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Hi there
Imagine if you could feel totally at-ease with expressing yourself and being authentic without holding yourself back for fear of being misunderstood or judged.
What might that be like for you? And what parts of your personality would get to come out that don't usually get to be expressed? How would your life be different than it is now if you were able to show up in social situations as your total self without hiding major parts of your personality?
The good news is that there some things you can do to remove the barriers that you have to authentic expression.
But to understand this, you must first understand those barriers which tend to fall into two categories... one of which is more obvious than the other.
The more obvious one is SELF-IMPOSEDbarriers to authenticity, which show up in the form of self-doubt, self-criticism, and negative self-talk in general. This also often comes together with feelings of awkwardness, nervousness, and fear that arises as a result of the negative self-talk.
Now the less obvious barrier to authenticity is UNCONSCIOUSNESS and lack of awareness of parts of your authentic self and disconnection with your truest deepest will.
And in most cases, the more you're able to shine the light of your conscious awareness on the parts of yourself that you'e not conscious of and get more into alignment with your truest deepest will... this will resolve BOTH OF THESE barriers to authenticity.
And if you're also able express these parts of yourself around other people and make other people conscious of these elements of your personality, it will create a brand new comfort zone where expressing yourself authentically becomes second-nature to you.
-Emerald
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“If you understand that the world isn’t separated into self and other, you’ll see very clearly that there is no such thing as enlightenment. There can’t be. After all, who is there to be enlightened? You would have to be someone before you could experience enlightenment. There would have to be a self to get free. But (imaginary) selves don’t get free. It’s true that when you wake up from this trance, you’re free of all suffering. But saying it that way still points to a “someone”, a being who is supposedly “awakened.” It’s only when you see the Buddha as a separate self that you can form the concept that he’s enlightened. All these spiritual concepts are just creations of mind.”

“The thoughts are what allow the I to believe that it has an identity. When you see that, you see that there’s no you to be enlightened. You stop believing in yourself as an identity, and you become equal to everything.”

“Nothing has ever happened but a thought.”

“It’s all a projection of mind. To imagine that there is anything outside the mind is pure delusion.”

“Whatever people say or do, how can you be upset with them when you know that they’re projections of your own mind? When the mind realizes this, there’s nothing to project itself as. Even the mind is its own theory. There’s no one to be upset. There’s only mind playing in the apparent world of itself. The Buddha-mind can never be stuck in the nonexistent past or future. So it’s impossible that it would ever experience anything but the joy that comes out of that understanding. The fact is that you’ve never reacted to someone else. You project meaning onto nothing, and you react to the meaning you yourself have projected. Loneliness comes from an honest place—you’re the only one here. There are no humans. You’re it. When you question your thoughts, you come to realize that. It’s the end of the world—the joyful end of a world that never existed in the first place.” Byron Katie @ConsciousnessAwarenessSpiritual

4) "And if you have CLARITY about this, you will also see that most therapies, tools, methods, and techniques aim to fix, heal, or positivize a 'self' that is an illusion. At a given moment, they may provide relief, comfort, but little more because you'll be working with a mental story of a character that isn't real. Because that 'self' is a thought. And a thought is nothing. You don't cut to the root of the 'pain.' You just apply a band-aid. You don't SEE the trap. You just add another mask. Until another mental story emerges, one you identify with again, one you label as truth because you haven't seen the trap, the trick, the illusion, and the cycle repeats. It's the fish biting its own tail.

I'm not suggesting that you stop therapy or using techniques to understand yourself. I'm simply laying the cards on the table. I'm describing 'what is.'

And if there is no 'self,' no 'someone,' your Enlightenment cannot be real either. Because who is supposed to be Enlightened? A thought...?

The Life that you are and we all are already Enlightenment. It's already Perfection. It doesn't need to attain any other state. It doesn't need to return home. It doesn't need to reach Nirvana because it already is, always, manifesting in whatever form it takes.

It's Life. And as Life, we're experiencing all kinds of experiences. Each 'one' gets their turn, as if we were characters in a movie, with a script written by Life (not 'you' or 'me') in every moment."
@ConsciousnessAwarenessSpiritual

3) Becoming aware of the trap of the "self," realizing that a thought is not a fact, not a reality, forms the root of everything else. It's our identification with those thoughts, with the stories that arise—mental narratives—that leads us to interpret Reality as we do. This identification causes suffering. It makes us want to escape, flee from Life as it is in each moment. It drives us to NEED to seek eternal happiness, enlightenment, our Home, or a soulmate.

Life "is what it is," not what we interpret it to be. Not what we think it is. Not what others have told us it is. Not what we've read about it. Not the theories we've heard. Not what we've BELIEVED it to be.

If I accidentally hit my knee, that's the fact. That's "what is." The only thing that IS. And all the thoughts that arise—why does this always happen to me, how clumsy am I, is this a sign, does it mean I have pent-up emotions, and so on—ARE NOT REALITY. They're merely a succession of thoughts that emerge "from nowhere and from no one" in that moment. They're like clouds in the sky. We don't need to give them importance or pay attention to them. Because it's those narratives, those interpretations, that cause our suffering—not the pain itself from the impact.

Similarly, you KNOW that when you have sexual fantasies about someone you like or imagine playing in the World Cup final or performing in a concert before thousands of people, those are NOT TRUE because they're not real. The same applies to "spiritual or non-spiritual fantasies" about "whatever."

It's the same: thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts creating a movie. That's it. It's that simple. No more. And thoughts will continue to arise because that's how our organism functions. We've been giving them our full attention. We've fueled them with energy. We've paid them heed. And the more attention we give them, the more they appear—just like a social media algorithm constantly shows us what we look at most. The mechanism is identical. That's our algorithm too: the thoughts presented to us are the ones we invest time and energy in. But that doesn't mean they represent reality. It means they're what we focus on from the entire spectrum of available Life possibilities.

We do this (it happens) automatically, unconsciously. We don't intervene in the production, elimination, identification, or disidentification of thoughts. REMEMBER, it's not about doing or not doing something; it's about SEEING, understanding, becoming aware of how we function.

And when you KNOW that thoughts, of any kind, hold no relevance, you don't grant them any power. No truth. You naturally stop paying attention to them because you've removed their mask, their disguise. You've SEEN the trap. And once you see it, you no longer believe it. It's like knowing the magician's trick to guess a card. It no longer surprises you. It becomes indifferent. You've stripped it of its power.

Or it's like when you discover that Santa Claus doesn't exist. You can continue pretending, playing along, but the illusion... it has already fallen away . ???

2) Disidentification is a consequence, a side effect of seeing, of realizing, of becoming aware.

It's as if from the moment you're born, people tell you that you're a monkey and teach you to behave like one. Until one day, Life places a mirror in front of you, and you realize that you're not a monkey. You had only believed it because that's what they kept repeating to you from the beginning. When you see yourself, you naturally stop identifying with the monkey because you know in that moment that you are not one. But you haven't actively done anything to achieve this disidentification. No tools, techniques, or lengthy processes were necessary. You've simply seen the trap, the deception, the belief. And it's in seeing the lie that the eternal Truth emerges.

This seeing, this clarity, happens in an instant. When you see in the mirror that you're not a monkey, it's immediate. You don't need years to do it. No prolonged effort is required.

Now, why does it sometimes feel like we have an ego, a "self"? Because those thoughts referring to "I" or "me," which lead to identification, get stretched out over time.

What does this mean? Reflect on a typical day of yours. Most of the time, we're engaged in various activities: eating, drinking, working, reading, walking, watching a movie, dancing, creating, writing, sleeping, cooking—essentially, living. But occasionally, that identification-thought arises, and it seems as though it has dominated the entire day. It's like feeling sadness four times in a day and then saying, "Yesterday, I was sad all day." But that's a lie! You only felt sadness four times, and the rest of the time, you were "fine." Yet, we give those four moments undue importance, infusing them with energy and intensity, leading us to believe that this is our perpetual state.

We tend to magnify discomfort, pain, "negative" emotions, and darkness. We inflate them like a giant balloon or a mountain out of a grain of sand. Consequently, many people end up believing that life is dangerous or that "the world is in terrible shape." Not because it truly is, but because they're amplifying a mere part of the whole.

This doesn't mean that sadness, violence, or pain don't exist, but they don't define the entirety. They are moments. Fleeting instances. They're like clouds that appear and then disappear. Clouds that we mistakenly think last longer than they actually do.

It's a false perception. Just like the belief in the existence of the ego. Therefore, transcending the ego, eliminating it, improving it, fixing it, or doing anything with it makes no sense because IT DOES NOT EXIST. These are merely thoughts that automatically arise throughout the day, and we give them undue importance. After all, what significance does a mere thought have? Would you "work on," heal, therapize, educate, or control a thought? It's nonsensical.

If you can see this, you'll also see that the "spiritual ego" and the "seeker" don't exist because the trap is the same. It's based on the belief in that "self." The mistaken belief that there's someone inside you who has nothing to do with the rest of Life. You can call it "I," ego, soul, essence, Being—it doesn't matter. The erroneous belief is that you're something or someone individual and separate from everything else, striving to achieve "whatever." Separated from Life (or whatever name you choose) that we all are.

There are bodies, organisms, with their particularities, their "form," just as each wave is distinct, but ALL are the same water, the same Ocean, the same Life. ???

"Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle."

Eckhart Tolle

There is only God appearing to God in the guise of every imaginable form and circumstance. ?

When I run after what I think I want,
my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety;
if I sit in my own place of patience,
what I need flows to me,
and without pain.

From this, I understand that
what I want also wants me,
is looking for me and attracting me.

~Rumi

“Nirvana is where you are,
provided you don’t object to it.”

~Alan Watts

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