3 Ways Self-Care Should Actually Be a Connection to the True Self

Letting go of the ego is the key to happiness, not an app.

This year is bringing some unsurprising effects on people’s mental well-being. I have heard more and more this year about the need for ‘self-care’, and a lot of people identify with apps and ready-to-go guided meditations that help them live more happily. These apps will tell you that you need to focus more, calm yourself, and be more ‘mindful’ and ‘present’.

I am here to tell you that these things are not truly self-care. They are only teaching you to be ever more attached to your ‘self’ and to the physical world that has been in existence around you all your life. This is not what you need in order to be free.

Self care is the absolutely last thing you need. Your ‘self’ is a fictional character.

If you are reading this far, you probably already know this at some level. You already know that living in the way you had been until now just wasn’t healthy. 2020 has brought this clearly into your awareness. Perhaps you know it’s because you weren’t in tune with the world and universe because, like most other people, you lived wastefully and in a way that was disconnected from your true self and the world. Or, perhaps you just sense that you were too focused on thoughts and feelings that probably don’t matter in the grand scheme of reality.

Self-care is the absolutely last thing you need. Your ‘self’ is a fictional character. You can get back to having a connection with, and complete awareness of a greater consciousness. That consciousness is truly you, and it doesn’t need care, at least not in the way ‘self-care’ is meant. You don’t need to take it to the spa for a day and give it a manicure.

You will reach a higher state of being in which ‘mental health’ seems irrelevant.

You are part of this unifying consciousness, as are we all, and you just need to re-connect with its energy. You need to live in harmony with all of existence as a result. All you have to do is open yourself to its energy. You will reach a higher state of being in which ‘mental health’ seems irrelevant. You’ll observe your mental stresses as illusions that came with the attachments you’ve been harboring.

You have to realize that ‘you’ is an illusion, as are all the things these meditation apps want you to focus on and stay attached to.

I have identified some common ideas about meditation that are often contained in modern quick-fix apps or guided meditations, and why they are not serving you in your journey to happiness and stress-free living.

1. Relaxation

There is nothing wrong with relaxation. But after relaxing, you just go back to normal life and become stressed and tense again. You’ll be in a cycle that you will never break free from until you gain the ability to be peaceful all the time. And likely, you’ll tire of the cycle and give meditation up entirely.

Total peace requires more than relaxation. That requires an act of letting go of attachments.

For example, let’s say you are stressed about a meeting at work. You turn on a guided mediation for ten minutes to calm your nerves. Your mind and body feel completely relaxed at the end of it. You enter the meeting feeling less anxious. Great. But after the meeting, you have another meeting scheduled for tomorrow, so you go to the guided meditation again for your ‘hit’ of relaxation, thinking it helped you the first time. Every meeting you have, you’ll rely on this outside source of calm to get you through it. Is that an ideal result of this kind of ‘self-care’?

All you’re doing is becoming attached to, and relying on, another thing to make you feel better instead of getting that calm from within. And the tenseness was only a symptom of your problem, anyway. Your problem was that you were attached to fear, which causes you anxiety and stress every time you have to face it. Instead, try removing your attachment to that fear and accepting the world for what it is. Meditation can help do that.

For you to try:

The next time you meditate, ask yourself: who is the one in this body, who is the one who is afraid, and how do those two things produce the negative effects in each, which you feel so desperate to escape from?

2. Focus

Focus is not what you need. Letting go of attachments to things, time, and even thoughts are going to bring you to a place you never imagined was possible, where ‘self-care’ is a concept that clearly only solves problems at a surface level. Focus is an attachment to thoughts.

Let’s imagine you are at the beginning of a relationship with a new romantic partner. You meditate by focusing on them and the situation you are in, focusing on how you feel about them. But that focus is only holding you back from a complete state of stillness and bliss that is just beyond — and not very far beyond — that feeling and thought. If you move past the feeling you are experiencing, and become truly aware, you will see the ‘focus’ you have for thoughts as an activity of the ‘surface’ version of ‘you’, and you’ll be able to very clearly observe your choices and feelings in this world.

You are stuck in a body, thinking you have a self, and that you are located at a point in time. You don’t have to be doing any of those things. Once you stop focusing on anything and remove your attachment to the things you are holding so tightly to, you will rise. You’ll be truly free.

For you to try:

Next time you meditate, ask yourself: who is the one experiencing this ‘focus’?

3. Staying Present

There is no argument here against acknowledging that you should let go of the past and stop worrying about the future. Being fully present to ‘stop and smell the roses’ is a step in the right direction. But that is still allowing you to remain attached to time.

If the past and future aren’t real, then why are we all so attached to them? We think we are located at a certain point in time and we are flowing through it, experiencing the change that it brings. The past feels out of reach and the future full of potential. Is that feeling an illusion? I argue that it is. But you should find out for yourself, and the way to do that is to not be ‘fully present.’

Completely let go of the present and any other tenses. Dissect what existence means in relation to time. Even if time is real, you can still remove your attachment to it in order to look at it more clearly. You’ll probably find that you have a lot of fear attached to the concept of time, and once you remove that fear, you can finally face reality.

For you to try:

When you are meditating next, ask yourself: what is time and what is change? How are they related?

Benefits of Meditation

Any meditation will get you closer to being a better human. Anything you do to ground yourself more in the physical and to also pull in energy from the non-physical world will be beneficial. However, you have likely only revealed to yourself a small amount of the possibilities of your mind, and attachment is what is holding you back.

Once you let go of that, you will be free. The ‘mental benefits’ of meditation will not be a concern of yours anymore since you will realize that all you’re doing in meditation is connecting with the source of energy and opening the possibilities that were always there.

So…

The people who produce guided meditations and live-stream yoga do not want you to ‘wake up’. If you achieved full awareness, and you entered a state of bliss, you would no longer feel the need to pay them for their product. You wouldn’t be attached to apps and technology anymore, and you wouldn’t be frantically searching for quick-fix solutions to all your ailments.

They will happily keep you at just the right level to retain all your attachments in this world. I am writing this to tell you that you can eliminate the attachment to those worldly things and to the self, and you don’t need anyone or anything else to do it.