Personal Development

From “getting aware” to Awareness

Personal development is an important theme at Sephira.
To develop yourself on a personal level, you should be aware of yourself.
Massage and energetic massage can be of great use for this purpose.

Massage is not only a relaxing moment for the skin, muscles and nerves,
but it also creates a deep relaxation on an emotional and psychological level.
Because of the rest and peace in your body and mind, room is created
to get a clear view at the situation your in, and what you can change (when needed).

This is the start of the awareness process.

Getting aware of yourself is quite a difficult task for most people.
It needs discipline, perseverance and the willingness to take a look at yourself and your own behavior.
Part of the problem is the observation of yourself, which is quite difficult,
but partially it’s also the problem of fear.
A lot of things you don’t want to see - hidden in the unconscious - can come up to a conscious level.

When you want to develop yourself, you will be confronted with emotions and thoughts
that are coming up from the unconscious.
Although it is not my intention to write a complete dictionary about the unconscious
(I can recommend C.G. Jung, who have written many books about this subject),
it’s necessary to tell a couple of things (simplified) about it.

The unconscious is an important “collection of experiences” with thoughts, ideas and emotions,
whereby all the things that keep (or kept) us busy, are anchored in this unconscious.
In fact, all the positive and negative memories are kept in here and influences us by emotions and thoughts, without noticing them most of the time.
This has a (large) impact on the concept of our Self, but it also influences our behavior towards others.
When we want to make a change, we need a turning point.
The turning point is the moment one chooses to change and be prepared to make some sacrifices
(i.e. by letting go a certain emotion or pattern of thoughts).

An example to make this a bit more concrete.
A woman has “learned” in her childhood that, whenever she wanted to say something,
people would not listen (friends, class mates), or authoritative people (parents, teachers)
would get angry (“Shut up”, “you can't say that”, “What do you know?” etc.).

A child like this will see that it is “better” to shut her mouth, with all kinds of consequences
on social and emotional areas. (All these memories and experiences are collected and will sink away
into the unconscious, the “collection of experiences”.)

The more she is pulling back and becoming more “invisible” in her social life, the fewer criticism she’s getting.
This will isolate her from social contacts, but in her childhood she is not capable to change this situation.

This has a great influence on her concept of herself, but when she grows up and gets older,
she can come to the insight that the negative image of herself greatly influences her way of
getting in contact with other people.
When she wants to make a change, she will have to create a turning point,
followed by the concentration on her Self, to See which parts in the unconscious are ready for a change.

The turning point is the moment she is getting aware of the influence of her unconscious
in the recent situation, in combination with the will to make a change.

Massage can be of great benefit, since the body as well as the emotions can come to rest.

Most of the time, the turning point is at the top (or depth) of a situation. When a situation can’t be kept up with the already known knowledge, we are forced to make a change both in the concept of our Self and our emotional / psychological world.

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