The last week was a period of some insight into myself, a rather difficult one, where I have started to see myself more clearly as what I have become and how I have been living in relation to everything and everyone, for a long time now. Sometimes I am using the Osho cards to assist myself with opening up the points for consideration. One card that kept coming up was Miser to which initially I did not pay much attention but slowly the awareness of myself as that has grown and is now undeniable, it’s here in my face.
The description of the card in the book:
This woman has created a fortress around herself, and she is clinging to all the possessions she thinks are her treasures. In fact, she has accumulated so much stuff with which to adorn herself–including the feathers and furs of living creatures–that she has made herself ugly in the effort. This card challenges us to look at what we are clinging to, and what we feel we possess that is so valuable it needs to be protected by a fortress. It needn’t be a big bank balance or a box full of jewels–it could be something as simple as sharing our time with a friend, or taking the risk of expressing our love to another. Like a well that is sealed up and becomes stagnant from disuse, our treasures become tarnished and worthless if we refuse to share them. Whatever you’re holding on to, remember that you can’t take it with you. Loosen your grip and feel the freedom and expansiveness sharing can bring.
The are many aspects of this in my case which are intertwined between each other and I can see that it will be an effort to take it all apart. Sharing is perhaps the biggest word encompassing many parts: like the inability to share myself with another where I take much for granted together with lack of gratitude for the people I have in my world and what they have done for me. Judging everything and everyone, trying to elevate myself and in this diminishing everyone else. Valuing my space so much that no one feels welcome in it. These are the main patterns I am aware of.
Until now I was somehow managing to hide this truth from myself by occupying my mind with more benevolent thoughts building on top of who I am underneath. It’s like layers of me that I exist as and as I peel one layer another gets exposed.
This exposure became possible through the conscious effort to stop participation in the usual thoughts that pre-occupy me day in and day out. This is where I started to feel quite a discomfort because I was no longer feeding myself with the energy to keep the outer layer characters, thus exposing that which is hiding under the surface – the Miser. What lurks even deeper is yet to be discovered, but even seeing this part of myself is challenging, and even here there are many dimension that i will have to work with.
As I become more aware of the miser within me, I can see that there many aspects of it coming from various sources. Unsurprisingly the main source appears to be coming from the family. It is interesting how I was always aware of this point in my environment but I managed to distance myself from that and actually fooled myself that I am better. And yes, there was a period where I was actively breaking this bond and living the openness and sharing, but somehow in time, I have hardened myself, became lazy and simply fell back into the tracks of who I was always supposed to be as the pre-programmed self. Money for sure seems to be an important factor in this shift, because I can see that since getting a job and starting to earn money and participating in the system and in this having to put up a mask – I have compromised much and never truly found a way to create a healthy balance. To be in the system but not of it – this is the point I have missed. It was much easier to simply give in and completely become a “normal” part of the system, in this no effort, no courage, no self-will is required. Just running on a default setting.
Considering myself to be a part of the Desteni group which stands for life and the end of abuse in every way, with only minimum participation, was kind of enough to feel a tiny bit better about myself and in this way manage the madness of the reality of me. It gave me the stability but no further growth. It’s the same with everything in life – if you do the minimum this is what you get. Surely being part of Desteni even at minimum participation and in this getting stability is a good deal for anyone because if we look around in the world there is much disharmony and stability is hard to come by. This is like the first step to get to, like a platform from where more things can be considered. Thus, I am grateful for being able to utilize this platform, as all the people within it, the available courses, the thousands of interviews on EQAFE on every imaginable topic for every possible eventuality of life. I truly have to humble myself here and give thanks to the people who make this possible and whom I have taken for granted due to my miserly attitude that I have accepted as myself without truly questioning it.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take people and things in my reality for granted, to take without giving back
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to build a fortress inside and outside where only that can enter which benefits me as who I have accepted myself to be as the character of greed and self-interest
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to shut down any regard for people immediately dismissing them through judgment and unwillingness to consider the deeper, common ground we all share
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create the fortress where I protect myself from experiencing the pain in me or another, where not all is welcome but only that which fits my limited rules of engagement
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create as myself the characters of apparent benevolence when the outer manifested reality as all my actions shows clearly that I am existing in complete separation and disregard for what is here in fact
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself into and as the mind characters with absolute minimum connection to life essence, just enough to feed and sustain myself as the mind characters and maintain relative stability
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge everything through my limited frames of definition, categorizing and classifying everything, including myself, where thus I am trying to place myself in a better position compared to others because apparently my survival depends on that
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize how I have become a part of the biggest disease inflicting humanity as that of separation and isolation from each other and all that is here as life where through the fear of survival and fear of each other we are creating our own demise
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deal only with symptoms of my disease by trying to feel better about myself, creating various ideas and believes about myself to keep myself stable instead of moving myself to discover the actual problem and where it is coming from to thus give myself the opportunity to see and live the potential that is here
I commit myself to continue self-investigation, sourcing all the courage possible to keep looking at myself as what I have become and in this find ways to forgive and correct myself
I commit myself to stop the pattern of only dealing with the symptoms of my disease/the separation that I exist in and as by trying to create relative stability in my life to actually walking and facing the deeper truth of myself
I commit myself to become comfortable with the discomfort of seeing myself for real by first accepting the parts of me that are in separation and then finding the most effective ways to transform into that which is best for all
I commit myself to continue the process of developing my awareness of the patterns that I utilize to hide from the truth of me and challenge those patterns by stopping my participation/feeding of those patterns with energy
I commit myself to work on developing the ability to welcome all parts of me into my life where I also develop self-trust to know that I can deal with whatever comes
To be continued…
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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trigger the reaction of depression within myself when and as I have failed within the point of having to participate in social situations with other people
That’s the character that comes in whenever I face a difficulty in my life where I as the character want to end it all, move away from the difficulty, start again, make another stupidity loop just to arrive to the same point over and over again – of having to face the difficulty of breaking the patterns of my accepted behavior. It’s so easy to just retreat and not face myself, to remain unchanged and even righteous by finding many justifications why I couldn’t bring myself to the point of change.
Arvydas' Journey to Life 