Follow Your Own Heart!

“And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling,

“This is important! And this is important! And this is important!

You need to worry about this! And this! And this!”

 

And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back,

put it on your heart and say,

“No. This is what’s important.”

― Iain Thomas

Just a Reminder

I need to remind you where I am at so you do not have any false notions about me or so you do not assume I have any of myself. I like to keep it real.

Like I said many times, I am no expert in anything especially that which I have yet to understand. I am not a master or a teacher in any form other than a student who learns through teaching.

Far From Evolved or Enlightened

I am still very much in what I believe are the early grades. I am still a gooey and underdeveloped mess. :)  I still have many knots stuck in places I have no idea how to get at.  I am still broken and in need of some major healing in many areas of my "little life." I "know" little to nothing about anything. I, by society's terms, am probably not functioning too well in the physical world and I have yet to come to an understanding about the non physical world that I keep saying is more important than this one.

 I am definitely not "enlightened" or even close to it.  In fact, I still struggle to understand what enlightenment is. I am not seeking to become a spiritual master in this life time, nor am I intending to become a follower of one. I am just intending to  move forward to a greater understanding  than the one I have been conditioned to believe is true. 

I guess, to paraphrase the many poets before me, I am just seeking to be guided by heart rather than my mind, by Self rather than a collective ego, and to live in a way that feels right at the deepest level. I don't know how to do that yet...so I read and listen.  I explore what is going on in the world around me  and I turn  inward to what is inside me. I listen to that Teacher, more than any other...the lessons are still a bit garbled like Charlie Brown's teacher's voice but...it is starting to come. 

A Student and Life Long Learner

I bring any learning, as underdeveloped as it may be, here to this page because as A Course teaches, A good teacher clarifies his own ideas and strengthens them by teaching them.  Teacher and pupil are alike in the learning process. They are in the same order of learning, and unless they share their lessons conviction will be lacking. ACIM-T-4:I:1:1-3. This is how I learned through all my years of academia...by teaching others what I have learned  even if it was just to my cat in my room.  That is how I learn.  So I am trying to share learned lessons here , to test to see how strong my convictions are.  When I write them here, they strengthen...even if it is only a handful of teacher/students who read them....even if it is only one.

What I am trying to emphasize here, is that I am just a student...a life long learner who teaches to learn. Teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now, because they enable you to change your mind and help others to change theirs. ACIM-T-4:I:4:1And I am aware I may sound like Charlie Brown's teacher to many of you.

Don't Listen to Me/ Listen to You

So what should you do?  Take whatever I have to say with a grain of salt.  Don't believe any of it until you test it out for yourself.  Go inside you where the answers are, where your truth is and let that guide you.  I do hope whatever I put here will be a helpful pointer to you but I don't have teh answers.  You do!

The Leader/Follower Danger

Why did I bring this up now?  I watched Holy Hell  for the second time and it both fascinated me and disturbed me. Shows about cults  make me question my own seeking and my purpose for being here. I think of these leaders and wonder how and why people blindly follow them...people just like me who are seeking more understanding?  What happens in these cults is the seeking gradually gets lost beneath the ever expanding  ego of the leader.  The followers are slowly  manipulated  to worship the leader rather than that which they were seeking.

What is Wrong with the Followers?

There is some really good intention there, isn't there? What the followers are seeking is great, is it not? Understanding, love, community, service, compassion and peace is something we all want, is it not?  And these communities created by these leaders seem to offer that and maybe even genuinely at first ( though I doubt it with this guy who sought  hypnotherapy and behavioural training before seeking followers. Big clue that his intentions were more to control and manipulate a group  than serve).  So a community of like minded individuals come together with good intention only to find that ego once again got in the way of their seeking...sometimes to a dangerous and abusive degree. 

What is Wrong with the Leader?

Do most leaders set out to mass control and brain wash for their own egoic reasons?  Or is there some intention in them that is altruistic in the beginning?  I hear of some yogis, one I often quoted btw before hearing about his own endeavors as a suspected cult leader,  who do set out to help heal. By assuming role of guru, master, however,  it is  very easy, I suppose, to get lost under that devotion and adoration ...for the ego to swell in its "little me" glorification.  Hmmm!  It is scary!

Don't Follow/ Don't Lead?

So I don't personally like to follow anyone or to lead.  I like to share and to learn from others but I am very, very cautious about people who claim to be spiritual masters or gurus.  That is a role. I believe, meant  only for the truly enlightened...the truly holy...and the truly humble. 

There is little room for ego in any type of true leadership.  Isn't that what Lao Tzu taught over and over again? What Jesus taught? What Buddha taught?  Yes these individuals may have had disciples but in their life times they did not ask to be served, to be held up high, to be worshipped.  They kept saying ...the same that is in me is in you. Though man may have given them glory during and after they left this planet they did not set themselves a part other than to be heard when they were teaching. Ego may step into a human mind to convince it ...it is like these individuals but the moment one assumes glory, blind obedience, special service....then there is a problem. 

This documentary also made me question my own seeking.  Am I just grasping blindly at teachings to fill this hole of not knowing in me.  If I didn't have such an aversion to leaders or being a follower...maybe I would be one of those members that blindly serves someone else's ego for 20 some years? 

In Everyday Life

How do cults apply to everyday life? Do we do something like  that in a lesser sense in this so called "cult-free" existence don't we?  In our institutions, our politics, our religions.  These same tendencies to a lesser degree are there too, aren't they?

I don't know...this cult thing is one more thing I need to explore farther. 

I love the above quote/poem that brings us back from being followers to listening to Self.  Maybe we all have to do that a little more often.

All is well.

Holy Hell . Netflix