Aging Doesn't Make Us Wiser, How Compassionate We Are Does

Growing up is a lifetime's work

People hugging each otherPhoto byPhoto by Priscilla Du Preez on UnsplashonUnsplash

We manifested into form to contribute, to share our experiences together while learning from one another, and more importantly — to celebrate life.

Deep inside of us, we all have something to offer to the world. No matter what we think of ourselves or what our lives look like right now — deep inside, we have something unique to share with the world.

And when we were kids, we were all aware of this gift. We knew exactly what we’d want to spend the rest of our lives doing.

Unfortunately, the world in which we live is still healing. Collectively, we have a lot of stuff to sort out. We’ve hurt each other in the past, we’ve focused on our “negatively” charged emotions — and we have to deal with it.

Those who took care of us when we were still unprepared to do it ourselves, have to deal with their stuff too. Perhaps they were too critical, perhaps we weren’t as smart as other kids, perhaps we weren’t as fit as they would’ve liked us to be.

From birth to around seven years of age, our brainwaves are slower. This simply means that we’re like hypnotized beings, absorbing everything from our environment and storing directly into our subconscious.

And when something goes into the subconscious, whether it’s true or not, we believe in it. It becomes our absolute, ultimate and irrevocable truth.

Put a negative comment there, a critic, even something that’s seemingly “unimportant”— and it becomes part of the person’s life — she defines herself through it. And she’ll work her whole life to live up to those (often) broken beliefs.

As we keep adding more and more of people’s “voices” into us, they direct our behavior overtime. They mingle with our own voice. And after a few years, they become part of who we are.

If we were told that we weren’t good enough, or that life is hard, or that we should feel guilty for having different views and not conforming to the norm — such “voices” become our compass. And we spend the rest of our existence living up to them.

Whenever we want to act, we always feel pulled back by our past, what we’ve been told, what we came to believe as being the ultimate truth — whether or not it’s actually true. And this is how people’s negativity shape our lives.

Eventually, these voices become so familiar to how we perceive the world that we take them as being ours. And before we know it, we’re angry because someone doesn’t agree with our opinions — or rather, someone else’s opinions, which we believe is ours — which means we’re angry for no real reason.

This is just one example of the world’s madness.

If you went through a recent difficult experience, or if there’s someone you’re particularly uncomfortable with, try paying attention to the kind of thoughts that pop in your mind whenever you’re dealing with something related to that person/experience.

You’ll notice that the voice in your mind is that person’s voice. Or if it was an experience, the negative emotions generated by the experience will make you adjust, again and again, until you lose your boundary and let anyone do whatever they want.

Recent experiences are much more helpful with such exercises because it’s not so deep into your subconscious.

Older experiences, especially those from childhood, form the very structure of our psyche. We’ve acted on them millions of times, and since then, we believe they’re “me.”

Of course our caretakers sucked at some level, but here we are, and it’s our responsibility to take care of it now. These are the facts. Plus, we can’t keep blaming others for our pain — they’re in the same race. What happened to us happened to them too.

Spirituality has been pretty abstract/unpractical in the last few centuries. We mystified a lot of things and it’s sexy for most people because mystery is always exciting. But entertainment doesn’t mean growth.

Life in society on the other hand has been more logical, mental, rational.

It’s about time both aspects of our existence, the masculine and the feminine, finally merge together.

To do this, we simply need to incorporate more practicality into our spirituality, and more compassion into our daily lives.

We’re all in this together. And we’ll go beyond our wildest expectations, if we take each other’s hands along the way, and move together — as a whole, like we’ve always been.

As a final note.

If you have 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 wrote a book called “Spiritual Transition,” which will help you understand the main obstacles to true spiritual growth, how to overcome them and what the spiritual path is all about. Whether you’d like to simply give it a look or get yourself a copy, you have nothing to lose. Check the book here.