My Journey to understanding Death to "Self"

Growing up Christian was not an easy path. I was often confused about the Bible and I often felt out of place. The story of Jesus Christ did not resonate much with me. Fortunately my mum was not one to force me to go to a specific church or force certain doctrines down my throat. In fact I was so free to explore different churches and even look into different religions. When I look back, my mother was extremely open minded. She would often buy spiritual books and share the knowledge with me. I was extremely enlightened from a very young age, so I would go to her and share all the knowledge that was being shared by Wisdom. She would often tell me to write books and I would note some stuff down, but as I grew up our relationship became strained. All is in the past really, but I appreciate that part of my childhood. The ability to explore and discover myself in different religions gave me freedom.

I know that this freedom had a huge part to play in my discovering of the above topic. I often changed churches, and denominations. I never changed religions at any point til now. There was a huge curiosity for me with the bible verse that speaks of dying to self. I often wondered why God would make the “self “ then tell us to die to it. Another question I had was, “what the heck is dying to self ? “. Does this mean that I will no longer have desires, dreams or aspirations and if not then what the heck would happen ?

In the times we are in now, we are told to be “ambitious” and achieve all that we can achieve. When you meet a potential life partner, we often ask questions like, “ what is your 5 year plan ? “ or “ what are your long and short term goals? “ When we watch shows on television or we go on social media, you see how much people are achieving and how much they are reaching for the moon. Owing to the things we see on the media we start to treat people differently. The way that we treat someone who does not have as much as you do, is different to how we treat someone who has more. The way we treat the CEO is so different to how we treat the cleaner. People will often say that they treat the cleaner “well”, so this means that they treat both parties equally. I would challenge you to pay attention to your body’s reaction when you meet both parties. Often when we meet the cleaner we are calm and easy going. We feel comfortable and we intentionally want to be nice. However when we meet the CEO we often have knots in our tummy and we start sweating. Those are two different reactions.

My point is that, in a society of such material driven minds, it’s quite challenging to achieve the above definition of “ death to self”. This question haunted me for a very long time. In the year 2018 I went through a huge transformation or spiritual shift. I started to listen to myself and not the world. It was extremely hard as I had built relationships that were strongly connected by Christian beliefs. I knew it was time that I faced myself with honesty. In that year I realized how much I greatly questioned the story of Jesus Christ. I questioned his life and why I as a human had to “worship” one who I believed was also a human. The wisdom and enlightenment that I had as a child slowly started to resurface. I found myself questioning a lot of the things that I had spent so many years preaching and “believing”. I was terrified of the person I thought I was becoming. I was afraid of the judgement and criticism I was going to receive from the people I so dearly loved. My best solution was withdrawal. I withdrew myself from everyone. I stayed in my own space and rediscovered my truth.

I say “my truth”, because it might not be your truth and because it might not be absolute truth. In the time I spent in reading and meditation I discovered that I had been living in a dream. The dreamer never really knows that they are dreaming. For so long the person I knew as “ myself”, “self” , “I” or “me” was actually an illusion or the dream version of myself, not the true Me. This may sound confusing at first, because quite honestly it really is confusing. When you actually sit down and write a list of all the things that define who you are, you will realize that all those things are what other people have said about you or things society has told you to be. When I wrote down my list I was amazed at how many of the things never truly came from me. The list comes from memories that stand out for me in the past and perhaps some things I want to achieve in the future. I realized that I had allowed the world or others to define me. I had allowed people to use man made languages to give me title and names that had made me to feel good or bad about myself. I was amazed.

I read some books by Eckhart Tolle and Gary Zukav, these books were gems to my mind. They really opened my mind to who I truly am and why I was unable to define myself. The answer to the question “ What is death to self ? “ was answered.

Death to self is death the idea of who you think you are. It’s the death of the illusion self that was birthed  by the world’s opinion. Death to self is the death of the dreamer in the dream. Death to self is the death of " I am right and others are wrong". Its the death of the idea that what you have and who you know defines you. It is the death of the idea that you are better than others or less than others. Death to self is understanding that you are one with everything and everything is one with you. You are not separate from the whole. You are one with the whole. Nothing you do or say can change who you are, nothing anyone does or says can change who you are.

At this point I believe the most important question to explore is, “ Who am I ? “. Going on the journey of True Self discovery is the best thing to do. Keeping in mind that the answer is found within. Be still. Trust. Whatever you hear in the calm stillness is Truth. Don’t be scared of your truth.

#deathtoself #spiritualawakanening #spirituality