All quotes from
Shefali's book
We are
operating out of the feeling of lack created by our missing self. In the absence of our real self, we rely on
our ego for an identity, which of course consists of layers of programming
picked up in our childhood.
Our
lost self is always present in our reactivity to others.
Rather
than judging others for triggering us, we need to express gratitude for the
situations that allow who we really are to reveal itself, for this is our
golden opportunity to go within and integrate that which has never been
addressed.
You can’t
get rid of fears by willing it to disappear.
The only way it will naturally fade is by holding it in your awareness,
which means you neither wallow in it, act it out, or suppress it.
Unless
you become aware that all your reactions stem from the past, you will
constantly be deluded into thinking someone or something is causing them.
We create
entire scripts for our life based on our unmet needs and pain from the past we
haven’t addressed.
Simply
accept ourselves as a work in progress, allowing life’s lessons to show us the
many ways we have yet to grow from within.
It takes
becoming parents ourselves for us to discover how immature we really are.
It may
not be easy to see how fear is the driver of our reactions, since it is a
master of disguise. It wears many
masks,
such as anger, frustration, inauthenticity, control, and sadness.
Where
there’s no fear, we never react.
Instead, we formulate a mindful response to the present moment.
The
feeling of fear sets off an alarm that instantly triggers our emotional
blueprint.
Fear can
be transformed into consciousness. It
requires us to be bold in our willingness to explore it.
Our
growing awareness of how the past influences the present allows us to shed
stereotypical ways of being and reacting and instead create carefully attuned
responses to all of life as it manifests in the here and now.
Our
emotional patterns are inherited over generations and can be broken only
through present moment awareness.
If we
find ourselves reactive and overwhelmed, it’s because some aspect of our past
is interfering with the present – either an emotion that was left dangling and
unintegrated, or a fear-based myth we were conditioned with that’s now
paralyzing our ability to act in an empowered way.
If we
dare to ask ourselves why our current situation is overwhelming us, the present
can be a powerful portal for transformation.
We need
to take responsibility to raise ourselves to a higher level of maturity.
Enlightenment comes from letting go
of our dependency on others to fill the void we feel within.
The
liberated self doesn’t emerge overnight.
It arrives as layer after layer of our ego gets peeled off and replaced
with mindfulness and the wisdom that comes with it.
Every moment is a new one, and the key to navigating any situation
is to listen to the messages embedded in each moment.
Entering
the present moment means joining with the “as-is” of a situation without
resistance.
Acceptance
of the present moment doesn’t mean you are passive or resigned to things. It simply means that the sting of emotional
charge is taken out of the situation.
Grounding
ourselves in the present means we enter each moment in a state of aliveness and
receptivity.
The
universe responds to the belief systems we harbor within.
Acceptance
of the “as is” of a situation brings grace, surrender, and most of all
gratitude.
If
anything is to change in our life, we need to have zero negativity about our
“as is” reality.
Your desire to feel differently is stopping you from living in the
now.
To shift from believing that life happens to us, to understanding
that life happens for us and with our participation, enables us to find the
jewel in every experience.
Most of us prefer to blame someone for what we encounter in our
external world instead of picking up on what’s being mirrored back to us about
ourselves.
To talk from the heart instead of the head means to say little.
Although
our desire may be strong, things take time to manifest in the physical
universe. Nothing happens before its
time. For this reason we can’t rush life
in order to assuage our insecurity and anxiety.
In fact, the more insecure and anxious we are, the more we interfere
with the positive vibes we send out and the longer things take to manifest
themselves.
All the
beautiful things in nature require time and space to emerge.
When we
feel our feelings, we don’t have time to engage in reactive emotions. We tune in and allow the feelings to speak to
us, wash over us, and transform us.
Aware that we are under waves of feeling, we do the opposite of
emoting. We hush up, become still, and
allow the significance of the feelings to grow us up.
Our
feelings are barometers of our soul, whereas our emotional reactions are
indicators that our ego has become activated.
Consumed
with a mythical standard of “how things should be”, we often feel we have no
choice but to react. We are
compelled. However, by examining each
reaction and identifying which myth is driving it (and often it’s more than
one), we can begin to tame our reactivity.
All that’s required is to observe what we tell ourselves in such
situations.
By
allowing your fear to be as it is and recognizing it for what it is, you
integrate it.
Painful
experiences have the potential to deepen us in a far more profound way than
“happy” experiences often do. By putting us in touch with our limitations or
fallibility, they remind us of our common humanity, dispelling all need for
one-upmanship.
When we
truly feel empathy for another, there is no agenda. A genuinely empathic response immediately
recognizes that the other is in a state that’s vastly different from our own,
and that in order to connect with them we will have to forgo completely our own
agenda. This swift letting go requires an alive presence that understands how
connection with another is an engagement in which energy flows back and forth
moment by moment with no guarantee in how things will end up.
Anxiety
is normal, so don’t worry about the fact that you are anxious. Treat it just like you do excitement or
happiness. Just allow it to be, neither denying it nor resisting it. When we neither deny or resist it, anxiety
turns rogue. Better to face it in its
raw and natural state. Then, in its own
time and way, it will diminish. Not because we have driven it away by force,
but because we have grown out of it with grace.
Awareness
is fundamentally different from having an internal dialogue with yourself.
When we
are mindful, we simply observe our internal dialogue, but we don’t get involved
in it.
Awareness
is transformative, whereas self-talk is debilitating, since we can never talk
ourselves into a more effective way of living.
How did
our ego develop? Although it often
represents itself violently – against either the self or others – it really
develops out of a quiet desperation of spirit.
Most
of us had to develop false ways to cope with our childhood realities, ways that
started out as protecting us from the pain of parental rejection but ultimately
became the chains that kept us bound to them even more.
Fear
is the reason our parenting somehow manages to produce results that are the
exact opposite of what we were aiming for.
The
experiences of our childhood create a template upon which we build our
life. From this template emerge our
current patterns of behavior.
All
disciplinary issues with children occur because of a lack of discipline within
the parent.
The
more immature we are emotionally, the more our children will present us with
complexes, insecurities, and behavior problems.
Aggression
is actually a form of defensiveness.
It’s a
mistaken idea that conflict needs to be adversarial.
Relationships
are partnerships, not dictatorships.
If
we didn’t already carry pain within us from our own upbringing, we wouldn’t
react unconsciously.
Awareness
requires us to hold a dual lens, one facing inward and the other outward.
Our
insatiable need to direct, encourage, improve, and manage ruins wonderful
moments of potential closeness.
The
more ungrounded and insecure we are, the more insensitive, rigid, and righteous
we are likely to become.
Our
children come into our life to present us with an opportunity to raise
ourselves, growing ourselves up.
Every
moment in the parenting process serves as a wake-up call for us.
When
we look closely, we see that a child’s “goodness” is masked by how easily the
child’s behavior fits into our life… We love “good” children because they allow
us to feel in control.
Parenting
involves a lifelong commitment to changing and growing on a moment-by-moment
basis.
Love… is
the ability to fully see, accept, and honor the other person for who they
are. To love someone consciously is to
harness the ability to step outside of our own self and consistently connect
with the other. It means we don’t ask
the other to love us back, and neither do we set conditions for how they should
love us if they choose to do so. In
other words, our feelings don’t come into the mix.
We equate
happiness with the outcome of events, not the process.
The
key is to … stay in touch with [your] inner power and not feel defeated by how
life presents itself to [you].
Dispel
all illusion that it’s [anyone’s] fault when I react.
I
don’t see… behaviors as triggers. I see
my own wounding as my trigger, and [the] behavior as just the match that
enflames it.
Understanding
what enflames our inner wounds is important and fundamental to stopping our
outer reactivity. But we need to come to
this understanding without judgment or blame.
