What is my Essence?
According to my subjective model of myself, my Essence (aka “True Essence”, “Inner Light”, or “Soul”) is Who I Really Am. It is an eternal and powerful spiritual entity. It has only love, joy, confidence, peace, courage, optimism, patience, generosity, curiosity, creativity, and other positive values and positive emotions. It never has any fear, sadness, anger, hatred, envy or any other painful emotions.
There is an additional background story about the Essence, which some people find useful.
Why is it important?
The most optimal way I found to manage myself is to direct my attention at all times to my Essence, to be connected with it, to think and operate from it.
How can we connect to our Essence?
First, I put an intention to identify with my Essence, which is Who I Really Am. I do this even and especially at moments when my Self feels great emotional pain.
There are different ways to proceed. One way is to go to a mirror, look at myself, and say out loud to remind myself: “I am a powerful, eternal, and infinite Essence (or: soul). I am love, joy, confidence, courage …” etc. – all the positive traits and values. Then continue: “I chose to get into [say my name] in order to experience both happiness and challenges which help me develop, to fulfill the Purpose of Life“.
I can also visualize various images of my Essence to help myself connect to it. E.g. I can visualize a large powerful entity that permeates my body. It can be like an infinite narrow triangle, whose tip is inside my body and has two edges that go up indefinitely into the “spiritual domain”. When I imagine that this is Who I Really Am, it makes me feel more powerful.
Then, from this powerful place, I continue talking to myself, and I ask: What step will advance my development at this moment? Or: What is the best thing I can do right now, according to my positive values? I can use techniques to communicate with my Inner Guide, which is an aspect of my Essence.
I then act according to the answer. If I can’t manage to act in this way because of some blocks generated by The Virus, then I repeat the step – I ask how to overcome these blocks. I repeat the process until I manage to do an action that moves me forward.
Example
Suppose my neighbor is playing loud music which interferes with my ability to concentrate on my work. Most people (including myself in the past) would get angry. They would either continue sitting at home while suffering from feeling annoyed, or would go to the neighbor, knock on his door impatiently, and then take our their anger on him, demanding that he turn down the music. But this is counterproductive. Staying angry without doing anything about it simply harms me. And shouting at someone is a tragic way of expressing my needs because it reduces the chances that they will be met.
Instead, when I connect to my Essence, I can see the situation with compassion to myself and to the neighbor. Perhaps he is happy now with his music and simply did not think that it might be disturbing other people. Perhaps he learned to behave egotistically because of the emotionally painful environment he grew up in. I don’t have to like his actions and I can do something about them (request kindly, or call the police), but from a place of light rather than darkness.
Exercise
Go to a mirror and do the process as described above.
Empowering habits and rituals
If we really want to live from our Essence, it is not enough to understand what’s written here, and occasionally remember it and do something about it. We need to actively do things to connect to our Essence many times every day. At the very least, have some habit or ritual which we do the first thing we get up in the morning, and the last thing before going to sleep, and at least once or twice in the middle of the day.
We can design our own morning ritual. It will involve some variation of the practice described above of reminding ourselves about our Essence and its properties and connecting with it. Additionally, it can include listening to a piece of some inspiring talk or music, reading out loud some inspiring piece of text, stretching our body, jumping, breathing exercises, meditation, writing down our positive intentions for the day – whatever help us connect to our Essence. Similarly, in order to get a good, refreshing night sleep, we can align ourselves to have that before we close our eyes.
And whenever we feel some difficulty, or simply need some inspiration to uplift our spirit, we can go aside to a quiet room or corridor, and for several minutes reconnect to our Essence, and listen to ourselves to see what we feel and what we need at that moment.
Exercise
Design your own morning ritual and night ritual, and also a short “process” you could do at any moment throughout the day that you feel the need for it. Now start doing this daily. You can experiment to see what works for you, and change and improve on your initial ideas. You could also do this with close family members and friends.