Re: Knowing who you are (and are not)

montalk, much appreciation for this insight.  I had a strange aversion to reading it through, the first couple times I cam across it - I know know why!  Funny how the shadow side works, I think it's just (irrationally) scared.

"The unknown does not incite fear, but dependence on the known does." - J. Krishnamurti

Re: Knowing who you are (and are not)

Thank you everyone for your sincere responses. I am certain your insights will benefit many who read this thread. We can all use reminders and reaffirmations like these from time to time.

Acquiring fringe knowledge is like digging for diamonds in a mine field.

18 (edited by ape-x 2008-02-15 23:06:26)

Re: Knowing who you are (and are not)

I feel this thread needs to be close to the top at closing time.

I still see, and deal with on a daily basis, people who are ego-inflated as an obvious attempt to cover up serious esteem issues.

I don't mean to imply that I am above it, but I see it for what it is now. I always had the ability to read a person pretty accurately. That ability has only gotten keener since I've dropped most of what ego I had. There is an almost indistinguishable line between ego-based overexuberance; foolish pride, and true confidence.

It all sounds so simple now, but if these people would stop, and realize that 95% of their insecurities are brought on and amplified by cunning MARKETING.

Marketing is an extension of pure conditioning and needs to be recognized as such. Marketing can apply to anything.

A drill sargeant "selling" fear as motivation.

A government "selling" us fear as a means to maintain the same fear.

A magazine ad, featuring exotic locations, beautiful people... may have been intended to make the "consumer" equate buying 'that' product with being 'there'.
But what often happens is that images like those add to the feeling of unworthiness, and unreality, OF unreality.

"I'll never have that, I'll never measure up"

And far be it for most people to even question if it's something THEY really wanted for themselves.

A simple scene in any movie, be it a sex scene, a shoot'em'up scene, whatever. They train us to think like the movie, be like the movie, live like the movie.

The outcome is a very skewed definition of "success" and distorted ideas about how humans should interact, selling you impossibly high expectations.

The trick is being able to separate what you want, from what they want for you.

Do that, and you are more than halfway home. Because you will find those irrational fears that may have followed you for years, simply fall away.

For instance, panic attacks are brought on by feelings of intense insecurity,

I call it the antiadrenaline. That is, adrenaline being not expended to help ourselves, but to do severe harm to ourselves.

And some of you may think these are brought on by external stimuli.

Which is somewhat true, (and that "somewhat true" part is what justifies not resisting it) because these stimuli are all things you are not in control of. Being obsessively concerned what others think of you, is a sure trigger.
Remind yoursel it doesn't matter, any more than not living up to that magazine ad matters. You will see the irrationality of the fears that fuel said attacks. The fear goes, the panic goes with it.

Liberation begins with YOU.

You might postpone trying to take on all the worlds problems, until you've made some headway with your own.

Healing will take as long as it takes, and don't fall into the "I'm not worthy of giving myself the time and attention, it's selfish"
nonsense.

It's essential you discover who you are, AND who you're not... both. Just like in the title.

Warm Regards, J

Happy to have been a part

Re: Knowing who you are (and are not)

This is where I am at...trying to figure out who I really am.  Why is this so hard to figure out?  I just graduated from college with a degree in Biology.  Somewhere along the way I lost my focus and started to literally hate school.  I'm trying to figure out how I want to spend my days and what cause I want to serve in this world.  Can you really be sure that the path you journey on is what you really want or what you should be doing?

Re: Knowing who you are (and are not)

I decided to write on this because when I first came in contact with "conspiracy" theories I  felt immediately freed.  While many people believed that the information I was reading was driven to make people afraid I could only feel tremendous relief for the information.  I did notice that some people use the information to drive people to fear and others use similar information   to drive them to understanding, which in my experience has been liberating beyond words.     Sometimes it's difficult to discern which is which.  When I first read I felt a conflict between fear and freedom and then soon became scared that I was serving a bad dark agenda. No, scared would be an understatement.  It nagged at my heart for months and months.  Nothing I could do would get rid of it.

  Long ago I was familiar with the scientist discovery of dark matter, and that no one knew what it meant.  Through my research  I discovered that dark matter is another name for negative/ego manifested into the human body it clicked and then so many puzzle pieces began to fit together.  I had understandings and insights about things before on a personal level that I hadn't shared with people, and now the information was either confirming things I internally knew or piecing it all together in ways that made a full picture.
But the fear of who i was still clung like toilet paper on a wet shoe in the restroom - you know the kind that you don't want to touch so you do little cirque de soleil  acrobatic acts to try to get the paper off the shoe without touching it with your hand? 

At one point I had an idea that flitted across my mind to say that if I thought I was an avenue for dark then i should end my life.     I immediately read an article from Amitakh Stanford  (say what you will about her work it singlehandedly freed me from every misunderstanding I ever had and led me into a feeling of freedom more than anything i'd ever heard) and she spoke about this topic.   She talked about knowing yourself.    I decided to go into meditation on it.  I discovered then and there that if i were an avenue for dark matter, to the degree i was concerned about, then i wouldn't have any of those negative thoughts that were coming to me... certainly dark matter wouldn't want to take itself out.    The fear of who I am stopped.

Although I will say that now-a-days I get more concerned if i'm inadvertently being an avenue for negativity just through my stupidity.    Even yesterday i spoke with a friend who is in Venezuela trying to help Chavez cause, and suddenly I wondered if i were inadvertently using my energy to help in a place where i shouldn't be.   She is driven to help in the Chavez cause and i have no real opinion on it all,it's her cause and she doesn't know why she's driven to help him,   i just support her to do what she feels is best from within.   I just don't want to aid something inadvertently that is negative and which appears as a wolf in sheeps clothing.   So, in this case it's not so easy for me to get an inner feeling on this chavez/friend situation because i have a deep respect for this friend and so my inner information may get a little biaste.   I also don't want to over-think anything, but go more from a place of inner spirit.   not as easy as it sounds in this case.

Breathe Deep

21 (edited by Barefoot Doc 2008-02-17 02:48:51)

Re: Knowing who you are (and are not)

Looking at this from another angle consider Autoimmune disease which is where the body (self) cannot regognise what it and what it is not as a mirror or physical manifestement (somatisation) .
We know that vaccinations for example can teach the body to not regognise itself and as its a two way street between the physical and the subtle bodies both affect each other, so i think it likley that things like vaccinations
can actually cause mind/mental dissacociation of self from self if thats taken place in the body.

We know about the links between low self esteem and trauma and auto immune disease/cancer, in this sense the cancer or autoimmune is you, its not an outside enemy attacking you if you accept the cancer and change yourself and thus changing the cancer cells there is hope of recovery if the lessons are learned of why the body decided to grow cancer cells.
I suppose what i am trying to say is sometimes it seems that if we regonise the parts which are not us (or that we would not like to be part of us) rather than outright reject them should we be transforming them instead?

Its not like we are fractions of the whole but rather versions of the whole.