How Do I Face Myself?

[Oso]

Hey everyone,

I’ve reached a point in my life where the essence of my being, which has felt like a black hole for several years, has finally pulled me in close enough that I can no longer run or hide from it as an ego.

I’m 21 now. For years, I’ve gone through eras of small, specific focuses or have just drifted along to whatever seemed like the best option. I have an associate's degree, a 200-hour yoga therapy certification, and have poured countless hours into researching so many different things. Yet, I feel like I’ve done nothing with any of it. It feels like I've dug a million random holes, and when I look at them, they feel hollow at their core.

My first shift in consciousness happened in my sophomore year of high school while reading Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth.” I don’t remember the exact line, but I vividly remember the observer becoming present for the first time, an awareness witnessing it all. In that moment, the ego dissolved. My life changed completely. I was no longer "me." My ego became a shell, losing all its weight and substance. All that was left was selfless observation and the raw feeling of my Being.

But that first awakening shot me into a spiritual arc that I would fall in and out of for years. The ego grew back quietly until it had taken over again. For a long time, there was no pure awareness, except for random split-second moments where that dissolution would overwhelm me and upset my egoic state.

Just recently, the clouds parted again and the sun of awareness was exposed. This time, it feels different. It feels like a final reminder that my living has not been truthful, that I have been faithful only to the agenda of the ego and have suffered deeply because of it.

This leads me to the real problem I'm facing now with my direction in life. I can’t put a nail on what it is I want to do because I don’t know which part of myself to listen to. I want to say my gut, my Being, because it emanates a direction like a compass. But the signal is so vague that trying to map it out practically just fries my mental state. I feel very unsure how to navigate this.

 

So, I have a couple of core questions for anyone who has walked this path:

1. How do you practically learn to live from this deeper place? My Being feels like a compass, but I don't know how to read it. How do you learn to interpret this guidance for real-world decisions (like career) without the mind getting fried?

2. How do you distinguish a genuine impulse from your core/gut from a sneaky, rationalized desire of the ego?

3. Once this door to awareness opens, it feels like it can’t be closed. How do you pursue this deeper truth while still living a practical, functional human life?

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you have gone through a similar experience, I’d be very grateful if you shared your wisdom.

[Deziree]

Decisions like career and spirituality are very different things, sometimes even antithetical to each other. Your spiritual path has to be different, of course you can use spirituality for business purposes, but I wouldn't recommend that. 

[Davino]

6 hours ago, Oso said:

1. How do you practically learn to live from this deeper place? My Being feels like a compass, but I don't know how to read it. How do you learn to interpret this guidance for real-world decisions (like career) without the mind getting fried?

It's hard to feel the breeze in the midst of a tornado. Get the basics down, have a job, master something, serve people, build the foundation. From this place, you have built protective walls for your survival so that your inner flower can blossom. Then the fragrance of it will guide you.

The latter cannot guide the former for it needs the former to land. See? Real world decision must be taken from a place of knowing yourself and your values, to strategically satisfy your needs and overcome survival forces. In this way you'll build a nice infrastructure for your deeper being to blossom. You need to create the right ecosystem.

6 hours ago, Oso said:

2. How do you distinguish a genuine impulse from your core/gut from a sneaky, rationalized desire of the ego?

It's hard to say. It's a skill you master more than an answer. Moreover, both have advantages and limitations.

A good rule of thumb is to know if it comes from an expanded sense of being or from a contracted emotionally influenced state.

6 hours ago, Oso said:

3. Once this door to awareness opens, it feels like it can’t be closed. How do you pursue this deeper truth while still living a practical, functional human life?

Surely it can be closed and open, it's like a camera, more or less light can come in, to all infinite spectrums of bright, obscure and colourful rainbows.

The key insight you need to understand is the following. There is a human, you should know your human self and develop it everyday to its full potential while enjoying the journey. Setting the right conditions for Awakening. There is Consciousness, it should be raised, explored and mastered. Eventually the breakthrough to Infinite Consciousness will happen.

These two paths should be walked simultaneously and life without one or the other is incomplete. Some authors like to point out the need to clean the psychic baggage as well. Sometimes called shadow work, therapy and so on.