The Wisdom of Eric

Finding the real me

Being with Eric, a conclusion had slowly crept up on me.  That my life was not a destination but a journey in which I was now largely responsible for creating my experiences, both positive and negative. I was starting to understand that life is the relentless balancing act of navigating a path between those things that we fear and things we crave, along with a yearning to find the wisdom to recognise the truth of our situation.

I now believe that we are all perfectly capable of walking a productive and satisfying path, if we remember our true identity and self: by that, I mean our innate capacity for compassion, curiosity, care, calm, clarity, courage, confidence and creativity.  As I spent more time with Eric, it also began to resonate that if my life experience does not reflect this truth, then my perception of reality is distorted, and misshapen, leading me to mental unease, depression, and anxiety.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I am aware that our biology, our parenting, our schooling, our cultural conditioning all has a role in shaping our ideas of who we are and how we should interact with the world. But for a long time, I just did not understand that my upbringing had also created some false beliefs that I continued to hold about myself, which to be honest, led to a fairly low  level of self-esteem (and as I write this, it also seems to me that the advent of social media and the Perma crisis that we see in the world does not make 21st century living easy).

To boil it all down.  We feel vulnerable and, in our vulnerability, we are prone to cognitive distortions about what is really going on for us or who we really are. These distortions feed into to the false beliefs we hold about ourselves - consciously and unconsciously.  It’s a vicious, perpetuating circle.

So how did I begin my journey into uncovering my true self?

It’s hard work, but for me, it was a mixture of the following 5 steps:

1.    I began to get curious about who I was and how my sense of self came about.  I began to explore my thinking and feelings, comparing and contrasting them and questioning their authenticity.  Whether they felt genuine to me.

2.    I tried to bring into my conscious the items of my persona which I had buried or repressed into my shadow (the bits of me I cannot stand or the parts of me I need to protect from further hurt).  I am still working hard to try to name them, understand them, test them, make friends with them, accept and reintegrate them with my sense of self.

3.    Inevitably when I felt vulnerable, I tried to deploy my Wise mind, in using both logic and emotion to test whether I was interpreting my situation realistically.

4.   I constantly got curious. Trying to find out what made me tick, searching to uncover the drivers and the scripts or narratives I held about myself.

5.   And lastly and most Importantly for me, I tried to rediscover my connection with spirituality, through the practice of self-compassion, forgiveness and mindfulness.

The list is not exhaustive, but it feels right and is still a work in progress.  Oh, and did I mention the most important step?  Try to take most courageous step and admit to yourself, that you are wonderful, deserving, unique and connected at a cellular level with everything and everyone on the planet.