Have you been trying to create a more peaceful life by changing your circumstances -- everything and everyone around you? or even yourself?
That's what almost everybody in the world has tried and continues to try. Our world situation is where that strategy has landed us.
Albert Einstein said something relevant -- if people could hear it: "Problems cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that created them." If we digest that, it might sound like this: "The results of our actions reflect our state of mind when doing those actions." Chew on that, for a moment. State of mind matters.
Another saying often swallowed whole, without much chewing is, "Become the change you want to see in the world." Sounds good, doesn't it? Idealistic! Lofty! Everybody should do it!
I think Gandhi said that. After chewing, it sounds like a platitude: "Live with integrity." Now, re-visit Gandhi's saying about being the change we want to see, in the world. They fit together. See?
And yet, we tend to try it the other way, first. Change the world!!!
Why is that?
I think it's because so few of us are able to regulate our own state, very well, we instead seek to cope with circumstances to bring relief. Coping is very tiring. That's because "beneath" coping is resistance and opposition -- or it wouldn't seem like coping.
Over a lifetime, it piles up. That's why, as we age, we go for the familiar, the commonplace, the conventional. The pile-up
Some people try "inner work". We aspire to healthy ideals, mental health, mindfulness and spirituality. For such approaches to succeed, they must effectively eliminate the pile-ups. It's slow going.
Those pile-ups pervade our lives as lifelong patterns so familiar as to be taken as "just how I am"; we lack access to "the levers and switches of the runaway train that is our mind" -- that's why it's an uphill climb that seems like things are going downhill, fast.
The world is a conspiracy of stressful search for relief from stress. Doing, doing, and more doing -- our state of readiness for anything and everything in all kinds of ways and running our lives according to everything we know. "Stress". "Overwhelm". "Too much". "On your mark! Get Set! ..." Am I exaggerating?
We're not peaceful or we can get only "more peaceful". A sea of "stress" pervades our places, concentrated some places (like airport departure gates), lower-level in others (like sensory-deprivation centers and massage studios), moderate-to-high level (parks and public venues) to hysterical (corporations, cities and the news media). We get infected. Relief is often temporary.
Because we seem to have so little control of our own state, we blame our stress on causes outside ourselves. "Such and such made me feel bad."
That load gets big. When it becomes overwhelming, distress seems to surface like Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster -- or suddenly to loom, like Godzilla. Bananas -- it's Bananas.
But the stress comes not from the circumstances, but from our own way of operating. It's our internal state that we're experiencing, not "circumstances". No escape from ourselves.
But, not having a handle on our own state, we make attempts to change circumstances, escape, or to suppress our reactions -- and away we go. More of the same.
The more "stressed" we become about our chronic lives, the more disturbed we are, the more aggressive we become for something different. We might become an entrepreneur! or for more of the same -- like a millionaire politician.
So, some people yearn for a more peaceful life -- and that's a sign of intelligence.
How to unload the pile-up without giving up or making unacceptable compromises? without burnout? without just persisting and bearing up? Without becoming a moron?
What to do? What to do?
Stay tuned.
Next expostulation forthcoming in two days, or so.
No comments:
Post a Comment