Having studied and investigated, for some time now, a variety of life help methods I have heard the question more than once (and have even asked it myself) about life becoming ideal. This is typically phrased along the lines of ‘How long do I have to use this help method before I stop having problems?’
Extract further meaning from the question and it basically interprets as ‘When will this help method make my life the way that I want it to be?’
If this question was analogous to a road sign it would read: WRONG PATH. TURN AROUND.
Why?
By desiring life to be different from what it is you are in resistance, which is a strong form of energy. In effect, when you are directing resistance at something you are providing it with energy and making it more robust. Carl Jung said ‘What you resist, persists.’Stop providing something with energy, on the other hand, and it fades.
When you stop resisting life as it is the only energy left in place is your internal Light Of Being, and once this goes unobstructed it will ultimately provide contentment and peace.
Secondly, desires are the direct product of the ego, also known as the intellect or the conscious mind. The ego is the incessant internal chatter that causes you suffering by telling you life is bad, you are bad, they are bad, you must do this or that, you must hurry up, etc. The ego is born from obsessive and out of control thinking, and it can and often does take over the life experience entirely.
Many, many people think of the ego — the voice in the head — as “me”. I am thinking this, I am thinking that. In reality however you are not your ego and the ego is not you. This can be demonstrated by the fact that you can observe the ego. You can listen to it, hear what it says.
Try this.
Listen to the ego’s output — without making any judgments or insights — as it bounces around in your head. And as you do this, as you observe the ego by listening to it in an unattached way, you will experience the ego quieting and then stopping altogether. You have observed the ego and now you — the incredible Light Of Being — have taken your rightful place as full consciousness while the ego has withdrawn, as it had to in the light of your Divine presence.
Now only silence, and the experience of the genuine you, remains.
But the ego is willful and strong, and it will return as soon as you — the genuine you — forgets itself and goes back to unconsciousness. The good news is that your genuine presence will grow, and the ego’s presence will fade, the more you remain conscious over time.
Finally, when you are seeking a change to your external circumstances you are putting the cart before the horse. If my life were like this, I’d be okay. If I had more of this and less of this, I’d be happy. No! External circumstances never bring lasting contentment and peace. Never, never, never. There is only one certainty about external circumstances — they won’t last.
Every aspect of your external existence, every single one, is going to leave you eventually. If these aspects don’t go sooner then they will go later, at the absolute latest when death takes them away.
The old expression is accurate: You can’t take it with you.
If you want true peace and contentment, true bliss, put the horse first and focus internal — specifically, focus on coming into consciousness, on letting genuine self be instead of allowing it to be blocked by the ego works of living in the past or the future, and thinking.
Positive change does not come from outside in — it moves inside out. When you are internally whole, when you are more conscious than unconscious, external life is peaceful and joyous. Now there’s positive space available for external change to occur.
You no longer care about a particular outcome because you’re genuinely content and at peace with life as it is. Then the outcome you previously desired gracefully materializes after staying away when you were frantically grabbing for it. It’s a great paradox: desires that come with strong attachments rarely materialize.
External circumstances are subject to change, they must change to make room for the new, so things will occur in your external existence that you initially find uncomfortable. This happens to me regularly. What to do?
Remain conscious. Exist in the moment, not in the past or the future. Stop resistance to what is and allow the stream of life to carry you to your destinations — trust that life will eventually deliver you to what is right and perfect for you.
Will all of this “work”?
Try it for yourself and see.
