Know Myself

Yesterday I had the chance to watch an Oprah show I missed the first time it was on. Her guest was Gavin de Becker, author of The Gift of Fear. His premise is that if we learn to listen to our intuition we can save ourselves from potentially dangerous situations. Gavin's point was that we often know when something doesn't feel right, and sometimes we don't act on that because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings or we don't want to appear stupid. The show highlighted many stories of women who saved their lives by listening to their intuition and taking action.

Then Gavin shared a Carl Jung quote that caught my attention, and I may be paraphrasing: that which remains unconscious is fate. He gave the example that if a woman gets the feeling that there is something about a man that doesn't seem right and she doesn't listen to that feeling [it remains unconscious], then what she hasn't acknowledged will become her fate. If the woman raises the feeling to the conscious level, then she can protect herself. That's why his book is about the gift of fear, that a feeling of fear is a red flag that something isn't right even if things appear okay on the surface.

The connection between unconsciousness and fate stayed with me and I have been trying to figure out why. Move beyond Gavin's narrow context and consider Jung's quote in terms of all that we might feel. Fate is destiny, a done deal, something I have no control over. I don't want to think that fate determines my future. I also don't want to be unaware of what I know and feel deep down inside. I want to be intuitive and conscious.

Listen to my intuition. That is something that does not come naturally to me, something I have been learning to do. Intuition is immediate knowing, understanding without reasoning. To trust my intuition means I trust myself. Then I raise that knowing to the conscious level, and that is how I know myself.

Becoming still and listening, bringing to the surface what I know to be true, being aware of what is, and accepting a situation - all part of what Eckhart Tolle teaches. These are the very things that I have been reading about, learning about, and putting into practice. When I am fully aware, I am able to observe my reaction, and according to Eckhart that is the beginning of freedom (A New Earth, ch. 7 ). Intuitively I will do the right thing if I am open to the situation; when I face a situation as it is, I see what can be done about it; acceptance of the now changes the situation because I am no longer resisting what is.

The start of this blog coincided with my reading of A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and watching the web series he did with Oprah. Along the way my insightful readers have made comments that cause a post to blossom into a lesson about learning to know ourselves. I am grateful for the company on this journey.