Contradiction on the Path of Wisdom

Desireing the feeling of internal organization is what prevents us from seeing the bigger picture of our lives. When we try to package our lives into controllable containers, I believe we limit ourselves and our options.

Contradiction on the path of wisdom has become a regular thing for me to experience. It seems the more I understand, the less I know. Contradiction. The more clear my path becomes to me, the more it’s hidden in wonder. Contradiction. The more peace and contentment I feel, the more insecurity in life I come to accept. Big contradiction! And, usually, I’m okay with that insecurity. That is a massive contradiction to me. (I hate feeling insecure yet, for some dichotomous reason, as I practice awareness more, I am more accepting of the insecurity of reality. Maybe it’s because, for some strange reason, the more insecure I feel, the more I know that somehow my life will be okay. …Yes, I realize that’s also a contradiction.

In the Western world (especially the men ), we like to pigeonhole concepts. My guess is we do this so we feel a sense of control over our environment. Yet, that very internal organization is what prevents us from seeing the bigger picture of our lives. When we try to package our lives into controllable containers, I believe we limit ourselves and our options.

One of the most significant contradictions I face comes in the form of emotions. I have learned that I can feel several conflicting emotions at the same time. I can feel fear, happiness, insecurity, anxiety, love, and anger all at the same time. More importantly, frequently, I can tell I’m feeling them and separate them all, trace the threads back to the causes in me and, even separate the individual motivations so that my anger doesn’t interfere with my happiness, fear, or anxiety. It’s not easy. But, I feel so much better when I’m not taking my stress out on a loved one when they don’t deserve it.

I’ve also found that my fear and anxiety (which I’ve felt a lot in the past three weeks because my dad had a stroke three weeks ago) does not overcome the peace and contentment I live in day to day since I’ve started practicing emotional and mental awareness. That means that while I was feeling fear that my active dad my not be the same active dad that I’ve known my whole life, I have a peace that it’ll all work out okay because God draws straight with crooked lines.

And realistically, that is the biggest contradiction I’ve found. God always draws straight with crooked lines! I constantly stand amazed at how events come together for good despite my belief that they shouldn’t. Always! When I was emotionally, mentally, and spiritually asleep, personally catastrophic events would have devastated me! I could never have seen the wonder and good in them. Now though, I can usually see many of the ways that God weaves all the threads of all the people involved, together for the highest good, for all. The greater good is not always the highest good that I want. I did not want my dad to have a stroke! However, God will now take this catastrophe and weave together the lives of my family. We can choose if it is for better or worse. Does this mean my dad will be back to 100 percent? I certainly hope so. However, if he doesn’t get back to normal, if my dad chooses it, I will watch my dad build a new life, which will probably be as satisfying as his previous one, not the same normal but a new normal. It will be up to my dad to allow that to happen, though. I hope he will pursue that path no matter what.

We have to choose how we want to move forward in our life. We have an active part in our paths. The critical role we have to play is dealing with the reality of the situation, not just the emotion we experience most strongly. That can be difficult to do. We experience emotions so profoundly; however, frequently, we don’t know we are experiencing them. So, it’s easy to react to how we feel even when we don’t know we are feeling anything. When we do this, we usually make the problem more prominent than it is, and this does not often help us live the life we want. Alternatively, when a situation occurs – negative or positive – if we choose to sit for a bit and recognize that we are feeling something related to the situation, we can then decide to look past those feelings to the reality of the situation and deal with that reality.

When we live in reality, we live our authentic life and can go after our real dreams. We can live fully in the present. In the Christian bible, John 10:10 says, “I came that you may have life and have that life more abundantly.” Awareness of our emotional and mental programs frees us to live that life. Go for it! Live more fully!

If you would like to live more fully, please write to me and let's talk, It would be my honor to share with you the tools I've found and developed to make my life more abundant. Please contact me here.

Posted May 3, 2014

Newsletter-Signup-Form-Default

Dear Friend,

Self-Compassion is a skill we tend to learn faster when we learn together. Please sign up for my newsletter, and together, let's create better lives for ourselves. I will only send out a few emails a year.

Thank you.