QUESTIONS FROM OUR INNER CRITIC

           QUESTIONS FROM OUR INNER CRITIC

I was recently asked these thought-provoking questions by a friend of mine, “How do you decide where to draw your line in the sand of what you will and won’t do, where you will and won’t go? How do you stick to those boundaries?

After a bit of thought I realized that I go by my guidance and core values. Now to some of you these words are old friends and for some they are new concepts so I will explain.

Your core values are those values that you hold in the very center of you, in that special place where the hard shining truth of who and what you truly are; that place where no one goes but you. Those values are the ones that you will always uphold, the ones you will never forsake or allow others to push you across. They are different for each of us and if you have not decided what yours are I strongly suggest that you do so. Like the song says,” You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything…”

Guidance is the still small voice that we often totally disregard. Over the years of listening to others in our lives that we feel know more than we do, that inner voice of guidance has been drowned out because it is so quiet and the world is so loud. Meditation is one of the ways we learn how to listen again. Guidance will never lead us in the wrong direction once we learn to hear and understand.

My friends’ next question was, “What about in times of great change?”

My answer was the same. This is not an easy answer, and it came after a lifetime of doubting myself and living my life by committee. You see, we are taught to listen to the village that raises us and to stop listening to our ‘self’ (I am talking about our instincts) as well as our ‘Self’ (here I refer to our higher spiritual voices, the ones who truly know the answers) and listen to the people by whom we are surrounded. The ones who want us to think and feel the way that they do so that they are comfortable in their status quo. When we begin to follow our true path(s), we have the tendency to upset those around us who don’t want to be around growth.
The next thing she told me was that she tended to doubt herself too much and think too much. This was causing her to feel that she is learning patience.

My response to this is, the reason we do this to ourselves is, again, that committee that always seems to know more about how we should be feeling and what we should be doing than we, who are living our life know about it. They mean well but their constant input creates doubt and the tendency to over think everything.

The other side of this coin is that the constant input triggers our ‘shut down’ mode and we don’t listen to anything from anywhere and we stumble around in ignorance, sometimes getting it right but, most of the time making the same mistakes over and over again. In order to break this cycle, we need to master the virtues of patience, the ability to let go, the ability to listen and believe in ourselves and our inner and divine guidance.

She then told me that her problem is her need to learn to believe; to build her own faith. She told me that she feels that it’s happening slowly.

I know all of you have heard the adage that “Seeing is believing.” And sometimes this is the case BUT, when you get into those higher levels of spirit and vibration (which is where this type of questioning occurs) you find that to believe is to see. Trust me when I tell you that the journey is rough because we are stubborn and don’t (at first) want to let go of those things we think we know, but as we come to truly understand and learn how to listen to our innate core values and guidance you will find that it is so worth the effort.

Happy growth and Bright Blessings,

Chessie

© Chessie Roberts 2011, all rights reserved