The Inner Guide

Listen to the noise in your head. There is a constant noise, or there is no noise at all? Can you silence your mind? Many people said it is very difficult to silence their minds. The mind is constantly busy. Thinking. It creates noise inside your head. But who is speaking? There are two personalities in your head – the false personality and the true personality. The false personality is called the ego and the true personality is called the conscience. They speak different languages to you. It is the ego that speaks more and creates noise. When the ego is speaking too much, you become restless. The ego brings confusion and doubt into your head. You need clarity. Clarity is found in a silent mind.

You might need to learn to make the ego become more quiet, if you want to experience a silent mind. It is only when there is silence in the mind then the voice of the conscience is heard. The conscience is your inner guide. Let your conscience guide you. Listen to your inner guide. It finishes confusion and doubt. It brings clarity into your head.

The two faces of ego

Ego is the enemy of everyone. It resides in each and every of us. We have to conquer this enemy. How to conquer it? We have to know it. Only when we know this enemy well, then we can conquer it.

Ego has two faces – the inferior I and the superior I.

When you hear the voice of “I am excluded” , “I am not valued”, “They don’t respect me“, “I am a victim”. This is the voice of the inferior I. Can you hear this voice? How often do you hear this voice? This is the voice that brings you down again and again. If you keep listening to this voice, you will become weak. You keep listening to this voice and then you start believing in it. What you believe will become your reality (what you feel). You start feeling isolated, small or weak. Can you stop this voice? Do not let this voice keep echoing in your head. You need power to stop it. This is the power of the soul that you need. Develop this power, so you will become victorious in your internal battle. You are in fact battling with yourself (your ego). Your enemy is not out there, but right here, inside you.

At other time you might also hear the voice “I know better”, “I am more experienced”, “They should listen to me”, this is the voice of the superior I.

Both are the ego. Both are false. Both make you fluctuate internally. The real you is not inferior nor superior. Nothing can pull you down. Remain seated on the seat of the real I. This is the seat of self respect. If you remain seated on this seat, you will experience yourself to be a master. A master of the self. You are the king. You are royal.

True love never hurts

A friend told me that she had decided to divorce her husband. She has talked about it with him. When she shared it to me, I could feel that she was feeling so relieved. She said that she was amazed by herself for being very calm while talking to him about this separation, no emotion was involved. She said that she had been listening to the ‘real I’ a lot and it helped her in controlling her emotion. I was happy listening this from her, not for the divorce, but for the way she handled herself.

She said to me that she did not love him anymore, so she wanted to end the marriage. They had gone through so much conflict. It was not healthy for both of them and also for their children. But she said that her husband still loved her. I replied ‘Wait, is it a real love?’ True love never hurts. If it hurts, it is not a true love.

This short conversation reminded me to a book written by Echart Tolla. I read the book long time ago. It is said in the book that ‘I love you’ often means ‘I need you’. So it is a self-centered love. Because it is self-centered, so expectation is involved – there is dependency and possessiveness. Of course it is not true love. True love is liberating. True love is without any expectation. True love is not self-centered.

She paused for a moment and finally said “Yes, he loves himself.”

How journaling can finish negative feelings

When I conduct a journaling workshop, I always encourage the participants to practice writing right away. I usually ask them to remember one particular situation that happened recently that created a very strong feeling. When the feeling is strong enough then it is very easy to start writing it out. It could be positive feeling or negative feeling.

Most of the people find it a lot easier to write the negative one and it is okay. A participant expressed disagreement to me when it came to write a negative feeling. She said that by remembering a negative feeling and writing it, the feeling would become even stronger. Then it is against the purpose of journaling. Because the purpose of journaling is in fact to finish the negative feelings and empower the self.

How can journaling finish the negative feeling and empower the self? When you are writing a journal, you need to sit on the seat of the ‘real I’. You are listening to the ‘false I’, either the ‘depressed I’ or ‘the arrogant I’. This ‘false I’ is in fact the ego. The ego is false. It is the ego that creates the negative feeling. Let the ’false I’ speak about the situation and feeling clearly and honestly and let ‘the real I’ listen. She is a good listener. She is very patient, mature and wise. She always listens very carefully. When the ‘false I’ finishes speaking, let the ‘real I’ speak or share some wisdom to your situation. Let her empower you.

You are not the feeling. You are the creator of the feeling. The feeling is your creation, but your creation is not you. You will become very clear about this. You are distanced from your feeling. You are detached from your feeling. Because you are detached from the feeling, so you can observe the creation better. You can write it in a detached way.

When you write your journal in this detached way, as if you are an observer of what is happening inside you, the feeling will become weaker and the ‘real I’ become stronger. Become a detached observer. It is said that emotion dies under observation.

A heart-to-heart sharing

Someone asked me to moderate a panel discussion last year. I don’t remember the topic of the discussion specifically anymore. I think it was about having self respect and maintaining humility at the same time. There would be two speakers. I prepared a list of questions the night before for the discussion.

In the next morning I thought I would like to talk to each speaker and share the list of the questions. The first speaker said : ”You can ask me anything.” She didn’t want to see the list. I thought it was good for me, so I could ask any question. Then I talked to the second speaker. He wanted to read the list. He went through the questions one by one and he asked me to take out one question from the list. It was a very personal question. I asked them to share their personal stories on maintaining their humility while dealing with difficult people. Whether they succeeded or not, it wouldn’t matter. I realized that not everyone found it easy and comfortable to share an honest story about themselves.

We always could learn from other’s story. I believe that we can learn more from someone’s experience than just from information. Infomation is a theory and experience is a practice. Because experience is coming from the heart so it will inspire people more. Sharing an experience is always much better than sharing an information. It is a heart-to-heart sharing.

A clutter-free mind

Very recently I got my tiny house renovated. It took about a few weeks to finish. Before the renovation started, I had to empty the house. In that point I realised after about 15 years I had accumulated stuff so much in the house. To empty the house was a big and hard job especially because I have to let go most of my stuff – including furnitures, books, clothes and many other stuff. To be honest I didn’t do it myself. I got a family member to do it. I trusted her on this. You might know the reason. If I did it myself, I would have to deal with my emotional attachment to those stuff and it would not be easy and also time consuming.

When I entered the house after the renovation, there was a feeling of a huge relief in me. There were only 3 furniture left, a medium size wooden bed, a shelf for storage and a hanging kitchen set. That’s it! It is so funny that I have lost so much but the feeling of relief is so obvious. It was like I was about to start a new life.

You create burden by owning a lot of stuff. What clutters your home, clutters your mind. If you want to have clutter-free mind, start owning less stuff. When I shared this to a friend, she quickly agreed with me.

Mirror

You might have experienced being treated badly by someone, or someone might show a rude manner or just a little bit impoliteness to you. Don’t get hurt, stay calm. They are revealing who they are not who you are. Don’t let their behavior bring you down. Rudeness is a false show of strength by a weak person. The weak ones have rudeness inside, and they will show what is inside. The strong ones have gentleness inside, so they show gentleness.

To stay calm means to remain strong in front of the weak one. To stay calm also means to become like a mirror for others to reflect themselves on you. They can see the pictures of themselves clearly only when the mirror is still.

Become a mirror like this. Don’t react. A cool mind reflect dignity and strength.

The Energy Levels

You might have heard the different levels of energy of feelings. Each feeling has energy. They have different levels based on their frequency. The more positive the feeling, the higher the frequency. Because each energy resonates different frequency. Feeling of peace joy love and acceptance resonate high frequency. Feeling of ashame, guilt, fear and anger have low frequency. On the list of feelings vs. frequency, ashame is on the lowest and peace is on the highest.

You can notice for yourself how low or how high your energy level is. You might need to know how to stay high……yes, stay positive in your thoughts. Positive thoughts creates positive feelings. Positive feelings create positive energy. Choose to stay in peace as long as you want, because it makes your level remain very high.

When there is a feeling of ashame in you, you don’t like yourself. Do you realize for yourself that disliking the self is very destructive? Someone might become so reactive to people to cover this feeling. Anger then follows. How to deal with this negative feelings? Realization is the first step. When you realize it, only then you can start working on it.

Working on Ego

A friend of mine texted me “congratulations on working on your ego” , after reading one of my posts in this blog. I was not so sure what he said congratulation for. I realised that most of my posts are of my own reflection. Sometimes I write something embarrassing such as a stupid mistake I made or when I am dealing with my ego.

When you start dealing with your own ego, you are actually working on the hurts, the ugly sides of yourself. Sometimes it creates a feeling of bossiness or arrogance. Sometimes it also creates feeling of fear, having no value, no importance, etc. Then we feel so embarrassed. It is really an uncomfortable feeling. This is why some people say it is too scary to see the self, because of having too many hurts and scars and being too ugly.

Then my friend said “It is so reflective. It has become your writing style.”

The Ego Game

I was in a workshop. We had to work in groups. We were made to sit in circles. My group is just right in front, in the corner of the hall. A topic was given to be discussed within each group and at the end someone had to present the result of the discussion. The way we presented should be with mindfulness. Everyone was in silence, listening to the presenter attentively and appreciatively. It created a very good feeling and atmosphere. I presented on behalf of my group, then followed by other groups. I really enjoyed the atmosphere during this session.

After the workshop was over, I said to the facilitator “It was really good. Very nice experience.” She agreed with me and said “Yes. It was very powerful. I could feel a very strong vibration in the middle of the hall.” This last sentence of her gave me a feeling of not being valued because I was not in the middle of the hall. In fact, she didn’t say that to me. But it was funny how the feeling of being not valued was there. I knew that I had got hurt.

You might get hurt because someone did not value you, or respect you. You might feel someone even insulted you. This is an ego game. It is not you that got hurt. It is the ego that got hurt, not you.

What is ego? Ego is the false identity you have given for yourself. We give identities to the self differently according to our role (what we are doing), our responsibility, or our position – “I am a manager. I am senior. I am the boss. I am so and so.” Why false? It is not permanent, it can change. It is associated with your body, not with the soul. Anything associated with the body is not permanent. It’s the soul that is permanent and never changes. So ego, in fact, is the identity related to body.