Human Being.. or Human Doing?

It has dawned on me recently, how much our propensity for overcomplicating life truly is. We knock up storms of suffering and manufacture our own dramas, relentlessly using others to keep doing our own models of reality and the universe to ourselves over and over, till we reach a certain point.. a point of spiritual exhaustion, and we change, not always because of having been enlightened by an epiphany or stroke of wisdom, ... but because we're tired.

But the question still persists.. Why do we make our lives harder and more complicated that it has to be? Is it fear? If yes, fear of what? .. of judgement? Failure? not being enough? Not being easily accepted or flat out rejection? It is a fascinating and indeed brain-churning prospect to contemplate.

Why do we revel in our suffering? Why do we like to milk our dramas? Why do we have this predisposition to make stuff more complicated than it needs to be? And then we dare to ask "why does everything have to be so hard?" ..

We're most amusing creatures...

Being, just being, entails having accepted everything to be perfect as it is. Perhaps the secret to being on the path to true and unflappable inner peace is through the ability to let go of our attachment to our expectations. Perhaps things become simpler, -and even sometimes easier- when we just let the universe turn as it shall, and simply decide to let go of things which are beyond our control.

But how do we find our inner peace? Is it through introspective contemplation?.. Meditation, perhaps? Well, what I have learned is that everyone's path is unique and thereby one's needs and methods ought to be adjusted with that in mind. In other words, what is right for a person, may not be for another, or, it may. The best way to ascertain that and allay any doubts is to simply try and see for oneself what works. After all, what is one man's trash is another's treasure.

So how does one let go of one's suffering? Or in more accurately put, how do we sacrifice our identification of our suffering? How do we stop milking it along with any dramas that consequently arise?

The trick, one might contend, perhaps lies in radical acceptance. Trusting the process. It is when we have that invincible sense of inner peace, that inner balance, that faith in destiny and that it will all work out just fine; that we can truly free ourselves from bondage. We are constantly sucked into the future by overthinking. Overthinking doesn't do us any good, worry doesn't solve problems, it attracts them. Overthinking is a disease of the mind. It is, as Jim Kwik puts it, "the art of creating problems that do not exist."

Indeed, we are highly prone to create typhoons in our heads about imaginary stories we've told ourselves. Lies we entertain ourselves with to ostensibly maintain a certain image, or a certain identity we've carved out for ourselves based on illusions and our outlook on the world. Borrowing problems from the future does not deplete the supply. And worry doesn't take away tomorrow's problems, it takes away today's peace.

"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than any one. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill -he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness."

We’re all method actors. We bury ourselves under an endless pile of identities. And when we get asked “which one is it that we truly are?”, we get addled and unable to provide a coherent, definitive answer. So why do we keep acting? 🎭  

Why do we keep pretending? Why do we fear giving voice to our deepest fears, desires, insecurities, hopes and inner selves? Is it fear of judgment? Fear of being alone? Fear of not being understood? Or is it the fear of being actually seen? There's a saying “Sometimes you think that you want to disappear but all you really want is to be found.”

We should never ever bury our true selves. The biggest mistake we make is that we live as if we aren’t deserving of being ourselves. We shouldn’t waste a moment of our lives living somebody else’s life. Everyone’s clock works differently. And, at the end of the day, you cannot become what you’re not. The greatest tragedy in life is being alive without living ourselves.

No need to live to please others. That’s not what any of us were born to do. Be who you truly are, and everything will fall into place. The path to reaching one’s true potential, goes through being one’s truest self. “Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

Suffering is loss of control. What we think we control, seems to merely be what we're unrelentingly clinging to. It is our inability or rather unwillingness to trust the process that gets us into the messes we find ourselves in so often. Our inability to not just go with the flow, but to go a step further, and become the flow. When we become one with the flow, when we repeat that to ourselves and reprogram our mindsets to adopt such a view of life, contentment knocks on our doorstep. For it is then when we will have finally realized, that even if we do not get all the gifts we want out of life, the real gift, is life itself.

Because when we just are, when we allow ourselves the chance to just be, everything... falls into place.

“You don't always have

to be doing something.

You can just be,

and that's plenty.”

— ALICE WALKER