A Healthy Dose of Reality

Today's post is going to dive deep into my mind, as scary as that may be! I composed this journal writing and I just want to share it as I have been continually pushed down this road to truth by people, books and many experiences. Recently all the guidance, learning and discussion has led to some really deep revelations for me as a person that I believe improve my quality of life. I don't believe ignorance is bliss, nor do I think it is healthy for us to view the world and ourselves through a distorted lens. I would like to share a journal writing I have done about seeing the truth about us and the world around us. This is a process I've learned to embrace and has led me to seeing life more clearly. It may or may not work the same for you, I simply want to share what I realized with others.

The key to living a life removed from disillusionment and deception is to not be disillusioned or deceived by yourself. Over the course a lifetime it is easy to develop thought patterns, carry out actions and create a modus operandi if you will, with little to no conscious effort. In fact, in most cases this is done without conscious effort. As we sleep walk through life minute to minute, day to day, year to year we develop a false and distorted view of ourselves. This inaccurate portrait we hold of ourselves will always lead to turmoil as there will be a rift between what IS and what we PERCEIVE to be true. We strive in our lifetime to form an identity: I am “fill in the blank”. Typically this statement simply means, “I am a person who does blank”. In the attempt for us to be perceived a certain way or for us to perceive ourselves this way through real actual action or just hopeful thought, we create a false identity about ourselves. Thoughts, movement, action and doing come and go, but these things are not the essence of who we are. It is the essence of us we must move closer towards by breaking apart the “doer” shell we have constructed. In order to see truth in the world, in order to find out who we truly are, we must shed all beliefs about who we think ourselves to be and doubt everything we think makes us an individual. We must wipe the slate clean and try to observe ourselves as we would observe others around us. This task can be painful and this task can be difficult. It is not easy to look in the mirror and acknowledge we are not who we thought ourselves to be. It’s even more difficult to acknowledge that we are something we believe we are not.

It is important in this process to not become self-destructive in the sense that we begin to victimize ourselves, devalue who we are, degrade our experience and develop a negative view of the individual we are trying to figure out. To bring about the reality of who we are in essence, we must observe ourselves objectively. It is not necessary to judge, condemn or praise ourselves during this reflective process because that gets us nowhere closer to reality. Judgments, condemnations and high praises are simply decorations or scarlet letters placed on something that just IS. We must objectively view ourselves for who we are given our relationship to the world around us. If we say we are pursuing love, peace and happiness in life yet our thoughts, words and actions create distension in the world around us, then it’s clear we are not being consistent. We are neither good people for wanting to be peaceful, loving and happy nor are we bad people for creating the true environment we’ve created. The situation is what it is: an inconsistent reality manifested by false views about ourselves, the world around us and an inability to see the truth. The only way to rectify this fragmented reality is by dissecting ourselves, doubting the beliefs we hold about the world and understanding what causes the rift between who we think we are and what we truly are.

Success in this process can be achieved through self-reflection and passively observing ourselves in relation to the world we live in. True, this life is our experience and we have the ability to do, to be and to create whatever we wish. This is not a questioning of our abilities as a human race to take action and create what we put our minds to. This is a call to find truth in reality and just how much of it we are willing to look at and take responsibility for. To see truth in us and to see truth in the world there is only one perspective that can liberate us from ourselves and that is the perspective of the observer.