How To Stop Self Sabotage In Our Spiritual Progress
Transcript: Non-duality Self-Realisation Satsang Meeting
Yallingup - Margaret River - Western Australia
See, quite often we don't realize we're self-sabotaging, because;
“It’s just the patterning and the programming we have been given by our family, friends, and culture.”
And, we don't know we're self-sabotaging, because others around us might be doing the same thing. And, we grew up with it happening, and we consider it normal. It's 'what you do'. And even if the ‘this is what you do’ thought doesn't come, it's just your interaction in the world in various ways.
So, as life starts to throw curve balls at you and things keep failing in front of you, unless you're watching what's going on and have a little bit of self-awareness, your life will just keep getting more and more confused, and darker, and shadowy, and unhappy.
From my perspective, the game we're playing of finding the happiness, and the joy within us, and the love within us, and what we actually are (which is all those things), are a side effect of finding out who and what you actually are.
“A big part of that is witnessing and observing, and having a high, high observation ability.”
And developing that so that you can see when you're self-sabotaging. Or, you can see something's gone wrong. You can see when people are reacting in a strange way to you. You can see that your life is not going in a direction that's creating happiness and joy for you, and others.
There is some self-sabotaging that is obvious, isn't there?
You'll say something stupid at the wrong time and you knew better, and for some reason, it just leaps
out of your mouth, and it's too late to bring it back. And then you're
wondering, what happened there, what was that?
Has everyone done that?
Yeah, so, that's an obvious self-sabotage, isn't it? And it's like, this thing just came out, I
knew it was wrong, it was completely inappropriate, these things just happen. So, it's a matter of trying to catch these occurrences.
That's an obvious one, as I say, there are so many subtle ones that you may not be aware of, that you're doing.
“We even self-sabotage by creating limits on how we think we can be in the world.”
We limit how successful we can be, how happy we can be, what kind of partner we can attract; our wealth levels. We put limits on this without us even realising. And most do.
In Australia, the tall poppy syndrome can be a part of it. I want to stay in my little comfort zone here with my group of friends, and if I get too far ahead there'll be jealousy, it'll be uncomfortable; there'll be backstabbing, there'll be gossip, I need to just stay in my pack. You may not have those thought processes, but that will be your default action, just to fit in.
You don't want any of that stuff going on in your life, but to avoid standing out is a form of self-sabotage. You're succumbing to lower consciousness behaviours, consciously, or unconsciously, just to fit in. This is self-sabotage.
Because now, you have to stay in a pack. And if the pack gets more ignorant, you get more ignorant.
With ignorance comes unhappiness, and you'll follow the group to unhappiness.
So, in that example, standing alone becomes so important, doesn't it? Who else has got some ideas on self-sabotage? How else have people done it?
Maybe we can even talk about that today; What's one of the biggest things I do to self-sabotage? And then bear in mind;
“If you’re self-sabotaging in the world, in your outer world, for sure you’re doing it in your inner world.”
You might be thinking; “I can never stop my mind, this is such a hard thing to do, I'll never be able to achieve this, I'll never be a good meditator, these people that wake up are so far ahead of me; there's just so much I can't do, it's just they just understand things I don't."
- All these thoughts are self-sabotage.
Every time you compare yourself with somebody and put yourself down over it, that's self-sabotage.
I'm saying drop it.
“All you have to do is find it and drop it. And how do you find it? You become aware.”
You start to be mindful of your environment, you're constantly watching your environment, you're observing the world closely. You're observing your actions, you're looking for where your reactions are occurring.
Essentially, anytime you react you’re self-sabotaging, every time you close.
If your heart is open and you're feeling good then someone says something or something happens, or you read something in the newspaper, or somebody at works says something you don't like and you contract and close - this is a form of self-sabotage also.
This is the reaction, of course, but now your consciousness has gone from perhaps a much wider one to a shrunken one, a small one.
It all falls under the one umbrella of the whole problem, ignorance. It's a form of ignorance. All suffering is ignorant.
“As the Buddha said~ All suffering is ignorance.”
There is nothing outside of that.
If you're suffering, there's some ignorance going on there, you're not understanding something clearly.
You're not seeing clearly. This is the only problem.
So then ask yourself, “What ignorances do I have? Where are my biases? Where are my beliefs? Where am I personally involved? Where am I special? Where am I unspecial?”
The ultimate self-sabotage is not to put all of your resources into hunting the ignorance within your system.
Because, with ignorance in your system, suffering follows.
“In the removal of ignorance and its many, many, many forms is happiness, joy, love.”
When all the rubbish has gone, there's just beauty. And people that are (energy) sensitive can feel it. It's not something that's intangible for those that are sensitive and have done a lot of emptying (of their system). It's obvious to them, they will feel it. And you will feel them.
People that are awake know who's awake and who's not. They know who's making up stories and who's not.
There's no getting away from that fact.
Why?
Because they've hunted out ignorance, to the point where their system is so clean and so sensitive, that they can feel. And any, even the slightest movement will be registered. The slightest uncomfortableness within their frame, or the frames around them, will be registered. And then it can be hunted, and it can be explored. Undone.
So, at that point, the game gets a lot easier. Once you start getting energy sensitive the game gets a lot easier. Because you can start to feel movement instead of being trapped, driven and pushed around by it. You'll notice the movements before they become thoughts, and then the thoughts before they turn into action.
You catch them way at the root.
It's a part of what we're doing here, isn't it? We're just working at getting more and more sensitive.
“As we get more and more sensitive, our healing of ignorance accelerates exponentially, it just keeps accelerating.”
From my perspective, following our thoughts around unchecked, and not letting go, just following them
around, is like a small child pulling a very large bull around be a ring by it's nose, yes? With a little piece of rope on it. This is what the mind does.
So simply following the mind around like this is also self-sabotage, when you understand this properly.
Not understanding you're not the mind is ignorance. It's important to know you're not the mind.
You are not the mind, you're not the body.
They are here, but they're an 'and'. There's something much deeper that we are, that has no coming and going.
“It’s always still. It’s always calm. It’s always in the state of love. It’s always in the state of beauty, and it’s unmoving, and it’s still and silent.”
And it doesn't matter what path you chose to get there, when you get there it's the same thing for everybody.
No matter what language, no matter what you look like, what colour your skin is, anything like that.
It ends up in the same place.
It's not some intangible object. It's universal. For all beings. Most beings don't have the capability to reach it, humans do and there are some others.
So, we started in self-sabotage. Really, very quickly, you come to the witness. Very quickly, it's important for
me to help you find the witness state.
“The witness is the only thing that’s going to cure the self-sabotage.”
And, discussing here we can find where we're self-sabotaging, which we do a lot of.
First, you have to become the witness.
First, you have to know something went wrong.
Keywords: Self-Sabotage, How to stop self sabotage, Why Do I Suffer So Much, Becoming the Witness, Energy Sensitive, How To Stop Self Sabotage In My Spiritual Awakening Progress