The following represents the a draft of the introduction to a book I am planning to write in the future on Self Parenting:

In The Beginning There Was Awareness — Joel Rachelson, PhD

I was struggling in an attempt to figure out how to begin this book. I like to start off with basic concepts. It occurred to me then that the most basic thing at this very moment for you is that you are reading this book.]

It then occurred to me to take a minute and consider why this was. What is or has motivated you to be looking at these words right now. The result of the consideration as to why anyone would purchase a self help book seems to be a good news bad news scenario. The bad news is that you are motivated to purchase a book like this because something is wrong in your life. That you might be feeling unhappy or depressed, confused or empty, anxious or driven by demons, tired of pretending or just tired of not feeling good about yourself. I am saddened if that is true for you and saddened that the absence of a chronic sense of happiness and confidences seems to be so pervasive for so many.

This unfortunate pervasive unhappiness is not really all that surprising if we consider the lack of training or modeling that is given in order to show us how to be happy, satisfied, or interpersonally successful.

The good news is that you are to be congratulated for not being content to be dissatisfied and passively stuck. You are obviously committed and willing to finding answers for yourself.

And that’s exactly what I propose in this book. The goal of this book is to provide a user friendly classroom so that you can become an expert student of yourself. The first lesson or requirement of this class on SELF 101 is awareness.

You obviously are interested enough for whatever reason, to take significant steps to increasing your awareness.

You are taking steps to begin you or keep you on what I think is the most important path you can take in this life. This is the path of expanding awareness and self knowledge.

It means being awake and more conscious about yourself and those around you.

Being awake, aware and self knowledgeable has many important benefits such as:
· Increased confidence, security and serenity
· Increased capacity for personal and professional success
· Increased connectedness and spiritual clarity
· Increased capacity for selflessness and generosity
· Increased interest/thirst for self knowledge and more personal and spiritual growth
· Increased ease, effectiveness, and satisfaction in interacting with loved ones

It is a little unsettling and somewhat frustrating to consider that most are content to remain ignorant of themselves. Many people, for a variety of reasons do seem to have an avoidance of self knowledge or an allergy to looking inside.

It seems ironic or not very smart that we don’t spend time learning how to operate our own personal life vehicle. Would you try to operate a vehicle (or anything where we spend all of our time) that you didn’t understand without studying it first. Yet our culture seems to support this avoidance or continued ignorance by not encouraging much in the way of increased awareness or self knowledge.

Why don’t they teach self understanding at school or at home? (Or even on TV--a game show perhaps?)

How are you supposed to know how to work with yourself when you don’t know yourself?

This, of course, is not a new question.

“Know Thyself?”
If I knew myself, I’d run away. — Goethe

But still, what would your life be like today if you had had someone teach you about how to know yourself and understand yourself? The clients I work with come in struggling not only with wounds and life problems, but also with a profound lack of skill at how to fix themselves.

OK, fix themselves seems too mechanical, but most don’t seem to know how to even begin to solve their dilemmas, unhappiness, or stuck places.

Not only is there a felt inability to solve problems, there is also a felt ignorance, ineptitude, and anxiety about looking inside to begin to figure things out.

How can we fix the car if we won’t even open up the hood! And if I’m anxious about what I’ll find or think it’s futile is it any wonder why so many don’t bother.

However, the consequences of self ignorance are many and devastating. Lack of vital information leaves one destined to repeat painful mistakes and perpetrate hurt on those around us, especially those we love.

Why wouldn’t people want to take steps to finding a better life and increased happiness. It may take work and may not always be easy, but I don’t think people are inherently lazy.

Hence, again, the purpose of this book.

The first purpose of this book is to consistently encourage and cheerlead the path of increasing self awareness and waking up.

The second purpose of this book is to give a fairly simple guide to your interior.

What I call this is giving you a road map of your insides with a set of operating instructions.

My hope is that having a map will make approaching yourself and becoming your own expert more appealing and easy.

Make you more willing to open up the hood and even be able to diagnose yourself, tune yourself up and with help give yourself a major overhaul.

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