Stuck? Get Out of Context!

Every bit of our potential lives outside what we think is possible or probable, outside of who we think we are. The natural self is hidden away behind a false self, and we miss it primarily because we simply don’t know it is there, having been fooled by the puppet show we have been buying tickets to every day for our entire lives; but when we begin to suspect it might be there we still often miss it because its nature is so deeply subtle when compared to the crude false self that we call home, the self made up of things we are comfortable with, even if they are painful. Even when we meditate daily and do the things we hope will bring us to truth, we still tend to rehearse the same rituals and take the same steps—herein is our opportunity to break out and open up.

We live our lives in a self-created context of routine. Although we would probably argue the point if confronted, we generally are complicit in what we are exposed to on a daily basis—we choose to turn on the television at a particular time, we read the same material from the same right or left-leaning news networks, we use the same language we always use, we hold our bodies in the same way we usually do, we drive the same routes, we eat the same food, we take the same paths, we like what we like and we live the same lives we have led ourselves to believe we should lead. We don’t know there is anything different because we don’t know things can be any different. Therefore we don’t make decisions we could make that might show us parts of the world and parts of our selves we didn’t know were there.

This maze we run pretty much the same way every day is of our own creation and everything that is outside the walls of the maze is unvisited by us because we ignore it as we are headed toward the same moldy cheese we always move toward. We head toward that cheese because we believe the answer is cheese, not figs, not dandelions, not wheat, not clams, not goat’s milk… And at the end of the day we get to the moldy cheese and curse it, curse it for being the same, curse it for being not enough, curse it because we don’t know what else to do.

Well, here’s a thought: Let’s break out of the context we have created! Let’s start finding the natural self by practicing not being the false self. Let’s turn left instead of right, let’s listen to someone who clearly is nuts for having a right-wing or left-wing point of view and see if we can see that they aren’t arguing their point just to make us horribly uncomfortable with our lives, let’s take the bus instead of the train, let’s make ourselves breakfast instead of getting a latte at Starbucks and calling it good, let’s plant a plant and watch it grow instead of reading the same pop-psychology stuff over and over again, let’s do something different.

You will never find your natural self if you don’t break out of your false self and you have the choice to do that every single moment of every single day. Personal and spiritual growth is available right where you are at right this moment—don’t pass it by.