Here are my observations of relationship with the self.
You are a compassionate and highly responsible individual, ever ready to extend a helping hand to anyone you perceive as in need, often at the expense of your own interests and life. This is an illustration of empathy that can be detrimental and destructive to many lives. Such a state frequently arises from upbringing that deprives an individual of the opportunity to receive rewards for their own actions while simultaneously imposing the burden of responsibility for those around them. Individuals like this often feel shame for their own success and productivity, influenced by the societal images they hold in their minds. This tendency is particularly prevalent among those from cultures that emphasize collectivist ideals.
The path out of this illusion lies within oneself, not in the external world. Our subconscious is governed by beliefs that lead us to experience various emotions, many of which are harmful. The solutions to your inquiries reside within you, not in the internet, in trees, in the sky, or beneath the earth.
Do you feel awkward in the presence of beggars or the “unfortunate”?
Ask yourself: “Why do I feel this way?” Justifications will emerge, explaining why you owe something to others.
Write down and analyze these justifications. Self-discovery is an incredibly engaging pursuit.
It’s been more than half a year since I left Indochina. Many things changed in my life. The amazing part is that I didn’t plan all of these changes. They happen naturally as you grow in your sense of being here and now.
Now, I am totally happy with what I have, wherever I am. I keep growing in all directions, and I don’t let my mind take full control of life but let it be part of it.
A few months ago, I could feel a bit of sadness in me about the idea that I had left “paradise.” I realized that paradise destroyed the meaning of being for me. There was nothing that could make me satisfied with who I am and what I am doing.
I feel there is a huge difference in my perspective on life now and what I should do. Too much comfort is good to have because, soon or later, it becomes your biggest desperation. You get a condition of mind that doesn’t understand who you are or why you live. It doesn’t matter what social status you have.
The human mind can make life seem stagnant, and if it becomes rotten, then you understand that there is no other way but to move and wash away all of those rotten, not working behavior patterns.
Silence the mind by observing the thoughts and feelings that arise. Stay still and see what you really are. Let the past go, and it will take lots of weight off you that you carry for yourself and those who taught you these misconceptions.
Get back to you and dance with the flow of life. May love be with you!
Every morning when I wake up, my head is attacked by thoughts about many different things, life issues, etc. Some of the thoughts are pleasant, and some of them cause anxiety and depression. It happens when you react to them and condition yourself to these thoughts.
For example, I have an important meeting next Monday, and on Saturday morning, I worry about how this meeting will be. My mind creates numerous scenarios about how and what I will talk about during this meeting, with lots of “what ifs” and other daubts bombing my head.
This thinking process makes my body feel like there is a real danger right here and right now. My heart is beating harder, my palms are sweating, and I am getting sick. I get up from my bed and nervously do my morning routine, even though I don’t pay any attention to where I am or what I am doing at the moment. My attention is fully occupied by worries and thoughts about future events.
Or there is another type of thought about a past event. These thoughts take me to that moment from the past, which I live through again and again. If the moment was pleasant, I am trying to repeat that moment using my imagination, remembering each small detail, and dreaming that it will happen again. Also, the past event could be stressful; in this case, thoughts are that I could react and act in a different way, in other words, I regret.
The reality is here and now, so your thoughts about the future or the past are irrelevant. Body and subconscious react to those irrelevant thoughts as those scenarios are happening right now. It emaciates the body, so it seems that you are always tired, even if you just woke up a few hours ago and did nothing that could make you that exhausted.
Any thought is addictive. Practice controlling your own attantion helps you live your real life here and now. Of course, it seems hard, and for some of us, it seems even impossible to do so after decades of heavy addiction to our own thinking process. Be courageous; step into the moment now, get out of your biggest addiction, and be free.
The mind is a pretty powerful tool that produces and contains different thoughts and entities.
Many spiritual teachings say that you should silence your mind. What does it mean?
Let me ask you a question:
When do you think the mind is silent?
Right, when it’s dead.
So until the body is alive, the mind is playing its role and performing its functions. The functions of the mind are to think and analyze information that we receive through our senses and to help the body stay safe while it plays its biological role. We should train the mind to get quieter. It’s impossible to make the mind totally quiet until you experience life in your body.
The common way is through meditation, which helps to observe the products of the mind. It means that while you sit there in silence, you notice thoughts that come to you, but don’t react to them. You just notice that thought.
Another way is to practice self-inquiry. To accomplish this, you should ask yourself a question about any thought that comes to mind: Who am I?
You shouldn’t answer this question.
It shocks the mind, and it will let any obsessive thought become quiet as you turn the volume down until this thought leaves the spectrum of your attention.
Doing so will cause a big change in your life.
There are authors who explain this practice in their books, and I would recommend checking them out.
1. Eckhart Tolle
2. Robert Adams
Wish you to have a wonderful moment now, dear human!
May love be with you!
Visit my website alshapovalov.com to find out more about mindfulness and my own observation of this beautiful life.
It was in the sunny afternoon. Seven years old, me was sitting on the roof of a little construction, playing with bees that was coming to drink water there. At that moment I heard voices of my uncle and his friend. I hid there on the roof to spy on them. They entered the area I could see. My uncle carried big hummer and rope with him. They entered the barn.
After sometime I heard burb of pigs in that barn. Pigs always burb when they see humans. Pigs are asking for food in this way. In few minutes uncle’s friend appeared from the door with the rope in his hands that pulled a pretty fat pig out of the barn. My uncle followed them with the hummer.
I was keep watching this scene and I witnessed the hole process of killing the pig. It shocked little me, because I felt emotions of that pig and its fear. Seems the pig could understand what was happening.
Anyway, I ate meat until the age of 29 when I started to realise that eating animals is kind of cannibalism. I felt nothing special when I ate meat of different animals, only feeling that something heavy is in my stomach, that my body has to digest.
When the realization of the idea that eating meat isn’t necessary came to me, first I reduced meat in my meals, and then after some time I slowly realised that there is no meat in my meals at all.
When you grow your awareness, you grow your sensibility to pain in your body and in the body of the world around you. Then you understand that hurting something that has emotions is the same as hurting yourself.
Animals have human-like emotions. When animal dies, it experiences fear, that stays in its blood and meat, that you eat and absorb.
The problem is not with people, but with the fact that we unconsciously choose them with a certain set of characteristics that will ultimately lead to an already familiar result, even if at a conscious level it is not desirable.
If, in childhood, you were ingrained in the pattern “without suffering, there is no happiness,” then each new partner will fall under criteria that will lead to toxic relationships. It will always seem that you are making the choice that you are striving for. In fact, you still don’t know who you are, and you are still learning the mechanisms of life through trial and error.
You see the source of desire or irritation, its merits and flaws, which are actually yours; you just cannot see yourself, so you see your own vices in others. The people around you reflect you in one form or another. This mechanism is the reason why we are able to understand each other.
The fact that there are conflicts and their frequent occurrence causes an uneven growth in awareness.
Awareness depends on some factors, but everything is not completely clear to me since there is no limit to awareness itself and factors change their functions as you move along the life path of growing awareness.
If you manage to turn your attention inward and keep it to yourself, then big changes will soon begin.
You will learn to feel your own body and mind.
After all, few, or perhaps many, people wondered why we were not given exact instructions for the body.
You will have to look for it yourself, listening to yourself. But how exactly do you do this? You ask.
The body wants pleasure, and the mind wants to know. So hear them by directing your attention inward.
You will think it’s crazy and a waste of time. You don’t yet realize that only silence means something in the world; everything is stored in it, and its meanings are broader.
May love be with you!
Visit my website alshapovalov.com to find out more about mindfulness and my own observation of this beautiful life.
It’s funny to see when an idiot, trying to be smart, pretends to be an idiot. Despite the fact that one should be considered an idiot neither in a negative nor in a positive sense, it is simply a given.
During this period of intensification of the manifestation of truth in society, the former opposing ideas that could dominate through deception and hypocrisy are no longer valid. No one wore masks because everyone saw the beauty in themselves and others. Therefore, there is nothing to cover up.
So one of the people begins to cover up obvious facts, using, for example, the technique of confusing the minds of “opponents” by denying what is clearly happening.
The question arises: what could be his motive? And there is only one motive—fear. What is our hero afraid of? What is society afraid of, having tacitly agreed to play hypocrisy until the next painful experience of revealing the truth?
The truth is that the hero and society are one. All are manifested in one, just as one is manifested in all. After all, everyone understands what the distortion of the truth will lead to, but still, time after time, they get carried away by the game of opposites, or “I see, I don’t see.”
The passion with which we strive to know the hidden ultimately becomes our obsession and, accordingly, our weakness, despite the fact that we almost always know what exactly is hidden, but we so like to pretend in order to again get the thrill of anxious ignorance and the sweet anticipation of new adventures.
May love be with you!
Visit my website alshapovalov.com to find out more about mindfulness and my own observation of this beautiful life.
The manifestation of evil is a signal that attention is required. Where attention is, there is energy. By controlling attention, we can change the state of things towards balance and vice versa.
If one side predominates in the manifested, then everything is doomed to return to balance through the destruction of another false concept created by the mind.
The essence of all concepts existing on Earth is always the same, but interpretations often distort the very essence for the sake of individual interest or the interest of a group (motive: dominance, predominance of one over the other).
You can verify this by looking at the world tree of religions and choosing one of the branches, asking about the history of its foundation and the reasons for degradation or prosperity.
Why religions? Because this is one of the oldest tools for controlling the consciousness of the masses, which clearly reflects all manifestations of life in its “truths” and dogmas. It all starts with you, it’s all in you. Existing and emerging individuals carry within themselves the potential of a co-creator, which they must reveal and embody within themselves, taking into account the conditions of the path of human life and other factors that impede the process of self-realization.
Having revealed the potential, the individual has the right and opportunity to influence matter and other minds, which in turn are the main source of energy and the very perpetual engine of progress. But the mind of each individual is subject to weaknesses and susceptible to illusions, which force the mind to interfere in processes that do not concern it, which leads to global imbalance and destruction in order to again show the mind that it is lost in itself.
An example of this phenomenon can be found in any of the empires that have ever existed and their rulers, who reached the peak of the development of the individual and the collective but still ran into the illusion of separating themselves from the whole, allowing the Ego to take over, which led to their complete destruction.
The creation of any empire is based on a philosophical concept that basically includes opposites that are initially in harmony with each other.
As soon as opposites become conditioned, resistance immediately arises, which soon leads to imbalance and destruction of one by the other and vice versa, but this is how evolution occurs.
The mind at first adheres to the truth, but an obstacle will inevitably appear on the way, which will draw the mind away from the truth with only one purpose – to remind the mind where its place is.
Since the mind is very strong, as long as it is active, it will not give up trying to show zeal towards the next illusion in the pursuit of imaginary pleasure. The truth is always the same, no matter how bitter or sweet it may seem to the mind.
May love be with you!
Visit my website alshapovalov.com to find out more about mindfulness and my own observation of this beautiful life.
The first is hypocrisy. For me, it’s the most miserable event that exists in human behaviour. Hypocrisy is the reason for many man-made catastrophes. For those who live life from the perspective of truth, hypocrisy is like direct insulting.
The second is violence. Violence creates more violence and pain that accompany the destruction of life.
The third is ignorance. But the fact that the first two things that I don’t like are the results of ignorance.
Anyway, these things are eternal parts of life, which is exciting for the balance and evolution of everything.
In conclusion, I would say that it doesn’t matter what I personally like or dislike because, in fact, everything is alright and in its place. Even negative things exist for good.
The main lesson of life is to learn.
May love be with you!
Visit my website alshapovalov.com to find out more about mindfulness and my own observation of this beautiful life.
Don’t you get tired of permanently consuming information from books, movies, YouTube, etc.?
I found that there is no difference in how important the information is. There will be a point where nothing can satisfy your desire to learn.
I realized that information itself is useless without your own experience with anything you read, watch or learn.
I heard from somebody that it’s important how much life is in your days, and it’s not important how many days are in your life.
Every new day is a new story, book, chapter, or episode of your unrepeatable life path. Even a boring daily routine is full of existing and magical moments, which we are usually losing by worrying about whatever.
How nice to be alive and be in love with your own story, where bad events are also good and good events are even better.
I wish to share books that really impressed me:
1. “Steppenwolf” Herman Hesse
2. “Flowers for Algernon”
3. “Meditations: Thoughts to Myself” Marcus Aurelius
May love be with you!
Visit my website alshapovalov.com to find out more about mindfulness and my own observation of this beautiful life.
mindfulbe 