Practice Coming Alive

We come alive when we get out of our head and into our heart. 

We come alive when we love. Love is enlivening. 

Focusing on what you cannot control, blaming other people for how you feel and rationalizing your fears is not enlivening.  In the short term, you may feel a burst of energy from a tirade against someone or something.  However, it's like a sugar rush - a short superficial high with an inevitable crash.  Right?  Just think of a situation in your life that you have been frustrated with for some time.  Aren't you sick of it?  It's not enlivening.  

So why would you, or anyone, give your attention to a perspective that dampens your joie de vivre?

Love is what we were born with.

                                 

                                  Fear is what we have learned here.  

We have learned to pay attention to issues that are outside our control, to blame other people when we feel uncomfortable and to regard avoiding what we fear as a valid approach to decision-making.  If you're curious about how we learned this, I recommend reading The Voice of Knowledge by Don Miguel Ruiz. Here is a brief excerpt.  

I'm not saying that there isn't value in understanding the world outside of our influence.  I'm not saying there is no value in clarifying when someone else is making decisions that have an unpleasant impact.  Nor am I saying there is no value in decisions that make catastrophe less likely. What I am saying is that we learned to give a disproportionate amount of attention to all of the above and it does not make people come alive.

Loving kindness makes people come alive.

For months after my first boyfriend and I broke up, I was miserable.  I was angry and sad and had no idea how to deal with such powerful feelings. If someone had said, "practice loving kindness" it would have made as much sense as "ride a unicorn to Pluto."  What did make sense was the passage below by Deepak Chopra.  I made a poster with these words on it and put it on the wall by my bed so I would see it every morning and night:  

I am not my thoughts.  They come and go. 

I am not my ego. My self-image changes. 

I am above and beyond these. 

I am the witness, the interpreter, 

the Self beyond the self-image. 

Of the most powerful acts of loving kindness you can offer is to remember who you are. You are not your frustrations.  You are not the situations in your life.  You are not your past experiences.  You are the loving awareness of all of this and everything else.  

Practice This

Right now, think of a couple things that are driving you crazy.  Right now, tell yourself "I am the loving awareness of this situation.  I am the loving awareness of my thoughts about this situation.  I am the loving awareness of my feelings of this situation."  Give yourself a minute or two to practice reminding yourself who you are.   

Some experiences may seem especially difficult to perceive with loving awareness.  That's okay.  Practice anyway.  Practice building the loving awareness muscle.  It makes you come alive.  At the end of the video below Zach says, "It's scary.  You can either freak out in the dark or you can relax."