vera wrote:that the only problem is that you've decided it's a problem and you've claimed it as your own.

vera wrote:that the only problem is that you've decided it's a problem and you've claimed it as your own.
It is a common ego story: "My problem is huge...no one can solve it...my problem fully and irrevocably defines me...I am my huge insolvable problem.......I don't really want to solve my problem, I want to have it. Without my problem, who would I be?"that the only problem is that you've decided it's a problem and you've claimed it as your own.
Your mind has brought you many successes in the dream world (I prefer the analogy 'world stage'.) And that is fine, just fine. But now, your mind is relieved of delivering final fulfillment from all of it. For that you can rely on your essential nature - timeless, eternal, inviolable pure awareness. So, extract modest enjoyment from your daily life. None of that stuff is required to do more than put food on the table -- and it never was capable of more than that anyway. Let it drone away, take moments for Self in all of it. And brief moments repeated often will do the trick for stabilizing Self-realization...check out greatfreedom.org for techniques and encouragement.Lucid living is consciously being all that you are. Waking up to your essential identity as awareness doesn't negate your individuality. Quite the opposite. Lucid living is understanding just how important your individuality is. Becuase it is by dreaming itself to be you as an individual that the life-dreamer is able to experience the life dream. Lucid living is feeling truly empowered as a person because you know that the creative eneregy of the whole world universe is propelling you forward in your life. Lucid living doesn't deny the delights and dramas of everyday existence. It charges life with new significance and meaning. Everything that you experience is a manifestation of your essential nature. So everything is showing you something about who you are -- like a dream. You are continually dreaming up new situations that give you the opportunity to become more conscious. Lucid living is wholeheartedly engaging with ordinary life as an epic adventure of awakening. Lucid living isn't withdrawing into some detached state of enlighenment. It is enjoying an exhilarating state of enlivenment."
Thanks, Andy. This is really great stuff to read. It speaks very directly to my lack of trust and fear - the sense that the older I get the more uncertain I am about absolutely everything. In my mid-late 20s I felt cheated, angry and so, so bitter when I realised that so much of what I was taught about as being fundamental and fixed in life was actually completely flimsy. It was kind of like finding out there's no such thing as Santa Claus.Sighclone wrote:I'd like to give you some encouragement from another author, Tim Freke regarding integration. This is from his small book "Lucid Living":So everything is showing you something about who you are -- like a dream. You are continually dreaming up new situations that give you the opportunity to become more conscious. Lucid living is wholeheartedly engaging with ordinary life as an epic adventure of awakening."
Do this, vera. Make a conscious decision to do something small for yourself, like formally take an afternoon to do something you like. Not something you think you "should like." Something you actually do like. And do it again and again.Now I just need to give myself permission to continue to enjoy those things again. Even if they aren't the answer to all life's problems or the providers of ultimate peace. Instead of denying myself altogther as some sort of punishment for allowing myself to be tricked for so many years.