“When you are without thoughts, without needs, without wants, without desires, then you are God. You are the Universe. You are Divine Love. You are beautiful.”
– Robert Adams
It’s never ending: the internal chatter.
But, most of it is predisposed to shielding you from understanding who you are.
I don’t mean your name, but something more fundamental.
So much of what is written under the label ‘personal development’ is nothing of the sort. It’s superficial, and does nothing to develop us. (In any event, how many people have you met who’ve read a seminal text in this area and turned their lives around? I’ve yet to meet a single person.)
We are our thoughts. And that’s where the journey starts, and ends…
Instead of trying positive affirmation or visualisation, consider watching your thoughts. In other words, don’t let your thoughts control every emotion.
It’s much harder than you think, even allowing for the fact that you’re unlikely to try it!
Very often we react to the first thing that comes into our mind. But, in case you haven’t noticed, it sets up a pattern of behaviour that is self-destructive. I should know because that is how I’ve been living my life. A thought would appear, and I felt duty bound to do something with it:
Career: work harder
Success: buy more things
Love: not being vulnerable
Passion: overwhelmed by a sense of doing
My life now is on a different path:
Acceptance
Whole love
No mind
Presence
Peace
Non-striving
Allowing things to be
For the majority of people, some of these sound ridiculous; but just imagine a world where your mind was quiet, even for a few minutes. What a joy that would be.
Perhaps it’s an age thing, but I’ve yet to meet someone who, having committed their life to cubicle nation, has come alive to who they are. Instead, they live a life devoid of purpose, passion and meaning.
I recognise in positing this message, I’m going out on a limb. Who wants to hear about dropping the pretence of achieving and allowing things to be?
But, I fundamentally believe that, instead of living inside our heads, we should allow things to be. By doing so, we would move closer in the direction of self-realisation. (I’m loathed to say happiness as that term has become so overladen with Western thinking. Perhaps being at peace. Or contentment with our place in the world.)
I would like to think that we are on the cusp of a revolution. One where people didn’t follow the history of old. But I don’t think anything revolutionary is going to happen as too many people have too much invested in the status quo. However, if you value your life, start looking inside rather that without. After a lifetime of looking, I now recognise the folly of succumbing to the controlling mind. To be clear, I don’t expect to quiet my mind completely, but I do expect to better understand the idea of presence and living in the moment.
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