When we come into this world, we come with a base feeling of neutrality. Our natural feeling, one of well-being and content. From there we experience the highs and lows of life which cannot be avoided nor do they have to be. These highs and lows are perfectly normal and if experienced and let go, we will slip back into our natural feeling of content.
The easiest way that I can explain this is to use babies as an example. If they are hungry or have a dirty nappy, they cry. If you play with them, they smile and laugh and then they naturally return to their base feeling. They don’t get caught up in the ‘low’ unpleasant feelings of being hungry or having a dirty nappy nor do they feel the need to be played with to experience the highs that laughter brings. They may desire the experience of these highs but there is a huge difference between desiring and needing (or deluded desires), the former is simply a natural expression of life with no resistance whereas the latter is a delusion which causes you to stray from your base feeling and to seek your happiness through external means.
The flow of life (our natural state of being) is one of acceptance of what is happening whether that be good or bad and in this flow we don’t get caught up in events or situations in our lives. We just allow them to come and go. The problem occurs when we start trying to control our experiences which entails blocking out or resisting what we perceive as being negative and trying to forcefully create what we perceive as being positive.
In truth, it’s not the experiences per see that are negative but the resistance to some and the deluded need/struggle to attain others. Ups and downs are part and parcel of life. The mental and emotional suffering that people go through is caused by the struggle to control, resistance to what is happening and the deluded beliefs being held about what is needed to be happy. Different people have different beliefs and needs (conditioning) in life so that is why different situations stress them out. If it was actually the situation itself, then everybody would be stressed out about the same things. Saying that, overtime we have developed societal beliefs /needs for things like love and wealth. I think everybody would desire these in their lives but if you stress yourself out trying to attain them and over-identify with the lack of them in your reality, you will suffer greatly as a result and this suffering will take from your creativity (ability to create wealth) and make you more needy (less attractive to the opposite sex) creating a cycle which gets more intense over time.
The more you resist life and the more deluded beliefs you have, the further away from the natural feeling of well being you are which means the more you will suffer. You cannot be completely cut off from this feeling because it is essentially who/what you are, but you can be so far away and distracted by your mind that you can’t access it and it may be just a distant memory.
These beliefs get buried away over time and become a part of your minds make up so its highly likely you are unaware of most of them or else you are unable to separate your mind from your true self through a lack of awareness and over-identification with it and its antics. You must first work on your awareness and then detach from your mind allowing your deluded beliefs to lose their grip and fade away.
You can view previous posts and follow my blog for more on this.
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Great post
Thank you!
well done - i like to think philosophically and live in the moment practising mindfulness - i will follow you now
Thanks!
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