Hello there.
You came into this life as an extension,
an expression of source energy in the physical dimension.
Because of this it could be said that you are an art piece, a creation of God's,
but as an extension of God, you are God.
So you are both the creator and the created.
In neither the creator or the creation is meant to be suppressed.
When you live in a state of openness
you are allowing the art piece, a view to be painted across this world.
You're not restricting yourself.
You are also not restricting source itself.
Because of this, it is by far the more in alignment way to be
and it can be said that walking the spiritual path is walking the path of complete openness.
When the child is born the child has no thoughts of suppressing itself.
The child has no secrets from the world.
The child does not secluded itself or exclude people from its heart.
The child is honest.
The child is like this because it is the most natural way to be.
The child falls its emotional guidance system up until the point where it is taught not to.
And when you fall your emotional guidance system,
what you find is state of constriction is painful and therefore it is not natural.
What you find is that the state is openness feels emotionally good
and therefore, it is our natural state.
We can think of constriction as the opposite of the openness.
But a whole range of things falls into the category of constriction.
We are constricted when we keep secrets.
We are constricted when we tone ourselves down in order to be accepted by others.
We are constricted when we do things we don't want to do.
We are constricted when we close our minds that are no longer open to new ideas and new possibilities for truth.
We are constricted when we are not honest.
We are constricted when we don't share.
We are constructed when we isolate ourselves.
We are constricted when we see love in terms of finite quantity,
and so we reserve it only for some people and not others.
We are constricted when we do not allow ourselves to admit to
and go after our needs and our wants.
We are constricted when we do not express our emotions.
We are constricted when we try to fit ourselves into a life dictated by society
instead of carving out a life to fit ourselves.
These are just a few examples of thousands of examples of constriction.
To live a life with construction is to not let the light of your eternal being
shine through your physical existence.
The first thing to suffer is your emotional life.
You'll start to not enjoy the life you're living.
The second thing to suffer is your body.
You can't stay in the state of construction for long.
Because you're preventing the source energy from flowing through your body.
The part of the body that perhaps suffers the most from construction is the heart and lungs.
Many of the heart and breathing problems that we experience are
ultimately the result of restricting the self.
But constriction can also give rise to a whole host of other ailments.
Such as stomach disorders, acne, allergies, eating disorders, arthritis,
boldness, blood pressure problems, bowel problems,
yeast infection, varicose veins, cancers and tumors,
speech problems, injury is associated with the body in the joints
prostate problems and ovarian problems to name a few.
After we've been here on the planet for a little while
we begin to feel as if there are consequences for being ourselves and for being open.
We begin to fear exposure.
And so, the one power that we have is what I call self-containment.
We know that it's a choice for us
to expose or to not expose ourselves.
So most of us exercise our free will
by choosing to close ourselves down,
by choosing to be invisible.
We choose to hide ourselves instead of expose ourselves.
And sometimes we hide ourselves from ourselves.
This makes us feel as if we are not powerless victims.
But it is a decision that will kill us in the end.
You came into this life in order to be the full expression of yourself.
You are source playing itself out in the physical body.
And each body is a unique expression of source.
Upon coming into this physical dimension,
you "chose" to become that full expression,
that unique expression.
And so to restrict that expression in anyway
is to disallow the very purpose for you coming into this dimension in the first place.
When we do things like keep secrets
it makes us feel powerful instead of powerless.
But it is to be exclusive in an universe
which is all inclusive, more than all inclusive, it is all one.
Your stories are not yours. They are everyone's.
Your secret is not yours. They are everyone's.
Your pain is not yours. It is everyone's.
Your joyous is not yours. It is everyone's.
To keep secrets, it's not understand the fact
that you are everything and everyone.
When we are not open and honest and do not share,
it makes us feel safe instead of unsafe.
As we said before, people think they're safe and they're invisible.
But to live your life at the mercy of fear is no kind of life.
It is only a half life.
We may fear what others will think of us.
Or, we may fear that what we tell others will be used against us.
But I can tell you that if you are comfortable with being yourself fully,
you would not care what they think about you.
It would not be possible to be embarrassed in the first place
if you were not indoctrinated with the idea
that there are good ways to be and bad ways to be.
People who fear exposing themselves without exception
were raised in environments where there was a heavy atmosphere of shame.
It would be impossible to be embarrassed
if you are not first ashamed of being yourself.
And the person does not become ashamed of being themselves
and thus they are exposed to someone who convinces them that they should be.
And as our spiritual practice progresses,
it becomes more and more obvious
that anything a person could do to us
does not compare to the pain of constriction
when we impose restriction
on our own being.
There's an old Chinese poem
that explains a very deep spiritual truth.
It is that an arrow can only pierce
something that resists the arrow.
If we were to instead become like water,
an arrow shot into the water
would not even make a dent.
Instead it would be absorbed into the expanse of the water.
When we live in a state of constriction,
when we keep secrets,
when we live our lives as anything other than ourselves,
we are resistant to the very things that we are afraid of
and so they can hurt us.
We are resisting the arrow
when we're living in a state of closeness instead of openness.
If we were to become like water
to live in a state of complete openness, sharing honesty,
the expanse of us would absorb anything
that came up against us.
Nothing could make a dent.
If you are completely open
it's true that you give all your ammunition away.
But when you give your ammunition away it can't be used on you.
Some people feel as of being open and sharing oneself over the world completely
is a tasteless form of public exhibitionism.
The deeper than that, it is a form of narcissism.
This is a profoundly out of alignment point of view from source perspective
seeing as how you came into this planet in the first place
to uniquely express yourself fully.
This is the only way we can achieve self-awareness
is if we are open with ourselves and if we're open to the world.
Whats more than that, our only way to learn from one another is to express ourselves.
For the people who hold this belief or raised in environments
for the only socially acceptable way of being
is conformity to a social ideal.
Social etiquette often calls for extreme
measures of self constriction.
But we need to understand that if we have an idea of how someone should behave,
we are living our standards be dictated by someone who came before us,
someone who had power over others who decided
that if other people behaved in a certain way it would make them feel happier.
It is a former social control that we have bought into,
and we now reinforce.
We need to ask ourselves
who decided what was tasteful and what was tasteless and why,
why is public exhibitionism is not OK especially in a universe where we came
to this physical life specifically to be unrestricted expressions of our true selves,
why should we act in a certain way
and who decides what that certain acceptable way to act is.
The idea that sharing oneself completely is narcissism
is a sad idea at best.
You came into this physical dimension
and you are restricted to the one perspective that you called by your name.
You will be with you for the rest of your life.
This means you are the love of your life.
You just don't know it yet.
Self-love is not narcissism.
Most people do not understand narcissism.
And I can promise you I'll be doing a video on narcissism coming up soon.
But the idea that there is something inherently wrong
with being self focused, self congratulating, self celebrating
is not an idea which comes from source itself.
It's an idea that was brought down from human to human.
The idea that its virtuous to forget yourself, and that it is selfish to care about yourself
and to think highly enough about yourself to be driven to show yourself off to others
is an idea that is imposed on us by the people who believe
in the virtue of selflessness and who rejected us for who we were.
These people believe in humility, a lethal humility.
They spent a good deal of time trying to make us believe that it was selfish,
and to be selfish was to be bad, and to be bad was to not deserve love,
so are only way to get love was to deny ourselves and restrict ourselves and to become constricted.
The idea that you should constrict yourself in any way
and not celebrate your own life and not show it off to others
is an idea that originates directly from self hate.
Bottom line is to live a life that is in alignment,
to live a life where you are able to be healthy,
to live a life that you enjoy,
"openness" is the order of the day.
We have a choice at all moments of the day, the choice is to be open or to be closed.
This is why one of the most beneficial exercises you can do
is ask yourself throughout the day, "How am I being closed right now?
How am i constricting myself or letting myself be constricted?
And make the necessary changes in favor of openness based on the answer you receive.
A state of openness is the real state of freedom.
Everything that we do in our lives is a creative expression of our inner selves.
Anything you do to constrict yourself or anyone else
is to restrict the flow of source energy through your body.
And you can't live like that for long.
It's important that we understand
that to commit to a spiritual life and spiritual practice
is to commit to a path of openness.
Have a good week.