Knowing Thyself!

It was Feb 2019, and it was my last semester in college( where I spent 6 wonderful and happening years).?

I had just one course left, and I didn't need to stay in a hostel, so I decided to leave the hostel and live alone in a place where I didn't know anyone or have any friends.

I rented out a small room with a small kitchen and bathroom; when I saw that room, it was in a very messy situation. It looked so small, but I decided to stay there because it already had a huge whiteboard. (There are always signs)

Why did I decide to live alone in the first place?

1.) I wanted discipline in my life(badly), and I was aware of the role our environment plays. Living alone would make it easy for me to be disciplined VS living with friends or other people.

2.) I wanted to free myself from the conditioning of society, parents, relatives etc. that would affect my future decisions to what I wanted and how I wanted to live my life.

In my last 3 years of living alone, this is what I have learned, I have categorized knowing Thyself on 3 levels,

• Mental

On a mental level, I first realized how most of my thinking was useless and repetitive. I have been thinking of the same things, in probably the same manner, for years. I started becoming aware of my most common thought patterns. This was very important because I had learned that my thoughts created my reality.

Second, I started becoming aware of my strengths, skills, things I enjoyed doing, things I wanted to do, my values, my fears, and my blindspots, on a much deeper level.

Living alone gave me enough time, space and clarity, for the first time ever, to think about how I wanted to live my life. What kind of person do I want to become? And how to achieve that while enjoying the process.

Also, I learned that I was addicted to one and one thing only, and that was "thinking," this addiction was so severe I knew that this would take consistent inner work, but I was ready to embark on this journey.

• Emotional

We are not rational creatures that have emotions; we are emotional creatures that rationalize.

All decisions are emotional in nature, no matter how much we rationalize.

Then how to make better decisions?

What matters is, which emotion is driving that decision, is it coming from lower vibrational emotions such as?Fear, anger, and guilt?or higher vibrational emotions such as?happiness, freedom, excitement, or joy?

If you make decisions out of anger, in the end, you will experience more anger.

If you make the decision out of love, you will experience more love.

Then, I started learning about the purpose of so-called negative emotions. Anger, rage, sadness, and loneliness each served a purpose; prior to that, I was doing everything in my power to not face those emotions.

Numbing down or ignoring emotions is a very stupid thing to do. I learned that a very hard way. That's a topic for another Newsletter.

Once I learned to feel and be aware of so-called negative emotions,

Something strange started happening,

Now, I could experience sadness, anger, and loneliness and yet, at the same time, be at peace.

Earlier, facing negative emotions was similar to being in a river, and the intense flow of the river would sway me away; now I could watch the water flow like I was standing on a bridge and carefully observing.

Finally, knowing myself on a spiritual level.

Before I talk about that,

There is a catch,

As "Leon VanderPol" in his book, 'The Shift in Being," mentions this important distinction,

Knowing about yourself is not the same as knowing yourself.

But, what's the difference?

Knowing about your strengths, skills, emotions, personality type, what makes you happy, etc. is all, "Knowing about yourself, not knowing Yourself.

I am not saying it's not essential to know about yourself, but it's not the same as knowing yourself.

To understand it better, the cup in the picture is the container, and water is the content. The content is now water; it could be anything depending on the time and situation.?

The content can be considered as our thoughts and emotions, but that's not really you because they keep changing depending on the situation, time or person.

Isn't it?

So, Is it fair to say that we experience our thoughts and emotions?

Then who is it that experience those thoughts and emotions?

Is there something underneath it all that remains constant no matter what we experience? (time to pause)

Knowing yourself starts with a straightforward question,

"Who am I really"?

Am I the one who is doing the thinking?

Or

Am I the one who is aware of that thinking?

The more I experienced who I really am, the more and more my source of well-being started coming from that place; it's started coming from the inside like how it was supposed to be, like how it used to be as a child.

And the more that happened, the less and less I started needing anything outside myself to feel better.

I would still enjoy doing them, but now I don't need any of them, I am not dependent on them. And when that started happening, I could make more conscious choices in the direction of what I really wanted in my life and the change(s) I was looking for, started happening effortlessly.

All our sufferings, overthinking, anxiety, stress, and depression all happen when we over-identify ourselves with the content.

You cannot stay content if you keep identifying yourself with the content.

If you want to live a truly blissful and joyful life, there is no other way to do it than knowing yourself, knowing who you truly are.

Knowing that you are not the 'content' but the "container" and the "container" cannot be 'contained'.