Having read the above you go 'Are you having a laugh?! Not in my situation. Forget it!' I hear you. And you are right. It cannot happen in your situation, in your world, how you are CURRENTLY perceiving it. Unless, of course, you open yourself to the idea that change is possible and understand why currently it isn't the case.
Our mind has been programmed to protect us against threats, to ensure we survive in this world. Growing up this was re-enforced by parental conditioning as our parents were worried about us. We have been 'trained' our whole life to spot anything untoward. Anything bad, NEGATIVE, which could potentially harm us. Therefore our learnt way of being is focusing on negativity. We have become really good at noticing what is wrong with our life. Where it ISN'T working, how we and others are not enough. We learned to look for the shadows instead of the light...
Our conditioning is also happens to be the reason behind our mind-heart BALANCE being off due to our disproportionately overgrown sense of False Self - our Ego. We THINK more than we FEEL with respect to ourselves and the world around us.
By losing our feeling, we lost touch with our true nature.
Letting our overreactive minds drive our life, we drown ourselves in FEAR which pushes us to act AGAINST our true nature, against our deepest desires. Against true fulfilment and joy.
Being constantly on high alert the beauty of life simply slips away in between our thoughts. Residing in our heads, anxiously scanning our environment for potential danger, is paradoxically making us totally oblivious to life inside and around us. We walk around blind and numb, thinking ourselves into unconsciousness. Our heads full of imaginary rubbish, we worry about our existence, yet we are already dead...
Awakening is re-training our way of perceiving.
Life happens through feeling. Realising that we are simply ASLEEP, is the first step towards change. We must MUTE our thinking and turn up our feeling. To awaken our CONSCIOUSNESS, our ability to notice.. Notice that our mind has become our worst enemy, instead a servant, eroding our sense of Self and consciousness. It is a necessary realisation on our journey to regaining our power. Which can be either unpleasant, scary, discontent, filled with negativity, OR pleasant, fearless, positive and peaceful. If we prefer the latter, we need to turn away from the mind and towards our heart. We have to learn to trust our senses and turn every moment of your daily existence into positive, fulfilling experience. Into immense pleasure, joy, ecstasy.
There are occasions which TRANSCEND our thoughts and which we aren't aware of in a state of sleep (spiritually speaking). We naturally switch off our heads whilst observing something inspiring, intriguing, or shockingly beautiful; when we experience an orgasm, or stare at wonders of nature.
By turning up our senses and consciously observing - WITHOUT thinking, we start to see just how much we are missing in every moment, during every breath we take. In time our brain becomes accustomed and will naturally move away from fear and danger connected negativity. We align with our true nature feeling more CONTENT.
Unhappiness is the INABILITY to feel the good, the positive, the amazing. So to make our journey and life beautiful we have to be able to:
A/ Live in the Now.
B/ Learn to look for the beauty in whatever we do, wherever we are.
C/ Practice appreciation for our experiences.
We have to drop focusing on the LACK and start seeing the world, our life and ourselves, as 'a glass half full' instead of empty. By dropping judgement and comparing, with practicing gratitude, we start to grasp what it feels like to be happy to be alive. As we start to see every day as a gift, not a curse, our life fills with joy (instead of dread) and we become the light illuminating the darkness of others.
EXERCISE FOR YOU: Look around you. Pick an object (a person, tree, animal), pick a scenery, or look at the sky. See the colours and their intensity, smell the scents in the air, listen to the background noise, feel the breeze. Let your mind go blank. Relinquish any commentary your mind proposes you engage in and just feel...Take it all in and PRACTICE staying with it! Notice when you zoom out of the scene back into your mind and how that makes you feel.
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2016 Michaela Patel