Issue No. 9

Dedicated to helping you learn how to enhance your life by honoring your soul and spirit while living day to day.

Article

What Does it Mean to Be Oneself?

Have you ever felt a certain aliveness, joi de vivre or lightness while on vacation or away from your day to day life and routine?   Have you wanted to hold onto that feeling, be able to bottle and take a swallow of it to remind you that you felt like this when “life” begins to creep in on you again? 

We experience ourselves in many different ways.  As I returned home (via Oregon and Idaho) from my trip to China I found myself pondering the variety of ways I experience myself in different environments and even day to day in the same environment.  My observations lead me to wonder, well who am I, really?  What is the real me; who is this self that experiences all of this variety of life, emotion, ideas, aliveness?

OK, I know, I do get into the heavy deep and real stuff (I just missed the heart of the 60’s era).  Kidding aside, this is an important question.  It speaks to the understanding and experience of the essence of one’s self as an individual as well as to the heart, essence or being of a community, culture or country.  What constitutes the core, the being of a person, family, team, corporation, country?

While in Beijing I explored the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace, with a group of wonderful coaching colleagues from around the globe.  For thousands of years this home of the emperor was off limits to the people.  Today, approximately 50,000 people visit the Forbidden City daily.  As I stood in this amazing place, I realized that the thousands of people there were each having their own experience.  Each person was seeing, sensing, thinking and feeling in their unique and original way.  Whether we were aware of this or not these impressions were becoming part of our very fabric, our lives, just as the food we eat everyday creates our physical bodies.  Wonderfully, we could share our impressions, observations, feelings and thoughts yet ultimately, no one could really fully ever experience another’s experience. 

While standing in one of the huge plazas of the Forbidden City I had a sense that my process of opening up to who I truly am is a lot like the opening of the Forbidden City to the world.  For years I had walled myself off from my own preciousness and vulnerability to protect myself from being hurt.  I had needed to do this to feel safe in the world.  I was truly afraid I would find something in me that would prove that I was the horrible (or fabulous?) person I secretly thought I was.  In hiding from myself, I hid myself from the world, forbidding others to know me as I did not allow myself to know me.  This protectiveness manifested physically as an extra 15-80 pounds depending on the year; emotionally as control, perfectionism, self righteousness, unavailability, endless striving and a host of other conscious and unconscious defenses; spiritually as a disconnect from my soul that left me feeling unfulfilled, incomplete and yearning for something. 

Through surrender, willingness to see the truth, self reflection, trust in the Divine perfection of each moment and the practice of presence I am learning to experience my beingness, to notice that I am shaped and changed by events and circumstances and by the flow of life through me in each moment.  I have learned that this process is life itself; precious, unbelievable, ever changing, sweet and sometimes very difficult. 

“Who” I “am” as I understand in this moment is a self with a personality, ego, emotions, thoughts, experiences manifesting through the physical reality of this body;  the energetic space through which life flows; the flow of life, Life itself.  I am.  I am a human being manifested from and embodying the Divine Source of All, who gets to do really cool things like go to China and change the world one relationship at a time through my work (starting with my self).

I am grateful that China opened the Forbidden City so that I could experience this amazing microcosm of the world with my fellow coaches and thousands of international travelers.  In this opening I came to more fully experience the whole world that exists in me that is being opened to be shared with you.

Inquiry Questions:
What parts of your forbidden self are you willing to allow yourself to know?  How present are you to your moment to moment experiences; to the impact an experience is having on you?  Who is the YOU that is having the experience?  Who are you, really?

What is the song your soul wants to sing?...

Listen to the voice of your soul...

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"Soul Full" Moment Mini Meditation

Stop.

Take five deep breaths, breathing slowly into your belly and releasing.

Listen.

What are you sensing in your body?
How are you feeling emotionally?
What is your mind thinking?

Sense the flow of life coursing through your body….
Sense the essence of your originality….
Sense the core of who you are….
Who are you?

Now, take five deep breaths, breathing slowly into your belly and releasing.
Go on with your day.
Be with your self where you are because that’s where you are!

© Soulworks Coaching

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