Why does our seemingly endless search for convenience lead us down the road to suffering?

Our world is packed full of convenience.

In our westerns society, marketeers peddle convenience to us easily and we lap it up like a cat does milk. We are slaves to advertising and the incessant need to have things, stuff, material and emotional possessions.

We build bigger businesses, roads, buildings, homes, cars, bank accounts and destroy our environment in the process. We drive faster, we boast about making it from one city to the next quicker than we did the last time we drove the journey.

We live for an invisible intangible future.

We race through one thing in anticipation of getting to the next thing. We get to the next thing and we race through that in the pursuit of the next thing and so on.

We push our children out the door each morning in the race to make it before the school bell, “quick, quick, hurry, hurry, we’re going to be late!” and we are teach them in the process to behave exactly like us, and Et Voila! things never change.

There is an incessant need for everything to be done now.

We are constantly trying to please ourselves by pleasing others and this pursuit of gratification is endless and without soul, and ironically without gratification. The situation for humanity is at a critical point, and I believe if we continue the current trend we will expire soon.

What Is It All For?

Our lives lead us to awakening and higher states of being. It leads eventually to our realisation of self, of our true self. Currently the world is led by Ego, the false self and it is the cause of all that is vacuous and destructive in the world.

I believe the Ego was never meant to take such a leading role, however it did. The Ego certainly has a role to play but it was never meant to take such a leading one. It allows us distinguish each other here and interact and protect us from danger. Given this is a relative existence, others were required in order for the individual to exist and so began the prominence of the surface identity.

It seems we have completely forgotten who we are. Most of humanity occupies the surface reality completely, and believes in it entirely. To know thyself beyond the Ego is the challenge for every soul that comes here.

A Higher Purpose

We enter this physical world a blank sheet, open to the influences from our environment. These influences sculpt our beliefs. It is our purpose therefore to break from these limits on spirit which take many lifetimes as I understand it.

The Soul Purpose is to realise itself in physical reality and to experience that fully, but the conditions of physical reality prevent this from being so, at least for a while. Physical reality is like a shell that keeps us from ultimate realisation of who we are, but the soul waits, patiently for us to break free and realise its presence.

One day we encounter a challenge to one degree or another and the shell cracks. A thin sliver of light penetrates the shell. This is the first glimpse of actual reality that we get to witness. Most people, strongly led by the Ego and gripped by fear, turn from the light and spend their lives in this fearful state only finding release when they eventually depart.

Realisation of Self

Eventually we gather enough life experience over the course of our existence that one day something pops, the shell breaks open and we finally have no choice but to see the light of our own consciousness in all its glory. When you experience this, and you will eventually, you’ll likely cry your eyes out in utter amazement and joy for what has just happened.

You could be doing anything when it happens, listening to a song, or walking down the street or hoovering the stairs. Or you could in fact be coming through a very difficult life experience. Whatever the circumstances, it’s an amazing experience.

The realisation of self brings with it the understanding that all the consumerism and adherence to things of the world is a complete waste of time (there’s no such thing as time by the way, I use that figuratively).

All driving force created by Ego is left behind like you’ve just shed a skin. The shed skin being transparent and unsubstantial and so obvious to you now. What a time this is. Nothing is impossible and everything becomes possible.

The Gradual Progression

You know now that all you were taught by your religion was a mixed up bundle of misinterpretation of fundamental truth. You know that Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed were souls who lived as we do and were just like you. They found out the truth and tried to tell the people.

You realise that when you were told to fear God it was a lie spoken as truth. You realise that God is You and You are God and that all other ideas are pitiful fabrications of the Ego, of men who knew no better. You finally see all life drama and pain for what it is, a shadow world of no consequence. But wow, when you are in it, does it feel real.

For some the transition can be sudden and brutal (from the physical perspective that is), for others it is a gradual progression with little spikes of understanding coming through at a time.

These can be great periods of disturbance followed by quiet spells of profound realisation of truth. It’s like riding a rollercoaster of emotion that you just gotta ride, you can not get off once you get on.

There’s no going back, you can not unknow what you now know. And the good news is it never ends. We are forever on the journey to realisation of self. And when it does come to the point of ultimate knowing and understanding- BANG! It all starts all over again.

Maybe I’ve Lost It…

Sometimes I read what I have written and I think “hey you’re crazy.” Then the light kind of shines a bit and I can see that maybe I’m not. But what if what I’ve experienced and what I’m saying here is just as much an idea as all the lies and hate and destruction that we witness in our world that seems so prominent?

Ok, so lets say there is nothing beyond this life and I am completely full of shit. I ask myself, what kind of life would I prefer?

I have two choices as I see it, I can feel good, or feel bad. I prefer feeling good and I know that to feel the presence of the trees and nature on a sunny day is special and so much better than watching TV, or shopping for stuff.

I know that stuff doesn’t make me happy for very long, or at all in fact. I know that beer and cigarettes, and drugs don’t make me happy, I’ve tried that. I know that watching news of bombs dropping on people doesn’t make me happy. I know that pushing for some financial goal or other somewhere in the future without a great cause attached to it doesn’t make me happy.

On the other hand, I know that meditation makes me happy. I know that looking in my childs eyes and seeing what I see goes beyond happy, it’s pure love. I know what I know, and I know the prevalence of Ego led lifestyle and world conditions are totally not cool and things need to change.

So maybe I have lost it. I’ve lost, or I am losing the ties to invisible things.

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Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Fabian Schmid at Pixoto