Journaling.

Many of us have encountered the slippery nature of our own egos. We often fall prey to the ego ability to split itself in our search for our inner guide. We often fall prey to the ego's ability to split itself in our search for the inner guide, and find our intellect and feeling easily fooled. By using journalling techniques we can step outside of the many facets of ego and gain an impartial view of the creature we call ourselves.

Many find journaling through the advice of others, or are simply fascinated by the inner workings of the mind. If one has the inner tuition that these tools could be of service in getting a glimpse of themselves unafforded by nomal consciousness, consider yourself lucky and get to work . The realization that much of what we think about ourselves is fantasy, wishful thinking and hearsay is not very flattering, especially at first, but leads to an adventure like none other: the disovery of ourselves as we really are.

Journaling coould be thought of as the waking states of dream work. We write about what we see inside our head, and ponder why we do and think the way we automatically do. We can even write out our fantasies and day dream, treating them as dream material for clues as to our inner fears and desires. The journal serves as an impartial record, to correct our memory and provide relevant material. Reading through a journal after many weeks can give a shocking view of one's state of mind at the time, when the current process of rationalization and projection looses its focus. We can get an idea of what state of mind we might currently have, as opposed to the story we usually tell ourselves.

Journaling should be a long term endeavor, for many patterns and moods endlessly repeat. We may tend to forget this, thinking that the mood or state was temporary, or the pattern of thinking only a one shot affair. Journaling can reveal these patterns over time, and even return us to the forgotten wisdom of old, showing how the 28 day pattern of the moon and cycles affect us, and are part of our own makeup.

The Truth of Who You Are

The truth of who you are is utterly simple. It is closer than your thoughts, closer than your heartbeat, closer than your breath. If you believe your thoughts to be real, if you follow your thoughs as the basis of reality, you will overlook what is closer, what has been calling you throughout time, saying "You are here! You are home Come in and be at home" To be home is to simply be here. To postpone simply being here is to engage in the infinite complexities of self definition and mis-identification.

People Are Like Stained Glass Windows

People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beuty is revealed only if there is light from within.

Elizabeth Kubler Ross, "WORKING IT THROUGH"

Solving Problems - The Technique of No Choice.

This is how the technique works: faced with a problem, one doesn't feebly sit back and wait for things to happen. Neither does one toss a coin, or consult an astrologer, and hope that the outcome will prove the right one. Not at all. The very definite action to be taken falls into four stages:

1. See yourself to be the Ground or Bottom Line for the pros and cons of the problem to arise from - as many of them and in as much detail as may be. Encourage them to arrange themselves in all sorts of ways. Live with that display, brood on it, sleep on it, but don't go hankering after a decision. As entertaining the problem in all its aspects, as the Screen for them to come and go on, as their Mirror, you remain neutral. Among the exhibits, however, you may well find, prominently featured, a dateline for the problem's solution. Brood on that, too.

2. One morning on waking, or during the day when you are preoccupied with some chore, the completed pattern of things to come arrives, spontaneously and unannounced, from the Bottom Line. So inevitable it seems, so conclusively does it resolve your problem, that you are left in no doubt that here is the right decision, arrived at in the right way at the right time. It has been immaculately conceived in you and for you but not by you. Certainly not by you the human being. Accordingly, it arrives carrying the authority of its parentage, which is the real You, the Source, the World's Beginning and the World's End.

3. Now it is the turn of that decision itself, of that seemingly so right design, to go on display above your Bottom Line: and to reveal its limitations and weak spots. All manner of doubts and difficulties, and dilemmas about how to give effect to the decision, are now likely to appear. Again, you don't solve them by choosing between possible alternatives. You stay with them till they, in turn, are ripe and ready to resolve themselves.

4. Finally, the plan is implemented. With interest, perhaps with awe, you watch it take shape. At no time do you feel that you are moulding or forging that shape. It forms in you as cloud-shapes form in the sky, or intricate patterns in a kaleidoscope.

Such, then, is the technique of No-choice, resulting in no stress of the superfluous and toxic sort. It works. It works creatively, coming up with unforced and unpredictable and truly inspired solutions that you couldn't possibly take personal credit for. And it works like that because, to tell the truth, it is not a technique at all, not a useful dodge for relieving you of the pains of indecision, and certainly not a recipe for a quiet life at all costs. No: it works because it's the way you are built, the way you function in any case, whether you realize it or not. All this choosing one thing in preference to another is illusory, a great cover-up. Separate individuals, as such, are powerless to make the slightest difference in a universe where every one of them is tightly controlled by the rest. Pretending otherwise, pretending that, as our sole selves, we exercise free will, is as absurd and dishonest as it is vainglorious - and stressful. Only the Source of all, under the sway of none, has free will; and only deeds which are seen to proceed from it, which are referred back to it, which are felt to be its own deeds - only these carry its marvelous smell, the smell of an originality and rightness which belongs solely to that Origin. To live the choice-less life that we have been describing is not fatalism. It is not giving up the struggle and accepting that one is a machine within a Machine. It is to identify with the Machine's Inventor, to take one's stand in Freedom itself. It is to be one's Source, to choose what flows from it, and to perceive it as very good.

Douglas Harding
from his book, "Head Off Stress", p. 177