from sickness to health
Jul. 9th, 2006 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iamomSo many of us are afflicted by a sickness of seeking, a sickness of wanting. If we take the time to notice, we're often consumed by thoughts of wanting what we don't have or wanting to be different than the person we are right now. It creates endless suffering, endless frustration, endless pain. It reinforces the feeling that we're not essentially good people just as we are, that we need something other to be whole. That's a farce.
I read recently that the difference between questing and wanting is that questing deals with trying to connect more deeply with something deep inside of you that you may have only glimpsed but don't fully understand yet; wanting is an act of isolation and fear, a path taken out of dissatisfaction with whatever is going on right now. Questing is a means to connect with what is our own essential nature and to connect with other people.
We don't have to be scared about anything that's happening right now. We can trust ourselves and our own judgment and not try to force ourselves to fit into any particular mold or set of expectations. If we give ourselves the opportunity, we can learn that our own true nature is simple and clean, unfettered by neuroses and uncluttered by hangups. All that surface stuff, the stuff that makes us tired, angry or stressed-out every day, is just that -- on the surface -- and we don't need to identify with the apparent pain we feel each day or think that we need to change ourselves to avoid the pain.
We are not the pain. We are not the sum total of all the bad things that have happened to us in our childhood, in our teenage years, in our lives or during the day today. We are not the thoughts, emotions and actions that feel so real and important to us each day.
Like the rivers, trees, clouds and animals, we are nothing more than a simple part of nature and the world around us. We are but a humble part of the regular, natural expression of the universe itself. All the painful and tortured thoughts we think we're harbouring about ourselves are nothing more than mere thought-waves conjured up by a set of biochemical processes in our brains. We are not flawed, we do not need fixing, we do not need to change.
We are Nature itself, indivisible from Nature and sprung directly from It. We are perfect, because we are. And there is nothing we need to do other than accept this in order to live in peace. Living in peace means acceptance of what is; living in peace means not trying to change yourself or the world around you. Living in peace is as simple as taking a deep breath and being mindful of the present moment. And knowing yourself, knowing who you are, and loving what you see unconditionally.
Life goes on in exactly the same way it always has when we do this: nothing at all changes. Except for one thing, perhaps: you no longer feel bothered by the apparent pain when it arises. This is because you recognize that you are not the pain; you recognize that you are just Nature. The same good or bad things will continue to occur in your life once you have this awareness, but now, nothing bothers you one way or the other because there's nobody there to bother anymore.
You are life, nature, the universe itself. You are everything and nothing all at the same time. You are. I am.
OM.
(Goodnight,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fey.)
I read recently that the difference between questing and wanting is that questing deals with trying to connect more deeply with something deep inside of you that you may have only glimpsed but don't fully understand yet; wanting is an act of isolation and fear, a path taken out of dissatisfaction with whatever is going on right now. Questing is a means to connect with what is our own essential nature and to connect with other people.
We don't have to be scared about anything that's happening right now. We can trust ourselves and our own judgment and not try to force ourselves to fit into any particular mold or set of expectations. If we give ourselves the opportunity, we can learn that our own true nature is simple and clean, unfettered by neuroses and uncluttered by hangups. All that surface stuff, the stuff that makes us tired, angry or stressed-out every day, is just that -- on the surface -- and we don't need to identify with the apparent pain we feel each day or think that we need to change ourselves to avoid the pain.
We are not the pain. We are not the sum total of all the bad things that have happened to us in our childhood, in our teenage years, in our lives or during the day today. We are not the thoughts, emotions and actions that feel so real and important to us each day.
Like the rivers, trees, clouds and animals, we are nothing more than a simple part of nature and the world around us. We are but a humble part of the regular, natural expression of the universe itself. All the painful and tortured thoughts we think we're harbouring about ourselves are nothing more than mere thought-waves conjured up by a set of biochemical processes in our brains. We are not flawed, we do not need fixing, we do not need to change.
We are Nature itself, indivisible from Nature and sprung directly from It. We are perfect, because we are. And there is nothing we need to do other than accept this in order to live in peace. Living in peace means acceptance of what is; living in peace means not trying to change yourself or the world around you. Living in peace is as simple as taking a deep breath and being mindful of the present moment. And knowing yourself, knowing who you are, and loving what you see unconditionally.
Life goes on in exactly the same way it always has when we do this: nothing at all changes. Except for one thing, perhaps: you no longer feel bothered by the apparent pain when it arises. This is because you recognize that you are not the pain; you recognize that you are just Nature. The same good or bad things will continue to occur in your life once you have this awareness, but now, nothing bothers you one way or the other because there's nobody there to bother anymore.
You are life, nature, the universe itself. You are everything and nothing all at the same time. You are. I am.
OM.
(Goodnight,
fey.)
