I do not want to love myself — I want to know myself as love.
Working as a therapist and a coach, clients often share with me an intention of feeling worthy and having good self-esteem. In the past, I might have supported them with identifying the misunderstandings in their consciousness responsible for their painful feelings of not being good enough. This certainly provides respite, and helps clients see their beliefs as false. It allows them to let them go of the limited thinking and experience a more accurate understanding of themselves. Working with the content of thought and clarifying it so a deeper realization can emerge is healing. However, there is another way to address self-worth that has nothing to do with worthiness. It is to simply experience the loving essence of our true nature.
When I drop into the love inside of me, I know my self-worth is a non-issue. I do not experience worthiness in that moment. All I feel is love — love for myself and everything else. My worth is not a question that even occurs to me. It would be ridiculous to entertain that kind of question. It would be like me asking if the fern in my living room is worthy, or if the cat lying on my bed worthy? What has worth go to do with it? They are neither worthy nor unworthy, they just are. Why is it any different for humans?
Now, I recognize, when I am feeling unworthy, this is a reflection of my limiting thinking being believed. It is a marker of me being disconnected from the truth of who I am. The only reason I would not be experiencing my beingness, the what is-ness of who I am, is by believing the illusion of my ego’s self-created limitations.
Having the anchor of the experience of love in my consciousness, reminds me I have the choice to surrender to love. I can relax and let my thinking settle. I can drop out of my personal mind and no longer be consumed by my self-conscious thoughts. I am able to enjoy the bliss of being self-less, with no concern for me and my worth. I can enjoy the freedom and liberation of being me without the painful experience of judging myself.
Any imperfection I experience is a conceptual idea that is made up. It is not the truth. Any notion of good and bad or right and wrong is created by the ego. The ego does not have the capacity to understand the spiritual context of perfection. Right and wrong are ideas of the ego. They are not the reality of what is. We make them up. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
There is a way outside the made up concepts of right and wrong. It is the path of love. Not personal romantic love reserved for a few, but impersonal, infinite love that is the essence of who we are and the essence of all things. When I relax and let my personal thinking settle, this is what awaits me. This is what awaits you.
Just like when we relax and let go when we go to sleep, we can relax and let go into waking up. We can wake up from the conditioned, limiting thinking of our personal mind. These thoughts may make up the background hum of our lives that we innocently keep alive. We buy into our physiological stress response that tells us we need to be vigilant. We believe we need to do more, be more, earn more, and have more.
I do not live my life in a state of surrender all of the time, but my intention is to continue to let go of my preoccupation with myself — looking good and getting it right — and to wake up more and more fully to the awareness of myself as love.
Rohini Ross is a psychotherapist in Los Angeles, and has an international coaching practice. 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.
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Rohini Ross
Elsie Spittle – The Soul of the Principles
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Chip Chipman – The Simplicity of Syd’s Teachings
Dicken Bettinger – The Spiritual Nature of the teachings of Sydney Banks
Meredith Bell
30.08.2016 at 03:18Beautifully said, Rohini. What a great solution you offer here as an alternative to analyzing and trying to understand our feelings of unworthiness.
Rohini
30.08.2016 at 07:27Thank you Meredith! I appreciate your comment!