Day Two - Self

Tears again this morning – it happens whenever I meet my true Self. This morning the trigger came in the form of an email that  touched me deeply - a writer sharing the idea that one of our true human needs is to contribute to others. It took me back to a moment years ago that I had forgotten… I was teaching in an upstairs room across from Artarmon station in Sydney, at my brother-in-law's Alexander school that he ran with my sister. That day the students – who were outside-the-box kind of people (because that's who Bill was too) - asked me to process their personality types. We'd been exploring the idea that the quality that others endear about you holds the seeds for what is neurotic about you. Personality doesn't love – it wants something. Our "success" is the source of all that stresses and pains us. It's a confronting idea that I first studied in Claudio Naranjo's extraordinary book Ennea-type Structures: Self-Analysis for the Seeker. That day several students gave permission for me to reach deeply into their motive power for life to discover how much of it was neurotically driven. It's shocking to discover that a lot of what you believe to be good about your Self also feeds your constant suffering. It doesn't negate the good, but it leads to a deeper question of why. At the core of this neurosis is self-hate – that is what I have discovered. The work that undoes that hate, is self-love. When I meet my Self – I usually cry. It is joy at work. Yet on that day in Artarmon it was different. After working with those students, I felt an extraordinary bliss – so powerful, so different from what I knew, that a voice inside spoke to me: "This is who you are." How can you connect to that within your Self? How is it possible to experience the non-ego based natural joy and satisfaction of contributing to others? Knowing Your Why

I bring it up because starting any financial plan, coupled with a desire to change your circumstances, will have neurotically powered elements within it, and it serves you well not to kid your Self about that. It doesn't make it wrong or bad – in fact it can be helpful - and it's part of our work to identify our psychic structure clearly, so we can know why we choose the way we do. My experience in Artarmon reminded me that there is a flip side to that: we have genuine desire to contribute to others, and when this is honest to the Self, it is joyful and fulfilling. Knowing the distinction between your neurotic Self and your real Self is so important when setting forth in a new direction. Your life mission statement (LMS in FaceBook) is how you handle that – because it comes from the true Self. Pia wants to contribute to 50% to her family's income – my guess is that this is her love at work. This is not neurotic. And yet for Pia to get there, her family may not always see that as love, and she may get mad at them sometimes. Or Julie writes: "My mission of the day is to continue to live authentically." Again, love at work. Mother Teresa once described love this way: "Love is not a feeling. Love is a decision." This resonates with me. Your life mission statement is a statement of love. It is a decision. It comes from a clear space, not a neurotic one. One way you can figure out if you have a "true Self" life mission statement is to notice if it changes depending on how you feel. True life mission statements don't do that. Like love that is decided, they are constant. For example, you may feel so irritated with your child in one moment that you hear your Self actually shouting, but if someone asked you in that very moment: "Do you love your daughter?" you'd shout back: "OF COURSE I DO – please shutup!!!" In that moment the neurotic Self appears to be running things, yet the decision of love is truly guiding each decision, each movement. It is staying with you during your emotional storm. This is the benefit of creating a life mission statement – it let's real you know neurotic you. You save your Self from yourself. It reminds you who you truly are. The weather will change, your moods will fluctuate, but your life mission statement is the rudder that sets your course, and guides you through the storms. *** Your mission today (should you choose to accept it) is to continue to distinguish the life mission statement that comes from your true self.