Buddha & 4 views to shatter false assumptions

Sometimes inspirational mentors can be well-known yet, rather obscure.  They can set an ideal or a standard which prompts you to reflect on how you view yourself.  For me, Buddha represents mystery and heightened awareness. The three phases of his life experience--Siddhartha the prince, Gautama the monk, and Buddha the Compassionate, enlightened one, all set examples that urge the rest of us to redefine our own awakening:

1) Discover the truth.  According to Buddha, the individual person or concrete sense of self are illusions.  He grew to sense how ignorance and attachment lead human beings to create false assumptions and misunderstandings, including getting stuck in a limited self-view, rather than embracing unconditional love and infinite potential.  He urges us to willingly rethink the meaning and temptations of ownership, possession and control.

2) Believe in karma.  This brings us to the principle of 'what goes around comes around.'  Emotional attachments can weigh heavily on the human soul.  If a soul is held back by a sense of failure, fear, pain or regret, then it may be reluctant to heal the past.  Your prior experiences influence your psyche.  Good karma, means acting well so to ensure a healthy psyche in years to come (fruit of karma).  Past lives also influence where you are.

3)  Review your patterns.  Buddha claimed we tend toward or away from anticipated suffering. Learn why you hate or fear not getting what you want, or not receiving.  Conditioning leads you to distinguish good feelings from bad. Buddha appeared to grow from the hardships and pain of reality that Prince Guatama knew of in this world.

4) Follow the Middle Path.  Eliminate your attachment to existence, desire, and prosperity, and a way to the Middle Path will be revealed. This is achieved through the Holy Eightfold Path which includes; Right Belief, Right Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Means of Livelihood, Right Endeavor, Right Memory, and Right Meditation.

Building a mindset like Buddha leads to insight, then acquired wisdom, which yields calm, knowledge, and eventually, Nirvana. Buddha deduced all else was linked to some unnecessary suffering.  He felt true peace and happiness could only be experienced through your mind and true pain and suffering could be felt in reality.  Whether or not we agree, we're invited to explore new ways of being to overcome our resistence to change.

7 Ways to experience your authentic self

To experience your authentic self would mean to experience your deepest, heart-felt dreams.  As you evolve to deduce that how you think creates who you are, then you will sense benefits in these steps which can guide you to get-in-touch with your soul:

1) Be present.  No matter what you have in mind, to be present solely in body won't get you where you wish to go.  You need to evolve to be present emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.  This implies developing greater holistic awareness of yourself.  Sift through the barriers you project that keep you focused and grounded in the past.

2) Speak your truth.  This means you learn to express how you feel with no fear of judgment, reprimand, criticism or punishment.  You can express feelings while nurturing love and respect for others, and for yourself.  As you work on whatever issues relate to your particular soul development, you will also connect with like-minded souls. 

3) Listen to and from the heart.  To discern the inclinations of your soul, you need to be more attuned to all aspects of everyday life.  The key is to trust in the process, in all events that unfold. To have faith in your intuition is to trust and grow your connection with the Forces behind your thoughts and feelings.  Use senses to read other senses.

4) Detach from outcomes.  This kind of attitude prevents you from being controlled by the ego-mind.  Value can always be found in choosing to learn from life experiences and choosing to change yourself. You have opportunities to increase your strength and awareness, to sharpen your ability to overcome inertia, and heal yourself.

5) Strengthen your will.  Visualize everything as you would will it to happen.  Increase your awareness of the possible advantages of channelling your own will energy.  Consider why you need it.   Take steps to apply it.  Connect with your Divine plan now. 

6) Dissolve your fears.  Any reason or excuse you offer for not doing what you truly desire is actually hiding an underlying fear.  If you aim to talk youself out of your dreams, you simply devalue your experience and you also forget you create your own illiusons. 

7) Eliminate distractions.  This is done from inside yourself and naturally shifts your attention to where it should be.  The only way to get to the bottom of distractions is to get in touch with your sense of purpose and priorities.  It all gets back to being honest and loyal to the person you are.  Without that, you distort your sense of the truth.

4 Tips to discern more about yourself through blogging

The more you read about blogs and blogging strategies, the more you may think about how similar strategies could assist you in different ways. Inspired by Tina Su of ThinkSimpleNow.com  who wrote a great guest blog on Problogger, and also inspired by ideas offered by Jason Ivers on  A Miracle A Day.com, I decided to prompt you to ask some of your own questions to empower you to develop dreams in your own way:

1) Why are you blogging? Lots of people blog to pass the time.  You may do it when you're bored, daydreaming or, to satisfy a desire to learn.  Some of us blog to connect with like-minded people, to search for answers, to obtain advice or direction or, as a means to compensate for emotional voids.  You may be driven to forge relationships or to postpone another reality.  Probe yourself with questions to get the ball rolling.  As you figure out why you blog, its easier to notice what isn't working and decide to change.

2) What are your blog goals?   Sometimes people start a blog to narrow their life focus.  They may blog about anything and everything, and gradually realize they prefer discussing fewer subjects.  This can help clarify an identity or purpose.  If your purpose is soul-searching or venting, blogging can be an effective, emotional outlet. Yet, if your main purpose is something else, like, to inform, to increase your traffic, build a client base or, to promote particular services, then you can see how reflecting and focusing your motives would help you immensely.  Brainstorming is a fantastic starting point.   

3) How does a blog teach you about yourself?  How you choose to contribute or present blog info reflects your priorities and offers a glimpse into your personality. Are you goal-oriented? Ambitious? Confused? In-transition? Does the spirit of a teacher emerge in your soul? Do you have a particular audience or community's interests in mind? Its not only what you instinctively write that reveals things about you, but also the kinds of readers your energy invites into your life.  As your blog intentions become clearer, readers are more likely to gravitate and benefit.  People readily reconnect when drawn to a threads of interest (or other appealing things on offer).  As you sense blogs are a means of raising self-awareness, you gain your own momentum.  

4) Who are your readers?  Although blog visitors don't always leave comments, you can progressively gain insight about the kinds of people who visit and revisit your blog.  Consider systems that help you compile statistics.  You can determine details like which sites link your blog, which key words and articles are most popular, you can obtain geographic information abut your visitors and subscribers.  You can offer questionnaires and suggestion boxes to generate feedback.  It all depends on what you want.

So, the more you discern through blogging, the clearer you grasp what you want.  To get what you want, structure your blog to help others get what they want.  Simplicity means getting to know yourself in ways that become mutually-beneficial.  Now, run with it.

Transcend the pain

Do your habits of perceiving and understanding your life serve you or do you serve them? Pain is a signal you can learn to explore and grasp at different levels of awareness.  What you sense in your present, or anticipate in your future is grounded in your limited view ofthe past.  How would you dissolve unwanted patterns and unlock your true intuition?

You only cope with pain as you accept and understand its message.  As you evolve to recognize meanings behind your pain, that is, the reasons for past emotional wounds in need of healing, the quality and intensity of your pain changes.  In other words, you discover more effective ways of dealing with it. You can react positively to pain, and find ways to heal.  You can encourage an absence of intention to dwell on the past.  The more pain you expect, the quicker the controlled will of your ego will thwart your plans to access your unconscious, and the harder it becomes to filter your perception.

Time exists only for continuity of memory.  This can seem like a prison if you ground yourself in your recollections of discomfort.  What if you released memories? In actuality, you are infinite, immortal and enlightened. These are your baseline states, often overshadowed by the turbulence of mind and your vivid imagination.  Re-experiencing pain is choosing to dwell on bad memories. Your personality manifests when experience is associated with the past and projected into the future as expectations.

Rest assured.  At the core of your being, you are connected with the love and light that define your authentic self. As you sense the knowledge and intelligence of your centre, you will sense it orchestrates not only phases in your physical life, but all the lives.  Something beyond you encourages your process of change and renewal. 

As you step back, you begin to discern you only act as an observer of experiences, but you are not the experiencer.  You are the spirit that occupies no time or space.  You may think and feel.  Yet, you existed before perceived experiences and you still exist after each one. Spirit is the immeasurable potential of all that is, was and will be. 

What are you trying to prove?

You may be unsure how you would define your sense of success. Perhaps you wonder whether the way you approach the subject now could or should change. As you go through your process of self-reflection, it will help to eliminate what success isn't:

1) Success isn't defined by what you do. The nature of your work isn't an accurate measure of self-worth. Your identity isn't based on the category or label you get in relation to your source of income. Success isn't something you gradually achieve based on your level of responsibility, social status, military rank, position, employer, pension fund or, degree of external approval that evaluates your performance. If you earn a lot of money or a little money, this doesn’t translate into a lot or a little success. Its not allocated based on seniority. Its revealed based on whether you learn to do what you do to the best of your ability.

2) Success isn't guaranteed (or not) by your Alma Matter. The institutions that provide you certain kinds of training or education are no guarantees of a sense of success. Reputation is something you evolve to create for yourself based on your own choices and behavior in "the real world." People who have little or no formal education also create their version of success. It’s not the courses, internships or apprenticeships that bring you success, but how you apply your free will, develop a thirst for knowledge and take advantages of opportunities to learn.

3) Success for you isn't assured by your family, friends or colleagues. The people you choose to form your entourage are not your gauge for success. You choose the treatment you will accept or reject and the people who help you set these guidelines. You evolve to delimit or extend your emotional boundaries. You decide what it takes to inspire you to feel good. You decide when to forge relationships or to strengthen those you already have. You always learn from other people and their life experience. Yet, how your personality unfolds, the skills you choose develop or not are what enable you to savor life your way. Success isn't something you can measure by the quantity or lifestyle of friends and relations. You have nothing to prove. You just are.

In essence, success is defined by how you create your wounds and transform your fears. It grows as you evolve to love and accept everything about you, including all qualities and traits, all your past choices and perceived mistakes or "learning experiences." A sense of success will intensify as you stop judging strengths and weaknesses, stop highlighting what you falsely assume is missing, lacking or rejected about yourself. Success is your awareness of the effective healing process within yourself. You are worthy. You are loved, heard and appreciated as you are. How prepared you are to confront your own issues determines the healing that occurs and how you view and experience success. Learning how to rebalance on a conscious level is part of the process of self-discovery.