Awareness That Heals

Robert Strock explores the continuing path to our own wisdom, a path that does not come cheap and leads us to become our ever-changing best selves. There's a need for sincerity as we learn how to access our inner wisdom without imposition. We access our wisdom by leaving behind moral pressure established from previous relationships or societal expectations and revering our own genuine state of asking for guidance. We find our sincere questions when we find our purest intentions to care, to be kind and inclusive. Once we find these sincere questions and respond with the guidance suggested, we will be connected to ourselves in intimacy and greater capacity to give and receive.

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Host Robert Strock moves deeper into the practice of self-inquiry and how it leads us to examine our quality of life. We return to the question of what is our repeating challenging emotion? As we move through the process of inquiry, we can start looking at whether or not our decisions help take care of everyone at the proverbial table or only a small group of people. It's a process of looking at our answers without judgment. This forward-moving practice involves identifying the qualities that we need to develop in ourselves, which are often the opposite of our conditioned tendencies.

Where are each of us, individually, in the process of inquiry and questioning? We can continue to ask questions and as we do, we can bring ourselves less suffering by finding and activating the place inside of us that wants to care for ourselves.

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Self-inquiry and guiding questions lead us toward our unique and deeper truths. We learn more and more who we truly aspire to be, and not dominated by our conditioning. We can start with questions like, "What do I need to do for my quality of life? What do I need to let go of to open the door to a greater experience of purpose, a priority for me?" Through a pattern of questioning, we can readjust our behavior and thinking to develop our best selves. We can use inquiry in all aspects of our lives. For example, the question "How can we be closer to love in our intimate relationships and friendships?" helps us look at the patterns that could be standing in the way of true connection. If we learn to keep asking questions with sincere intention, we can move forward on a journey to be more connected to our awareness and our heart.

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Host Robert Strock leads listeners through the process of using friendly mind and our inner knowing to address difficult relationships in our lives. If we can approach them from a standpoint of causing the least damage and most understanding for both parties, we can have crucial conversations to support ourselves with challenging feelings and relationships. This same skill comes into play when inquiring into how do we find purpose, meaning, and a way to contribute in the world and not let feelings of helplessnes, skepticism, or habits lessen our potential. With time, we can narrow down our inquiry to the question that most matters in our life as a central part of who we are becoming. We can be enjoying asking ourselves a version of "What's the next step for me to care for what I am feeling and be taking the next small step into being inspired in the world at the same time.

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To grow beyond the conditioning of our upbringing and, ultimately, hundreds of years of human conditioning, we have to be honest with ourselves and develop our ability of self-inquiry. If we can take a step back and ask ourselves how much our conditioning is running our lives, we can begin to move in a different direction. A direction that includes seeing ourselves as world citizens responsible for giving and helping those in need. This process leads us to interact with our inner feelings and our inner knowing. Our inner knowing can help us continue to face challenging feelings and develop our relationship to friendly mind. Friendly mind, honesty, and inquiry then become our cherished guides as we learn from our life experiences.

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Host Robert Strock teaches about learning to face the truths in our lives. Self-inquiry can teach us to see, prioritize, and let go of patterns that aren't beneficial to our personal progress. The process of building awareness of our thought and behavioral patterns can help us steer our rudder in the right direction, rather than beating ourselves up or withdrawing because of our perceived weaknesses and mistakes. Regularly questioning ourselves in a caring way guides our course, helps resolve broken relationships, and builds a more fulfilling, and wholesome heart.

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Host Robert Strock discusses the importance of identifying and listening to our own wisdom. We can learn to value paying attention to whatever our challenging emotions are at any moment. This is a major victory. It's a part of identifying what are our essential needs so we can guide ourselves toward the best version of who we are. We can ask ourselves "What is it that we most need?" and refer to the Introspective Guides on AwarenessThatHeals.org for specific help. Strock uses examples from his years of experience in psychotherapy to show how we can identify the patterns of distraction and false things we unwittingly tell ourselves that keep us from our needs. As we do, we can learn to shift our tone, behavior, and thoughts to move forward and experience benefit for ourselves and those around us.

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Host Robert Strock teaches the process of moving from self-criticism to pivoting and accessing our own wisdom through self-inquiry. The process starts when we face challenging emotions. In these moments, we ask ourselves questions, searching for the best of who we are. What is our best self, our best actions, best communication, and best attitudes? These questions will guide us toward the thoughts we will derive benefit to think rather than self-criticizing ones.

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Host Robert Strock explores how a growing awareness around our own confusion affects self-rejection during serious health or medical changes. It's inevitable to feel loss, emptiness, or fear during drastic life changes. We need to learn to acknowledge our feelings around these challenges. Otherwise, we will increase feelings of depression or agitation rather than deepening acceptance, understanding, and forgiving ourselves. There's a process of learning to see our own expectations and realizing that they're so often unreasonable. When we go through drastic changes, we are going to change how we think and function physically. It is incredibly helpful to realize that anyone going through a similar situation with extreme change and hardship will face similar challenging feelings. The hardship can lead to confusion that, if not faced with greater self-compassion and questioning, lead us to become more judgmental, depressed, or empty. The problem isn't the confusion itself but the rejection of it.

We can train ourselves by leading our awareness to our true intention to heal, where we see our confusion as an opportunity for deeper inquiry and purposeful introspection. The more we look at our confusion with reverence, the more capacity we have to live a courageous life.

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Host Robert Strock and guest Dave discuss the process of finding the wise part of ourselves that has the ability to speak with an understanding, compassionate inner voice. With this voice, we can identify self-rejection and see it as an emotion and not feed it with continuous thoughts. We also need to be careful not to succumb to premature transcending, where we think we're beyond our challenging feelings when we've really let them sink deeper into our subconscious. We want to develop gradual dis-identification with our challenging emotion(s) and work toward developing the intention to heal. At that point, we can begin to disempower self-rejection. We can increase our ability to see and tell ourselves what we're doing to overcome the various forms of our self abandonment or criticism. Over time, we can dis-identify with these challenging feelings and use our inner voice to encourage and support ourselves, even as we see our shortcomings. Eventually, this ability to identify and alter our inner voice lets us develop a positive direction and tone that opens our hearts for greater kindness toward ourselves, others, and society.

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