The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [23]
MEETING THE SILENT WITNESS
How to Seek Within
1. Follow the flow of awareness.
2. Don’t resist what’s happening inside.
3. Open yourself to the unknown.
4. Don’t censor or deny what you feel.
5. Reach beyond yourself.
6. Be genuine, speak your truth.
7. Let the center be your home.
Follow the flow: The phrase “follow your bliss” has become a maxim for many people. The principle behind the maxim is that whatever brings a person deepest joy is a reliable guide to follow into the future. An even more reliable guide is to follow your awareness as it grows. Sometimes awareness doesn’t equate with joy or bliss. You may be aware of a hidden need to feel grief or a nagging sense of unease or discontent with the limitations of your present life. Most people don’t follow these signs. They search for outside sources of happiness, and they think their bliss comes from them. If you follow your awareness, however, you will find that it cuts a path through time and space. Awareness cannot unfold without also unfolding outside events that mirror it. Thus, desire and purpose are linked—if you follow your desire, the purpose reveals itself. There is a flow that links disconnected events, and you are this flow. When you were a child, the flow took you from one stage of development to the next; as an adult, it can do the same. No one can predict your next step of unfoldment, including yourself. But if you are willing to follow the flow, the path will certainly lead you closer to the silent witness, who resides at the source of all your desires.
Don’t resist what’s happening: It’s impossible to be new and old at the same time, yet we all wish we could stay the way we are while changing in ways we desire. This is a perfect formula for getting stuck. To seek who you are, you have to let go of old images about yourself. Whether you like yourself or not is irrelevant. Someone with high self-esteem and proud accomplishments is still caught up in the battle of opposites—in fact, such people usually think they are winning the battle for the “good” side. The part of yourself that has found peace from all battles is the witness. If you ask to meet the witness, be prepared. Long-held habits centered on winning and losing, being accepted or rejected, feeling in control or scattered, will begin to change. Don’t resist this change—you are shedding the trappings of ego and moving to a new sense of self.
Open yourself to the unknown: This whole book, being about the mystery of life, returns to the unknown many times. Who you think you are is not real but a concoction of past events, desires, and memories. This concoction has a life of its own—it motors forward through time and space experiencing only those things that it knows. A new experience isn’t really new; it’s just a slight twist on very familiar sensations. To open yourself to the unknown means cutting the ground out from under your familiar reactions and habits. Notice how often the same words come out of your mouth, the same likes and dislikes dictate what you do with your time, the same people fill your life with routine. All of this familiarity is like a shell. The unknown is outside the shell, and to encounter it, you have to be willing to welcome it in.
Don’t censor or deny what you feel: On the surface, everyday life has become much more comfortable than ever before. Yet people still lead lives of quiet desperation. The source of this desperation is repression, a sense that you cannot be what you want to be, cannot feel what you want to feel, cannot do what you want to do. A creator should never be trapped in this way. No authority looms over you to enforce repression; it is entirely self-enforced. Any part of yourself that you cannot face puts a barrier between you and reality. Yet emotions are entirely private. Only you know how you feel, and when you stop censoring your emotions, the effect goes far beyond feeling better. Your aim is not to experience only positive emotions. The road to freedom is not through feeling good;