Becoming Your True Self

Knowing your true self can also make you re-assess your strengths and weaknesses, which may help you along your journey.

With acute body awareness and mind focus, you begin to train yourself to pay greater attention to what is happening in your body, in your mind, as well as in your perceptions of others and of the world around you. In other words, it is your deliberate and purposeful intention to bring more being into your own life experiences. According to research studies, mindfulness of your being is instrumental in helping you cope with your everyday problems, look after your physical health, let go of your undesirable patterns of thinking and behavior, and relate to others with better understanding and greater compassion.  In other words, awareness and focus may bring about the miracle of being, which is now your new perception of your true self—who you really are, and not what you wish you were. Your new being is the outcome of your becoming from where you were.

An Illustration of Becoming

There was ancient Chinese fable of a stonecutter who worked so hard cutting stones that he often felt stressed and depressed.

One day, while standing behind a huge stone where he was cutting his stones, he looked up at the sky, and saw the beautiful sun. Then, he wished he were the sun that could give warmth and sunshine to everyone on earth. A fairy came to him and granted him his wish, so he became the sun.

For a while, he was happy and contented. Then, one day, a big cloud came over, blocked out everything from his view, and he could not even see what was below. He became distressed, and wished he were the cloud, instead of the sun. Again, the fairy came to his rescue, and granted him his wish. He became the cloud, and began drifting and floating happily and peacefully in the sky.

After a while, a strong wind came and scattered the cloud in many different directions. Now, he wished he were the strong wind that could blow away anything and everything that stood in his way. Again, the fairy made his wish come true: he became the strong wind, blowing here and there. For a while, he was happy and contented.

Then, one day, he found that he could not blow away the big stone behind which he used to cut stones in the past. Worse, he was stuck there at the big stone, and going nowhere at all.

Now, finally, he realized that was where he belonged, and where he was supposed to be.

He made his one last wish to become the stonecutter that he used to be. The fairy granted him his last wish, and now he was contented to be the stonecutter again.

The moral of the fable: comparison and contrast between the self and others is often a stumbling block to self-contentment, without which there is no self-discovery, which is the ultimate enlightenment. Self-acceptance is self-love—accepting yourself as who you are in spite of all your shortcomings and imperfections, without comparing and contrasting with others. Letting go of your ego-self is detaching yourself from all your attachments that may ultimately become the sources of your miseries and sufferings in your life.

Remember, all human attachments come in the form of many different stressors in life, and are often the stumbling blocks in the human quest for true human wisdom because they create many delusions and illusions for the thinking mind.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau