Are you realising that you are NOT as happy you thought you were? Feeling as though you are not living YOUR life, but someone else's like your parent's or your partner's? Admitting to yourself for the first time that the common goals most of us strive for, like having a well paid job, living in a nice house, having a family, are NOT making you feel complete? That there is STILL something MISSING? That having achieved all of what society portraits as the benchmark of happiness is NOT IT?
Do you feel unfulfilled, having fulfilled what you thought of as the pinnacle of happiness?
Do you remember saying to yourself: 'I will be happy when....' Then getting there you have realised that it hasn't brought you the happiness you have imagined?
How would you feel if I told you that you are asleep? That you are dreaming, trapped in this dream of a collective illusion of what being happy looks like? That you are indeed living an ILLUSION of happiness instead of experiencing happiness from feeling alive? What if I told you that you are living a lie, not being aware of following this collective illusion?
You may have heard of the term 'AWAKENING'. Awakening of consciousness, spiritual awakening, awakening of soul, or intelligence. You may have noticed large numbers of groups appearing on the internet, amounting to many millions of members who do not belong to any religion, cultural background, or sexual orientation. People who are not age or race defined. Groups and communities who have many differences between them but one thing in common:
They have grasped that they have been living was a LIE. They have awakened to this realisation, and their only goal is living in Truth.
You may ask: How do I know I am living a lie? How does 'living the truth' feel?
And why is it that some of us awaken to this realisation and some don't?
To understand this, I like to enlighten you on how different TRUTH FEELS from a lie.
When you are truthful you feel ALIVE. You feel content and deeply happy - there and then! Nothing else, or no one else, is NEEDED for you to be happy. You KNOW and FEEL that truth without any confirmation.
This whole issue, with us humans lying, lies at our core. It originates from NOT admitting to ourselves how we truly feel deep down. When we are truthful with ourselves we are automatically truthful with others.
Happiness is simple believe me. But there is a catch. Although it is straightforward to start living happily at any given moment, RIGHT NOW, to express our truth DOESN'T come easy to us....
Why? Because we are not skillful in practicing it.
Firstly, we accumulate so many lies (created by ourselves, and acquired/learned) along our journey that we are not sure what the truth is anymore.
Secondly, we are worried about how others are going to react to us telling them how we REALLY feel about things. We are scared of their emotions as much as we are scared of our own. Of course we are.... How can we skilfully manage the emotions of others when we don't know how to manage our own?!
Firstly, let me tell you, that most of us are majorly DISCONNECTED from ourselves.
We lost the connection to ourselves deep down - to our feelings, to our own heart.
Are you surprised? We practice from a young age to disregard our feelings.
Others tell us: 'Don't be a wuss' 'You are over reacting' 'You are too sensitive' ' Man up!'
And we tell the same to our Adult Selves too. Having an emotional reaction is a shamful experience. A man crying is a big NO-NO! We are all so disconnected from our feelings, that we do not know how to deal with them. So it's easier NOT TO FEEL ALTOGETHER...
....we have learned to shut our feelings out.
You know what we have effectively done??
We have closed our hearts. We have excluded what makes us HUMAN. What makes us feel alive. We have excluded the truth from our life!
As a result of that we are all too easily to manipulated by others - our polititians, media and society. Our minds are over-reactive because there is no balance due to NO emotional feedback - no telling us 'Wait this doesn't FEEL RIGHT!'
And the outside world is in chaos... We are confused and full of contradictions. On one side of the world we dress dogs in pretty outfits, we buy them designer toys, let them be part of our family, and on the other side of the globe we eat them at festivals. Some of us live in insane luxury, yet just few miles away some are dying hungry sleeping rough on the streets. We support our government to send humanitarian aid to save people's lives, yet we let our politicians get away with murders. We are so quick to develop a new technology to feel connected to the whole world, yet we ignore another human sitting right next to us. We proudly fly to the Moon to search for life, watching our planet dying.
We kill in the name of God - the creator of Life itself!
Are you telling me we haven't lost connection to truth?!
See, to be happy, we have to stop lying to ourselves. We have to stop CHEATING ourselves.
We have to stop being scared of seeing the truth and the unpleasant emotions which initially come with accepting we have been sticking our heads in the sand. Distracting ourselves by numbing our pain with addictions to alcohol, TV, work, sex, drugs...All that to escape from our feelings.
ESCAPING the truth, we found solace in thinking. We are well connected to our over-reactive minds, processing our overly busy 'life of distractions'...
But how come some of us suddenly awaken?
In the same way you awaken a drunk from sleep: by a painful stimulus.
We go through a very painful experience, which makes us realise through all the numbness (!) how much we are HURTING....
We awaken to the fact that no matter how much more numbing we do, the pain will always come back. We realise that we have been doing the same thing for a long time, and that it just isn't working. We know that we have to stop listening to others, and start trusting ourselves instead, by letting our emotions flow. That we have to start SEARCHING for answers on the inside. We know that we have to start asking some brave questions, and live those with courage first, before we can start living the answers, in line with the Truth - OUR TRUTH.
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2016 Michaela Patel