Sunday, November 3, 2013

Inward versus Outward: Conscientiousness

The main point of this post is probably to work through my thoughts on my own excessive introspection and self thinking.  Its about love and caring, and about relevancy.

While I'm not actively doing harm by thinking about myself, I am unhappy with it.  I am passively interacting with my world, that I am only such a small part of, and my thoughts about myself are completely disproportionate to all the things going on around me.  If I want to fit in, I'm going to have to start being aware of things going on that I can fit into.  Or, develop my awareness, increase my physical presence over my mental presence, and let my mentality drift beyond my current sphere of self.

I already think that I am a good person, and in simple terms of principles, I wish the best for everybody.  But things that I want in my life haven't come together, with a job and career success and respect being the main one.  I think that the main reason is that I haven't made significant efforts towards enabling other people to reach their goals, and so I haven't been reached out to in a workable manner, either.

There's a number of reasons for me to not reach out to others, including social anxiety and excessive inner conflict, and in much of this I feel a victim (again, of people not reaching out to me).  But the plain facts are that I think about myself constantly, and its obviously not working for me. 

I don't think I have to come to any large scale changes to develop the habit of thinking about others.  I believe it will simply take a shift in my perspective.  Here's why: I consider myself extremely conscientious.  I am careful to do the right thing, I am concerned how my actions affect others, I value peace and quiet over noise and conflict.  I felt terrible last night when I kicked a pebble that was actually a living snail in a small shell (I kicked it right as I saw it was a snail). 

 But I think that my conscientiousness is again profoundly self concerned, like I watch every step I make, and every noise I make or thing that I say.  So, its over the top self involved and its pretty excruciating to live up to standards of being highly conscientious, or shall I say perfect.

And, or, there is the chance of me turning my conscientiousness away from myself, and thinking about the world.  Not in my passive or inhibited way, but in a broad, expansive, engaging way.  My conscientiousness, if redirected into awareness and compassion, could do great things.  I would start seeing suffering around me and make attempts to stop it.  I would be able to think about issues, and with that same introspection, looking in, I could like in at an issue and really work it out.  

That's something I could do.  Or, I could just be, and incorporate my senses into everything I do to ease the stronghold my mind has on me.  I could just be sensual and alive.  As my presence develops, I will feel less invisible, and less wary of creating noise or disturbance.  I will be fuller of life and awareness of sounds, smells, tastes, touch.  So I will grow into my own body and naturally my mind will stop wandering because it will be so attentive to whats going on around me.  I will be anchored by present sensations rather than drifting in thoughts of the past.

Conscientious means with a conscience, so I already have that strongly developed - my conscience is ready to be used, its just under many mental barriers.  The book, the Power of Now, will probably help me with this to decrease my mind wander.  My mind wander isn't really very conscientious since its so random and irrelevant to the present.  I want relevant, and I want to matter, and I want to make a difference.  I just would hope to shift my perspective around and focus on things that I care about.  I do care about myself but I am not even showing myself that much caring while I am mind wandering, so its better that I think about others.  Its better Karma to think about others; it gets you more connected and plants better seeds to help others and have things come your way.

Since I'm very word/verbal focused, I need to think of some way to step out of the spiral of self involved conscientiousness.  I had already come up with selfless development.  What I'm going for here is to retain the conscientiousness (but lower the degree since its too stiflingly perfectionist), and dissociate from myself.  I'm not going for development, I'm just going for a shift.  Just easy, relaxed, smooth, nothing to make efforts on or judge myself over.  I'll pick smooth, since it reminds me of my sense of touch.  Instead of conscientiousness, I'm trying to feel outward for smoothness, and my body can tell me what to do.

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