Coming Home to Yourself

EPISODE 78 | COMING HOME TO YOURSELF 

This word "self" is like a bad word. Bad word in the sense that you shouldn't focus so much on self. Because clearly, if everyone was just looking out for ourself, I mean society would crumble, right? We would self-destruct and I think a lot of times maybe that is what we see is going on wrong with the world. 

[00:00:20] But there is a healthy relationship with self. There's a healthy way of turning inward - to look at the self and to be in relationship with the self. And there is a very unhealthy way of being centred on the self.

 [00:00:36] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me. 

[00:01:13] Hey, good morning, everyone. So today is day three of my 30 days of IG Live challenge that I'm on. And I'm actually pretty excited about today's topic because it is kind of like the linchpin. It is so foundational to the interior journey. And it's not talked about enough.

 [00:01:41] In fact, I would say that in my practically 30 years of going on the interior journey, while there has been a lot of helpful resources and a lot of people along the way that have helped me, no one - no one has actually really explicitly made this particular connection for me - this connection that I'm about to share with you today.

 [00:02:01] And really this connection is something that is very much part of my work. So, if you follow me on my podcast or if you're my coaching client, or if you attended a Leader's Spirituality, this shouldn't be unfamiliar to you. I always try to emphasize how important this is because I think you can't emphasize it enough.

 [00:02:20] And also because the culture that I'm in, that a lot of people that I know share. So, by that I mean also being Asian. Particularly if you're a woman and also being Christian - being a Catholic Christian, there are certain aspects of these cultures that make it hard for us to make this connection. 

[00:02:42] MAKING THE CONNECTION
So, what is this connection? Today's topic is about coming home to yourself. Okay, yourself. Now why is it that I say it's so hard to make this connection? A lot of the virtues and the values that are associated with my culture, with being Asian. And I think even, especially more being a woman and certainly being Christian, it's almost as if this word self is like a bad word. Bad word in the sense that you shouldn't focus so much on self. Because immediately what is it that you associate it with? At least for me, I think I was taught and nurtured so that I was afraid to be selfish, self-centred. I mean, my caregivers, my teachers, whoever's forming me - it's out of the best of intentions because clearly, if everyone was just looking out for ourself, I mean society would crumble, right? We would self-destruct.

 [00:03:44] And I think a lot of times maybe that is what we see is going wrong with the world, but there is a healthy relationship with self. There's a healthy way of turning inward to look at the self and to be in relationship with the self, and there is a very unhealthy way of being centred on the self.

 [00:04:05] BEING OVERLY FIXATED
Interestingly, when we see the negative kinds of being superbly focused on ourself, of someone, let's say, being really self-absorbed and narcissistic and not caring about anybody else, I will say like interestingly and you can say, maybe ironically - I'm not sure if I'm using that word correctly here, but ironic - interestingly, that is usually a mark. And often a mark that that person does not have a healthy relationship with him or herself.

 [00:04:36] DYING TO SELF
So, a distorted, unhealthy relationship with self that focuses too much on ourself in that sense, usually, it's a mark of a lack of relationship with self. So, when we are very fixated, as I was growing up; I cannot be selfish, I shouldn't be self-centred, it should always be about others. One of the mantras that was instilled into me so much that I would hear it, I know I can expect that it's going to be said is - die to self. Die to yourself. 

[00:05:10] Take the lower place - as in you, yourself, always take the lower place. Somebody else must always take the higher place because that is love, that is service. And what else? But okay, these two mainly for me, dying to self and taking the lower place. Okay, so always, in whatever situation, it's almost like, well, can you die to yourself? 

[00:05:30] What would it mean to die to yourself and what would it mean to take the lower place? Because that is what is virtuous. That is what is praiseworthy. That is what is good. Now, again, I need to stress. I'm not saying that in all cases these are not good. Because often when we look at heroic virtue, people who are deeply loving and also, I must say, deeply grounded, they can actually display a tremendous selflessness of generosity of sacrificing themself.

 [00:06:05] But here's where I want to ask you to imagine something, okay? Okay, it's not an Olympic year, but you know, when I was a kid, I loved watching the Olympics and looking at these athletes who were at the top of their form, right? I mean, whether it's track or figure skating - I loved watching figure skating when it's the Winter Olympics. And you look at the finesse, the elegance, the sheer mastery, and artistry that these athletes at the top of their form - the way that they do it. As a kid I used to try and imitate, you know? Okay, so for me it's kind of the artistic - I love watching the dancers, and you know, figure skating. In fact, I loved watching the ballet, as well, on TV. And you know how the ballerinas would go on point, right? 

 [00:06:51] And those of you who are familiar, maybe who are trained dancers, actually one of my dear nieces is actually a wonderful dancer. And I don't know whether she watches these, but if you do, you know who I'm talking to. You know how many years it takes of training to actually go en pointe, right? For a ballerina to wear point shoes without hurting herself, right.

 [00:07:15] There's so much muscle strength, so much flexibility, integration in terms of the body and all that training that goes to the point where you can even begin to wear point shoes. And then that's only just the beginning, right? 

[00:07:27] And how much more training and practice and mastery before you can perform en pointe. Same thing about the Olympic athletes, right? As in, to be able perform at the height, at the level of mastery that they're performing, there's a lot, a lot of work that went in before. And in fact, you can't force someone be before they're ready to try and perform that way. 

[00:07:51] In fact, when you see dangerous stunts performed on TV, and I remember as a kid, there'll always be this disclaimer, like kids do not try, do not attempt to do this at home with without supervision. Because it may be great to watch, but you don't know what is needed to be able to do this without hurting yourself.

 [00:08:08] So, why am I talking about this? Because I would say the exact same thing applies to being selfless. The exact same thing applies to dying to self, to knowing how to take the lower place. These are, in essence, not for beginners. Not for beginners of the interior life. Now, of course, we can imitate, and of course we can try.

 [00:08:29] I'm not saying that we shouldn't teach this to our children, right? But what I'm saying is that as we begin to make the interior journey, as we begin to notice how wounded we are, right? So, yesterday I talked about noticing the patterns of our woundedness, of our brokenness. When we begin to realize that something's not quite right and I need to strengthen myself, I need to grow, then we need to, in a sense, start from the beginning.

 [00:08:55] And one of the things that took me so, so, so long to learn because there wasn't anyone around me that I really trusted that told me this or that taught me this. In fact, I was so ingrained in the "it's virtuous to die to self", "it is what God wants me to do", that if anyone had told me when I was younger that, you must learn, you must love yourself, or it's okay to take a break. It's okay sometimes to put yourself first. I honestly would be very suspicious of that person. 

[00:09:25] I would actually think that maybe this person isn't that spiritually mature and that's why he or she is telling me that I should look after myself because didn't Jesus ask me to die to myself, to lay my life down for others?

 [00:09:38] CREATED FOR LOVE
And so, I went my merry way and for the larger part of my 44 years of existence, I tried to practice what it meant to die to myself, to love others, to sacrifice for others, only to discover - as I shared yesterday - that deep in my own subconscious, like without my own awareness, I was trying to seek love. I was trying. Because I am meant for love.

[00:10:07] In my video yesterday, I also talked about how we are created for love. The way like the trees are created to grow towards the sun, to grow towards light, right? To grow towards light. Trees do not know what is up, what is down, but they will grow towards the light because they need light to grow, to live. 

 [00:10:23] And people, human beings, for us, it's love. It's the way we were created. We were created for love. So, when we don't have love, we will seek love. We will really struggle and fight for love. And if we can't get love in a healthy way, we will get love any way we can. You just think about it, if you are starving of food really, if you're desperate enough, the first thing to go would be that the food has to be delicious, right?  

[00:10:47] I mean, most of us we're privileged to be able to have three square meals every day. And you know, me living in Singapore - Singaporeans are notorious foodies, you know? Like not only do they eat to live, many people they say live to eat - to enjoy delicious food.

 [00:11:02] And that's fine and that's possible when you have food in abundance. But if you don't, if you cannot afford to be choosy, you would take whatever food you have, right? And hopefully it is nutritious food. Hopefully, it is food that is fit for human beings. But if you were desperate enough, you would eat anything to survive.

 [00:11:21] And you may have heard - I've heard this story or this account many times that you know, we can't drink sea water. We would die because there's too much salt in sea water, right? It wouldn't actually hydrate us. It would actually dehydrate us faster. But if you were lost at sea and you were desperate enough and you were thirsty enough, we even may not be able to think rightly anymore. You would probably drink even sea water. I mean, if you're desperate enough, there are people who have drank even their own urine, right? 

 [00:11:49] Okay, so this is one of the examples when I said in day one that I'm going to talk about stuff that is sometimes left-hand column; things that people don't usually talk about.

[00:11:56] Okay, I'm just going to put it out there. I'm going to be very real because these things deserve saying out loud, okay? I want you to understand that not just in the interior realm, not just in the spiritual realm are these things true.  

[00:12:12] When we lack what we need to live. We will do in desperation, whatever it is that we need to get what we think we need, even if it actually harms us. It's the same thing for love. It's the same thing for love. Should we desire and go towards having love that is healthy, that is appropriate, truly a blessing for everyone? Of course! Who wouldn't want that?

[00:12:37] But when we don't know how to get that, when we don't know how to receive love, how to give love, when we feel like nobody loves us, then anyone who pays us attention, gives us a sense of any bit of that love, we will go towards it. We will take it, right. Even if that's not a healthy relationship, even if we may even know that is morally wrong or there's something wrong with this.  

[00:13:03] I mean, so many people end up getting very hurt or maybe even getting abused, right? Because they enter into relationships that are harmful. Is it that these people are stupid and that they don't know that there's a risk in entering relationship with someone that's potentially abusive or that sometimes hurt them? No. 

[00:13:20] Sometimes people who are in abusive relationships are highly qualified in other areas of their life. They could be highly educated; they could be professionals. But in the area of relationships, somehow, they can't extract themselves, extricate themselves from dangerous or harmful relationships.

 [00:13:37] Why? Because no matter how distorted it is, there is something there that says to them, there's love here. And love is love. And when you're hungry enough, you take what you can, right? So, that's the context.

 [00:13:55] Why is it that relationship with ourself, which we never talk about, why is it that is so important? Because something that I never knew - and I'll bet that many of you probably also never knew or never thought about - that hunger, that loneliness, that desire to be loved; did you ever know that you can give it to yourself or that you are part of what you are hungering for? That hunger in you to be seen, to be compassionately held, to be unconditionally loved. 

[00:14:28] Did you know that that desire, at least part of it - in fact, I'll say a big part of it - is directed at you, at yourself. So, if you are self-loathing, if you're self-rejecting, if you're constantly criticizing yourself, you're constantly thinking that you're not good enough. If you're constantly beating yourself up and forcing yourself into places that you don't really want to go, don't really want to do. If you have no compassion for yourself, guess what? You're starving. 

[00:15:04] BEING AT HOME WITH YOURSELF
And no matter who outside of yourself may love you, or you may get some sense of love from someone else, you're going to still keep seeking. You're not going to be satisfied. And I'll go so far as to say, even if you try to make God that other person because you think like I did - okay, I totally believe that, okay? You know, surely God is the right target. Target, in the sense of God is the right person that will love me, right. Because of course He does. He will love me and then I'll be okay, right? That hunger for love will finally be satisfied because after all, did not Saint Augustine say, I mean, that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

 [00:15:47] But here's the thing - and I would bet I'm hitting it on the nail for many of you - if you seek love from God, but you are not at home with yourself, you cannot receive God's love. Even if you know He loves you, intellectually, you won't be able to actually feel that that love is coming to you, you won't actually be able to soak in that love.

 [00:16:20] Why? Because you're not at home with yourself. You are not at home to yourself, okay? So, even if we're talking about God, even if we're talking about God's love for us, give you a question, is God out there somewhere in the universe? Is He the master and you're the slave? Is He somebody that you really revere and respect, but you're also afraid of, and you're kind of like trying to keep a distance from? Or is this God that loves you? 

[00:16:49] Is He within you? Is He one with you? Do you feel how close He is to you? Do you feel that He knows you more than you know yourself? And not only that, is He in you so that when you want to be with Him, you have to actually enter yourself to be with God. So, very different. Both can be ways of thinking about I'm seeking God and I'm seeking God's love, and I want to be loved by God so that I know who I am, right? So, that I can serve God. But is God just someone outside? Far away beyond me?

 [00:17:23] There is that is one aspect of God, in a sense, we say God is transcendent, He's beyond. He's more other than other, right? There can't be anything greater in terms of the distance between who God is, how God is, and us creatures.

[00:17:36] But at the same time, we say that God is eminent. He's closer to us than we are to ourselves. Do we experience that dimension of God? Because really, when we talk about the interior journey, this is the dimension and the aspect of relationship with God that we need to be in touch with. And what I'm saying is, if I don't know how to be at home with myself, if I have no relationship with myself, I actually won't be able to have an intimate relationship with God.

 [00:18:08] Why? Why do I say that? Any relationship, there has to be at least two parties, right? You know? So, two parties in a sense that, although I am saying that we can be in relationship with ourself, but if you think about in other relationships, let's say with God, with someone else, there has to be two parties. And there is an exchange of a giving of self, right?

 [00:18:34] So, let's say with God - God really gives Himself to us in the most complete sense. He even became one of us, right - in the incarnation, He gave himself to us. Now, the question is, can I give myself to God? What does that mean? What is the self that I'm giving to God? Can I give what I don't possess?

 [00:18:54] If I don't possess myself, if I don't know who I am - I don't even know what this is - what am I giving God? If I am trying to be selfless, if I'm trying to lay my life down for others, if I'm trying to sacrifice myself because that is what I believe is loving others, what exactly am I sacrificing? Do I know? Do I know what I'm giving up? Do I know what I'm choosing to lay down so that I can love someone else? 

[00:19:21] If you are like me, for the majority of my life, I had no idea what I was laying down. I had no idea what I'm sacrificing. All I know is I need to lay my life down. I need to deny myself. But what is the self?

 [00:19:35] And that's why I was never at home with myself. The loneliness, the deep loneliness that I had, even after having repeated experiences of God's love. Okay, so, I would say I'm very blessed. From a very young age, I had really real encounters with God, experiences with God.

 [00:19:51] Okay, so, I know He loves me in that sense, not just intellectually. I've had real experiences of His love, but outside of those specific experiences of like, you could say, a bit like consolations, where in that moment I experience this love. Outside of that, I'm empty. Outside of that, I'm back to feeling lonely, abandoned, lost. I'm back to using all my usual coping mechanisms, right? Until the next time in prayer maybe, or in retreat, again, I feel God's closeness, right? 

[00:20:20] So, if you think about it, my day-to-day living does not come from a grounded, rooted security of being with God, of being loved by God. Why? Because I was not at home to myself, okay? I did not know how to be with myself, and so, I was not connected, even with God. And much less so even with others.  

[00:20:47] I thought I was loving others when I sacrificed for them, but really, I wanted them to love me, you know? Because that hunger; that's very deep in me, that is very subconscious. So, I'm talking about all this right now. Like it is real, right? But I'm talking about all this now because they have become conscious to me.

 [00:21:08] But for all of us, and for probably most of you, you may not actually be aware of how much your actions, even your loving actions might be subconsciously driven by your insecurities, your fear, your desire, your hunger for love. Okay, so I'm putting it out there. 

[00:21:28] You need to go on that journey, perhaps yourself, to come to that awareness of whether or not it's true for you and the way that it's true for you would be different from the way that it's true for me. Because for every one of us, it's very different, okay? This specific pattern of our brokenness that I talked about in day two's Live, which is yesterday's - is different, okay? 

[00:21:46] So, I will illustrate using my experiences and maybe sometimes some examples that I've come across in people that I've met or I've known, right? But you have to make the connection for yourself. What is your version like? 

[00:22:00] WHO ARE YOU?
So, if I were to ask you, do you know who you are? Do you know who you are? Not what role you play, right? If I were to ask you, who are you, how would you answer that question? Would you maybe give your name, your profession? Would you say that you're a mother, a wife, a father? Would you say you're a lawyer, engineer? mean, we all have a particular way. Of course, it depends on who's asking, right? Sometimes, the context shapes how we answer.

 [00:22:32] But if you ask just really somebody who wants to get to know you, "who are you?". How would you answer that question and how would you know who you are? What is the reference point that you use to try and answer the question, who are you? For me, for the longest time, I had no internal reference point. 

[00:22:55] I was always looking towards someone else and trying to figure out how does that person see me? Because I think, it's like having mirrors, right? But do mirrors really accurately show you who you are? Not really. There's always a distortion in mirrors, okay? Right? Mirrors have distortions and mirrors cannot completely show like the exact "who you are".

 [00:23:15] It's just a reflection. So, if you were to depend entirely on mirrors in your life to tell you who you are, you will never actually reach the answer. But that was how I lived. The people that were important to me - and for me for the longest time, the most important person to me was my mom, whom I was very, very close to. 

[00:23:34] In fact, I mean, for the first 30 years of my life, I thought that was the most healthy relationship I had. Turns out, I was wrong. Because turns out it was a codependent relationship, right? But when you're in a codependent relationship, when you're raised in one, I mean, that's the love. And there is genuine love in there too, right? Even if it's a distorted love, there is genuine love. 

[00:23:52] I could only see myself through how she saw me. And then when I went to school and along for friends, I began to try and see myself through how my friends saw me or my peers saw me. 

[00:24:04] And when I became a student leader, I began to get some affirmation and praise and in a sense some encouragement from the teachers. I began to try and see myself through the way the teachers saw me. Now, all this, it's all very subtle. It's very subconscious, okay. I mean, like, as a kid and as a teenager, there's no way I had the level of self-awareness that that was what I was doing, right?

 [00:24:25] And even later on, in my twenties, when I was in university, there was always a - depending on the context, depending on who was important in my life, at that point - I would try and see myself through how that person saw me, or how those people saw me. So, my sense of self was never grounded.

 [00:24:45] It was always shifting when I felt like the way people were seeing me was good, was happy - they were happy, what they saw - I felt good, right? And then I try to really soak in. Imagine like a starving person, you get some food, you just inhale the food, right? You can't even really enjoy it because I was just trying to hold it, in hold any consolation that someone liked me or someone was happy with me, or someone felt that I brought value to their life.

 [00:25:11] But the moment I sensed that the way they saw me was negative, that somehow, they felt that I felt short or that I disappointed them, the way I saw myself immediately plummeted. I felt like there was nothing. And that's why I avoided that experience. I didn't want to have the experience of feeling that somebody else was looking at me negatively because I was depending on how people saw me to have a sense of myself. 

[00:25:39] And so, I feared criticism. I'm really very scared of criticism. At the same time, I didn't like that because I kind of felt, I knew to have a healthy self-esteem, and to be a confident person, you should be okay with criticism. You see a lot of shoulds. I knew that. And so, knowing that, and because I need to see myself in the most favourable light - because my sense of self rested on being favoured or being seen as mature, responsible, capable, intelligent, whatever, right? 

[00:26:09] I mean, like, you may have your list of words. My list of words often is that responsible, capable, takes initiative leader, reliable, good. Okay, role model. So, those were, those were my words. To me, those words described who I needed to be. Did they really describe me? I don't know. I wasn't safe enough to ask the question of who am I? I say I'm not safe enough because will I be loved for who I am? I was afraid that the answer was no. So, then I didn't dare to ask the question. I didn't dare to really want to know who I am. 

[00:26:46] Because what if who I am is terrible? What if who I am doesn't deserve love? What if I show up as who I am and the people that I care about or that are giving me the sense of self-worth - what if they turn away from me? So, it was much in sense, safer for me to try to be what I think people need me to be. 

[00:27:07] So, I got my sense of self from what the people in my life wanted to see or what I thought they wanted to see of me. It's a very hollow way of being - emphasis on hollow, right? Hollow. There's a big hole inside me and so it didn't matter how well I was doing outside. Whatever external metrics were showing my results could be good - people could think I'm doing great - I felt empty inside. I felt hollow inside, and I couldn't explain why, even to myself. 

[00:27:40] ACKNOWLEDGING MY UNHAPPINESS
I used to think I'm so ungrateful. I said, God has blessed me so much. What do I have to complain about in my life? If I look at that, it's like, eventually, I mean, I met the love of my life. I got married, I could take my time, in the sense, to do my graduate studies because he had a good, stable job that I didn't have to rush out and try and get a job straight away. And then I was doing well in my studies, in my graduate studies. Like, seriously, what do I have to complain about? 

[00:28:06] I didn't even allow myself to admit that I was unhappy because that would mean I was ungrateful. So, because I didn't allow myself to admit that I was unhappy, what was happening, I was actually running away from reality. The reality was, yes, I had all these things, but I was unhappy and by me refusing to look at my unhappiness, refusing to admit that I was unhappy, I was in a sense preventing myself from going further, making progress in the interior journey.

 [00:28:37] So, really, it was really a moment of grace. Great grace. One day, I just woke up and it just came to me. I am unhappy. I'm very unhappy and I thought, oh, that's interesting. Why is it that today I can say that I'm unhappy? I mean, I was already unhappy yesterday. I was unhappy so for so long, but I couldn't say that I was unhappy, right? 

[00:29:00] I think in being able to acknowledge that I was unhappy in a way, I was connecting with myself for that, for that moment. I saw myself, my inner self, I saw on how unhappy I was, and I could acknowledge that, right? And that kind of like really was the mark of me beginning to search, you know, what is it?

 [00:29:24] Why is it that I'm so unhappy? And I told God, in fact, I said to him, you know, I realize I don't know who You are. I know so many things about You I read so many things about You. I thought I knew who You are. But I realized that deep down, I don't think I know who He is, because if I really know who He is, why is it that I'm still unable to feel safe with Him?

 [00:29:44] And then I told him, and also, I said, if You could show me who You are, can you also show me how You see me? Because You love me, right, Lord? Maybe if You show me how You see me, maybe I'll learn to love myself because I can't even accept myself, much less love myself.

[00:30:00] And for me, now looking back, that was such a gift of grace. To be able to realize that and to be able to ask for that grace - you know, to be able to admit to God, I don't know You. I don't know who I am, I believe You love me. So, maybe if you show me who You are and You show me how you see me, maybe I might come to love myself.

 [00:30:23] So, for me, this entire journey has always been initiated by grace, initiated by God. As much as you will see and hear me often, the way I talk about interior journey beyond just the purely spiritual or religious - it's very human. I wanted to make it more holistic. There are emotions, there are things that come from, you want to talk about, like other academic disciplines maybe. 

[00:30:46] But my starting point has always been through searching and seeking God, and there's always been God that led me to these things. So, for example, what I just shared, I never thought that this path required me to get home to myself because, like I said, the self has no place in my paradigm, right? 

[00:31:06] The self is just something to die to. It's not important because if it needs to die, how important can it be? I mean, that's how I was thinking. Okay, so if the self needs to die, I mean, why should I make it important? Which is actually not the point. If you think about it, even in the gospels, why is it such an amazing thing that Christ laid His life down for us?

[00:31:24] That He said, no one takes it from me, but I lay it down off my own accord. That is a great thing because of the greatness and the value of what is laid down, right? If I lay down something that I didn't care about, I didn't value, would it matter very much? No right? But if I laid down something that was of great value to me, it then really shows I love you, right? And it's out of love that I laid down something of great value to me.

 [00:31:58] So, if I don't know how to value myself, if I don't value who I am, if I don't know who I am, what am I laying down for you? What am I laying down for Christ? Can I say it is something precious and something valuable? 

[00:32:12] No, right? And so, the linchpin, I said earlier, the hub of the interior journey must include coming home to ourself, all right.

 [00:32:26] Alright, so first I want to give you this idea. If you listen to my podcast, episode four, I talk about living from the inside out. And I talk about these layers. In the podcast, I use the example of an avocado, right? Avocado. You have the skin, you have the flesh, and you have the seed. Basically, lay these three layers, okay?

 [00:32:44] So, I want you to think about first there's what's outside of you, the circumstances and environments that you're in, the events that happen to you, the people that are in your life, your bosses, your peers, your colleagues, your family members, your spouse, your friends, anything that's outside of you.

 [00:32:59] Okay, so, that's the first layer outside of you, and then there's what is inside of you, like the flesh of the avocado. Your thoughts that are always accompanying you. Most of us probably have very busy thoughts and we don't even realize it. Our emotions that many of us do not pay attention to until they overwhelm us. And then we're scared of our emotions, right? But there are emotions.

 [00:33:21] And then there are the physical sensations that our body sends to us. Like, you know, when your gut clenches, when your heart races, when your shoulders tense. A lot of us are not even aware of what's going on in our body. That's how disconnected we are from our bodies.

 [00:33:38] But that's part of us, the inner layer, thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. But that's still not who we are. At the heart, at the core, the seed of the avocado is the core of me - my inner core, my identity, my inner self, and the beliefs that I hold about myself. They do not make up who I am, but now we're going really into the heart, into the core, right?

 [00:34:03] When I talk about self, this is what I'm talking about. If I ask you, how do you know who you are, what is the reference point that tells you who you are? Is it from what's outside of you? In the example that I gave from my own story, it was always outside of me because how did I know who I was? I looked at how people looked at me.

 [00:34:24] I tried to imagine how they saw me, and then that gave me a sense of who I was. I only knew how to go through others, which meant that my reference point for who I was from the outer layer. I was disconnected with what was inside of me. I had no sense at all that there was a core. 

 [00:34:44] So, the three layers again, so the outer layer is where I am, what I do. That's the layer in which all of us are usually very concerned about, right?

[00:34:52] Being virtuous or that we are concerned with how it comes across, how we act towards others. But that's only the outside, right? The inner layer, how I am is my subjective experiences, my thoughts and my emotions, my physical sensations. And already at that layer, most of us, we are not very aware.

 [00:35:11] It takes practice to become aware, really of what my thoughts are, how I feel - to allow myself to even feel my emotions, to really take notice of what my body is saying to me, instead of just brushing it aside because I need to press on. I need to be a certain way, so all these things are just slowing me down, you know?

 [00:35:31] Listening to my body is going to slow me down. I'm not going to listen to it anyway, because, for example, I need to die to myself. So, no matter how tired I am, no matter what my body is doing to scream at me that I shouldn't do this, I can't take this anymore - I need to die to myself, and I'll just push on.

 [00:35:45] And maybe it sounds familiar to you. That was my life for so long and so many people I know, so many wonderful people I know who truly want to know how to love others, that's what they do. And then they wonder why they're burning out, why they're so miserable. Why is it that they've given so much to God and to others and they're not alive?

 [00:36:04] And then they begin to doubt. They begin to doubt is this really what God is like? Is this really what my life is worth? And you know, if they don't make the interior journey, they may just be stuck there, right? Because what we want to know is at the core, who am I? What is this identity? And it cannot be based on what's outside of me.

 [00:36:24] OUR CORE LAYER
And it cannot be based on what's the inner layer is either, there has to be a central core reference point, right? So, the core, the core self, the innermost layer, this is where we are all wounded. Okay, this is where we don't have a sense of who we are, and this is where we desperately try and find the answer.

 [00:36:43] Who am I? We're actually going around trying to find an answer to that. And if some of us find a role that we can play that gives a sense of identity, we can think that that's who we are, okay? So, for, for example, sometimes for women, we really want to be a mother. And motherhood is amazing. It's wonderful. But some of us can get so enmeshed with the role of mother that we don't know who you are except being a mother. That's a role. That's not who we are, right. Someone else may take a great sense of who they are out of their profession. Maybe they're really good at what they do professionally, right?

 [00:37:25] Could be lawyer or doctor or let's say in religious context, maybe someone who's into religious life or a priest for example. Then if they don't have a strong sense of who they are professionally, you know, whether it's a doctor, lawyer or teacher or whatever it is - whatever you accomplish becomes who you are.

 [00:37:43] The role that you play for others becomes who you are. It's still not the core, okay? And what that means is, when you lose that role or when illness or some situation in your life means they have to step away for a while from playing that role, you will lose all sense of who you are.

[00:37:59] You will feel like I don't know who I am, and it's very uncomfortable because I only know who I am when I'm working, or I only know who I am when I'm playing that role, when I'm a parent, when I'm a mother, right? The core is where we are attacked by identity lies, right. Because it's so powerful when we actually come to know who we are, that all - you know, there are many forces trying to confuse us right about that.

 [00:38:23] And this is where we form beliefs and valves about ourself and how we will lead our life. Right, and it's subconscious. It is subconscious. We don't often realize this is all happening at the core of us, okay? Our core is the foundation of all our relationships. With God, with others, and this is where Christ dwells in us.

 [00:38:43] Christ doesn't dwell in our roles. He doesn't just dwell in our emotions and our thoughts or our physical sensations, although all that is part of us, right? But it's like, it's the core on who we are at the heart. The core of our being it's at the heart of all of this, right? That's where Christ dwells, and this is where I would say personal redemption and transformation happens. 

[00:39:06] SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE REDEMPTION
Okay, there is the objective redemption that happens on the cross. I'm speaking as a Christian here, as a Catholic Christian, right? So, there is, at certain point in history, Christ died, right? He suffered. He died and he rose again. And salvation happened. That's the objective redemption. But for each one of us to have the fruit of that redemption, we need to go through our own personal subjective redemption.

 [00:39:30] And often it is - and I would say it is actually in the core of us that this redemption happens for us to come back to life. Right, to come to life. To know who we are, to know whose we are. Not just generally, we're not going to go into that today. But sometimes it's also dangerous for us to kind of think of, oh, I'm beloved, but everyone's beloved.

[00:39:50] What does it mean that I'm beloved? It has to be a very concrete, specific way that I'm beloved, right? And this is where we are healed in our core and empowered in making the interior journey.  

[00:40:01] It is usually not consciously thought about, okay, our core, but it influences our thoughts, our actions, and our behaviours, right? So, the core of us, the core of us - we don't think about it often. And that's normal. But it affects everything. So, Okay. It affects everything. And if we don't have a secure sense and we don't know who we are in that call, we will forever be looking for it outside of us. And that's often the reason why we are so unhappy. Okay, why it is that we are lost - why we feel lost. 

[00:40:47] I know the nature of the kind of things that I talk about - you know, it is just maybe the kind that people would rather maybe not have to show their face - in terms of not actually showing their face, like, you know, reveal who is asking the kind of question, which is why if you have questions, you can send me a direct message, okay? If you're watching this on replay, if you have questions to a particular Live that I did, I'll be very happy to try and address it without mentioning who it's from, just that there's this question. Because the nature of these topics is, all of us, in different ways have the same kind of questions. 

 [00:41:22] Okay, so when you ask your question, and if I address it, I talk about it, often, it will also be speaking to someone else who have the same question. And sometimes we don't even know that we have a particular question until we hear someone else ask it. And then we go, yes, yes, I also want to ask that question. Right? Like that, that speaks to me too.

 [00:41:39] So, anyway, I think that's the end for today's Live about just introducing this idea that the self - the self is so important. That the linchpin of the interior journey is the inner core, the inner self. And for many of you, just this topic, today's topic, would probably be the most impactful and fruitful already.

 [00:42:02] Because I was just talking to a client recently who said that she was really struggling, in her role as, as a leader. She was a leader at work and everything. And so, she took one of my previous runs of a leader spirituality offered through Catholic Leadership Centre. And she said, but after attending that, she realized, oh, my problem is not a leadership problem. My problem is deeper than that. 

[00:42:23] My problem is, I don't know who I am, and so I don't really know what I'm doing, you know? And she said she realized that she's been asking questions at the wrong level. She's been trying to improve herself as a leader, but really, she is struggling because she doesn't really know who she is at the core.

 [00:42:38] And that launched her journey, right? And then a year after that, I mean, she's one of my current clients right now who has just made an incredible breakthrough, like literally life-changing breakthrough. That was really, I mean, God's grace where she is in her life, but she was just sharing with me that it started, like this journey started when she realized there was this inner core thing, that's inner self that she was not aware of. Right, and so I thought, yes, I really should make this one of the earlier sharings, about yourself, about how it's important to know that it's possible to have relationship with yourself. 

[00:43:11] Okay, and that it's important to come home to yourself. When we are able to be at home with ourself, we learn how to relate to other people from a place of security. Our external environments often are not going to be very safe. We can't control our external environments, right? So, the three layers.

 [00:43:35] But the more safe and secure we are in our core, that means the most safe and secure we are in our relationship with ourself and with God - is those two together, okay? That means I feel seen not just by God, but by myself. Usually, the two will come together. I've experienced being seen by God, and I also know I'm seen by myself. I know not just cognitively that God really holds and loves me unconditionally, and I can also say that I love myself unconditionally.

[00:44:04] I experience God's mercy for me. I also experience my own compassion for myself. When I can say that, and that is true, then the core of me becomes a secure base. Which means that even if the external environment is unsafe, I am attuned to what's going on in my emotions in my body. I am attuned to myself and I'm also attuned to what's happening outside. Which means that from a secure centre of gravity, right, I'm integrated, I have a strong sense of security a good centre of gravity, then I can act.

 [00:44:41] I'm going to really suggest if you haven't listened to my podcast episode four yet, to do that; about living from the inside out, because that's really what I'm talking about when we know where our centre of gravity is, when it is in the right place.

 [00:44:52] Just like if you exercise. I'm not, I'm not physically, I'm not - you know, that's not one of my gifts. I'm not physically talented or gifted, right. I have taken Pilates before and all that. So, I know how important it is to have a strong core. Not just to have a strong core, but they say usually to engage your core before you do the exercises.

 [00:45:08] Even if they exercises are using your arms and your legs, which are like, you know, kind of the periphery of me, right? Once I engage my core, I'm more balanced, my movements are more graceful, I have stronger stability - everything just changes when I engage my core, right? That's physically, let's say in Pilates. 

[00:45:26] In life, it's the same when I engage my core, when the stronger and more stable my core self is, my identity is the more gracefully I can live life. Even if I have to deal with what is unexpected and what is unsafe outside of me, I will have a lot more gravitas. And if I fall, I also know how to fall lightly and come back to it.

 [00:45:46] It wouldn't touch my inner core, right? I can be hurt, I can experience failure and all that, but it wouldn't change my sense of dignity. That's what the interior journey into authenticity and wholeness can give us. And this series, why I'm calling it - is it growing in wholeness in Christ? Now, I can't quite remember what I'm calling the series, but I know that's wholeness and in Christ. The self is part of this because Christ loves us through loving ourself.  

[00:46:15] Okay, so again, I welcome any questions. If there are things there that you've like never heard before, you doubt it, you want to question me, you want to disagree with me - hey, please send me your question! Be nice about it, I hope. But I really am very excited and I think it's very important to address these things, these questions because they are so, so central to the interior journey.

 [00:46:37] Okay, so I will be back tomorrow, so, in the morning. Generally, it'd be in the morning, after I have a stronger sense of what is it that I'm meant to talk about. And I pray about it. I write down some of my notes. You know, I really want the Lord to be the one to guide this journey and to tell me what is it that I need to talk about, okay.

 [00:46:57] So, see you guys tomorrow. Thank you for those of you who have been watching live. And let me know if there's anything you would like me to address and talk about. Okay, bye. Thank you all for joining.

 [00:47:11] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

 If you like what you hear on this podcast, you would like to receive a monthly written reflection from me as well as be updated. On my latest content and offers, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter, Begin Again. You can find the link to do that in the show notes. Until the next episode, happy becoming!