This concludes the first week of my practice in the 365-Step daily practice called Steps to Knowledge. I decided to share my experiences of my practice on reddit, with others who have also taken the Steps, and with those who might be curious to see what it is and what it involves. Anyway, here is today's step:
Step 7: Review. This practice was over an hour long in total, and yet it seemed to fly by. I tried to go through my practices of each step both periods, so I only ended up spending about ten minutes revisiting each step in total.
Step 1. What is Knowledge? What is it really? Is it an experience? Is it more than that? How does it feel? Is it just thoughts? Is it a physical sensation? If Knowledge is God within me, how will I recognise something of this magnitude? It almost seems a bit scary. Will it overwhelm my senses? Will I still be me if I reconnect with it?
Step2. Where am I? Knowledge is with me completely, but my analytical mind is full of conditioning and habits. Where should I be in the world? What should I be doing right now? I carry deep fears of being inadequate, of not trying hard enough, of failure. I want to feel whole and complete. I want to feel the satisfaction of living my true potential.
I have a very impulsive mind. I get intrusive thoughts sometimes. This has led me to self-avoidance in the past. Can I still do what I came into the world to do? Is there still time to find the people and places I am meant to associate with? What harm have I already done to myself that I must first repair before I can realise my true relationships?
Step 3. What do I really know? Nothing, perhaps. Does the analytical mind really know? Or does it only accept, only assume? Without Knowledge, can I really know anything? Some things are facts, but even facts become replaced with updated facts, or are disproven entirely. Looking at our world, everybody has their own take on what is going on and who is to blame. Is it all really that simple? What is the complete picture?
I am hesitant to claim to know anything for certain, but I have my preferences and my assumptions. It is so easy to try and complete the picture myself, rather than leaving it open. What do I really know about myself, where I should be? Who I should be with? I don’t know.
Step 4. I want familiarity in life. I want who I think I am to make sense in terms of my understanding of the world. But my experience is only subjective. I see the world from a limited personal point of view. How many times have I filled in the blanks reactively, connected the wrong dots because they seemed to match up in my mind? It is so easy to let your assumptions be when you do not fact-check yourself. You don’t even really recognise the need for fact-checking.
Step 5. What do I really want? Survival and pleasure? I have been running in circles, trying to maintain pleasure and happiness. But it is always so fragile, so temporary. When it is gone there is a hole, like a chasm. I need more things! I need to fill the hole so that I don’t feel so empty inside! But what can fill the hole?
Hopes shaping beliefs... It is often the case that I will try and remain positive about a situation when I am uncertain about it. It is like my mind has two main settings that it is comfortable with, hope and fear. I either see everything as a hopeless disaster or a certain success. Being in the middle is so uncomfortable! I want to feel sorry for myself because there was nothing I could do, or confident because, of course, everything is going to work out fine and there is nothing more to do! There is little room for unknowns. Not knowing something is like having an itch that demands to be scratched. A blank space that needs to be filled in.
Step 6. My true foundation in the world. Knowledge? Relationship? I barely know much about either. No wonder I feel so insecure. If I can’t do what I came here to do without those things, then I have been living a very small and partial life. But Knowledge is ready to take me further, once I begin to prepare.
Just this one week of practice has given me so much to consider. At times I didn’t know where to start. Other times it was like floodgates opening. I don’t know where this will lead me, but the reflection and contemplation has been therapeutic, at least. I feel happy that I chose to take this course.
Thank you for reading!
Submitted March 31, 2019 at 11:22AM by Everythingisanexampl https://ift.tt/2V8fymL
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