So how do you really live your life. To experience it instead of being a spectator. How do you do that? It's strange that many times we do a lot of things but are somehow not present. Life passes by without you noticing. What are we really doing? And how do we go about really experiencing life?
When you boil everything down to what life really is about, it is just that. Our experience of it. It's the only thing we have.
The paradox is that we are so engrossed in our thoughts that we don't even notice it. We are not experiencing what we are doing here and now, but thinking about what we will do next, what has happened, planning and thinking. All the time.
Imagine you have a person who follows you all day long, wherever you go, when you go out, when you go into the next room, wherever you go, it follows you. And it talks non-stop. There you have it, that's your brain. A constant chatter all day long.
Of course, thoughts can be very positive. We humans have created so much with our thoughts. Everything around us is packed with human thoughts. All the things you use every day have been thought of by someone.
But how do we experience more? So we don't miss out on the best things in life?
The thoughts will keep coming whether you like it or not. What we can influence is what we do with them. Actually realizing this will take you much further than most people. When you start to become curious about what thoughts you have and actually notice when you get out of the "thought loop" you are in. When you realize that thoughts can hijack your experience indefinitely. Without any of what you have been thinking about actually happening. How you can be completely in a whirlwind of thoughts and it almost feels like waking up from a dream once you discover what happened.
Once you start noticing it, you are free.
Free to choose if you want to keep thinking the thought. See if it affects something you are doing now. Is it something you really need and want to think about now? Replaying the conversation you had with your mother yesterday in your head today, what difference does it make? The conversation you had was yesterday. Not now. Who are you telling now? You can't change what happened. What you can influence is what you do now. And only now. There is no other time. The future we so often fantasize about for better or worse will never come. Never as you imagine it. As Mark Twain said:
“I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
When you get to the point where you start to notice that you are thinking, you also have a new superpower to use. If you decide that you don't need to think this thought right now, you can make it disappear. Focus on what the thought really is, is it images, a voice, what do you see/hear/feel? Be curious about what a thought really is? Not what you thought but what is a thought and where does it come from? Is it possible to find where it came from?
The interesting thing about this journey of discovery is that you can't find anything. As soon as you look, it disappears. It's like a castle in the air. At one moment fully real and almost so real you can touch it, but the next moment dissolved into nothingness. If you can master this, you have a superpower to use. Try it! Imagine not having to be angry, irritated, stressed, afraid. You choose! Let go of control over what I want to happen and how. And let what happens happen and be confident that I can handle what comes, by just being. You can do this.
I didn't live like this before. Before, I was stuck in my thoughts. Because it was "me". How could it be any other way? So I didn't even question it. The turning point that changed my life, for real, was when I happened to listen to Sam Harris on a podcast. He talked about meditation and mindfulness in a way that I had never heard or understood before. The light version of mindfulness and meditation that I had been exposed to before was nothing compared to this. Suddenly my eyes opened. Sam Harris' app, which I have used daily since then (the only app I have paid for in my life) and which is a goldmine that is constantly expanding, is called Waking Up.