If that headline didn’t get you, then you must be dead.
Can I even come close to thinking I have the answer to this ultimate question of life? The hubris of it all. Let me start with the fact that this is not original work. I am simply sharing my epiphanies after reading the likes of Tolle, Dispenza, Aurelius, Frankl, Ruiz…
…and after playing the lottery.
Even ponder what it might mean to you to win the lottery. I’m not talking about the little scratch cards I play from time to time. I’ll buy a $5 ticket whose meager winnings can afford me three more tickets, whose meager winnings can afford me four more tickets, whose meager winnings can afford me one more ticket, and then…busted. No, I’m talking about hundreds of millions of dollars kind of lottery. The profound change this type of windfall would invoke in your life would be indigestible from a long-term perspective. Your identity would become one with your wealth. Your ego would set up a permanent outpost in the field of your reality. I submit, dear reader, that it would totally suck.
It would be like being born into tremendous wealth. There is a reason that the children of the excessively wealthy tend toward the disposition of a ne’er-do-well. They have no challenge, no raison d’être. They are prone to bad decisions or radicalism. Neither are the paths to true inner peace.
As Joe Dispenza has written, our emotional state is body-centered. When a situation threatens or challenges us, our response is hormonal. The feelings we experience, the butterflies in our stomach, the tensing of our musculature, and the lightheadedness, are due to our hormonal response. What do we do then? Too often, we identify with this emotional response and the mental anguish it brings. This is our ego, and it is now in control. Too often, it wants to perpetuate the pain.
We find peace when we dispatch our identification with our ego by making peace with the present moment. We don’t make peace with the present moment if:
- We believe something has to happen before we can feel fulfilled. Maybe it’s that next job, degree, or the move.
- Something has happened in the past, and we can’t let go. Be it regret or perceived misfortune, this is a seemingly inescapable trap.
- Something is happening now that should not be happening. You are involved in a drama, not your own doing, and it keeps you from true peace.
All of these scenarios rely on the ego to exist. When we tie our identity to things, people, or events, we roll the dice because fate might take something from us, turn people against us or put us on the path of failure.
This is my belief.
Suppose we can all come to understand that peace is in your grasp right now, then….well, imagine. We find peace in the present moment. The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. What has happened or what will happen is inconsequential. If you can come to master this, you will have found happiness. If we can each one of us find this kind of true peace, we will have done the best thing we can do to save the world.
We are human and will fail at this from time to time. We must persist. It is a practice, one that gets better but never perfect. Ours is not an ideal world. But it is always the journey and not the destination.
Peace be with you.
