Sunrise at Mount Sinai, photo Guylène Briez

Introduction to life :

Where do we come from?
Why are we here?
What direction are we heading in?
Who are we?

We certainly ask ourselves these questions at least once in our lives. But how many of us dig deeper into these questions? Who among us really knows who they are and why they are here? A woman said to me one day, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” I answered, “Yes, you have lost the notion of who you really are because you are trying to be what you think you need to be in order to please others, to be loved and respected, to avoid problems… So you started to say yes when you really wanted to say no and vice versa. That’s how you got progressively further away from who you really are to the point of losing your true identity. All because we have been programmed like robots ever since we were children.

You have to work hard to make a living…
It’s an offer you can’t refuse…
One doesn’t say such things…
I don’t like that…
If you aren’t nice then you can’t have this…

Yes it is during our formative years that we are taught that if we don’t do what others expects of us then we will not be loved! And we can’t have that!!! So we tell ourselves that no one will love us if we are simply ourselves. We start to become a robot…. A so-called intelligent robot that figures out what others expect of us and responds accordingly. The problem is that one day we realize that this doesn’t work, that we aren’t more loved or respected despite our efforts and we still don’t feel good about ourselves.”

But why?

There are several answers to this question:

First of all, what we believe someone else wants is often miles away from what they truly want, because we are using our mind, which is influenced by our Ego. Therefore any judgment the mind makes is incorrect.
Secondly, when we lose our identity, we lose our self-worth… we don’t respect ourselves anymore! So how can we expect others to respect us if we don’t respect ourselves first?

“So how do we rediscover our identity, our true self?” this woman asked me.
Simply by changing and realizing what we are not.
“The other day,” she said to me, “I got violently angry for the first time at work.”
“That’s great,” I responded.
“No,” she said, “I felt terrible afterwards.”
“So you experienced what you are not, and you now know that you don’t want to get angry like that, which brings you a little bit closer to you what you are.

Know that there are many other solutions besides saying nothing, hiding, and getting violently angry. And one or more of them is a part of who you really are.
So continue to experiment like this and you will soon experience your true self.” “On the other hand we have other robots, those who believe that they are loved, who have a sense of entitlement, to whom nothing is refused. They are slumbering even more profoundly under the illusion of being. Since they don’t ask themselves any questions their Ego has such a hold on them that they think they are their ego and that anything that does not enter into their ego comprehension is false. These sleepwalkers are being manipulated by their ego and they don’t even know it. We could tell them, but they wouldn’t believe us and would just call us crazy.
But in an insane asylum the first sign that determines whether someone can recover and come out of it is the moment they recognize and admit that they are crazy.”

Introduction to consciousness and liberation.

So then what do we do?

First of all, we must wholeheartedly desire to make a real change, and recognize that we have been sound asleep.

Next we must become aware of and understand how life works in its different dimensions.

The first dimension we must look at is the psychic dimension, since it influences our daily lives and the way we have been programmed.

As in the so-called physical world, there are both constructive and destructive people in the psychic world, as well as orderly and disorderly places.

Psychics are in fact our egos speaking to and influencing us, and places are our mental projections into the future or the past. To perceive all of this we must leave the automatic world and regain control over our lives. Which means we must become awakened, or in other words, we must not lose touch with ourselves. For when we lose touch with ourselves, the mind and the Ego take over and we function on automatic pilot and that’s when the mind identifies with situations.

If the mind identifies a sensation as negative, then it feels hurt or attacked. Consequently, the mind creates a defense mechanism called Ego, which either counter-attacks or tries to avoid those kinds of situations in the future.

If we are insulted then we insult others, if we are pushed to drink then we drink…

We should avoid these kinds of automatic reactions, which are incontrolable and impulsive.

In order to do so we must stay in the present moment so that we can remain conscious and not lose touch with ourselves. If we can do that, all of our sensations will be interpreted by our conscious mind rather than our ego, which will then process our impressions and transform them into something else.

Let me give you an example

Think back to your adolescence, to a day when a teacher or parent was unable to explain something, and their lack of awareness and presence triggered a terror or anger program within them. At that point they began to get carried away, to get angry, and in turn your mind kicked in its ego which is programed to defend itself by counter-attacking, or worse, by sadness expressed in order to receive pity or leniency. In both cases you languish internally and became frustrated externally. Whereas if you had been fully present with yourself, your conscious mind would have generated your impressions and would have identified the other as a desperate person who had lost touch with themselves and became angry because they got stupidly carried away by their programming. You wouldn’t identify with this situation because the other person is not angry with you but rather with themselves, since they are the one that can’t explain things correctly. You would stay calm and would feel compassion for this poor robot. You wouldn’t lose your composure because of their anger, and you would remain concentrated on the essential, which is your true self.

In summary, all you need to do is to become aware that you are on automatic pilot most of the time. You have been sleepwalking and you must awaken by living in the present moment.

In the present moment you can begin the introspection necessary to observe the patterns that seek to find expression as soon as we lose touch with ourselves. Once we have become aware of these programs, we can consciously observe them until we realize that they serve no purpose and are all completely inappropriate and obsolete. Written by Brahmadev,

Belgium, Introduction to a workshop on holistic energy healing.