Awaken to Your True Self

“When we keep the past alive by reviv­ing and res­ur­rect­ing these sto­ries repeat­ed­ly, they don’t allow for what-is to be. We only see what is hap­pen­ing now through a lens of past expe­ri­ences and mean­ings: a pro­jec­tion of our inter­pre­ta­tions of the past onto the present moment. Our sto­ries keep us bound to the past. They pre­vent us from hav­ing a direct expe­ri­ence of the present; they essen­tial­ly keep us trapped in time. Your attach­ment to the past—an addic­tion to your stories—is what’s keep­ing you stuck and suffering.”

“More often than not, they believe they are look­ing for results when they’re actu­al­ly look­ing to val­i­date their sto­ries. The more they focus on their stucky sto­ry, the more it becomes the focus. The more they invest in the sto­ry and the seek­ing, the more pow­er they give it. It becomes more about the nar­ra­tive around find­ing a solu­tion than actu­al­ly solv­ing it and find­ing peace. We naive­ly believe that our addic­tion to our strug­gle gives us a high­er chance of solv­ing it. You don’t get what you want—you get what you focus on.”

“As he seeks to ful­fill his needs, the nar­cis­sist doesn’t find much use for a per­son as an actu­al per­son because he is unable to empathize, relate, or be inti­mate with them. But an object can be used: they serve their user, giv­ing them pur­pose. Everything in the now objec­ti­fied space is clas­si­fied as either ‘use­ful’ or ‘not use­ful.’ The nar­cis­sist does not actu­al­ly let oth­ers meet his needs: he uses oth­er peo­ple to ful­fill his own needs. The nar­cis­sist still has oth­er peo­ple in his life to ful­fill his needs, but they aren’t the ones to ful­fill them—he is.”

“All blame—along with jus­ti­fy­ing, pro­ject­ing, and avoidance—keeps us bound to vic­tim­hood. These reac­tive pat­terns pre­vent own­er­ship, account­abil­i­ty, and responsibility—which are required to have free­dom. This tri­ad is the rec­ti­fi­er of vic­tim­hood. They are lib­er­a­tors of the dis­em­pow­ered. Our sense of pow­er is not found in demand­ing hand­outs, nor from pity, nor through riots and rage—but in own­ing our cir­cum­stance and tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty and account­abil­i­ty for it. Ending the enabling is lov­ing because that is what liberates.”

“After twelve years at school—feeling hope­less­ness, despair, con­fu­sion, and apathy—I final­ly had hope. It was the real­iza­tion that there were things that I could do to change my sit­u­a­tion in life. I didn’t have to “just deal with it.” This saved me from sui­cide by show­ing me I could save myself—the pow­er of true hope. Nobody else was going to do it for me. I real­ized that true hope is the recog­ni­tion that you can save your­self. That you can bring your­self out of your own suf­fer­ing. From here, I went all-in.”

“Our dreams require us to betray who we ‘should’ be for who we are to become. It’s self-betray­al to acqui­esce to the demands of a dys­func­tion­al rela­tion­ship. It’s self-betray­al when we aban­don our­selves for a lie. Our loy­al­ty must be with truth, not suf­fer­ing. We can only give when our cup is full. We can only offer to oth­ers what we allow for our­selves. We can only tru­ly love oth­ers if we have self-love. We can only tru­ly respect oth­ers if we have self-respect. We can only tru­ly be gen­er­ous if we are gen­er­ous with ourselves.”

“As odd as it may sound, both sides of the extremes—selfishness and martyrdom—are mak­ing it about them­selves. One is mak­ing it about reject­ing and mar­tyring them­selves and feel­ing undeserving—and the oth­er is about self­ish­ness and unmet needs. The self-cen­tered will keep attempt­ing to fill their void, tak­ing from others—perhaps in hopes that one day they will be filled enough to give. The mar­tyr will over-give and feel drained, jus­ti­fy­ing with duty, pride, or right­eous­ness, inevitably car­ry­ing resent­ment as their void grows.”

“It’s the dif­fer­ence between adding to improve your­self and sub­tract­ing to remove detri­ments. Ending suf­fer­ing is not about adding plea­sure and joy, nor learn­ing ‘to love’ or ‘do happiness’—but in the elim­i­na­tion of what we’ve learned to do that is pre­vent­ing our innate joy, con­nec­tion, and love. […] The more you add, the fur­ther you get from your True Self. The more you remove what’s not you, the clos­er you get. This is why stop­ping is the only way—because it is no longer a doing, but an undoing.”

“This book isn’t show­ing you how to be like me or help mold you into anoth­er gener­ic, idol­ized clone. What you’re learn­ing here is how to be more you than you’ve ever been. You do this not by mim­ic­k­ing, but by doing less and allow­ing your­self to just be. You’re learn­ing how to show up dif­fer­ent­ly in your body and the world because that’s just who you are—not because you’re run­ning some tech­nique about what suc­cess­ful peo­ple do. We are get­ting you to stop all the insane things peo­ple taught you to do to aban­don yourself.”