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We were talking about the real You, and how it gets shoved deeper, compressed. Hidden. Ignored. Forgotten.
When you start out, and there’s no junk yet, it’s so easy for you to be you and send your Youness out into the world. There are no barriers, no filters, no screening processes.
It’s like this.
I mean, consider babies.
They are essentially useless. They are not productive members of society. They are completely self-centered. They are, to put it mildly, a lot of trouble.
I adore them.
They are real. They are the essential package. They are not good because they are nice or considerate or moral little beings. They are good because they are good.
Of course, they do awful things, like keep you up all night, and cry inexplicably, and produce inhumane amounts of poop. And they don’t care that these things inconvenience you.
Yet, still, somehow, these little creatures are good. It has zero to do with what they do for you and everything to do with babies being The Real Thing. Every baby is perfectly Itself. No junk.
(If babies aren’t cool for you, consider pets as an alternate analogy.)
But you remember the process of how the junk seeps in, pushes its way in, and slowly but surely every Baby Happily Being Itself becomes an Adult Unsure of Itself.
I am really enjoying these arbitrary capitalizations, by the way.
As an Adult Unsure of Yourself, you still have all the potential and passion you came with, it’s just compressed. And despite the heavy, suffocating layers of junk on top of the real You, it’s still in there. Alive.
It’s still feebly sending out messages, transmitting Youness, trying to be, trying to breathe, trying to reach out, trying to send those true desires out and connect with the world.
It’s hard for anything to get through.
Everything gets filtered through the ego, the huge strata of junk piled on top. It gets distorted, muffled, covered up, altered before it gets anywhere.
Everything comes out covered in junk.
That’s really discouraging (to you) and can be damaging (to other people). (And to you.)
Sometimes you try to give something of You to someone you care about, and it comes out all messed up. They don’t see the You part, they just see the ego stuff covering up the You.
They think and say things like, “Why would you give me this?” and “Why are you like this?” and “You hurt me,” and “I can’t believe you would ___,” and maybe even “I hate you,” or “You’re disappointing,” or “Leave me alone.”
The tragedy is that what they don’t like is the junk. They are pushing back against the junk you’re sending out. But the message you get isn’t about the junk; it’s about You. Because you’ve lost sight of the real You, when someone rejects your junk, it seems like they are rejecting You.
That rejection often makes you want to fight the other person, because you feel abused and threatened, and you have an instinctive need to protect yourself. What you don’t realize, unfortunately, is that you’re protecting the junk. The real You is never in any real danger. It’s untouchable. It’s eternal. It can’t be made less or more. It can’t be removed from you. It can be pushed down and covered up, but that’s it. It’s always there, because it’s You.
Sometimes you meet someone who recognizes the real You inside those Ego-altered attempts at communicating.
That’s a really special encounter.
Usually it is someone who has uncovered their own real Self (at least a little). They are able to recognize what is hidden in others. Deep calls to deep.
When someone sees the real You, recognizes that core of each message, understands the goodness covered up in the junk, you can’t help but love them because they’ve seen and loved the real You. People like that can change your life.
(You might also be a little afraid of them, too, but that’s another conversation for another day.)
Most people will be too distracted, though.
They’re lost in their own ego.
The way to help the real You communicate is to give it some room to expand. Get some elbow room. Downsize the junk.
It isn’t easy. You’ve lived a lifetime operating in the junk-world, believing that it’s the only reality. It can be terrifying to start breaking it apart and pushing it away.
It’s doable, though. And the really good news is that it doesn’t have to be done all at once. It’s not an all-or-nothing game. All of us are in process. All of us are working this out, one way or another.
The only important question is which way are you working it out?
Are you working toward more ego and less real You? Or are you working pushing for less ego and more real You?
It’s the same amount of work, either way. You’re going to expend the energy. It’s just about which direction you’re pointing. Where’s your consciousness? Where are you looking? What are you focused on?
Focus on real You, and real You will expand while Ego diminishes. Focus the other way, and the opposite happens. It’s up to you. One bit at a time.