The power of experience in finding out who you are
Have you ever had that experience in which you did something that was very atypical for you, because other people pushed you towards behaving in that way? What kind of experience was that for you? How did it feel? Would you do it again? Our daily lives are filled with experiences. No day is the same and our own behavior and the behavior of the people around us, tend to give us a certain feeling, which is either positive, negative or neutral. Through those feelings, we can discover who we are.
In this blog post, I am discussing the power of experience, based on the book of Neale Donald Walsch. Neale Donald Walsch wrote one of the most unconventional books I have ever read. He wrote his Q&A book from a religious perspective but sheds a different kind of light on what he believes his religion is supposed to teach him. However, here you won’t read much about his perspective on God. Instead, you will read about other topics that many people deal with, such as how everything roots either in love or fear, why a lack of self-love is damaging for a relationship, and what the power is of experiencing who you are. In case you do wonder about Neale Donald Walsch’s perspective on his religion, I highly recommend you to read his incredible book: Conversations with God.
“If you want to know what’s true for you about something, look to how you’re feeling about it. Hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth.”
– Neale Donald Walsch in Conversations with God
Love and fear
All is rooted in love or fear. These things lay closer to each other than you might realize. In practice, they often even intertwine. Let’s first talk a bit about what we mean by love and fear. Fear, as Welsch describes, is “the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms.” Love, as he explains, is “the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.” As he says: “Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go”.
We give love, but we are also dependent on receiving love. Research actually shows that babies who don’t receive the love they need grow slower than babies who do. When we love, we might instantly feel vulnerable because we know we need that love to be returned. Still, even when it is returned, we experience times in which we fear losing it.
Love versus attachment
When you are afraid of losing something you think you have, you could say you got attached. There is a subtle difference between love and attachment, but the latter roots in fear. As they describe in Buddhism, love is when you send out positive energy for the purpose of making other people happy. Attachment is when you expect to receive positive energy for the purpose of someone else making you happy. That person once gave you a very positive feeling. It made you feel great, and that is why you want to experience that feeling again.
As an example, think about your relationship with a significant other. During dating, you were feeling truly happy to be around that person. It made you feel wanted, appreciated, and important. But then, you come across a situation in which this significant other prioritizes something or someone else over you. You suddenly feel a wave of fear. You feel rejected. That person should always make you feel special, wanted, appreciated, and important. But because of how this person unexpectedly behaves, you start to question his or her love for you and how invested the person is. This can make you feel all kinds of negative feelings: Frustration, anger, sadness, insecurity. You start a discussion or feel like you need to create a certain kind of distance to protect yourself.
In this example, you could say that you are unable to see the situation as it is. You might take it too personal and feel like the other person is doing this to you. This is because you feel attached to the feeling the other person usually gives you. You constantly need confirmation of someone else’s love because your happiness depends on it.
But, if we knew how amazing and lovable we are, we wouldn’t fear love. We wouldn’t feel like we need to chase it. The problem is that we are not able to see ourselves for who we really are. Instead of finding out who we are and focusing on self-love, self-compassion and self-acceptance, we focus too much on what we need to do to receive love from others.
What a lack of self-love does to a relationship
Many people depend on love from others and this actually prevents people from loving themselves. Please allow me to elaborate on that. When you’re not able to depend on selflove and compassion, you find it hard to understand or even believe why others have love and compassion for you. You don’t feel worthy and need others to constantly prove to you that they really love you because only then you will believe them. You start to create conditions. If they really love you, they must behave in a certain kind of way.
When there is a lack of self-love, you become more easily attached to others to compensate for that lack. It is kind of unfair. Because that would mean that you need that other person for love to such a great extent that it sometimes becomes unclear how much of your relationship is based on love and how much is based on fear.
In order to love yourself for the way you are, you actually first need to find out for yourself who that person is that you are. In my eyes, this is one of the most difficult — but also most important — life questions. Luckily, there are people like Neale Donald Walsch who can share their perspectives on how you can find that out.
How to find out who you are
I personally believe there are three ways to find out who we are.
1. By becoming aware of our ego. In that way, we find out who we are not.
2. By meditating. Through meditation, we create stronger feelings and find out what gives us energy. We become more compassionate and find it easier to accept things as they are. We become more alert of what we feel drawn to. What gives us energy and what we feel drawn to helps us to discover what makes us who we are.
3. Through experiences.
Experiences
Welsch believes that we are in this world to find out who we are. He thinks we can find that out through experiences.
The beauty of this thing called life is that it is filled with experiences. According to Welsch, we live in a world of relativity to experience who we are. We learn about our personality and our traits because we find ourselves in situations in which they reveal themselves. In that way, by experiencing who we are, we get closer to finding out who we are. This is why we need to focus on experiencing ourselves in different situations.
The labels of right and wrong
There are no such things as inherently right or wrong. By inherently right or wrong, I mean that these are labels that did not come into existence with the behavior or person itself. You could say that this is a human concept that we implemented to create a society where we can all live together. It is a judgment. An opinion. In a world of colour, black and white are only shades perceived from its viewers eye. We created labels of right and wrong and good and bad, but should always remember that things are not right or wrong and good or bad of themselves.
A good example is stealing. Most people see stealing as a behavior that is bad of themselves. Most of us think you should never steal and that there is no situation in which this should be allowed. But when we look at a specific situation in which a poor woman was robbed from the money she made that day and she needs food to feed her toddler, do you think is it okay for her to pick an apple from her neighbours tree without asking? Now, we are getting in a gray area.
Opinions about this topic differ. Based on the common definition we gave to stealing, you could say this is stealing and that this should not be okay. Many people stop there. But what if we dove into our feelings. Would this feel okay to your personally, knowing her particular situation? Some would be more compassionate in this specific scenario. The fact that people can change their minds over this and that people have different opinions, only proofs that bad behavior is not bad behavior in and of itself but rather depends the viewer.
How we can get to know our values
Welsch explains that our values are often based on the values of others. Those other people got their values perhaps from other people, perhaps from their own experience. Welsch says we often do not allow ourselves the time to await the moment to experience things ourselves and then to find out what kind of value we hold towards whatever it is that we are experiencing. To find out how we feel about it. To find out whether something feels right or wrong to us. Instead, we look at these situations once they appear, through a filter of right and wrong that others taught us.
When we look at the example of the woman stealing an apple, you might feel like the woman should face the consequences of stealing. This is because you found out you find equality very important. If someone else should deal with the consequences of stealing, why shouldn’t she? On the other side, if you feel like the lady should be forgiven and not face any consequences due to the particular situation she is in, you might have realized you find compassion more important. Through these kind of questions we find out who we are.
None of both values are right and wrong of itself. The trick is to find in your friends and partner, someone with the same chore values and at the same time being able to have healthy debates with people who are less like-minded so you could get to know different views. You don’t only find the power of experience in the specific situations you are in. It is also about experiencing how you feel during hypothetical situations and conversations with others.
Why it’s important to remain aware
We should always be very attentive about whether our view regarding different topics is actually ours or is adopted from others. If we adopted the conventional perspective, has that been a conscious decision? Or was it based on fear of being rejected by our social environment? These questions are of great importance, because by repeatedly adopting and living by the perspectives of others, we may move further and further away from finding out who we are.
Welsch shares in his book that the world is meant to be imperfect in order for us to create a subjective judgment about it and therefore create ourselves. Also, he believes that there are no coincidences. Things happen so that we can create and experience who we truly are.
The power of experience
We need to get ourselves into new situations and get to know ourselves through experiences. In those experiences, we need to be aware of our own feelings and find out whether we behaved according to who we want to be. If we didn’t, we learn, and next time we are able to behave more accordingly because we found out who we don’t want to be. Slowly we start to get closer and closer to who we are, and all of our experiences help us to find ourselves. Therefore, no experience is wasted or useless. We could learn from every experience because we learn first-hand how we feel about it and therefore learn first-hand who we are. And that is how we grow and become more ourselves. The ourselves we can start to love.
Everything I shared about Neale Donald Walsch’s philosophy is based on his book. However, there is always a chance that I misunderstood some of the things he wrote. Do you want to get the philosophy straight from the source, make sure to read his book: Conversations with God.
