Reclaiming myself on the ground of myself

by Jen Peer Rich

There are messengers and teachers busy defining what we imagine an ideal spiritual life looks like, me included. These ideals are very popular, we humans tend to like maps of territory that is mostly uncertain. Even if those maps lead us astray.

Don’t listen to me, anyone else or a teaching as much listening to and trusting your own direct experience. Receive information deeply and hold the value of it gently within, rather than projecting any value externally to the source of information.

What I am talking about is the autonomy of psyche. What I mean by this is a completely independent way of reclaiming who I am as a mind, body and spirit. I come to know this autonomous sense of myself by trusting myself.

I learn to trust my own inner being and interbeing over external maps. Being is fluidity in motion. Being is unfixed and my mind organizes this fluidity with an inquiry within that is explosive, shredding again and again into new perspectives and subtle bits of passing information, all of which dissipate into ever changing new perspectives and bits of information- my psyche is like a kaleidoscope inside, yes- a cylindrical space I am peering through made of ever-changing mirrors, loose interpretations, colorful objects, sand, pearls, rocks and glass.

But I am not the person mapped out by others, I am this being I am.

And why is this important?

Because until I let go of everything I trust and depend on externally, I am beholden others interpretations of what has value and what does not. But as I look deeper inside, when I am intimate within myself, I see a pathway to the locations and limitations of my conditioning and these pathways are what I am interested in getting into, so that I can explode again, so that I keep blowing my own mind.

Only then am I devastated. Only then may I see myself as I am.

Maps of myself made in the minds of others lead me away from my own direct experience.

My experience is born from a sea of uncertainties and inquires but all of it is authentically verifiable, for me, to me, as me. This heart is mine. I am whole within myself and here, I am OK.

What is deeply radical about this moment is reclaiming myself on the ground of myself rather than through the eyes of anyone else.

There is autonomy here, confident yet uncertain on my own terms, there isn’t a map that could possibly lead me now to myself.

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More by Jen Peer Rich on Everything Matters

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Jen Peer Rich is a friend in presence. She lives in Atlanta with 5 rescue dogs and is married to her best friend, Iris. Jen has a MA in Transpersonal Ecopsychology from Naropa University and is presently working on a PhD in Transformative Studies from California Institute of Integral Studies. Her research centers on self-awareness and reclaiming ecological consciousness. She has two books about Nonduality available for free download at Friends in Presence or on amazon kindle. You can find Jen writing and collaborating in the Facebook hive, she’s always open to making new friends there.

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