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  • We may at first have thought consciousness was in the mind, or even thought it was the mind itself. That it was somehow part of our domain; our personal interface with life or our go-to source of thinking and reason.

    Exploring the mind however, we discover it is not consciousness that is personal, but the mind. We discover the mind is limited and finite and that we can go beyond it — to consciousness itself. Even as a new explorer, we are aware of something here vast and whole, an infinite peace, potent and complete. And we know — as if remembering — that this is also the intrinsic, intimate truth of ourselves.

​Welcome!

This is a blog for those who travel an inner path, seeking truth, beauty and the source of being.

Here are ideas and practices to help and encourage the traveler, and to address the obstacles that we, as students of consciousness, inevitably encounter. Everything you find here you can do at anytime and take as far as you want.
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​I invite you to use Paradigm Practice as a foundation for your practice, which you may find here, free and available for your use. Paradigm Practice is a powerful guide for bridging the gap between limitation and new awareness.

Awakening into the happiness and peace of your true nature benefits all the world.
May you be blessed on your journey!
Ann
Consciousness is the ultimate teacher:  it is always sh​owing us what we are.​​​

Every step on the inner path, however seemingly small,
is a benefit to all of life and advances the whole of consciousness.



Our Inner Doggie

11/18/2018

2 Comments

 
Potentially bad dog with grapes
​It’s good not to take the ego personally even though it seems so personal: it talks like us, thinks like us, remembers our childhood and likes us best – but the ego/mind really isn’t who we are.

The ego/mind is actually an aspect of form and it has a very useful job. Its job is to stay “alive” which ensures that the body it comes with stays intact, so life can still flow through it.

The ego’s sole purpose is survival and survival will do anything to win. It will claw its way to the top, take the last piece, deceive, manipulate and even kill to get its way.

Isn’t that bad?

Fortunately, the ego/mind is not what we are – but that can be hard to remember, especially because who is responsible for its behavior? We are. And who pays the consequences of everything it thinks and does? We do.

The Inner Dog

If your dog digs up the neighbor’s garden, chews up the welcome mat and terrorizes the cat, you have something to fix up with your neighbor, but you know you’re not the dog. Right?

 It is super helpful to think of the ego/mind in exactly the same way – as our inner dog – and then we can come into an appropriate relationship with it.

The Unsolvable Conundrum

See, if we think we are the ego/mind, it is impossible to reconcile its meanest, most selfish instincts with who we are.

If we pretend the ego is not related to us, put it under the rug or bury it in the subconscious, it just shows up outside of us in the people we meet and the world we experience.

If we are seduced by the ego/mind, justify its actions or glorify its bloody warfare, we become it. Then where are we? Shouting and tearing things down, all the time thinking we’re in the right.

But if we can think of the ego as our inner dog, then we can do something about it. And clearly, this dog needs some good training.

Sizzling and Dripping into a Pan, a Roast Sits on the Kitchen Counter

The dog is in the kitchen all alone. This can go one of two ways, right?

Does the dog want to pull the roast off the counter and devour it? Yes.
Does he do it? No.

He doesn’t take the roast because we have trained him. We can train him because we see him for what he is: an animal. And we love him for it. We just don’t let that animal nature be in charge.

The ego/mind is like an animal too and we can recognize its animal nature and still love it in just the same way. We can know it wants to eat the whole thing, be mean and horrible, and lie, cheat and steal. But we don’t have to let it do that.

Master or Dog?

Ideally, with our real dog the roles are clear: we are the master and he is the dog. As you may know if you have ever trained a dog, clarifying these roles can take a lot of time and attention!

But every time we tell the ego/mind, “No, you may not jump at the car windows and bark at the traffic,” we become stronger and more aligned with our true Selves, the master within. And we increase the likelihood that we will make the same choice again.

Most of us have things in our lives we wish we hadn’t done and that we have needed to make up for. But really, the only mistake we can ever make is forgetting who we are and thinking instead that we are the dog.


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2 Comments
Vivek
11/30/2018 01:13:31 am

Great article, Ann! I love your analogy between then master/dog and the ego-mind/true-self. Very enlightening.

Usually I notice the dog only after he has screwed up. Do you have any suggestions how to catch him before he screws up?

Reply
Ann K Gryczan link
12/2/2018 08:40:17 am

Thanks, Vivek – great question! And it is the question, isn’t it?

Briefly, it's like how we would be with a puppy that got into the garbage. Catching him before he gets into the garbage again has a lot to do with how we treat him now.

1. First, we still love him – even though he just did a bad thing.

So, when we screw up – we try not to think of ourselves as bad and horrible. We take responsibility, but at the same time we still love ourselves and know that we are innately good.

2. We let the puppy know our displeasure & tell him the rules. He hates feeling our displeasure, and this motivates him to be good.

Same with us. If we really let ourselves feel the pain of hurting someone we love or the consequences of falling off the wagon, it helps us remember our true dedication so we can recommit.

3. We support him in being good. Maybe he didn’t get his morning walk, so he couldn’t help but act crazy and bad!

Same with us. All of us seeking the master within look for the deeper, more hidden motivations and needs below the surface so we can deal with them consciously. This way we can catch the urge to chew up the neighbor’s lawn chairs before we actually do it!

4. We align the environment with our goal for him – like putting the garbage pail out of reach or stacking metal pans on top to scare him if goes for it again.

Also the same with us! If we’re on a diet, we don’t join our friends at a dessert buffet (even if we think we’ll just stick with coffee), and we have structures and practices in our lives that help us remember who are.

I hope this gives you some good ideas – let me know how it goes!
Ann

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    ANN K GRYCZAN
    Ann K Gryczan



    Ann is a long-time student of consciousness and has been offering guidance for remembering the true Self since 1987.


    You may find more information about her here.




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    Guided
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    Held in Life
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    (13:49 min)
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    Definitions

    The ego/mind is based in the ideas of identity and duality, and committed to its survival over all else. To ensure this, the ego/mind uses any means necessary to get what it desires and avoid what it fears. Over eons, the ego/mind and the survival instinct evolved in the manner it fulfilled this purpose, developing increasingly sophisticated and complex capabilities: it learned to conceptualize, manipulate, imagine, deceive, convince, invent and so on. All of this bundled together with emotion (another evolutionary development), created what most of us now experience as our identity — as myself.”



    A paradigm is the framework of belief, perception and emotion through which we experience and understand ourselves and all of life. It is the filter through which we perceive, the lens through which we see. Like water to a fish, it is our unquestioned sense of reality. The paradigm both creates the appearance of reality and confirms to us that what we call reality is as we believe it to be. Normally, we are oblivious to what makes up this paradigm — the framework of what we call reality.”



    Consciousness is often thought of as being located in or created by the brain; its origin purely chemical or physical, and its function that of creator, recorder and experiencer of our interface with life. Consciousness seems like our individual and distinct sense of reality, but what we are actually experiencing that seems so unique to ourselves, is the ego/mind.

    Consciousness is an infinite and omnipotent field, a unified and congruent wholeness of unlimited creative power whose source, and ours, is Absolute Reality.



    God, Divinity, Ultimate Reality, Self and one's true essence all seek to describe the indescribable: the Absolute, which is omnipotent, omnipresent and eternal; the infinite unity out of which arises all existence, consciousness and life.



    The world exists,
    but our perception of it
    does not.

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