make a big deal to yourself about how you are a particular way? You could just act with courage, and leave it at that.

Self-deceit just doesn’t want you to see your own inner world, your difficulties, your flaws, all the embarrassing stuff about yourself. Can you see why this is a problem? No matter how awesome you feel, issues are left unsolved. You remain a mystery to yourself. Your pain and depression and frustration continue.

So how did I get past this guy? Three things:

  1. The Inner Victim – the part of one’s self who feels helpless and weak, who worries and tries to grasp on to solutions – this part of myself came to the point where lies were hurting her so badly that she desperately wanted the truth. She realized that the truth would be the only thing that would empower her to make decisions that would really help her. Otherwise she was at the whims of the lies of my Deceiver and Self-Deceiver. She no longer wanted things to be nice, or cool or awesome. She wanted to see the bad and face it down, and find real solutions, no matter what she found on the way to them. She didn’t want to be fooled.
  2. I challenged Self-Deceit’s notion that it’s awesome to fool one’s self. I gave him the idea that it was more awesome to be able to stand tall in the face of all the darkness inside one’s self. He bought into this for a second, but his fear got the better of him. That’s when I realized he was a true coward.
  3. See those star glasses he’s wearing in the picture above? I imagined taking them off. I ripped off his mask. And underneath, I saw a scared, insecure, quivering child. “No… my precious coolness…” he said, “Damn it… give [the glasses] back… I don’t want to see… that I’m insecure…”

After that, his game was up. He stopped trying to deceive me, because he was forced to see how uncool he really was. Yeah it can be uncomfortable, but ultimately it’s what we need to be healthy, to know what goes on inside ourselves without the interference of our imaginations.

That’s how he gets you, by the way, Self-Deceit has the power to create illusions with your imagination. You can imagine anything – it can be the exact opposite of what’s actually inside you. How do you know the difference? You could always get lost in a world of illusions created by Self-Deceit to distract you from your desire to see the truth. We could avoid the guilt, the pain, the embarrassment for our entire lives. It doesn’t mean it’s not there, but we’ve covered it over with our own unwillingness to see our flaws. Our own fear.

In the mean time, we can’t pursue the truth, self-improvement, or healing consciously.

So, knowing this – is that how any of us truly wants to live? If you could see what Self-Deceit can do to you, I’d bet not. So call this guy out! Oh and good luck finding him, too – he probably doesn’t want you to. But I think you’ll know him when you find him.

For more help on the dynamic involving the Deceiver, the Inner Victim, Self-Deceit, and the Good-Hearted Theorist, check out these previous blog posts:

Overview: Self-Deceit and Manipulation

Overcoming Self-Deceit, continued

The Inner Deceiver’s Return

(Note: I call it Self-Deceit here, but there’s a difference between the Self-Deceiver and the Deceiver. The Deceiver wants an easy life through lying to others. The Self-Deceiver wants to run away from the truth of himself. But it’s a pack of lies regardless.)

Complexities of Criticism

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The funny thing about criticism is that it can be directed towards anything. At one moment, you can say something is good and in the next second argue why it is bad. Against the sword of criticism, anything can be good or bad, right or wrong, and it is often used to disprove someone who claims that something really is good or bad. At the same time as it laughs in the face of high-minded idealism, it cuts down the underpinnings of corruption. Perhaps all this is not for the sake of finding some one, easily defined truth, but to broaden people’s perspectives, to show that one greater truth is that there are multiple sides to any issue, unforeseen effects, uncertainties where you thought there was certainty.

However, criticism can be bypassed when an issue comes up that you feel is important enough to act on – when you don’t need to cast tons of doubt on it. When action is needed, rather than thought, and you’re willing to take the consequences on your own shoulders, criticism can do nothing besides inform your actions as they take place. For some things, it cannot stop you.

Furthermore, critics can fall into the trap of being insensitive and cruel. If they deliver their truth with no thought of how it will be received, it can cause a whole lot of distress if that person is not ready to receive critiques. At this point, the person being criticized can shut out all further input, despite the potential benefits.

Conflict Needed for Peace

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It seems that conflict is necessary for peace. How does that make sense? Because with the willingness to engage in conflict you can face down those things within and without that disrupt peace. To not do so is to let yourself be enslaved and manipulated by these threats to peace, such as anger, hatred, and so on. All they have to argue is “you betta be peaceful!” and you’ll shut down? Arguing, conflicting with others is part of respecting yourself – as long as it’s not arbitrary, as long as you don’t intend to stir up unnecessary trouble. Conflict is best engaged in with the intent to resolve conflict that was already there – perhaps under the surface. It’s like potential energy in physics, like with a loaded spring. That spring wants to boing, don’t let it stew. Call out the anger and resentment and the desire to control hovering under the surface of those around you, and you’ll be respecting yourself and becoming more free.

That doesn’t mean you need to fear peace, either. Just stay in tune with your ability to sense that something’s wrong – like when you’re starting to feel annoyed inside. At that point, just try to get to the root of the conflict, by challenging whatever needs to be challenged, within or outside of you. The truth will come out in the conflict, and you might find in others, or yourself, false beliefs that you’ve been relying on, but which cause unnecessary conflict, destroying peace.