We don’t need to be at war with our lesser selves. We need to transcend them. If we try to defeat the tendencies we don’t like in ourselves and that don’t bring us inner peace, we set up an adversarial situation. We are then actually going against ourselves, blaming and criticizing.
As in war, there is defeat, if we become angry with ourselves. And no one ever wins in a war really. Everyone is scarred by it in some way.
So we do not want to defeat ourselves. We want to examine the traits that do not support us and then lovingly set about to rise above them gently to our Soul level. For example, we recognize a tendency to cut corners and be lazy. We know this is not a great character trait and does not lead to success in any undertaking. We also know that at the end of the day we will beat up on ourselves for being slackers.
Adding self-criticism to our already low sense of self-esteem leads to a downward spiral. It more effective to look within and see the fear behind the procrastination. We need to look at what about the task at hand makes us want to escape the present moment, and we need to arrive at what we can do to get out of our inertia in a fun and lighthearted way.
In this way, our lesser selves (our petty, frightened ego-minds) will become neutralized. We have not given them the power and therefore do not need to fight them. We just leave them where they are and move to a higher level.
As in war, there is defeat, if we become angry with ourselves. And no one ever wins in a war really. Everyone is scarred by it in some way.
So we do not want to defeat ourselves. We want to examine the traits that do not support us and then lovingly set about to rise above them gently to our Soul level. For example, we recognize a tendency to cut corners and be lazy. We know this is not a great character trait and does not lead to success in any undertaking. We also know that at the end of the day we will beat up on ourselves for being slackers.
Adding self-criticism to our already low sense of self-esteem leads to a downward spiral. It more effective to look within and see the fear behind the procrastination. We need to look at what about the task at hand makes us want to escape the present moment, and we need to arrive at what we can do to get out of our inertia in a fun and lighthearted way.
In this way, our lesser selves (our petty, frightened ego-minds) will become neutralized. We have not given them the power and therefore do not need to fight them. We just leave them where they are and move to a higher level.
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