Right Vision vs. Surrender and Awareness: finding your path to be, become, and evolve is about clarity, intention, and willingness to flexible in the moment.
Participant: I’m part of some other groups, and I’m also reading a lot of books, because at this stage in my life, this is what’s most important to me. And what I’m noticing is that essentially advice about how to be and evolve is really split into two different ways. One is to have the right vision, to have a daily discipline of things to do, of calm, of meditation, of the work there is to do. It’s work. And to me, it felt without even me knowing it until recently, it felt like there’s effort involved.
And the other way is essentially surrendering, developing awareness of just what life brings you and just being, resting in that place of knowing that everything’s happening the way it should be for you. It’s a kind of more trusting way, and I’m wondering, which part of this is right, or if it’s a mix, how much of one and the other there is, and if it’s not a mix, which one is it?
Cheryl:
Okay, I love this. Thank you.
Oh, it’s like they’re settling in for a long conversation.
So, the short answer would be that it’s a little bit of both.
And in some respects, it’s none of it.
If the goal is, you used the phrase to be and evolve, if that’s the goal to be aware of who you are and to feel yourself progressing and evolving, they would see that as an intention.
They would see that as a clarity about what you think your life is about.
Because not everybody’s got that kind of goal, some just want to make it till they retire and then whatever happens.
That could be one of them.
Or life has always been crap and I don’t see it’s going to get any better so it doesn’t matter what I do, right?
There’s all these different ways to perceive the meaning of life and what your purpose in life is and all of that kind of thing.
So if the idea is to be evolved, then they think that what’s at the root of that or at the foundation of it is a focus on what brings you clarity.
What brings you the sense that you can trust your awareness.
What brings you happiness and joy?
And different people get to all of that in different ways.
So what you described, like having a daily discipline of some kind, you’re doing meditation, being calm, surrendering, trusting, all of that are actually like different ways that somebody can get to the foundation for themselves.
Let’s call this being and becoming, because that’s a phrase they see as about being aware of what’s now and being willing to step into the flow, into the unknown of how you can progress, how you can learn, how you can expand.
That’s what they think becoming is.
Not everybody gets to being and becoming the same way.
And while for some people, it is about sitting very quietly and learning how to meditate, for other people, it’s about getting up and moving.
It’s about taking a conscious approach to working through whatever is in front of you.
And that for some people exhibiting calm is an indication that they’ve been on the path for a while, and they’ve gotten to the place where they’ve calmed down.
Whereas, for some people, being calm is actually an indication that they may be in a state of denial.
It’s very much more about your particular experience of what brings you into awareness and into a conscious process with yourself of your being and becoming.
And while there may be lots of similarities from person to person, or group of people to group of people, ultimately, we all have our own little nuances.
We need this button turned up a little, and this one turned completely down, where you might want, need it, opposite to that.
And because they see that the path of our being and becoming, the highest potential of our path of being and becoming is learning to become comfortable stepping into the unknown.
It’s ultimately that ability to step into the unknown that ends up having both the greatest impact and offers usually the broadest opportunity.
Because it’s allowing ourselves to be comfortable with the idea that we don’t know everything and that being in that place and being comfortable in that place has a bigger effect on being and becoming than just choosing a path and saying, this is the only way that can happen, because what you’ve just done right there is create a limit.
So, if you say that the only way that you can get to the depths of your being and becoming is by being a vegetarian who meditates three hours a day, you just created a limit for yourself.
It’s not that you can’t do it that way, and it’s not that people don’t do it that way.
It’s just that if you’ve decided that’s the only way that it can happen, then you’re not going into the unknown.
You basically buried your head in the sand.
Part of this whole process of being and becoming is learning to trust yourself.
And part of what happens with learning to trust yourself is learning that some things work really well for you and some things don’t, and being comfortable with that, right?
So, you’re not going out and getting a list that’s been created by whoever, a religion, a spiritual tradition, a yoga tradition or whatever, and then just following that, in a vain hope that, if you do what they tell you to do, you’re going to get to where you want to go.
And the main reason why that actually doesn’t work is because being and becoming is based on what I call an inside out process.
Going and getting someone else’s list of what to do is basically an outside in process.
So, you’re going outside of yourself to find some source of truth and then bringing that into you and trying to make it your truth.
And it’s not that you can’t learn anything from it.
It’s not that that’s just an insanely stupid thing to do.
No, it’s not that.
It’s that you didn’t trust yourself to start within you first so that when you go out in the world, you’re looking through the lens of what works for you, as opposed to looking through a window at what seems to work for others.
And again, not that that’s a bad thing to do.
It’s just that there is no certainty for you to take on what works for someone else, because your path is unique.
We all walk paths.
Often, we walk paths together with people, but ultimately, our path is our path and so it’s about learning to trust yourself that you can walk your own path.
Does that make sense? Do you have any follow up questions for that?
Participant: No, it works. It works.
Participant: Can I make a comment? I felt spirit around me all the time you were speaking, Cheryl, and I felt a real freeing in what you were saying. Very freeing, because I don’t think that we often realize that we limit ourselves by trying to do other people’s programs, or other people’s traditions, or their way as the only way. And so I found it very freeing.
Cheryl:
This is part of both the challenge and the opportunity of what I think of as physical spiritual integration.
That’s the process that we are in the midst of going deeper and deeper into in a variety of ways.
When we as humans are more dominated by the body and the mind over the heart and the soul, it’s not that we don’t think integration can happen, it’s just that we’re essentially taught that you have to get to a state of perfection in order to transcend this horrible place to get to that kind of spiritual integration.
That it’s not possible for human beings to do that here on the planet.
Whereas if physical spiritual integration is a process that is happening for people right here and now, it means that we have a capacity to enjoy both our physical sides and our spiritual sides in a way that we have been taught or have believed is not possible.
But when you’re in a place of body and mind over heart and soul, then it is much more a focus on outside in.
So it is about finding a program that works for you.
It’s going someplace and having somebody tell you, this is the way this works.
This is why you’re having problems.
So if we just do ABC, we take care of it.
And in one way, that’s convenient because in some respects, it’s just easier to be told what to do.
But the problem comes when it doesn’t work for you.
Like when it doesn’t work for you, you are now in a place of having to decide why it’s not working.
And generally, the consensus is if it’s not working for you, it’s because you’re doing it wrong.
Somehow, somewhere, you have failed.
So it reinforces the sense that we have to go out in the world to prove our worth, just even to feel comfortable and happy in our lives.
Whereas if we believe in our intrinsic self- worth, we don’t feel that kind of push, and we feel it is easier to trust ourselves, both within who we are, like being able to focus on our inner sense of balance and power as the guides for how we choose to learn and to live.
That means that we’re taking on the responsibility, right?
When we go out and we get someone else’s program, we’re basically, in a sense, giving up responsibility for ourselves.
Some instances would probably be worse, and some would probably be a little bit better on that score.
But when we trust ourselves, we are taking on responsibility for our lives.
And that isn’t always a comfortable place to be, especially if you’re used to having someone tell you what to do.
But at the same time, if you’ve been struggling with something, taking this responsibility on for yourself gives you the opening to be able to tweak it and shape it so that it does work for you, right?
Like, wait a minute.
I don’t need to meditate.
I can just go out and take a one mile hike every day.
And the quiet and the calm and the peace I bring into myself in doing that is the same thing I’m looking for by trying to learn how to meditate, right? So that instead of being focused on trying to attain the skill perfectly, what you’re focused on there is the experience and the outcome that you’re looking for yourself, which is what you use to try to determine what you want to do.
So that way, because especially as you learn to trust it, you have an inner sense within yourself of what’s going to work for you.
And learning how to follow that and trust it is what makes the difference here.
Or you find, I can’t meditate every day, like once a week on a Saturday works really well for me.
And so then on the other days, I’m going to do this or that.
Right? So you have this way of working it out and that this is true for, not just what we would call spiritual practice, let’s say, but it’s true for pretty much anything that you do in your life.
And sometimes it’s kind of continual refinement because when you learn something, you don’t all of a sudden just stop, right? Especially once you get into a path of learning, it’s something that you continue with for and with yourself, over and over again, right?
Most people who start on a learning path do so because they are interested in continuing to learn.
They don’t say, I just have to learn this much, right? Because outside in is much more about getting a certain volume, whereas inside out is that learning becomes one of your prime spiritual practices that you do over and over and over and over again, right?
There’s not that sense that there’s only a finite body of knowledge to learn.
You’re learning how to learn because you’re also learning to deal with the infinite nature of the environment that we live within.
So it also ends up being less about perfection then, because the outside in way of everything is very much geared towards perfection.
Like the whole push to go out into the world and prove your value is absolutely a path towards perfection, right? That’s the thing.
That’s the carrot on that stick that pulls you out of you and says, if you’ll just do what we’re telling you is the best thing to do, not only will you get the carrot, but you will then be deemed worthy and you will find the perfection that you’re looking for.
Whereas if you’re moving inside out, it’s not about perfection.
It’s about the experience in the moment of, let’s say, balance, or the experience in the moment of trust, or the experience in the moment of just this sense that you’re aligned within yourself with All That Is, because you’re no longer experiencing limit.
Outside in wants you to believe that there’s nothing but limit, and it’s part of why it would rather you never take on inside out, because you learn the truth that there is no limit.
And you’re much more in a place to be controlled if you believe that the only solution is outside in.
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