Recovering our Sense

Our instincts haven’t been working. Maybe they’re still not. 

You know why I know that? Because you haven’t been able to feel —you’re numb. You don’t fuck with wild abandon at all. You don’t follow your senses, or even recognize them. You don’t even think your own thoughts—just whatever the latest meme, or commercial or the news tells you to

You’re not alone. Hell—I’ve been there too. And I mean that. It’s Hell. Locked out of our sense of instinctive potential, passionate purpose, or deepest capacities. We flounder. We fold. We just zone out

Professionals start to occupy the spaces that our own lives should encompass. Priests and preachers do spirituality full time, so we can learn about it on the weekends. Counselors and coaches do the labor of personal development in order for us to have a couple of sessions. Medical professionals with as little protective gear as we may have access to, do the caring and coping for our neighbors. As long as there are people out there occupying those spaces, we can NOT. Let them do the heavy lifting—we imagine, and are told

But the this outsourced equation which creates the illusion of more freedom for us, hides quite the opposite. What it obscures is how deeply automatic our behavior is—how profoundly conditioned our responses are. 

The conditioned reality

Rousseau said it well: “man is born free and everywhere is in chains” and in truth this seems apparent in our day-to-day living.

Think of this situation:  

You had a fight with your partner last night and went to bed grouchy. Then had a dream that left you fearful. When you wake up, you’re already annoyed at this day 
It gets worse as you open your phone and see the countless stories of panic, plague and pestilence. Your mood sours even worse
As you come down stairs you notice that you don’t smell the familiar aroma of coffee. Your partner hasn’t made it as they usually do. You become livid. This is their role, you think, and this is clearly them being vindictive. You feel so incredibly angry
Then getting into the car your boss calls and tells you that you don’t need to come in to work. The virus has made it important to do work from home. Your heart drops even lower. Then they tell you this will paid for. And suddenly your mood improves. It’s not as bad as thought! You begin to think of it as a vacation and feel elated 
You run down to the coffee shop and giddily order a cappuccino to celebrate when you overhear a person saying “Aren’t they hot?” And you see they’re looking right at you! Splendid. This day couldn’t get any better could it
Gone are the worries of the morning or the frustrations or concerns. Life is good. And your mood is better
Then your partner calls and says they’ve gone to store and there’s no toilet paper and won’t be for a month and that some asshole rear ended them and left without leaving their insurance. You are overwhelmed with rage and confusion. The pleasant feelings evaporate…
Do you get it? This is a day in the life of most of us, if we are honest. Because when you are “state dependent” your moods are simply determined by each passing externality

That isn’t freedom. That’s bondage. It’s being a machine. Data in. Data out. And reading this, you may very well think, “but isn’t that just how it is?!?” You couldn’t be more accurate 

This is the state of human existence. Yet it does not have to be. We need not go through life as automatic and second hand sleepwalkers 

It is time to wake up. It is time to train ourselves how to have a whole new way of being. We cannot afford business as usual any longer.

The snooze button

However, this can be difficult. Just as a room tends towards darkness, we tend towards mindlessness.

Our civilization rewards it, reinforces it, and regulates it. Sleep. Sleep—like a steady drum.

Every time we are shocked by the “bad behavior” of a spiritual leader, institution, or a politician we tip our hand that we were sleeping. People who are awake aren’t caught off guard

When you are present to life, you are equal to it. You aren’t left scrambling and self protective. You can trust yourself, when you’re awake

When you are awake life’s next challenge, whether a virus, or a passage, or a scandal, or a loss, is simply another problem to solve 

I can tell I’ve been mindless when I’m shocked, especially by loss. The truth is we lose everything

Husbands, wives, lovers, our freedoms, our movement, our stuff, our thoughts, our bodies—literally everything. Why are we surprised then? Because we were asleep

Someone came into our house and stole the family treasures in our slumbers!! We were taken unaware. If we had been awake, we wouldn’t have been alarmed. We would have known that we can keep nothing

Underneath the thin veneer of civilization is an animal always somewhat aware of the possibility to lose everything

We are so terrified that often the best we can do is hide from the constant reminders of loss, the reality of death, the fear of disappearing

So we numb, we sedate, we sleep. .

Waking Up

But eventually it collapses. And you collapse. Isn’t that just where we are? And for so many of us, it takes just that. The floor falling in, leaving us standing in the basement of shadows we had avoided for so long. But here’s the gift: there in the darkness we begin to learn what is wild, instinctual, and natural again

You want to live out of purpose? You want to become confident, untamed, and a force of will? Get acquainted with your shadows

It won’t be in the skyscrapers of your ego and conditioned thoughts that you find meaning. It will be in the ruin and the wreckage, in the basement of shadow, in the failures and the cracks. That’s where you begin to discover who you are

Naturalness only comes to those who have shed the comfort of being who others told them they should

Try this: Today, notice when you feel surprise—particularly at OTHER people’s actions, reactions, and attitudes

Notice outrage. Notice alarm. Notice bitterness and grumbling about life not being fair. These are all wake up calls that you’ve been asleep

Now—WAKE UP. It’s time to become mindful