— In the outer world, there are places you're familiar with, places you're not familiar with, and places you don't even know exist. The more familiar you are with a specific place, the more it feels like home.
Your inner world is no different. It consists of parts you're more familiar with, parts you're less familiar with, and parts you don't even know exist. The journey of self-realization is to feel at home in all your parts.
You can't be yourself if you don't know yourself.
It’s both ironic and beautiful that not knowing yourself is what propels you forward. Ironic because your mind is all about knowing. Beautiful because you get to experience the freshness of each new moment. Every part of you that you haven't yet realized contains both the anguish of not being you and the longing to be more of you.
Self-realization is the process of realizing who you are. You are never not experiencing this process. Every moment of every day, life is pushing you to know yourself better. More specifically, you are the one doing the pushing. Life is just a mirror. Stuck feelings are the fuel of your evolution.
If it feels like you’re taking detours instead of the direct route to your happiness, that’s your headspace talking. That’s when you criticize yourself for making mistakes, thinking you should know better. You forget that you’re a more realized person now, precisely because of how you've responded to things in the past. Ultimately, there’s no reason to fault yourself for anything, ever. In fact, it's the experience of not being you that has prompted you to become more of you. You haven't failed. You haven't taken a wrong turn. You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.
You're always you, doing the best you can. There is no other way.
Resist the urge to plan out your life for fear you might go down the wrong road. Right and wrong only exist when you’re in your headspace, focused on outcomes. But in the great unfolding of your life, veering off your path is what accelerates you forward. Each time you veer, you grow in clarity, resilience, and determination. You become more of you. Your journey is meant to take you through a field of experiences. Detours and excursions aren't just part of your journey, they are your journey.
Everything you experience teaches you something new about yourself and puts you in touch with your feelings. How you respond to them directly impacts how much you participate in - and contribute to - the flow of life. When you keep your feelings stuck, you generate friction within yourself and with the environment. But by releasing them, you contribute free-flowing energy to the world.
As you become more realized, so does the world.
Less realized energy, longing to become more realized energy, is the engine behind life's continuous expansion. Everything you do is motivated by this pull. You buy things to experience abundance. You fall in love to experience unity. You set goals to experience fulfillment. You're always replacing what you think an experience is like with the actual experience of it.
That's why you're supposed to buy shiny things and be enamored by them. You're supposed to fall in love and promise each other foreverness. You're supposed to climb to the highest peaks and fall to the lowest lows. You're supposed to experience all those things because it's not about the things. It's not about reaching goals or achieving outcomes. It's about realizing yourself along the way…
P.S.: You will love Chris’ book and his work! He is one of the most genuine and open-hearted human beings I have ever met!
