The Monster is Loose - The Gatekeepers

Posted on November 2, 2007
Filed Under Spirituality |

There exists in each of us a monster guarding the gate into our true self. This monster is birthed from a fragmented mind – which has been created by the conditioning of our social environment. There are a lot of pressures around us that cause this to occur – aside from the personal things we face. Three of the most influential are inner conflict, self-doubt and holding to abstract beliefs.

Inner conflict is a result of one part of our mind – the natural drives, desires, thoughts – being at odds with the expectations of the people around us. We suppress many of our feelings and thoughts because we feel they maybe viewed as unacceptable by those around us or by society. I am not talking about things such as murder or crime, but rather much simpler things; the desire for personal space, or certain ambitions which maybe at odds with other expectations and commitments. This inner conflict often causes a lot of stress and unnecessarily unhappiness.

Most of us at one time or another suffer from self-doubt, some far more so than others. We lack faith with our self, and eventually this leads to us distrusting our own senses. In many cases people will believe the authoritative voice of the media, or experts over the proof of their own senses.

And then we live by abstract beliefs; ideas which we hold in our mind and never speak. Yet until those ideas are spoken they are not manifested into a real form. Words have a physical power – when you say something it is a manifestation of your thought. And sometimes when you hear your own words they sound very different to your thoughts. An abstract idea can remain in our minds for decades, but the moment we speak it – sometimes we discover it is extremely fragile and meaningless. Yet through inner conflict, and self-doubt we quite often never speak before we think.

These are the building blocks which fragment our personality. Each of them carries its own voice, constantly shouting for your attention and each one arguing with the other. We hear these voices in exactly the same way we hear our own thoughts, and we mistakenly believe them to actually be our thoughts. But in truth those thoughts are the voice of the each fragment of our mind, which has developed into a living entity – residing within our mind only to torment us.

Collectively these entities – monster like – guard the gateway into our true self. To get past these keepers, we only need stop associating with the thoughts they generate. It’s true we can’t just flick a switch and shut them off. But we can come to the realization that these thoughts are merely the result of conditioned programming; the voices of entities which live within a fragmented mind. As such they don’t belong to us. They are us, but we do not need to submit to the constant inner conflict and self-doubt.

Recently I have discovered that the more I open up to myself – the more open I am able to be with those around me. In turn this allows me to speak many of the things that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Self-doubt and inner conflict fester in the dark corners of silence…when you shine a light on them they stand out stark and naked. They own you only when you allow them to be a separate aspect of you. We can learn to integrate them back into ourselves by not giving them the attention they desire, and soon we realize that we have been thinking with multiple minds instead of just one.