The other day I received a message from a friend. We haven’t spoken in a while and we always had an interesting dynamic between us. And his message triggered me. It seemed to me that he was challenging whether what I was doing, the commitment to focus so much on inner growth or healing, was healthy and whether there should not be a balance between living life and doing this work.
His challenges seem to always trigger me. And of course, my bursts of consciousness seem to have triggered him and that prompted the message in the first place. Maybe it was a genuine inquiry, maybe not. It doesn’t even matter. But there’s a message for me: Why would I let other people let me trigger? Why would I let them steal my peace and joy?
It is just a message. I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to agree with it. I can even ignore it. But the most powerful and liberating way is to be equanimous about it. When I don’t differentiate between good and bad anymore, actually when there is no perceived good or bad anymore. When there just is what is.
That’s the seemingly elusive place of peace and bliss that I am seeking. And there is nothing to seek. I can have it any moment. I can have it right now. I just have to embrace this realisation and then I embody it and act accordingly. It is simple as that.
Freedom from suffering is within reach for me and all of us. It is evoked by the simple insight that nothing needs to be different than whatever is and that it is my attachment and need for it to be different that creates the suffering in the first place.
He just sent me a message. It might have come from the best intention. It doesn’t matter, that’s the important point. Even if he wanted to trigger or annoy me, or put me in my place, so what, not my problem.
The weather does what it wants and so does the world and everyone in it. I can’t have it my way and I don’t need to. All I have to do is to let go of the idea that things and life needs to be a certain way. And the moment I do, I am free.
While it is that simple, it is harder to embody than to say it. That’s because I am under the illusion of being a personality with an ego that wants to be understood, seen, loved, appreciated, safe and comfortable. But me needing all these things creates the opposite of what I want and moves me away from all these things rather than closer to them.
Everything I am seeking is already here and the moment I stop seeking it, the moment I let go, it will all be mine.
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