This Post Is Dedicated to the Life, Legend, Lessons, and the LOVE Whitney Houston Shared With Us
** At the end of this post are five ABC Primetime video links with Whitney Houston and Diane Sawyer that offer insights regarding the following discussion.
INTRODUCTION
I have been planning this post about True Self since last year. Following the very sad news about the passing of Whitney Houston, I decided to post it today as a reminder of the life journey we each share, and the importance of listening to our True Self, we each have, that is ALWAYS within us and activiely guiding us. When we listen to our False Self, negative consequences ALWAYS occur. The challenge for each of us, is to listen more closely to our True Self, especially in the midst of great turmoil.
Each of our life journeys is filled with many challenges, some outward, but mostly inward. Each of us has to deal with the measure of our challenges, the level of difficulty and pain they bring, the complex ways these challenges affect our life journey, the major transitions we experience, and how they affect the time and energy we try put into our career-life roles. Every career-life choice we make, in any life role, is based on our core values. Sometimes the challenges we face can confuse us about what truly is important to us in life, including life itself, and the meaning life holds for us.
Yet ALL our challenges are also carefully wrapped in life lessons. It's up to each of us to make choices that CAN change the directions of our lives, and learn from these lessons. Sometimes we are successful; sometimes we aren't. Yet, even in our apparent failure to learn a life lesson, others will learn from that lesson that was so very challenging for us, and for our personal life journey.
Whitney Houston has gifted us through her voice that sends chills through most people when they hear her sing. She once siad, "I knew it was an infectious thing God had given me."
Whitney Houston still gifts us through her sharing about the public challenges she faced, her personal struggles, and her steadfast belief in God, in Jesus, and the love she always had for using her gift to touch others so deeply.
Dear Whitney, this post is for you; with deep appreciation for your gifts you shared while here on this earth; with empathy for your struggles and the challenges you faced that can serve as lessons for so many of us yearning to listen better to our True Self; and with a real love for you as our sister, whose gifted voice and energy have stirred our very hearts and spirits and made us better because of knowing you through your music and how you chose to share The Greatest LOVE of ALL.
TRUE SELF
What is True Self?
Do we each have a True Self?
How powerful is our True Self?
How can True Self provide us with the knowledge to deal more successfully with our life challenges?
Why don't we listen all the time to this wonderful older and wiser "sister/brother" True Self?
How does listening to our True Self relate to aspiring to be whatever we aspire to be?
How does True Self inform our special calling to BE and live our potential to contribute our gifts and talents to others and this world?
IMAGINE
Imagine for a moment, there is no limitation to our self-knowledge that will help us deal more successfully with our life challenges.
Imagine that the access to this knowledge and the secrets of living our potential, are always within our grasp, daily. That's what our True Self IS.
Imagine that we have control over how to access to our True Self.
Now imagine each of us has three selves:
a) A Regular Self who experiences life, all the challenges and complexities, including all the feelings we humans have as we expereince our life journey and its many challenges...
b) A True Self who guides us and offers us unconditional love and wisdom through what some describe as our intuition or our "inner voice". Others might experience True Self as connected to God/Higher Power, the Holy Spirit, the Buddha within, Atman, Angels, our guides, universal love and energy that unites all life, or the beauty and life-force of nature and how we can attune with nature and have remarkable insights.
* True Self speaks only in whispers and silence to train us to listen more attentively to her, and always from a source of LOVE, to guide us in life journey, discover our special callings, learn lessons, and live our life with purpose.
How do we listen to her whispers? By putting our heart close to her's and listening carefully for her promptings.
How do we listen to her silence? By simply experiencing her presence in our lives, usually taking time for ourselves away from others, often in a quiet space, yet sometimes with nature or music.
c) A False Self that forms as a result of our "human" experiences from early on; the self that is our naysayer and uses fear and self-doubt to lower our self-confidence and efficacy beliefs, and does everything possible to contradict our True Self, and simultaneously confuse our Regular Self which is working so hard to navigate life's journey with all its bumps and challenges.
* False Self usually speaks with a loud voice and always works from a source of FEAR, which gives rise to self-doubt, confuses us, and distracts us from our path, our purpose, and our callings.
*** True Self Is ALWAYS More Powerful Than False Self; Only Regular Self OFTEN Forgets This!
BRIEF OVERVIEW WTH AN EXCELLENT 3-MINUTE VIDEO LINK
Thomas Keating speaks and writes extensively about some of these ideas, and effectively communicates with many people from many faith traditions regarding this concept of True Self.
This TwitLonger Link provides a very brief specific summary of his interpretation of True and False Self, afflictive emotions that tie into habits, addictions, and life challenges, the spiritual journey, and suggested readings, PLUS, an additional special link at the end, to a brief 3-minute video of Thomas Keating offering a brilliant, yet simple, summary of the Spiritual Journey.
CHOICE
Listening to True Self is challenging, especially when stress is abundant in our lives. Taking time to be quiet facilitates reflection and listening to True Self. Even taking times to breath very deeply 6-7 times, when faced with stress, changes brain chemistry and body physiology in seconds.
The lessons Whitney offers us about following our callings are excellent lessons for everyone, the young and not-so-young; everyone has callings; everyone is here for a purpose; everyone has something of value to contribute! This is true for people who give their gifts quietly in ANY of the major career-life roles, especialy being a parent. And this is true for others who might want to share their gifts more openly, perhaps even in the public eye, such as Whitney did as a young girl singing in Church about Jesus, and this young eleven year-old Brianna Mazzola who loves to sing, has wonderful aspirations, and sings a Carrie Underwood hit, "Jesus Take The Wheel" and ""On My Own" ~ Les Miserables.
And just as important are the lessons Whitney leaves us about trying ever so hard to listen and be attentive to our True Self, despite the loud, distracting voice of False Self that all of us experience during our life journey; a false voice with false messages that would have us get off-track from our intented life purposes. Her struggles were NOT unlike those struggles we each face in our own life context and journey.
I wish Whitney could have been exposed to this paradigm so she could have had another tool to help her deal with her challenges. The five ABC interviews with Diane Sawyer posted below offer powerful insights about how Whitney's Regular Self (Whitney Houston the singer, Mom, daughter, friend, etc.) struggled to listen to her True Self (her guide who loves her and is always connected to God/Higher Power and speaks to her daily with real wisdom).
The real enemy was her False Self (who influences Regular Self to do the opposite of True Self), who Whitney WAS NOT.
When Whitney shared, "I am my own worst enemy", she is correct in not blamimg others and taking full responsibility; most of us do not do that as directly as she did when she spoke to Diane Sawyer.
But she was so incorrect thinking that SHE, Whitney Houston, was her own worst enemy. It was never Whitney Houston (Regular Self, the singer, the little girl with the big voice) who was the enemy. It was ALWAYS her False Self, who was NOT who Whitney Houston was, who was the REAL enemy. Perceptions are so very important!
Unfortunately, some of the time, during those challenging years, Whitney THOUGHT she was her False Self, and perhaps, did not understood that her True Self really was WHO she ALWAYS WAS...and now IS, forever.
Ultimately it's all about OUR choice whether we listen to True Self or False Self, as Whitney herself shares here, about "deciding" and being a "child of God".
"It's my deciding, it's my heart, it's what I want and what I don't want to do. Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to do. It's my decision".
"I know I am a child of God and Jesus loves me. This I know"
CLOSING
** The following are five ABC Primetime video links (Parts 1-5) with Whitney Houston and Diane Sawyer that offer insights regarding this post.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Dear Whitney, You ARE with God and Jesus now, singing with God's Angels and hitting those high notes again! Thank you for your One Moment In Time You ARE now free.
And we will always love you Whitney...
FINAL COMMENTS
Please feel free to ask a question or make a comment. If you do not want to leave your name, you may simply make your comment as "anonymous". Also please share this website or post with friends or colleagues who might be interested.
This related post on my website site called The Power of ONE offers useful links and resources for discovering your own personal power. This post also discusses a NEW view of the traditional term 'career' NOT as paid work, but rather a more dynamic and accurate paradigm that sees career as continuously playing several of nine life roles, ALL of which allow opportunities to give/receive CARE for ourselves and others via "caring experiewnces". Once this CARE is experienced, this dynamic immediatley produces an energy release (ER) of 90-100 trillion cells, and the by-product is a measure of happiness, fullfilment and self-actualization. Thus career is simple giving/receiving CARE across these nine life roles, one of which is paid work. CARE +ER =CAREER.
If you are interested in a special post and video I had been asked to post on the Deepak Chopra Well World site, I am in the process of making that link available on my website because the Well World site no longer is available. This is a unique video born from the USA 911 experience that is FREE and can be used by anyone in any country as a resource for promoting greater understanding for youth and adults about multicultural differences, including faith traditions.
** I am available for in-person or distance support regarding topics in my posts, and offer a complimentary phone "mini-assessment" for those who might be interested in career-life counseling/coaching.
Please e-mail me and leave your best phone and time to call, and I will be happy to call you back if you are in the USA. Skype is also an option for anyone in the USA or abroad.
Contact me directly at (781) 721-1200 or careercoachcolozzi@verizon.net
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