When you go through your days, you rarely experience life as it is.
You experience your thoughts and feelings about life.
When you look in the mirror for example, you immediately start judging, labeling, and naming. You condemn the parts of your body you don’t like. You decide it’s time to lose weight. You think it’s time to get your hair cut and wonder if that’s a new wrinkle on your forehead.
Numerous thoughts go by while you look at yourself.
Some make you feel good, others don’t.
You don’t really experience looking at your body. You experience the thoughts and feelings that come up when you look at your body.
The same thing happens throughout your day.
You constantly judge, name, and label everything you see, feel, hear, sense, smell, taste, or encounter.
When you walk in nature, for example, you don’t simply experience your surroundings. You automatically name and describe everything (“a tree” “a bird” “it’s green” “it looks like an oak”)
When you meet someone, similar thoughts show up.
(“She looks just like that bitch in high school.” “He could use some deodorant.” “She makes me feel uncomfortable.” “I don’t like her.” “I wish I looked like that.”)
You’re constantly thinking, bouncing from one feeling to the next depending on the content of your thoughts.
You don’t see anything as it truly is, including yourself.
You look at everything and everyone through a thick filter of thoughts, knowledge, memories, fears, doubts, stories, and (cultural) conditioning.
This filter keeps you stuck in a limited, distorted perspective of life and yourself.
It hides your true nature and prevents you from feeling deeply content and fully alive.
To help dissolve this filter, I recently gave one of my clients the following exercise:
Get present in this moment.
Then, look around you. What do you see? The first thing that happens, is that your mind starts rattling of the things it sees: a window. A curtain. A plant.
Discard these and any other thoughts. Put them aside for now and look again. What do you see? Without describing it, naming it, or comparing it to anything?
A different way to practice is to get present and notice how you feel.
The mind will instantly search for words to describe your feeling: I feel restless / sad / giddy / tired, or whatever you would call what you feel.
Put all words aside. Don’t put a label or name on anything you feel. Don’t condemn or judge what you feel.
Just feel. Embrace every sensation exactly as it is in this moment. Just BE.
You’ll notice a softening and opening within yourself. You feel calmer. Your mind clears. Don’t take my word for it, just try it for yourself. Play with this exercise without any agenda or expectations. Just play with it and see what it’s like for you.
Enjoy!
Love,
P.S.: Ready to dissolve the thick filter of thoughts and conditioning so you can experience your True Nature, true and lasting freedom, joy, and inner peace?