SELF MASTERY

Mark L Lockwood - Contemplative Intelligence

There is a fundamental truth we often forget: you were born a sovereign being, yet somewhere along the way, you started outsourcing your own divinity. That tight, anxious feeling—the intimidated personality—is simply the sound of your inner king or queen having abdicated the throne. It is the protective suit of armour, fashioned not to empower you, but to protect a vulnerable wound, and it has slowly become a prison of personality.  This is not a failure; it is the universal human story. It is the hero's journey we must all take from a temporary set of masks in the first half of life to an unprotected, undefended conqueror called your Sacred Self.

Transcript

00:00And at some point in life, you will have to remember who you really are, instead of walking

00:09around blind with your eyes half closed. And this is what we mean by coming back to our authentic

00:17self. Once you were born as a sovereign being, yet somewhere along the way you forget about

00:24your divinity, the anxiety we feel, that tight inner anxious grip that life brings on us,

00:34is the feeling we get when we abdicate the throne of our king or queen. At some point,

00:41you have to take full responsibility for the things that you do, the thoughts that you think,

00:47the feelings that you feel, the facts of life that don't care about our feelings.

00:53At some point, you regain a sense of power, authentic power, and control over the things

01:02in your life you can manage. And those things are all within. Every single day, we need to practice

01:09the art of contemplation. We need to remember and understand that there's an entire world out there

01:16full of 8 billion people almost that are trying to tell us what to do, that are trying to manage

01:23us what we do, how we think, what we spend our money on, if we actually get to make that money or keep

01:30it for that matter. So what we need to do is manage ourselves, take charge of the kingdom. And the kingdom

01:39of heaven, of course, is within. The sheer pace of the world, the size of it, the immensity of the knowledge

01:47of wisdom out there is enough to crush your spirit, especially if you don't remember who you really,

01:54really are. So the idea is to practice daily understanding who your authentic self is and

02:03managing yourself, your body, heart, and mind with every faculty and talent you have, not just with your

02:10five senses. But with your extrasensory perception, your intuition, imagination, the power of your

02:19intention, we need to take hold of the reins and direct our lives exactly where we want to be.

02:27And the first step of really doing that is drowning out that perpetual noise, that constant hum of the

02:34world that says, hey, you're not good enough. The prison of our own personalities is why we get

02:41intimidated and tempted into getting off the throne and not managing our own kingdom.

02:50The personality is designed for survival. So the minute we feel threatened, it kicks into action and

02:57becomes defensive. And defense is the first act of every single war, especially the war upon yourself,

03:06your future, the things that you really want to do in this life. It's a war on the meaning of who you

03:13really are. The personality is constantly seeking that external approval and validation, which it never

03:20finds. People want you in their place. They want you to relinquish the throne and serve.

03:27But you can serve from a place of limited capacity, or you can serve from a place of becoming unlimited.

03:37And this is what we teach. In the end, you have to take full responsibility for everything you do.

03:44And that's a practice. It's a pathway. It's a way of thinking, feeling, being and doing.

03:51To break free and master our lives, we must take a neurological update. Like everything needs to be

03:57updated, especially today in this fast-paced world. We can't run outdated programs. And the nervous system

04:06runs on habit. It runs on a story, a narrative that has been created since the day you were born.

04:12A neurological and emotional update is required. And we've got to do the work again and again to

04:19transition from survival or the first half of life into thriving, which is something that comes

04:26in the second half of life when we awaken out of the personal narrative and develop meta-thinking

04:33or contemplative intelligence, where we can actually observe our inner world, not just the world outside

04:41with the five senses. No. We need to become the witness of our thoughts rather than being ruled by them.

04:49This process of updating is where we move from our limbic system, which has been hijacked time and time

04:56again and move into becoming the CEO of our own lives, which is in our prefrontal cortex, where we get to

05:05innovate and create the lives that we want without being ruled by the external world.

05:13There's many, many old stories, many ancient narratives, like the prodigal son and King Arthur.

05:19They illustrate the journey we must all take if we want to release the truth of our inner kingdom.

05:28So we need to realize the ephemeral and the transitory are not who we really are.

05:36We're sovereign. We're divine. We're created to create. And why create something that you don't want?

05:43And it is often because of our low self-esteem that we've allowed to become lower and lower through

05:52allowing our environment to dictate the story of our lives.

05:57So what we do is we teach people how to dismantle the masks that they wear. They don't even know that

06:03they're wearing them. The mask of codependence, the anxious mask, the mask of the actor.

06:09And you need to dismantle these masks, take them off. And it's that authentic self that the prophets,

06:16mystics, monks, and masters have tried to teach us as we start to master our own wellness and stop

06:25taking a back seat in the story, the autobiography that we get to write from a pace of purpose, meaning,

06:34and intention. So there's a world out there, an entire environment, trying to tell you who you are.

06:42But in turn, there's an internal world that is also trying to tell you who you are. And it whispers

06:50with force, with a never-ending rise of power. But often we only listen to that voice

06:57through great suffering or great love, but usually great suffering. So why wait? What we can do is

07:05just learn how to access that inner voice, listen to it, and then respond to it rather than react

07:12to the colder negative environment that we may perceive on the outside. Many people who've had

07:19depression, anxiety, addictions, and those sorts of things tend to avoid life and remove themselves.

07:26But we say, get into the arena. Accept the game of life. Life is a game. Play it. It's a race that we

07:34can win, that we can run instead of avoid. That's where our true power is. That's where our true power

07:43resides in playing the game and doing life on life's terms. One of the first things that we forget is that

07:52deep inherent knowledge that we're the creator of our own personal realities.

08:01Our personality creates that reality over time through every thought, feeling, action,

08:07behavior, and response that we've ever given, that we've ever taken.

08:11So the work is waiting. It's getting into the gap. It's being still and knowing God, his ways, his world,

08:21his work. And this is how you show up for yourself. Spiritual awakening is not that crazier idea.

08:30Spirituality is walking around with your eyes wide open, walking in prepared, knowing what to expect,

08:38and acting from a place where you're not intimidated. This whole process of losing our

08:47self-identity, our own power, it's not a failure at all. It's the story of humanity.

08:55And the way out of that deep story is to listen to the deep yearning of your sacred self. It's calling you

09:01back to authenticity, to sovereignty, to developing and creating the person you really, really want to

09:09be without being sold the lies of an external environment. And this is the way every single

09:16story unfolds. Every good story is the story of a hero's journey where we overcome the odds and we

09:25discover powers within that help us overcome what we perceive as the enemy in the outside world.

09:33Every hero needs to descend into the chaos and it is in that chaos within or the shadow inside.

09:41That's where you find the power to direct and guide your life as you want to. It's this internal authority

09:51that we need to reclaim instead of being dictated to by people that are trying to sell us things,

09:59trying to make us follow rather than lead. So we must know ourselves through internal authority.

10:07That's the courageous work of dismantling the old programs and stepping unburdened into the

10:14invincibility of your own true essence, you know. So this is where your healing emerges from.

10:21It's how you heal depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, addictions, personality defects,

10:29character defects, whatever they might be, is by going within and not fighting the world. No,

10:36you must love your enemy. And the enemy, the only enemy out there is yourself. Love your enemy as you

10:42love yourself. That's what it means. We don't fight the world. We create our own kingdom. And to do so,

10:50we need to drop the masks and reveal our authenticity. Much like Clark Kent becomes Superman.

10:58That's the story of every hero's journey, is the revealing of the authentic, powerful,

11:06purposeful self that is wide awake and gets to dictate how each chapter of the story is going to unfold.

11:16Every day, practice taking full responsibility of your life.

11:20Witness what's going on. Open your eyes, your ears, your heart and start to listen and face what's really

11:27going on. And it's in this way that you will break free from a survival mindset.

11:34You'll rewrite the programs and become who you are doing what you need to do and take possession of your

11:41life from within. That energy within is what is under your control. You don't have to worry about the

11:48other energy in the world. That energy inside you matches and calls to and responds to the energy on the

11:57outside. So when you change the way you look at things, the way you perceive reality, the things

12:03you look at, the reality changes. And reality is always kind. So the work that we do each and every

12:11day is setting ourselves free from the prison of personality. That's not who we really are, not at all.

12:18And the paradigm processes the science of finding your spiritual self.

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