Intro
Until a few years ago, I was my worst critic. I never ran short of negative self judgement. I kinda felt there were other ways to do things, but it seemed like everybody else around me did it, so I thought, well, who am I to do otherwise? Not to be mistaken for a conformist. I did it my way. 🙂 But I was living in the mind.
I’m not gonna go into the how and why I got there, because I would probably need to write a book to tell the whole story. But I can give you a glimpse of what it looks like, and what I think of it, as I am still shaking off the last bits and cutting off the last strings of the burden that it has built around me and my life, while being attached to it. Some may even be feeling a bit of relatableness 🙂 So grab a cup of tea, this will be, at times, a bit… chilly.
I know how cruel the life of those living only in the mind is, because I did it too, for a long time.
It’s a cold place, which you constantly try to warm up with ego things and you never quite manage to.
Every time you think you made it, something, someone bigger, faster, stronger, will dwarf you.
It’s the way of the world, the natural process of growth. And yet, when you are in the mind and live off the land of ego, nothing will soothe the pain, since you only play for the first, spotless place.
Anything which starts with the second place and goes downwards, is for losers.
Sure, this way to live and be has made our race stronger… or did it?
Did we learn to keep our tears inside? Are we more ourselves now?
Are we pleased?
Outcomes and underlayings
Poverty, violence, war, racism, old laws that cause injustice, pollution, intolerance, disease.
The personal dramas, the natural catastrophes,
a picture of an earth that seems to forgive the bad and punish the good.
Yet, these are not the real problems, in the sense that they are not unsurpassable. All these things have solutions. Real ones.
On paper, everybody knows them. Sadly, in practice, there’s something underneath them, which constantly sabotages their fulfillment: the underlying ones. Instead of allowing ourselves to thrive and soar, our efforts seem like stones in a game of backward Tetris, unconsciously dissolving everything that’s on top. Those underlying problems aren’t complicated, and not hard to understand, but we lack the muscle for it; and they are simple in fact: we don’t take care of our bodies and we live in the mind. Sounds too easy, doesn’t it? You would think that we are here for higher purposes, right? Well, what if that higher purpose would start to reveal its true nature only after you solved these first two?
Vessels of life
If we would just take a moment, and stay still, and reflect.
I’m not sure which is worst, ignoring your body or believing you are your mind.
Both however make a recipe for disaster.
We think that we don’t have to listen to our bodies, but to everything else around them; when actually, the Universe is within us too. We know what we need, so that we can function at an optimal level. But we just don’t want to. We can’t. We need to many permissions, it has to first be all over the news. We need a campaign and a montage!
Denying the very space inside of us, and its requirements, is what leads to the primary structure on which we sew our negative emotions, bad feelings and unwanted outcomes.
Nothing would be simpler, and yet more effective, than to turn inside. Yet somehow, most of us spend a lifetime running away from it, in this mad quest for an ever-eluding picture of happiness and what we are taught it should be.
In a fast paced world, nobody seems to have the time for such un-graspable matters.
When did we decide that this formula would be good for ourselves:
don’t eat natural foods
don’t drink water
don’t get fresh air and sun
don’t get enough sleep?
Not listening to our bodies is actually not listening to the divine power that created us, call it whatever you fancy. We tool and harden them, instead of loving them. It seems easier, although it’s a bad long-term management decision. In time, it will prove to be harder.
Why do we do it?
because for so many years, we have been taught how to imitate an ideal that serves the industrial type of productivity, we scheduled our hours and efficiency, trying to imitate machines.
- are you sick? get a pill and get back to work.
- you want not-junk-food? what, what’s wrong with fries for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
- and of course, my favourite: you can sleep when you’re dead.
A German might call me a Greek. But this is not about disproving what already is, it’s just to ask: what do we really still need?
We ignore the little signals until they become a huge cry, then we go to the doctor and get quick fixes or permanent ones. Society loves sacrifice stories, but do we still need them to feel worthy?
Servants
Back to the mind: when you only live in it, or mostly in it, you make a choice of being its servant, instead of making it your servant. Everything has to be a challenge, in order to reaffirm your choice; a mountain, something to be conquered. Stillness is death.
We have an overly masculine approach on everything, even though femininity is the symbol for creation, creativity and nurturing, thus for positive growth.
Maybe applying a few feminine principles would spare us greatly of the negative outcomes we face.
Maybe the two, the masculine and the feminine, should be sewed in a more balanced manner into most decisions, if not all decisions. How would the world look then?
One paradox of the mind is that, although it doesn’t have all the facts, it behaves as though it has only the negative possible ones. Then, it shuts down or ignores the communication with the heart, and makes perfect excuses for distrusting it all. God forbid we should accept we need attention or to love ourselves, before we first hammer ourselves into avoiding to acknowledge that. It’s an acquired reflex. There’s no need for a teacher or a supervisor, we can punish the self and the others without any help. What’s better than persecution? Self-persecution. We’ve become masters of the blaming game, always on a lookout for possible candidates, that we can offer some home-made anger treats to.
We embrace the ego so tightly and then ask the divine to give us answers for why our lives aren’t better than they are. We like greed, envy, jealousy, to be possessive, to control and manipulate; we think maybe if we keep going like that, we will somehow imitate true power. They’re like artificial sweeteners and hydrogenated fats in your desert, a brief somewhat pleasurable taste, but then they damage all tissues they come in contact with…
Mindfulness? slow food? grinding your own coffee? meditation? Ain’t nobody got time for that!
A shadow of reason
We’ve become so skilled into shooting our own dreams down.
When did we decide the power to change is not ours?
When did we outsource responsibility?
At what point did we accept to be in a constant state of unworthiness?
Was it when philosophers first came to be, when they seemed to be people destined to solve problems which required (more) time to think?
It seemed deep thinking and rabbit holes were for philosophers, creativity was for artists, building houses was for masons, and the matters of the spirit were for priests and monks.
Did that left the rest of the people with in-between jobs (purposes)?
Do we go to fortune tellers and truly expect them to map out our next moves, when in truth, the map is inside us, and we, subconsciously or consciously, draw it ourselves as we go?
Was it in our education over the years, the mentality that brought us to record and execute, but not to understand?
Why do we let our bodies and our lives to something else other than our own hands?
We settled for less. Probably because it seemed easier to appear as victims, than to appear as anything stronger than that.
Responsibility means accountability, nobody wants that. The victim cannot be guilty, right?
We’ve mistaken instincts for feelings, and to be powerful with being destructive or unchangeable.
More questions
Why is it so hard for people to fight for what they know is best for them?
Is it because they don’t know they can ask for it?
Are we afraid of being called “lazy”, “a wuss”, “a rebel”? What’s the label you fear most?
Who do you need permission from to be yourself and claim your right to wellbeing?
The demons that live inside and around you need your permission too. They feed primarily on fear. They grow stronger with each dive into anger, and each fake desert you have.
And at what point did the mind became the only seemingly reliable tool?
“Here’s a soul: now go on living like you don’t have one.” Wouldn’t we all be just brains? How creepy would that be?
Eventually
We should understand that we have been given a sacred space and vessel of communication, and that we are obligated to care for it the best way we can.
We should see that only in this space we share the management position with the power that created us.
We should understand that having a brain does not mean we only have that. The mind is but a servant. Someone said that the mind is the captain that stirs the boat, but not the boat itself.
We are a resonating space, that when let to it, goes in tune with all universal forces. Being there for ourselves is what gives way for that to happen.
We are the ones that shut down the opportunities which lie on the other side of victimhood.
Our bodies are meant to move us and hold our spirits.
Stepping across that line between fear and manifestation of our inner gifts is what drives the human spirit after all. Caring for yourself is caring for the way you care for others. When you are not whole, you can’t give the same way you would as when being that way.
Let the bridges between your heart and your mind reconnect. Let them go together. Then tie back the loose ends of your body’s needs, these are two gifts you can give yourself anytime, that no one else can give you. Make yourself whole again, that is how you first came here anyway.
Versiunea în română: https://soulpatterns.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/doua-lucruri/
