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Most of us treat our lives like a house that needs to be in perfect order. We have all these corners of our house demanding our attention — family, friends, career, health, house, etc. — and we are convinced that all these corners deserve our attention.
Not just that, we treat the house as if it’s the master and we’re the servants though we like to believe the opposite. But it doesn’t take much to see that the house dictates our emotional state, or so it seems. But whether it is the case or just seems to be the case, we certainly believe it to be the case.
We think we’re at the mercy of this house, so much so that we identify with the house. We are thoroughly convinced that this house we’re taking care of is us and because we want ourselves to look good, we have to make the house look good.
And because we like positive emotions and dislike negative ones, and because we believe the state of our house determines which emotions we’re worth receiving, we do all kinds of absurd twists and turns so that the house is happy and thus bequeaths us with a meagerly pathetic amount of transient positive emotions.
The goal, we assume, is to turn these transient positive emotions into lasting ones. To do this, we have to get our house in order. But because the nature of the house is entropy, we have a never-ending task on our hands.
People, things, and experiences enter and leave our house and do whatever they want to the house. So, it’s our job to clean up the mess. And no matter how good of a householder you are, there’s always a mess to clean up.
Freedom Lies Outside Your House
This kind of existence is not being alive, it’s being a slave — a slave to the house, a house that is just an idea in your head.
Keeping your house clean and tidy will never offer you the happiness and freedom that seems to be waiting somewhere. But you know what will?
Burning the house down.
If you like pouring all your life energy into busy work then trying to keep your house in order might be the right choice. But if you feel a gnawing sense of discontent about your house, then going to the gas station to get some gasoline might be the better choice.
This house we’re talking about is not your friend or companion or even your life you need to take care of. It’s your imaginary slaveholder. And this slaveholder has convinced you that you should want to take care of it by making you believe that it is yours and not the other way around.
It’s what keeps us running in circles like mindless sheep for lifetimes.
This hardly needs mentioning but when we talk about burning your house down, we’re not talking about literally burning your house down (though who am I to disallow it). We are talking about stepping out of the house (what you consider to be your life) and clearly seeing what kind of grotesque nightmare you’re in.
Happiness and freedom are not in having the perfect house with everything in order but in having no house to take care of. What I mean by that is no longer having a fixed mental representation of “your” life that you need to constantly track and keep alive.
Stepping Out of the House
This process is about taking the “your” out of your life so that only life remains. If this sounds too metaphorical and cryptic to you, it’s because you haven’t stepped out of your house to have a clear emotionally uninfluenced look at it.
Right now you might still feel like you’re the overseer of your house and if you’re not overseeing it who else will, right? But what if it doesn’t need overseeing? What if the overseeing is what is messing everything up? And what if overseeing is actually just playing make-believe?
This doesn’t mean that you’ll no longer work, or no longer take care of your family, or no longer live in an actual house. It means that all the mental overseeing that drains your zest for life drops away.
Imagine all the overseeing over your house would fall away. Imagine someone else would take care of it. How much free time and energy would you suddenly have?
Simply imagining this, there might be something long forgotten coming up, something that’s been here all along but which you kept suppressed through all the housekeeping work.
This something is fear.
Fear and Beyond
In the beginning, there will be fear. Suddenly, there’s no more of anything that kept you busy. This can be a whole bunch of thinking about your life falling away or, if your life feels like a prison, a whole bunch of your life falling away.
So what are you going to spend your time on?
You might feel lost and useless. But what is happening is not that you’re becoming more lost or more useless. You’re starting to see what was there all along. But because you’ve been so busy and entranced by your housekeeping job, you’ve never seen what was right in front of you.
The house you’ve been taking care of is nothing but an idea. You choose and pick whatever concepts and ideas best represent the house you wish to have based on your conditioning and call it your life. And if you don’t consistently pour energy into keeping this idea alive, no one else will, and it starts falling apart.
From society’s perspective, this falling apart might seem like the worst thing that can happen. But really, it’s the most wonderful thing. It’s a death-rebirth process. It’s a metamorphosis — the caterpillar self dying to become a butterfly self. You are claiming your birthright.
Even if from the outside nothing changes right away, internally you’ll move into a new paradigm — a whole new way of functioning.
Eventually, you’ll see that things keep going even without your overseeing. You don’t need to define life as your life; you don’t need to dig your heels in, in the vain attempt of keeping life from changing; you don’t need to conform to any ideas or notions about who or what you should be and how you should behave, not even your own.
This might sound dramatic and it can be (although it doesn’t need to be) but it all starts with one simple step: looking.
You take a fresh look at everything in your life, especially everything that seems to be connected with negative emotions. And then you just observe it without changing anything. If you jump too quickly into trying to change stuff, all you’re doing is meddling with something you don’t understand.
Begin by dispassionately observing everything in and around you and soon understanding will start flooding your veins — the understanding of how you’ve been living in a crazy house, while all along there was a whole wide world outside this house.
And when that understanding takes hold of you, change will happen naturally, as you gladly burn the house, you’ve spent building and decorating your whole life, down.
That’s when you get your first taste of freedom.
Luka
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thank you Luka.
you are my life saver.
i was in pain without knowing the reason, i happen to find your site.
and i believe it’s not coincidence.
your mini book leads me to understanding.
now i am reading 101book and Dr. hawkins books
Hope to see you in person someday.
changwoo from korea
I appreciate your kind words, Changwoo! I’m glad that all this is helpful to you.
Reading your wise teachings is as always for me a way of getting in touch with something miraculous. As if a ton of burden is being lifted of my shoulders 🙂
So grateful! Thank you Luka ❤️
wow thank u luka!! your website is a find 💓
Much appreciated. 🙂