The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [25]
Knowing that you have to go your own way, no matter what the cost.
Each sentence begins with the word knowing because the silent witness is that level where you know yourself, without regard for what others think they know. To speak your truth isn’t the same as bursting out with all the unpleasant things you’ve been too afraid or too polite to say. Such outbursts always have a feeling of pressure and tension behind them; they are grounded in frustration; they carry anger and hurt. The kind of truth that comes from the knower is calm; it doesn’t refer to how anyone else is behaving; it brings clarity to who you are. Value these flashes. You can’t make them appear, but you can encourage them by being genuine and not letting yourself fall into a persona created just to make you feel safe and accepted.
Let the center be your home: To be centered is considered desirable; when they feel distracted or scattered, people often say, “I lost my center.” But if there is no person inside your head, if the ego’s sense of I, me, mine is illusory, where’s the center?
Paradoxically, the center is everywhere. It is the open space that has no boundaries. Instead of thinking of your center as a defined spot—the way people point to their hearts as the seat of the soul—be at the center of experience. Experience isn’t a place; it’s a focus of attention. You can live there, at the still point around which everything revolves. To be off center is to lose focus, to look away from experience or block it out. To be centered is like saying “I want to find my home in creation.” You relax into the rhythm of your own life, which sets the stage for meeting yourself at a deeper level. You can’t summon the silent witness, but you can place yourself close to it by refusing to get lost in your own creation. When I find myself being overshadowed by anything, I can fall back on a few simple steps:
• I say to myself, “This situation may be shaking me, but I am more than any situation.”
• I take a deep breath and focus my attention on whatever my body is feeling.
• I step back and see myself as another person would see me (preferably the person whom I am resisting or reacting to).
• I realize that my emotions are not reliable guides to what is permanent and real. They are momentary reactions, and most likely they are born of habit.
• If I am about to burst out with uncontrollable reactions, I walk away.
As you can see, I don’t try to feel better, to be more positive, to come from love, or to change the state I’m in. We are all framed by personalities and driven by egos. Ego personalities are trained by habit and by the past; they run along like self-propelled engines. If you can observe the mechanism at work without getting wrapped up in it, you will find that you possess a second perspective, one that is always calm, alert, detached, tuned in but not overshadowed. That second place is your center. It isn’t a place at all but a close encounter with the silent witness.
CHANGING YOUR REALITY TO ACCOMMODATE THE FOURTH SECRET
This fourth secret is about meeting your real self. Words can say a great deal about the real self, but it takes an actual meeting to realize what it is. Your real self has qualities you are already experiencing every day: Intelligence, alertness, being tuned in, knowingness—whenever any of these qualities comes into play, you are living closer to your real self. On the other hand, when you feel distracted, lost, confused, fearful, scattered, or trapped inside ego boundaries, you are not.
Experience seesaws between these two poles; therefore, one way to meet your real self is to push away from the opposite pole whenever you notice that you are there. Try to catch yourself in such a moment and pull away from it. Pick a strongly negative experience of the following kind (if possible, choose a repetitive one that has cropped up several times):
• Road rage
• Arguing with your spouse
• Resenting authority at work
• Losing control over your children
• Feeling cheated in a deal or transaction
• Feeling betrayed by