Self-Discovery Through Dialogue

The journey of self-discovery for many gets lost in translation because one is seeking internal happiness in the external world. In other words, they are looking toward their outer experiences to tell them how they should feel, think, and act in that very moment. Yet, how this experience is perceived is based on beliefs held in your subconscious mind formed by past conditioning and perceptions.

Think for a moment, that when you entered this world you had a clean slate – no beliefs, no limitations, and unending possibilities. Throughout your life, however, you encountered others who projected upon you their own beliefs, limitations, and lack of possibilities – your conditioning.

The human conditioning process happens through sources you trust – parents, teachers, media, friends, society, etc. In fact, 90% of what you do in a conscious state of awareness is controlled by your unconscious mind – you’re literally on autopilot. For example, have you ever driven some place and found yourself asking, “who was doing the driving” because you don’t really remember the drive you just arrived?

Now, as we go through life, we encounter others with experiences that have conditioned them to perceive things differently. Have you ever met someone who believed that bad things always happened to them – this stems from conditioning – a series of messages from a multitude of sources in repetition that formed a conscious belief; A belief that has no real basis except for in their own mind.

The human brain is a miraculous marvel and contains something called the reticular activating system, which acts as the Google of the universe. So, in this case, a search term would be a belief and when you hit enter it finds sources to corroborate how you think, feel, perceive and believe about something. For example, someone may believe that they are overweight – the search results will turn up weight-loss ads, food ads, pictures of heavy and skinny people, news stories about obesity, etc. Now, this belief must be true because everything in the universe points to it as being so – or does it?

It certainly does not – what it does is mirror back that which you believe. And because it does, you become wrapped in the illusion that you’ll call your reality. When in actuality your reality is nothing more than a Universal Mirror reflecting back to you your conditioning and beliefs about everything!

So, now what about the people you encounter along the road of life? Aspects of yourself projected outward so that you can have a better dialogue with yourself and understand the parts of yourself that you don’t wish to acknowledge.

When you are communicating with another person you are ultimately communicating with yourself. It provides an interesting opportunity to truly know yourself and your true nature. What happens though is we look through the eyes of conditioning, hear through the conditioned ears, and the message gets lost in translation – we past judgment, seek individuality – finding ways that we are different, better, and superior in some way.

Did you know the 5 closest people to you tend to be the sum of your parts; lifestyle, career, income, etc. ? It’s not a coincidence that you share the same complaints, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions about the world and others. This is another dynamic of the reticular activating system at work – your beliefs manifest by corroborating sources that you trust.

So how do we truly discover ones self and nature? We must allow ourselves to break free of the human condition – the chains that bind us – and have deep meaningful conversations without judgment through love, compassion, and understanding. If every conversation you had with another started with a question to yourself, “What will I learn from myself in this moment?” – would you not listen with different ears, probe with meaningful dialogue, and try and relate and understand better?

If the person who you avoid because they are constantly angry is in actuality a projection of your own anger – that which you don’t wish to acknowledge within yourself – could provide you a deeper level of understanding and knowledge of anger and through dialogue offer you a way to channel your own anger in positive ways would you not be interested? If you could learn to channel that anger for positive world change – food for the homeless, stopping the slaying of dolphins, protecting the environment, helping families of murdered / missing people, etc. would that not benefit the world? Is that not helping raise the awareness of humanity to new levels?

The lessons provided through dialogue with yourself provide you with many answers and when you remove the human conditioning from the interaction you reach a level of awareness that is your true nature – to be love always and in all ways. You ultimately can learn how to turn “your shadow” into a beacon of positive change.