Personal development for what?

Why do we want to change our lives? Why do we try to do things differently today compared to yesterday? Is our personal development not already done once reaching adulthood? After the age of majority, the society judge us as responsible and we have to know enough to solve our own problems. Our education system does not teach us what we need to know to make the most of our potential.

Society teaches us to play roles, but it does not explain how. There is no school to learn how to be parents for example. We live in a very materialistic world, we try to control everything mechanically. But our emotions and feelings are not mechanical. We absolutely must raise ourselves to something that is beyond all that.

So how do we do ?

Personal development is the awakening of the Self. We try to understand what our true nature is, boundless and limitless. Children possess this intuitive and creative ability that we have perhaps lost. As an adult, we cling to a set of beliefs and habits that we learned from our parents or our grandparents or our near environment, and it is very difficult to become detached and have an open mind.

Our present personality is determined by our past and is conditioned by our environment. Through personal development we try to understand what we are. How can we achieve emotional well-being? How can we live a full life while sharing our knowledge with others.

The world is changing and we must ensure that we are ready to accept other perspectives. It is in our nature to learn and grow to live together and have a better life. We must make room to share, exchange and less selfishness. For the benefit of our survival, we must make room for unconditional love. Everyone must take responsibility, human nature is spiritual, discover who you are before any action. Our survival depends on your investigation.

The fear and anxiety of others slow us in our movement forward. Don't get overwhelmed by your resentments, your anger, it is true that we live in a time where violence has reached an extreme level, but it still has much to celebrate; every human being has the capacity for compassion and love. We are the captain of our ship because we create the world in which we live and everyone has THE POWER TO CHANGE IT.

We must be vigilant because a sleeping mind behaves like an automaton. It does things mechanically. The human being needs to wake up to what it really is, the true Self is a source of infinite knowledge. We are not a finished product, we are in constant evolution and progression, physically and spiritually, even if we do not realize it.

Here is a little exercise that you can do right now

Sit comfortably in a chair or on the floor. Try to keep your spine straight, gently, stay relaxed. It's just to keep yourself awake and not sleep. Your feet should touch the ground and not crossed. Breathe quietly and normally.

Now , close your eyes. First, focus on your breathing, quietly, gently and normally. After a moment, your whole body should be relaxed. Ok, now, observe your thoughts. DO NOTHING ELSE, JUST OBSERVE YOUR THOUGHTS.

JUST BE AN OBSERVER. AWESOME.

Consider the coming and going thoughts are just BACKGROUND NOISE. Do nothing, just observe them.

THAT'S ALL YOU HAVE TO DO.

If you notice that you're running behind any thought, believe me, this will happen often, do not be overwhelmed, STAY CALM. This is a mental characteristic. Notice that the fact you discover that you were running after a thought, ends the mental journey and make you regain your observer status.

During the session, TRY TO BE MORE OBSERVER THAN WALKER. If you stay in this state, after a while, you'll find SOMETHING behind the thoughts which are just coming and going, remember, THOUGHTS ARE ONLY BACKGROUND NOISE, they are like echoes, they come and they go. But the thing that stays is the SILENCE. There is a beginning and an end to all thoughts, but SILENCE IS ETERNAL, that's what Eckhart Tolle calls the PRESENT MOMENT.

Ramana Maharshi explains this with an analogy. Thoughts are movies and SILENCE is the screen. You can see all kinds of things in a movie (explosions, scenes of love, joy, misery, death, natural disasters ...), but the screen is still there, and it is imperturbable and perpetual. And Ramana says we are THAT. Remember, this is an analogy.

We must behave like an insatiable researcher. Human nature is constantly changing, we can not have a static and stagnant mind. Let us wake up to a self-discovery process and the quest for our INNER KNOWLEDGE.

If we continue with the little breathing exercise I introduce before, if you do this exercise often enough, you'll make a second discovery. If you are relaxed enough during the exercise, you will find that you cannot define your body in relation to SPACE around your body, compared to the entire universe.

If you keep practicing this exercise, you will make a third discovery; YOU CREATE YOUR OWN WORLD FROM INSIDE. We live on one planet, the earth, but everyone lives in HIS WORLD.

Therefore, personal development is the only remedy against the stagnation of the mind against enslavement to habits and customs.