Live NOW
One of the most interesting questions that you could ask yourself is: why am I doing what I am doing? Why am I doing this work, this hobby, do I have these habits. What am I heading for? As these questions will focus your attention on the purpose of your life.
Over the years you will grow accustomed to a certain way of living. You will grow into your job, there is a familiar group of friends and family you hang out with, you have a nice home, great car, and on your holidays you go to pleasant locations. You are altogether in a pleasant situation. Generally you meet the standards and values of your society and the people around you, and you are
content with it. Before you know it, you have developed a way of living in which you simply repeat things that turned out to be successful to you and your society.
A treadmill, as convenient as it may be, remains a treadmill. You find yourself in an endless series of repetitions on a well-known theme. Even an occasional change of job or environment has the same goal: use your energy to create a new situation on which you can project your old patterns, thus hoping that this time they will bring you what you vaguely hope for.
It can be very refreshing to take a break and look around you what it is that you are actually doing here. Is this what you expected your life to be? Or does it look more like camouflaging some inexplicable unpleasant feelings by covering them in what appears to be success and dynamic behaviour? A conveniently filled life that gives no rise to introspection, so you do not have to face what is really there.
Chances are that this is happening in your life, as this is the way personalities work: they create a world of standards, values, do's and don'ts, obligations with success guaranteed (either positive or negative), and will absorb your attention through and endless series of thoughts in which everything that happens is analyzed, reasoned, judged and anticipated. Only this principle is taken for granted and never questioned in itself,
and that is why we all repeat the patterns of our personalities.
Your everyday life routine usually leads to such intense activity that you hardly experience NOW anymore. You are recalling what has happened or what is about to happen. Your endless thoughts prevent you from experiencing the only moment in time that really matters: NOW. While you do something or relax, you still entertain immense discussions in your head, so you could hardly say that you are really present in the moment.
Take a look at your past. What is left of all those things that you have spent so much time working on? Some vague memories and a feeling here and there. Some pictures in a photo book. A forgotten article in a magazine. The reorganization that you worked for so hard, already has been followed by the next one. So you see, in the end it all brings you very little, except when you keep on repeating it in your head. Then you find yourself
projecting these things on whatever happens now or what you believe is about to happen. Thus you create your own reality, which in no way resembles mine or that of someone else. Why do you make yourself believe that it is objective?
So you need not "do" anything for the sake of collecting memories. Neither for a thing called "honor", since before you know it you are history, other people enter into your life who do not want to have anything to do with your line of work, you may well be pushed aside altogether, etc. And for the future you need not do it at all, since when you keep on dragging the past along to the present, your future will only be like what you
had before.
What is personal growth more than a personality that has gained more experience with a world that he created together with other people? Who gained more insight into technical issues and learned the rules of the game and adjusted himself to be able to play it?
NOW is the only thing that really matters. What it is that you are here and now determines the quality of your life. Do you insist on running around, heading for some vague goal or an end that you are likely to pass by in the same hurry that you used to reach it? Are you comfortable with a life in which you head for goals and standards of other people? Or are you about to find out that the only thing that really matters is experiencing
the present, NOW. And by experience I do not mean the endless chatter in your head that judges and hands out labels, analyzes etc. It is plain experience that remains when you stop doing that.
Only in the present can you remember your inner Self. You cannot find it in your memories. You cannot find it in the future. The only place where you can find it, is NOW, since it is a kind of experience. A memory of who you really are. In it, you will find a tremendous amount of inner Peace and Wisdom. Regardless of whatever happens outside of you. You will find it separate from all the things you identified with: your job, your
car, your money, your relations, family, standards and values etc.
Making more space for your inner Self is a process of becoming aware of what it is that you are really doing, and making a conscious choice to no longer strengthen it. Move your attention away from the standard routines of your personality and bring it inward. From that place, action will arise (or not), at least it will bring inspiration.. You cannot reason with your Self, or call for it, control it etc., it will only fill
the space that you make for it effortlessly. When you begin with this, this will ask for a great amount of trust, as your experiences with your personality are so dominant still and those with your inner Self so unfamiliar, uncontrollable and peaceful, that you should not be surprised when you find that you want to quit in no time.
You can practice this during your working hours as well as when you are in your private situation. Each situation may call forth the moment of choice for your personality or your inner Self. It is about an extra dimension to your life: learn to make mental space for your inner Self is the new way in which you want to look at a situation. It does not matter where or how you will learn to live more in the present and listen to
your inner Self. Whenever you are ready to make the first move, then the rest will follow.
Life from the perspective of your personality has no "meaning", that is why you are not too eager to answer the questions that this column started with in the first place. The choice is yours: will you continue to uphold the patterns of your personality, or are they boring and worn-out and are you ready to take the next step: remember who you really are.
| 