We live in a world that keeps telling us it has our back.
Whether it’s the government, some institution, or even our religions — we’re taught from a very young age to depend on something external, in order for our needs to be met.
This starts even earlier, when we’re being taken care of by our parents/caretakers, and when we’re naturally inclined to depend on them for our survival.
To depend on someone or something external to us becomes part of our worldview. We live with this very thought/directive in the back of our mind.
On one hand, we have our biological drive to depend, and on the other, we face the constant conditioning from society, which keeps telling us that we need something outside of us to live.
Things have their place in the world, and that’s okay. But how does it affect us internally?
One of the biggest and most universal challenge we all face is to be in the world but not of it, as Jesus would say.
Nature lives in patterns. A dog cannot act like a duck for instance. A dog lives and behaves like a dog. A dog has only specific parameters to work with during its earthly experience.
Human beings on the other hand have been “bestowed” with the ability to choose. While most earthly beings simply work within their predefined parameters — we have the choice to live by ours — or otherwise.
While some rare people actually express this act of choice in their daily lives, the vast majority of us are still pretty comfortable being dependent on others/outcomes for our well-being.
We blame people for our feelings. We’re always trying to find why things are so wrong in the world. We blame God. We blame the laws, the government, politicians. Etcetera.
If you want to make yourself “loved” in today’s world, you must point your finger at an “enemy” so that people find another reason to be unhappy, angry, miserable.
And because we’ve stored so much darkness over the years, it just needs a way out to explode and destroy.
As long as it’s over there, or on some other country or person, and not right here — on our shoulders, as our responsibility — our egos are fed, and we get enough fuel to perpetuate the vicious cycles we’ve all been witnessing for too long in our history.
We’ve tried relying on our built-in inclinations, and clearly, it’s not a viable solution.
It’s sad to see that most people don’t change over the years. Most of us have had the devastating experience of meeting people from our past, only to realize just how much of the same person they remain.
When something moves, we say it’s alive. When it doesn’t, we say it’s dead.
Life, by its very meaning is movement, and therefore change. A person that changes regularly is a person that is alive — a person that lives, a person that is full of life, and therefore unstoppable.
Now that we’re beginning to see our old ways don’t work anymore, it’s time to change.
We can of course still choose to blame people for our challenges, wait for God to be nicer the next time, or pray that some savior saves us — we have free will after all — but it will only make the process slower, and more painful.
Having the blessing of choice, it’s our responsibility to make use of that choice, and we do so by stopping to delegate the weight of our feelings and thoughts on others.
We are responsible for our emotional and mental well-being. The world out there follows its rhythms. Our world in here, within, in the depths of our heart — follows ours. It follows our lead.
And by taking the fullest of responsibility for it, we switch from being a contributor to chaos, to one of harmony.
In the beginning it won’t always be “easy.” We’ll notice that it feels so natural to just fall back into our old ways. This is normal, Nature is always attached to the familiar.
But we’re rewriting our “code,” we’re designing a new human — one that has the potential to create so much positivity in the world — and it takes time to do this.
And because you’re here, reading this, it means you’re on this journey just like many others. The numbers are increasing. And it’s looking great. Thank you for being part of this.
Your brother, Rabih.
As a final note.
If you’ve been meditating, using affirmations and thinking positively for a while now, without necessarily integrating spiritual truths at a soul level even though you understand them intellectually — I’ve written a book to help you understand the main blocks to true spiritual growth, and how to overcome them. I'm sure you're tired of "knowing" about God because you can't wait to experience God. That's what we explore in Spiritual Transition. Give the book a look here.
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