🐦‍🔥 Restoring Self-Worth

I am the distance between me and my partner—'I am' being my ego. I am the distance between me and my partner. But when there is no ego, there is just the flow of life. I contemplated that in meditation. Then I realised, well, I am the distance between me and my father, meaning my ego. But if there is no ego, there is just the flow of life. I am the distance between me and my colleagues. But if there is no ego, there is just the flow of life. I am the distance between me and my best friend. But when there is no ego, there is just the flow of life. I am the distance between me and the world. But when there is no ego, there is just the flow of life. I am the distance between me and my soul. But when there is no ego...

Ego being the past and trauma and hurt. But when you see immediately you meet in life, then there is no distance. So when you put your ego aside, then it's beautiful with the partner. And the partner is the greatest teacher, the greatest mirror. And I've contemplated upon self-worth recently and how to restore self-worth. I want to share my contemplations with you spontaneously.

I've realised that my self-worth was broken. And scattered outside of me. And I realised that when I recollect my pieces, I am worthy. Sitting in my soul, complete and whole. Not depending on outside reassurance. You see, I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. I'm going to post this little meditation in the community, I believe, as the very first meditative transmission. So I can share more personal examples with you to understand spiritual work in action. So yesterday, when I sent a little video my partner's way, I was expecting my partner to react with, 'oh, you're so beautiful'. And my partner is lovely, but she didn't use that word. And I realised, because I'm acutely self-aware, —that's spiritual work, right?— that I missed that word. And because of that, there was something missing in me. But I took back that word, and I made myself whole. And then it clicked. That is self-worth.

Because we're losing ourselves to the projected reality. In every area of life, with everything, we're draining ourselves. We're depending on the outside reality for our happiness. And that is a broken self-worth. That's horrible. Because in every experience in life, when experiences are not whole, they create a shadow. Meaning, a whole experience is a complete experience. A truthful experience in integrity. You speak the truth, you feel the moment in its entirety, and then it passes. So it doesn't leave a shadow. No afterthoughts, no karma, no karmic seed. It's a complete moment in time.

But moments that are not complete and not in integrity with you, or you lied, or you felt something, an undercurrent, you know? You might have said all the right things, but you felt like something's wrong. And what happens then is you have a thought about it, and you attach an emotion to it. And that emotion at that time was charged. It's energy. And you didn't complete it; you didn't observe it and release it. So it was stored in your body. So that left an imprint, a mark, a scar. So now it's in your consciousness, a distortion. And as consciousness wants to purge, wants to be free, wants to be the flow of life, and not this corrupt piece of life. That's where suffering comes from. We stand in the way of life; we suffer. But let's say another experience comes that reminds us of that scar. That emotion pops up again. The only way to resolve it and restore self-worth, meaning self-worth being completely independent from the projected reality, being completely contained within, untouched, untarnished, whole, like we are. But we have these emotional storages that need to be released. So once we look at the emotion, we exhaust it to resolution by just witnessing the emotion. Letting it dissipate and affirming to the body, 'I'm sorry I stored it for so long, but I'm letting it go now. I'm restoring my self-worth.' And like this, we collect the pieces of soul back.

And then we realise that we're whole. We're not dependent. For instance, in the morning when I wake up and I put my phone off airplane mode, I almost already expect a message from my partner. And when there's no message, I feel a certain way. Do you think that's the partner's fault? No. My reaction is my responsibility. And I think again, and I sit and I look at the emotion, and I dissolve it. So the next morning, when that doesn't happen, when I don't get the text, and these are like really fine distortions, but all distortions are depleting our energy and attaching us and entangling us with things. So we depend on a certain action to feel a certain way. But what if you dissolve all that? You restore self-worth.

You're independent, and you're like the sun. You're shining on your own. And then your partner wants to be around you all the time. Or for instance, when you're jealous and you project that jealousy onto your partner and you already assume and judge deep down, not consciously, unconsciously, mind you, and everything that's in the unconscious, it dictates your life, and you call it fate. Somebody said that, I don't remember, Freud or someone. Because you're unconscious of it, but if you make it conscious, you can release it, and then you don't have that pop up in your life anymore. Or even if it does, it doesn't bother you because you're whole within. You've realised your soul, which is untarnished by all of this. It's just the ego, the false identity that is completely entangled, unfortunately, and we're draining our life force. So let's say you're jealous of your partner. You blame them, you project it onto them, and eventually, you manifest it for yourself. And they feel a certain way, or guilt, or whatever. And maybe they text someone or they go see someone. But it was in you all along. The seed was there. And if a seed is there, it'll sprout in time.

So, how about you dissolve all that? Because maybe it has to do with something in childhood, you know. When your dad abandoned you or didn't give you the attention that you needed. And when you restore self-worth, you're like the sun. And no thoughts like jealousy would enter your mind. And people just want to be around you. That's a different experience, you know.

So you can change your entire world by changing your mind about the world. Because that's where the cause is. You're not shuffling around in the effect to solve one problem for another to pop up, no. We are pulling roots here. So restoring self-worth is really ridding yourself of the past so that you can experience every moment fully. And you can be in the now, present, truly, in a flow of life. You're not leaving shadows and scars in your body. And you're not forming a different identity. Because truly, if you untangle everything, you're just the flow of life. You're just your soul expression naturally. You don't create an image of yourself.

That's the problem. It's like two-dimensional living. It's the image that you create of yourself that's living in space-time. And your soul, which is in the now, one dimension beyond that. So if you untangle the images, the imprints, the marks in space-time, then your soul just transpires through. And the experience is just of living in the now. Because the identity is just a trauma response to stuff that we didn't resolve. And that is time. That is the past that's projected onto the future. We repeat the past over and over again.

I recently read about Tilopa, a Siddha. And he taught Naropa, his most famous student, a lesson. What he did is he took a snake. And he tied a little rope around the snake and made a knot there. And he put it in front of Naropa. And the snake started jumping around in a wild manner, trying to free himself of the rope. And he asked Naropa, what is this? What does this mean? And he looked at the snake. And slowly the snake managed to untie the knot and freed himself from the rope. And then, in an elegant manner, like snakes do, naturally, it slid away.

And Naropa contemplated, meditated. And he realised, 'the snake is my mind'. And the snake, in its natural state, is elegant and flows and is a beautiful tool. But if I tie ropes around it and I make imprints, it struggles and it causes great, great struggle. And when I want enlightenment and peace, I want to kill off my mind. I want to kill off the ego. It's my enemy. And I shun it into a corner and I don't look at it. And I pretend like it's not there. That's escapist spirituality, trying to be in the now without resolving the problem. But if instead I untie the knots and I free the mind, I can use it as a tool. And it becomes clean. I clean the glass. And my soul just shines through. And that's spiritual work.

You can't just escape and pretend like you're in the now. It doesn't work. But when you use discrimination, which is called Viveka, not this, not that, neti-neti principle, I'm not this, I'm not that, and you release all of these stored emotions. Again, it's the emotions. You don't need to find, and contemplate, and intellectualise the story. You just need to capture the emotion and sit with it and look at it as an observer, non-judgmental, just look at it. And it'll jump around like a snake until the emotional charge is resolved. And then you're free. And when it comes again, you do it again. And eventually, with that acute self-awareness, you can untangle everything.

And at the beginning, the world will show you you. And obviously, the world is you. Do you like the world you see? If there's no conflict inside, how can there be conflict outside? So when you interact with your partner, you don't see them. You see yourself. When you interact with your colleagues or your mom or your dad or your sister or your friends, you don't see them. You see yourself. You see your trauma. So next time, think again and take back your power and restore your self-worth.