“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Henry David Thoreau.
Even though it may sometimes feel as though we have no control over the events in our lives, we are the creators of our experience in life! However, until we become aware that it’s our unique conditioning that’s causing us to see the world the way we do, we’re not even making a conscious choice. Once we understand that we are products of our family, religious, and geographic culture, we can begin to see through this conditioning and consciously choose how to perceive and relate to life with awareness. Understanding and developing this perspective enables us to take control of and improve our life immensely.
“No one succeeds without effort. Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance.” Ramana Maharshi
Becoming conscious is our purpose in life. If we don’t make the effort, we live our lives under the influence of our parents, teachers, and other authority figures, robotically parroting their beliefs, opinions, and attitudes. Our reaction to events and people happen so quickly and unconsciously, that we assume our perception is accurate and factual. But everything is actually completely neutral until we put our spin on it. We define things as good or bad when we project our values onto them. Is a naturally occurring forest fire a ‘bad’ thing? Is it ‘good’? It kind of depends on your perspective.
“It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.” Henry David Thoreau.
Most of our opinions about ourselves are formed unconsciously during childhood. Until we become conscious of our self-image, we won’t be able to take control of our lives. How do we do this? By taking a look inside and facing our feelings about ourselves honestly. We need to do this even when the feelings are uncomfortable ones. It's important to try to remember when in our past these feelings first started to surface. As we become more aware of which ideas, people, and influences contributed to our self-image and self-esteem, we begin to become conscious co-creators. Life takes on a whole new luster when we learn to acknowledge what we really feel and start to respond more authentically to what life brings our way.
Comments
Nice new changes about the place!
I like how you emphasized "the experience" aspect of things. Islam teaches that, yeah, a lot of the time you can't control what happens. But you can certainly control how you react to it. Truth.
You are so right about the role of perspective in how we interpret and internalize the happenings of our life. Is this a life-long search, do you think?
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