The Censor… Oh Will You Shut Up Please?!

   

What might this censor be that I clearly want to do away with? It’s me… well sort of. Now before you decide to wrestle me into a white coat and check me into a loony bin, hear me out. As we go through life we are often told that we cannot trust ourselves and that the innate feeling(s) within, that gives us gentle guidance is selfish or self-serving, wrong and any other manner of non-positive things. We are 'guilted' (I did indeed say guilted) out of trusting and caring for ourselves, in lieu of a more acceptable view that society, our parents, our teachers, etc would prefer to impose upon us, so that we will be more willing to do for others than for ourselves.

As we spend life learning to trust the “wisdom” of others instead of the guidance of our own personal source from within, we begin to accept the outside “wisdom” as our own, learning to disregard the innate true wisdom from within. This “wisdom” (like how I keep putting that in quotes?) is the censor. It has inherently become a part of us, some call it the human mind, ego, logical brain, you know, that place where we store all the info we’ve learned and observed as to what is supposed to be right according to the approved standards of others (teachers, church, government, parents, etc). Over time this voice begins to drown out the natural inclination of the true wisdom within. This is the voice that tells us we are “Selfish” (yes with a capital 'S') for not putting the needs and desires of others before our own. It tries to tell us what we can and can’t do based on what feels “safe” not based on what feels “right.” The censor is us being mean to ourselves because that’s what we’ve learned to do.

I like to mentally and sometimes verbally slap my sensor around when she rears her meanie poo little head. I imagine her as a miniature clown, with a white pointed hat, topped with a large puffball. A painted face with, oversized red circles on each cheek… and a self esteem issue. The more I try to ignore her the louder she tries to be, wanting to force me to remain locked in the familiar (because that’s what society has told me I should do, stay in my place right?) vs wanting me to grow and expand into the unknown. When she gets too loud, I envision her just as I described above and I laugh at her. The imagery is too silly, to do anything but. Sometimes I even imagine myself laughing directly in her face, especially when she is trying to do her worst and then it's all the more fun imagining her shocked face at my disdain regarding her down-talk.

Lately I have come to realize that, yes this is all something that is a part of me, but it did not originally come from me, and it is something I can acknowledge and change in order to be nicer to myself.

The next time you find that censor flaring up, you’ll know, because the internal talk will be guilt-ridden and negative, words and phrases to bring you down and diminish you, try to steal the power from it. Tell that voice to simmer down, so the quiet voice of source can be heard above the ruckus.