Our Mind’s Truth
I was listening to someone recently who told me that he didn’t feel whole, that he was wondering why a part of him felt missing and that he needed to go find it. In that moment it occurred to me that maybe what he was feeling was truly being whole and what was missing was only his fantasy of what was missing. If I believe everything that I’ve been taught, and we are perfect all the time, then the feelings of inadequacy, the feelings of “not feeling whole” are just our mind tricking us into believing that we’re not. This is not the truth, it’s just our programming trying to override our natural state.
Over the past 5 years I’ve been talking about how much Madison Avenue and Hollywood have effected our lives. How much consumerism has educated us into what’s most important, yet this is not the truth. We are focusing our thoughts and energies on the distractions, the things that get in our way of happiness. If we were to truly trust in the world, trust in our own inner voice, than what decisions would we make? How would we act in the world if we knew that this was all a game and life was meant to be lived fully, not sitting on the sidelines as a fan watching others play? I am tired of watching others play the game and thinking that they might be doing it better than I am.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the human process of judgement keeps us from our own happiness, and maybe, just maybe, we are whole all the time. Maybe we are perfect and it’s just our mind, or the programming of our mind, that keeps us from experiencing the joy that lives within us every day. What if we could remove that judgement and experience our inner happiness on a daily basis? In a past iteration of my thinking I would think that joy was all happiness all the time. Today I think differently. Having had the life experiences I’ve had, it’s not about happiness, it’s about feeling all the emotions of life and embracing them rather than fighting them. To embrace all the feelings with acceptance and saying hello to them. Saying hello to sadness and disappointment. To learn how to identify them and see them for what they are.
In a meditation a couple of months ago I started to think about times in my life when I felt depressed. During the meditation I came to realize that I don’t believe I was ever really depressed, ever. What I was feeling was really loneliness and the only “label” I could put on it was depression. In that moment it became clear to me that I didn’t have enough understanding of my own thoughts and the labels I use are insufficient, and how the words I tell myself effect my way of being. As I learn to understand what’s really going on inside of me I can experience the feeling and let it go. I am coming to believe that it’s about seeing the feelings for what they are and then letting them go, and the same for relationships. They are there to hold up mirrors for us, to see in others what we don’t see in ourselves. So, when we believe that we’re not whole, is that true, or is it our mind trying to confuse us into thinking that we are not perfect?
To a life well lived!
Larry Kesslin 