[Hae-Joo] Awakening - A Messy Business
I've been praying for everything to blow up in my face...
Because these incongruities in my state of being... These tense contradictions, seeming almost impossible to resolve... It's funny how there's nothing to be done about them except to do nothing.
How many of us are like this? Just ever-so-slightly schizophrenic? Just a little bit too unbalanced to experience harmony in our lives? Just a little too pathological to get a grip over certain emotional or psychological issues.
It could be putting off to tomorrow what could be done today. It could be never being fully present in the moment, even when said moment is enough to bring us genuine happiness. It could be all forms of escapism, addiction, depression, and compulsive behavior.
There were so many things that I had been putting off, and now, all of that is literally coming up, making it impossible for me to keep postponing...
It either goes uphill, or downhill. The choice is simple, but it is not easy to choose the right one.
But that is simply because the uphill journey requires effort, and requires sacrifice.
There is no getting around it. And a failure to get with the program, to adapt to the changing circumstances... leads to a very quick down-fall...
Everyday we make thousands of choices
The Universe Has No Need For Those Who Do Not Continually Evolve
The issue is when most of our choices are automatic, and they are out-dated choices that no longer serve us... Once adaptive decisions turned to maladaptive behaviors; these dysfunctional habits are what need to be periodically cleared out in life to make room for new, difficult, conscious, positive choices to take their place.
The more choices for the better we make, to change our lives, our habits, our behaviors: the more sacrifice is involved. Yet sacrifice (defined as the foregoing of our own personal, and often narrowly-defined, "self-interest") is the only thing that is truly rewarded in this Universe.
Protracted Gratification Over Instant Gratification
The More We Give, The More We Get Back.
Just some of this year's insights
Counting Our Words :
It's not worth committing to something if you know you can't handle it, if you really don't want to do it, or if it's not good for you to do it.. In one sense, this can mean saying "No." when it is appropriate, saying "Yes." when it is appropriate; and knowing the difference between the two.
I know I was a fool with a big mouth for a large portion of my life. I thought I was smarter, or knew more than others, so I was always babbling on, and never knew when to keep my mouth shut, or even more importantly, when to just shut up and listen.
Sometimes, especially when we're young, it's not the time to be talking. It's the time to learn something from somebody else's experience. But too often, and increasingly (due to the internet?) we feel like we know everything. In reality, the more one knows, the more one realizes they know diddlysquat. The smartest man in the world is the smartest man because he knows he knows jackshit.
So sometimes, it's not about what we want to say... It's about saying what we need to say... saying what is absolutely necessary, and keeping everything else out of our mouth...
The Importance of Humility :
Humility is quite a simple thing. It means not saying much when you're up (especially when it comes to how great you are), and not saying much when you're down (especially when it comes to how unfair everything is)
Humility is cloak we choose to wrap ourselves in because when we are shining brightly it stops our light from blinding passers-by, and when we are surrounded by darkness, it is something that can be removed in order for us to shine our light and illuminate the way.
Humility protect us from the dangers of the world, by keeping us concealed from predators that would want to eliminate us out of hatred and jealousy, and by making us appear non-threatening to people who would otherwise be very intimidated by us...
Humility makes us approachable, it humanizes us, it is the foundation upon which everything that lasts is built. Pretentiousness, cockiness... If properly integrated, may be appropriate at certain times, but these are ephemeral and vapid in nature. There is insufficient room for depth in anything else than humility. Really, nothing superb can exist without humility... It would simply blind the senses.
The Ego Must Go :
It is natural to have debates, arguments, disagreements and conflicts with people close and far from our hearts throughout life. It is both natural and normal to have our own personal points of view, to defend them publicly when they come into question, just as others' points of view should be questioned.
Sometimes we can fail to see certain situations clearly, be it because situations can be too painful to bear, too convoluted and opaque to perceive, too complicated and confusing to understand...However, learning to tell the difference between the point, and the self-defense mechanism, is the key to ego-death and all conflict resolution.
Because Freudian ego, the super-ego construct, the way we believe we are perceived by others and the ways which we wish to be perceived and believe are valid ways to be perceived are all illusory. These are all mental projections, psychic forms or images that we are intuitively sharing and connecting with, through our mirror neurons and our energetic vibrations.
Whoever we are interacting with, it is best when conflict arises to forget ourselves momentarily, and simply to not take anything personally. When we get caught up in a shitstorm of mental projections, it is very easy to get completely lost in a fog of illusory impressions.
The egos are acting as mirrors to each other but when a mirror is just reflecting back another mirror, we are left not seeing reality as it is but rather a kaleidoscope of heavily refracted energy waves.
Whichever way we actually see ourselves, it's probably wrong. We're so much deeper and more complex than what we can readily access in waking consciousness at any given point. Even when we are in very open states-of-mind and experiencing what feels like a fuller version of our Selves than we are accustomed to (or that we've ever experienced), it's still just the tip of the ice-berg... So forget squabbling over complete and utter non-sense about our ego/lower-selves... Forget about the desire to be in the body of one that is "right", of one that is "faultless"... Just be content to be vibrating in this plane, be content to play your cards and make your moves, and be content with who you are in this life, and beyond...
Awakening is a messy business... There's No Single "Eureka" Moment... Rather There Are Many... And Each One Adds An Extra Layer of Depth, Complexity and Beauty To The Edifice of Our Life.
There are just the lessons on the top of my head right now but I will gladly share more of these kinds of lessons that I've learned over the last year or longer... If people find these philosophical musings of value, please feel free to ask a question, on any topic, or anything you'd like to explore, and I'd be happy to share my thoughts and engage in expansive dialogues.
Peace
"We Are So Much More Than We Can Think or Feel At Any Given Moment"
I like this a lot, reading it brought a feeling of content that can sometimes feel very close but yet so distant.
For a long time(maybe always?) I've thought of myself as my own thoughts and ideas, but after mediating for awhile and also in the book "the awakening of intelligence" Krishnamurti talks about how we see ourselves and problems we create by thinking in such a way.
So far from what I'm seeing is that we are everything but our thoughts but that seems in-vertically backwards in every way.
My question to you is what is your experience with this? Have your changed your perspective of who "you" are since becoming more awakened? Did you resist or was it more of an natural experience?
Shit I'm sorry man, I wrote that like 5 days ago and forgot to hit enter -_-'
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So many truths. Can’t say no, don’t shut-up enough and so guilty of choosing instant gratitification. Keep musing away, I’ll be reading.
I guess there’ll be no alien abductions for those amongst us who are stagnant in evolution...