My Ego Created Identity (32 slides) creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth

Interactive thought experiment Even though other people won’t be present pretend they are and see what you can learn about yourself. We are going to participate with a number of different interactive experiences that will invite introspections, both thinking and feeling. Be brave and thoughtful. Be kind and honest. Be as open as you can be.

Everyone divide into groups with no more than 5 in the group.

Taking turns, stand before your group for 30 seconds, just attend to what you think and feel… say nothing as your group members look at you. Really try and see each other! After your turn at standing, record what you felt and thought in your journal.

Many will have experienced a self-conscious adversarial relationship that will create discomfort and nervousness in our minds and hearts…

Stand before your group one more time… but this time fill your mind with good will. Picture these people as being wonderful with affection and love in their hearts toward you and see if, and how your experience changes. Record your thoughts and feelings in your journal before you share them.

For many the experience will have become much more positive and comfortable when compared with the first… Why?

The lesson: What is in our mind will be manifested in our life experiences and the people we meet. In other words: We create the reality we live in day to day.

What we call reality resides within us and we have the power to evoke and draw out that reality in situations and with other people depending on what is going on in our own heads!

Think of a positive adjective that starts with the same letter of your first name… Write it in your journal.

What do you want to experience in relation to these lessons? Record in journal.

The End of Experience One.

Experience Two … change groups.

List three positive adjectives that describe how you would like to be perceived by others in your group. Record them in your journal.

Taking turns, share them with your group.

Now record three adjectives that you would hate to be perceived as by others in this class. Record them in your journal.

Write them in your journal.

List the biggest 2-3 pet peeves/irritations you have of each of the following: 1. The other gender 2. Children 3. Strangers 4. Spouses or girl/boy friends 5. Roommates

Write them in your journal.

Now taking the list of pet peeves and irritations: label the opposite of how they should be if you could fix them! Record this list in your journal.

Take a moment and share any of the fix up examples that you would care to with your group.

This next part I don’t really expect you to believe but let me plant a few seeds if you will…

The characteristics we dislike in others, that create discomfort and anger or dislike in us are merely reflections of un-owned parts and defended feelings within ourselves.

The people in our life, who irritate us and make us feel uncomfortable, give voice and energy to the thoughts and feelings that we have toward fragmented parts of self. These feelings can be invitations to explore our own wholeness.

These very irritating people can invite us to explore and heal if we are wise enough to accept their invitations. We typically ignore the invitation and become further defended… Life is patient though and it will wait… the invitation will be recycled over and over again in the hopes somebody awakens.

The other people in our life become a mirror for our own souls. When you remove the offense from your own inner sanctuary of self, it will surprisingly disappear in others.

“Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnst thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. Romans 2:1

Major issue: Why do we have the energy about the quality?

The truth of self… Self discovery and awareness can be a troubling process. The energies that we project onto others protect us from feeling the sadness of perceiving our self as small, insignificant and of not much consequence.

The Paradox: We are anything but small, insignificant and inconsequential but we don’t yet know, how to discover the treasure. That’s the reason our energies scare us so much… we are afraid the energies of sadness, fear and anger will confirm our worst fears about ourselves… so we project them on others.

These lessons will address some aspect of the defended heart and will invite you to explore a little deeper for solving the riddle of self. Sorry, but this would have been so much better with people to have shared it with.

the end