Find Your True Self

 I recently read an absolutely riveting story about the Golden Buddha as retold by Nick Ortner. Some of you may be familiar with his work in the field of tapping also known as EFT. He is a coach and strong proponent for the tapping solution. Here’s how the story goes.

“Over 300 years ago, as a Burmese army planned an attack to invade Thailand (then called Siam), Siamese monks who were in possession of an enormous treasure, a solid gold Buddha that today would be valued at over 200 million dollars, made a decision.

To protect the Buddha from being plundered, they covered it in 12 inches of clay.  The Burmese attackers, thinking it worthless, ignored it but sadly killed the monks.  So for over 250 years, until the mid 1950’s, this Buddha existed only as a clay Buddha.

Then, when the Buddha was being moved to a new location by a crane, it began to crack - they didn’t expect it to be so heavy.   The monks set it down, waiting for a bigger crane the next day, and covered it with a tarp to protect it from the rains.

One monk, in the middle of the night, came to check that the tarps were staying on and saw a reflection, a glimmer in the crack.  He carefully chiseled away around the crack as the glimmer grew...And then…as the clay fell away...a solid gold Buddha shone once again for the world to marvel at.”

This story got me thinking about how we often only see ourselves as a Clay Buddha because that’s all the people around us have ever told us we are. What if we dug into our core and found that we were indeed a Golden Buddha?

Just as much as you can find out about other people by speaking with them about their lives, their interests, their dreams and hopes, you can do the same for your own self. It is important to talk with yourself to find out exactly who you are.

 Mirror work is a great tool to do this. Spending some time in front of the mirror each day telling yourself what you want to do, what you are grateful for, what you find challenging, can indeed make a huge difference in the quality of your life.

It is a simple but powerful tool. Most of us are well aware of it, and yet we don’t make it an everyday practice. Why are we so convinced that we can do it anytime we want to, but never seem to find the time to actually do it? Why are we so scared to look inside?

Are we worried that maybe one day we may look in the mirror and after hoping to see the clay around us crack and wash away, we will still not find the golden heart inside? Or are we just so scared that we may really be solid gold and would not know what to do with that revelation?!