A Fearless Self Discovery

A Fearless Self-discovery
Written by Sen on August 5th, 2012

If you are on this journey towards self-discovery, you are inevitably also on a journey towards a fearless expression, what I also call your natural expression unfolding. The mind immediately will associate something “spiritual” with these terms, basically because we always seem to associate this journey of self-discovery with some deluded notion of becoming unworldly – most of us have a very screwed up idea about what “spiritual” even means. Though a good part of self-discovery is about understanding your nature as the “spirit” (life-energy or stream of consciousness), that you are in your essence, this understanding is then used to burn through all the “hang ups” you have in your human nature, which you’ve created through holding on to fear-based/limiting thoughts, and thus realize your authentic expression – each of us is unique in our human nature, and so this discovery is very personal, and only you can explore this discovery in yourself, you can’t trust anyone else (not even your intimate spouse or your therapist of 10 years) with it because only you can meet yourself 100%, no-one else can do that for you.

The deal is that in order to discover yourself you have to be willing to be fearless of what you discover, and how your life will change with these discoveries; of course, the more you discover yourself the more aligned you feel, and the more abundant your experience of life is. It’s a fair warning that as you delve into this journey of self-discovery, you will reach a point (soon enough) where you realize there is no “U turn”; basically, when you see a truth about yourself, clearly enough, you can’t “un-know” it again, ever – it becomes a point of no return. Of course, there is nothing more liberating than the truth, and you will discover that the more you simply go with your truth the more interesting/enjoyable, and aligned, your life becomes – so this is not a “risk” rather it’s a path towards the freedom your being/heart desires so much. Basically there are two ways to live

1. You trade your inner freedom, or inner alignment, for a sense of pseudo-security

2. You don’t compromise on staying true to yourself

Both these choices are valid ways of living life, I am not saying one is higher than the other, it’s just a choice you are making based on your present state of understanding/awareness, and it’s where you are right now – of course, when you have a deeper awareness of your true nature as life-energy, you can’t help but make choice 2 as your default choice, and a conscious movement towards choice 2 is a natural path of growth. Also, when make the choice 2, long enough, choice 1 is no longer available to you because you lose the grip of your mind’s fear-based pull (which is required to live choice 1). Choice 2 also takes you into the realm of fearless expression, but by “fearless” I don’t mean “reckless”, a better way of putting it would be that you live an expression aligned with your true nature which includes operating from a place of inner wisdom.
Freedom from suppressing your natural expression

Basically, when you understand that what you call “your mind” contains a lot of thought patterns which are not really yours, rather they were fed externally by the outside influences or created through some misguided interpretation, you realize that you may be living a very disconnected life by following these conditioned patterns blindly. So many beliefs get seeded in the mind, and take roots because we don’t question them. Your journey of self-discovery will inevitably make you see all these unwanted weeds (some in the form of deeply rooted trees) growing in the space of your mind/being, and seeing them is a point of no-return, because when you see something false in you, you can’t go back to believing it fully.

When you make a commitment that you only want the truth, above anything else, this journey of self-discovery becomes a living movement in you. I can just give you an assurance that the truth is what really sets you free, the truth is what makes you feel liberated, it’s what makes you feel alive, makes you live what you desire to live in your heart. However, it’s very normal to have a strong fear towards discovering the truth, especially about yourself, about your human nature, about your non-physical nature, and about the reality of life in general. So how do you know what’s the truth? It’s quite simple, by it’s very nature, your being only finds interest/resonance in the truth, and the truth is what “sticks” when you let go of all forms of fear-based suppression – it’s only your fear-based grip that keeps you from seeing/discovering the truth on a constant basis.

A few ways in which you keep yourself from discovering/living from a place of truth, are as below

– You feel the need to keep convincing yourself about something. (truth doesn’t need convincing, it just sticks), for example, you may keep trying to convince yourself that you enjoy your job or that you need to be a millionaire

– You get scared if someone opposes a certain thought/belief in you (this fear just indicates doubt, and doubt indicates you are not clear about the truth).

– You find yourself “trying” to convince others about your beliefs (or your way of being), the inherent strategy being that the more people you can convince about your “beliefs” the stronger you will feel about the truth of it.

– You try to find groups who believe in the same things you do, and find security in this group. There is also fear about leaving a certain group that you associate your identity with.

– When you discover some truth about yourself, you try to “hold on” to it with all your might instead of being open to a constantly evolving expression. For example, you may discover that your expression is to be monogamous right now, but it’s possible that in a couple of years you may want to experience being polygamous – if you try to make “I am monogamous” as a conceptual truth about yourself which you hold onto, you end up creating resistance to what feels like a natural flow of inspiration.

– You are not flexible in incorporating new understandings. You don’t realize that the moment you try to hold on to a certain understanding, you’ve already missed the point of the process of awareness; it’s never about holding-on, it’s always about being open to discovery – anything that’s really true will remain true even if you don’t hold on to it.

– You give in to your fears and cling to what feels like “familiar” grounds, rather than develop the trust in your life-stream’s intelligence to fully take care of your well-being/abundance as you live your truth. You don’t realize that when you live your truth, you can’t help but feel abundant.

The primary step towards living your truth is to reduce your mind momentum. If you have a high mind momentum, there is a constant resistance, and emotional pressure, created by the negativity in the mind which keeps blurring out, and opposing, your movement towards self-discovery or your natural expression. Reducing the mind momentum takes time, and it’s very similar to a “detox” program, only here you are weaning off from your addiction towards your own mind – like any detox/rehabilitation period, it’s not very pleasant at-times, especially when there is an inner war between the mind’s fear-based pull and your space of being. The way you reduce the mind momentum is through coming to a state of inner allowing, where simply allow a free movement of mind/emotional-space in your open awareness, without attaching to these movements. (A lot of posts on this blog give a deeper understanding of the process of allowing – the practice of relaxed awareness, the state of total allowing, the space of being and reducing mind momentum are just some posts you may want to start with).
Beyond ideas of spirituality

Since Siddhartha Buddha became popular as someone who discovered his truth, the whole process of self-discovery has taken on a “sitting under a tree, in spiritual garments, with a divine smile and an angelic halo” tint, which is actually the reason for a lot of spiritual imagination around this process. It’s strange, but a lot of teachers who talk about self-discovery usually fit in (or try to fit in) with the “spiritual imagination” (the deal of a slow way of speaking, a sweet tone, a beatific smile, a larger than life charisma, slow gestures), mostly because this is the image of an “enlightened being” the masses associate with – I am not saying that these teachers are pretending/projecting, it could well be that this is their natural human personality, just like Siddhartha Buddha or Ramana were living their natural personality. It’s just that this type of “spiritual” personality can create a lot of false ideas in the minds of their students/seekers about how one would be after growing in awareness. These ideas can severely inhibit your process of self-discovery; always remember it’s a process of discovering who “you” are, not a process of making yourself into some image of who you think you should be.

Awareness is a process of “honest discovery”, the word “honest” is of essence here – if you don’t have the courage to be honest, within, you can’t really know yourself. It’s so easy to idolize personalities that we admire or feel in awe of, and it’s not long before we start trying to emulate this person’s way of being. If you truly want to grow in self-discovery you have to be willing to stand alone without holding anyone/anything as a model for your life – as long as you stay a “follower” you can never connect fully with yourself. It may seem easy to just stay a follower, and it’s totally fine if that’s what your present state of being is, but if you want to go on this journey of self-discovery you can’t hold on to the comfort of depending on the outside to tell you how to be.
The aloneness of self-discovery

A lot of people who get on this journey talk about feeling a sense of being alone, and of course you can’t help but feel this way because that’s the reality, life inherently is alone because it’s all there is, and you being the same life-energy are bound to sense this aloneness when you start sensing your reality/truth – once you embrace this feeling of aloneness you realize the freedom of it, it doesn’t mean you have to be alone and secluded on the outside, it’s just an inner feeling, it’s just a sense that you will always have your own individual journey to stay true to. This also means that you no longer cling to your “group” or even the sense of belonging to a certain ideology – only in this total inner aloneness can you really start seeing yourself clearly – it’s a total intimacy with yourself.

It’s mostly this sense of inner aloneness that people fear, and it’s one of the fears you need to transcend if you really wish to be true to the highly personal nature of self-discovery, especially in your human nature. If you fear being alone with your journey, you will eventually start making a fear-based choice towards clinging to a sense of belonging. This is definitely an initial challenge for many, but as you let go of this fear and continue on the journey you soon realize the sense of inner wholeness that lies beyond the feeling of aloneness – you stop feeling isolated, rather you feel fully connected with all there is, a sense of deep oneness, a state of real belonging, and this can reflect on the outside with you finding compatible relationships.

The fear of being alone is just one of the major fears you will contend with, as a human, as you venture on this journey of self-discovery, the other fears would be the fear of becoming dysfunctional, of being ridiculed/ostracized, of being different, of being financially un-supported, of becoming a failure/loser, of messing up your life, of becoming reckless, of becoming “bad”, of staying confused and unproductive, etc – you can imagine that it’s quite a challenge to move through these fears, but eventually you notice that these are just the fears of the mind based on its imagination; the process of self-discovery, of coming to your truth is nothing like what your mind fears, rather it brings you to living your true potential, and nature, in a fearless and abundant manner. http://www.calmdownmind.com/a-fearless-self-discovery/