It’s a Sunday Spiritual, so no quick fixes today, just an invitation to slow down, explore some paradoxes, and see what pops up for you.
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Do you ever catch yourself reading one of these Daily Reminders and thinking, “Yes, I must remember to do that!” in a particular situation?
If so, I think that's a totally innocent, human thing. I catch the Giles Ego Construct 📦 doing it from time to time, too.
I’ll come across a lovely turn of phrase or a fresh perspective that stirs my soul… I’ll have a deeper insight into the nature of things and then watch as the mind automatically scans recent mis-steps.
And it wants to remember, ‘for next time.’
But let's explore why none of this is about remembering-and-applying.
Not one iota.
Remembering-and-applying is a left brain activity. It’s using the intellect. It’s an attempt at using willpower to somehow reverse-engineer understanding in the moment.
It’s a bit like saying,
“Right, in situation a, b, or c, I must remember to hold my breath for 3 seconds.”
Could you do it? Sure, I guess. If you remembered.
Is it a bit unnatural? Uh, yeah.
Would the natural order of regular breathing take back over, once you stopped trying to control things? Of course!
All of our behaviour—every tick, every thought, every response, every feeling—stems from our understanding of the world in general.
We don’t get to choose.
For example…
If we believe we’re somehow deficient… we’ll forever be on the lookout for ways outside of us to bolster our sense of worth (e.g., possessions, status, power).
But if we’ve seen that we’re whole and don’t need circumstances to line up in a particular way to feel a deep sense of inner peace… we’re free from that.
There’s no trying, or remembering. Our behaviour flows automatically from that place of understanding.
Or…
If we view our kids as lacking the fundamental resources to manage difficulty, navigate painful feelings, and come up with solutions that are contextual to them… we’ll try to manage their experience and fix things for them.
But if we’ve seen there’s nothing to fix—that they are innately resilient—we’ll point them in that direction, instead.
There’s no trying, or remembering. Our behaviour flows automatically from that place of understanding.
Of course, that’s all well and good on a macro level (and is catnip for the spiritual ego, that likes to ‘progress’! 😉), but on a micro level, our state of consciousness (or put more simply, ‘mood’) fluctuates all the time throughout each day.
- When we’re not taking our thinking seriously, these simple truths are self-evident and we’ll behave with magnanimity, love, and understanding
- When we’re caught up in the mind’s self-referential chatter, we’re acting from a place of relative insecurity and our behaviour will match that.
There’s naff-all you can do about your behaviour in these situations – once it’s happening, it’s happening, and no amount of ‘remembering’ or ‘trying’ will make a blind bit of difference.
You might as well try getting the eggs back out of an omelette!
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So what are these Daily Reminders for, then?
Well, on one level they’re to point you back to what I just said happens on the micro level. Because no matter what you’ve seen, or how deep you’ve been, you’re still going to be a total idiot from time to time.
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But more than that, they’re inviting you to remember who you really are: perfect, whole; the unfathomable formless energy of life/the Universe/God, manifesting into form, NOW.
They're for you…
- To fall out of the mind’s stories and to see something about how you experience the world, in general.
- To get a felt sense of life before the mind kicks in and starts analysing it all (and complaining about it)!
- To realise that you’re ok, that you always have been, and you always will be. Because who you really are is not of this world.
- To provoke insight – the kind that shifts everything without effort.
It's not about wrestling with behaviour or making a mental note of what to do in the future to ‘feel better’, it's about seeing something true, right there in the moment.
And don’t ask me how it works—I don’t even pretend to know—but what I do know is that that stuff changes you.
Forever.
Every single time it happens.
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So if you catch me saying “remember this” or “try this out,” and the Reader Ego Construct 📦 pipes up to suggest that Giles should get his story straight, know that's it’s just shorthand for pointing you to the space where insight lives.
After touching that space, you will automatically ‘remember’, and there’s nothing for you to do, when faced with challenge, because you’ll do what makes sense.
It won’t even feel like remembering.
It will just feel completely normal.
💖
Giles