i doubt myself sometimes
i imagine most of us do
here are some self-doubting stories my mind conjures sometimes:
âno one caresâ
âno one even reads or watches your stuff anymore, JBâ
âyou supposedly have thousands of email subscribers but almost no one takes the time to reply, comment, or like any of your posts so probably the vast majority arenât even paying attentionâ
âyouâre too weird at this point; your stuff is too âout thereâ; no one can relateâ
âyouâre too Christian for the New Agers and too New Age for the Christiansâ
âppl perceive you as being lost in ânondual lala landâ rather than writing about grounded things that rly matterâ
âno one believes in what you have to offerâ
âyou are irrelevant and will gradually fade into total obscurityâ
âppl feel like youâre just writing a bunch of useless mystical fluff even tho you feel like youâre repeatedly writing about the only antidote that could ever heal our civilization: Divine Loveâ
âyouâre just shouting into the voidâ
âyouâre trying to share the Good News but itâs falling on deaf earsâ
âyouâve spent so much time building things online and the internet isnât even realâ
âyouâre a jokeâ
âyouâre washed upâ
âppl think youâre crazyâ
âyou suck and no one likes youâ
how do i work with this doubt-energy?
this list of doubts might make my mind seem like a pretty damn hostile place
thankfully i donât rly experience it that way most of the time
i used to experience a lot more anxiety & self-doubt but this (along with chronic shame/guilt) decreased by about ~90% on one of my first ayahuasca retreats in 2018 and never returned to prior levels â tho there can be occasional flare-ups
most of the time my mind is not generating these types of signals
sometimes it is tho â especially if i get hit with a ~random wave of depressive energy
this happened to me a few days ago and i noticed feelings/thoughts similar to those described above
thankfully thought-based stories (and their associated feelings) donât hold the same weight or sway over me as they used to
donât get me wrong: they can still be pretty sticky or bothersome at times but they arenât taken as seriously and tend to dissolve or be âseen throughâ much faster
(iâll be releasing a video soon on transcending the addiction to thought, you can prolly watch the unpublished version here if you like)
essentially: if you really deeply see through thought at some point, thought loses a lot of its power over you
even seeing through thought one time can be very powerful, though repeatedly seeing through it is naturally even more powerful
by âseeing through thoughtâ i essentially mean:
1) seeing that all thoughts are finite constructs that cannot ever come close to containing infinite reality, and ideally
2) deeply/viscerally feeling/experiencing the reality of Infinite Love & Wholeness that is ever-present and entirely beyond thought
at this point i have seen through thought and directly experienced Infinite Loving Wholeness countless times â i can do this more or less âat willâ nowadays
this has resulted in a life where i simply do not â and almost cannot â take thought very seriously anymore
i hold a tenderness in my heart for thought: itâs a beautiful & useful tool
but itâs also just such a low-fidelity medium that is instinctively ~only concerned with a linear interpretation of a âstory of meâ⌠it seems to primarily try to come up with highly-reductive linear stories to justify or make sense of whatever emotions are being experienced in the body (often further generating or reinforcing those feelings in a looping process)
essentially thought is intrinsically vastly inaccurate
the best use of thought is basically to train yourself to utilize thought/words to attempt to convey the non-linear all-present reality of Godâs Love
though the cosmic joke is that this is kind of like attempting to fit trillions of galaxies into a 2-d cave painting or a sequence of guttural monkey-howls
the medium cannot come close to containing the message â but itâs fun to try anyway
presence is key.
âthere is no basis for preferring one thing over anotherâ â Peter Brown
this cryptic-yet-genius statement of Peterâs points to the common denominator of all experience
it points to what all experience is made of:
Presence.
in a profound sense all experience is the same: it is all an Unknown Radiant Emanation Of Pure Presence
(in other important [human] senses this sameness is not the case, but attuning to the level of sameness can be a very powerful spiritual tool)
when you are afflicted by self-doubting thoughts, the solution is not found at the level of thought. it is found by dissolving all thought into Pure Presence.
our culture does not teach us this, and so we usually try to find thought-based solutions to afflictive thought-loops â but this tends to only strengthen the loop/cage
seeing through thought and returning to That All-Presence In Which All Thoughts And Questions Dissolve, is the actual solution
itâs also often important to feel fully whatever feelings in the body are associated with the thoughts; often thought-loops are a signal that there is a repressed wound in the body that is trying to surface to be felt fully and released; it is much easier to allow this to occur from a space of Pure Presence
my approach
so essentially when iâm experiencing self-doubting thought-energy, i donât grant it much power to begin with, because iâve repeatedly seen through thought
when i notice it, i basically allow it to be seen through and surrendered to Pure Presence
i generally allow âmyselfâ to melt into / unify with Pure Presence, attempting to fully feel anything that is needing to be felt
this is the ideal; iâm not saying iâm always perfect at this â and like i said sometimes afflictive thoughts/feelings can still be sticky or heavy for me
but generally i feel ~exponentially more Free from thought-based self-doubt than i used to
this is just one of ~endless examples of the practicality of the mysticâs path
sometimes i also utilize other thought-based stories to help counterbalance self-doubt â or to âreplaceâ âlimiting beliefsâ with more empowering stories
for example, i might gently affirm to myself (or inner child) that much of my creative/mystical/shamanic/bridging work is âahead of its timeâ â to the point where it is often even triggering or befuddling for other ~advanced spiritual practitioners who encounter it â and that therefore itâs understandable that many of my messages are only meant to resonate deeply with a small percentage of presently-living humans
i have to be kinda careful with this type of affirmation though, as it can easily devolve into simply another compensatory mechanism of puffing up the âegoâ
tho when utilized wisely/humbly, affirmations or ânew beliefsâ can be powerful seeds to plant in the soils of oneâs psyche/beingness
generally tho, for me there seems to be no substitute for surrendering everything to Pure Presence / Christ Fire
this seems to be inherently the most humbling approach, as it has a devotional quality and takes the focus entirely off of the âselfâ â giving everything to God
from Pure Presence it is then resoundingly clear that it does not matter how many âfollowersâ one has or how many people one âreachesâ with oneâs messages
if even one soul is reached in a pure way, this is already a great victory
and even if zero souls receive or are touched by a given message, this does not matter if your own soul was moved in the crafting of something true
if your own soul is touched or transformed in the channeling of something that is true, real, and pure in your heart, this is already very powerful
ultimately what will shift this Earth-realm into purer timelines of Peace is most fundamentally *what we are BEING & the energy we are channeling/emanating here*
it is vastly better to be who you truly are and reach one person than it is to live a lie and have 100,000,000 followers
because when you are True, you become transparent to Grace and can act as a pure instrument for the Music of Innocence to flow into this realm
and when you are doing that, it does not matter if anyone is physically watching or hearing itâfor you are prayerfully and shamanically assisting in healing the collective body/psyche/being, even if no one else consciously understands that you are doing so
so create freely and truly, oh beautiful child of God
and do share some of it with us
because we are indeed dying of thirst
thirst for God
thirst for Truth
thirst for Love
thirst for Naked Honesty
Love,
J
p.s. today i realized gmail has unfortunately been marking ~all email-replies to me as âspamâ for a ~long time. i am now trying to reverse this. deep apologies if i never replied to you, i probably did not see your words if you replied via email. better to comment on substack; or feel welcome to email me directly again at jordan.bates1991 [at] gmail [dot] com.
all Love always <3
p.p.s. Happy Birthday to my daughter Lila who is 4 years old today! : )
p.p.p.s. applications are open for another ~8 days for Brothers of the Ever Innocent Heart. i may extend the deadline another ~week so that i can host one or two free menâs circles before closing the gates again. if you feel a spark to be part of a pure-hearted tribe of men supporting one another to rise to Live Truth, apply here brother <3