What Is My Life Challenge?

Nothing would seem easier than to be yourself, but people complain endlessly about how hard it is. When you are little your parents won’t let you be yourself. Later on teachers keep you from being yourself. Then teenage peer pressure takes over, and finally, once society has imposed its demands, freedom is more restricted still.

Alone on a desert island you might be able to be yourself, only guilt and shame would pursue you even there. The inheritance of repression is inescapable.

The whole problem is one of boundaries and resistance. Someone imposes a limit on you, and you resist it in order to break free. Thus “being yourself” becomes a relative thing. Unless someone tells me what I can’t do, I have nothing to push against. By implication, my life would be shapeless. I would follow one whim after another, which itself is a kind of prison.

To be in unity, you cannot have limitations. You are wholeness; that is what fills your perception. Choice A and B are equal in your eyes. When this is true, desire can flow where it will. I am not my desires. Being myself no longer has the slightest outside reference.

Doesn’t this deprive me of choice? Both yes and no. A person will want to dress and talk in a certain way; there may even be decided likes and dislikes. Yet these are karmic holdovers from the past.

My real existence is simply to be. How would I be able to tell that such a state is real? The skeptic would claim that unity is just a form of self-deception. The problem of self-deception seems trickier still when you realize that the ego, in its need to continue as the center of all activity, has no trouble pretending to gain enlightenment.

Adapted from How To Know God, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2000).

Read more: Deepak Chopra's Tips, Spirit, Be, existence, unity

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Uma C.

11:58AM PDT on Mar 26, 2012

Zee you are on a roll. Most elegantly put and thanks for the shattered mirror concept.

send a green star

7:57PM PDT on Mar 24, 2012

Which self?

It has been proven that the archetypes, which are in all of us, are activated with the energy of life. Remember when transactional analysis was so popular: the child, the parent, the adult....
The Kahunas, those guys of old Hawaii who walked on fire knew how to bring harmony to the inner selves.

The inner selves, it's interesting go google.

Just as, in the big bang, the one became many, even so are the many existent in each of us. Quantum physics postulates that we are as a shattered mirror with each shard reflecting every other shard. We are one, when the pieces come back together in the harmony of oneness, as once we were. Until then, be nice to yourselves because you are your pluralities and they are you.

Let the inner child play. Let the wise old archetype share wisdom. Let the defender defend because the opponent will oppose.

Take time to commune with yourselves and to accept that every archetype is available.

It's sort of like in the big bang, when the ONE became many.

The answer is not how but why!

Do simple answers satisfy you?

Then, don't bother with truth.

Danuta W.

1:50AM PDT on Mar 24, 2012

Thanks for sharing.

heather g.

12:00AM PDT on Mar 24, 2012

Just 'being' seems to be the way to go ......

LMj S.

6:40PM PDT on Mar 23, 2012

Thank you!

Dot A.

3:17PM PDT on Mar 23, 2012

~ I always enjoy the essence of Gaby!

You let the spirit of your 'essence' flow into the unknown, and we are the grateful readers! Your spirited comments bring life to us all*

***************************************

In the movie starring Jodie Foster:
[Jodie's father is dead when this question is raised]

Q:
Did you love your father?

A:
Yes!

Response:
Prove it!

(verifiable evidence can be illusive and contradicted in a court of law, as every other reality can be manipulated by the human rational mind - ask any criminal how they got away with it - or a magician, - it is the limited ability of the rational mind to perceive ALL of the truth in reality * and therefore we open our minds to theology and the realm of spirit, where love is the essence)

Gaby D.

12:24AM PDT on Mar 23, 2012

Goodmorning Deepak and Care 2 Friends, Just Be Yourself? Hmm....I read through all the comments and contemplated this question a bit. The question that follows is: Who am I?
and the answer to that is: I am all that I choose to be. Drawing from the vast well within and without that offers me an infinite field of possibilities to choose from. I am in the Universe and the Universe is in me, and combined 'we' shape the events and 'I' that I choose to be.
Sounds like gobbledygook to some I suppose, yet it is so true, we do always have a choice to 'create' ourself, our human experience if you will from the ALL that IS! Creative power is ours - to shape the 'I' that is your human life - the essence however, is inside of you and when all seems lost - that is when you oftentimes find the essence within.
We do get challenged during our 'human experience'. Physical limitations, emotional havoc, you name it....challenge abounds. These challenges 'shape' our human experience - as we get to choose who we are in the light of that challenge - as Deepak describes it might get a bit 'shapeless' if we had nothing to push against. To 'truly' be yourself - is to feel the essence of your being and all that is -even for just a moment - in the midst of that whirlwind that we call 'our life'! Deepak thank you ...now I know which book is next on my wish list! Namaste - wishing all an another glorious day of SPRING!!!

Marianna B M.

12:57PM PDT on Mar 22, 2012

thanks

Past Member .

6:03PM PDT on Mar 21, 2012

"Be yourself, everyone else is taken."

Charley Brown