Remember This The Next Time You Are Upset
I no longer have a personal prayer. I have the prayer of aligning with that which is — the impersonal flow of the divine that starts beyond space and time. We live in the experience of the illusion, and we forget about the divine. The clouds of thought disguise who we really are. As Hafiz so beautifully wrote:
You are God hiding from yourself.
Remove all the “mine” — that is the veil.
…
You are God in
Drag!
Waking up to this is the direction I want to look in.
Not only are we God hiding from ourselves, but we also become attached to the hiding.
We say we want to suffer less, but we are often unwilling to let go of our position that prevents us from experiencing happiness and freedom.
This is of course, innocent. We are not hiding because we want to. We hide because we are afraid. We hide because we forget that we are not this fragile, separate self that can be destroyed in the blink of an eye. When we forget this, and we protect who we think we are at all costs because that looks like it is all we’ve got.
This is exhausting and has us behave in irrational ways. How can it not be irrational to try and protect a self that does not exist?
Who you are does not need protecting. Who you are does not need to be prayed for. Who you are does not need to wake up or be improved. Who you are is beyond any concept that can be understood, yet you know who you are in the depths of your being. You recognize truth. You feel it.
It is primal. It is instinctual. It is real. It is unchanging. Out of this primordial essence, the individual idea of you is created, but this idea is a pale comparison to your true self. This pale comparison is naturally insecure because it is not real. It does not exist outside of thought. There is no foundation in identity so any attempts to bolster the confidence of the imagined self are futile.
The simplicity is SEEING the imagined quality of our individual selves and remembering who we are beyond our thoughts of identity is freedom.
Look to that which is real and true. It is alive inside of you.
The distractions of day-to-day life will call you to look elsewhere. There is nothing wrong with this, but when you are suffering, rather than getting frantic and trying to fix the suffering, look to who you are beyond your experience. Rather than trying to fix the individual components of your day-to-day existence to make life more comfortable, look in the direction of the love and compassion that are your true nature.
We fall into who we are when we let go. Let go of what? Let go of identifying with our ideas of what is right and wrong. Let go of our attachments to concepts because they are not what is.
The practicality of this is that when we no longer have the self-importance of our ego as our organizing principle, we open up to experiencing what is true. We experience our innate safety and wellbeing that lies beyond the appearance of our personal psychology. We show up differently because of the certainty of our wellbeing. If I am fundamentally okay because who I am is not this fragile made up ego that gets destroyed moment to moment. If who I am is God in drag, I am going to show up differently in the world. I will approach my human experience with more freedom, open-heartedness, and generosity because there is nothing to lose, and I will actually have something to give that is infinite.
Anytime you experience discord, you have forgotten who you are.
The answer, therefore, is to look within and to remember the truth of your being. This is not passive. The empowerment that results from a fearless love is unparalleled.
Your impersonal nature is God.
You are not separate.
You have everything within.
The gift of consciousness that allows you to have a human experience is not a punishment. It is not a fall from grace. It is a game of hide and seek. Can you enjoy it?
The hiding and the seeking.
The being lost and being found.
The forgetting and the remembering.
All of it is love expressing itself through the human condition.
We all do our best to express the love that we are in the best way we can.
We are all innocently doing our best bringing forth our essence into the world.
Remember this the next time you have an argument with someone or find yourself mad at yourself.
The words, the feelings, the experience are the rainbow of experience all sourced by love. Nothing is separate from this one source. Everything is an expression of it.
Our freedom comes from seeing this and feeling the truth of it.
Would you rather have your judgments or would you rather experience the knowing of who you are. You can’t have both.
I go back and forth, and my intention is to remember who I am and drop my judgments in favor of an empty mind that lets my imagined self soften and become more translucent so what is real can be shared and experienced more easily.
When you are hurt or angry, remember you are afraid because you have forgotten who you are not because of what your judgments tell you is the source of your suffering. Seeing this clearly helps the remembering. Everything starts from there. You are love! How many times will you remember this today? How many times will you forget this today? It doesn’t matter. That is the game. Can you enjoy it?
Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their full potential. She is a transformative coach, leadership consultant, a regular blogger for Thrive Global, and author of the short-read Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1) available on Amazon. You can get her free eBook Relationships here. Rohini has an international coaching and consulting practice based in Los Angeles helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. She is also the founder of The Soul-Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality, and the Teachings of Sydney Banks. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and watch her Vlogs with her husband. To learn more about her work go to her website, rohiniross.com.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
Barbara Patterson
Scott Kelly
Barbara Patterson
Clare Dimond
Michael Neill
Rohini Ross
Elsie Spittle – The Soul of the Principles
Spiritual Facts 
Chip Chipman – The Simplicity of Syd’s Teachings
Dicken Bettinger – The Spiritual Nature of the teachings of Sydney Banks
Connie DeKramer
16.12.2019 at 06:43So beautifully and profoundly shared. Thank you for this post. These words deepen and expand the ever-present reality of who we really are. We are blessed beyond imagination.
Much love, Connie
Rohini
16.12.2019 at 07:46Dear Connie,
Thanks so much for writing!
So wonderful to hear from you and how you are impacted.
Sending love!
Rohini
Dicken Bettinger
16.12.2019 at 13:50This is such music to my ears and my soul. A re-member-ing! A re-Mind-ing! Love whispering to it-Self! Thanks Rohini!
Rohini
03.02.2020 at 15:10So glad you enjoyed it, Dicken! Thanks so much for letting me know! So appreciate your encouragement and support!
PAM LIND
16.12.2019 at 16:04Lovely expression of the truth of who and what we are Rohini! I will read this again and again because it hits home . That feeling of presence that is felt while reading your insights is so valuable and every time I feel it , it becomes more and more open /accessible /trust worthy and real. It’s what we all need to offer each other. … this acknowledgement of what connects us. At our core, we are this one thing and each time someone points to it we all benefit. Thank you!
Rohini
03.02.2020 at 14:57Hi Pam, Thank you for writing! So glad the post resonated with you and that you recognize that feeling of presence comes from within you. Sending love, Rohini
Brian Patrick Williams
22.12.2019 at 20:24“When you are hurt or angry, remember you are afraid because you have forgotten who you are…” <— My favorite quote from this post. Re-framing the human experience as a cosmic game of hide and seek really helps to soften the fear of getting lost and caught up in suffering. While I find it quite difficult to remember to "seek" when I am in pain, physical or emotional, just having this greater understanding helps to, at the very least, decrease the intensity of the pain. As I write, I can sense my intellectual, personal mind trying to "figure all of this out" and store the good feeling I felt so I never lose it and thus never experience pain again. As my mind wanders here, I feel, quite tangibly, the growing distance between the realization of who I truly am and my illusory self. It is scary. Because the feeling that I have when I am floating in the truth of my divine nature, the infinite expansiveness of my soul, is such ecstasy. And the difference between that truly blissful experience and the perceived darkness when I feel lost and caught up is so immense – it almost feels like I'll never find my way back, that I'll be stuck in darkness for eternity… Yet, I do find my way back, eventually. So, I'll just bask in the knowing that I will find my way back, always. And, if it's a game, maybe I can actually find a bit of playfulness in it all. 🙂
Thank you Rohini.
Rohini
23.12.2019 at 12:00Hi Brian, When you think you are your experience the roller coaster ride of human emotions can feel very intense. When you are not the experience, but the experiencer of the experience, this is a different reference point. This reference point is not transitory the way that emotional experience is. When there is constant change, but you are the constant observer there is no real change. For me, this has helped me immensely to be with the ever-changing human sensory experience in a lighter and kinder way. Sending you love!
Christina mills
01.01.2020 at 05:15“A game of hide and seek” 🌞☔🌞☔🌞thankyou ,a timely reminder.Today this is all sinking in.Loving the breath of your blogs.💖💖💖
Rohini
03.02.2020 at 14:41Dear Christina, So glad you chose to immerse yourself in my posts. Glad you are feeling the benefit of letting them sink in! Love, Rohini