Look within and find yourself

First of all, to look within could mean to search for a deeper understanding or truth. The thing is, truth and understanding can't be found, only embraced.

This is to say, it is already within you. So rather than looking within, stop putting yourself on the outside to have to look inward because then it will always be outside of yourself.

Rather, recognize you are that silent witness in the center. Like the eye of a hurricane. It is so easy to get swept into the winds of life, but even as you read this now, you aren't your thoughts, you aren't your beliefs, you aren't your identity. You are the ever present witness that already fully embraces truth and understanding.

Also to look within could also mean to project your consciousness within your body and have “insight". This type of insight is not a realization of something, although its discovery will certainly be a huge realization, but rather it is to move your awareness inside your body. An inductive use of consciousness.

And if you can grasp that you are the silent witness and simply move into witnessing, you should find this next faculty of conscious to be not too difficult. First close your eyes and lift your finger into the air. Allow thoughts to slip from your mind and just feel your finger. Your feeling may be fleeting because the mind is conditioned to thinking like a deductive faculty, but with practice you will, not only be able to feel inside your body, but you will actually be able to ”look within”. This is valuable for discovering areas of tension, blockage, or unconsciousness. A word of warning however, if you do this long enough, you will shift from objective consciousness to subjective consciousness. In this state, you can awaken your body which will then “turn on".

And this is nothing short of an enlightening experience, however, it also means it must be managed. A body that is turned on will feel everything but the mind might not have the capacity or framework to process that much information while also maintaining continuity with your life. But always know, you are that silent witness, in stillness, with everything whirling around you. You have always been home safely.

Doing meditation is great because it gives us an opportunity to train our minds to be more focused, to separate our sense of “I” from the chatter that is always going on in our heads, and it gives us an opportunity to become more familiar with all the forms of information-processing and feedback that is always happening inside of us e.g., thoughts, intuition, emotions, memories, etc. It also can train us to pause between a thought occurring and an action being taken and if we decide we want to take an action in response to that thought at all), and that can save us a lot of trouble.

Also, journaling is a fantastic vehicle for self-awareness. For me, that’s more of a self-directed guided meditation (and also sometimes just a cathartic purging). When I’m journaling, it’s often an experience where I feel something and try to kind of “empty out” to give the feeling space so I can “see” its shape and identify what it might be rooted in (e.g., a memory of a past experience, or a valuable insight into a present circumstance). The physical act of writing kinda slows my mind down and helps me navigate through what I’m experiencing. And it creates a record that I can look back on at some point for reminders on things I’m trying to habituate and/or to measure progress.

But another thing that’s interesting to become aware of through this sort of mindfulness is how thinking is just another sense like hearing or sight. Most people seem to see thinking as being what they actually are, but through meditation, it becomes clear that there’s a separation between thinking and awareness. Awareness is like the lake that thinking is floating in. Stay blessed! #kishoreshintre #possessedbywritingspirit #ks1000articles