Elementary deductions

By James Kyle


So what is all this awareness I have been referring to in various previous posts? It is all very well saying that we should practice being more self aware but how do we go about this? One way, certainly, is by looking for self limiting patterns in our lifes, and this can be assisted by keeping a journal. This is something that was particularly encouraged at the University of Santa Monica. And as a way of example here is an extract of a personal journal I was keeping as part of the course.


This month the common thread was a more powerful self expression of myself in the world. There have been many advances in the ways that I relate to myself and to others over the past few weeks. I have had an ideal goal for myself of living life powerfully from a still center and this is beginning to manifest in my life. As I have connected with an inner peace inside I am more centered in myself and more able to respond in the moment, avoiding regrets, self punishments for past mistakes, and future fantasizing, positive and negative. I am very grateful for the inner shifts that I have experienced over the past two months and my patterning journal has had a significant part to play in bringing about these breakthroughs.

Additionally my intention was to avoid negativity and focus on being positive. This manifested in my life in many ways this past month. A key was that I chose to be positive. I achieved this by monitoring my inner voice, and when negativity started to bubble up, I chose in that moment not to support this and to instead focus my thoughts elsewhere. I also realized from acting classes that I am very good at living in the moment, and displaying emotions, when playing roles - but yet I do not always find this easy in real life. This was an empowering insight, as I recognized that once again I have a choice. If I can choose to do these things while acting, I can choose to do these things in real life too! 

As I allow myself to relax more into just being in the moment, I am increasingly aware of the immense power of just being authentic. And yet doing something so simple does have its challenges. There are various limiting characters that I have observed coming up inside me that I allow to distract me from being authentic in the moment. And of course they all come down to some kind of judgment. So far example up until now I have had an irrational belief that displaying excessive emotions was something to be avoided, both in myself, and in others. Another is one that I have inherited from my Roman Catholic upbringing, and that is that sexuality is wrong, and up until now this has stood in the way of me being truly authentic in relationships. Another is confusing asking for what I want as being needy, and judging my worthiness when it comes to asking for something and being ‘rejected’. Overall I have, in the past, allowed my own self expression to be controlled by my anticipations of how others might judge me. So my intention for this month is to really monitor how authentic I am in each moment and really get in touch with the fact that being truly authentic in the moment is serving both me and the people that I am in relationship with.



The above is the outcome of the the self observations of how I was reacting to myself and other people in social situations over the period of a month. One way to look at this is that you are playing the part of the detective. But the case, in this case, is you. Become an analytical Sherlock Holmes, put aside the judgement, and observe dispassionately how you interact with whatever situations come into your life. As Sherlock Holmes himself once said "“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence". Observe, evaluate and decide what needs to change. And as ever put aside what doesn't work, and do more of what does.