Know Yourself

In order to know yourself you must first recognize what kind of questions you are asking yourself. Are they negative questions such as "What is wrong with me?" or "What am I doing wrong?" Asking yourself negative questions will do nothing to contribute to your coming to know yourself. What asking yourself negative questions will do is create a stream of visions in your mind's eye filled with all the you consider to be your short comings. In addition your mood level will sink like a stone. You are not your short comings so you will not recognize yourself there you will only see what you think you are. You will see what negative things others have told you about yourself. You will not recognize yourself in those reflections either because they are not you. They are only the negative projections of the precepts and opinions of others.

Ask yourself repeatedly, as many times as it takes to dig out from under all the hats you wear and the identities and roles you take on in life, "Who am I? You will recognize when you get your right answer to that question because you will recognize yourself.

There are better questions to ask yourself than "What is wrong with me?" or "What am I doing wrong?"  It is far more effective to ask yourself questions such as "What's happening?" or "Did that remind me of something?" "What's happening?" will allow you to look at what is right here, right now rather than tying up your energy and attention on an entire litany of happenings. This affords you the opportunity to deal with what is right here, right now as this is where you are and this is what you have control of. You have no control over the past only the present. Asking yourself, "Did that remind me of something?" will allow you to identify what area of the past has come to view and you can acknowledge it by noting when it was, where it was and what it was. This will move the incident off your present time. Another question you can ask yourself is, "Where am I?" This will serve to make you aware of where your attention has been. Your energy flows where your attention goes therefore it is vital that you be aware of what you have your attention on.

Asking yourself questions such as the above facilitate your arrival in present time. It is impossible to begin to recognize yourself if you are not here. Therefore, the first step to take in order to recognize yourself is to arrive in present time.

Once you have arrived at you, here, now, in present time your next step is to acknowledge that you have arrived here, now, in present time. It is vital to acknowledge that you are present because one of the reasons you go absent is that your presence is too often not acknowledged. You, your arrival, your communication, your ideas, the things that you do for another or others very often fail to get acknowledged and you begin to make negative decisions such as "I can't be bothered?" or "It doesn't matter what I do?" and on it goes. Enough of these piled on top of negative decisions are the cause you being absenting yourself from your own life.

Celebrate your presence, it is a win and winning and celebrating are partners. A win is when you set out to accomplish something and you accomplish something. You set out to find yourself and you did. You have recognized that you cannot find yourself in the past and you cannot find yourself in the future you can only find yourself in the present, right here, right now.

Whenever you catch yourself drifting off or in a trance state, stop and ask yourself, "Where am I?" It takes practice to increase your presence. The more you practice the more presence you will have. It is vital that you arrive in your own life and there are many benefits to doing so. For one thing you have no power in the past or in the future the only power that you have is in present time. It is from present time that you influence your future. The past is a done deal.

When you have found You then you have control of Your Own Universe. When you are absent, gone, not found, elsewhere, far-off, away, hidden then your life is under the control of others and the environment.

With your increased personal presence your perceptions are more accurate and you are able to take and hold a position. It is absolutely necessary if you are to succeed in any game in life that you choose to play that you have the ability to perceive accurately and to hold a position from which you can play in your chosen game(s). If you are not playing your own game then you are playing someone else's game and it is very easy to loose yourself in another's game. Play another's game and it will not be long before you no longer recognize yourself, especially if it is a negative, destructive game. Then one day, hopefully, you will wake up and ask, "Where am I?"