Questions to ask yourself on the way to self-discovery

1.Can you tell the difference between being "on" and being "off" in yourself?

2.Does the thought of living out the rest of your lives according to the limits set by your present personal patterns frustrate you?

3.Do you feel an impulse to evolve?

4.Is there a quality of your consciousness that remains the same despite your experiences of emotional turmoil?

5.Are you able to tolerate, or even embrace, distrubing and nonsensical humor, chaotic energies, theories which identify ordinary life and ordinary thinking as being problematic?

6.Do you think it possible that through consciously guided evolution an individual can become free from his or her past limits and approach a superhuman or even divine state of being? Could you become a god or goddess for real -- beyond humanity?

7.Do you understand it be the case that spiritual and scientific geniuses are in agreement about the nature of the universe?

8.Have you heard the theory that everything is made of information?

9.Have you ever felt yourself to be outside of time? Do you think that this means that your own subjectivity now exists, eternally, "somewhere?"

10.Does it feel like you have a creative destiny to fulfill on earth?

11.Have you ever felt energy move tangibly between yourself and someone else?

12.Do you think that confusion and uncertainty can be useful to you if you alert during experiences of them?

13.Do you want to be completely free of your neuroses and hang-ups?

14.Do you feel like your personality is malleable?

15.Would you like to think faster?

16.Can your mind maneuver around its simple emotional reactions and beliefs?

17.Do you have an emotional connection to ideas of God, salvation, transformation, infinite intelligence, evolution, higher self, true will, ........?

18.Are you interested in the contents of your own unconscious mind? Do you think there are valuable insights and experiences hidden therein?

19.Have you had, or are you willing to have, experiences or sensations that seem unbearable yet you can bear them?

20.Can you see why Nietzsche said that morality either does not exist or is an obstacle to wisdom?

21.Do you think (or even suspect) that YOU ARE GREAT?

22.Can you think of two things at once?

23.Have you ever felt the "essence" of something apart from any of its attributes?

24..Have you ever suddenly noticed that your mind was utterly empty except for a strange impulse?

25.Do you believe it is valuable when geniuses or rebels upset society?

26.Can you laugh at yourself?

27.Can you imagine being God?

28.Do you want to be God, or do you have any similar kind of drive that you can find in yourself (and do please actually check your inner contents rather than answers based on an assumption of what you are like)?

29.Have you ever had an emotion that turned out to be another different emotion? Did this make you suspicious about your ability to determine what you feel and think?

30.Have you ever had a powerful but seemingly neutral or undefinable emotion?

31.Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like a the energies around you were being conducted through you and subsequently "tamed" or modified and made useful in some way.

32.Have you ever wondered what all the things you like have in common? Can you feel a subtle sensation that links all those things together? Do you think that that sensation has anything to do with your nature?

What do I give to others? What do they gain by knowing me?

What do I expect of others?

Do I pretend to be something I'm not, ever? If I do (when I do), why am I doing it? What is so important to me that I hide and protect it, or what disturbs me about myself, so that I can't let others see it?

How much time do I need for myself, to be alone?

If I died unexpectedly tomorrow, what is the one thing, more than all others, I would regret not having done?

How do I define love?

Do I really, truly, hate any person? If so, why?

Am I a cat-person or a dog-person?

What is my own unique contribution to the world?

Do I portray myself to myself and others in a way that is contrary to who I really am?

Do I seek the acceptance of others before / above the acceptance of myself?

What am I willing to do to change the things about myself which I can not accept? When will I start making those changes? Am I really committed to the changes I have set for myself?

Do I make decisions based on fears or do I decide based on what will help me progress towards what I really want in life?

Why do I feel guilty about....?

What is it within me that makes me feel __________ (this emotion) about _____________ (this person or situation)?

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The further you go
The more difficult it becomes

There are certain key questions you need to ask yourself, should you truly decide to follow the path to self discovery. Some of them are easy questions. Many of them are more difficult. Once you understand and accept the difficult ones, the easy questions become much easier. In retrospect, they seem like questions that were answered before they were asked.

Are you willing to abandon your comfort zone?

Regardless of whether you are happy, complacent or depressed, you have a comfort zone. You have certain people and things that you have come to rely on and often take for granted. Even a person who makes you miserable, who destroys your confidence and self-image, becomes a comfort zone because of the human addiction to familiarity. In order to truly travel the road to self-discovery, you must be willing to lose or abandon all the elements of your comfort zone. To follow the path, you will come to realize what it is that you need and what it is that you merely want. Situations and elements of your life will change in their definitions. Some will hold you back. Some will lose their meaning. To travel you must be strong, and strength comes from the ability to walk a tightrope without a collection of safety nets. Many things in our lives are just that, safety nets. We become nervous without them below us, but we do not need them.

Are you willing to redefine yourself?

Beyond the comfort zone is the definition we have given ourselves. To go on a road of self discovery, you must be willing to redefine and allow yourself to change and evolve. Any of the standards and judgments you have placed on yourself must now become negotiable. Who you are, what you planned to do with your life, your standards of success, your beliefs, even your sexuality and relationships with people will come into question. You cannot truly follow the path of self discovery if you are going to anchor yourself to learned beliefs and self-image. You must be willing to accept change. The anchor helps to keep us moored, but we do not need it.

Are you willing to go where you never have gone, or where you feared going before?

When you first begin to follow the path of self discovery, you will find yourself facing things that you would rather shy away from. They may seem foolish, ridiculous or dangerous. If your inner self calls to you to follow these paths, you need to follow them, in order to understand and translate them. If you limit what you are willing to do and experience on the road to self discovery, you will not get very far. You must abandon fear, or at the very least learn to control it. Bite down and go for it. Fear acts to protect us from harm, but we do not need it.

Are you willing to lose everything?

Are you strong enough may be the real question. My own journey of self discovery began with suicide and death and became necessity rather than a choice. Even when you think you have nothing, you eventually realize there are things you came to rely on. A good friend, a person you love so deeply it hurt to be away from them, a favorite meal, a car, an apple tree... it doesn't matter, there is always something you don't want to lose. You will lose it. You have to go into your journey realizing and accepting of the loss. To go on this path you must be willing to destroy yourself and life as you knew it in order to go beyond. You must be strong because everything will start changing and you will not be able to keep up with the changes until you learn how to slow down.

When you lose yourself will you be able to find yourself again?

You will lose yourself on the path. You will lose yourself many times. You will forget who you are and who you were. Memories will become like strange lessons and at times you will feel oddly detached from things that once meant a great deal to you. This is the re-interpretation. In order to survive on the path, you will need to re-interpret everything you have learned and come to believe in. You must be willing and able to re-interpret. This will hurt. It will hurt a lot. Then, one day, you will come to appreciate the pain. You will crave it and you will know that it is the teacher. Loss, defeat and suffering will become your friends. Once this happens and you are able to interpret all the new information, you will have become stronger than you ever imagined possible. Once you have truly discovered yourself, no one can ever take it away from you again.

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