WHAT IS REAL WHO HAS IT EASIER THAN YOU?
SEPTEMBER 15, 2009:
9/15/2009
Tags:
Direct Link
You guys this story from Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner on page 138-139 saved my life today. I was facing a challenge in my mind, and I was letting it start to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I knew I was standing on the ledge so I phoned a friend. Love to you dear friend, you know who you are, thank you for talking me down. Unfortunately once off the phone the voices and noise in my head got louder again. I was in that dreaded zone of catasrophizing! I know that zone, don't like to be there and want to get out as soon as possible. I had used up all my calls it was just me fighting for my life (you know a life of peace, calm and happiness - no big deal.)
So I went outside to let the sun and wind help me heal my head that was now causing my heart to want to explode in my chest. I picked up my book and it fell to this page and I started reading the following: "I was home listening to NPR when I heard a familiar voice, a colleague who also works as a reporter for the network. She had woven a small masterpiece. A story that was pitch perfect. My old nemesis, professional envy, kicked in. God, I thought, her life is PERFECT. So together. Everything is going swimmingly for her, while I am drowning in a sea of irrelevance. I sent my friend an email, telling her how much Iiked her story and adding, breezily, without a trace of envy, that I hoped life was good.
Thanks, she wrote back, but no, life was not good. Just yesterday, her three-year old son had been diagnosed with a rare, debilitating disease.
I felt like a fool. I had misread reality, once again failing to realize that as yoga teaches, all of the material world is MAYA, illusion. Things are not as they seem. We humans do not know a damn thing. About anything.
A scary thought but also, in a way, a liberating one. Our highs, our accomplishments, are not real. But neither are our setbacks, our mushkala. They are not real either."
Chapter 2.18 in the yoga sutras talks to us about two aspects: the one who sees (the TRUE SELF) and that which is seen (everything else). It reads like this "When understood as illusory (Maya) nature (seen) and her attributes the gunas exist to serve the self (seer) with both enjoyment and liberation." Our real problems exist because we can't tell what is real and what is not. We think that our problems are real. But even our problems are always changing (someone loves you one second and they don't the next, you have a job and then they let you go, then you get hired by someone else and fall in love again). The ONLY THING that is truly real is the seer, who we are intuitively on the inside, our real self. Not what we look like, what we do for a living, how much money we have, everything else in life is always changing.
"Once we realize that everything in nature changes, we FREE ourselves from wanting things to be different than they actually are. We ENJOY every moment."
YES! Try not to fight what is illusion and instead when the noise starts to get out of control come to the mat and remind yourself the only thing real is the moment we are living right now and it is something of the experience of ourselves on the inside. Love you, and if you every need to phone a friend call me 847 772 9642. Silvia