“Lifelong, set-in-stone thinking keeps you stuck… often without your even realizing that you’re stuck! Since this type of mental activity can’t lead you in a new direction, becoming aware must be the first step to getting rid of your excuses forever.
Cultivating awareness is indeed the preliminary activity in the “I-opening” experience of meeting your authentic self. Living your life oblivious to your thinking patterns and beliefs, day after day, year after year, is a habit that encourages and elevates your ego or false self. Eckhart Tolle states that “awareness and ego cannot coexist” because awareness encourages and elevates your authentic self to be the center of your life experience. Although the false and authentic selves are mutually exclusive, I believe that knowledge of both is valuable. The way I see it, if you’re going to practice an Excuses Begone! life, your primary relationship needs to be 100 percent with your authentic self.
Who you truly are originated in a formless, invisible world. Scientists acknowledge that all particles (including you) emerge from an energy field of no-thing-ness. It’s Spirit that gives life, and it’s to Spirit that all life returns. There’s very little room for ego here, since it clings to the false belief that you are your possessions and achievements. Becoming mindful of your true essence leads to awareness of your magnificence, your Divinity, and your unique power to create for yourself whatever you feel is your destiny here on this planet, beyond any and all excuses.
When awareness is your reality, you don’t need to explain your shortcomings or missed opportunities. Instead, you transcend the pull of ego and move into a totally new dimension of higher consciousness. To put it simply and bluntly: if you don’t realize that you no longer have to be stuck in your old thinking habits, then the habits will prevail and persist.
From Excuses to Awareness
Breaking old habits requires noticing that you’re creating impediments in your life, and that these impediments have become excuses for so-called limitations. For example, if you’re averse to risk taking and tend to choose the safe or easy path, this has caused you to erect mental barriers. Such barriers are what I’m calling “excuses,” and they give you a way out. So when it’s time to try something new—or to take a step that might result in failing, becoming the butt of criticism, losing a contest or competition, or anything at all that puts you on the path toward becoming a stronger and more self-reliant person—you come up with the same old excuse and avoid the risk. This is all an exercise that starts and ends in your mind: it’s habituated thinking you rationalize by saying that it was inherited, or foisted on you by well-meaning (albeit cautious) parents.
Simply being cognizant of your excuse making will open you up to vast arenas of new possibilities. You can begin this process by paying attention to the false part of yourself that believes in limitations. Simply observe the thoughts in your mind and the feelings in your body and note when they don’t resonate with your authentic self. Yet you don’t have to change or fix those thoughts and feelings. By becoming aware of your true being, you only need to pay uncritical attention to the ego self, and it will recede gradually and naturally in the light of your awareness. Remember, you’re not just the temporary shell that you call your “body”— you’re a Divine essence who is limitless, formless, and infinite.
When you notice your ego’s chatter, you discover the ability to overcome long-established habits, and you begin to see all that you’ve been blinded to by excuse making. Awareness leads to your highest self; ego leads to your earthbound self. When you let the Divine grow within you, awareness will be what you bring to all aspects of your life.
As a Hindu devotee was once told: “The blossom vanishes of itself as the fruit grows, so will your lower self vanish as the Divine grows in you.” Letting the Divine grow within you involves sincerity, service to others, kindness, and reverence for all of life. Endeavoring to become aware encourages authentic thoughts to grow and appear in your inner world, and so will your lower self vanish as the Divine grows within you.” www.drwaynedyer.com
