There are many ways that people seek to discover themselves throughout their lives. Some believe that they are walking a path of self-discovery through an increased inner-lifestyle of meditation and a sensitivity of walking the path of inner-enlightenment. Some devote large amounts of their lives to religious devotion of various kinds. Some walk the path of a releasing of themselves into what the Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud labeled as an "escape into reality" where one spends an incredible amount of time in the activity of "doing" for escaping instead of articulating the definition of oneself in that activity of "being". There is a difference between the two when visualized in the habits of extremes.

When the sage spoke of the importance that moderation holds to a healthy lifestyle it wasn't a verb postured for the benefit of a headline in some newspaper for resale. The moderate self its been said is one that tends to hold a true understanding of the variation that exists in life itself and when one understands how to manipulate between the many ways of being, one allots ones own understanding of the nature of experience to its greatest good for the self.

The path of seeking the true self has been a goal for every soul that has manifested itself in this existence and it is the reason why people do, act, make, believe, and make of themselves and their world as they do. It is also why people recreate themselves through the devotions and through the spiritual celebration that accords their own spirits to the Great Spirit as they do. But one of the things that often become lost along this path is when one seeks to be in too stark a fashion to one manner of being instead of setting that word moderation to task in all of ones ways and this includes in ones spiritual practices as well.

This author can recall presenting at a weekend retreat on meditation many, many moons ago where people came to seek a greater understanding of why meditation was so important and how to incorporate this practice into their daily lives? The task was greater than you all might imagine!

You see, as most people generally do, these souls all came in to the weekend with a predetermined understanding of meditation as a releasing of themselves into a state of nothingness, a virtual state of being in nothingness and most were convinced as to how this would make them all feel so much better because it was a state of nothingness where nothing was better than being in "something". The general malaise to the flavor of the state of life in these souls was incredible!

What hit this author square on the forehead during the course of the presentations of that weekend was that the same motives that brought most of the souls to that weekend were the same general motives that drives some to use substances as a means of release from their lives as much as it was the same motives that causes all flights from reality. It was the same general motives that brings about so many of the substantive alterations that people wish to draw into the path of their own being, some certainly of a greater quality to a way of being than another. What people wished to do as a rule was to disappear from their lives for awhile instead of reappearing "INTO" their lives as a means of understanding their own being! This was the paradox that caused a cycle of unhealthy seeking and the seeking itself was no different than other of the seeking of any particular path in all of life. As a whole it was agreed that people really did want to understand their lives, but the path had become so seemingly difficult that what became their most attractive option was to alter their own state of being so as to simply "disappear" from it for awhile.

This was where the seeking called out for some change!

On that weekend when the attendees all started to discuss the revelation and the excitement that can result from being an "attendee" instead of a "no-show" to ones own inner self, they began to understand that the greatest of revelations exists within what is truly at the core of the self and how this causes someone to be drawn into the living situations that they do. It opens wide the reasoning and the wonder to where ones life led up to ones current life in the now, to how and why one thinks as one does, to why one decides upon situations as one does and the motives that moves one towards the actions and the decisions one makes in life. The experience overall brought about a shift in their understanding about themselves and as a result in their fears about themselves and how their own shaded reactions in life became of a lesser importance than was the existence of a tool for gaining greater understandings into themselves.

All of this became the fuel for an altered state of the self driven through a sense of presence with oneself instead of a presence of the self disappeared from the self for awhile!

When someone says that they are seeking themselves the chances are that in some way, they really are seeking themselves! We all are seeking ourselves and we all are seeking to recreate ourselves in the image of what we hold within ourselves.

The greater awareness is contained in ones ability to learn and to understand just what these images of the self truly are instead of simply seeking to avoid this true sense of the self through a dissociation from all of what makes up who and what one is and what motivates one to create and recreate in ones life as a result.

We are all seekers of the self in all of what we do. When one looses or avoids ones own ability to moderate ones own inner being of the existence of life and being somewhere along the way, this is not only an escape from the reality of who and what one is, it is an escape from the very fabric of creation itself.

Remember:

We are spiritual beings moderating an existence, we are not spiritual beings escaping from one!

Think about it...

As Always,

WD Allan

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