One hidden opportunity during this time of COVID and quarantining is deepening our self-awareness through reflection exercises. It is similar to our body’s inner resources being freed to “clean house” when we abstain from food during a period of therapeutic fasting. Given the extra time many of us have while not engaging in the usual activities out in the world, we can set aside a space for examining mind and heart. Examining mind and heart in the right way, we bring into awareness places of disorder, confusion, and conflict. Letting these out into the proverbial light of day, we can examine them, peel the layers back to understand them, work through them, pray into them, purify them, etc. Doing this work in the right way, we unburden ourselves, we are freed from our own self-imposed prison, we naturally live from deeper joy that naturally touches others without us having to say a word.
So in that spirit…take a few moments to enter an inner state of calmness and reflection, and consider the following:
At this moment, people are talking about you behind your back. They’re commenting on your worst quality, and how you ruin their vibe with it. Private reflection questions: what are they saying? if your worst quality is a problem, what is the solution? how does it feel to admit to yourself the truth that you hurt Life with your worst quality? how committed are you to change?
The spirit of inquiry is itself the greatest wisdom.
Yoga Vasistha
A friend told me years ago: real gold doesn’t fear the fire. When rough ore is put to the furnace, and kept in there until the job’s done, what doesn’t belong is purified; what’s precious withstands the purification process and is retained. What comes out of the smelter is of value, and can be put to productive use in the name of increasing wealth.
Truth is composed of honesty and integrity. Honesty, while important, is not enough on its own. When we choose to work from integrity (etymologically related to wholeness), it is like crafting the antidote from the poison. Our worst qualities are like wounds; remaining hidden, how can medicine touch it? Remaining hidden, it becomes a poison to our system.
Bringing these wounds to the surface with a heart desirous of healing, realizing the suffering it brings to ourselves and others (such an act of courage and humility), we create conditions favorable to upliftment. In a state of openness, having let down our defenses, curative information is able to flow from our Superconsciousness through us to where it is most needed.
Obviously, it’s not a short-term task. A tree with deep roots is not dug out in an hour. But when resources are committed in the right way, the job gets done. And then more work awaits.
In order to rise above anything, you have to go through it, so that you lose the fear of it.
Pathwork Lecture 52, The God-Image
Epicenter Wellness 