What if we didn’t judge others? What if we looked for the good and not the bad? What if we automatically trusted others? What if we choose kindness? What if we listened instead of speaking? What if we shared instead of accumulated? What if we choose to let go? What if we choose to forgive? What if we choose to give instead of taking? What if we looked for what people did right not what they did wrong? What if we were the first to change? What if we were brave enough?
These are all choices we can make now and for as long as we choose.
For a long time now, life for many has followed a predictable pattern and the industrialised system has sold us the ‘journey’ and in reward for going along, we get trinkets for our services, which we then spend back into the system to buy the lifestyle they system sold us.
It’s a ‘loop of life’ from birth to death and if we have children, they start another loop of the same journey and so on. It ‘s self-perpetuating.
We can, of course, be ‘happy’ following this loop, well, often what we believe is happiness. It is more likely to be on surface as we are fearful of not fitting in, so we pretend we are happy.
We are conditioned for this ‘loop’ from birth, into early years by our parents, who have already been fully conditioned, then by school and then work and wider society. We follow the path fearful of stepping out of the loop.
The conditioning leads us into a loop that is dominated by unconsciousness, deep in thought within our minds, driven by fear, and as the conditioning is very ego driven, it leads to a great deal of comparison, judgement, criticism and suffering internally and externally.
The loop is there, we are all aware of it, and yet we happily enrol on the journey, fearing there is no choice and, of course, it ‘gets better’ as everyone tells you.
It takes bravery and consciousness to step out of the loop, to break free and to unlearn our conditioning. We have to be prepared to be vulnerable and to enter the wilderness, to be on the edge, to be alone. Yet when we do this, when become who we truly are, instead of pretending and following the loop, we experience true joy rather than the shallowness that a new car, or a bar of chocolate or more trinkets will bring us on the loop. We free ourselves from suffering of the mind and the ego and we then step out on a journey where we can be what our soul wants to be…our true-self.
Philip Dodson 