What Box, you Say?
The Memories of the PAST
How much of your daily life do you think comes from your past? How does this baggage affect the person you want to be? The neurology of the brain is biologically wired to rely on your past to deal with the present. That may be the default. Thankfully, it is not our only choice. The ability for each of us to be more aware frees us from our past, when we choose to make that choice.
The PRESENT or The NOW
This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. This is the only place where you actually show up. From here you act, you relate to the world around you, and you engage in your life. Doing that while free from your past baggage and unencumbered from future worry, you will show up as the creative, powerful, caring human that you were born to be. When you have full choice, you have freedom.
The WORRY About FUTURE
Worry is a prayer for what we do not want. It is an act which reinforces our powerlessness. Its yield always clouds the present, removes us from possibilities, and puts us in a place subject to consequence–rather than a place where we can create consequences. Anticipation can help with planning and strategy, yet there are strong distinctions between that and worry.
Call it a box, call it a philosophy, call it a belief system. By any name, it defines who you are, how you act, think, and behave. It is the way you will show up in the world, the way you live your life. You will show up the same way unless you change that box, change that perspective. Most people won’t do it. Why is that?
Because, it’s damned difficult. It’s hard work, even if we are able to see where we need work. We simply just don’t know how, or we would have fixed it already. Using that same brain that created our problems, we are actually misled and misdirected–by our own thinking. Our friends, who we may ask or seek guidance from, are oftentimes of the same or similar construct as us. This compounds our desired escape from our box.
To hold oneself up to the light; to really look and think about what we are, and what we’ve made ourselves into, is no easy task. Not only do we not know how to do it; the real difficulty is that a big part of ourselves resists the task. We even disallow the notion of even thinking that we need to think about it. Why fix what’s working, right? Even if it’s not working the way we’d like, it’s still working, right?
Because there may be no calamity–no fire, no roof collapsing, no urgent surgery needed, everything (says that part of our mind) must be just “FINE”. The Universe begins to talk to us through light taps or whispers and it will get progressively louder as we ignore it. Sometimes it takes a 2 by 4 whacking us to get our attention–at least it did for me (for way too long and way too often). Without guidance of some sort, this mission of digging ourselves out from a hole could be doomed from the start. (FYI, if you do find yourself in a hole–quit digging!)
Henry Ford said that: “Thinking is the hardest work there is. That’s why so few people do it.” If you’re relying on your daily conscious mind to help you with this, you are in trouble, because your thinking, your ego, is the very thing which got you into this mess. After all, if you could have gotten yourself out of this situation you would have. But you’re working with the same brain that created the problem. The ego is the part of us that thinks it is us. Without some check and balance, it tells us that it is who we are and runs our life.
But I dare you: ask your ego who you are. You will get no definitive answer. The ego is only a part of the whole of you, though most of us think otherwise.
The ego cannot tell you because it has no basis for itself other than superficial thoughts and beliefs which are put on it.
Bottom Line: If you don’t know if you are in a box or not, the evidence is right there: you definitely are.