It’s taken a long time for me to figure out Self & self, but I finally figured it out I think. Our family has been through some horrible, exhausting battles. All this time I have been afraid to voice my real fears. I’ve been afraid to really open up to the person who is closest to me, my heart. I thought if I told him all my fears that somehow it would break him.
His mother died in July and we never talked about it, none of us. His mom told me that if you be kind to people and help people that in the long run you will come out a winner. And then she died…..She never left me anything.
I now realize that what she left me is bigger and better than any piece of jewelry or any piece of furniture. What she left for me was the ability to finally trust the person that is closest to me. She trusted him with her life and I was afraid to trust him with my fears. When I finally opened up to trusting him…my life became much calmer, more relaxing, it was as if everything in my life that ever bothered me or I was afraid of…I had to come to terms with in a four day span. If I didn’t have his support and if I didn’t have his strength, I could have lost my Self. But I didn’t, I listened to him and realized my fears were irrational. I listened to my Self that I would get better. Maybe not this instant, but gradually things would improve.
It’s been a great battle with my Self & self but I am listening to my greater Self more now. I will listen to the Self who tells me that I am a good person, the Self who tells me to reach out and ask for help when I think I need it. I no longer will listen to that smaller self that tells me negative things that beats me up.
Our son was just diagnosed with Bi Polar, Manic Depression Disorder and I knew for many years that something was wrong, but I couldn’t understand what? I felt at first I didn’t do anything, but I now realize that I have and will continue to do everything and anything to help the people I love. I was looking for answers for his behavior and I was looking in all the wrongs spots. I finally looked to my Self and the Doctors, Councilors and the Phsyichiatrist who have been helping us and I’m no longer looking at the diagnoses as a bad thing. I finally trusted. We finally have some answers, maybe not the answer I was looking for. It’s not a quick fix situation that we can clear up in a day, but it is an answer to all the pain and anguish our family and our son have felt for a long time.
We will get back to being the strong family that we were. We all will try our best to be patient, kind and compassionate with one another. We won’t be perfect but we will try. I know I with my higher Self will get through this. Thanks Ruth…thanks for being there when I needed a friend.

Sandy:
I am glad to see that a diagnosis has been made and that an answer can be seen to the troubles that have surrounded you. I wish I could say that I have been there more for you and that I could draw from the strength that you have to heal myself in the daily struggles that I have with mySelf. Reading your post was inspiring and I know that I beat mySelf up on a daily basis..and I rarely see the good that I do, even if others mention it. I got through the Christmas party and I mainly organized it and from what I could see it was a success, but I don't feel that it was my success..even though ..why I don't know.

I have joined yet another program at the YMCA in the struggle to look and feel better on the outside. I am to go to the Y every Tuesday and Thursday for 12 weeks and I will gain back a $50 deposit that I made. The program is called Commit to be Fit and it is to help people like me who lack the motivation to go try and get on a regiment to going 2 to 3 times a week. I want to accomplish it and more and get some of this weight off before I have to visit Mom, Dad and Ed someday..but it is a struggle daily and one that I find so hard to fix for myself. I guess..I love food but at the same time, I hate it every time I eat too much.

I need your strength and your positiveness to help me!

Dolly

Hi Dolly,

How nice to to see your post/reply to Sandy, connecting and expanding on her theme of strength from within ourselves, as Self-to-self assistance. This kind of linkage between ideas and personal real-life experiences is at the heart of the Speaker Material. This linking, in itself, is a goodly bit of inward understanding. The recognition of "struggle" between the self of our own concepts/desires/efforts, and the inward Self of a larger view and understanding about our power of choice as the underlying method for creating what we want, is a huge challenge to sort out.

Essentially, (from Speaker Material perspectives), this recognition is an awareness that we are thinking about our private power of choice, as if it is a "power struggle" within us. We're struggling with our understanding of our own ability to make choices, whether we are making them by default or making them out of conscious direction. Such struggling can twig us to see that we're viewing our power in a split, contradictive, either/or, domination-or-subordination, sort of way. Such experiences of "struggling-for-control" can help us begin to address the real "driver" of this dilemma about choices.

Even such a fundamental realization that there is a difference between simply experiencing our struggles, and seriously asking questions about what drives our struggles, is a great step forward in trying to understand ourselves! The questions about what is driving our experiences are different than the questions about how to "change" (or fix) our specific experiences. To fix, change, or create some different outcome from what is already the existent result of our paths of creation, is different than understanding the method that originally created our current result. Changing the specific "ducks and geese" swimming on our pond, is not the same thing as changing the flight path of all ducks and geese in order that no more of them come to swim on our pond.

Generally, our inward tug-of-wars are about the "ducks and the geese" - about the specific issues. We all spend lots of time seeing only these outward expressions and experiencing our specific, immediately visible situations, without connecting them to the underlying inward ways we think about our personal power to make those choices we are struggling with.

One of the hardest ideas to sort out is the possibility that our experiences are neither rooted in, or correctable through, such constant struggling with our private "ducks-and-geese" of personal situation. Maybe the answers (at this juncture of our individual learning) are not in trying to deal, at this moment, only with the precise dilemma (be it weight, or smoking, or anger management, or drinking, or depression, or re-action/interaction issues, or......) Maybe the answers lie deeper within us, as our learning about how we understand, and what we believe, about our own power of choice.

Sometimes, to "let ourselves temporarily off-the-hook", and allow that our struggles may be an assistance from our-Self-to-our-self, aimed at helping us find the inward path to the real questions and solutions, can be a big relief from the burden of misunderstood guilt over our own behavior. To work from a basic assumption of "there is really nothing wrong with me - there is only something that I don't YET understand", helps us to see that we are not the problem - the "problem" is only that - it's a problem concerning our self - "it" is not our self. We certainly all have vast personal proof in our lives of our ability to "solve" all sorts of problems. This (whatever it may personally be that we are dealing with) is no different than any of the problems we run into that we've already deftly dealt with; it is just a matter of using the tools of our thinking ability to do what we've always done with problems - learn what we need to in order to fix them.

When we decide to put our attention into seeking solutions by first learning about our "tools" of mind and how we might use those tools in some more accurate or new way - just as anybody who is trying to fix anything does - then we begin to work out of a position of empowerment rather than a position that begins in our ideas of powerlessness.

In realizing that the self that we each are is not defined by this-or-that arrangement of the-ducks-and-the-geese specifics of our life at any given moment, is a very freeing realization; for such a recognition let's us out from under false, chameleon judgment and guilt. Such a realization moves us "automatically" over to a path of understanding from the inside-out, rather than holding us in a power-struggle that cannot be solved without new information that can only come to us if we first learn how to use our tools of mind in a more precise way. Now we can begin dealing with any problem as something that we know is possible and do-able. Now we're dealing with actually helping ourselves through our own power and effort to learn what we need to in order to do what is obviously possible.

To use the actual evidence of our own experiences - weighing the facts of our ability to use our power of mind quite perfectly, alongside the equal evidence, that indeed there have been times that we may not have done that - is to realize in very intimate personal ways that we always have-and-use the power of our choices. I've really come to believe that the conundrums we may be dealing with at any particular point in our lives are not proof that there is something wrong with us and somehow "we" need "fixing". There's nothing wrong with "our self", we perhaps just don't have all the information we need to make more fully informed choices, and there is easily a solution to that.

Maybe our specific experiences are just a way for our inward Self to get our attention so we will look closer into our own nature as both the cause and the effect of our experiences, and recognize that the answers are always BE-CAUSE. We are the BE-ing and we are the cause; so absolutely, with that kind of power supporting us, we can see that we "came with", were gifted with, were "built" with (or however you want to view this notion), the ability and the responsibility that are the intimate power of our own minds, to think. We all think - all the time (no matter how unaware that thinking might seem). The real power of "creating" our lives is in acknowledging - owning the truth - that we are the ones making the choices about "what" we think and "how" we think; and then tying our responsibility for these processes of mind to what we create, using these processes of mind. So understanding our thinking and choosing, is paramount to our creating.

Sometimes, like the multitude of personal examples we can each find, we are - as Sandy understood - just looking in the wrong place, reading the wrong kind of manual - reading the steps for fixing our T V when we're actually trying to fix our VCR! We're really trying to fix a a problematic situation - expand a limited understanding that has turned up as a particular conundrum in our lives. We aren't really in need of fixing "US" - "WE" are perfectly fine, and we have all the tools we need to fix any of life's problems. That we might have to learn a bit more about how to use those tools isn't unreasonable.

I guess the whole point here is to try pushing at the edges of current understanding that may be keeping us on a treadmill of repeating failure, locked into perpetual mis-understanding. The evidence that we CAN and DO create change in directed, desired ways, is in our daily lives, just as the evidence that we are capable of new learning is. What we may be seeing as "impossible", is as Sandy said, often only a matter of looking in a direction where the answers are not actually located. Feeling defeated is really about a particular way we've accepted and allowed our thinking to formulate because we didn't understand there are other ways of seeing a situation that are "in the actual facts of our lives", just as valid and logical. To get our mental hands on this sort of wider view of any situation is to open ourselves to the vast energy of our own power of choice.

It can be tough to recognize and accept that how we've been organizing our thinking is not absolutely the only truth of things. We're always working from a limited position - that's the point of learning - to keep pushing those limits and expanding our position. To allow the possibility that perhaps our own personal nature of heart and mind is just fine as the amazing individual blueprint for our lives, is to relocate our power INSIDE our self-to-Self. We are entirely able to use our minds to think, and to learn, grow, discover, and create out of our personal power of mind.

To make a choice for allowing, that perhaps, how we are experiencing things, is NOT some hardwired absolute but is only a reflection of how we are understanding at any given time, is a most marvelous gift we give ourselves - and we do that out of real love for our own greatest potentials. We allow, that just perhaps, we don't know everything about everything this very instant - we allow, that maybe, we can learn something more than we currently know. We choose to look in the direction of growing ourselves forward into something more than we currently experience out of our limited vision. It is our choice to give ourselves permission to consider a different view's validity, instead of deciding to close ourselves into only the view we can currently see.

All of this leads us inward to the real experiences of self-to-Self relationship where we Speak and Listen to our own intimate self-to-Self knowledge.

Sandy's point about self trust is a huge grasp of the concepts of Self-to-self, and how it takes courage to allow for the real possibility of a real answer. To often we "want to seek, but not to find" because we realize we risk the safety/security of our current position - you know that saying about "better the devil you know than the devil you don't", sort of thing. It IS a risk to "allow" new thinking, for we may make discoveries that mean we can no longer hang on to beliefs about how we "can't..." because we've uncovered the evidence that we can...

To see "can-can't" arguments as actually being about choices and the belief systems that power those choices, brings our power back into our own hands, since inevitably we hold the power of such choices and decisions, in our personal mind that shapes our thinking into our beliefs; and conjointly, we embody the mind that shapes our beliefs into our thinking, as the self-to-Self reciprocity of our own nature as a relationship of the two energy focuses that we experience as our own unique selfhood. Re-fashioning of our own identity into competent creative power, is everyone's challenge. To recognize we have choices about how to understand and use our personal power, is to recognize that we are the bottom-line-answer for accepting or rejecting, agreeing or disagreeing, doing or not doing, allowing or not allowing, generating or not generating .......any and all of our life's experiences! Now that can be a very big deal!!

The question is not really about how do I ..???..., our queries are really about what we believe concerning the value and meaning of the person that lives in our own skin. To ask these questions is to take a leap of faith into the sea of possibilities - and it is truly amazing to discover we DO know how to swim.

Hope some of these ideas are helpful to you Dolly. If you want to look more closely at a particular idea just post back a reply. Kudos to you for bringing your self's power of inquiry so thought-fully for discussion!

Who else out there is willing to put their penny-for-your-thoughts into this pot of thinking? There must be somebody else with an idea or an opinion on what we're talking about here??!!

Thanks for stepping in and stepping up Dolly!
'Till later,
Spinfo

P.S.

The idea of weighing the facts in one hand and the fictions in the other hand is a simple basic technique that can help us clearly see what we are telling ourselves about what we believe, and lead us to ask why we believe these things. This is a good way to set off exploring the connections between beliefs and the reality of our experiences that is the result of those beliefs - however obscure or contradictive that may seem at first glance. This can be a good method to get us back on the track of empowered thinking by helping us see that beliefs are also choices we make - and we can make our choices out of living, growing knowledge, or out of the rigidity of closed-minded, unexamined, unquestioning assumptions and fear. We can either embrace our power-of-mind and learn about it as our astonishing ability to grow and create, or we can strangle our power-of-mind with fear of itself, as our equally astonishing ability to stagnate and destroy.

As a friend once phoned me up and complained in exasperation when she started to see this point - "choices, choices, choices choices - do I never get to stop making choices......"

Thank you Sandy for your amazing post to this forum.

Your post was so beautifully written from the heart, it made me cry.

I think you more than just "got it" - what you wrote epitomizes the meaning of self-to-Self as a living value. It is a joy to hear your grasp of self-to-Self from the inside out, through the layers of your own inward knowledge. Thank You for so graciously sharing your experiences with all of us.

I'm awestruck with your clear and cogent understanding of sometimes slippery concepts. Your grasp of self-to-Self shows how this concept can be used - how it can expand our ability to experience more meaningful, genuine and compassionate relationships. The strength, peace and freedom that come from such knowledge, enable hope, healing and learning as a natural unfolding. Your loving commitment to your family is a perfect demonstration of how Self-to-self identity can enrich life as a value of mutuality and respect that comes from the inside of ourselves, out, to be expressed in all of our relationships.

The world is better place just by your Being in it. I feel privileged to have your posting on this site, and to have you as a friend and fellow traveler through the lands of self-to-Self.

Thank you to for your generous compliment - it gives the work of the Speaker Material more value and meaning than I ever expected. Just today I was talking about how Speaker Material reminds us constantly that we are our own proof - our lives experiences are the proof of our inward knowledge - "the proof is in the pudding" - in the "making real" of our reality. How clearly you expressed that!

Your post reminded me of the poem on this site, "Conversion". What do you think? Does anyone else see a connection between the two?

Thank you again Sandy,
Awesomely grateful and gleeful for you,
Spinfo