This work is for you to learn to know yourself, to pay attention to yourself, to be watchful of your feelings, attitudes, and thoughts. Observe what your attitude is toward what’s happening inside and outside, to yourself and to others and to the situation. What are you doing with yourself? What is the movement, the action happening within you? What is the commentary? What is the reaction to what is happening inside you and outside you? Be watchful of that, be aware of it now. What are you saying to yourself, what are you wanting to do about what’s happening? Are you saying, “Oh, this is good” or are you saying, “Well, I don’t know about this, I’d like it to be different.” What is your attitude toward yourself, toward your feeling, your thinking? Is it okay to have the experience that you are having? Is it completely okay? Or is part of it okay and part of it not okay? Is it okay for it to be the way it is, or should it be different? And if it’s not okay for it to be this way, how do you want it to be? If you’re looking at what’s happening inside you and you see a part of you that wants things to be different, a part of you that has an idea of how things should be different, in what way do you want them to be different? Ask yourself where you learned that it should be different in that way? Who said things should go the way you say they should? Let’s have some feedback about your experience. What did you observe as I was inquiring? What did you experience? – Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, ch. 7
Some people say you have to learn to be yourself. It sounds good. Some people say you should be free from your personality and develop your Essence. It sounds great. How do you know it will resolve your situation? You don’t really know whether any of these ideas are relevant or true for you. You can’t know with certainty until you have experimented and learned from your own experience. Until then your action is based on faith or belief. If you assume unquestioningly that what someone else says is the truth, your inner flame will be extinguished. You will believe that you have answered questions when you haven’t answered them; someone else has. And they haven’t answered them for you, but for themselves. We comfort ourselves by believing that others know, and that we can use their knowledge. It’s a very comforting thought; it encourages us to be lazy. We comfort ourselves by saying to ourselves, “Somebody knows, and in time I’ll get around to studying it. It’s already known and always available to me.” – Diamond Heart Book Three: Being and the Meaning of Life, ch. 1