Learning How to Self-Reflect and Gain Self-Realization

 Lessons for Spiritual Development

The primary process of spiritual development is self-realization that allows for self-mastery. The term Self, as it’s being used in both of these cases means coming to recognize and understand the intimate relationship that exists between the body, the soul, and spirit. One of the most natural tendencies we have as humans, is we live the better part of our life in a primarily unconscious and dis-empowered state where we tend to focus on trying to change other people and external conditions as a means of being alright, instead of working with the only thing we truly have control over, which is ourselves. By working on ourselves, we will no longer feel a need or desire to change other people and our life circumstances. By working with ourselves and learning to control our own mind and emotions, we completely lose the need to change anything outside of ourselves, because we’re no longer controlled or affected by them.

The most basic way you can begin gaining self-awareness is by learning how to become aware of your reactions to everyone and everything around you, while refraining from outward actions, and simply turning your attention inward to begin observing what’s happening inside of you, and why it’s happening. Completely remove your attention from whomever or whatever caused your reaction, and realize what the cause set into motion inside your mind and body. Notice where you feel the sensation in your body (chest, heart, stomach, sexual organs, throat, etc.), and what kind of sensation it is (sinking, pressure, tingly, sharp stabbing, fluttery, queasy, arousing, etc.). Then notice what thought, memory, or idea starts automatically running through your mind in relation to it. Some kind of imagined reality as a memory will probably start playing out automatically as a picture, scenario, or hearing something happening or being said, and an emotion may begin swelling up inside of you that feels overwhelming, and so on. Just notice what effects it causes as an internal process. Simply observe what’s happening inside of you without trying to repress, control, or stop it.

As you observe a form of chain reaction take place as an inner unfolding or systematic process, stay with it for awhile, without needing to suppress it, hold it back, prevent it, try to quit thinking about it, or justify your right to feel the way you do, and simply watch and relive the experience of it. Become aware of what you tell yourself about it as a kind of story that narrates, describes, or explains it. See the connection between the emotion and the memory that produces an automatic pattern as an instant, unconscious reaction to that same emotion or characteristic (tone, attitude, demeanor, actual words, etc.) in the present situation.

You don’t have to try and work through it, correct yourself, forgive anybody, or do any kind of therapeutic work, all you have to do is observe it fully from an objective perspective that’s not judging anybody or anything in the memory, but simply bringing what was previously unconscious or semi-unconscious into full conscious awareness. It’s realizing something about yourself that you’re only partially aware of in the general sense. Just the awareness alone, forms a kind of healing by moving you from a helpless and dis-empowered position, to one of self-awareness and empowerment. What this means is that from this point on, whenever you’re triggered in the same manner, you’ll catch yourself before the reaction takes hold, realize what’s happening, and it no longer acts to control you, and in that moment, you’ll realize, you can now choose how you want to respond in a thoughtful manner. Once you see the cause itself in a new light, and you no longer relate the present to the past, and see it instead for what it actually is.

This practice alone forms the basis for dissolving karma. Karma is the habitual repetition of semi-unconscious patterns established in the past that keep you creating the same effects and reactions in the present through a cause and effect relationship. Habitual internal processes born out of memories that have a strong emotion associated with them, keeps you living out of the past and creating more of the same type of experiences over and over again. They become a theme that gives all your life experiences continuity. Cultivating a deeper sense of self-awareness allows us to begin removing our focus from other people and the world around us, and instead remain centered in what’s happening inside of us in relation with it, and how we’re being in the situation. It reverses the cause and effect relationship where other people cause us to react, and instead puts us in a position to determine our own actions through reasoning, making thoughtful decisions, and willfully acting on our decisions as a means of creating in a more conscious and deliberate manner.

 Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher