OPENING OUR FIRST DOOR

The self is our entry way to understanding. It’s just that we can’t stay stuck in our self because that has a shelf life. We have to know our humanness. We need to understand our disposition. And to some degree we need to make peace with the work we need to put in to heal our past. Our self has layers. It is our common human strengths and weaknesses. Then we have our unique strengths and weaknesses. And then we have our paths which take into account our times and places.

To find any happiness in life, our view of the self needs to change. We must become travelers on paths. It is the old journey thing. What is personal always becomes the greatest source of our suffering. What rises from the personal is our truest, strongest and wisest self. In any good spiritual practice, we are always reaching for our better self, not striving too hard, not making it a burden, but we are seeking to grow. What we are growing from is what we see as our self.

Imagine a seed in the ground. It does not know what it really is. It may have a clue. In fact, it does have a clue, but it does not know. Years can go by for some seeds, whether being blown around or dormant under the earth. Seeds do not think but people do. A person says, this is jus me. Always getting blown around, or stuck under something. And we say this is the self. But all we know is the seed. And what if that seed was planted in toxic soil? And the seed absorbs such a thing. Is that what the seed is? A human seed begins to grow and it is constantly questioning itself? is this okay? Is this right? Am I moving too slow? And now we begin to think this is us. The one with all the questions and doubts. This is all the price of being human.

The self becomes and we find we are not what thought we were in ways, and yet exactly what we knew all along in others. This is the journey of the self in a nutshell. A process of uncovering our nature, Something in us remains the same, and yet what we become can be far more interesting than we imagined. Strength and resilience are non negotiable things for the self to become. A child does not complete itself by becoming a bigger child. This is a common thing due to the fear of age. In this we cease to become the best of us. The best of us is old and wise not young and beautiful. What becomes is beautiful through presence. Through a deep comfort with itself. To be at peace with your self is to be beautiful. It what makes children beautiful. Trees, even old trees, beautiful.

My friends, nothing is going to give you more trouble than your self. But your self is the doorway to wisdom and happiness. It is the test we are given, this self of ours. How will we navigate it? What will we teach it? How will we nourish it? What risks will we allow it to take? What is that sweet balance of courage and humility that gets us to best self? To embrace this journey, we must recognize that ur self cannot teach our self everything. Wise people gravitate to wisdom in others. The wisest people to the wisdom of others that reflects their own specific challenges.

The last thing I will add is that everything is selfish. It is a matter of what rewards we want for our selfishness. If our selfishness is personal, we will become a weight on others that no one wants to carry anymore. We will become disliked and alone. If our selfishness celebrates the wisdom of others, the betterment of others, we will be rewarded with friends, allies, and love. In the height of my own spiritual journey, I experienced a profound loss of self. It was intensely beautiful and I promised my self to pursue the path at all costs. But my first thought was, How selfish is this? Am I not pursuing this for the joy of being selfless? And do I not need some sort of self to navigate life? Am I truly selfless if I engage with life? Indeed no one can be completely selfless. That is a stone. Or a cloud. Or the sun. We all have a self. We just want our selfishness to be the joy of being unselfish! So get yourself together, for God’s sake. Personal selfishness has a shelf life. The wise know when the alarm rings. Those destined for bitterness and resentment do not listen to the bell. The ultimate fruition of the self is not the loss of self as some would say. It is the loss of the ignorant self. The loss of the self that causes us unnecessary suffering.It is such a weight lifted that it can feel like we have lot our whole self. But it is the weight of our ignorance. There is no rush. We can’t rush to this place We go through the experiences and steps that can lead us to place to letting go of our ignorance.