This Week’s Quotation:
The experience of true identity only comes by reason of spiritual expression. As I have before pointed out, there cannot be spiritual expression until there is a pure heart, until the veil is transparent. Then the fact that heaven and earth are one is known. It is known on earth. It is known because it is expressed. You know what you express. If it isn’t expressed you don’t know it. To try to convince ourselves that it is so when it isn’t being expressed is to enter into a realm of delusion, a very unstable experience, inviting mental unbalance.
~ Martin Cecil
Selfhood and Expression
Attunement Teacher & Author
Sometimes when I read the writings of Martin Cecil, I feel like I want to laugh at the sheer simplicity of his words. Reading these words is like that for me.
Selfhood is a mysterious thing. Observing someone else, we notice various traits and features which we associate with them. We see the expression of self.
But for ourselves, it is not really like that, is it? Sure, we might hear others’ comments on what they see when they observe us—the traits and features they see embodied by us. From our own perspective, looking from the inside out, that’s not really how it is. We might tell ourselves we need to be more this or less that. We might attempt to improve and develop how we act in a particular field. Yet still, the essence of our experience of ourselves is simply Being. In the middle of whatever is happening in our life—before and after we do anything—we are simply ourselves, without any worldly definition.
This state of Being is a state of selfhood, undefined by any concepts of who we are. As Martin so aptly points out, we know this state when we are courageous enough to invest who we are in what we express in the world—when we manifest who we are in thought, feeling, word, and deed through our human capacities. That doesn’t carry any of the usual efforts to be someone, with all the turbulent emotions that come with those efforts. It isn’t the experience of egoic selfhood that is so common in our world.
But here is what happens. Expressing who you are transparently brings the joy of being yourself as a human being and sharing who you are with other people. As simple as this might sound, it is the ultimate state of Attunement.
What Is Attunement?
Attunement is a consciousness practice and an energy medicine practice that leads to personal spiritual regeneration.
How true that I could read book after book on the subject of love and even observe its expression by others, but only by expressing it myself will I actually know it.
Being ourselves – what a marvelous concept – and -what a time-saver!!!!
Do you remember the scene in the Marx Brothers in which one of them is looking for the flashlight with the flashlight? Funny! we make it hard that way and forget that I AM THE LIGHT. I know who I am through self-expression of my spirit not by looking for my identity out there. I laugh with you, David, at the simplicity and beauty of Martin Cecil’s expression. We know it when we express it. After all we ARE it. I am the authentic identity of myself when I know and exude spiritual expression. THANK YOU, to you and to MARTIN for this simple yet profound truth. WITH YOU. Tom C.
Thank you David, I relate to what has been said and the challenges for me to totally be myself. The real inner me is totally free and that is not quite what I feel I can bring forward many times. Wanting to love and be loved, understood or heard isn’t all that easy. I know that to feel totally free and to feel safe from judgment is an inner freedom. As I grow and mature into my original free, divine self it gets easier. I’ll bring my heart and that is what truly counts. Thanks again.