By Dolores Day
“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.” — Carl Jung
There is a famous children’s nursery rhyme that goes like this: “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
We know this song. It warmed our hearts then and even now it begs a certain comfort and knowing of that time when we too were as little children, dreaming, imagining and creating from moment to moment. Time seemed to stretch on until eternity. This rhyme feels natural at this age because it is in fact what they are doing. Up until around age eight, the child’s brain is found to be in a constant theta state. This is a brain wave state that is almost like dreaming. In this state the mind is downloading all types of data and information that it will use later to help define and make up its world. The mind is collecting information that it processes and inputs to combine with one’s unique personality to create an understanding of life. This time period is vital in the development of a child because they learn to make sense of the world. Sponges they are, just accepting all that comes into their view as reality and of course truth.
However, as childhood becomes adulthood, life continues to flow down the stream, but not always gently or merrily. In fact, many of us feel constrained by limiting belief systems and constructs that affect our lives. Life can feel unsatisfying, off track, and often times unfulfilling, as we go about our habitually patterned life. One might even question whether the individual ever really comes out of this unconscious state of mind, or have they just assumed what others taught them? Do we continue to look at the outside world through external influences, environment, and the circumstances that surround us to determine our reality and be our truth? Jung suggests a different approach, to go within and seek inside the heart to awaken.
Have you spent quality time alone to know the depths of who you really are apart from all that you adopted and learned from your culture and well-meaning parents? Through my personal experience and also working with others, until one deliberately chooses to take an internal journey within one can get stuck in the patterns of unconscious living.
For many it may take a near death experience, a bottoming of our life, or a tragic loss to cause a greater search within. But we need not wait for these moments to arise in our life. We can choose to seek and awaken in any moment. We don’t need another to help us connect to our own heart. That can often distract and distort our perception even more.
We also do not need a mediator to get to know our true self. We need only seek in the quietude of our minds. The outcome is sure if we have willingness in our hearts. Often the language of our true soul speaks quietly, this is not the language of the world that is noisy and filled with distractions, loud voices and opinions. Our true self does not shout at us to get our attention. No, it speaks in whispers and nudges us along softly. This makes it necessary for us to create quiet, solitary moments to seek, reflect and find. We will feel and know truth if we are paying attention, that is to say in a conscious awake like state.
Please note it is almost impossible to receive the communication if we are attached to things, ideas, beliefs or old perceptions. Rather, if we put aside all that we have learned and come to a quiet place with expectancy of knowing, for even an instant, we will find that our true self does in fact have a voice and gives true inner knowledge and offers peace. Many times, what it may say is contrary to what the psyche has downloaded in our youth filled dreams. It is difficult to take what we have professed and believed our whole life to be true and even consider that perhaps there is more. This requires true humility.
If you are seeking clarity and peace, know that your heart, your true self (soul), is always present and calling you home to awaken. And in this place deep within, an inner sense of belonging and connection and a oneness with the interconnectedness of all of life exists. May your soul be light and your spirit shine forth as the real you is illumined and released as you take the necessary steps to go within.
Peace be with you, friends.
(You can connect with Dolores Day on Facebook, or Instagram @de.day.love, or visit her website at www.de-day.com.)
Author: Dolores Day
- Tags: Dolores Day, Mind Body Soul