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Wholeness is Presence

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Self awareness and self realisation do not lead to the absence of challenge in our lives, they equip us to better deal with it, to experience and interact with the world in a way that feels fluid and organic. As we grow and evolve and do the work to transform, remembering our ability to remain centred in wholeness when we are challenged, by ourselves, events, situations, circumstances, other people, allows us to flow, adapt, be guided by self trust and clear mindedness. We learn to operate from wellbeing, to override past beliefs and habits when they do not enhance our lives, to set healthy boundaries and gain insight into our triggers and blocks, navigating challenge so that we do not feel reduced or compromised by it and able to reflect on, process and expand beyond our experiences when we do.

Past suffering, programming and conditioning may claim that if we could control our lives to exclude challenge then we would feel whole and safe and stable at all times. Sometimes when we are feeling overwhelmed by life we may feel that it is too complicated to take part in it and that we need to retreat permanently. Whilst there may be periods during which it is beneficial for us to pause and rest and step back from the world, when we are aware that we are whole, when we are aware that we have the resources within to remain spiritually well and healthy in the face of challenge, we realise that taking part in life gives us a full experience of it.

In wholeness, we trust in our instincts, we honour our inner wisdom, unique insights, needs and desires. We find that no matter our past experiences or the situations or circumstances of the present, we are able to trust in the expression of our wellbeing. Wholeness is the absence of feeling that there is anything to prove or run from. Wholeness is without struggle. Wholeness is presence and presence is total conscious awareness. When we refuse presence because we fear loosening our grip on what we need or want to deal with, we refuse wholeness but it is in embracing our spiritual truth and dissolving into presence that we are able to meet challenge and not just handle life but thrive.

Learning about and exploring how we want to live, relate to others, navigate life as we evolve and transform, means that we see the wisdom in never overriding our instincts as we may have been taught to, come to believe we should or are expected to by society or culture.

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All of life is a journey and relearning to centre in wholeness is a process that will not be perfect and does not have to be. Allowing ourselves to make mistakes, make up for them, be kind and gentle with ourselves and others is what moves us forwards. We are always, together and alone, finding our way. When we can realise this, we are able to show up present and aligned, do the work to heal, let go of and move on from our blocks and discover that there is nowhere to get to, that we are spiritually whole and well at all times, which relieves the pressure of arriving.

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We are able to grow and change in our own time in the way that feels peaceful to us. As we evolve, not only does the way we experience life, ourselves and other people change, we are guided to know what work we still need to do. As we notice and consider and transform how we think and feel and take part in the world, it is practicing self love, self patience and self forgiveness that allows us to be free to explore and express more of our true selves, growing as we go, showing up fresh and faithful, willing to see where doing so leads us. We have so much to unlearn on the journey of self realisation, so much to remember and discover about how we work and who we are and what matters to us. Becoming aware of and releasing ourselves from unhelpful programming and conditioning allows us to move beyond limited notions and concepts of self, identity and what we can achieve and experience in life.

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When we are willing to explore our belief systems, conditioning and programming and engage and express the love, compassion and understanding that are innate to us, we come to know ourselves. It may be that this is a process that makes us feel vulnerable to what we have tried to avoid in some way but as we reflect on our unconscious motivations as well as our innate values and conscious desires, we find that we want to grow and expand and explore our truth, that we want to embrace life. We know how to live well. We are able to navigate challenge whilst being true to ourselves. We are allowed to refuse, disengage and move on from what is not supportive of our wellbeing. We can trust in our intuition over the advice or opinions of others. We can remain present, aware, balanced when we are triggered and required to respond to what feels challenging to us.

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In alignment, we are centred in wholeness, innately guided to practice kindness, tenderness and gentleness towards ourselves, to remain rooted in wellbeing, self respect and self protection as we experience and take part in life.

When we wake up to the truth that we are the creators of our experience, we begin to access a higher awareness that guides us to move beyond who we think we are and shift into new modes of being that resonate with our limitless potential for positive change. We are moved by self realisation to dwell in love, to choose to operate from love and we become conscious of and allow to pass by thoughts that would steer us away from love. When we find out more about who we really are, when we choose love and health, we act from a fundamental respect for our wellbeing and we make choices that foster and support it.

This directly affects how we relate to and interact with the world. We begin to consider and become curious about what beliefs we hold that influence the way we experience life. As we do, we come to understand the power of centring in wholeness, of operating from presence. In presence, we are more true to ourselves, more loving, more open, more understanding. In wholeness, we are alive to the moment, connected, conscious, aware. Practicing presence, centring in wholeness isn’t always easy and doesn’t always happen but when we commit to conscious living and making decisions in awareness, we experience life more fully and come back to ourselves more quickly in the moments we notice we are turned away from our inner wisdom.

This is what allows us to deal well with challenge. Once we discover wellness within, it is not that challenge no longer occurs for us, it is that we are not so knocked off balance by it. The experience of self realisation is the uncovering of the knowledge that we are equipped to deal with life. We trust in a greater awareness and surrender to it so that we respond to life without limitation, suffering or concerns about what is right; we know intuitively what is, we trust in our inner wisdom, we are inspired in our action by our innate intelligence.

In love, which is the intelligent energy of all life, we are strong and resilient and clear minded and in tune with our instincts and intuition.

We are expressions of the energy of love and as we explore the world of form, we are guided by love to put in place boundaries that keep us well and safe and assert our right to consideration and respect. Loving ourselves and modelling self love for others leads us to the knowledge that from a clear mind, we take action that is in alignment with our core values of love, kindness and compassion as we prioritise our own health on every level.

The way that we request or assure this for ourselves will be unique to us all. We have a right and innate desire to keep ourselves well and we are motivated to do so by the intelligence within us. If we are struggling to set boundaries or have been unaware of our need or right to do so, we can reflect on why this might be and how we might expand beyond what is holding us back from doing so. Setting boundaries is a form of self care, self love and self respect. We are guided by a deep inner wisdom to support our innate wellness and it is when we are unaware or unsure of our wholeness and inner guidance that we do not.

Whilst we may know that suffering motivates others to act unwisely and feel compassion for them when they do, we are not obliged to tolerate behaviour we find unacceptable and unsupportive of our own wellness. We do not relieve other people’s pain by committing to our own. When we operate from a knowledge and certainty beyond the limited mind, we are guided by a grace that does not come from personal thinking. We know what to do and how to do it when we are operate from wellbeing. The conditioned self may struggle with this as it makes judgements and claims about what we should be doing. If we view this as a call to turn towards the wisdom of the true self, the intelligence within us, we centre in wholeness and are guided by our truth in our choices and actions no matter what the limited mind claims.

We have a right and innate desire to keep ourselves safe and well and are motivated to do so by the intelligence of life, guided by a deep wisdom to support and seek experiences that facilitate and foster the expression of our innate wholeness, grace and awareness.

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Guided by Wellbeing

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Other people may not react well to our boundaries; this does not mean we need to reduce or remove them unless we are guided to and we do not have to take responsibility for or carry their reactions, even if they want us to. Wisdom is calm certainty. Wisdom is acceptance. Wisdom is not passive tolerance. We can forgive people for their behaviour and also not to tolerate it. We are not obliged to cast off personal preference. We are not required to ignore threats to our health. Wisdom directs us towards wellbeing. Wisdom guides us towards safety. We can have compassion for a person caught up in suffering without being obliged to them. Wisdom will only lead us towards opportunities to realise our wellbeing.

Opening up to our spirituality and allowing it to guide us in being more successful, more aligned and more loving does not mean we overlook safety. Establishing boundaries is a means of ensuring our wellness, of acting on the knowledge that we deserve to be well and to make decisions that support our health on every level. Any thoughts that question the validity of our right to health, to ease and joy can be investigated or turned away from. In grace and awareness, we intuitively take healthy action and we are able to explore our choices when we haven’t in order to process, learn and heal from them. In self knowledge, we take intelligent steps. We do not require consensus, we are not obliged to tolerate anything we deem to be unhealthy or unsupportive. When we make decisions from wisdom, we are in a position to improve our lives and the lives of others.

We can understand that others are suffering and have compassion for them without attempting to fix them or take responsibility for their actions. Prioritising our own wellbeing and safety is a form of self support that boosts confidence in our ability to operate from wellbeing in order to make healthy and helpful decisions. Choosing health means establishing boundaries that protect health. We are spiritually whole and safe within. This does not mean we do not seek to be safe or are required to tolerate or engage in situations or encounters that feel unsafe to us in any way. When we allow this knowledge to guide our decisions, we lean towards wellbeing and choices that support it. We learn that we are worthy of health. Setting and maintaining boundaries that assure our right to respect and safety are a natural consequence of being centred in wholeness, rooted in love, guided by wisdom and wellbeing.

Self awareness allows us to examine, evaluate and gain insight into whether we are responding to life with grace and clarity or not so that we know when we are refusing and preventing ourselves from joyful living rather than setting boundaries that allow us to.

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As children, we construct our sense of self through our relationship with the world around us which is determined by the behaviour that is modelled for us, what we are taught and what we come to believe. We identify with our beliefs, the feelings they create within us and the behaviour they motivate and we form ideas about who we are based on our experience of other people’s treatment of and reaction to us. Once we become old enough to be truly self aware, it can be extremely helpful to reflect on whether the ideas we have about who we are are beneficial and leading us to experience wellbeing, wholeness and happiness.

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Until we begin to investigate why we live the way we do, we operate from an idea of who we are, a concept of self that is based on deep rooted beliefs, habitual thought processes, familiar feelings and an identification with certain experiences that inform the way we relate to the world in every area of our lives. When we begin to look beyond our identity to new ways of understanding who we are and how we might operate, we start to see through concepts of self that have felt as if they are fact, solid and real.

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The conditioned self, the created self, the identity we have constructed, has been fashioned to cope with life as best it can. As we begin to uncover more understanding and knowledge about our spiritual health and wholeness, we find that we can expand beyond its limits and engage with the world in new ways. Personality is not fixed or stable. If we think, feel and act as if we are certain people, born of certain limitations, flaws and insecurities, there will be certain things we do and don’t do in life as well as certain things we feel affected by.

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In wholeness, we realise that we can be free from what holds us back from living full, healthy, engaged and beautiful lives with appropriate boundaries in place that elevate and enhance our experiences.

When we step back from and look at the ideas we have come to identify with, about ourselves, life and other people, the feelings we create via these beliefs, the opinions that we are attached to and the actions and behaviour we repeat that they inspire, we see that the identity we inhabit is a concept of our own making, kept in place because it is familiar and known. What is familiar gives us an illusory sense of control, offering us a misguided sense of safety. Keeping it in place cements the subconscious belief systems it is based upon that trigger discomfort when we attempt to move on from them.

In order to live well, we must come to know who we really are and what is available to us. We may be able to do this alone or we may need a particular practice, therapy or support. However we travel the journey of self realisation, learning that we are what we believe ourselves to be is a fundamental starting point. When we identify ourselves in the present as a certain type of person based on our past experiences, we are acting as if personality is static and fixed rather than understanding that we are the fluid energy of life that is total creative power and intelligence, always in a state of flux and transformation.

As we take new approaches to life and set new beliefs and open up to new ideas, we create new habits of thinking, feeling and doing; we rewire our brains to default to clarity and wellbeing when past triggers occur and we choose new ways of responding to them. We embrace life because we do not fear challenge and in the moments that we revert to past ways of being, we know we can wait until we are at peace before we engage in self analysis. Frustration, self reproach, self criticism are confusion which does not lead us to new and healthier expressions of self or ways of living. If it feels like tension, we can let it go, allowing space for fresh thought and perspective that inspires and guides us to understand or move on from it.

When we realise that we are more than and not defined by our experiences, our past beliefs, identifications and expressions of self, we become present and experience the peace that comes from a greater connection to our truth.

When we start to explore who and how we might be outside of the confines of a set of familiar and habitual ideas of self, we find that identity is a creation, that personality is a construct and that beyond the sensations we experience when we are triggered and the limiting beliefs that we have innocently invested in in order to survive, we have the ability to move on from and let go of what has actually held us back from exploring and enjoying the freedom of who we really are and thrive. We have the ability to consider and remain distant from how we feel. Once we realise this, we discover it is safe to move on from what is known to us when it is limiting or unhelpful.

We are not the ideas, things, people and experiences we have come to understand and affirm ourselves by. We are able to live well despite what we have done and been through. When we start to strip back who we are not, we start to uncover who we are. Understanding that the way we relate to the world is wholly to do with our ideas about ourselves and our place in it, that our experience of others and what we understand about ourselves through these experiences is the result of what we think about life, can help us to consider how we approach and deal with challenge as well as how we navigate change. This is a process of reflection and consideration that allows us to become free to enjoy life because we no longer see ourselves as a fixed point in an ever changing Universe trying to control what we cannot in order to remain still and safe.

Stillness exists within us and in the stillness and safety of our spiritual truth, we find that we can flow with life, we can adapt and transform. We can allow ourselves to evolve and we can let go of what it makes sense to in order to love and respect ourselves and operate from grace and awareness. When we open up to, connect with and live from our truth, we become more aligned with our boundless, eternal, majestic, whole and magnificent essence. When we allow ourselves to be guided in our choices and actions by the love and respect we uncover for ourselves and the stillness that is always within, we realise that we do best when we are patient with ourselves as we do the work to investigate where we feel hurt or harmed or wounded and explore ways to restore a feeling of health in these areas so that we can live well in times of peace and challenge.

When we are at peace with ourselves, centred and grounded in our spiritual wholeness and able to let our thoughts flow, we can feel our way through self exploration, letting our feelings guide us as to the helpfulness and truth of our perspective and awareness in the moment.

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Transformation

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Examining our triggers can help us gain insight into how we are navigating life. Our feeling state is reflective of our state of mind in the moment and the actions and behaviour we engage in inform us about what we are feeling and why. Our triggers are the result of beliefs we have created or taken on in order to survive rather than based on truth in the moment. Considering them this way allows us to step back from them when they occur in order to follow our instincts and operate from clarity rather than the confusion of past perspectives and the states of being and behaviour they motivated. We have resources within always ready to lead us back to the ability to be present, balanced and clear minded so that we eliminate triggers or reduce their instance and are able to remain calm and present as we do.

We will make mistakes, we will wish we had handled things differently, we will relive certain situations in our minds. We are human. We learn through life and with respect and compassion for ourselves, we act with respect and compassion for others and we work out how to do things better or differently when we have acted otherwise, supporting ourselves as we need and want to. Reflecting on our triggers and seeing them for what they are, nervous activation of past reaction to what we found to be painful, confusing or confronting, allows us to understand them as a survival mechanism for a constructed self, a conditioned self, a fixed identity that denies, doubts or is unaware of our innate wellbeing, our spiritual wholeness and our potential for feeling secure and clear and peaceful.

We can change the way we respond to our triggers as well as become free of them completely. Just because we have thought, felt and acted in certain ways in the past does not mean we need or will continue to do so in the present or future. When we revert to past patterns, we move forwards by loving ourselves through what comes up as we reflect on our choices. Who we really are will support us through it. Once we begin to wake up to the potential we hold for changing our minds about who we are and how we might live, we experience the world anew, understanding that when we align with our inner wellness, our expression in the world becomes more true to who we are and we allow ourselves to show up fresh in the moment in the way it makes best sense to.

It is freeing and simple to operate as wholeness guides us to over what we are used to, have been shown, is expected of or dictated to us.

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When we live this way, we are more relaxed and present in times of peace and challenge. The true self, the spiritual wisdom of love that we are cannot be triggered into panic, confusion and unhappiness so when the conditioned self feels this way, we can turn towards the clarity and peace of truth and allow ourselves to be guided in grace and awareness to helpfully navigate our experiences. Centred in wholeness, we are authentic, we act with integrity, we bypass limited notions of correct behaviour in favour of aligned action, consciously responsive, operating outside of concerns about other people’s experiences of us so that we are present, in truth, in power.

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We are endlessly resilient, wise, peaceful, safe and whole within. Knowing that our triggers and habits of being can be moved on from, having compassion for the confusion and experiences that motivated their creation, practicing loving kindness towards ourselves as we work to let them go, whilst thanking ourselves for doing what we could to keep ourselves safe, allows us to deeply root in the knowledge that character is not set in stone, not determined by our experiences but created and motivated by our perceptions of them. This awareness allows us to discover newness in every moment, to uncover the resources within that allow us to live well.

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As we explore our ability to stop engaging and identifying with what steers us away from recognition and realisation of our inner truth and faculties, we give ourselves permission to examine the beliefs, feeling states and behaviour we default to and repeat when we are not in truth, in presence, in wholeness and work to change them. As we change, we find that the ways in which we live and express and interact with the world change too and that we are able to discern between what is good for us and not. We deal well with life when we deal well with ourselves. Centred in wholeness, we know that we have the option to explore and investigate what prevents us from operating this way, guided and supported by all that we have available to us as we choose something new.

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