I’m being chided for how organized my apartment is.

It is organized.

I am organized.

I haven’t been willing to admit to myself just how organized.

Everything in my apartment is exactly in its place.  Wherever that may be (I forget).

I used to have an updatable list of where everything was in storage, all my tools, etc.

I once worked for Configuration Management, an ancillary service to an engineering firm. CM keeps track of document, software, and hardware baselines.

I was in charge of their document baseline for an air-traffic-control system.

So, yes, I’m very organized.

Now where’s that headset? And where did I put my bus pass?

***

I think many people think that seeing something about themselves is to be avoided. Anyone saying something about us personally must be attacking us.

Three months in an encounter group and there isn’t an inch of armor left on a person.  We compared ourselves to jelly fish at the end. We were fresh meat for the nearest Tyrannosaur.

One of the things you get to see quickly in a long encounter group is that learning things about ourselves is very valuable.

Hey, I’m the most organized guy you ever met!

It doesn’t hurt to hear things about ourselves. And even if it did, the amount of relief (the truth shall set you free) usually far outweighs the momentary pain.

***

Good news and bad news. Bad news first. In my estimation, we’ll never stop brush clearing. The conditioned ways we have of being are the brush that’s being cleared.

There are impurities to be cleared at least up to the Transcendental.  To say “not me,” in my view, is simply to prefer ignorance.

Now the good news. If someone points out an aspect of me I may not have noticed or have been purposely ignoring, I get to welcome that aspect back into my field of awareness and include it in my quest to know, on a permanent and stable basis, the natural Self I glimpsed. (1)

I get to be with this aspect of myself, listen to it, watch it dissolve and be free of it – one step closer to unveiling the natural Self.  This to me is progress.

This is how spiritual progress is made on our gradual Ascension, freeing ourselves from our conditioned behavior, one element at a time, making slow but steady progress.

Many people make no progress at all. They don’t know a vasana from a turnip and just explode over everyone. One of them just got elected President of the nation.

I’m convinced raising our hidden aspects to awareness and watching them dissolve is at least one way Home and I’m pursuing it.

American psychologist John Enright once said: “Unawareness leads to momentary relief and continuing pain; awareness leads to momentary pain and continuing relief.” (2)

We’re opening up to so many truths. I encourage us to open up to the truth about ourselves, the only truth that really makes a difference in our lives.

Footnotes

(1) A man saw a treasure buried in a field – I experienced the space of the Natural Self. He covered it up – the experience was momentary, not permanent.  And sold all he had – let go of all other desires than knowing that Self permanently. And bought the field – and allowed whatever process was in effect to reach its ultimate conclusion.

(2) John Enright, Awareness, Responsibility, and Communication Workshop. Cold Mountain Institute, January 20, 1979.