Frog in a well
The first thing we need to understand is, that people in mayoralty has need, to explain things that surround them, since unexplained things, fright them. In the long history, there was a lot of explanations, for all the phenomena that was happening, and for the life itself. We aren’t new at that; also, we aren’t special, when we believe (so strongly) that we figured everything out. I’m sure people always believed, just as we do, that they figured everything out. The only thing that was constantly changing was the explanation.
As I said, we need explanation - we’re curious, and curiosity (as my friend said) is what make us humans, it’s the force which pushing us further and further. Of course, when talking about curiosity, we must take into account laziness, which seems to be even strongest force.
So, let me tell you a fairytale: long time ago lightning appeared - people were confused, and they were searching for an explanation, a wise man realized that lightning is something made by God; since he was convincing and since that explanation made perfect sense - all people agreed and didn’t though about it anymore. Many years later, and after many corrections of that theory, people accepted that lightning is just “an atmospheric discharge of electricity”, they weren’t sure what that is, but they were happy with it, and they made a lot of fun, of those savages from past, who believed that lightning is send by God.
There was always majority of people who just agreed with the explanation which was valid in their time, since they were too lazy to think with their heads; but what’s really disturbing is, that they were really ready to defend that false believe, defending it even with giving their or taking other peoples’ lives.
I’m concern when I talk to people nowadays, since mostly all I can hear, is just blindness and total inability to think with their own heads. I could swallow even the most crazy idea, if only that idea would be something that person actually figure it out on his own, and it’s based on his own experience, his own life. But what’s mostly happening is just repeating; the irony is, that mass media nowadays has more power (to brainwash people), than all churches put together ever had, but we still believe, that we’re somehow advanced, enlightened, that we understand everything, and (now here’s the irony), that people in the past were brainwashed and mislead by institutions of that time.
Does average person ever ask himself, “why do I believe in what I believe?”, it seems that such questions aren’t often on peoples’ mind. People seems to be fanatically closed, unable to open up to anything.
We’re like computers, outputting bunch of data, not knowing even what that data is, and why are we outputting it. We’re absorbing data, with same mindlessness. To know a lot, is insignificant, why do I care which is the longest river in world, which is the tallest mountain, what’s the distance to the moon and back? It’s just trash, kitsch, it has no real value. Everyone with too much time can learn all those facts. Give me wisdom and I’ll shake your hand, and I’ll even walk with you on your path and respect you. But wisdom is something, masses never were looking for.
I heard a story about the frog, who was living all his life in a well. Two birds has visit him from time to time, and tell him about the ocean. The frog, was trying to understand a scale of ocean, while still having in mind measure of the small well in which he was living. The more he was trying to understand the wideness of ocean, the less he could. He was asking birds, he was thinking and thinking, measuring, calculating. The more he was doing that, the less sense everything had; finally he concluded, there’s no such thing as ocean - it can’t be, it’s totally impossible.
Nevertheless, from time to time, even if only in deepest dreams, he sens the wideness of thing called ocean.
Indeed, in small puddles in which we live, which are all we can see, from time to time, even if only in deepest dreams, we sense the infinity, which is beyond anything we could ever understood.
Life…
The thing about life is, that you must fall in love with it, you must start perceive it, as lovers perceive each other — with tenderness and awareness of every detail, with enthusiasm and expectation of every moment. To spend this time here is great reward; our life offering us so much possibilities, about which we’re totally unaware, while being trapped in our everyday thoughts, which seems so important, but in reality are so insignificant.
In life, just like in love, is nothing to win and nothing to find, but just to experience. The greatness of being in love is the simplicity, the melting of what we’re calling reality, but actually what’s happening, is just melting of our everyday ideas, which are mostly based on fear, and therefore are mostly negative. There’s nothing but love or fear, so when we fall in love, our ideas emerge from love, and therefore, they’re not just positive, but actually limitless.
Falling in love with life, means simply that our perception emerge from love, instead from fear. To put it more simply, it means: when we fall in love with life, life fall in love with us.
To have a good life, I think, we must love it - just like, to have a good relationship, we must love the person with which we’re in relationship. We must be forgiving, patient, and mostly understanding. The recipe for good life, I think, is the same as for good relationship, but that’s not coincidence, since what is life, if not the most important relationships of all - the relationship with ourselves, with God, with universe.
You better start running, find a place to hide, since things are different here. You can’t fight back. You’ll be lost, you’ll be falling down, into infinite caverns. The air is polluted - almost impossible to breath. Men without faces will follow you, they’ll get you - they’ll eat your brains like zombies; women with hearts riped out - emptiness in their eyes - they’ll try to get you, to get your heart. You better run. Your ancestries will follow you, whispering about the weaknesses, about diseases, about the death. And death - she’ll follow you too, and she’ll get you, and you’ll suffer. The armies of other creatures, vampires and beasts will be crawling to you, will drink your blood and feast on your body, while you’ll be tied up with chains. Dark water will swallow you, and you won’t be able to swim, you’ll be drowning, and downing will last forever. There’s no fighting back.
And I start to run, but couldn’t run - I had no legs.
They had always got me, I have always died.
Until that night.
I was tired of trying to run away, I was tired of dying. I turned around, and look everything that was crawling towards me. My eyes were shining strength, and they melted away. I stood up, and they were small - i could have crushed them, like a small and helpless insect - but I didn’t. I sat down and breathed them in, like they would be air. The land, which was dark, was illuminated by me now. The air, which was polluted was clean and fresh, like after light summer rain. I fell into water - that deep dark water - which was now clean, and light, warm and soft - carrying me away. I heard the song, and I realized the ancestries weren’t whispering about death, but singing song of eternity. I looked at men without faces, and I saw deepness in their eyes, tears in their eyes, soul in their eyes, and they wanted to listen to me, to understand me. And I looked at women without hearts, but they were beautiful, and they had hearts, and they had love in their eyes, - and I was lifted by their love, so high - that I could see everything, and now everything was clear.
Finally, the death came, and thrown away her cloak, and shined and she was beautiful. She took my hand, and love was in her eyes, and I woke up, like you wake up, in the embrace of your lover, in the beautiful morning. So natural, calm and peaceful.
I once bought four yogurts - they seemed really delicious, I could have eaten them all at once. But don’t know why, I decided I’ll not eat them, I decided to save them instead. On some point they expired, so I couldn’t do anything else, but throw them away.
I once had a girlfriend, and oh, how I became bored with her. Lying in that bed, nothing to say or to do anymore. I just didn’t care if she’s there or not. Only when she said goodbye, I realized, how much was there, to share with her. But she was gone, for good.
I once had the youth, and oh, how I wanted to grow up — and so my youth has passed, don’t know when and how.
I once had the life. How much was there to do, to see and experience. I realized, I saw so clear, on some point, right before everything has passed, right before the expiration, right before, I was thrown away. And then, I was floating in infinity and I wasn’t me, and even before I had a chance to be judged by myself, for all the beings I hurt, I was judged by myself, for one particular being which I hurt the most - the being, which I hurt, and let down — I wasted life of that being. How could I.
I - the thing that left of me, screamed, and the scream was so intense, that it waked me up. It was morning.
The birds were singing, and I felt and smelled freshness of the early spring. The world outside was so green. I decided I’ll eat my yogurts, and I hugged my girl, and shared the morning with her. And I enjoyed the youth. I don’t know, if that morning ever passed.
Know yourself
We are, what we think we are, that’s what Buddha said; you can trust that this statement is true, and you can take it literally. Now, here’s the first problem: instead of trusting ourselves, and believing in ourselves - we believe what other tell us. You’ll maybe say now, that a person is defined by his/her environment, therefore - there’s no choice. But, even though we’re define by our environment - there’s a choice, actually, a path on which we can go; the path of self-exploration, - self-realization. So, the exploration of our inner world. The realization who we are, and what’s our purpose. And this realization shouldn’t be just something shallow, but should be deep, philosophical and spiritual experience.
When realize who you are, you won’t need grasp on the words anymore, and living in hope, that people will say something good about you, so that you could feel a bit better, and you won’t have to hope, that people won’t say something bad, what could made you sad. This is the point on which you know who you are, they have right to their opinion, but you know, so you don’t have to (and you don’t) react emotional.
It’s really logical - you lived with yourself all your life, so I guess, you’re the one who should know yourself the best. There’s not even a single day, which you wouldn’t spend with yourself, there’s not even a single person who could know you better - that’s of course - if you explore just a little bit, and if you start believing in yourself, and in your experiences.
Self-exploration isn’t just important - it’s the key actually, since without it, you’ll easily got cough in your own made-believed-word, which consists of old, and outdated opinions. You must explore your inner world, and realize who you are - and you must keep exploring your inner world - and never stop.
People are running away from themselves, somewhere out, since inside, it’s often too bad, too strange and unfamiliar. Music, television, work, people just can’t be alone in peace and quietness, they’re looking for joy outside.
Right now you can imagine you inner world, as a big dump - everyone comes, and throws some of his things into it, and you just take it all - you love those who throw something “nice” and useful, — and on other hand, you hate those which are throwing bad items; “exploration”, in this analogy, is cleaning of this “dump” and replacement of it, with nice garden; cleaning will take you a lot of time, but when you’ll clean it, - you won’t have so much work with it anymore, and even the work which you’ll have won’t be so hard, opposite, it will be mostly joy. When other people will see this nice garden of yours, they won’t have desire to throw trash in it, quite opposite actually, they’ll enjoy and appreciate it.
But mostly you’ll benefit from this nice clean garden, you’ll feel good in it, you won’t have the need to run away from it anymore.
Be Grateful
There is so many things, for which we all can be grateful, if for nothing else, we can start, with the realization, that we’re - by some miracle - alive, and conscious. Where is life and consciousness, there is always potential, of happiness (and even enlightenment), so we can be grateful, even if only for that potential.
In dark times of my life, I was grateful for light days and short periods of happiness; when things were much better, I slowly forgot to be grateful. Instead of that, I became greedy.
We always think, how we need more, but what is more good for, if we can’t notice what we have now? We’ll get more, but, in that very moment, we’ll again desire more, and again, we won’t notice what we have in this moment. And so the life will pass, in need for more. That’s a life of a poor man.
Life of a rich man, on other hand, is life of grateful and aware person. When we know what we have, and we’re grateful for that - we don’t need more, we may still follow our dreams, but one is to follow the dream, and walking on the path of life, and another is desire of something to happen, and trying to force our life into particular direction. One is death thirst, another is refreshing sip from the never ending string of life.
Money, or any material thing, can’t make you rich, - they never could, and never will. And among the poorest persons in this world, seems to be the riches, and among the riches, are the poorest.
Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.
—Doris Day
To be grateful for most regular things, is sometimes hard — only when we lost them, we realize we had them, and just how much they were worth. Health, inner and outer peace, hope and faith, etc… We’re so unaware of those things, while we have them.
If we’d just start thinking, for how many things, we can be so grateful - we could think for a whole month. But I’m not saying, that we must start making a list, of all the things for which we’re grateful, I’m just saying - we should recognize some of them, since after recognition, the inspiration will came - above all, the inspiration for life itself.
It’s sad, that we need to be inspired for life; I believe, that depression and many other mental disorders, and even many of the global problems, are (more or less) the consequence of the uninspired life. I think many people lack the sense and reason (of life), - they’re feeling like a machine, or actually, as a small piece of a big and horrible machine.
In gratefulness for the simple and small things, we can find a lot of inspiration for our life. The great inspiration, to do something with life, can arise. One can start seeing, before unseen possibilities. Of course, we shouldn’t mix, being grateful, with being attached. While attachment may imprison us, gratefulness, and appreciation of the current moment, will liberate us.
Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.
—Buddha
To Be Alive
The realization of reality would lead into liberation. People have no idea how far from reality they are. We have no idea, what a big illusion is this, what we perceive as “reality”.
I won’t say I’m some kind of exception, some kind of superman, who is liberated, free, illuminated, enlightened in state of nirvana, - no, I’m not. I’m not even close. On other hand, I had, at least couple of times, glimpse of what lies beyond dirty windows of our so called reality. I was alive, couple of times, couple of seconds, in my whole life. And I’m sure you were too, and I’m sure that’s something we’re looking for. Either in money, or in sex, sport, spirituality, church, religion, etc..
I said that realization of reality would lead directly into liberation - the enlightenment; by the fact that most of the people aren’t illuminated and liberated, we can conclude, they lost the touch with reality. When I talk with people, when I’m looking my own life, I can see how very far from reality we actually are. It’s like living in a dream.
So what is reality? I have no answer, I haven’t seen it, since if I would, I probably wouldn’t be here, writing this post. I can say, what the reality isn’t, I can tell a lot about being dead. When talking about reality, I won’t go into things like perception of physical reality, I wont talk about our senses, and how things are processed in our brain, I even don’t have enough knowledge about this, to be able to write about it with any confidence. I can say however, that even physical reality, the world we see, isn’t seen from our eyes; they do provide data, which is processed, cut down, and “enriched” with our believes, fears, expectations, etc…
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
— Albert Einstein
What actually lead me into writing this post, wasn’t the questioning about physical reality, about outer world - but rather about our inner world. The fact, that we don’t live our life fully, that we’re ready to sell ourselves into slavery, that we’re so easily ready to sell our believes; we’re so easily ready to believe words of other people, rather than our intuition, rather than our own experiences or even our own eyes. All those things, lead into realization, that this isn’t life, it’s rather some state between life, and death, between being awake and dreaming (mostly we’re dreaming).
If I go and see the doctor today, and he will told me, I have couple of months to live, I’ll probably really die in couple of months. Not because of any fatal illness, but because of being so sure, about his words, I’ll taken them more seriously than my inner feelings. On those rare occasions when I’ve watch TV, I head about small people; that’s the expression used for people, which doesn’t belong to the political (or some other type of) elite. The sad fact about this is, that many people would agree with that, thinking: “yes, I’m small person, unimportant”. How sad is that?
People will very gladly admit, and truly believe - that they’re nothing. And because they do believe so, they allow to be tortured, humiliated, and exploited. Admitting you’re nothing, has “good” point too, by admitting so, you can easily blame others, for just about any of your problems, plus, you can play the role of victim. We’re what we are. Nor black, nor white, full of colors, capable of being as big as the biggest or as small as the smallest. At night, I sometimes looking into the sky, seeing all the stars, they bring smile on my face. We’re so small, so unimportant, and invisible. It’s so funny, that one invisible dot, on invisible dot - our earth, in hardly visible dot - our solar system, thinks, how big she is. And another invisible dot, think how small she is, compared to other invisible dot. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Nothing. One big zero, emptiness, void.
People are so happy to compare, the whole system of comparison works so well, since they always find someone who’s smaller than them - and they beat it, step on it, smash it, - with such a pleasure. This is really sad, but even saddest are wars, in which two masses start killing each other, based on religion, nationality, or based on any other silly illusion. Dear reader, if there was any doubt, about this world being awaken or not, war and hatred clearly shows, that people actually aren’t awake, they don’t think - they have brain, but they don’t use it. We have a world, of zombies.
Who else I could quote (again) if not Albert Einstein: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
To be alive, to be awake, it’s the same; if you’re not awake, dreams will carry you, dreams will create daemons, dreams will turn you into beast. You must wake up. To be awaken is to see, to see though your eyes, to be equally invisible dot, in infinity of the universe. To be awake is to feel now, not to be lost in tomorrow or yesterday. Feel on your skin, see thought your eyes, taste, hear. Trust yourself, and love yourself and love the world around you.
Understand yourself as you are, - you’re equal, no one has the right to step on you, and you have no right to step on any being. Throw away your guns, tear down the walls; and see the magnificence of surroundings.
You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?
— Jalal ad-Din Rumi
I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things… I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.
— Leo Buscaglia
Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?
You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.
— Jalal ad-Din Rumi
The Relationship
First of first, I believe love should be part of relationship, however, love is much wider than the relationship itself. I actually see quite a lot of selfishness and limitations (+hate,jealousy,etc..) in many relationships, while I consider love to be wide, open and pure, as I wrote about it in one of my previous posts.
We could imagine relationship as soup, and love is water. So it’s (main) ingredient, but it’s quite modified, and mixed with other things. When it comes to relationship, the biggest problem is understanding what relationship should be, and our ideas about it, are really quite strange; relationship based on such a ideas easily fail, even if it had potential in the beginning.
To be single (for longer period of time) is very often considered as some kind of curse, and single person, feels like a big failure. Very often, people consider single person as odd, and above all, as unhappy. Can relationship equals happiness, and can being single, be worst than being in bad relationship? I think answer to both is NO.
Is it true that, no matter how unhappy you are in the relationship, it can’t be worst than being single? Well, it doesn’t make sense to me. Relationship of two persons, with such a strange ideas, must turn into something awful and frightening, after all, they both were (at least partly) pushed into it because of fear of being single (and fear of being odd, unhappy, etc..)
Many people wrongly understand world “single”, they confuse it with word “alone”; that’s not correct of course, being single isn’t the same as being alone. Being single is just not being in relationship, while being alone, is being on your own (no people around you whatsoever, no friends, - nothing). Furthermore, thing that cause even greater confusion is (conscious or subconscious) mixing of words “alone” and “lonely”, which leading into wrongly believing that “single” equals “lonely” — and of course, no one wanna feel lonely.
But, I’m thinking, being in a bad relationship, where the other person doesn’t consider you, the relationship in which you constantly feel ignored, - isn’t that even worst than feeling lonely? For good (healthy) relationship, which won’t bring pain and frustration into our life, we must first learn to be single.
To be single
To be single, it’s not something that we need to fix, it’s not limitation whatsoever. We can fully function while single, and mostly important, we can be happy.
The first thing we must be aware of, is that being single it’s totally fine, and that the relationship won’t bring any salvation. We absolutely must start consider ourselves as individual person, which is able to survive and being happy without relationship.
As we realize mentioned things, and actually consider ourselves as such, we can stop seeking for someone, and we can dedicate time, to our life - to develop it, to realize who we are and where we’re going. In other words, to grow and to be alive. We must fill our life, and when we’re going into the relationship, we must bring this fullness with us.
The relationship
When we start the relationship, even if we came full into it, we very soon give our life to the other person, we often merge it too much. The good relationship is such, in which two persons living their own life, the dependence which is happening, should be only subtle, there shouldn’t be dependence which emotionally or physically prevents one to leave, at any given moment. From that perspective, we can understand relationship as friendship, and above all, that’s how relationship should be.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
— Kahlil Gibran
I don’t believe there’s one right person for which we should wait, or which we supposed to find. Once someone said to me: “in this big city, lives so many men, how can I ever find the right one?”, I believe, there’s not one right person among millions of wrong persons, - I believe there’s just a million chances.
To believe in one right person, is quite narrow minded and limiting, and above all it may become very frustrating, when we realize that the persons for which we believed it’s the right one, turns out to be wrong. We suffer, and we very wrongly believe, there won’t be another like he/she was.
What I really enjoy is not you; it’s something that’s greater than both you and me. It is something that I discovered, a kind of symphony, a kind of orchestra that plays one melody in your presence, but when you depart, the orchestra doesn’t stop. When I meet someone else, it plays another melody, which is also very delightful. And when I’m alone, it continues to play. There’s a great repertoire and it never ceases to play. — Anthony de Mello
From the same reason I don’t believe in marriage. Marriage is contract, and doesn’t offer anything, nor love, nor permanency. Nowadays it’s very easy to get divorce, so it’s not even any insurance that two will stay together, and most important, it’s not insurance that two will understand each other, and that they’ll be able to live together happily.
Him that I love, I wish to be free — even from me. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The relationship, is walking on some path together, and when that path split, both should go into their own way.
The life of person, the personal development and happiness, it’s more important than the relationship. The relationship should be tool, the helping to achieve mentioned things, but never obstacle. I don’t have in mind, that things should be perfect all the time, but I do believe that we all sense, very soon (not after years of suffering, but much sooner) that things doesn’t work anymore. In that case, our duty is to leave. To free ourselves, and to free the persons with which we’re in the relationship. — And if we love that person? — If we truly love that person, then we won’t even think about it, we’ll leave immediately.
How about trying to fix things first? — I believe in fixing and dialog, and when that’s possible, things aren’t so messy anyway. But sometimes (often), things can’t be solved with talking, in many cases we have monologue rather than dialog. The best thing in such case it leaving. Not hating, not threatening, just simply - leaving. Our life isn’t subjected to anyone, our life is too short to waste it on any drama, therefore, when we find ourselves in drama, we should escape it. We don’t have to run, but we do have to terminate it. Spend yeas for fixing something, that hardly ever worked, makes no sense at all. No matter good or bad, relationship is a chance to grow. Even if your relationship is totally messed, there’s still some message in it, something important to learn, maybe you need learn to leave, or learn to survive on your own.
Don’t see just the relationship, but above all, chance for something great, something above you and your partner, something - that brought you two together, even if into a bad relationship. But don’t insist for the sake of relationship, or because of the fear of being alone (or lonely), put that energy into the realization, into seeing what’s there to see.
Wise up!
Lets talk about suffering, about difficulties in life and about “overcoming” them, shall we?
I can’t imagine with what else to start, if not with Buddha’s first noble truth, which saying (simply enough) that life is suffering, meaning that sooner or later we’ll suffer somehow. Buddhism of course, offering answer on how to end suffering, actually - that’s the fourth noble truth.
Now that we know that life is suffering, with that in mind, we can look around. If I look around, for example, I see so many people suffering (because of) many causes: some are sick, some wanting(!) love - or better said relationship, some has experienced some personal trauma.
The way how we understand the suffering, is a bit confusing and mostly wrong. We mostly feel, that suffering has absolutely no meaning. Since people mostly think their suffering is meaningless, they’re not looking for a meaning - they fail to see meaning, so the meaning stays overlooked and unrealized. Result: their suffering really is meaningless and unproductive.
Since we mostly failing to see meaning, we’re looking for a quick fix, - maybe pills, maybe some therapy. Anthony de Mello said: “Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don’t really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful.” Ahhh. So true. Cure is painful, since it does require a change. But people wanna quickly eliminate the suffering, and stay absolutely the same. Of course, things just don’t work like that.
I said before, that suffering has meaning, and the meaning is: the call of our life, the big shake of our life, the alert, the sign: “it’s time for a change, you’re doing something wrong!” And the fact is, we can’t deceive our life, .. we can deceive everything and everybody (even ourselves), but not our life.
The suffering is process, and it most likely won’t stop - until we realize it, and make some changes. Like in great song by Aimee Mann:
It’s not going to stop ‘Til you wise up.
We don’t wanna change, it’s amazing, people would rather die, than change. So they keep suffering, as suffering seems easier than the change. I heard people saying: “I’d rather die, than stop eating *some kind of* food”, or “I’d rather die, than give up smoking”. They don’t even try, and they really do - soon enough - die.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” – Albert Einstein
When suffering become just too much, too loud, too big, we can start realizing good sides of it. The suffering can bring us back to ourselves, it can eliminate all the noise that’s going on in our life, and focus our view on more important things: self-realization, our inner world.
Really, the suffering, can make us a better person, a more aware person. But it’s necessary, to realize the meaning of it. When we finally do realize the meaning, does suffering stop? Well, I said in the beginning, life is suffering. If I have fatal disease, I’ll still feel pain; or I can be still single (and alone) as I was before, or if someone had trauma in past, that won’t just go away.
“Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed: after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed. But there’s a difference: I don’t identify with it anymore. Do you know what a big difference that is?” — Anthony de Mello
Do you know? “Before, when the rainy days came, I felt like a clouds, now I feel like a sky. Calmly observing them, passing over.” When I found at lease some meaning in my suffering, when that happened, things started to change. Indeed, I was still as I was before, but yet different. I start realizing things, I start realizing myself. When I look back on my life, I see what a big and important role suffering played in my life, and how drastically changed me. Without doubt changed me to better.
To be honest - sometimes, I want a new wave of suffering, as I realized what a big power is in it. How much energy, and how that energy can be transformed into something creative, how that energy can push me forward. When I suffer, I look mostly for what needs to be changed, what needs to be realized, I don’t search for quick solutions anymore.
We sometimes don’t wanna wake up early in the morning, but when we finally do, we see priceless sunrise, wonderful morning, full of life, so fresh and relaxing. What the realization of suffering brings, is just as beautiful and full of life as the morning is. We must just open our eyes, and wake up.
Of course, this doesn’t cover all types of suffering. For example, probably it’s unfair to expect that a kid who has nothing to eat, will realize some higher meaning in his suffering. I was mostly talking about spoiled society, who suffer mostly because of some bad habits, and wrong views on life. Instead they’d actually try to do something, to realize something, they’re putting all energy into search for a quick fix. On other hand, if we’re able to lost ourselves in our suffering, to disconnect off our body, and ideas - the suffering (that’s believe in many religions) could brought higher realization.
Who am I?
Through all of my life they were teaching me completely useless things. School - what a waste of time is it, when it failed to inspire student, to constantly learn, but first and mostly learn about himself. We were learning so much about drunken and depressed writers, about dates when they were born, when they wrote another depressing poem or book, and when their luckless life finally ended.
We were learning about math, geography and history, about all the subjects, but never about the person, who is sitting there, who is listening, who is learning. The question closes to “who are you”, was the one on the test, right on top, and the answer was always your name. I’m Marko, there was another Marko in my class. So, it was very clear that I can’t be just Marko - that Marko really doesn’t mean much.
The life goes on, questions about what should we do, how to earn more money, and what to buy with it. The questions where to spend next holidays, and if the person with which we’re starting the relationship, is telling us the truth. The questions if the politics are telling us the truth, and the rage, when from time to time we realize that they were again giving us empty promises.
Ship at Sea, Sunset by Edward Moran
Politic, it’s such a big topic. People must watch news, read news, listening news, every single day, more than just once, more than twice. On any occasion. And then they can discuss news, and feel so well informed. Seems they know everything about the world, but nothing about themselves.
If I ask you, who are you, what will you answer? Your name? Your job, the fact that you’re a husband or a wife, the fact that you’re rich or poor, that you have some education or some experiences, your religion? Is that you?
And what do you want? New car, cellphone, visit US, become an opera singer, learn to play a piano? Is that all? And what if I ask you, why? Why do you want new cellphone, why do you want to become an opera singer? —- Did you ever go, just one step further, look just a little bit deeper into yourself? What’s there? Why those desires exists, is it just something empty, inspired by advertisement? Did you question yourself, your desires, your wants, and did you follow your honest answers, and keep questioning those answers, with more “whys” - until you finally saw, even if just for a moment, the glimpse who you really are?
People follow a path, but how can they, when they don’t know, who is walking on that path. How can they choose anything, if they don’t know who’s actually choosing. How can they love, if they don’t know, who is loving.
Can you buy the right clothes for yourself, if you don’t know how tall you are, and if you know absolutely nothing about your appearance?
Life is such a waste, when we don’t try to learn, who we are. Why would I care, about the moon, - what moon is, how far is it, what’s up there - what good will this ever do, if I don’t know who am I. As a matter of fact, - as far as I’m concerned, moon could be just one big cheese, putted up there by a ruler of the universe, who is just a simple shepherd. Well - what difference that makes to me?
Yes, it seems, we’re concerned about everything, but ourselves, though everything doesn’t make any sense, until we realize who we are. We should really stop: doing, thinking, learning, - and first realize who we are. And then, with this awareness start doing, thinking and learning.
