The Relationship That Is You
In all the great spiritual traditions, at their heart is tenderness—just to be kind inside, and then everything rights itself. Fear rests. Confusion rests.
—Pamela Wilson
For your journey, it is important that you have a core understanding of who you truly are. This will help you to feel centered and strong. You are, in fact, a relationship— within your self. You think, feel and behave toward your self just as you do toward others. Though many of your beliefs about your self are conscious, your strongest beliefs and the ones that have the greatest influence on your emotional feelings and behaviors are in your unconscious mind.
Your emotions and behaviors are the result of your beliefs even though you might be more in touch with the emotions than you are aware of the beliefs that cause them.
I will refer to this aspect of you as the personality self. Most of how you choose to move in the world is the direct result of the beliefs that make up your personality self.
Alongside your personality self resides your spirit self. Your spirit self is the energy of unconditional love, acceptance, joy and peace. When the energies within your personality self—your beliefs and emotions—cause a vibration that differs from the vibration of the spirit self, that dissonance causes you to experience pain. When the energy is harmonious, you experience peace.
We have two types of beliefs: beliefs about our self and beliefs about the world. Our beliefs about our self include whether we believe we are smart enough, good enough, loving enough and acceptable enough. Our beliefs about the world include whether it is safe or dangerous, supportive or rejecting, fair or unfair, and so on. These beliefs set up our expectations, our anticipat