The 4 Life Lessons

Trevor HendyThoughtsLeave a Comment

This latest Blog begun forming itself in my mind immediately after the thought “Life should be much easier than this”.

As I wrote it I realized there was a lot that I wanted to say, an unfolding of an idea, that needed to be put on paper. Whilst this longer than normal, please take the time to relax and have a read, see if it sparks something in you, as this is probably the first time I have summarized what I believe to be the four main life lessons.

It started with a tense moment, one of those moments where there seemed to be an awful lot to do in a small amount of time to have any chance of feeling the peace of being up to date with life’s commitments. I am sure you know what I mean.

Life or more succinctly, the way we play life, has gotten to be more and more of a grind. Most people are working or house working from start to finish of the day, start to finish of the year, for possibly years and years to get to a point in time when they finally get to enjoy that holiday with the family or the unencumbered house or car or the income stream that they have been working so hard to cement.

Although there is not denying the comfort we get from nice surrounds and situations, mostly, we are lost, chasing things that will never really fulfill us, certainly not if we don’t end up with a sense of who we really are. We are often either identified with the things around us and the titles/jobs/roles we have. We are usually chasing more of these, in the hope that in the more, we will get more peace or more fulfillment.

However the most peaceful and fulfilled people haven’t found themselves in more, they have found themselves (fullstop).

Whilst it is not the end point of this story, I often point out to people that the real challenge is to break our identification with that illusion, the illusion of not enough time, too many things to do, more to get. The power of breaking the psychological link is very profound as it brings you into this moment and only this moment. Whatever you are chasing, whilst it may provide a temporary sense of accomplishment, it will not provide you with a lasting sense of fulfillment.

That sense of fulfillment and peace is not so hard to find, it is always and only, to be found right here and now. The magic of life is not anywhere other than inside and all around you, in this moment. You will only feel truly free when you make friends with this moment, the here and now.

Sometimes that is more challenging than others, as the situation in the moment may be more ghastly and difficult to deal with than at other times. Learning of a horrible illness or loss will be a more challenging situation than watching the sunset with some friends on the beach.

However the fact remains, that when you are able to occupy the moment fully, you occupy your own life fully.

Also, when you are in the moment, the solutions you have been looking for, will often appear. More importantly though, they will appear only after you feel a little sense of the ultimate peace you were looking for.

You see we are doing all this things to get to that moment in the future when we experience the peace of having all of that done and nothing to worry about. It is like desperately wishing and controlling ourselves out of a happy existence.

In the meantime we worry, almost permanently, whilst never getting there. You have nothing to lose from letting go and experiencing a little bit of piece right now, even if your mind tells you that something very important hasn’t yet been done or achieved and, therefore, it is not possible to be peaceful or happy or contented.

Just let go of the need to be in another moment and be with this one, whatever you are doing. If you’ve not done it much, or not for a while, try it with small things, even the dishwashing. Just slow your mind down, be with the task and hand, ease up on the incessant judgement and assessment that goes on in your mind and do a little observing.

In fact why not try it right now. Bring yourself right into this moment, whilst reading this. Pause for a moment to look around and observe. See if you can feel or locate a sense of your inner body, then energy that is permanently inside of you. Allow your mind to slow down and come into here and now. I will wait for you to come back to this, I’ll still be here, surprisingly. If you have kept reading right through, common, don’t skip past it, slow down and have a look around, observe, breathe deeply, slowly and with no force, just allow, come back when you are ready.

I hope you felt something, even slightly, different? The sense of peace you feel when you slow down, that tingling feeling, that is you, that is your essence, that is what yogis and spiritual seekers have been seeking and adoring for Millennia.

The bonus is that when we slow down and come into now, we make different decisions, at least, different quality decisions, they are infused with the peace that we always wanted to end with.

Stephen Covey produced the wonderful, “7 habits of highly effective people”, if you haven’t read it, at least Google it and have a scan over it. I loved reading those habits, they made so much sense to me. One of the habits that has always stuck with me is “begin with the end in mind”. Hence, if peace, a sense of fulfillment and contentment is your end game then perhaps it would be best to begin with it.

Remember, whatever you are beginning with, energy wise, you will end with. How I wish I knew that when I was a teenager.

Funnily though, I wouldn’t trade my awareness then for now, the journey wouldn’t have been as rich without some major stuff ups.

Now we get to the point of this article. Once you have that sense of peace you may start to notice how alarmingly easily we all get drawn back into the drama and ridiculousness of life. Or how easy we got drawn into it in the first place, usually via a gripe of some sort.

It is as though the drama itself is working overtime to make sure we continuously come back to it. If you have that sense, you may be onto something, as life is definitely an energetic game and there is definitely an energy that would love nothing more than for us all to fall in a hole and have a pity party together, feasting on each others problems.

I don’t want to get too heavy here but wanted to make the point there seems to be a bit of a battle going on between can do and can’t do, life and death, possibility and impossibility, hope and despair, freedom and entrapment.

Put simply if you identify with the woe of life you will find more of the same and lots of evidence to back you up. If you pause and question the validity of the “impossible to break free” thoughts and statements of yourself and others you may start to rise above them.

I am not talking about being Positive, nothing wrong with that, but excessive amounts of positivity often just fires up the nay-sayers and draws unneeded attention, after all, unless you are still hooked into drama, you should be just wanting to move on. So no purely being positivie, I am talking about observing the game of life and noticing that a lot of it is just built on uninspected thoughts. I am talking about Observation without Judgement….. Those AHA moments.

Inspect any limiting thoughts, beliefs and viewpoints and you might start to see a few holes appearing. For life is not impossible or permanently troublesome, it is an ongoing opportunity to discover who you really are and who you are not.

Life is an ongoing opportunity to find a little magic in the moment, in yourself, in others and ride a magic carpet of hope out of any dark situation. It may sound airy fairy to some, but it is that simple and that powerful, inspect yours and others thoughts and know that when you hear or have some version of “can’t”, it is not true. Just know that and you will feel lighter and better.

Hope is Life, there is only one way to squash life and that is remove Hope.

Finally, although this article is a lot longer than I intended, I wanted to get to my original point.

If life is filled with opportunities to find hope and yet is abound with opportunities to lose hope, then it helps to not do it alone. One of the best ways to end up busy, out of time, stressed and energetically working for the wrong side, is to believe that you have to do it all yourself. That is just another sign that the negative aspect of life is calling the shots and having you believe that no-one cares.

Can you see that is the way life is set up at the moment, too much to do in too little time, seemingly physically impossible to get to where you need to be. Even this article is probably too long for most. We are all running around so busy, not noticing that it is the “Us” that is needed. We can’t see the forrest for the trees. We can’t see the solution (each other) for the problem (too many people to look after).

That is how the negative remains so strong and people’s hope gets sapped so easily. The fact that we can’t get through it with purely the same old hardwork and without working together is ultimately a great gift to us.

Finally, here is the point. Think outside the box, the world is pushing us to collaborate, to truly come together and create magic. As a human being in the school of life, that is a major part of the end Game.

From my experience, this is the order that my life lessons have been delivered.

First, look within and find yourself, notice what is not you, experience the peace when you find yourself and the angst when you identify with something that is not you, no more searching needed.

Second, learn what you can do when you are in the moment and are being yourself, connected to your own source. Practice creating.

Third, acknowledge that we are all connected and begin honoring that. Separation is an illusion. We have answers for each other and help that we can give and receive.

Finally, find others doing the same and come together with them to create something bigger. Work with the people you feel a pull towards or are drawn to you. Collaborate and trust in the bigger picture and a bigger purpose. Life has many layers of magic that can gradually be revealed to you.

It took me quite a while to get a grip on the first one, the rest started flowing more easily the more I had understood the first lesson. Simply work it what is you and what is not you. Look within and do not believe anyone or thing that says “you can’t”.

Remember, bring it into now and never under estimate the power of who you are.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading, you will have surely made a difference just by doing that.

Love,

Trev

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