You Have The Final Word


Ishvara:

There is also self-intimacy, that is, intimacy with yourself. Intimacy with self means accepting yourself and being aware of and open to who you are, without reservations, without explanation. In other words: what you see is what you get. Self-intimacy is not a narcissistic self-love, but a connected presence, an ongoing appreciation of who you are as a unique expression of Life, appreciating the embodiment of intelligence that you are, and looking openly at that without judgment. Self-intimacy is much like becoming your own best friend; you understand "you," you talk to "you", you are gentle to "you."

Usually, fear is the main barrier to the openness of intimacy: fear of knowing too much, fear of seeing too much, fear of not "being enough." Fear distorts or annihilates intimacy. For instance, someone may say something about you and the intellect worries, "Oh, what if that is true?", and that creates a wedge, an obstacle to intimacy.

Now, it is difficult to see yourself in the inter-relationship with other people, because you see yourself through your own intellectual arena, and there may be things to which you are blind. When you interact with someone else, those things may bounce back to you. They may bounce back in a distorted way, a seemingly threatening way, but you can still look at them, be with them, and see whether there is something there for you to know.

In openness and intimacy you are always willing to know everything you can know. There is no resistance to what you can know: good, bad, ugly -- it doesn't matter. You are totally open to what you can know, and that is where it becomes hard, because most people have a lot of secretiveness about them: they are ashamed of how they see things, fearful of revealing what is there.

In intimacy, there is no need for defense, no need to be right. Your internal "critic" creates the need for defense. The best thing to do with the critic is to be aware of it: "OK, you (the critic) are running again; what are you going to do with me?" Make fun of it, laugh about it, joke about it-- "Aren't I being silly?"-- something to shift the focus, to shift the energy away from it, because if you resist it, it gains power. If you sort of embrace it and say, "Oh, the critic is running again, having its way. So what?", that can take its power away.

This is not easy. The lower intellect, where the critic resides, has controlled your life for so long that it is not willing to give up control. You have to appeal to the superior intellect that sees more, sees a bigger picture. There is no set way to deal with the critic, other than just to do it. You can laugh at yourself when the critic comes up. Another technique is to throw yourself into something and forget about the critic, because if you are really engaged with the present, the critic cannot appear. The critic, and the way it appears, are unique to each individual, so you have to come up with your own way of dealing with it.

You have a story, a description of yourself that you have collected over your lifetime. Unfortunately, most of the things you have collected are negative, demeaning. Your body-being takes that story seriously. It is an energy-price you pay constantly; it diminishes the quality of your life. The body doesn't know anything other than what the intellect is saying. Changing your story involves deliberately beginning to change what you say to yourself. Suppose your story is that you are stupid. Changing your story involves realizing, "Yes, I've acted stupidly sometimes, but it doesn't need to be that way all the time." The more you see it, the less it happens.

When some criticism is leveled at you from the outside, it doesn't have to become part of your story. When you hear the criticism, you don't reject it, but you don't own it either. You can be with it, and ask "What does this mean to me? Is this saying something to me?" If you experience an internal resistance to what has been said about you, then probably there is a kernel of truth to it. The goal is to have the awareness, because the moment you have the awareness, things can shift. It is not a matter of being guilty about it. It is simply the awareness, "Yes, this may exist, and I'll look at it and see if it does." You have the final word on any information: You can add it to your story, and make yourself more wrong, or you can see it just as a piece of information about which you determine whether and where it fits.

You try to look at yourself through the eyes of the person who is criticizing you, and you will see whether that person has an agenda, an opinion, or a projection, and then you are liberated. It doesn't matter what the truth is; all that matters is that you become aware of something. Life is about gaining awareness, not about gaining anything else. The awareness is liberating.

When you reach true intimacy, you can be "slapped" with criticism and not feel it. You can look at it to see if there is any truth to it, but feel no hurt from it. You don't have any judgment on yourself, or on the person who said it.

I have a blanket assumption: everyone wants my highest good, so everything is helpful. I have reframed my life in that context, and as a consequence I am liberated. You can do that too.

Everything coming from the outside is hearsay, but if you have any kind of reaction to something it is a signal for you to look at it a little closer to see if there is a message in it. Sometimes there is. Sometimes the person criticizing you is just having a hard day, and you needn't take it personally.

I don't take criticism personally, and I see that my frequency makes all the difference in that. I see where things are coming from, I see a bigger picture, and often I have to be careful not to laugh at what is happening with other people because I see the dynamic that is occurring, the hilarity of it. Mostly, I find it hilarious because I did the same thing in the past. Yet people who are in a very emotional state may not like it if you laugh at what is happening.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

This is the conclusion of a message in which Ishvara speaks of intimacy. I have transcribed and edited his words from a talk he gave on April 5, 2005. - TG.

Copyright © 2005 - 2006 by Alaya®.
All rights reserved.
Alaya® is a registered trademark and service mark.

If you forward this message, please include the copyright notice.

This message comes to you from Alaya, a nonprofit organization. Alaya depends upon financial contributions for its continued existence. Click here to make a tax-deductible contribution to Alaya.
Thank you for your support.

To learn more about Ishvara and the Alaya Community, visit our website at www.alayanet.org

To subscribe to this message list, send an email to tgrant@alayanet.org with the word "Subscribe" in the subject of your message.