“The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates
My life has changed.
Not out there but within.
In the beginning, it was about success, security and now…a beautiful unfolding where the examined life starts and ends with thought, consciousness and (universal) mind — see the works of Sydney Banks and Eckhart Tolle.
So what, I hear you say?
So bloody what?
But look around you: everyone questions their external circumstances — “I want more or less (of something)” — but they never look within.
It’s no accident that I return endlessly to the above quote: I’m deadly serious: unless we’re prepared to examine our internal monologue and sense-perceptions, do we honestly think that our life will be made better by pursuing an external agenda?
Sit with that question.
Imagine a world where you only had positive emotions (…a bit sickly I know), how different would you feel? Also, forget the ‘no mind’ diatribe; you can’t escape your mind — it will be with you until you die. Instead, understand that behind your thoughts sits a witness — I call it awareness or presence — and if you can disidentify from your thoughts, everything, and I mean everything, changes.
But of course for many people it all feels weird; no, it’s worse than that: they never question their identity beyond what’s gone before and what they or others tell them they should do.
You might think me odd for raising the question Who am I?, but until you recognise you’re not your thoughts, you’ll be stuck in an endless cycle of wants premised on what’s gone before (but only the good bits) and what you want from the future (which is just a thought in itself).
Of course, you might consider this self-inquiry discourse a pile of crap, and I’d understand if it wasn’t for the fact that as soon as the insight reaches your heart that your thoughts produce your feelings, and you recognise it’s impossible to change the external world sufficient to allow in a new state of consciousness, you’ll see how much of your life you’ve invested going in the wrong direction — outside-in.
With my so-called message, awaken, to true self, I’m not on a mission to convert anyone — hell, I lose this self-inquiry piece just as easily as I find it — but, trust me, until you question (deeply) your conditioned self (the egoic self not the true Self), you’ll never move forward with your one, precious life.
And that really is where the rubber meets the road. If you’re not willing to question your thoughts beyond their daily repetition, how your feelings arise — good and bad — and the primordial soup that gives life to everything, then you’ll have to accept you’ll be forever at the mercy of the external world for everything that comes into your life. Good luck with that one — as I now see, you can no more control the outside world as you can turn your heart on and off.
Below is a podcast I recorded yesterday to give a bit more flesh to the Three Principles’ bones; I don’t want you to think that I’ve been hijacked by some New-Age thinking. That’s not me. In fact, if I thought for a second that I was simply peddling someone else’s tired old juice, I’d throw in the towel now right now. This is me now and forever.
Do let me know what you think both to this post and the podcast.