I hear people saying: 'I hate love. I hate life.’
Well, we tend to love any activity we have MASTERED, and hate anything we haven’t.
It is the same with love and life. To become a master of living happily, we have to learn, first and foremost, how to discern the lies from the truth. We have to learn techniques for spotting anything we falsely believe to be 'true'.
The top condition for living a happy life is authenticity. It is that simple.
Trust me when I say that if you are experiencing pain and disappointment, there are many lies and CONCEPTS in your life substituting the real thing - be it love, relationships, yourself, etc.
When our life isn't working, we automatically focus on our pain and 'those who caused it'.
We say 'I am not lucky enough to attract the right partner' 'He/she was bad to me', blah blah blah...
We focus on 'their' shortcomings, faults, wrongdoings, etc.
And this is our major WEAKNESS: We focus in the wrong direction.
See, we are not even aware WHY we like to focus on others. We do not know it this is because we have been taught so.
We have been taught to distrust ourselves and pretend to be someone we are not. We have been taught to pretend in the same way our parents did. We have been told how to feel, how to see things, including ourselves. ‘You are not feeling upset - you are ok!’ ‘How can you be angry about that?’ ‘You are stupid, clumsy...' Others told us how WE feel, who WE are - from THEIR perspective. And we believed them...
Of course we did, when we were told to distrust our own judgement and feelings!
So a huge step forward, in starting to move into the direction of truth, is acknowledging that we are full of lies. Borrowed, and our own.
You may ask ‘My life isn't working, where am I to start when my life is full of lies, full of inauthentic people?’ My answer to you is this: How would you fix a complex piece of equipment which has stopped working?? By focusing on its pivotal part.
Who is the pivotal part of your life? YOU.
Because believe me, there is NO WAY of finding out who others are if you haven’t cleaned up your own act.
We have to find the lies in ‘Who am I?’
Having to break down our false beliefs about who we think we are, will we be left with NOTHING? Well no….
We are left with something. However, many of us are very SCARED of this process of shedding our false Self, because we are scared precisely of ‘What would be left of me!?’
Believe me, this is a part of the process. Our fear is our Ego mind talking, scared of having to take the passenger seat with us discovering our true power. Because it knows this will be the end of its control. End of driving our life full of inauthenticity, illusions, pretending. End of pain.
When we burst our own bubble of who we THOUGHT we were, we are left with the truth:)
We have no image, no personality, no attitude, no opinion about who we are. Rather we embrace NOT KNOWING, and FEEL the energy behind our physical body with each breath. We become the observer, a curiosity itself searching for answers. This curiosity is our own consciousness becoming aware of itself.
Practical steps for getting to know you - the REAL YOU:
1/ accept that you do NOT know who you are - that you are NOT your personality, your image, or your status. But rather something much larger, more expansive than that!
2/ learn a great deal about your Ego - THE FALSE SELF. Practice watching yourself in situations, observe what behaviours are from your Ego and how these make you feel.
Do they bring you happiness?
Observe your mind, your thoughts. Who is the one observing your thoughts and actions?
Being able to separate who we truly are (our True Self) from our mind is a great step forward in seeing that we are not our thoughts but something much more powerful! We begin to see how constricting our mind really is, and how this limits our life and understanding of things.
3/ feel your fear of not knowing - your fear is your Ego at work. Practicing observing it, see how it wants to be in control by wanting YOU to have everything under control! You must practice right the opposite to loosen its grip on you, because if you are IT (your fear), you cannot be anyhing else. So become vulnerable by embracing uncertainty. This opens up a new space for you to investigate the truth.
Through this process we get to peel off our mask and release ourselves from the prison of our image and society concept of who we should be. When we start being who we actually are, experiencing nothing but great fun, joy, happiness, there is no way we like to go back to putting on our mask. Because besides it being painful, it requires a lot of our ENERGY to keep it going.
AREN'T YOU TIRED OF ANXIOUSLY PRETENDING, JUST TO BE LIKED?
Are you scared of what would be left of you not presenting yourself as your achievements?
If we want to live authentically, we have let go of what we cling onto - our Ego, our false image, our lies. We have to feel the fear and trust that we will survive this process of breaking our cocoon, turn into a beautiful butterfly, spread our wings and fly.
Some say you need to break yourself down to be able to build yourself back up. I see it differently. Everything we ARE is already there, we just have to open our eyes to see it :)
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2016 Michaela Patel