Face the here and now with whole-hearted attention

 Self-improvement can’t catapult us into heaven, 

but it can keep us out of self-imposed hell.

Christian M. Wiese

 

I had a colleague who was pretty good at what she did, but whenever she had to close a successful deal, she self-sabotaged somehow. A life coach, perhaps even a therapist can help with that problem if she is open to that. Somewhere she will encounter the inner naysayer who doesn’t grant her success. Somewhere deep inside the memory system of her body she will find a pain body—a repressed childhood memory, a traumatic event, perhaps even a past-life experience or a family curse—that needs to be dug up, looked at, embraced and let go of. It sometimes takes a lot of work to heal our karmic past but once the Gordian knot is dissolved, a completely new energy rushes in. We need that energy to connect with heaven; transcending our self isn’t easy.

 

Freedom—the absence of psychological self—cannot be reached by working on our self. It’s a completely different dimension of consciousness that we have to open up to. Who can say how exactly this feat can be accomplished, other than “you” of course. God hands each of us a different key to the imaginary door that was never locked in the first place. One thing is clear though, to face the evolutionary and karmic energy humanity has created over the eons takes energy. We need that drive to face the here and now with whole-hearted attention. The truth is we have to do both. There is no enlightenment in the future. The step towards freedom has to be taken now. God gave us two eyes, to be self-aware, and to see through the illusionary body-mind-world connection, that is, to be Awareness itself.