“Pearls do not lie on the seashore. If you desire one you must dive for it.” Oriental proverb.
Have you ever had a time in your life, where life was going smoothly, everything was going your way, you felt content, happy and the answers you were seeking were freely coming into your mind? Or maybe you’re a runner and your first mile is a struggle, then you let go of your thoughts and you feel free, you feel like you’re running on air? Have you ever followed a thought that just comes out of the blue, and you follow up by taking the action that is needed? And you find that it has brought you to a place where the information you were looking for was right there, or maybe you met a new companion who has become a great asset in your life? Maybe you felt that you were completely falling apart and you are guided to a person or place that has helped you open up to these issues in your live and your whole outlook on life changes?
This is Our Authentic Self, Our Higher Consciousness, pushing us forward for growth in ourselves. It is moving us along in life guiding us to remember who we really are. We are Our Higher Consciousness, we are our the Authentic Self in our highest of Consciousness. We do not have to wait for our Authentic Self to push us forward, we can become our Authentic at any time. Our True Nature is inside each of us, it is witnessing our smaller self, the one who we think we our. It is waiting for the opening to become its Whole Self. It is always reminding us to remember who we really are.
I am going to share a story that happen, while I was working as a home health aide in hospice. I saw a remarkable change in another person and how this experience helped me to change my life. I was being pushed forward by my Soul to look at new possibilities in my own life. I was being reminded to remember who I really am.
When I started out with Hospice I was a Home Health Aide, I would go to client’s homes or nursing facilities to help the client with their personal daily care. On this particular day I walked into an Assisted Living to see my client Ann. I had known Ann for a couple of months now, and Ann was the unhappiest, mean spirited person I have ever come across. She never smiled, she complained about everything, no matter what anyone did, it would never be done right. When I would ask her about her family or her life she would tell me to go back to doing my job. She never took the time to ask about my family or anything about the staff lives, she just did not seem to care. The assisted living staff was exhausted and fed up that nothing they did made Ann happy. At first I thought it was because she was sick, growing older or maybe the loss of her home because under these circumstances many of us can become lonely and unhappy. Unfortunately, this was not the case with Ann, even her family told me that she has been like this for most of her life.
As I walked into Ann’s room that day, I found Ann complaining to a staff member about how something wasn’t done right in her room. As she looked at me she shouted “make my bed!” this shouting and complaining went on for about an hour. Than I began noticing that Ann was having difficulty breathing, her breathing was becoming rapid and she was unable to do anything on her own. I called the staff nurse and she gave Ann a dose of Morphine to help her with her breathing and she put Ann on oxygen, then Ann was placed into bed for the night.
The next day I walked back into the Assisted living to see Ann, I walked up to the staff nurse who had also worked with Ann yesterday. I asked her how Ann was doing today, the nurse just smiled at me and said “You are not going to believe this” and I followed her to Ann’s room. We stood by the doorway and I peeked in and to my surprise Ann was sitting up on the couch dressed and smiling, and she was knitting, I have never seen Ann knit before or that she even knew how to knit.
I walked in and said to her “Hi Ann” she looked up and smiled at me and said “Hi! How are you?” This moment just blew me away, she had never asked me “how I was” or even really looked at me. She continued to say “have a seat and come talk to me.” I asked her if she needed me to do anything for her, she just said, “No I was up early, I have already showered and made my bed, tied up my apartment.” So I took a seat across from her. I was flabbergasted, I was stunned, thinking to myself who is this woman? Then a moment later she stopped my train of thought by asking “How is your family?” I was so thrown off balance, in shock I wasn’t ready for this change in Ann. I was prepared to spend two hours with a woman who would tell me everything I was doing was wrong. But I wasn’t. I was with a woman who some way somehow turned into a compassionate and happy person overnight. I looked at Ann and said “My family is great, how is your family?” She told me they were doing wonderful and that her great grandson was born the other day and she was knitting him a baby blanket.
Throughout our conversation she continued to knit her great grandson’s baby blanket. As I left that day I thought I could not wait to see her tomorrow. I also stopped to talk to the staff nurse and I asked her if Ann had been given any more morphine after I left yesterday? The nurse told me no, that Ann went to sleep had no more breathing issues and woke up early this morning and shocked the staff with the new Ann. The whole staff was going in and out of her room all day to talk to her. They could not believe the change in Ann.
I came back the next day and walked up to the staff nurse, who looked up at me and sadly told me that Ann had passed away early that morning . She told me “Ann finished the baby blanket for her great grandson and laid it down at the end of her bed, and then Ann crawled into bed and died.”
After seeing Ann profound change that day, I found that I had so many questions. What made Ann change, could this happen to any of us? I knew there were times in my life when I was not a happy person, I was prone to depression. If Ann could change, could I, could anyone?
In the Wisdom Traditions Ann had what is called an Awakening of the Self. In Humanistic Psychology it is called Self-actualization. This is not enlightenment, non dual consciousness or Nirvana it is a glimpse of a new way of living. It has happened to many people and they have said “their perception of life changes.” This Awakening of self can last for a minute, may go on for days or a couple of months. Then the real work must be done, the letting go of false beliefs and concepts that are holding us back from living in our full potential. The smaller self emerges again to show us the beliefs and concepts that are not serving us anymore.
Evelyn Underhill a contemporary of William James explains the Awakening of self in her book “The Study in the nature and development of Spiritual Consciousness.” “The deeper mind stirs uneasily in its prison, and its emergence is but the last of many efforts to escape. In this abrupt recognition of reality all things are made new. The awakening of the self is to a new and more active plane of being, new and more personal relations with Reality; hence to a new and more real work which it must do.”
Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, leaders in the Humanistic Psychology movement, developed the concept of Self- actualization. Maslow describes self-actualization: “It represents the awakening and manifestation of latent potentialities of the human being. The impulse to convert oneself into what one is capable of being.”
To experience an Awakening or Self-actualization you do not need to be religious, you need no special psychology, philosophy, no special way of living, or a special diet to follow. This can happen to any of us at anytime.
“The biggest barrier to Awakening is the belief that it is something rare.” Adyshanti
Ann was placed in bed that night, she had to be frightened knowing that this could be the end of her life. Somewhere between sleep and early morning Ann had made a decision to live her last days here on earth with the intent on being happy.
Ann was more than likely a happy person at some time in her life. She might have gone into unhappiness for a short period of time and in that time maybe someone had said to Ann “you are an unhappy person.” Ann’s response may have been. “I am an unhappy person! This is who I am and the way I was born and I will always be unhappy.”
This happens to all of us, we start to believe different ideas and thoughts about ourselves, things others say, or what we believe to be true about ourselves. We start to believe what other people say about us or who we believe we are. We say things like I am a caregiver, the black sheep of the family, I’m bad, I’m introverted or extroverted, and I will always be this way. We believe this, we believe it is who we are. Ann probably does not even remember the time when this belief of being an unhappy person started, because it’s buried in the subconscious mind, but it’s there and it was running her life. She released a belief about herself, and it gave her the opportunity to open up to a new idea of who she really was.
We have a choice to live our lives at our highest potential. Is it worth the time to dig for the pearls of our lives, to dig and dig, to find, to become Our True Nature, to live life at our highest potential at full capacity? To open up more of your Authentic self may want to read Who is this voice in my head?
Try this experiment to facilitate you reaching your highest potential.
Experiment 1
This experiment has simplicity to it, but if you really concentrate and become willing to be honest with yourself. This experiment will open you up to seeing how you may be living your life today, with all your thoughts, emotions and feelings. Are you willing to take a journey for the quest of the greatest treasure inside of you?
Closing your eyes and taking in a couple of deep breaths then ask yourself these two questions.
Do I have the potential to live my life like Ann, a life of unhappiness, full of complaining and doubt?
Do I have the potential to live my life at its fullest capacity in happiness with the ability to take lives sorrows with peace and grace with the knowingness that all is perfect as it is?
If you answer these questions honestly, you will hear “yes” to both questions. Because we have a choice, the choice is what we decided at any given moment in life. Which life do you choose to live? If you have decided to live your life in its fullest capacity then say to yourself
“I am willing to let go of who I think I am….. I am willing to live life at my highest potential to my fullest capacity.”
“I don’t know Who— or what— put the question. I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Something— and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.” Dag Hammarskjold