Yet I feel like a failure for dropping out of the medicine course as it may have been my only opportunity.

I’ve been re-reading ‘The Untethered Soul’ by Michael A. Singer a book that explores the question of who we are. He arrived at the conclusion that “our identity is to be found in our consciousness, the fact of our ability to observe ourselves, and the world around us”.

In other words, you are not your thoughts, you are not your mind, you are not your body, you are not your experiences, you are not your feelings, you are not your memories… You are consciousness that observes thoughts, mind, body, feelings, experiences, memories…  (The authentic ‘I’ is the still point from which all things move,  call it Buddha consciousness, Christ consciousness, the philosopher stone)

From that perspective, you get to step back and doing so direct your consciousness vice letting it run wild. Consciousness is attracted to ‘loud noises’, fear, anxiety, hope…. but undisciplined will fixate and feed what it fixates on. The practice is to learn how to direct our consciousness.

Michael suggests that when we are feeling like a failure that we ask ourselves Who is it that is feeling like a failure. What part of this I is feeling like a failure? If you drill down far enough you will discover this thing you think of as ‘I’ is observing this experience of feeling, and in observing can choose not to let it have a hold on you. (no need to fixate) The Experience was something for you to notice, and once noticed can be allowed to pass through.

We cannot know how our choices may or may not impact our path of experience however knowing that the authentic ‘I’ is the observer there is never failure or loss of opportunity. You are exactly where you need to be for the next experience to happen.

And here is the secret… this place you find yourself moving from is the only place in which you can move from. If your on the wrong foot, the only way to get to the right foot, is by moving from the wrong foot. And when you get to the right foot you know that there was no other way to have gotten there then by having moved through the wrong one.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Peter.