Life Beyond Change and Pain
One of the great and often self defeating identifications is that with our body. If we accept that dreams portray in images our conception of self, then dreams suggest that our identity largely depends upon having a body, its gender, health, quality, skin colour, the social position we are born into, and our relationship with others. In fact we know that if a person loses their legs, becomes paralysed, loses childbearing ability, becomes blind or is made redundant, they face an identity crisis. Yet despite all of that they still exist as a person, and if we realise that early, we can avoid all the pain and distress caused by a complete identification with our body.
An exploration of dreams shows an answer. It is easy to see that while you are convinced that your real identity is your body; while you are convinced that your emotions and thoughts are your only reality, you are incredibly vulnerable to uncertainties, fears, dashed hopes, feelings of failure, the emptiness of success and painful betrayals. These can toss you around like a scrap of paper in a gale. They can be the stress that is at the root of illness. Discovering yourself as anchored beyond change is enormously healing. See Avoid Being Victims
To find yourself anchored beyond change you need to have an awareness of your core self. to do this we have to first realise how we create our identity. We build our identity and our sense of self out of the language we are taught, being an individual body, a sexual creature and the many interactions with other people and the world. In a real sense we create each other by believing in and communicating with each other.
Losing an arm or leg, losing your physical beauty in age, may affect your thoughts and feelings, but those things do not in any way deplete your sense of existing. So if your body, your thoughts and emotions are not YOU, then what or who are you? What is it you can most securely identify with? What is it that is not shifting and changing and capable of being lost? How do I find the unchangeable?
The state of not knowing is important. It frees you of preconceived or rigid ideas and opinions that might stand in the way – so this step requires no belief. What it does require is a sense that there is something you do not understand that brings you into being. Take time to develop this condition of not knowing.
What I observe in people around me is that they often search frantically for help from others, and pay enormous amounts of money to gain such help. I see that they have little or no real certainty of their own innate power and wonder, and so always look to others. All I can say is that perhaps for some this is necessary. But it misses one of the greatest blessings we can find. That blessing is your own inner power and connection with the Core of your own existence.
But a simple way of touching your anchored self is to say over and over – I still exist – I AM beyond all I can lose – I AM.
You might be led to say, “I AM a failure – I am lost – I am in pain – I am without love – and so on. But remember that they are all expressions of emotions or thoughts and constantly change.
But you exist despite all the change, so say it with strength – I AM.
I realise I AM the Nothing and the Everything. But if i cannot realise the Nothingness I AM then I cannot know the Everything that I AM. It is a wonderful paradox.
See http://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/tonys-experience-of-stroke/
This technique is incredibly life changing. But it has to be made into a habit by using it frequently until it becomes active in the background of your waking and sleeping life. If you do not have time for the other approaches simply use this one.