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Forget for a moment who you think you are. Forget the life story, crafted by a select few events, you’ve been identifying with.
What lies ahead?
What is your potential?
I have no clue. But more importantly, neither do you.
When we think about fulfilling our potential we usually think about getting degrees, climbing career ladders, running for offices, heading drug cartels, etc.
That’s not what I mean here.
What I mean by fulfilling your potential is unique. All of the above smells like being part of the script. I’m convinced that your true potential lies outside any preexisting script.
You could do something we don’t have the vocabulary for yet. You could go somewhere that isn’t on a map. You could become something no one has ever imagined becoming.
Or it might be something more modest like tending to a farm or being full of joy at every moment in your life. Whatever it is, if it’s the expression of your unique spiritual DNA, you’ll feel that you’re fulfilling your function.
—
Compare that with the life you’re living right now.
The lives most of us live are so tightly scripted and rigidly defined they’re hardly worth getting out of bed for. We have conditioned ourselves into a Groundhog Day existence.
You know it’s true, don’t you?
Haven’t you had one or the other morning, after being torn out of your slumber by a violent alarm, sitting on the edge of your bed wondering what’s it all for?
Is making money and raising children so that they can become another shuffling herd animal the best we can do?
Feel free to be offended by the way. If this doesn’t hurt then it’s probably not true for you.
These little sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-bed-wondering-what’s-it-all-for moments are wake-up calls. Usually, we dismiss them and keep slugging through the trod.
Instead of brushing those moments off as a bug in the system, treasure them. Nurture them. See them as the beginning of the plant trying to break through the seed’s shell.
Up until now your life might have been not much more than a conditioned reflex. You’ve followed the script just like everyone else.
I’m not blaming you. We all do it because that’s what our upbringing amasses to.
That’s also the reason why it’s so hard to break from it. Everyone you know is following the script and everything around you wants you to follow the script.
But what do you want?
Most of us smother the spark of discontent beneath all the emotional debris piled on top of us that we have no chance of ever discovering life.
If your spark of discontent is still alive start fanning it. Turn it into a flame that devours all the falsehoods, programming, beliefs, and attachments keeping you in herd formation.
What Options Do We Have?
Retrace your steps to the beginning and start over in the right direction. Return to the point where everyone and his uncle told you to zig but where you should have zagged.
Most of the life decisions we make are minor ones. Examples of minor decisions are:
– Which subject to study at university
– Where to invest your money
– Whom to choose as your partner
– What career to pursue
Surprised?
I bet you are.
The above examples are usually considered the biggies. I call them minor ones. What they amass to is choosing what colors you want to use to fill in the hand-me-down colorbook.
Those decisions are concerned with the content of your experience. The biggest decision, which few people make, is to choose your own context.
What if university, money, partner, and career are nothing you want to have anything to do with?
What else is there? That’s the question, isn’t it?
And that’s where we yearn for simple pre-digested answers. We want to find our unique path but we still prefer to have someone lay it out for us. But the only way to find the answer to this dilemma is by creating it yourself.
You don’t have any idea who you are until you are it.
Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t play the games society so graciously offers. But the important part is to discover what you are deep down about.
Something no one is deep down about is being perfectly adjusted to society.
Saying you want to perfectly fit into society is like saying you want to be a perfect Borg in the Borg hive mind. And if that is really what you want, then you can relax because you’ve already achieved your goal.
Saying you want to be a good Borg is a clear sign that the Borg has already assimilated you. In that case, all hail the Borg queen.
Defeating the Public Enemy No. 1
The biggest enemy we have to face is not an interstellar hive mind or the government.
It’s fear. It’s our own survival mechanism.
Most of our life is controlled by fear, that is, until we wake up and square up.
Until we are no longer afraid of fear and dare to look it in the eye without lunging behind the next bush to cower, every decision will be an expression of dodging fear.
Of course we have to first see the extent to which fear controls our lives. Some people are more under fear’s spell than others.
Fear-based decisions are appropriate when your immediate life is in danger. But how often does that happen?
What happens instead is that we choose life paths based on fear.
We choose a career based on fear (”I might not have enough money if I don’t become a lawyer.”). We choose a partner based on fear (”I hate this guy but if I don’t stay with him I might end up alone.”). We choose to postpone our dreams based on fear (”I will first work for 35 years to have some security before I start pursuing my dream.”).
To become who you really are usually takes courage and surrender.
Courage because you have to summersault down the cliff of uncertainty.
“This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.”
— Terence McKenna
Surrender because you have to give up what you think you are, release the illusion of control, and allow your authentic journey to unfold.
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
— Joseph Campbell
—
If you feel stuck where you are, then it’s probably because you’re locked in a circular repetitive motion of the same thoughts and emotions.
Imagine walking in circles in sand for years — at some point you’ll have a track so deep, it will be hard to climb out of it.
And the longer you keep circling in the sandbox, the more you’ll feel like a victim — a victim to thoughts, emotions, circumstances, other people, the government, and on and on.
But when you realize that no one is doing all that unwanted stuff in your mind to you, then you can haul yourself out of the sandbox. You can choose a new thought and a new feeling.
Instead of bullying yourself all day long, you can choose yourself.
And then you can keep choosing yourself over and over again until the thought of ever deviating from who you really are is as unthinkable as a square circle.
Luka
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