There’s a challenge!
I’ve been reading an interesting book on relationships by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks - Conscious Loving.
To where I have read to date, the message is that we need to become conscious about our relationships otherwise our unconscious mind will automatically be attracted to situations which we have faced in the past in an attempt to get the resolution we sought then - now. If that makes sense.
So the son who lost his mother at the age of 3, who was then fostered by an aunt who died, now finds that he terminates every relationship he has with a woman because at an unconscious level he wants to avoid being abandoned again.
My question is, how do we become conscious; how do we become more self aware without becoming self obsessed? Surely too much navel gazing is as bad for us as not enough?
Perhaps I should finish reading the book and hope that all will be revealed 
In the past I have worked with women who have been victims of abusive relationships (and I know men are also abused…….I just have no first hand experience to quote from there, but I would consider it an honour if you would join the discussion here) and have been saddened to watch them apparently heal and do so much inner work only to almost instantly fall back into the victim cycle once again.
I think, unless this is something you have experienced yourself, it is hard to appreciate how it can possibly happen.
So, I can accept that a heightened awareness is required and that a level of consciousness is required but I do not want to spend all the time thinking about myself and my own needs, hence my original question.
Any suggestions?
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Oh, I’m all over this one!
I have a suggestion for you on how to see yourself without getting obsessed with yourself.
Take a time-out sometime today and make a list of some of the ways you see yourself. Are there any patterns there in those self-images? Are there any underlying beliefs about who you think you are in these images you see of yourself? Way down deep inside, what do you believe about yourself?
This is difficult for people to understand — but, can you comprehend that all the things you believe about yourself have no truth or reality?
That is the truth, you know! All those things you believe about yourself are nothing more than stories you and others have been telling you about yourself. This could go all the way back to early childhood when someone close to you told you about yourself. (I have a great example of this to demonstrate what I’m saying, but it’s too long to put into this comment.)
These stories feel true to you because you believe them. Yet, nothing you believe about yourself is, in essence, true. All these beliefs have shaped your life and your experience of your life. These beliefs are powerful - but they get their power only because you believe them.
Unless you can see that you are not the self-images you are living out, it will be difficult to see who you really are, which has no image attached to it whatsoever.
In Peace, my dear friend!