Self Talk #136: Building Your Foundation of Self—Walking the Path of Awakening

Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.
—Carl Jung

In this episode, we explore the concept of awakening—a profound shift in consciousness where you recognize your interconnectedness with all existence. We'll delve into the spiritual and psychological dimensions of awakening, drawing from traditions like Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism.

Most importantly, we'll look at how awakening transforms personal perception, challenging the ego's self-centered worldview. We'll also address the inevitable changes in relationships that happen once we set foot on the awakened path, the importance of inner work, and the need for nonjudgment and gentleness during personal growth.

Key Highlights

• Awakening is a perceptional shift in consciousness
• The ego resists understanding of interconnectedness
• Relationships naturally change during personal transformation
• Inner work requires patience and self-compassion
• Individual growth contributes to collective consciousness
• Awareness is the primary tool for personal development
• One cannot force awakening in others
• Personal healing impacts the broader community
• Spiritual growth is a continuous, lifelong journey
• Understanding interconnectedness leads to a more expansive worldview

Timeline:
0:00:00 - Opening quote by Carl Jung about looking inside to awaken
0:00:21 - Introduction to the concept of awakening

• Defined as a perceptional shift in consciousness
• Understanding interconnectedness with all things

0:01:42 - Exploration of awakening across different spiritual traditions

• Zen Buddhism (Satori)
• Taoism (Primal unified awareness)
• Hinduism (Sat Chit Ananda)

0:02:24 - Two key things that happen during awakening:

• Realizing interconnectedness
• Ego's resistance to this new awareness

0:05:50 - Relationships change during awakening

• Existing relationships may end or transform

0:06:07 - Systems theory explanation
Disruption of homeostasis in relationships

• Others may resist or react to one's personal transformation

0:08:37 - Key insights on personal growth:

• Cannot force awakening in others
• Need to be present and loving
• Respect others' individual journeys

0:10:00 - Being on the awakened path means:

• Shifting worldview
• Continuous inner work
• Clearing personal misalignments

0:11:51 - Practical approach to awakening:

• Non-judgment
• Awareness
• Gentleness
• Patience with personal growth

0:15:20 - Concluding message:

• Individual contribution is essential to the whole
• Personal inner work impacts community health

Got a question about your self?
Send it to me at rachel@selftalkpodcast.com and it may be featured on a future episode. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Defining Awakening
• 2:26 What Happens When We Awaken
• 5:30 Relationships Change After Awakening
• 9:54 Walking the Awakened Path
• 12:56 Building Your Foundation of Self
• 16:02 Your Role in Universal Consciousness

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Who looks outside dreams who looks inside awakes. Carl Jung. Welcome to Self Talk. I'm Rachel Estarte. Thank you for being here. Welcome to Self Talk. I'm Rachel Estarte. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 1: 0:26

You've heard me talk about being on the awakened path. Being awakened is an integral part of building our foundation of self. In fact, it may be that your awakening is the event that placed you on the path to developing your foundation of self. So what is awakening? Simply put, awakening is a perceptional shift in consciousness where we begin to see our interconnectedness with all things. We come to know that the world does not revolve around us. We move with the world. There is no separation between our individual selves and all around us.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Zen Buddhists call it satri seeing one's true nature. Now, because Zen Buddhist teachings say that everything is transient, satri is actually thought of as a brief moment of awareness, a taste of enlightenment, if you will, but not in the Western sense of being fully actualized, but having a glimpse of our true nature, and even that glimpse can be life-changing. It's the understanding that we are an integral part of what Taoists call primal, unified awareness. In Hinduism it's sat-chit-ananda. Sat means truth, chit means consciousness, ananda means bliss, the ecstatic state of realizing the unity and wholeness of all existence. And that brings us back to what we talked about earlier in another episode, which was Ramana Maharshi's philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. Everything is energy communicating with itself. So what happens when we awaken? Two things always happen when we awaken Within the self. Once we realize the interconnectedness of all things, we begin to realize that the self-centered world that we have lived in is akin to living in a box. Now that we've blown the lid and the sides off the box, the infinite vastness of creation, of possibility, can be really de-centering, to put it mildly. So what happens to the individual self in the face of eternal cosmic oneness? It fights back. Eternal cosmic oneness. It fights back, or rather the underdeveloped ego fights back. The underdeveloped ego freaks out, because coming into awareness of our true nature, that is, being pure consciousness, that means the ego self, the small s self, dies, that scrappling, grappling, always scheming thinking mind that necessarily has to die as it recognizes that this life of suffering is a dream and our true nature is eternal. It's the all, the nothing, the all way, everything right. But here's the deal Energy doesn't die, it just just changes form. We came from that plane of pure consciousness and we return to it and iterate in new forms as consciousness experiences itself. This is the cycle.

Speaker 1: 4:00

As a little kid I used to stare up at the sky and I imagined it going up and up, and up, and up and up, until I would hit the end of the cosmos. But of course there was no end ever. And that dizzying feeling, I assume, is the closest I could get to what it's like to return to pure consciousness state. I was doing that a lot as a child, so I invite you to do. It's like to return to pure consciousness state. I was doing that a lot as a child, so I invite you to do it. It's a great exercise.

Speaker 1: 4:31

But if that's the behavior of the underdeveloped ego right, this freaking out this I need to control everything around me, because if I don't, you're going to figure out you're one with everything and I'm going to be killed off. So that's the behavior of the underdeveloped ego. What does a developed ego look like? Right, we have to ask that question.

Speaker 1: 4:52

The ego has a place. It's the container of the soul, as Carol Pearson puts it in her book Awakening the Heroes Within. Our developed ego maintains the balance of being fully human and at one with source. It reminds us not to fly off into woo-woo land, and it also reminds us not to get caught in the murky mire of what it means to be human and have human suffering. So it's what we talked about earlier, about Zorba, the Buddha right Fully in the earth and also fully spiritual. So that's what happens inside the self, what happens outside of us, outside of ourselves. Our awakening means that the relationships we established before awakening will change or end entirely, and no one prepares us for this. But it is as much a part of this journey as your voice changing during puberty. It's just part of the deal. I wish people would tell you that, hey, when you wake up, all your relationships are going to change. Sorry, but that's what happens. So if you're aware of this at the start, it won't be as shocking to you when it happens.

Speaker 1: 6:13

So why does this happen? Well, let's talk about family therapy, right? So that's what I'm trained in as a family therapist, and we work with systems. One of the tenets of systems work is homeostasis, that is, the balance of roles and behaviors within a system, and so we could think of a family or a couple or a community as a system. So, even if the roles we have are dysfunctional. It's still a trusted dynamic, one that all of the members have gotten used to.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Now, if someone in the family, let's say a troubled child, gets therapy and begins to change their behavior for the better, there's been a disruption in that homeostasis, right. So the homeostasis is now out of whack and what ends up happening is an unconscious drive to compensate, to get that homeostasis back by any means necessary. So that might mean that as the troubled child becomes more stable, another child in the family might start acting up, or the father might start drinking more, or whatever. You see how that works. So when you awaken, you're disrupting the homeostasis of your system of relationships. So necessarily, some of your people friends, parents, siblings, other family members, colleagues even will resent your quote-unquote new self and either try to push your buttons to get you back to your old, small-s self ways, or they will begin to act out themselves, treating you as if you've betrayed them, which, in effect, you have.

Speaker 1: 7:55

So what do we do? Well, here's what we can't do. We can't fix it. It helps to remind yourself that we are all energy In this moment, in this place. We happen to have human form. Your family and friends are experiencing their own journey. So we can't know, you can't know, what is it that they are here to learn and we can't interfere with that.

Speaker 1: 8:22

We cannot awaken a sleepwalker. As we've said before, it's very dangerous in reality to wake a sleepwalker. They have to wake up on their own. And it's the same when we talk about it in this psycho-spiritual way. There's a fantastic Alan Watts teaching quote which I will share with you. Kindly let me help you or you will drown, said the monkey, putting the fish safely up a tree. I love this teaching so much. So what Watts is saying is we cannot interfere with others' growth we don't know, but what we can do is be present and loving, as all others are, ultimately our siblings.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Ram Dass has this wonderful perspective on holding space for others. He says we morally have no right to take away another person's suffering. Isn't that the shit way? Another person's suffering, isn't that the shit? So, even if our awakening causes suffering in others, we can simply listen and not get bogged down in the mud with them. In that way we are living as our capital S self, the awakened understanding that we are all in this together, which reminds me of another one of my favorite ramdas quotes we're all just walking each other home. Maybe you've heard that one. It's pretty famous.

Speaker 1: 9:54

So what does it mean to be on the awakened path? It sounds very fancy, doesn't continue doing inner work, clearing out the misalignments within ourselves, the childhood, wounding, anger, jealousy, negative self-talk, unhealthy boundaries all of that that clouds the luminescence of pure consciousness, our true nature. Here's the deal, though. Once you awaken, you can't go back to sleep, sorry, you can't unsee the great seeing, and this is a blessing, of course. But it can also feel like a great effort, like, oh shit, there's another thing I have to deal with, and there's anger. Again, this is another issue I have to work on. Um, there's that need for external validation. These things are going to come up because now you've opened the doors to perception and you've invited these things to come, and they feel safe enough to come and be dealt with. Now, right, but here's, here's another part of it.

Speaker 1: 11:16

There's a real challenge in that we may begin to expect results to come quickly. Well, I'm awake, so why does this shit still bother me? Why does it feel like I'm not making any progress? Well, hang on, because that right, there is awareness at work. That's the first tool we use as we build our foundation of self. You are aware that you feel impatient with yourself. That's a good thing. What matters now is how you respond to that awareness. So let's talk about that.

Speaker 1: 11:51

How does being on the awakened path apply specifically to foundation of self work? Well, this is where non-judgment and gentleness come to the rescue. So remember, non-judgment is that magic elixir that we carry with us on our path of inner work. It helps us to look objectively and lovingly at where we are misaligned. Awareness is the tool that we use to look objectively at our wounded thought patterns and behaviors and actions. So we're carrying the non-judgment with us so that we can use that magic elixir as soon as we hit that awareness of oh crap, I'm still pissed off by my adopted stepsister, or whatever. So that's non-judgment, that's awareness. And then gentleness is the salve that we apply to the wounds we uncover as you clear out internal misalignments and perhaps become aware of impatience with your progress. This is where non-judgment and gentleness come into play. You need patience, love and gentleness as you work through old wounds. Remember that those wounds were there a lot longer than you've been awake, so it will take time to change old patterns. Thanks to neuroplasticity. That's possible. It's been proven that the brain can change how it processes information, based on retraining. And that's what part of this work is about.

Speaker 1: 13:26

Now, this awareness that we are part of the whole may seem counterintuitive to self-development If there is no self per se. What's the point? Well, this is the paradox. In one of the minor Vedic texts, the Tejubindu Upanishad, satchitananda is explained like this this is the realization of Atman. Atman is your individual soul, your true self. I am the nature of consciousness. I am made of consciousness and bliss. I am non-dual, pure in form, absolute knowledge, absolute love. I am changeless, devoid of desire or anger. I am detached. I am one essence, unlimited, utter consciousness. I am boundless bliss, existence and transcendent bliss. I am the Atman that revels in itself. I am the Sat-Chit-Ananda that is eternal, enlightened and pure, sound, familiar. All of this I am stuff. Well, that's the name of God In Exodus 3.13-3.14,.

Speaker 1: 14:54

When Moses asks God, whom shall I tell? The Israelites is sending me to them, and God says I am that I am. Tell them I am sent me to you. So you see, your awakened self is the realization that you are one with the divine. That's how vital you are. You are a breath of the divine. Your individual life is the universe source, god, great spirit, great mystery, pure consciousness experiencing itself, and your contribution is essential to the whole.

Speaker 1: 15:36

A community is only as healthy as the individuals that comprise it. Think about that If you make a cake using rotten or spoiled ingredients, is it still a cake? Sure, but it is not a good one. We are all ingredients in the cake of pure consciousness. That's why it behooves you to do your inner work and to shine your unique light in this world. Building a strong foundation of self is your commitment as an ambassador of source. Now that you have the basics, what inner work is? The importance of practicing non-judgment, how to use the tool of awareness in your inner work, how to apply gentleness to your growth and what it means to be on the awakened path, we can begin to look at practical applications for foundation of self-work, and we'll begin with self-talk a good place to start considering the name of this podcast. Until then, be gentle with yourself.