I recently revisited a book that I had read a long while back called; The Untethered Soul: A Journey Beyond Yourself, by Michael A. Sugar.
An excerpt that I found to be interesting was the notion that; “Life itself is my career. And my interaction with life is my most meaningful relationship.” If you read this and interpret his thinking from the perspective of life itself, then there is a real sense of calm, or as Sugar would like us to repeat and feel, a heightened sense of; “relax and release.“
When in the moment and reading books by authors that really do want us to gain a heightened sense of awareness, a better way to handle our lives, a new perspective, ways in which to deal with life’s unexpected force, it all makes perfect sense. “Of course,” I say as I’m plopped on my couch feeling perfectly comfy and enthralled in my reading. Hey, people read fiction, I read self-help and personal empowerment books. Sometimes they’re the exact same thing. Other times they’re profound.
I feel my book; Be Your Truth is one of those that clearly demonstrates why we may not be leading the life that we had hoped for. Of course, I’m completely biased. Shameless self-promoting – however, it’s simply an event, nothing personal, as you’ll find out later to be true.
I agree with a lot of what Sugar writes. I don’t embrace all of his thinking and yet I do when it comes to how best to deal with the reality of life. He suggests that our inner self and outer self, need to be managed differently.
It’s the idea that during really challenging times, take COVID-19 as a perfect example, we manifest reality by being fearful.
When we approach life with fear and worry, then the way in which we handle reality will be coming from a place of fear. And, when we come from a place of fear and worry, most of us make lousy decisions. We’re not thinking rationally.
That being said, you could be facing horrible life conditions and yet why make things even worse by making yourself sick through fear, panic, worry and stress?
Sugar suggests that; Events in our lives are just that, events; great, good, bad, horrible, catastrophic. They’re just events. It’s our resistance to them that causes the problem. And he’s right. Why is that we can be handling any number of events each and every day where things just roll off our back, we don’t even think about them, where others trigger us, some profoundly. We respond differently. We respond through fear, anger, worry, stress, unhappiness, because it has now become personal. Something in our memory or experiences popped up that we’re not pleasant so of course we’re going to feel compelled to react differently. And there lies that resistance. This now shows up for us as a problem.
Nothing is that simple. However, it’s not complicated either. As human’s we have a lot of emotional baggage that we carry around. It’s very difficult to flip a switch in our mind to say; “I will never have another problem for the rest of my life,” and yet Sugar suggests that it is possible. It’s our resistance to any event that causes these problems.
To bring this thinking home; a little redundant, and yet it does help to reinforce the message:
Sugar writes; “To avoid events turning into problems, begin dealing with each situation with acceptance. Acceptance means that events can make it through you without resistance. If an event takes place and is able to make it through your psyche, you will be left face-to-face with the actual situation as it truly exists. Since you are dealing with the actual event, rather than stored energies stimulated by the event, you won’t assert reactive energy from your past. You will find that you are able to deal with daily situations much better. It is actually possible to never have another problem for the rest of your life. This is because events are not problems; they’re just events. Your resistance to them is what causes the problem. But again, don’t think that because you accept reality it means you don’t deal with things. You do deal with them. You just deal with them as events that are taking place on the planet Earth, and not as a personal problem.”
Fear and desire make everything more complicated.
I think it’s worth it to make things less complicated. It’s certainly much easier in the long run.