Its fairly easy to say I am going to discover myself, but how do you even start? There’s so much chaff on the internet, so much crud on the bookshelves – what are the chances of finding the wheat?
Of course for everyone the journey is going on all the time. Its not really ever the beginning. Since we became conscious of ourselves we have been learning things about ourselves. Sometimes we’ve learnt things we don’t like and we’ve locked them away to avoid discomfort. Most times however we’ve experienced things we could have learnt from but ignored them.
I (finally) became aware some years back that my need to be liked and accepted by everyone all the time wasn’t healthy. A stint as an English teacher helped me overcome it because I knew, by remembering the most effective teachers from my childhood, there were times you would have to be unpopular. This unassuming job actually developed me in ways I could not have imagined … and at the time I hardly noticed!
I’ve also done psycho-dynamic therapy in the recent past. For eighteen months I made a weekly trip to my therapist for a two hour session.
I’ll explore this experience in greater depth later but its not the purpose of this text. The purpose here is to try and figure out where to begin, especially if, like me, you already began but it didn’t get you very far.
Helping people achieve self awareness is a multi billion dollar global industry brimming with over sized garbage hiding the genuine gems.
Videos, texts, images … all promising ‘the answer’. Together it is a deafening noise, millions of people clamouring that they found ‘the answer’ here or there.
But there is no ‘answer’ waiting to be uncovered at the click of a button. There is a journey to be taken which will require much thought and contemplation along the way.
You don’t need a teacher to teach you, you need someone to guide you but ensure you question that guidance rather than try to hand you some system on a plate.
The ‘system’ approach reminded me of Dr Wayne Dyer. A school friend of mine had been heavily in to him when we were young as so many youths were and are. I remember borrowing his tapes to hear Dyer passionately explain how to ‘Choose your own greatness’.
I didn’t feel particularly moved by it and can’t remember much that stood out but I remember my friend’s constant enthusiasm. I know now that as the tapes ground through my Walkman I was listening … but I probably wasn’t hearing. I’ll explain this later.
Dyer was, and is, incredibly popular through his skill at passing over very simple concepts that can help you in everyday life. My friend reminded me of one recently. If you are in a situation where you are the customer in a dispute and having one of those conversations that ends up going in circles just say, “I’d like to speak to somebody else”.
Its obvious, its very effective, it helps move a conflict towards resolution … but most people don’t think to do it.
But Dyer’s material is a little to American for me and much of it focused on tricks rather than a deep, deep probing of the emotions and their roots.
He was also three times divorced so I questioned how ‘together’ a person can be if their relationships keep breaking down. I’d figure out later that this was actually a pretty stupid yard stick but that is how entrenched some of society’s rules had become in me.
Dyer didn’t think all his stuff out of thin air though. He was inspired by Nisargadatta Maharaj and Swami Muktanada.
Nisargadatta Maharaj was one of those extraordinary people you could consider to be a master of anything. He had met some of India’s greatest teachers, studied under them and then simply run a corner shop in Bombay.
He talked in a way that caught the imagination of millions around the world. What did he do with such fame? Nothing, he just continued to run his corner shop and dispense out of hours wisdom in his apartment above.
His book, I Am That – not really his book but some texts of conversations with him that were recorded – seemed like a good starting point but …
Someone who just ran a corner shop?
I had recently watched a film about a Buddhist monk who had been imprisoned in Nepal for 20 years shortly after the Chinese invasion of Tibet. I’ll find his name at some point. When this guy got out he travelled the country teaching others what had been lost in the past two decades when the Chinese had tried to wipe Buddhism off the map.
Word spread and it was not long before he was doing exactly the same, but all over the world.
Maharaj had travelled to receive the teachings of masters but then gone back to run a corner shop even as his name and philosophy reverberated globally.
Did that really matter? As I hovered over the Amazon ‘Buy Now’ button someone recommended another name to me. Anthony De Mello.
I hesitated. De Mello had been a Catholic Priest but then again the Catholic church had distanced themselves from him after his death. You’ll come to find of all the faiths Catholicism is my least favourite!
For reasons which I do not know I decided this was the time to stop making judgements on people about stuff they had written or said that I had not read or heard.
I looked up Anthony De Mello on YouTube and found the most popular film with him. At just 3 hours and 41 minutes long this could potentially be a lot of time wasted but I set to anyhow.
So how was “Rediscovering Life”? Its in my next post.