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. Self, in both of these cases means coming to recognize and understand the intimate relationship between the body and the soul 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 that tends to focus on trying to change other people and external situations as a way of being alright with things, instead of working with the only thing we truly have control over, which is ourselves. By working on ourselves, we won’t need to change other people and circumstances. By working with ourselves and learning to control our own mind, 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 we begin gaining self-awareness is by learning how to become aware of your reactions to everyone and everything else, while refraining from outward action, and simply turning your attention inward and begin observing what’s happening inside of you, and why. Completely remove your attention from whomever or whatever caused the reaction, and realize what the cause set into motion within your body and your mind. 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 or memory starts automatically running through your mind in response to it. Some kind of imagined reality as a memory will probably start playing out automatically that may be a picture, a scenario, hearing something being said or that’s happening, an emotion may swell in you that feels overwhelming, and so on. Simply observe it without trying to repress or stop it.

As you observe a form of chain of association take place as an inner unfolding or systematic process, stay with it for awhile, without needing to suppress it, hold it back out prevent it, quit thinking about it, or justify your right to feel that way, 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 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 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, because you see the cause itself in a new light, and you no longer relate the present to the past, but see it instead for what it actually is.

This practice alone is the basis for dissolving karma, which is the habitual repetition of unconscious patterns that keep you creating the same effects and reactions in your life through the cause and effect relationship that keeps you living out of past memories as a way of creating in the present. It allows us to remove our focus from other people and outer circumstances, and keep our focus instead on what’s happening inside of us 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 be the cause of our own actions by use of choice and will to control and determine our perception and behaviors.

 Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher