It is almost one whole month since I had that fateful reading with Diana Summer, where she told me that my sense of self was so bound up in my book that it was preventing the book from fulfilling its true potential, as I was unable to separate it from my sense of self, and it therefore was not free. It is only now one month later, that I am beginning to finally realise what Diana meant.
When a young child begins to learn language and recognise sounds, one of the first words that it learns to recognise is the one that represents it's name - in my case, June. The child thus begins to equate this word with their sense of self; the word that represents their name becomes a thought and the thought behind that word becomes who they are. The name is not who they are, but merely a mental abstract, a symbol which represents who we believe that we are. It is interesting that children at this stage of individuation refer to themselves in the third person, for example, "June is hungry or thirsty", almost as if they are observing themselves. Who though is the observer? Answer - the real them that is locked inside.
As the child develops, they cease to refer themselves in this way. The next stage in their development entails learning how to designate certain things as theirs - "my toy" or in my case, "my book", and so it goes on. This carries forward into our adult lives, as we learn to define ourselves and our sense of self through not just things, but also through our jobs, our relationships, our skin colour, our religion and all those other things that we use as adults to describe and define who we are. None of these things are really who we are at all, but are merely distractions of the ego, tools that we use in order to feel better about ourselves in relation to others, and convince ourselves that we are somehow different or unique.
Who we actually are beneath all of this, as our Gnostic forebears also discovered, is awareness becoming aware of who we are.
Today I have been carefully watching my thoughts and observing how many times the word I, or mine, enters my head. It is amazing how many times it does. I have discovered attachments to not just the book, but virtually everything that I own - my record collection, my clothes, my photographs from my travels around the world, even my handbag and the shoes that I wear to work each day - if I did not associate so much with these items then I would not go into a flap when I cannot find them, as it would not matter to me!
I also though I have learnt, define myself through my story, all the things that have 'happened' to me and which life has thrown at me - both the good and the so-called bad. The ego loves the drama of it all, and so it creates drama where there is none - through the so-called Amazon debate for example, which I allowed myself to get far too het up about, when most of the things that have been said do not affect me at all. It is impossible for them to withdraw print on demand books from their site, since the information is fed to them directly through a feed from Nielson Bookdata, the ISBN agency here in the UK.
So, I have decided that from now on, I have to mind my language, and if I don't like the things that are happening around me, then I can choose a new reality, and my life will change accordingly. It is all a state of mind, and ultimately a state of being. I don't have to be anything other than myself.
This is not to get bereft and beat myself up for behaving the way the way that I have done, for this is a futile exercise that creates nothing but guilt. No, I simply learn from my experiences and move on to the next one, knowing that I have the power to create anything that I want in my life. In using the word want, all I create is more wanting, and so I say to myself that I do not want success, I already have it. And so I do, and all is well with the world.
When a young child begins to learn language and recognise sounds, one of the first words that it learns to recognise is the one that represents it's name - in my case, June. The child thus begins to equate this word with their sense of self; the word that represents their name becomes a thought and the thought behind that word becomes who they are. The name is not who they are, but merely a mental abstract, a symbol which represents who we believe that we are. It is interesting that children at this stage of individuation refer to themselves in the third person, for example, "June is hungry or thirsty", almost as if they are observing themselves. Who though is the observer? Answer - the real them that is locked inside.
As the child develops, they cease to refer themselves in this way. The next stage in their development entails learning how to designate certain things as theirs - "my toy" or in my case, "my book", and so it goes on. This carries forward into our adult lives, as we learn to define ourselves and our sense of self through not just things, but also through our jobs, our relationships, our skin colour, our religion and all those other things that we use as adults to describe and define who we are. None of these things are really who we are at all, but are merely distractions of the ego, tools that we use in order to feel better about ourselves in relation to others, and convince ourselves that we are somehow different or unique.
Who we actually are beneath all of this, as our Gnostic forebears also discovered, is awareness becoming aware of who we are.
Today I have been carefully watching my thoughts and observing how many times the word I, or mine, enters my head. It is amazing how many times it does. I have discovered attachments to not just the book, but virtually everything that I own - my record collection, my clothes, my photographs from my travels around the world, even my handbag and the shoes that I wear to work each day - if I did not associate so much with these items then I would not go into a flap when I cannot find them, as it would not matter to me!
I also though I have learnt, define myself through my story, all the things that have 'happened' to me and which life has thrown at me - both the good and the so-called bad. The ego loves the drama of it all, and so it creates drama where there is none - through the so-called Amazon debate for example, which I allowed myself to get far too het up about, when most of the things that have been said do not affect me at all. It is impossible for them to withdraw print on demand books from their site, since the information is fed to them directly through a feed from Nielson Bookdata, the ISBN agency here in the UK.
So, I have decided that from now on, I have to mind my language, and if I don't like the things that are happening around me, then I can choose a new reality, and my life will change accordingly. It is all a state of mind, and ultimately a state of being. I don't have to be anything other than myself.
This is not to get bereft and beat myself up for behaving the way the way that I have done, for this is a futile exercise that creates nothing but guilt. No, I simply learn from my experiences and move on to the next one, knowing that I have the power to create anything that I want in my life. In using the word want, all I create is more wanting, and so I say to myself that I do not want success, I already have it. And so I do, and all is well with the world.
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