“Anything exposed to light becomes light.”

The journey to self-discovery isn’t linear; it’s a constant back-and-forth.
Awakening, whatever that means, is not a one-time event.
It’s a plateau we reach for the stage of consciousness we are currently in.
It illuminates all we had been unaware of thus far, and we expand as people.
No point in being self-righteous though: We’re bound to have blind spots forever.

“If you don’t know who you are, anyone can name you.”
– Michael Meade

It’s so much easier to live unconsciously, but the feeling of helplessness is deafening.
As they say, knowledge is power.
Once we have opened the door to acknowledging our flaws, we regain control.
We are no longer passive actors – when you know the true you, you know who you’re portraying.
Whatever we cannot bear to contain within us becomes what we show the world.

“What a liberation to realise that the
“voice in my head” is not who I am.
Who am I then? The one who sees that.“
– Eckhart Tolle

I’ll never forget the confusion on everyone’s face in Kopan after we meditated on the self.
“What do they mean with I don’t really exist?” Granted, this Buddhist ideology is hard to grasp.
What doesn’t really exist is the idea of ourselves that we fabricated over a life time.
Each meaning associated with given labels, the weight of each thought…
Our true self however is not this abstract object, it’s the observer who can never fully see itself.

“Becoming a genuine individual requires
learning the oppositions within oneself.
Those who fail or refuse to face the oppositions within
have no choice but to find enemies to project upon.”
– Michael Meade

People who believe the world to be inherently good have been found to be more pleasant, whereas the opposite stands true too.
This is because they believe themselves to be worthy of goodness:
To have looked into a dark pond and trust that life can flourish within.
If we refuse to see the “shameful” within ourselves, we will choose to see it everywhere else.
Easier to let the light of awareness touch these corners within ourselves, and encompass these lessons for us to grow into fuller beings.