Thich Nhat Hanh says, “The aim of life is not to get all that you want but to enjoy all that you have”. How do I do that? Especially when I feel check-mated by life events, and stuck in an unhealthy place?
I tried journaling on it and I couldn’t believe what I found! It led me from one piece of wisdom to the next and so on, all the way to a surprising revelation of the root cause at the end of the post (Cha-ching! BIG points for this one). Hoping to share it in this post if it may help you. Please feel free to put yourself in my place wherever I refer to myself in the following paragraphs. Here we go….
So how can I be happy in the moment even under unhealthy circumstances?
Maybe I need to remember who I really am…a soul having a human experience. And that the reality we see on the outside is only an illusion and a dream we are living in. I need to meditate and come outside that dream and then watch it as an observer from the outside…which means to not be emotionally taken up by the dream we are living or its events….because they are not real but just projections of the collective psyche. If you are not used to this ideology, it may sound utopian and I hear you. Let’s talk about it in another post.
Maybe I need to realize that my current experience is not my fault, or the result of anything I did not do or did wrong. In other words, the universe is prompting me to leave my feelings of guilt and shame around the fact that my life circumstances are not where I would call myself comfortable financially or healthwise or in any other way that may not meet my expectations or the expectations of anyone in my family or friends or society.
When I can view life events with absolute peace without assigning a positive or negative value to it, that’s when I can be happy in the moment.
Because then, it would be a joy to experience life in that event, it’s an experience of being human, of learning to be in the human world. Of learning to go through events, and seeing how life flows.
Because I am a spiritual being having a human experience.
If life is a river and our body is the inner tube floating in it, this would be like going down the river of life in our inner tube, just going with the flow. Not trying to control anything or make anything happen but to just enjoy the ride in the inner tube that we are floating in: our body. Like reading a story and reading about what is happening to the character in the story, and realizing at all times that it is not actually happening, but is just a story.
Because there is nothing bad that can happen to us. Everything in our external world and our inner world is here in the now. In the universe. No one can be lost anywhere. This is the only place we can be at. There is no other place to go from here. Nothing can be lost. Everything is here. In the now. Everything we have ever wanted, ever needed, need now or will need, all of it is in the universe right now.
So do not be fooled by what shows up first….what is meant for you is always here and will always find you no matter what is happening now in your life.
Now how do we get to feeling the above high vibrational state with the core of our being? As in truly believing this to be true with every single cell and tissue of our body…..
Here are a few steps that came to me:
- Meditation for detachment
- Naming my blessings
- Naming what is working right now (may be a part of blessings too)
- Naming what makes me happy in everyday moments
- Finding things that bring me joy in what seems to be otherwise boring or unattractive to me but is a necessity at that point in life
- Naming how I can bring more love, compassion and empathy in that situation while I am going through the situation (or for you, finding how you can bring whatever-your-life-purpose-is-to-bring-into-the-world while going through your current situation)
The aim of life is to serve our life purpose. And any event that leads us away from peace, love and joy are just distractions from our purpose. The key is to stay on the course no matter what happens.
Because in the end, life is a series of discoveries, a treasure hunt through the universe. And what we are hunting for is something that is not easily obvious, but is so invaluable when we find it. What you are hunting for is your soul’s game mission in the experience you are going through at that moment. As in what you are meant to innerstand from that experience. No matter which way you are tossed, the aim is to find your way back to peace, love and joy. And an easy way to do that is by playing the game of how you can bring your life purpose into the world in whatever situation you are thrown into.
Life is like a big video game. In fact the first step in the game is finding what your mission is in that experience (boy is it fun when you think of it that way), and then the next step is following your mission.
What does finding the mission mean? To me it is trying to know what that situation is leading your attention to, like what is it asking you to look at or which direction is it beckoning you to follow. What information is it trying to share with you? What secret is it trying to reveal to you? Like what are you meant to take note of from the situation. As in what are you meant to learn from the situation (minus the negative connotation of the words learn/ lesson, since ‘learn’ and ‘lesson’ have come to imply learning from a mistake and a sense of failure or guilt or resentment attached to the mistake). So mission in our case is to find what we are meant to read between the lines from the situation.
And it is important to follow this treasure hunt in the free spirit of a child and then it is pure fun. This aspect of the free spirit of a child came to my attention just now… because right when I was typing the above sentence, I realized that certain words about following fun clues did not make me excited. Luckily my awareness kicked in and showed me this was tied to a limiting belief from my childhood where, when I followed someone’s lead into what I perceived to be fun, I was met with a shockingly disappointing experience afterwards. It led me to take on an unhealthy impression of myself after that.
Maybe I felt embarrassed or ashamed afterwards from that experience in my childhood. But the realization that this limiting belief showed up when talking about finding my mission in a fun way, was my anchor to remember that it was just a limiting belief, and this was the perfect time to demonstrate that I had unlearned as an adult what I had learned from the experience as a child ….that, before that event happened, previous experiences where I had been led to for fun were indeed very much fun, and numerous times at that! So I refuse to let that first shocking experience taint my view of the rest of my life, because now I am an adult and a powerful child of God with a mission for the good of all, and have the choice and ability to remove that tainted impression from blocking the good things in store for me and others from now on. I refuse to give it my precious energy.
The biggest responsibility in my life is to care for my inner landscape, especially my inner child: to make sure she is safe and loved and cared for no matter what. My (her) happiness is my highest priority and if this limiting belief above is not making me happy, it means it is time for me to purge it and wash off that limiting belief from my psyche with love and forgiveness, and lead myself home to love.
Maybe my inner child from the time of that event even needs some cajoling and healing from that event. Maybe that event was shocking to my inner child and my inner child felt that no one loved her and that she was not important, or that she was faulty in some way or did something wrong and that is why it turned out to be a not so fun of an experience. Maybe my inner child even needs to know she will be loved back again and things will get back to being normal and fun.
And who better to bring this healing to my inner child than me…the one she can always count on.
Now let’s read through this again, except this time, let’s replace wherever I refer to myself with your name 🙂
If you are new to journaling and would like to know 3 tips on how to journal like a pro, click here.
Did you have any ah-ha moments from this exercise? I would love to know! Please share in the comments below.
