I try to face the reality of the two me’s in my life without condemnation or violence.
But, it is foolish to fail to acknowledge that when mini-me is in charge he creates disintegration, chaos and pain. When I am living in spacious-me, wisdom, light and truth emerge. It only makes sense to do what I can to live more consistently in tune with spacious-me.
How might I live in such a way that I am more consistently in harmony with spacious-me?
We all have to find our own techniques. Here are some strategies that help me to live more consistently in spacious-me.
1. I do not create an identity of out mini-me. I know mini-me is real and that the choices mini-me makes have a serious impact on my life. But I am not mini-me. Mini-me is simply a conglomeration of coping techniques I developed early in life using the best tools I had at the time to help me navigate the difficulties and struggles I encountered.
I do not judge mini-me, I simply acknowledge that mini-me’s reactions are not helpful and life-giving. They are the choices of a hurt child and I am doing what I can to grow beyond the behaviour patterns of a hurt child.
Spacious-me is my native land. I do not belong in mini-me. Spacious-me is my true identity as a child created “in the image of God”.
2.I cannot move from mini-me to spacious-me using the same consciousness that plunges me into mini-me. This is why judgment and condemnation never work. Mini-me thrives on judgment. He thrives on dividing the world up into good and bad, likes and dislikes, positive and negative. So, when I label mini-me “bad”, I am simply reinforcing the consciousness that brought mini-me into existence in the first place.
I will never move beyond the mini-me consciousness using the consciousness that created mini-me. Finding my way to spacious-me is not a function of hard work, determination, and self-discipline. I empower spacious-me when I open to the consciousness that trusts God at the heart of all reality; my being is held. I am safe and secure, not because I am smart and capable, or in control of the forces of life, or always doing a good job of finding my way through life, but because there is a deep strength at the heart of my being that nothing and no one can undo.
3. Seeing is the key to moving from mini-me to spacious-me. The truth is, I do not want mini-me to run my life. So, whenever I am willing to see that I have been tripped into mini-me, I begin to be re-oriented to spacious-me. Consciousness, awareness, and attention are the territory in which spacious-me thrives. Mini-me and unconsciousness are synonymous.
I return to spacious-me when I am willing to see myself honestly and fully. Spacious-me and self-awareness are synonymous.
4. The royal road to spacious-me is called “letting go”. Clinging, clutching, grasping, holding on, fighting for my little piece of the pie, are the primary source of nourishment for mini-me. Surrender feeds spacious-me. There are so few things to which it is really worth clinging. There are not many ditches worth dying in. The cost of spending my life fighting trench warfare against an army of imagined enemies is high.
The energy I bring to life is vastly more important than the details of my external circumstances. The more things I am able to put down, the more often I will find myself walking freely in the land of spacious-me.
5. Mini-me thrives on speed, activity, chatter, high energy, and mind-numbing “entertainment”. Spacious-me thrives on a gentler slower pace. Spacious-me is not in the habit of forcing his way into my life. If I want to manifest spacious-me, I need to create space in my life. Spacious-me likes silence, solitude, and connection with the natural world.
6. Spacious-me needs to be in relationship with other people. But, not just any relationships will do. Spacious-me thrives in relationships that are authentic, genuine, and honest. Spacious-me quietly walks away wherever there is play-acting, posturing, and dishonesty. Mini-me chooses relationships that are twisted by hidden agendas and that centre around the constant clash of competing needs, wants and desires. Spacious-me chooses relationships in which he is free to enter without needing to be a certain way in a futile attempt to make the other person comfortable.
7. Spacious-me is a physical stance in which my back and shoulders are relaxed; my hands are loose, and my mouth is not tight. I move from mini-me into spacious-me when I am able to be fully present in my body with warmth and acceptance.
Spacious-me likes it when I stop, take a deep breath and relax. When I build tiny gaps into the moments of my life, spacious-me feels more free to emerge.
There is no prescribed list of techniques for living from spacious-me. Spacious-me is not keen on lists of rules. I need to pay attention to that soft inner voice that has the power to guide me into a more spacious place. When I respond to that voice, I find myself living more consistently in tune with the life-giving force of spacious-me.
6 comments
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June 15, 2012 at 7:17 am
jaqueline
Even when it is insisted that mini -me is not judged..( how could spacious -me admit to such a thing as judging…..making spacious me less than spacious ) The very fact that a distinction between mini me and spacious me indicates a split that has come through judgement.
The very fact that certain negative qualities are attributed to mini -me and the positive to spacious- me indicates judgement and the desire to make a distinction between good and bad within… It is from THAT place of self judgement that we divide the world outside of ourselves into good and bad.
I am not sure it is helpful to describe these states of consciousness as two me’s, I think it perpetuates the cause of pain. It is helpful perhaps to describe two places of consciousness to which we are drawn…but it is ALL me.
Spacious- me is mini -me in love, mini- me is spacious- me in fear.
June 15, 2012 at 10:15 am
Tress
I am with you on this one Christopher. I thing of Mini me as the ego and spacious me as my connection to that very power in which we are all one.
June 15, 2012 at 5:40 pm
kimgye
I like that thought Tress!
June 15, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Steve
I know Mini-me would find the statement “I am the way, the truth, and the life” to be offensive since he tends to want to be in charge of his own destiny, but would I be out of place to ask if the best if not only guide to and source of life for Spacious-me is in fact the person who made this controversial statement. Or is it that I am (a.) missing something, (b.) narrow minded, or (c.) am I just jumping ahead? Also, in all sincerity, I am asking myself if it is Mini-me or Spacious-me who is asking this question or is there a third me, one who stands between and is arbiter for the two halves.
June 16, 2012 at 8:57 am
brokenstones
“But what if you could not tell which you were anymore? What if both were mixed in together? What if you could not tell them apart? What if they were one and the same? What if the two were tearing you apart? How would you know which you were, what if the good man had made you into the monster? What if it was your longing for a good world that put you in the service of evil?”
http://frombrokenstones.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/a-good-man/
June 17, 2012 at 10:19 am
Steve
Brokenstones, It is that I am wondering why it matters so much to me and is it Mini-me or Spacious-me that causes me to question. In most of life’s transactions I know who is who but in others I can’t tell them apart but isn’t that what sanctification, or as Christopher would likely call it spiritual growth, is?
I have read some of your blogs and can see you have been exposed to horrors most of us cannot imagine. I can see a conflicted and struggling person trying to come to terms with the demon that haunts you. I suppose on a much lesser scale I am doing the same thing. Correct me if I am wrong but in any case I leave you with this poem, perhaps you’ve read it before.
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
March 4,1946