No-Self Help Book

Kate Gustin

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Mind
• Body

Informations

• Publié par: New Harbinger Publications
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781684032198
• Langue: English

Extrait

“Drawing on psychological research and clinical experience, Kate Gustin offers a profound understanding of our truest identity underneath the mind’s story, helping us connect with the peaceful, interconnected consciousness at our core. The No-Self Help Book is a refreshing and timely antidote to the rampant loneliness of our times.”
— Marci Shimoff, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Happy for No Reason
“Kate Gustin’s The No-Self Help Book is a new approach to emotional healing that provides simple, clear-minded lessons on getting away from the negative, bullying voice of the constructed self. As you learn to ignore the false narrative, you’ll see yourself through new eyes as you discover that you’re not who the voice inside you says you are, or who you pretend to be. Instead, you discover the authentic being within each of us who is capable of relaxed joy and awareness.”
— Anne Lamott , author of Almost Everything
“If you were to try to define yourself, how would you do that and what would your SELF look like? Treat yourself to the concept of NO SELF and discover how you are not just your mind’s stories.”
— Sharon Salzberg , author of Lovingkindness and Real Love
“Kate Gustin’s quirky and compelling book subtracts the self out of self-help! She communicates a powerful and ageless spiritual truth in a way that is accessible, humorous, and compassionate. Highly recommended!”
— Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT , author of Yoga and Psyche and Eyes Wide Open
“Kate Gustin has written a book that is at once insightful, refreshing, playful, and truly wise. The No-Self Help Book goes to the very root of our unhappiness and insecurity: as long as we think we’re separate from the rest of life, we aren’t enough and will remain stuck in the prison of our minds. When we learn to see ourselves from the illuminating perspective presented in these pages, we can understand that from the beginning we were always enough just as we are. Then we can play at being who we truly are instead of taking ourselves so seriously. How liberating!”
— James Baraz , cofounder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA; coauthor of Awakening Joy


Publisher’s Note
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books
Copyright © 2018 by Kate Gustin
Non-Duality Press
An imprint of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
5674 Shattuck Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609
www.newharbinger.com
Cover design by Amy Shoup; Acquired by Elizabeth Hollis Hansen; Edited by Jean Blomquist
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
To the Great Mystery, with gratitude from a “spiritual being having a human experience.”
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion…to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.
—Albert Einstein
Contents
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Part 1: Selfhoods
1 . The Imposter Self
2 . The Self Slices and Dices
3 . The Self Freezes
4 . The Dictator Self
5 . The Self Seeks Esteem
6 . The Self Wants
7 . The Self Needs
8 . The Self Whines
9 . The Self Is Picky
10 . The Self Smirks
11 . The Self Strikes Out
12 . The Self Steals Credit
13 . The Self Is Selfish
14 . The Self Gets Rejected
15 . The Self Checks Out
16 . The Self Stays Stuck
17 . The Self Second-Guesses
18 . The Self Suffers Scarcity
19 . The Self Erodes
20 . The Self Dies
Part 2: No-Self Speaks
Part 3: To Self or Not to Self?
35 . The Effectiveness Test
36 . Acting As If
37 . Smart Selfing
38 . Off the I-land
39 . The No-Self Revolution
40 . The Homing Beacon
MeSearch
Acknowledgments
References
Foreword
Let’s start off with a question to help you slap yourself across your face, in the most spiritual way imaginable, of course. Who would you rather live your life as? Who you think you are? Who you want to be? Who you actually are?
Tuck your answer under your mala beads for just a second; we’ll look it in the eyes in just a moment.
Hell isn’t a fun place (just in case you thought otherwise). There’s a lot of opinions about what hell is, ranging from being in an eternally overheated sauna, to being surrounded by noise when you just want to meditate or meditating when you’re just craving noise, to being depressed or feeling empty inside. Yet, I dare say, what’s more hellacious than all those terrible places that we visit from time to time is that trump card of hell we deal ourselves from the deck of life: “trying to be someone you’re not.”
Nobody knows the purpose of life…until this paragraph. (Just pretend I know this; it’ll make this paragraph seem more impactful.) Maybe the purpose of life is for you to live your life. In other words, for you to deal yourself the heaven-on-earth card of graceful permission for you to be you . Similarly, maybe the purpose of a tree’s life is for it to be the unique tree that it is. Not for it to think that it’s a different kind of tree. Not for it to try to be a dolphin. And not for it to think it should be a dolphin tree or any other variation of the self-created hell that it might bring upon itself by trying to be something it’s not. The sooner the tree can cut through the psychological scar tissue of thinking that it is something it’s not, the sooner it can step into the peaceful flow of living its life by allowing itself to be what it already is: a tree.
You are a tree. That’s who you really are, a tree. Just kidding, you’re probably not a tree. Yet it would’ve been really convenient if you were a tree, because I think the tree analogy would’ve ended with a lot of literary authority—by me telling you that you’re a tree. But this book that you’re holding was probably made from a tree. Now you probably feel fully integrated with the tree metaphor, so you can realize you are not the tree literally—yet metaphorically, you definitely are the tree.
What was your answer to the slap-in-the-face question? Many of us are convinced that we are who we think we are . Like there’s some kind of magical correlation between our sense of certainty around who we think we are and the truth of who we are. How much thinking, interpretation, stories, and reinforcement do you put into trying to be who you think you are? AND (written in all-caps so you know it’s the beginning of a challenging proposition) what if who you think you are, your sense of self, isn’t even close to who you really are? What if the sequoia believed with 100-percent certainty that it was an apple tree?
Or what about the option of putting your life force into living as who you want to be ? This option is a glorious one, especially for us self-helpers who have taken steps of personal empowerment and probably have at least three vision boards in our trophy case. The excitement around deciding who you want to be and going after it with all of your intentionality, affirmations, and beliefs is sexy as hell. Yet no matter how sexy, it’s still hell because it isn’t you. The sequoia who wants to be a millionaire circus clown is still torturing itself with the betrayal of not allowing itself to discover and be who it really is.
What about the least ego-gratifying option, living as who you actually are ? Maybe it’s the most obvious choice to direct our mind and body resources in order to have a beautiful life, and that’s what makes it the hardest to find. You were hiding in plain sight all along, but your awareness was blind to your obviousness because it was looking outward, into the thought fields and imagination, to your seductive mind’s story of who it thinks you are or who it thinks you should be. Slicing through the stories and ideas about who you are, as well as your allegiance to them, means you transcend the hell of indifference of just settling for who you think you are. And you transcend the purgatory of arrogance that accompanies thinking you should be who you want to be or who others think you should be. It means you arrive at a place of humbleness in which you don’t try to define who you are; you curiously discover who you are. And it’s a place of courage where you don’t just try to mentally comprehend who you are; you live who you are.
I can’t be certain of anything because I am certain that I’m not certain of anything, yet I can say that in my experience, we are all our own unique version of the sequoia. When we realize that we have been beyond our own imagination of ourselves all along, we can let go of confining ourselves to the claustrophobic container that keeps us playing life small and take bold steps into the mystery of who we really are. While you will definitely encounter fears, insecurities, and challenges as you become the willing adventurer exploring the mystery of you, you’ll very likely find the geyser of meaning and fulfillment that makes your life a much more enriched experience.
And into the journey of the mystery you go, wonderfully guided by Kate Gustin. My crystal ball tells me that you’ll find a lot of fruit as Kate challenges you to level up your awareness to see the many nuances of the psychological hiding places you may be constructin