Inside Out and Insight Out
As we begin to realize our true nature, the natural occurrence is an insight. An insight is different than learning something about yourself or hearing something about your self – its something that spontaneously occurs and carries with it the knowingness or wisdom that everyone possesses. To review, we are not our personalities, or our Myers Briggs summary- we are not our behavior and we are not our thoughts, feelings or emotions about any of the aforementioned. We are that which is aware of all those things and has the gift of creating those things as we move through life. This was an insight I had some years ago – I learned to meditate from Deepak Chopra and at the time it was mostly because my stress levels in my job and in my life had reached a level I did not enjoy. I went to one of his workshops and learned to meditate and it surely did lessen my stress. I was rigorous about it – twice daily for 20 minutes no matter what …on an airplane, during my lunch break – you name it – I did it. As promised, my stress levels decreased and I began to feel more joy in my life. The surprising thing which qualifies as an insight, was that I could observe myself. It may sound trite but if you can observe an object, you are not that object.
After that I began to explore what that implied and found the key in recognizing my true nature before thought, before behavior – and that insight led to dozens of others – it led me to leave the corporate world and start my own business, it led to deep study of what was the Truth – not a truth but The Truth about human beings, about life, about the universal intelligence that governs life. The important thing is not what I discovered, but that from an insight, everyone discovers new answers, possibilities, and yes Wisdom. When we are lost in the notion that we are the sum total of all of our thinking, we have limited ourselves and often find ourselves in a loop – always viewing life as a problem to be solved, rather than an exploration or discovery that includes love, joy, peace and beauty.
This became the central focus of my work – helping people discover who they truly are – as opposed to who they think they are…and applying that discovery to every avenue of their lives. That has included applying it to businesses struggling with decisions, with programs that seem to fail, or same old same old stuff they can’t crack. It led to personal coaching where people could see with new eyes and find their own answers with ease and grace. It led to a decade in working with the effects of poverty on all levels of our society, and brought forth new insights for many people to see the entire area from a different perspective than they had ever considered.
The power of this has never been me as a person – but it is in the understanding of how it works – how to introduce people to their true nature – how to point them in the direction of their own innate wisdom and yes answers from the inside out. It has never failed me in over 20 years. The tricky part is next week’s sharing – because if you have a deep insight and you don’t know how to cultivate it into new behaviors and permanent change – it can feel like a one off experience and be quickly attributed to something outside of you rather than from you…(an inspiring motivational talk- a beautiful piece of music- a trip to Hawaii) all of which is wonderful but not powerful.
I have hesitated to use the word transformation for years – I arrived in California from the mid-west at the height of the transformational movement…people were claiming it from EST to Tony Robbins. But in truth, these first two principles of understanding are life giving – are life changing – and yes transformational.
