Lack of awareness lies at the root of human suffering. Anything that you do without attention and mindfulness is in vain and in error.
The ancient Indian yogic scriptures, the Vedas, explain that God is consciousness itself. Because the God force is made of consciousness, for you to be aligned with God and life itself, you must be extremely awake and attentive to the smallest task that you perform moment by moment.
For more than 50 years now quantum physicists are stating that human attention and human intention influence the atoms and electrons, and that we humans can manifest our own destinies by placing our unwavering attention and focus on a particular outcome.
Please do not be absent from your own life; your life needs you! When your attention is absent from your own life; when you do not know your own inner landscape, you are living among the walking dead on earth. Most people are dead and do not feel their inner self. Most people have no clue who they are and they have no clue about their core essence.
Notice how often we humans look for electronic gadgets, other people, and all sorts of distractions in order to spend some time away from ourselves.You must make daily arrangements to meet yourself, to get to know yourself at the very root. Do not back down, do not distract yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, having an inner life is different from being anti-social. Once you come down to greet yourself and truly know yourself, you will fall in love with your own soul. With deep self-love your social life and your love life will improve dramatically.
The way to know yourself is to become easy in your own company. To become easy with your own company you must follow your breathing; you must spend time reading uplifting books; you must write down your diaries; you must spend time in nature; you must spend time with artistic activities; and you must spend time in prayer and meditation. Getting along with yourself requires an inward gaze. Having in inner life and knowing your inner landscape is nothing boring.
On the contrary, people who are always looking for external approval, distractions, and socializing, are in a way beggars begging for the company of superficial things outside of their own being. Being an emotional beggar is a bore.
In order to really know your own inner landscape, you must come face to face with the root of all your issues, fears, and doubts. For example, if you have spent the last 10 years without a mate in seclusion, the root of your problem may not be loneliness at all. The root may lay several layers deeper in your own lack of self-worth and deservedness.
Most people that I know keep themselves busy by just doing. Understand that work holism or pure doingness will not get you to peace and contentment. This is because keeping busy and just doing without knowing who you are and where you are headed is like laying bricks on a building structure without an architectural plan.
Come to understand that nothing on the outside (doing) can change your inside–who you are at your core. For example, if you think that studying for an MBA is going to make you feel more worthy or secure deep down; or if you think that getting a salary increase is going to make you feel more loving and kind, you are wrong! The core of your character can only change when your sub conscious beliefs change about who you are. Greet yourself kindly and more regularly through daily meditation and prayer (inward gaze) in order to develop self-love.
Instead of just distracting yourself by keeping busy, take some time to get to know yourself. Which are your core values? What are your life priorities? What do you like spending your time on most? Which are your true passions? What would you regret not doing if you were to die six months from now?
Write down your goals for the next week, for the next three months, for six months, for the next year and five years. Make sure that your eyes regularly come across your list of goals. Paste pictures that represent the kind of life you are seeking and look at those pictures or symbols regularly. Know that your subconscious mind which controls so much of your future grasps pictures and mental images much better than words and sentences.
In the present moment there is a Presence which we call the Witness in spirituality. When your mind is clear and calm; when there are less thought bubbles in your mind, there is a kind of intelligence that surfaces.That inner tranquility is a quality of the soul, the quality of just being. It is as if there is a very powerful and centered Presence within your inner silence.
Exercises in Staying Present and Gaining Self-Knowledge
- Pay attention to your inner physical sensations in order to feel your own body.
- Write or record your daily diaries in order to hear your own voice and and reflect on your own life story.
- Take walks and while strolling, pay attention to every minute detail.
- Stare up at the sky and with each exhalation, imagine that you are penetrating empty space further and further into oblivion. This exercise will quickly empty your mind.
- Follow your inhalation and exhalation with mindfulness as you perform the most menial daily tasks. Breath-meditation makes you very present.
- Engage in artistic activities and spend time out in nature.
- Each day take a comfortable seat, take 30 long slow breaths, all the while emptying your mind and relaxing your muscles, and then, visualize in full living color and in full detail, already living the life that you want to live three months, six months, or one year from now. Make it a real motion picture and feel the emotions that you would feel already living your ideal life. Remember that your subconscious mind does not recognize the difference between imagined reality and utter reality.
- Write down all of your goals where you can see them daily. The writing of goals is a declaration to the subconscious mind that you really mean it!
Many Blessings,
~ Kambiz Naficy
For more inspirational insights, I invite you to listen to my podcasts: joyoflife.podbean.com
