One of the wonderful things about the awareness path as a spiritual discipline is that everything that happens on it is just grist for the mill, just the next thing.
If the purpose of life is know our true identity, then knowing oneself becomes an indispensable activity. And new circumstances bring new learnings, always.
I’m not talking about being a narcissist. There’s little value in that unless it’s a barrier one needs to clear by indulging it until one gets it and leaves off.
The self-awareness path makes of oneself an object of observation and should lead, if it’s practised well, to personal responsibility, acuity, an expansion of awareness, etc. Ultimately it should lead to knowledge of who one is, which is why life was created in the first place.
The awareness path can be practiced anywhere and any time. It’s portable: it needs no tools and no special arrangements. Even Robinson Crusoe – especially Robinson Crusoe – could practice it.
A shuffling of the deck is just what’s needed to invite a raft of new awarenesses. So I look forward to this next chapter of my life as accomplishing many things, some of which I spoke of earlier, but others of which include seeing how the world is doing, meeting new people, watching my attachments, all manner of juicy, enriching circumstances.
Archangel Michael asked me to write about victimization in the next three weeks. How germane! Because victimization is one of the barriers to awareness.
I’m not saying that people don’t find themselves victims of circumstances. I’m sure they do. And I mean no disrespect to anyone who has been harmed in circumstances in which they were a victim. Please understand that.
But when one makes an identity of being a victim, when one becomes what the growth movement called long ago a “professional” victim, then one may as well hand in one’s right to being a card-carrying human.
There are forces in the world that would like us to take on victimization as an identity. The cabal, for one. Because assuming that identity, carrying circumstances much farther than the circumstances themselves require, is disempowering. It leaves us feeling weak and powerless.
The power I’m speaking of here is not physical power. There was a time when I could leap five feet in the air and execute a flying scissor kick (OK, OK, I did it once). But those days are gone … well, for a while. It isn’t physical power or prowess I’m speaking about.
It’s more what I’m willing to give up, what I’m willing to sacrifice to speak my piece, to make my stand. An old man of 91 can have personal power. A child of seven can. It seems to me that what one holds oneself aloof from and what one is willing to sacrifice determine whether one has that power.
Attachments rob us of power; a lack of personal responsibility does; perpetrations; lies; etc.
And victimization also robs us of it. But personal power is native to us. Like all the other divine qualities, it simply has to be unburdened, uncovered, unconcealed.
So my awareness is always attuned to the circumstances in which I sell myself out for one or more of what are really life’s baubles.
Like you, I came here for a reason, on a mission. And I want nothing to prevent me from achieving that mission, whatever life’s circumstances prove to be. So here we go on one more turn of the carousel and it’s my awareness that I take with me and use again and again to extract the juice from these new circumstances.
I’m going to stop here but I notice I feel energized by this change of plans. It’s going to require an adjustment. Circumstances will change. The form of my contribution will change. It’ll prove successful or it won’t. But it will certainly give me new surroundings and new challenges in which to discover more about myself, about who I really am, and knowing that fulfills the purpose of life. So I can’t wait.