The Youniverse

Your identity is the product of your choices. As you change your choices you change your identity. An example: one day, you may choose to stop eating meat, which would change your identity from a “carnivore” or “omnivore” to a “vegetarian”. 

The difference created between any of us, or between ourselves from moment to moment, is only created as a result of the difference between our choices. 

Your true identity, however, is not the choice you are making right now. Actually, it is not any one single choice. It is all choices. It is your ability to choose. That is your identity. That is your soul. That is your infinite, unconditionally loved and loving nature. 

You have forgotten this true identity, so you forget what it means to be unconditionally loved. Because you forget what it means to be unconditionally loved and to be free to choose, you behave in certain ways in order to be who you are “supposed” to be. You limit your choices to only those that are acceptable to the voices in your head. You judge yourself constantly in order to mould yourself into the being that you’ve been taught to be. 

Who taught you these things? Others, who also forgot their own true nature. Parents, teachers, siblings, elders, priests, presidents, the whole world it seems. Each was a product of artificially limited choices, of conditional love. They seeked to limit your choices from when you were born, because they were told to limit their choices by those who raised them. Sure, they had mostly good intentions, but little by little, as you were taught to limit your choices, you forgot your ability to choose and your true identity along with it.

So now you’re probably in a state of varying degrees of misery, because you have chosen to be limited, not by your own free choices, but by the choices of others. You and everyone else have come together to create a reality of limitation, where people judge themselves and each other, all to keep everyone within the acceptable range of choices. 

This is the cause of the sickness that ails the world. We limit ourselves, and attempt to limit everything else, including the natural world itself. Environmental destruction is created by deliberately limiting the choices of the natural world. Poverty is created by deliberately limiting the choices and opportunities of people. Meanwhile, all of this is leading to an ever growing number of people suffering from depression and physical diseases.  

The solution to this dis-ease is simply to be at ease. To be at ease is to be natural, which is to be true to ourselves. To be true to ourselves is to unconditionally love ourselves and everyone else, giving everyone back to themselves.

A world of unconditionally loved beings is a world that allows all the freedom to choose. It is a world of abundance, which is a reflection of our ability to choose to express ourselves in whatever way we prefer.   It is a world of health, which is the absence of dis-ease. It is a world of joy, which is the feeling of choosing that which we prefer.

You owe no allegiance or obligation to any single organization, nor any single relationship, nor any single structure. You are Life and Life is free of being limited to associating only with one aspect of itself.

The only allegiance you have- if it can be called an allegiance, is to yourself; which is all of Life. As you give yourself freedom to associate with whomever you desire, you also give all other aspects of Life- or all other aspects of yourself, the freedom to associate with whomever they desire as well. In this way, all of Life continues being natural, which means it continues expressing itself through its inexhaustible desire; which is the true fundamental energy of Life.

To attempt to resist desire, by maintaining obligations or by any other means, is to attempt to resist Life itself, which is an impossibility. At some time or another each of us will fall into the natural alignment with our desires, because we can hold ourselves apart from the energy that we are for only so long.  

Our society is in the sad situation it is in not because of our desires, but because most of us do not allow ourselves the freedom to express our desires. Our society is mainly structured on anxious, fearful obligation, not joyful freedom, and so it resists the nature of Life. This is why much of it cannot stand as it is currently structured. Many of the social systems that are built on obligation will collapse (or are currently collapsing) under the building pressure of resisting the energy of Life. They will be replaced with more natural systems based on freedom and the joyful expression of desire. 

But the new systems can only be created if we each allow ourselves the freedom to express our desires. And this freedom can only come about if we learn to trust and love ourselves. The challenge in this regard is we fear what will happen if we express our desires, because we have misunderstood ourselves. We believe that deep down we are evil and that human nature is tainted, so we put up guards to protect ourselves from ourselves. We believe that without these guards we would surely destroy the world, yet we overlook the fact that even with these guards we are slowly on the same path to destruction. We mistrust ourselves so we lock the doors to our homes to keep each other out; we employ security guards and alarm systems to protect the goods we offer in our stores; we erect borders to keep each other at bay; the police department usually has the largest budget of any municipal department; the military has the largest budget in certain countries; the list goes on. We spend so much of our time and energy expressing our fear of ourselves and each other, keeping ourselves and each other in line, rather than spending it expressing our true desires.

We can only learn to trust ourselves if we each personally get in touch with who we are at the core level, rather than automatically operating on assumptions, which are usually based on what others tell us about ourselves. Once again, at the core we are Life itself, which is freedom and desire, which is another way of saying Love. We are Love at the core. That is the basis of who we are and that is the basis of what Life is.  

These past few weeks I have been re-integrating with society, meeting and interacting with a growing number of people. This experience has given birth to and solidified a strong, almost overwhelming, desire to be myself. Seeing what I truly do not prefer, created by people I do not prefer to be like has provided me with the necessary contrast to allow this desire to be fully born within me.

In a roundabout way, this contrast has been extremely beneficial for me, so I cannot even say I do not prefer it. I have enjoyed it because it has allowed me to focus strongly on my true preferences. Previous to this experience of contrast, I was in a haze, unsure of who I was or if I wanted to be who I was. I definitely did not think it was alright to love or accept who I was in each moment. I simply did not appreciate who I was or many of the things surrounding me in life that reflected my preferences. 

Now though, at the end of the day, as soon as I’m done working and interacting with these people, I take a deep breath, centre myself and blast my favourite music, all while falling in love with myself and my view of life. At that exact moment I am overjoyed with who I am. I feel relieved and ecstatic at the same time. I feel like I’m coming home after an exhausting journey. I rejoice in all the little things that make me who I am. I rejoice in my choice of clothes, my family, friends and culture, my choice of music, my choice of my wife, my choice of the pets that I share my life with and my choices of being vegan and the types of food I enjoy. I rejoice in how I like to create and decorate my apartment. I rejoice in the choice of what I desire to experience in my life and what makes my heart soar. Yet all this rejoicing is done simultaneously and holistically. I don’t break it down and focus on individual aspects of me. Instead I take in that breath and feel what it is like to be me, the real me, and that somehow encapsulates everything I currently prefer. It’s an awesome feeling!

I have found many benefits to this overwhelming feeling of self-acceptance. It gives me a strong confidence to honestly be who I prefer to be in my interactions with others. It allows me to create a space for myself, safe from the influence of others, so that I can consciously choose what I prefer to incorporate within me and what I choose to leave out. It gives me the confidence to disagree with others when I truly wish to disagree. It allows me to face any criticism and keep on going, as long as I’m not harming anyone. It just makes me happy to be me, and that feeling is priceless. 

Yet this self-confidence also gives me the confidence to accept others. Since I no longer feel threatened by the influence of others I tend to observe them without any negative reactions and constructively use any contrast between my preferences and theirs so that I am more focused in my own preferences. Seeing a person express negativity, for example, and seeing the results of that negativity, allows me to choose to express positivity that much stronger. In this way, I am not falsely self-confident by masking my own insecurities and fears. I have found that true self-acceptance gives birth to the acceptance of others, not the denial of them.  

So what else can I say? I’m very happy with who I am right now. I couldn’t say that a few months ago. I was waiting to be wealthy or whatever before I could accept myself. Now, I accept myself and I see and appreciate all the things in my life that already allow me to be me. There are so many little things that reinforce my recognition of myself. I find it very humbling that life has already provided me with so many enjoyable and exciting things, people and experiences. I now appreciate that the people in my life love me for who I am already, not who I may become sometime in the future. I also now feel a shift in the momentum of my life, where more and more experiences, things, and people that reflect my preferences will be showing up. I am genuinely excited. 

LOVE YOURSELF UNCONDITIONALLY. The fact that you exist is proof enough that you are loved by the Universe. Don’t argue with the Universe by judging yourself or doubting your deservability. You belong, just as you are.

But WHAT ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU? These are the first questions you must ask of yourself. Are you who you think you are? Are you who others say you ought to be? The answer to the question is deceptively simple: You are who you choose to say you are. That is what it means to be unconditionally loved. You get to be whoever you want to be and the Universe will support you in being that person. So, if you say you are only acceptable if you conform to what others say you should be, your experience shall reflect your declaration. On the other hand, if you say you are who you want to be, you shall instead be that. You are utterly free to choose who you prefer to be. You always have been. You’ve been choosing every moment of every day and you’ve been experiencing the results of those choices. Not happy with those choices? Choose again.

To choose your true preference, however, you must BE HONEST with yourself and with others. Always be honest about what you prefer and what you don’t prefer, for yourself. Lying to gain acceptance from others is an act of allowing others to dictate who you should be, by their acceptance or denial of you. By being honest, you sift through your life experience, choosing what you truly prefer to incorporate into your identity and what you prefer to leave out. You then create an identity based on your honest truth, rather than the truth of others.

To do a good job of sifting of life experience, you need to get out of your head and PAY ATTENTION to that experience. To not pay attention to your experience is to repeat it. Paying attention to your experience, concluding your own preference about it and creating new desires is the process of your life unfolding. Those preferences and desires give shape and direction to your life.

It is then up to you to FOLLOW YOUR DESIRE, which will lead you on the path of being you. Live according to what you have concluded. Follow your own intuition and your own passion. You will then fulfill the reason you were birthed by the Universe. You will have realized the joy of being you.

For you to follow your own desire, however, you must TRUST THE UNIVERSE. The Universe is supporting you in numerous ways, many of them implicit. Your distrust of it has been unreasonable, because if it truly was out to get you, you probably wouldn’t even be here to read this. Realize this and open yourself up in trust to the Universe. Your joyful expansion depends on it.

Lastly, spread this message of wellness, not by telling people about it, but by living it. Be yourself and allow others to be themselves. HONOUR OTHERS’ CHOICES. They are just as free as you are to choose whatever they prefer. Allowance is the key. Allow them to be.