Evolving who we are: How I found My True Self In Nature

 Are you comfortable in your own skin and is the skin you are in truly yours? Are you aware of your true nature? I felt like I have been a deep slumber all my life and now just have awoken to life as I did not know who I really was.

“When you stop living your life based on what others think of you real life begins. At that moment, you will finally see the door of self acceptance opened.”
― Shannon L. Alder

Humanity. We are easily manipulated into conformity. Easily manipulated since birth into becoming  who we are and as to what we need to be. We are easily influenced by society, by family,  by friends, by a TV as it sells us an image.

Furthermore, We conform to a image because we now we live to impress others as this world has become a materialistic world. We often get lost in the confusion of who we are deep down inside and get lost in the quest of finding our true self, our true nature.

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

On our path in this journey we often struggle with finding our true selves as we become confused in the chaos in our minds. Starts from that young age when we are in school and where we want to fit in.

We choose our friends and join their circle as we mold our world around theirs. Now we want to be interested in the same things they are and wear the same things they wear. It branches off further as media tells you what you should wear, what you should eat and drink and ultimately THINK.

We dress to impress, wear what we think is the trend and what it is we should be wearing. Everything is a fad and we must put ourselves in these boxes. We wear this and that and belong to this group and now we have become just labels.

Oh he is a rocker, he is hip hop, oh he has a beard and believes in peace and love , he must be a hippie. If he smokes cannabis, he must be a rasta and blah blah blah.

I never thought the way I do now. It is an evolution of who I am now and of what is to come.  I was part of that conformed mindset as we all are. We allow our minds to be contained in a glass jar, molded like clay putty.  Subconsciously, I was always trying to impress others that  I forgot to impress myself.

Deep down inside there was this layer of who I am now. I was into saving the environment in my early teens. Now decided to be the guardian of the beaches and rivers here in Puerto Rico.

There were traces of who I am, but as I grew older I allowed myself to sway away from who I should have been by those layers of conformity. Where I allowed my mind to remain dormant, to remain comfortably numb.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must strive to become who we should become, that is to say, evolving to a better you. Then again who is to say that what you would become is not just another level of conformity?

I think ultimately is how you feel in your skin and I am not speaking about your outside layer, I speak about deep down inside.

There are many layers upon layers that we grow accustomed to not realizing the many mask that we continue to wear. Mask disguising our true nature.

I believe that these layers or mask that we wear are the shackles from our true selves. As Sadhguru wrote in one of the blogs I posted about what is Spirituality.

“I like solitude. It is when you truly hear and speak your natural, unadulterated mind, and out comes your most stupid self as well as your most intelligent self. It is when you realize who you are and the extents of the good and the evils which you are capable of.”
― Criss Jami

Finding myself in nature

I think we must unplug everything and escape our bodies. Go out in solitude to a place in nature and get lost in introspection. I believe solitude is true freedom. In solitude is when you find your true self.

In the solitude of nature without the distractions is where I found myself.

Growing my own food also thought me many life lessons and thought me many things of myself.

I also quit drinking over 5 years ago which helped me get more in tune with myself. Where as Before I used to numb my mind with alcohol. Click here to read why quitting alcohol was the best decision I ever made.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

— Henry David Thoreau

We should not only strive to be our own unique selves. But strive to better who we are as the souls that are trapped in these bodies.

Strive to shed the negativity that have weighed us down. Strive to be better humans so that we could better our world. It’s all about taking a journey deep down to your inner soul.

I also think there has been a shift in consciousness happening all over this world. Where people are finding themselves and are breaking free from the box that has contained them.

More souls are finding their inner voice and that is something we should strive for. To find that voice, to find what makes us so uniquely special in our own ways. Be your own person without the strings that has strung us along.

Further, we should strive to follow our own paths without being persuaded into detours.

We must release the fear we have of being ourselves instead of wearing a mask of what we want people to perceive us to be.

We fear rejection, we fear not being liked and so we live a life trying to impress everyone. Instead of impressing others we should be impressing ourselves.

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.”
― Lao Tzu,

I used to live chasing material things, now I live for the natural things. For the beauty around us and for the beauty of who I truly am.

We think the clothes we wear would make us happy. We think the lifestyle we choose based on the influence of others would make us happy. It is all a perceived happiness. A happiness that we tell ourselves to be as we live a life just lying to ourselves never realizing it.

“One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.”
― Shannon L. Alder

All the clothes, accessories and material things are not what ultimately makes us happy. It’s looking in the mirror completely naked and being happy with the reflection you see.

Being uniquely beautiful in your own way. No matter how you think society views you.

You are uniquely beautiful. There are no flaws, only the flaws of what society has become, diluted, vain and shallow as I once was. Only the flaws of what has become our manipulated mind and perception.

Remove the mask and set yourself free from the limitations of who you are deep down inside to your own personal freedom.

“be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.”
― Henry David Thoreau

I love what I have become and have embraced it as I continue to shed my former self like the skin of a snake. In order to continue to build a better person and become the change I want to see the world be. Look to continue to Remove the layers upon layers of coating so that I could unplug myself from what was once known.

I Continue to go down the curved path that is my journey in this book that is life. Shed everything, as to become so positive that it will shine on to others rather than being as negative as I once was. Where as instead of leaving negative imprints, I now choose to leave positive ones.

“Everyone of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self..We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves. Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular. Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness….We can rise above this unreality and recover our hidden reality.”

– Thomas Merton

Looking back, deep inside I was a beautiful tarnished soul. I allowed the world to make me bitter, cold and hateful. Grew hatred for myself so I projected that hate onto others and so I lived with depression and suicidal thoughts which can read be here on how nature helped me with that.

I was a horrible being before. That was the mask hiding who I truly was because of those conformity’s in life that I allowed to shape me.

Moreover, I know if I could change who I was into becoming a better person, I believe others have it in them as well.  I was a good person hiding in the layers of destruction.

Some might be rotten down to the core that they might not ever change. But again it’s all about striving and opening our minds and ourselves to change, to evolving.

All about the next generation as well and allowing them to be free thinkers and not spoon feed them the same things that have shackled us.

Not allowing the schools and TV indoctrinate us into something other than what they want to truly be.  Ultimately, it comes down to being aware of the manipulations of our mind and awakening to a new world.  I think it’s time that the world awaken to their new world!

“make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”
― Jon Krakauer,

I have since donated my old clothes, deleted all the old music I listen to because music is something else we conform to, we listen to the music that becomes a product of our environment during our upbringing because it’s what our friends and everyone around us listens to.

Born and raised in the concrete jungle, Hip hop was my music of choice. But I won’t listen to it anymore just for nostalgia as many do. I found the music I love. Found the clothes or lack thereof, that makes me happy. I found my true nature and there are many more layers upon layers to go on this journey of self discovery and I am enjoying uncovering who I truly am like a beautiful butterfly coming out of its cocoon.

Have you found your true nature?

Is your true nature really who you are or is it a facade?

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