PHOTO: RIMANTAS DICHAVICIUS

“Because there is no part of you that you’re not willing to see, the mind is no longer divided into the conscious and subconscious…

“There is simply pure energy pouring inside of you that creates the ripples of thoughts and emotions, and there is the consciousness that’s aware of it. There is simply you watching the dance of the psyche.

“In order to reach this state of awareness, you must let your entire psyche surface. Every little separated piece of it must be permitted to pass through.

“Right now, many fragmented parts of your psyche are held within you. If you want to be free, it all has to be equally exposed to your awareness and released.

“But it will never get exposed if you’re closing yourself.. .

“Once you close, you have to make sure that what you protected doesn’t get disturbed. You then carry this task for the rest of your life.

“The alternative is to become conscious enough to simply watch the part of your being that is constantly trying to protect itself. You can then give yourself the ultimate gift by deciding not to do that anymore…

“You start by watching life and noticing the constant flow of people and situations that hit your stuff every day. How often do you find yourself trying to protect and defend…

“The reward for not protecting your psyche is liberation.

“….We normally attempt to solve our inner disturbances by protecting ourselves. Real transformation begins when you embrace your problems as agents for growth.

“In order to understand how this process works, let’s examine the following situation. Imagine that you have a thorn in your arm that directly touches a nerve. When the thorn is touched, it’s very painful…”

“This thorn is a constant source of disturbance, and to solve the problem you only have two choices. The first choice is to look at your situation and decide that since it’s so disturbing when things touch the thorn, you need to make sure nothing touches it.

“The second choice is to decide that since it’s so disturbing when things touch the thorn, you need to take it out.

“Believe it or not, the effects of the choice you make will determine the course of the rest of your life. This is one of the core level, structural decisions that lays the foundation for your future.

“…If you decide you have to keep things from touching the thorn, that becomes the work of a lifetime…

“This is what people do. They let the fear of their inner thorns affect their behavior. They end up limiting their lives just like someone living with an external thorn.

“Ultimately, if there is something disturbing inside of you, you have to make a choice…

“Do not doubt your ability to remove the root cause of the disturbance inside of you. It can really go away…”

“How do you free yourself? In the deepest sense, you free yourself by finding yourself.

“You’re not the pain you feel… None of these disturbances have anything to do with you. You are the one who notices these things. Because your consciousness is separate and aware of these things, you can free yourself.

“…Because you’re always doing something to avoid feeling them, they are not given the chance to naturally work themselves out. If you want, you can simply permit the disturbances to come up, and you can let them go.