People often say they fear the unknown and prefer to stay in the known, their comfort zone.
Well yes there is that choice on one level, and yet in reality, we live in the unknown all the time.
Life ultimately, is able to change and turn and shake things up in any moment.
Sometimes recognising this can be a relief and liberation, as we can realise we don’t have to control everything.
We can let go. We can live in a more surrendered, trusting state and let life take care of life.
You are more than any thought, as every thought you have requires you to be there first to have it and engage with it.
You are beyond all thinking, ideas and definitions. There is no defining our formless consciousness. Even the word consciousness is just a word.
Become aware of all you do to avoid stopping and just being with yourself.
To become peaceful within, there is often a process of first having to identify, acknowledge, feel and sort through all the stuff we have suppressed.
Our ghosts, fears and belief systems often rise within silent space, in order to be seen, healed and released.
Not wanting to experience them keeps us running on the treadmill of distraction, busyness, addictions or perhaps repeated unhealthy relationships.
The first step is to start to explore and identify what these fears and ghosts are for you. We all have our version of them, no matter our upbringing. It’s just part of the human psyche.
When we can work through these with support, we can start to empty out. We can learn to see their threat as devoid of true reality or any substance in the now. We can stop running and just be with ourselves and whatever experience arises.
We can be safe enough to feel.
And we then will find ourselves in the space of silence and peace more often.
We can try to figure things out in our mind to feel like we have some sense of controlling life. We are often way ahead of ourselves in this, and not connected to reality.
Sure it works and is important for pragmatic planning and simple things, but for the inner things and the feelings and the relationships, we are not going to know until it unfolds and is alive and revealing itself to us in the moment.
Trust yourself enough to explore and find out.
Allow life to show you.
We get so consumed in our thinking, we are one big walking head!
We even forget we have a body.
What is reality?
Thoughts change 60,000 or more times a day! And what is left of them that is really true?
And who’s thought world is the real one? When each one is real for each individual?!
To find truth and stability in ourselves, we must see that which is unstable and unreliable and step back from it.
Come out of your changing, unstable thinking, and into your breath, your body presence, body sensations, your senses, the earth under your feet.
Take up a yoga class, find some good body scan meditations on YouTube, use an app like headspace or calm or insighttimer to help you.
Anchor yourself into the real. And keep practicing this everyday.
Healing is an embodied experience.
Focus on your own growth in your relationships. You cannot change the other person.
Look and work with your half of the dynamic.
Yes express and communicate clearly about your fears, your needs, your wants and experiences, and yet whether changes happen in them or not, is not up to you.
You are not your mind. You can see the movement of your mind, therefore you are there prior, for a mind to happen within.
You can exist without thinking, thinking cannot happen without you.
Our mind often carries a lot and tortures itself with worry, unceasing problems, judgements, fears and identity.
Don’t make your mind the enemy. Have compassion for it. It bears a lot.
Just know you are more than the activity of thinking, your heart is much vaster.
Learn to be in your heart, your beingness, your presence, your self as awareness.
Not so much your head, existing and trying to control things through thinking and ideas and identity.
Wherever you go, there you are. You don’t have to think about anything to exist.
You don’t always need to understand everything and have it all figured out to find your way.
Your breathing happens for you. Life unfolds. Yes use your mind as a powerful tool, but learn not to let it use you.
The same can be said for any emotion. You are more than your emotions.
Gaining mastery of one’s self involves learning to deeply be with your emotions, to be compassionate with yourself, to honour and express them consciously, with care for yourself and others and without losing awareness.
True emotional maturity is no small feat and requires ongoing commitment to oneself.
We look everywhere outside of us for ideas and information and feedback and relationships and interests and and and…
And yet all the while we overlook our very own presence, our ever present awareness, that which is the context of our connection to everything.
Without our inner eye, there is no knowing of anything. And it exists prior to any thought, it just sees.
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RATNA DYER 