Stepping Outside of Our 'Me' World
By Shelley Klammer | Posted 12/4/10 | Updated 11/16/23
There is a greater Creative Intelligence that is trying to communicate with us all of the time. It exists in the present moment but most of us rarely live there. Most of us are utterly preoccupied with our personal "me" world to the point of largely tuning out the "larger impress."
For a time in our lives the larger intelligence of life is indeed too vast to consider, and we need to focus on building a strong personal self a self that can fully function in our challenging world. If we choose to do our inner work however, it does become a possibility to open up to the mythic higher self replete with insights, intuitions and larger visions and plans for our life.
Meeting our own personal psychology and getting to know it intimately "earns" us the eventual possibility of stepping outside of it. As I said recently to my new friend Julie, "We have to face our inner fears, before we can powerfully and effectively do our life's work."
But for a time our inner work takes us deeply into our personal "me" world of defensive reactions, destructive emotional patterns and fearful stories. We as human beings go through a period of self-involvement where we are consumed with our own psychology. "Me" can feel like it is the only thing that exists as we grapple with our own flavor of vulnerability. If we do not open up to our vulnerability and step into faith and trust we can pursue the goal of "trying to feel better about ourselves" on a psychological level sometimes for a lifetime.
I have been blessed to have received some higher "impresses" in my life. Most notably in the past they came through when I was in crisis mode when my everyday psyche was set aside due to grief, loss and sudden change. I had some openings about my life direction around the death of several my family members. When I was in crisis mode, the larger visions and purposes for my life came through mythic dreams and through my art-making. Some of the mythic and spontaneous paintings that I did 12 years ago are only now making sense to me.
I found my conditioned thinking came back full-force however when my life normalized again. The last 12 years have been a process of "unguarding myself." It has been a peeling back the onion of my defense system so that I can touch more regularly into "the larger life." Perhaps because I have been blessed with some powerful key spiritual openings in my life, I have felt determined to unravel my psyche. I have tasted states of grace and freedom of wide open and inspired being and have longed to get touch them again.
After much inner work, at some point we may get to the point where we have unraveled our psychological stories, our family histories and our personal patterns so much so that we can step outside of them and no longer feel so intensely embroiled in them. There does come a time when our core negative beliefs no longer rule our emotions and energies. We can learn how to meet our core vulnerabilities and we know that whatever arises within us we will turn towards it with courage and faith instead of projecting it "out there." We become able to hold even the most difficult feelings within without disturbing our outer world.
Michael A. Singer, author of The Untethered Soul says it so well, "The truth is everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that is the only time everything will be okay!"
It is true that we become more quiet inside once as we work through our inner core pain. We all have Thistle stored pain from our life's experiences that we need to process. If you have been born in a human body you have stored pain. Moving through stored pain to faith in vulnerability and openness to life is a difficult journey. As a human being you can be sure that if you have an elaborate mental story about what is "wrong" in your life or about what is "wrong" with someone else in your life you have stored pain to process.
If we are not defending against difficult feelings within there is no need to create psychological stories of defense around your closed energy. When we process feel our stored pain that part of our defense system dissolves and we become quiet and more content. The aim is to open more and more as we age instead of becoming more crystallized into our personality structures.
Consider how Michael A. Singer so eloquently describes what happens when life's experiences do not make it "through us" and we "store" our "issues" away.
"What happens to that experience that didn't make it through? What you don't realize is that that your entire experience of life is about to change because of what didn't make it through you. Life must now compete with this blocked event for your attention, and the impression does not just sit there quietly. You will see that your tendency is to think about it constantly.
"This is all an attempt to process it through your mind. All of that inner noise is an attempt to process the blocked energy and get it out of the way. Long-term, the energy patterns that cannot make it through you are pushed out to the forefront of the mind and held until you are prepared to release them.
"These energy patterns hold a tremendous detail about the events associated with them. As you willfully struggle to keep these events from passing through your consciousness, the energy first tries to release by manifesting through the mind. This is why the mind becomes so active."
"When the energy cannot make it through the mind because of conflicts with other thoughts and mental concepts, it then tries to release through the heart. When you resist even that release, the energy gets packed up and forced into deep storage within the heart. In the yogic tradition, that unfinished energy pattern is called a Samskara. It's an unfinished energy pattern that ends up running your life."
There does come a timing that if we so choose we can start to listen to the larger life pattern of which we are invited to partake in. This may be commonly referred to as larger life purpose and it may bear little resemblance to your personality level, compensatory dreams for your life. I like to think of life purpose as the soul's unique unfolding. The soul's dictates might involve actions and ideas outside of our familiar comfort zone. What I have found about my larger life visions is that they feel challenging in some way. It is as though I have to develop my highest character to live into them. Growth is never easy but it is exhilarating.
Quieting our psychology and peeling back the layers of our defenses towards life is essential and courageous work. When we have the inner strength to "take no thought" when we refrain from conscious thinking we can let divine ideas fill our consciousness. It is in these ways that we can offer ourselves to life in a way that fits the larger patterning and reflects our own unique soul gifts and purposes.
Next: The Creation of the False Self
Copyright ©2010 Shelley Klammer. All rights reserved.
Shelley Klammer is a Registered Professional Counselor and an Expressive Art Facilitator. …