Are You Asleep?

Habits and routines are, sometimes, helpful -- they give us a way to organize our lives, and often, this is necessary. We may have many commitments and obligations, and developing healthy, productive routines and habits can help us meet those commitments.

However, often, habits and routines can become more than just "helpful tools" that guide us; they can actually put us to sleep. They can serve to numb us from reality itself, from our very lives and our hearts. They can make us think or believe that we're aware and "doing stuff," when truly, we're on auto-pilot, following a routine or habit that has outlived its use.

In your life, look at all of your habits and patterns, and see which ones are enabling reality and which ones are preventing reality.

And guess which ones you want to drop?

Life is an Invitation

Many people, perhaps most people, have an underlying, deep-rooted idea of what life is “supposed” to be. And as such, they continuously measure their personal life experiences and events against this “supposed” idea of life.

Of course, as we all deeply know, life is really beyond the intellectual grasp of any of us – no matter how smart we may think we are. As such, our model of how life is “supposed” to be is, really, doomed to be flawed. We are raindrops trying to understand the ocean.

Instead of imposing your idea of life onto reality – instead of trying to measure reality against your projection of how life should or should not be – try accepting it as an invitation; a possibility. Not to “fit” with your patterns of life, but something that allows you to experience more of your being.

WHERE ARE YOU?

In some shopping malls, you’ll find these maps that give you a kind of “birds-eye view” of the different stores and places in the mall; and the different ways to get to them.

For example, these handy mall maps will tell you that the sports equipment store is next to the pet store, but not next to the office supply store (because, as the map happily tells you, the office supply store is across from the little stall that sells those giant pretzels).

Now, all of this is good and helpful – knowing where the stores are, and which “roads” get you to the store that you want to visit, is…well, yes, it’s good and helpful. But...

It’s not enough. There’s another missing piece of information that is absolutely, uncategorically, utterly essential.

You need to know where YOU are on the map. You need to find that blissful, even spiritual little dot that says “YOU ARE HERE.” With that little dot you can go ANYWHERE in the shopping mall; and you’ll always go towards your desired destination.

But without that little dot – and really, on a big shopping mall map it does seem like a small detail, right? – you’re merely “lucky” if you find your destination; and if you do, you’ll probably never be able to find it again (unless you keep getting lucky...which you won't).

Forrest Gump thought that “life was like a box of chocolates.” Okay, sure. Why not?

But I’d suggest a slightly more…urban version of this wisdom: life is like a shopping mall map.

There are places you want to go; and places you don’t. And once you know where YOU are, you can find your way towards these places/avoid these places.

So. That compels us to ask: WHERE ARE YOU?

Seriously. Right now. Where are you? No, I don’t mean physically – I don’t mean the city in which you live, or the country, or anything defined by some outer criteria. I mean INSIDE you. Where are you?

Are you tense? Fearsome? Resisting reality? Are you being nourished by some kind of inner complaining? Are you projecting yourself OUT of the present moment into the future, or thrusting yourself back into the past?

Or…are you simply WHERE YOU ARE. Are you inside your being; are you alert, aware, open, and co-existing with reality?

Remember: being aware and co-existing with reality DOES NOT mean that you become a passive vegetable who does nothing and cannot make positive change. In fact, just the opposite is true: ONLY when you are aware and co-existing with reality can you clearly and consciously SEE what needs to be done – and what you can do to help make that happen.

So from now on, as you go through life’s many situations – some tense, some pleasant, some positive, some not – always ask yourself: WHERE AM I?

Find – or rather, RE-FIND – yourself on your internal shopping mall map. And then happily go where you really need -- and really want -- to go.