In Spiritualism, there is a process referred to as unfoldment. It's a process whereby you work on yourself to heal the aspects that are not yet healed. Once it is healed, you work on another aspect. This makes a lot of sense to me, except I don't think heal is the most accurate term. To heal implies that something is injured, which I don't believe to be the case. I would prefer to use the term awareness.
Are you consciously peeling back your layers? Or do you still believe you are the onion? I've been pondering this for a while. We are born with no previous conditioning, and so life is a playground. There are no concepts of shoulds or shouldn'ts. We climb on chairs, we scream when we feel like it, we cry and then we laugh the very next minute. There are no rules. There is no right and there is no wrong.
As we become older, we take on the programming of our parents, our peers, and write our own story of how we are supposed to be, the best way for us to behave. Most of the time. this occurs unconsciously. The programming is executing while we are in a walking slumber. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is time to awaken from the sleep and re-claim the driver's seat.
I see us (human beings) as a combination of machinery (the human physical components), combined with software (the thoughts that run the machinery) and the programmer (our conscious selves). If we are not aware of our own programmer, then the machine happily obeys the instructions of the software that is already running. It can sit there for it's entire physical existence running and re-running the software that is already running. The conditions that our parents installed, our peers installed, our school teachers installed, the guy at the deli, the neighbor, basically anybody who we've ever "bought" a concept from that has added to our suite of programs.
Once you are aware that you have access to the programmer-self, you can choose to delete certain programs that no longer serve who you are. You can even write new programs that serve who you are today, and who you want to be tomorrow.
How does this translate into practice? Once you are aware of these dimensions of yourself (machinery/software/programmer), you can begin to question, at any point in time, who is running your show? Is it the existing programming (your conditions of the past) or is it you, the programmer?
For example, you bought your wife some jewelry and she thanks you but didn't gush over it. You are frustrated because you feel that she didn't really appreciate it, all of the effort that you went through to select it. You resent her a little and even feel slightly under-appreciated. Was it really your wife that caused you to feel resentful? She is an external component, a peripheral device if you will, another person. What is the programming that you are running that tells you you are under appreciated? Perhaps your parents ooh'd and ugh'd over your achievements as a child, and therefore you only feel appreciated if people verbalize extensively their appreciation of your actions. Or perhaps it was the opposite, your parents never acknowledged you as a child for any accomplishment or thoughtful deed, and you still look for that in your adult life. What is the program that is churning? and does it still serve you? Can you delete that program because it makes you feel lousy every time? Can you re-write it so you don't require an external person (your wife, your co-workers, whoever) to validate you? Install a new program that tells you to feel happy because you did something nice for someone else".
Another example is
Somebody cut you off in traffic and your anger is triggered. It is not actually the driver of the other car that caused your anger. The anger was already inside you, and the person or circumstance simply activated it. Thus, you have to ask ourselves the question, what in my past caused my anger to flare when people behaved obnoxiously? You may see that back in school, some kid cut you off in the cafeteria line, or bullied you and you began to associate such circumstances with an angry response. Perhaps your memory does not allow you to remember anything that specific at all. The main point is that you are looking. The idea is not to find incidences from the past, although that helps tremendously. Rather, it is about shifting the focus of responsibility from being 'out there' to being 'in here' within yourself.
There could be a million reasons why the person cut you off in traffic, perhaps he was just obnoxious, perhaps he was oblivious, perhaps he was rushing to take his child to the emergency room. Know the why isn't as important as being aware of the trigger within you, and letting it go. Letting it go requires altering your state of being in the present moment. For me, I take a deep breath in through my nose, holding it for a few seconds and then exhaling through my mouth. I repeat this a few times. It also helps me by focusing in that moment on what I am grateful for, related to that particular circumstance. For example I'm glad I got out of this one accident free.
***********************************************
I believe that the truth is in the eye of the beholder. It's all about perspectives and thinking outside the box. This is something I challenge myself to do. For me, it's a part of the entertainment of being a member of the human race.
The next time you look in the mirror, look at your reflection a little longer than you normally would and ask yourself, "Who am I"? I challenge you to challenge yourself to distinguish who runs your show. Is it the existing programs from the past? Or do you write your own programs?
