There's nothing to Fix! You were never Broken!

Do you ever feel like you can't fully relax? Like you can't truly rest?

Maybe you feel like there's always something to do, there's always somewhere to go.

There's some task or objective that needs to be completed.

You've got to achieve something. You've got to go somewhere.

Maybe you have found yourself saying things like "oh there's not enough hours in the Day" or " I'll be okay when I've got this last thing done. In a few weeks when everything calms down, the kids are back at school & I've got a less busy time at work, then I can rest and relax."

Maybe you notice feeling a little bit worn out. A real need to rest and relax.

So you think "right I'm going to take some annual leave! I'm going to take a bit of time off just for me!"

Then during that time off, very quickly a sense of dis-ease starts to arise once you're not doing something.

You try and relax, put your feet up maybe watch some TV or go for a walk but you feel like something's not quite right. There's a slight feeling of dissatisfaction or maybe loneliness and disconnection.

Even though you know that you need some time to rest, you have a restlessness stopping you from truly letting go. So the thought comes "I know maybe I'll clean the house. Okay let's get that done, let's clean the house that'll make me feel better and when it's done and everything's tidy and shiny I can sit back down again, get a cup of tea and then properly relax."

This time it seems to work at first, you might get a bit of peace for an hour or so but then that feeling comes back again, the feeling of dissatisfaction, dis-ease, restlessness and actually this time you notice that maybe it's more than restlessness. Maybe that's the surface level but actually underneath there's something a bit deeper going on something a bit more fully felt.

So then you find a new task to do. Maybe you go out and apply yourself to an outdoor task, once again moving from the well-needed rest of just being and sitting, back into the habitual pattern of doing and striving to get things done.

It's Exhausting!

You notice that you have spent most of your life doing all of the things you thought you were supposed to do. You've applied yourself in school, applied yourself in work, applied yourself in family. You've tried really hard to get the pieces of life to all fit together so that everything's completely orderly. Everything is exactly how it should be: You've got a car, a career, maybe you've got a partner & some children.

We have all these situations and things in life that we have worked really hard for and we think "now I should feel some lasting ease, lasting satisfaction and long term happiness, but I still find myself feeling that sense of dis-ease and restlessness"

Maybe we find a bit of stability for a while, and things seem kind of OK, and peaceful but then Life changes.

Perhaps I lose my job or my partner leaves me.

Maybe illness befalls my family and then those feelings of potential sadness or heart ache or anger, the deeper feelings we sensed in those times of quiet, the feelings that we don't really know what to do with arise again.

We don't know what to do so we revert to the only thing we know, the thing we've been doing all of our Lives. Try harder!

"Okay well I'm gonna try and fix this this feeling that is painful! I'm going to try and change the situation!"

Maybe we've done this one too many times and we've seen that actually the usual areas we go to in life for satisfaction and lasting happiness, they don't really work. It's all very material and doesn’t touch us on a deep level, maybe that's not the answer at all!

"I've been investing all of my time into the material things of life and now I can see that isn't working. I feel the need to explore a more spiritual dimension. Maybe that's where the answer lies? I've been applying my efforts in the wrong area and now I should maybe go inwards and explore a little bit more about what it means to be alive."

So we start investigating the spiritual dimension of our lives.

Maybe we find a video on YouTube from Rupert Spira or we read some Eckhart Tolle.

Maybe we've been traveling and been inspired by some of the Buddhist figures we have seen in Thailand.

It could be that we have started a mindful movement practice: yoga or ecstatic dance and we think "YES, there's Something to this. It's got a different dimension. It's clearly not materialistic and I'm exploring something deeper. Right I'm going to apply myself fully to this!" and over the years a deeper sense of satisfaction starts to arise. It feels like now I've got a bit more balance, things are a little bit more secure a little bit more stable. I've found a balance between the things of the world; the job, the career, the family, and the spiritual aspect of being alive.

"I can do this now! I feel like I've got the tools I need get by. I've got a balance between the spiritual life and the material life everything is locking together nicely. Maybe this is it, the formula to lasting happiness."

Then Life Changes again!

Maybe you lose somebody very dear to you, your Wife or Brother and when life changes those feelings of dissatisfaction, those difficult emotions that we've been running from all of our Lives; the pain, the sorrow, the loneliness they arise again with more intensity.

We recognize that actually, all of that striving to manage life, hasn't released me from feeling these difficult emotions!

That can be a difficult truth to realize. "I've tried and I've tried for years yet I still find myself subject to Life's turbulent emotions."

The core issue, the thing that makes it so difficult to deal with is that we have made an error. We have made an error very early on in our life and it's an error of judgment or an error of view that we've inherited generationally from our parents and from society around us.

That error is that the difficult emotions of life, the sadness, the loss, the grief shouldn't be here. In fact very early on we're taught that emotions are not valuable. They're kind of a waste of time really, they don't get things done, they distract us from productivity.

What use is feeling deep heartfelt sorrow for another being in raising profits or getting your homework done, or succeeding in industry?

So very early on when naturally we encounter life and emotions emerge in our being we're often told:

Stop Feeling so deeply! Stop succumbing to these negative parts of life and get on with it!

Come on let's apply ourselves, get back to work!

Let's disassociate from this natural part of life, this emotional sensitivity and let's be productive.

The difficulty is we cannot stop feeling and this is what we find throughout all our lives. This is the predicament we find ourselves again and again, we cannot stop being and feeling. These are the natural faculties we are born with and these faculties exist so that all of life can be met fully and felt fully and the emotions of Life can rise and fall through our system. They can move us and transform us and be naturally freed but because of that error, because of that message we received at the youngest of ages; that this is not okay, it shouldn't be like this, then we're left in a quandary.

Where do we go? We can't stop being and we can't stop feeling, so we take our cue from what's around us. We see people that have retired into the recesses of Mind Identification. We are taught to live in a world of the Mind, a storyline where we try and create some separation between the energy of being alive Now and the thoughts in our minds. We try to retire into a thought world where we can manage life and that thought world gives the illusion that we can Fix This. We can put things together in a certain way by predicting the future, so that in the future I won't feel sorrow, I won't feel sadness, I won't feel unhappiness, I won't suffer loss, but when it doesn't work, because of course it can't work, we think "well there's something wrong with me!"

Everybody else seems to be able to do this, they seem to be able to be happy and live life with ease yet I keep bumping into these emotions again and again and again and I don't know how to get rid of them.

Of course they were never to be got rid of! They're a natural part of being alive, so the only thing we can do, because of that error of view is Try Harder!

We think "right okay well I need to try harder, I need to be a better dad, I need to figure things out more deeply, I need to read more, meditate more."

Even when we get a feeling of the spiritual dimension and we start exploring Awakening we think "I need to move towards Awakening more quickly, I need to create something in the future that's not this" and because of that we suffer and we suffer and we suffer.

We suffer because we're denying our natural ability for life to be lived through us!

The emotions of life can be fully felt and they will naturally resolve without us pushing them away.

When we get a flavour of the fact that all of that striving, all of that effort was just because of a slight error of judgment that I inherited, and I'm completely able to be with however life is, emotions will naturally arise and fall as Life Changes.

When I lose somebody I will feel sad and that is natural and I'm completely capable of being with those emotions as they arise and as they pass.

When I have a child, love will naturally blossom in my heart and it will naturally arise for the child again and again. I don't need to mitigate it through a story, I don't need to create imagined separation in order to deal with it.

The more we get a feel for this truth the more we can really begin to relax.

I can feel right now, in any given moment my feet on the floor, the breath coming in and going out of my body. I can hear the sounds of nature arising and ceasing, not needing anything to make them arise or needing to be pushed away for them to cease. I can see the light coming into my eyes, I can feel the sense of being Right Here, Right Now and I can know that in this moment, when I relax into this moment there's nothing to fix.

There's never been anything to fix.

I have never been broken, You have never been broken.

We will never Be Broken!