The Love you seek is found within,
The Completeness you seek is found in accepting yourself completely,
The Life you seek is found in embracing the everything of you.

Ah, the everything of you. It’s not about being good, about only embracing the things about yourself that are noble and kind and seemingly positive. We are not talking about moral judgements here. You are a circle, not a square. There’s no end, no beginning, and a break in the line anywhere breaks your shape completely.

You are always changing;
So stay alert,
For who you are in this moment.

The constant flux of who we are demands complete attention in all moments, a willingness to see ourselves with fresh eyes every time we look. It also means accepting the awkwardness as well as the brilliance, like in the meter of this poem.

Denial of What You Are can only be kept alive in thought.

Think(!) about the implications of this. So often the emphasis is on how terrible thinking is, how it takes us away from the present moment, and from Things As They Are. But what if our Thinking Self, like our body, is doing its very best for us? What if it turns out that the reason we spend all this time thinking instead of being is simply because we refuse to accept ourselves as we are, and so are forced to live in the only place that can keep that illusion alive - lost in thought.

It has been three quarters of a year since I last spoke of growth as a matter of what size a container you are in (see: Room To Grow). This particular theme has returned to me, as I continue on the Great Spiral of Life. Anyone experienced in plant growing will understand that a time will come when we must put our plants into a bigger container if they are to grow any further. So it is with us. If we are to grow as people, we must expand our views of who we are. Thinking in the same ways, thinking of ourselves in the same old small ways, will mean that we limit our own growth. So, we must learn to think of ourselves in larger terms, to shapeshift, become more than we think we are.

The most natural way we do this is by learning. We learn about the world, and we learn about ourselves. We learn more of what works for us, what doesn’t, what we like, what we don’t like, and as we do we refine our behaviours and the way we relate to the world around us. To learn most effectively, you must be open. (especially to the way I seem to change from talking about us as a whole (we), to you guys out there (you) - my English teacher would have something to say about that I’m sure). To be open to new information, it is of no use if we already think we know the answer.

“Oh, I know the answer to this, so I don’t need to listen to you, I don’t need to take in any new information, because I already know it what the answer is.”

That sounds silly, doesn’t it? Yet that’s exactly what we do, and we do it more than you might imagine. What we must do if we are to optimize our learning and speed our growth, is pay attention (take in new information), and rest in a headspace of “don’t know” (what do you do when you don’t know something? - you seek out information!).

I’ve found that when I simply accept where I am, paying attention to what I’m doing, seeing things as they are without resistance instead of making up my own dream of it on top, the rate of insights I have increases dramatically. If you apply this to all things, then it will work for you in all things - all areas of your life will be refined and improved, made more efficient, more effective, more enjoyable. You’ll learn to cook better, clean better, run faster, and think better. This is the blessing of seeing things how are they - what to do next becomes completely obvious, and with no ego involved there is no resistance to doing it either.