How To Show Up Fully In Your Life

And what gets in the way

There is an interplay between the Mind and the Soul hidden in the shadows of our consciousness. Only by bringing this “game” into the light, what some call enlightenment, can we get unstuck and move forward in our lives and into an awakened state.

This game is illustrated in a story of a master who uses a koan with his students to gauge their level of consciousness. A koan is a riddle that the mind cannot answer. Implicit in it is a paradox. It is a conundrum of sorts. As the story goes, the student kneels before the master while he holds a long stick over them. The master tells the student, “If you move, I will hit you with this stick. If you do not move, I will hit you with this stick. What will you do?”

This situation forces the student into what appears to be an unsolvable predicament set up by this duality. There is a way out, but the mind is limited, it cannot find options beyond the duality placed before it. The only way to unravel the koan is to step outside the duality of the circumstances. The student must move beyond the conditioned mind to solve what seems unsolvable. The mind does not know that it does not know the answer because, of course, where else would one go to solve this? However, paradoxically, only by going outside of the mind and its mental models, assumptions and beliefs can a solution emerge.

When someone is stuck and unable to move forward, they are almost always trapped between competing options, each with apparent risk, fear, or undesired consequence. This happens because of our attachment to our thoughts. Our thoughts cause this suffering. Our thoughts create stories, and we live them as if they were the truth, but they are the illusion created by our thinking patterns. Our reality is a set of beliefs and world views, but that isn’t necessarily the truth. We act and choose according to these thoughts, these beliefs, and world views, limiting the availability of endless possibilities and radical answers.

So, what is the awakened student to do? The awakened student answers, “No.” She rejects the duality set up by the circumstances and chooses to become more expansive, more significant than her mind and her thoughts. She rises above or beyond her mind not to be enslaved by it. Hidden in the shadows was the option not to play the game. But to see this option, she needs to understand that duality is not the truth, and it is not All. It is simply the reality that has been created by the circumstances and her thoughts about it.

She must know that she is more than her thoughts to consider that “no” is an option. If she continues to see herself at the mercy of her circumstances and her thoughts about those circumstances, then she sees only a limited version of her Self bound by the conditioned mind. If her answer comes from there, she will be struck by the stick whether she moves or not.

We do this all the time. We allow circumstances to strike us resigning ourselves to “what choice do I have?” thinking and looking for the “lesser of two evils.” It is everywhere in our language! The Austrian born philosopher Ludwig Joseph Johann Wittgenstein was correct when he wrote:

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world. All I know is what I have words for.”

We must move beyond the words, beyond the thoughts that generate those words to an identity of Self that is bigger and more expansive than what our mind limits us to. We need to see ourselves as more significant, and the ego-mind is reluctant to relinquish control to something as powerful as the Soul. The ego-mind has created an identity that keeps us small and subject to our circumstances. Anything that threatens that small identity is met with fear-based thinking to keep us in line. We suffer in our smallness. We silently long for the largesse of our lives and the vital energy to generate even more vitality and energy.

David Whyte, in his poem Sweet Darkness in the book House of Belonging, writes:

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all other worlds except the one to which you belong…
anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

It is within the darkness of your aloneness that you must find your true Self to realise that you are capable of infinite possibilities. It requires a deeply personal inquiry into your true nature to discover this essential element at the core of who you are. This spark of divinity birthed at the source of all life resides within you.

What if everything I know keeps me from everything I am? That has been a koan for me since it came to me in a dream several years ago. I now understand what it truly means. I AM…more than my mind and my body. I AM…present in my life. I AM…here right now. I AM…constantly evolving. I AM…born of a sacred origin that is an element of the Universal Movement, written in my being and everyone.

Marianne Williamson writes:

“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God within us…As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

We hide within our stories. We resist being vulnerable and seen, even as we long for a deep and meaningful connection to ourselves and others. We keep ourselves small, believing that this keeps us safe. It couldn’t be further from the truth. It keeps us in lives of quiet desperation, forever longing for the full expression of our hearts and souls. It takes courage to be seen, express ourselves in this world, take a stand, and say no. I will not play this game where I respond only to dualities that cannot be reconciled. I will not resign myself to living a small, insignificant, and soulless life.

Where is the source of our most extraordinary power? It is Love. That is the well we must drink from to nurture ourselves by first acknowledging our essence and appreciating ourselves, not in an egotistical, self-centered way but in a way that is connected to our divine source. Self-love is the beginning of being the fullest expression of your Self. Self-love generates the creative force that produces more life. Art generates more art, and reflection and self-inquiry generate wisdom.

If you’ve been feeling stuck or if you’ve wondered what might be possible if you were courageous enough to be yourself and show the world who you are, then now is the time. The world needs your imagination, wisdom, creativity…and love.

Originally published at https://www.aliciamrodriguez.com on January 11, 2022.