{"id":6640,"date":"2022-02-27T02:09:26","date_gmt":"2022-02-27T02:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/?p=6640"},"modified":"2022-02-27T02:09:26","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T02:09:26","slug":"whose-life-is-this-anyway-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/whose-life-is-this-anyway-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose Life is This \u2013\u2013 Anyway?! Part 2 of 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c<\/em>Most people are other people.\u00a0Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.\u201d\u00a0Oscar Wilde, 19th<\/sup> C Irish poet and playwright.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

During the Retreat at Elohee in January, Jac O\u2019Keeffe, the spiritual teacher who led it, told us that years before, she\u2019d recognized and affirmed that, \u2018There is no Personal I.\u2019 She repeated this phrase over and over each day and posted it around her home\u00a0to train her brain to let go of the fiction of being a separate, personal I.<\/p>\n

This made a lot of sense to me because of the contrast between who I think I am when lost in fretful thinking \u2013\u2013\u00a0and who I know I am when the mind goes quiet and the heart opens naturally. I\u2019d also seen a wonderful TED talk on YouTube by the playwright, actress and poet Sarah Jones, which illustrates the illusion of the Personal I<\/em><\/strong> quite persuasively.<\/p>\n

In One Woman, Eight Hilarious Characters, <\/em>Sarah takes on the identities of a host of women of different ethnicities \u2013\u2013 including a Jewish grandmother, a fast-talking Puerto Rican young woman, and immigrants from China, India and elsewhere. With the change of a scarf, an accent, a gesture, Sarah demonstrates the mutability of the seemingly permanent personae, which turn out largely to be cultural artifacts \u2013\u2013 or masks \u2013\u2013\u00a0assembled in response to the people and conditions closest to us.<\/p>\n

Here are two online definitions of Persona: <\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The aspect of someone\u2019s character that is presented to or perceived by others.<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. A role or character adopted by an author or an actor.<\/em>
    \n<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Based on Jac\u2019s affirmation \u2013\u2013 There is no Personal I \u2013\u2013 <\/em>and my attentiveness to resonant echoes between seemingly unrelated words, as well as my experience of the inherent Beauty of Being that becomes apparent when the waves of thought are at low-tide, I suddenly heard it this way:<\/p>\n

    The Personal I is the Persona Lie \u2013\u2013<\/strong>
    \nThe Only Truth is Love!<\/strong><\/p>\n

    And this is how I expressed it tersely in verse many years ago:<\/p>\n

    We’ve a cellular line to the Divine<\/strong>
    \nBut ego causes static.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    As we each<\/strong>
    \nlet go and enjoy the flow \u2013\u2013<\/strong>
    \nOur lives become<\/strong>
    \nX<\/sup>STATIC!<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Emotional \u2018Nudity\u2019 as a Personal Strategy for Upgrading my Operating System: <\/em><\/strong>Personalities to some degree may be innate. But, as we also know, they are built to a significant extent on the beliefs we develop in response to our early experiences. These beliefs relate to our inherent value and safety, as well as the amount of happiness, love and money we think we\u2019re worthy to receive and can therefore allow into our lives.<\/p>\n

    The belief system that gets cobbled together subconsciously throughout our growing-up years, then becomes our default Operating System (OS). And this system drives our \u2018body-mind vehicle\u2019 through largely familiar territory day-after-day because the familiar seems so much safer to the ego \u2013\u2013 even though it may be totally miserable.<\/p>\n

    One of the deeply held, self-limiting beliefs I\u2019d installed into my Operating System by the time I was 12 was the assumption that, \u2018It\u2019s too late for me.\u2019 And that belief colored everything I ever tried to do subsequently. So, I avoided envisioning higher possibilities for my life because I didn\u2019t want to subject myself to even more devastating disappointments than those I\u2019d already endured.<\/p>\n

    In the comfort and safety of Jac\u2019s retreat at Elohee, I boldly blurted out some of my darkest, oldest fear-based beliefs about myself. Jac instantly blew the first one out of the water<\/em>\u00a0of my emotional body. I now know deeply, and with certainly, that it simply isn\u2019t true. It was a case of mistaken identity. I\u2019d been living a highly limiting, self-tormenting lie.<\/p>\n

    I don\u2019t even remember what the second fear was that I openly shared in the group with Jac. But after I disclosed it, I was afraid I\u2019d gone too far and had rendered myself socially undesirable by being so forthcoming and revealing something so completely unappealing. We were observing \u2018social silence\u2019 throughout most of the Retreat, so I couldn\u2019t ask anyone if I\u2019d gone \u2018beyond the pale\u2019 in telling on myself.<\/p>\n

    So, what prompts me to be so emotionally forthcoming in a room full of strangers? I think, in part, it\u2019s because I grew up hearing that anyone who thought well of me simply didn\u2019t know me well. There are also times when I receive positive projections from people who encounter my creative work on line and make wildly flattering assumptions about me. I feel compelled to dispel any and all illusions anyone might have about me \u2013\u2013 whether positive or negative.<\/p>\n

    There is also a wordplay-based awareness that emboldens me: It\u2019s the recognition that my seemingly unfixable Faults <\/strong>are what is simply not true about me. For, echoically-speaking, our Faults <\/strong>are False<\/strong>. They aren\u2019t even personal.<\/p>\n

    Based on this awareness, I don\u2019t give any of my dysfunctional beliefs and behaviors safe harbor in a dark corner of my psyche in order to appear more evolved than I am. When they come into focus \u2013\u2013\u00a0if I\u2019m in a place where they can be exposed to the light and seen with deeper wisdom and compassion \u2013\u2013 then I may share them in hopes that such self-disclosure will dispel the trance state that has kept them active in my Operating System. I\u2019m happy to say that once the retreat reached its conclusion, and people could interact verbally again, I received a lot of love and appreciation for the level of my revelations and the impact that this had on others.<\/p>\n

    A Personal Global Reset: <\/em><\/strong>Receiving the surprising and sumptuous blessing-gift of Jac\u2019s Retreat from a benevolent, anonymous stranger \u2013\u2013 out-of-the-blue and at the beginning of 2022 \u2013\u2013\u00a0is definitely not<\/em> part of my old belief system. Yet, it very tangibly happened for me. And, as mentioned, new blessings have ensued since my return from Elohee. Taken together, all of this has definitely and irrevocably changed my mind profoundly.<\/p>\n

    Jac\u2019s Retreat may, in fact, turn out to be my personal global reset into a Life of Happier Dreams Come True. Perhaps I\u2019ll finally get to fulfill my WordMagic Global vision\/mission, which has kept me embodied for so long \u2013\u2013 through a life with a lot of unfortunate fall-out from my many significant misperceptions of reality.<\/p>\n

    So, at last I take my hands off the \u2018weal\u2019 \u2013\u2013 meaning my drive for \u2018<\/em>well-being, prosperity, or happiness\u2019 <\/em>\u2013\u2013 and leave WordMagic to the greater Creator that inspired it. If this Infinite-Intelligent Source wishes to see it become more visible and viable in the world, then it will be so. And if not \u2013\u2013 well, it\u2019s already worked its magic on my life so perhaps that is enough.<\/p>\n

    Now, I can sit back \u2013\u2013 \u2018Rest on my Laurel\u2019s\u2019 \u2013\u2013 and live a life rich with resonant connections, and life-enhancing adventures in beauty, love and higher consciousness. For as Jac O\u2019Keeffe so wisely reminded me at Elohee \u2013<\/p>\n

    \u2018That which brought you here is taking care of you!\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

    This is true for us all. We just have to release \u2013\u2013 or be shaken free from \u2013\u2013\u00a0our death-grip on Life to discover it is so. And then we may also discover, as I certainly have, that it\u2019s never too late to be who we Are in essence already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cMost people are other people.\u00a0Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.\u201d\u00a0Oscar Wilde, 19th C Irish poet and playwright. During the Retreat at Elohee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6641,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6640\/revisions\/6641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}