Reflecting
I suspect that reflecting is pretty much a basic part of our biology. How
often do we give ourselves the space to go there, however?

When reflection is stalled (or not happening in a balanced, spontaneous
way) I think there are routines, scripts, needs, fears, beliefs and so forth
getting in "it's" way... getting in our way...

Reflecting is most translucently who and how we can experience
ourselves. Reflecting, meditating, contemplating - being in Flow - is a
start to accessing your Middle - that Detached Enthusiastically
Initiating and Observing Self.

If I reflect here on, for instance, the writing/building of this website from
February through April 2006, my first impulse is to "thank my wife for
her indulgence of me" while I spent many long hours
plugged in to my computer to put this together.
Call this reflection layer one.

That first reflection here says lots about my personal programming... I
once counted for instance that both my parents would use the word
"sorry" every second or third sentence! If I delve further (reflect below
how I have my own version of that sorry script as indicated by my quasi
apology to my wife) I come to the script whereby I've always looked
primarily to actively try to take care of others . It's one type of Bridging
Autopilot Persona style - a first layer of what I can reflect on.

If I leave it there - i.e. I don't reflect more deeply - I won't get very far in
self awareness because in that first reflection a balanced sense of myself
is only peripheral... On the other hand I could also find a layer where I
am grandiosely hoping to enlighten the world! If I stayed in that alternate,
second personal script I could accuse myself of being a simplistic fame
seeker. It's when I delve deeper than either of those types of layers of
reflection that I will start to be able to find more...

There is a similarity then to the Russian Dolls analogy - where as we
open up one first superficial level of ourselves we find another more
refined, smaller doll within. These layers of self receding up/off into the
more detached, more comprehensive aspects of self are really part of the
classic journey into the realm of soul within us.

Other than the pragmatic focus of the contact page, each of the pages of
this site (or the OffAutopilot.com site) is an attempt to demonstrate that
you can be compromised by these Autopilot self routines - those first few
layers of the Russian Dolls - or you can go further. So if I reflect to a
next level here, I know that my Intent for this Reflecting page is to be
able to convey some of my sense of the Joy of accessing more Freedom
for self through this process of reflection (that I'm attempting to
demonstrate here!) In other words, you can find that expansiveness for
yourself (as I'm saying I daily look to find it for myself) and trying to
demonstrate that for you. This, my friends, is also how we can pull
ourselves through entrenched depression or anxiety - following the
layers... Particularly as you look at the four Autopilot
styles or aspects you will see that.

So although despair, anxiety, conflict, dominance and depression appear
rampant (like the threatened economic meltdown in how infectious they
seem) finding further degrees of personal freedom can also become more
possible. What I propose is that our daring to assert more personal
balanced power can generalize, we can help ourselves to transcend
what can otherwise feel like purposeless pain.

When you are Open to the unique self that You Are, balanced in the
Middle of the bickering or depressed (or whatever) sub-personalities - the
Autopilot's four styles - you can feel yourself having more freedom for
going in this or that personal direction. You are not being herded along
by your controlling Autopilot. You feel more connection with the sense
of having an INTENT in PEACE - a capacity for mindfully weighing
what option you want to actualize next.

For me, here, this website has been about giving back. I know through
this, as well, that my exploring all this as I have written it has been a
chance to further my own journey - so I thank you for that.
I sincerely hope it will have been of use to you.
Freedom Associates Therapy
Barry Johnston-Spooner, M. Ed.