The more we learn about ourselves, the more we understand about the world. They say that practice changes you. Anything you do in a disciplined way, with a pure intention to see your true self and work on your patterns, ANYTHING like that can change you. It is a slow process, but a very powerful one. In my case, the biggest change has come from my daily yoga practice. In your case might be your mountain biking “meditation”, your karate practice, your running, walking in the forest or any other practice or combination of practices. It’s never a single story, I believe. If you have an open mind, many beautiful things can happen.
Some people thing that other people are happier than they are, more successful, better, stronger, wiser etc. Some feel discouraged when comparing themselves with what they believe it’s better than they are. And others like to feel superior to some people weaker or less knowledgeable (according to their own definition of weak and knowledgeable). The truth is the mind is so complex we don’t even realize it yet. With all the information that we get, opportunities in the world at the moment and we still have a hard time in understanding ourselves. Isn’t that ironic that we live in this body and mind and know so little about who we really are?
We run from task to task. We like to identify ourselves with a label (even if it’s a good one, it’s still a label). We create division. We don’t know how to take care of ourselves and how to care about others. Even when think we take care of ourselves, it’s very easy to get into a narcissistic behavior instead of an honest pure intention.
Working with your mind has ups and downs. It’s a hard job! The hardest I have personally done until now. And I dare to say it is similar process for each one of us. Life is not easy for any of us. And managing our mind is not easy for any of us.
We are all trying to be happy and enjoy our life. Nobody has a perfect time even if it looks so sometimes.
Having a practice and a moment where you can reflect and really see and accept who you are (even if you don’t like what you see), it’s essential in living a good life. A life where you don’t try to escape yourself and find distractions, but where you can accept the dark sides and work with them.
The key to a good practice is love and acceptance. But practicing acceptance and love is such a hard task as well. We know the theory, but in practice we don’t know how to do it. In theory we “love” ourselves more than we love other people, even if we don’t dare to say it (or are pretending to be the other way around). But I personally think most of the time is not pure love, but the attachment to our ego and the narcissistic behavior that we feed every single day. In “loving” ourselves so much, we also hurt ourselves and others.
Practicing getting to know yourself is practicing love and acceptance, the pure love and acceptance. It is first of all understanding that suffering cannot be avoided whatever we are doing. In this time of the history of our civilization, it is easy to forget that. The “perfect” pictures on social media do not show the real life. And they might make you feel that other people are happier than you are. But still…nobody “Likes” the sad pictures. Especially in the Western world it is such a high tendency to think feeling sad is bad and getting into depression when life does not happen the way you think it should happen feels like a natural circumstance.
The truth is we can work on it. We do have a choice.
By putting daily effort, we can work on it. But how many of us really want to work on it? How many of us find excuses instead and a quick fix when it’s too late?
Nobody said it is easy and perfect. It is a practice and practice is never easy and perfect. Work with how you are right here, today, not yesterday, not 1 year ago. Right here! Today!
I am soon getting on my mat and do my daily self discipline work. Have you done yours today?
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© Unfold Your Mat 2017