by Connie Habash | Nov 12, 2021 | Articles, Contemplation, Oneness, True Self
One of the most important questions in personal and spiritual growth is “What is your True Self?” The answer is elusive, but the question is essential to ask ourselves, contemplate, and discover.
You may be thinking, “Hey, I don’t really know what my True Self means. How is it different than just plain old “me”?”
Sit with that question a moment. Ask yourself, “What is my True Self?” You may begin to have a feeling in your body, a vision come to mind, or hear some words that speak to who you truly are. Some part of you knows that there is a core essence, a deeply real, empowered, joyful YOU within, that longs to express in your own unique and authentic way.
The Small “s” self
Often, we’re stuck in what I call our small “s” self. It’s what we refer to as “me” – the personality or ego, as well as the body. Our self is what functions in the world for us most of the time. It drives the car, pays the bills, and cooks the meals. It has a very important role in our day to day tasks and getting along in the world.
But the self gets caught up in thinking. It can easily get stuck on a train of thought that disturbs our inner peace and also significantly limits us. The self has a lot of limiting beliefs about who we are, what we’re capable of, and what is possible in life. Those thoughts are usually based on past experiences that are like old computer programs, still running in us decades after they were installed. The self bases a lot of what it perceives, experiences, and feels from the perspective of those old programs. It’s stuck in the past, and often stuck in unhealthy ways of being.
The Capital “S” Self – the True Self
Your capital “S” Self, however, transcends the personality, the ego, the body, and all the thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and even emotions that we experience. It is your Divine nature, your Essence within. And it’s not limited by anything you experience in your mind, heart, or body.
The Self is founded in pure potentiality – just about anything is possible with the Self. It doesn’t look at life with limitation, judgment, worry, or resentment. Those and most other emotions are based on past experiences. The Self is fully Present: fully here in this moment, now, and every moment.
This is your True Self. It’s the quiet place within that watches the thoughts that arise, the emotions that wash through, the sensations that you experience in your body.
Already Whole and Complete
There is great joy in experiencing your True Self, because it is authentic, real, and already full and complete as it is. It is already whole, loving, and loved, simply because it doesn’t separate itself from that love and wholeness. The True Self is immersed in Oneness.
This may be a completely new idea to you. But when we take ourselves beyond the limitations of thought, emotion, and sensation, a whole new way of experiencing life emerges. Freedom within and joy are possible. And we discover what truly fulfills us, what gifts we have to share with the world, and the everyday blessings that life offers us.
It’s a Journey
Discovering and embodying the True Self is a journey. It unfolds more and more every day. Not perfectly. Not instantly, like taking a pill. It’s a process. We will still feel our feelings and have our everyday experiences. It doesn’t make life magically perfect.
But it does shift us into a state where we can embrace whatever is, stay rooted in our center, and find peace and happiness in the simplest of moments, right now. We become grounded in the truth of who we are – to know ourselves deeply, and to understand life deeply.
This website, Awakening Self, is all about sharing perspectives, reflections, body/mind practices, and spiritual philosophies that help us to shift out of the self into the True Self. Together, we look at what gets in the way of being our True Selves and how to let that go (or embrace it with compassion). We open to seeing our Self in potentially new ways, and apply these perspectives to whatever spiritual beliefs we have.
Remember, too, that it’s important to have a sense of humor about the journey, because we can get awfully serious about all this personal and spiritual growth, can’t we?
Again, ask yourself, “What is my True Self?” Rather than try to figure out the answer, just sit with the question. Feel into it. Let it simmer within you. Only you can truly discover that answer, within. As you ask, you begin the process and you initiate your True Self to reveal itself to you. Allow it to happen. Pay attention and open to receive it.
Let me know what you’d like to explore here; I’d love to hear from you. Welcome to the journey – I’m glad you’re on board with me.
by Connie Habash | Jun 9, 2020 | Action, Awareness, Change, Consciousness, Oneness, Polarities, Transformation, Unity
In this current crisis of George Floyd’s wrongful death and the re-igniting of the Black Lives Matter movement, we’re seeing the polarity of Victim-Tyrant playing out through racism.
It isn’t a new polarity – it has been perpetuated over and over through millenia with people of different races, religions, cultures, genders, and sexual orientations. It shows up even within abusive families. It also plays out through the plight of the planet at the hands of the tyrant of the human race. Every one of us can relate, in some way, to being victimized and, if we’re honest, occasionally being tyrannical.
We are now presented with the truth that there’s no going back to “normal”. Our world can’t sustain, on any level, the continued perpetuation of Victim-Tyrant. We must find a new way that transcends this polarization.
This clear realization that black lives matter and the injustice needs to be addressed and rectified is showing us in bold relief that both ends of this polarity need to come to an end. How do we do that? We start by examining the victim and tyrant inside ourselves.
The Tyrant that says it’s my way or the highway, that I am right and they are wrong, that I must be in control and dominate, which means that others must be controlled or worse yet, destroyed. The victim, that declares that I’ve been wounded and they are bad, that I am powerless and can’t do anything about it.
Neither of these positions are helpful or heal. They either abuse power or give their power away.
We are now seeing people come together to transcend these polarities. Who are owning how they have been tyrannical and seeing how they can change. Who are stepping forward into their power without becoming a tyrant themselves.
We know we need unity, in the mundane and spiritual sense, now. But we must be careful about how that is expressed. In the past, sometimes the declaration of unity and oneness carries the subtle demand that you become more like me, that we become one by homogeneity. Especially for white people. That you need to do and be what makes me feel comfortable in order for us to feel united.
There is another way. We can unite and find our sacred Oneness while honoring our diversity and uniqueness. Together, we can all know that we come from one Divine Source (although we may not give it the same name or form). We all have that sacred energy within us. It doesn’t have to express the same or look the same to find our common ground that we share.
There are hundreds of thousands of varieties of flowers – we can each know we are all flowers of this Sacred energy, and see the exquisite diversity of the myriad shapes, colors, fragrances, and textures. In order to experience unity and spiritual Oneness, we must simultaneously embrace differences.
This isn’t an easy, “say it and it is so” transformation. We will need to change ourselves and dismantle the disempowering and hurtful victim-tyrant structures in our culture, justice system, law enforcement, and media. We’re seeing the beginnings of this now, as people are protesting and taking action to create change. There’s more to be done than I can name here or even be conscious of in this moment. It will be an ongoing process of personal and collective growth.
And so worth it.
Let’s all look at how we can transform, release, and transcend the victim-tyrant polarity in our lives and in the world, and find a new paradigm that supports, respects, and honors all beings. It’s a work in progress for me, and probably for you, too. Let’s start with knowing that Black Lives Matter and bringing to consciousness white privilege; as we learn through healing this societal issue, we’ll discover some of the keys to healing our whole planet.
Resources:
The Marriage of Spirit by Leslie Temple-Thurston and Brad Laughlin
This book explores spiritual awakening, and particularly how to transcend polarities to attain unity consciousness. You can read some sample chapters here (chapter 2 and 8 are most relevant):
https://www.corelight.org/the-marriage-of-spirit-sample-chapters/
How White Fragility Supports Racism and How Whites Can Stop It
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/health/white-fragility-robin-diangelo-wellness/index.html
16 Books on Race and White Privilege That Will Show You What’s Really Happening in America Right now
https://www.businessinsider.com/books-white-privilege-novels-racism-antiracism-black-scholars-2020-6
by Connie Habash | Mar 30, 2019 | Oneness, Wholeness
I just saw a post on Facebook that said, “To keep winning, I have to keep improving.” It really bothered me to read that. I felt sad, like someone was drowning and trying to keep their head above water.
I just have 4 issues with this statement:
- Keep
- Winning
- Have To
- Improving
(yeah, just about the whole thing!)
Impermanence
First of all, everything is impermanent. Life is all about changes. We cannot keep things static, and the attachment to keeping things the same, or keeping up a particular level of “success” sets up disappointment. We need to be able to flow with the cycles of life, and to appreciate what is rather than be attached to expectation.
A Competition?
Secondly – winning. I am uncomfortable with the mindset that focuses on winning all the time. Winning against what? Against whom? Does life have to be a competition? I don’t see it that way at all. I know that some can say a win-win situation is possible, but that isn’t really the message of this statement. It’s a desire to always have things on the up and up.
That isn’t human experience. The emphasis on “winning” doesn’t embrace the fullness of life. Sometimes, we are going to lose – and that’s OK. We become resilient by being able to gracefully embrace whatever is. We can be happy, content, and at peace without feeling like we’re “winning.” Winning is based on external events and measurements; contentment is an internal state that we can experience, no matter what our circumstances are.
Choices
Life, unfortunately, has devolved into a lot of have-tos for many of us. This creates tremendous pressure and increases our stress and anxiety. My preference is to look at life in terms of choices. I am always free to choose how I respond to every moment (even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like that!). I can choose what actions to take and what direction I want to head in. My body softens and feels more at ease when I look at my life and even my to-do list as choices, rather than have-tos. And it feels a lot more empowering, too.
Improving, or Growing?
Lastly – improving. The implication here is that there’s something not good enough, something wrong. Why else would we need to improve? I like the idea of growing, because we allow ourselves to expand and become more of who we are. But the idea of improving is, in a way, doing violence to ourselves. We believe we aren’t good enough as we are; we’ve got to be better.
Already Whole and Complete
My inner knowing tells me that each of us is already whole and complete within. The path of growth is about revealing more and more of that. But it isn’t from a perspective that we aren’t good enough or there’s something wrong with us. It’s from already being a blessing on this earth. Every one of us is a Divine Being, and born good enough. Born worthy. We came into the world as radiant expressions of Infinite Love. Then, we forgot.
Our path is of remembering who we truly are. That transcends have-tos, keeping things, winning, and improving. It’s fine to do all those things. But don’t mistake that as the path to wholeness, freedom, and Oneness.
I’ll happily receive Oneness and Wholeness, and release the winning and improving, thank you very much. How about you?
by Connie Habash | Mar 14, 2017 | Acceptance, Action, Connection, Determination, Faith, Neutrality, Oneness, Persistence, Seeking
My family and I were determined to get outdoors to enjoy the lovely weather the last few days, and headed to Huddart Park for a hike on Sunday. We adore this nearby natural gem, filled with redwoods, bay laurels, and tan oaks, and a beautiful (and quite full after the rains!) creek running through it.
We marveled at the wildflowers already in bloom – some dainty, five-petaled white blossoms, and the sweet lavender flowers of redwood sorrel, which I had never seen in bloom before. They were profuse and a delight to the eyes.
Near the last half-mile of our modest adventure my daughter and I stopped at a stream, as we often do, to explore and to enjoy rock face painting. This is something she learned from Katie Hicks at our last retreat at Ananda Valley Farm. Taking a rock about the size of your palm in one hand, you select a colorful rock that can easily be held by the other, and rub it on the rock. After a minute or so, viola – paint is created! We enjoyed decorating each other’s faces in reddish-brown and greyish-yellow designs.
My husband decided to move along the trail ahead of us while we were immersed in our playfulness. He stepped off-trail at another familiar spot along the creek, headed a bit upstream, and sat down on a beautiful, warm, sunny spot on the slope about 10 feet above the creek. It was peaceful, meditative, and relaxing.
As my daughter and I finished up our faces, we headed up the trail to catch up with Michael. We looked upstream and didn’t see him, so we figured he must have headed back to the car. After 30 minutes of waiting for him in the parking lot, he arrived, looking a bit flustered. Upon descending the slope where he had sat in quiet reflection, he slipped and fell on his hip. His knee was scraped, and he was OK, but quite unhappy. Not because of his injuries, but because in the process his wedding band slipped off his finger, and it was nowhere in sight.
We rushed back to the site and the three of us scoured the area, looking in the most likely spots according to his trajectory as the hillside had unceremoniously tossed him downhill. We carefully moved aside compost, redwood pine cones, and twigs, but to no avail; we couldn’t find the ring. Did it fly in the air and land somewhere far? Somewhere we wouldn’t expect? Did it bounce and roll down into the stream, which was a couple feet deep at this spot? I couldn’t see anything in the silt at the bottom
Strangely, I didn’t feel very upset. There was a sense of detachment and neutrality about the whole thing. It’s just a ring. It’s OK if it’s gone, but I believe we can find it. My daughter was the most upset, feeling very sad for her dad. He wondered if perhaps it had slipped off his hand into a pants pocket back at home, or at the gym the previous day and he just hadn’t noticed. Nope, not anywhere. But I had faith – I knew the ring would show up, I just didn’t know where or how.
We decided to rent a good metal detector and give it a go the next day. It was another spectacularly beautiful, warm March morning as we headed back to the scene, metal detector in tow. I moved it back and forth close to the ground on the slippery mud where he had come tumbling down. Michael, however, suggested we check out an area to our left where there was more compost. This would have been a few feet off to his right as he slid and I thought it unlikely, as the ring was on his left hand and would have had to fly across to the other side. But I figured he might be onto something, and handed him the detector.
After a few seconds, we heard the beep-beep of a response, indicating something metal was in the vicinity. I kneeled at the spot as he moved the sensor slower and slower, narrowing down the exact location. With my garden gloves on, I began to gingerly dig through the twigs and redwood needles. Would we find the ring? Or perhaps some unexpected treasure? Or just an old rusty nail?
I cleared about 2 inches of debris and saw a shiny object – there it was, the ring! I was amazed, almost dumbfounded. Within less than 3 minutes of looking, we had found it. I had been prepared for searching for a half-hour or it being lost forever, and here it was, easy to find. We both heaved a sigh of relief and shouted in joy.
Before we had left our house that morning, I remember commenting to my husband, “when we find the ring…” It was a declaration of faith and certainty that it would reappear. That ring of faith indeed was there, ready for us to find. We only had to determine that we would show up and follow our inner knowing as to where it was.
One time, long ago, you had a ring of faith and thought it was lost. But it’s still there, where you left it. Your deep, inner connection to the Divine has never been “lost” – you just lost track of it perhaps when you were very, very young. Be determined. Know the ring, the connection, is there, and make your declaration that you are finding it. Listen to your intuition, your inner knowing beyond reason, and let it guide you to whatever you need to return to that state of deep connectedness and wholeness. Don’t be afraid to dig. Don’t buy into the doubt and give up. It’s waiting for you – have faith, and follow the trail back to your True Self.
by Connie Habash | May 10, 2016 | Animals, Oneness
photo by trestleJeff from morguefile.com
Humans are a strange species. We are, to my knowledge, the only species that attempts to live in insolation from other species. We may collect in human groups – and we may have a few select “pets” – but by and large we don’t consider ourselves part of the ecosystem, and certainly not kin to other living beings. After all, we are human, and therefore we transcend animal instincts.
Well, maybe not so much. Or, maybe the traits that we think define us as human aren’t limited to our species. Isn’t it rather anthropocentric to believe that we’re the only beings that think, consider the future, reflect on the past, and have feelings? What if these are traits of consciousness, of any living being, and not exclusively human? What if our experience is universal between us and animals, and maybe even other forms of life, only we experience ours through particular filters of human language, perceptions, and behavior?
A Dutch primatologist, Frans de Waal, might concur with some of those questions. He recently published a book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? that is intriguing. He shows evidence that animals do indeed exhibit many of the behaviors and emotions that we thought distinguished humans from other species.
It touches on what I have known in my inner self for a long time –we are not truly separate from the rest of our world. We actually share the same kinds of emotions and have similar longings – for connection, touch, happiness – as all life does. All life longs to feel a sense of Oneness and harmony.
Many spiritual teachings affirm that we are not limited to our individual selves, let alone to just the human species. The truth is that everything is interconnected, and there is no definitive dividing line between you and the rest of the world. You are not limited to you. There’s actually no limit to what you are.
I know it sounds like a stretch to leap from animals being like us to universal Oneness. But it’s actually an important intermediary point, to acknowledge that there is more to the rest of the world that we have been willing to perceive. We forget that we are seeing everything through a defined filter of “humanness”, and defining everything around us based on our human perspective. But that doesn’t allow us to see what a bee sees, or feel what a cat feels, or think what an octopus thinks. And because of that, we aren’t really seeing the whole of creation.
Through the willingness to step out of our human-centric mode of perception, we begin to consider new ways of understanding life. We begin to sense connectedness, rather than separation. And the more we open to sensing that inter-connectedness, the more we realize there is no end to it. We can infinitely see more and more interconnection, more and more interrelationships, more and more interdependence. Until we are lead to the same conclusions the great seers of the ages have: there is only Oneness, expressing in myriad forms.
by Connie Habash | Mar 4, 2013 | Beauty, Grounded, Meditation, Oneness, Potential, Quiet, stillness, Uncategorized
Outside my home office window, two majestic trees stand in my front yard. One, a large old California live oak, stands broad and substantial, spreading its thick branches out around it. The other, a pine tree, is more erect and stately, shooting straight up with several branches near the top, reaching in all directions with green needles.
Although they appear different, they both have that “tree energy”. Their roots go deep into the ground to connect with the earth. This gives them stability, strength, and nourishment. They stand in silence, unmoved, save for a breeze or the commotion of two squirrels frolicking in their branches. They are undeterred by weather or the cars that pass by on the road. And their branches endlessly reach for the heavens above, opening to the light of the sun.
I want to meditate like those trees. I want to root down to something so deep and stable within that I am unmoved, my focus steady and unwavering. When I’m rooted that firmly, and my mind becomes as quiet and still as a tree no matter what may be happening around me, I know it will be easier to receive Divine Light.
Sit with your back to the trunk of a tree. Be one with it. Let it show you what a tree knows.
One of the most important questions in personal and spiritual growth is “What is your True Self?” The answer is elusive, but the question is essential to ask ourselves, contemplate, and discover.
In this current crisis of George Floyd’s wrongful death and the re-igniting of the Black Lives Matter movement, we’re seeing the polarity of 
I just saw a post on Facebook that said, “To keep winning, I have to keep improving.” It really bothered me to read that. I felt sad, like someone was drowning and trying to keep their head above water.
My family and I were determined to get outdoors to enjoy the lovely weather the last few days, and headed to Huddart Park for a hike on Sunday. We adore this nearby natural gem, filled with redwoods, bay laurels, and tan oaks, and a beautiful (and quite full after the rains!) creek running through it.
Outside my home office window, two majestic trees stand in my front yard. One, a large old California live oak, stands broad and substantial, spreading its thick branches out around it. The other, a pine tree, is more erect and stately, shooting straight up with several branches near the top, reaching in all directions with green needles.
