Okay, phew! Sorry if that last section was a little intense, but sometimes those thoughts can see all consuming and need to be put in their proper place and a functional relationship established between the real you and the many voices and images that float around in your mind. Now that this has been accomplished, let’s move on to the much more interesting and ultimately powerful experience of discovering your true self that exists beyond your story. As you discover and experience who you truly are, you can create whatever story or stories you desire, or live without a story, knowing always that who you are is beyond any idea.
As the eastern tradition has maintained for centuries, the world of form and phenomena is an illusion, maya. It is insubstantial, appearing as but a dream within consciousness. It has no inherent existence in and of itself. It appears to you to be real only because you are involved in the dream and don’t yet see it as a dream. You mistake the dream for reality and thereby suffer.
The beauty of this, however, is that you can always wake up. You can always wake up from the dream. When this happens, the dream continues, but you remain unaffected. You see yourself as an actor in a play, doing whatever needs to be done, playing whatever role needs to be played, but knowing always that you are not the role you are playing. You realize that life happens, events happen, but you no longer identify with the happenings. You remain fully engaged and yet affectionately detached, playing the role without being controlled by it.
So the question thus becomes, how do I wake up from this dream? How do I play my role with love and compassion, fully engaged, and yet aloof? How do I know my true self, the essence that is beyond space, time, and causality, the reality that is beyond all experience, and yet is the cause of all experience? How do I know myself as something neither thinkable, nor perceivable, nor conceivable, and yet the power that allows everything to occur?
This, of course, is a question that spiritual inquirers have been asking for millennia. Here are some of the insights that have impacted me most profoundly in my own journey:
1. Meditation
Most people spend the majority of their lives doing. Parents are shuttling their children to school, soccer practice, and piano lessons. There are deadlines to meet, groceries to buy, work that needs to get done. With all of this frantic doing, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that you are a human being, not a human doing.
A regular meditation practice allows you to schedule specific time to simply be. It is a time where you withdraw your senses from the external world and bring your attention instead to your inner landscape, the home of all true riches. A consistent meditation practice helps you learn to shift your attention away from feeling, doing, and having to simply being.
Ultimately, this awareness of being, not being this or that, but simply being will remain with you whether you are washing the dishes, tending your garden, rushing to meet a deadline, or anything else that life might require of you. But meditation is the beginning, the place to practice this shift in awareness.
2. Not this, not that (neti, neti)
Another incredibly effective technique for discovering who you are beyond your story is to consciously remind yourself of everything that you are not. You cannot know what you are at the level of the mind; it is impossible. However, you can know what you are not. As you systematically and continuously remind yourself of what you are not and let it drop away, who you truly are comes into the focus of direct perception, meaning that although you cannot know it, think it, or describe it, you can be it.
The technique is simply this: remind yourself that anything you experience is not you. If you can taste it, touch it, smell it, see it, or hear it, it is not you. You are nothing you can perceive, but that which makes perception possible. You are nothing that you can experience, although you are that which makes all experience possible. You are nothing that you can sense, although you are that which makes sensing possible.
Simply and gently proceed by using your mind to remind you of everything that you are not, which is easy because if the mind or the body can perceive it, it is not the real you. Through this process of negation, you will come to know your true being, which can only be known through being Itself.
This analytic process is known as Neti-Neti, which means not this, not that and is used to progressively negate everything to experience the Ultimate Reality of Being, which is here, now, and always has been. The only barrier to experiencing It is the focus of your attention which is turned to all that is perceivable instead of to the power of perception itself.
3. You are not the body, nor the inner-world of thinkables, nor the outer-world of perceivables
Along these same lines, here is another technique for discovering your true self. This is one of my favorites because of the complete irony for anyone who struggles with a negative body image.
For most people most of the time, their awareness is exclusively focused in the body. Most people believe themselves to be the body. I mean, who are you if you are not the body? Therefore, millions of people spend their lives trying to perfect the body and prevent it from growing old, decaying, and dying. If you have struggled with disordered eating or Negative Body Obsession, your relationship with your body appears to dictate your entire life.
So here is the irony: the body that you have been so worried about, the body that has seemed so ugly, so fat, so weak, so impossible in every way, the body that you have tried to perfect only to deem it imperfect – you are not this body. In fact, the body only occurs in your mind, and, you are not your mind either. So this problem that has seemed so real, so overwhelming, so ubiquitous, this problem of your body and your mind – you are neither body, nor mind, nor the problem that is appearing. Who you are in reality is beyond all of it.
So whenever you find yourself obsessing about your body, worrying about your body, lamenting about your body, whatever its condition, remind yourself that you are not your body. When you find yourself trapped in your mind, seemingly controlled by negative thoughts that seduce into believing them to be true, gently remind yourself that you are not your mind. You are not who you think yourself to be; you are not limited by the body-mind that you currently identify with.
In this way, you can face your struggles with food, your struggles with your body, the mental angst, with gratitude and even reverence instead of with anger, resentment, and despair. You can face it with gratitude because it is through this struggle, in many ways because of this struggle, that you have an unparalleled opportunity. Whatever problems you have had with your body and with your mind allow you now to realize that you are neither body nor mind and can go beyond both.
Who you ultimately are is beyond your story. For the time being, you are appearing as a body-mind and are engaged in the world of form and phenomenon. Realize, however, that no matter what story you tell, your true self, your unalterable essence is beyond your story. You cannot access this part of yourself through your mind, the mind by its very nature creates, divides, and analyzes. You can only access this part of yourself through being. This immutable essence has always been there, is there, and will always be there. You experience it through letting go all that is of the mind and abiding in the stillness and silence of the unfathomable.
Ready to begin your journey? Post your intent on how you plan on loving your body and loving your life today.
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About the Author
Sarah Maria is the author of Love Your Body, Love Your Life. The book outlines her 5-step process for helping you feel great in and about your body and yourself. Her work embraces the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, so that true and lasting healing can occur. Click here to purchase your copy and begin to love your body today! To learn more about Sarah Maria and her work, you can visit her websites at www.sarahmaria.com and www.breakfreebeauty.com
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