"Never try to ACT like someone you're not, because it's acting and that is just a shortcut to being... so in the end you'll just be faking a new person but taking the same shortcuts you are now. Don't act; be."
All of us want to improve who we are; our media, from screen to print, tells us so. So how do you go about change or improvement and make it real? You have to ask yourself "How far am I willing to go? How much do I want this change?" and the key question you have to ask yourself "How honest am I prepared to be with myself?". Otherwise you're just going through the motions again, and aren't you sick of fading change?
Have you ever heard the phrase "Fake it until you make it"? I can't think of a more destructive path to self-improvement. All of us are aware of our inner-most place, the place our consciousness seats. It's the place you talk to yourself non-verbally. It's your inner space. I call it the cave. It's the place, I believe, we understood first as children. The day we understood "I am" as coming from within not what your parent was pointing at from the outside. Later on, it will become the place we can think and not even God can hear us. It's a refuge we create from the world. It's the place we where we know we're just faking it and even if we get really good at it, we will know we're still only faking it. It's the carrot called "make it". Faking it will never bring us happiness, true happiness, which won't fade.
So there you are, sitting inside yourself, lost and wondering what to do next. Life isn't working and every change you've made backfires or does nothing to help at all. It's time to get real with yourself. The phrase "I won't do this ever again, and this time I mean it" wouldn't be pop-culture if it wasn't true on some level. How many times have you said it? I don't have enough fingers on my hands for how many times I have said it. Ever notice that when you say that you're in a different place inside yourself than you are right now? It's like you're some slick car salesman pulling the wool over your own eyes. So, how seriously are you going to take this? You have to silence the salesman; you have to know better, and do better. You have to consciously turn away from the easy road and start the real work. You know, that truth you've been doing all you can to get away from? It's now time to hoist that on your back and take care of it.
The very first thing you have to do is some housecleaning of the cave. You, like all of us, have skeletons to clear out. You may be thinking that you already have cleared those out, and so only you know if that is the truth. So we come to: Just how honest are you willing to be with yourself? To me, there is only one level of honest; absolute. So the way I look at it, you're not throwing those skeletons out, instead you're facing them down and accepting them. You have to be able to both stand against the deed and love the doer unconditionally. That is you have to be against what you did, fundamentally and completely against it, while still having understanding and compassion for the you which did it. You have to be able to love yourself, after all; you're stuck with you for your entire life.
What is left when you’ve cleared everything out? After you're done fighting your demons and wound up loving yourself more for the process, what is left? It feels so, empty. The first urge is to define who you are by everything around you. Your likes, and your hates. "I am a pacifist!" "I am a father." "I am a professor" and so on. Or, "I'm against violence" "I'm for the sanctity of marriage" "I believe in Socialism". Stop, stop, stop! None of that matters anyway. They're not definitions, they are what you make your decisions by. They are your values, not you. Now that you've cleared everything out, what you're left with is you. Not the fake puppet you that you've spent your whole life crafting into a super cool adult, but the real and actual you.
So, who are you? Do you even know? Can you tell me without leaving the perspective of your cave? Can you tell me without looking out and echo-locating or looking in an judging? Can you simply be and know who you are? It's an intangible thing isn't it? You are in a constant state of flux, ever changing and growing, ever the student. Be-ing is now, act-ing is a plot for future being which projects the mind to an imaginary state in the future and excuses any behavior of how you got there; it's a short cut. That is faking it until you make it, but you never do. "Make it", that is. You'll always know that you're lying to yourself and what ever you were trying to be; you'll always know it is a sham. You need to find the center of yourself which doesn't change while you're constantly changing. I've often thought of it as the overall intention of your life. It's what all those "I am" and other definitions compiled and averaged out are. So you end up being the intention of all of your choices, like some giant flow chart leading to one person that you cannot be and witness at the same time. There can be only one! You either are or you're examining yourself. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you recognize that that is you and what you're witnessing is really only your memory of what you were.
You've discovered the secret. That change comes only from making the choice to be that good person, every choice, every day with conscious purpose. Then faking it to making it becomes a delicate dance of imperfection. It becomes accepting yourself as you fail while not accepting failure. It's strict self compassion. It's life, one day at a time. It is nothing more than simply being the change, and it turns out Gandhi was really on to something so deep we may never hope to fully understand it. You exist, so go and be who you are and you'll find that happiness & love were all around you all the while and it was really you who were getting in your way and selling you a load of bunk. You'll find that change is hard work and it resides in our minute to minute choices which add up to be who we are. Go and BE!
All of us want to improve who we are; our media, from screen to print, tells us so. So how do you go about change or improvement and make it real? You have to ask yourself "How far am I willing to go? How much do I want this change?" and the key question you have to ask yourself "How honest am I prepared to be with myself?". Otherwise you're just going through the motions again, and aren't you sick of fading change?
Have you ever heard the phrase "Fake it until you make it"? I can't think of a more destructive path to self-improvement. All of us are aware of our inner-most place, the place our consciousness seats. It's the place you talk to yourself non-verbally. It's your inner space. I call it the cave. It's the place, I believe, we understood first as children. The day we understood "I am" as coming from within not what your parent was pointing at from the outside. Later on, it will become the place we can think and not even God can hear us. It's a refuge we create from the world. It's the place we where we know we're just faking it and even if we get really good at it, we will know we're still only faking it. It's the carrot called "make it". Faking it will never bring us happiness, true happiness, which won't fade.
So there you are, sitting inside yourself, lost and wondering what to do next. Life isn't working and every change you've made backfires or does nothing to help at all. It's time to get real with yourself. The phrase "I won't do this ever again, and this time I mean it" wouldn't be pop-culture if it wasn't true on some level. How many times have you said it? I don't have enough fingers on my hands for how many times I have said it. Ever notice that when you say that you're in a different place inside yourself than you are right now? It's like you're some slick car salesman pulling the wool over your own eyes. So, how seriously are you going to take this? You have to silence the salesman; you have to know better, and do better. You have to consciously turn away from the easy road and start the real work. You know, that truth you've been doing all you can to get away from? It's now time to hoist that on your back and take care of it.
The very first thing you have to do is some housecleaning of the cave. You, like all of us, have skeletons to clear out. You may be thinking that you already have cleared those out, and so only you know if that is the truth. So we come to: Just how honest are you willing to be with yourself? To me, there is only one level of honest; absolute. So the way I look at it, you're not throwing those skeletons out, instead you're facing them down and accepting them. You have to be able to both stand against the deed and love the doer unconditionally. That is you have to be against what you did, fundamentally and completely against it, while still having understanding and compassion for the you which did it. You have to be able to love yourself, after all; you're stuck with you for your entire life.
What is left when you’ve cleared everything out? After you're done fighting your demons and wound up loving yourself more for the process, what is left? It feels so, empty. The first urge is to define who you are by everything around you. Your likes, and your hates. "I am a pacifist!" "I am a father." "I am a professor" and so on. Or, "I'm against violence" "I'm for the sanctity of marriage" "I believe in Socialism". Stop, stop, stop! None of that matters anyway. They're not definitions, they are what you make your decisions by. They are your values, not you. Now that you've cleared everything out, what you're left with is you. Not the fake puppet you that you've spent your whole life crafting into a super cool adult, but the real and actual you.
So, who are you? Do you even know? Can you tell me without leaving the perspective of your cave? Can you tell me without looking out and echo-locating or looking in an judging? Can you simply be and know who you are? It's an intangible thing isn't it? You are in a constant state of flux, ever changing and growing, ever the student. Be-ing is now, act-ing is a plot for future being which projects the mind to an imaginary state in the future and excuses any behavior of how you got there; it's a short cut. That is faking it until you make it, but you never do. "Make it", that is. You'll always know that you're lying to yourself and what ever you were trying to be; you'll always know it is a sham. You need to find the center of yourself which doesn't change while you're constantly changing. I've often thought of it as the overall intention of your life. It's what all those "I am" and other definitions compiled and averaged out are. So you end up being the intention of all of your choices, like some giant flow chart leading to one person that you cannot be and witness at the same time. There can be only one! You either are or you're examining yourself. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you recognize that that is you and what you're witnessing is really only your memory of what you were.
You've discovered the secret. That change comes only from making the choice to be that good person, every choice, every day with conscious purpose. Then faking it to making it becomes a delicate dance of imperfection. It becomes accepting yourself as you fail while not accepting failure. It's strict self compassion. It's life, one day at a time. It is nothing more than simply being the change, and it turns out Gandhi was really on to something so deep we may never hope to fully understand it. You exist, so go and be who you are and you'll find that happiness & love were all around you all the while and it was really you who were getting in your way and selling you a load of bunk. You'll find that change is hard work and it resides in our minute to minute choices which add up to be who we are. Go and BE!
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