Never realize that you were conditioned at all.
Believe that you are your thoughts, that you are your emotions, rather than the being observing those things. Never realize the constant stream of conversation you hold with yourself. Never realize that two-thirds of the statements you make and ideas you have are not organically yours.
Disregard that they don’t lead you to contentment or kindness or hope, and accept them anyway.
Pick and choose the people to whom you afford humanness. Decide who is worthy and not. Sift through the traits and habits of others, categorize them into what’s acceptable and not. Don’t let someone be worthy of love and respect just because they are alive; doing this will ensure you never give the same kindness to yourself.
Be your worst enemy so nobody else can be. Assume the worst so nobody can surprise you with it. Call it being realistic. Accept the life someone else thinks you deserve. Don’t believe that change is real. Don’t believe in anything other than what you can immediately sense and see. Suffocate the chance of possibility. Sustain yourself on temporary highs, the kind that come from other people and their attention. Let your past experiences quantify your self-hatred. Create your past in your present.
Let other people wash away the good parts of you. Call this being strong.
Settle because you are afraid to choose. Call this being smart. Fight others so you don’t have to face yourself. Resist and reject until it seems like everyone and everything is seeping under your skin and torturing you.
Never realize your mind does the wielding. Never realize that bit by bit, you created the life you never really wanted with the pieces you never really chose.
47
IF WE SAW
SOULS
instead of
BODIES
If we could see souls instead of bodies, what would be beautiful?
What is the first thing people would know about you? What would you be most afraid of them seeing? Who would you impress? Who would you love?
What would you adjust as you walked past the mirror? What kind of work would you be in? What would your goals be, how would you strive to be better if what you collected in the bank or put on your body or attached next to your name on a business card no longer affected what people saw?
Would you spend your time in gyms and stores or in libraries and temples? Who would you let yourself fall in love with? What would your
“type” be? Tall, dark, and handsome or creative, kind, and self-aware?
Whom would we idolize, and what? How much of our governing body would be fit to lead? Whom would we make famous? Whom would we celebrate?
Would we restructure our value system to prioritize the things that bring us true peace and desire, not just better than the norm? What would we do with all that money if we weren’t spending it on decorating and changing and convincing everybody else that we are a way we really aren’t?
How would we define success? As who gathers the most shit around their souls or who is transformed the most and shines the brightest? What would it be like if our priority was to just become lightness? What kindness and joy and healing and rawness would come of the journey there?
What would happen if we could see people not as “bad,” but as…
blocked? If we could see the ways they’ve packed away their pain, or how they hold a belief that keeps them away from being kind to others? How they are unaware that those issues even exist?
What if we weren’t afraid of the ways people are different than us?
What would happen if we realized our bodies never wanted anything more than to feel connected, and acted out on nothing more than their false ideas of being separate, different, exiled, the odd one out, the almost-but-not-good-enough?
What would happen if we embraced our desire to play out and finagle with our individualism, but eventually returned to the knowing that we are all just energy fields? And where would we be if we realized that we were all from the same one? What would happen if we realized we really weren’t that different at all?
48
16 REASONS WHY
you still don’t
HAVE THE LOVE
YOU WANT
01. You want someone else to do the work of unearthing, creating, activating, and then convincing you of the love in your life.
You want someone else to do what you were taught that you couldn’t do for yourself. Every time you think, wish, imagine, or hope for someone else to give you something, dream of the day when they will, belabor and obsess over why they aren’t, realize that thing is what you are not giving yourself.
02. Historically, it has not looked the way you thought it would, and that’s because it never looks the way we think it will or comes the way we think it should.
When we hold an idea of what love should look like, we attach to something that often just quells an insecurity, saves us from a reality, or helps us prove ourselves to someone else. Love never looks the way we think it will…because it’s not supposed to look any certain way. Because the look of it won’t actually give us the experience of it, but the pursuit of that will distract us from actually finding something genuine.
03. You think that love is just a good feeling, when love is really a consistent state of being in communion with body, mind, and soul.
It is a daily commitment to learn what it means to love someone else in small, practical, mindful ways. You can be more or less attracted to someone, more or less compatible, but choosing to love and appreciate someone regardless of those variables is a constant that you can choose (and it’s the belief that you can’t because love must give you what you cannot give yourself, that leads to so many breakups, divorces, etc.).
04. You are unaware of the fact that love is nothing but an enhancement.
It magnifies and brings clarity to whatever is most present in your life. So if the things that are most present are self-doubt, lostness, insecurity, etc., you will only have more and more of that. Love is not your life; it is the avenue through which you share your life (and more palpably, see yourself).
05. You believe that love will “blossom” when the circumstances are correct, as though you must place two reactive chemicals together and assume that an instantaneous physical/emotional response should equate to lifelong, sincere love.