Seeing Yourself From A Deeper Perspective
Q. I’m generally not someone that complains when I get hit with tough times. I was taught from an early age that when I fall, I get back up and get on with the process of overcoming whatever it was that knocked me down.
I have been doing that for nearly forty years, and it’s always worked for me. However, in the past five years, my life has been in free fall. I lost my business and my home. I had to declare bankruptcy, and then my marriage of ten years ended in divorce. As if that wasn’t enough, finding a job in this economy has been nothing less than a nightmare.
The successful and positive person I knew myself to be has disappeared, and with it, my ability to effectively overcome life’s challenges. I eventually had to relocate and start my life all over again.
I have grown more depressed, and I have noticed that life seems much harder for me now, and my suffering has become physically and emotionally debilitating. I am not a religious person, but I am beginning to believe that behind all this suffering, there is something greater that will come from it, something I have yet been able to see or understand. Your guidance here would be most appreciated.
A. First, thank you for your honesty and heartfelt sincerity. You are not alone in how you feel. Many people are walking in your shoes right now. The effects of a lousy economy, broken relationships, and long-term unemployment are weighing heavy on millions of people every day here and abroad. It is easy to find yourself going through painful periods of prolonged and debilitating depression and anxiety.
Know, however, that what you are going through will pass, you will move through these challenges, and in the process, you will have further evolved as a person – you will have grown into a more powerful being. It is the process of transformation. What does not kill you only makes you stronger.
The evolving self
There is so much more going on if we consider the larger picture. Being challenged on multiple fronts, financially, emotionally, and spiritually, we are learning lessons more valuable than we could appreciate while we are in the thick of it.
As we work through your challenges, be aware that you are also evolving at the level of your consciousness. The single most important thing we can do for ourselves in these challenging times is to remain aware that the old in us must die so that the new can be born.
We need to be strong, stay awake, be thankful and stay outside of conflict. If we can manage this, we will avoid falling into negative, fearful, and destructive behavior.
Developing wider and deeper perspectives
One helpful suggestion is to cultivate a new perspective. One that requires giving new meaning to what is happening to us, even while we are going through our troubles. Those painful and life-disrupting experiences. This is no small task.
You must be able to alter your very perspective of life. You must be willing to recognize that you are more than just your physical body. More than your mind, thoughts, and ego.
Inside of you is the ultimate source of all that is powerful, good, and creative in the universe, and this is your true source identity.
In times of trouble and significant challenges, we must center ourselves in this great spiritual presence or risk getting caught up in a spiral of fear and negativity.
Suffering and joy
When we are young, many of us are taught the aim in life was to strive for happiness and avoid sadness. All types of sadness were to be avoided – from the pain that comes from a broken heart to the pain from financial trouble.
As we grow older and experience more of life, we realize that sometimes suffering is inevitable and sometimes even necessary to grow into something other than we currently know ourselves to be.
The power of perspective
The gift behind our suffering is often the deep knowledge and wisdom we gain from experiencing and understanding a fuller and deeper understanding of our human experience.
Maybe we can understand this by seeing ourselves as souls in training that belong to a greater purpose that we are still unable to see or understand but which reveals itself slowly as we make our choices and then experience the consequences of our choices – then contemplate the causal effect of our choices.
It is the knowledge and wisdom born of learning that which we did not know before that is so revealing and transforming. The contemplative form of learning through our experiences allows us to observe the paradoxical nature of emotional experiences.
We name opposing experiences, for example, good and bad, joy and sadness, rich and poor, and love and hate. The names we assign to these experiences, however, come from how we have reacted to them based on our past, and what we have been taught to believe when we confront them.
Reacting is a conditioned response, while choosing is a contemplative response
We hold within us the potential to see and understand our world in the way we choose to see it. And how we perceive our world shapes how we will experience it. In our lives, what we consider opposites, challenge us, test us, stretch us, and dare us to understand more than what we are capable of understanding.
If we could just watch and be rather than just react
The popular image of the happy Buddha sitting under a tree, smiling and at peace is inspiring, but it is also terribly misleading; for the Buddha was able to reach the transcendent state only after having gone through long and arduous journeys fraught with personal agony, defeat and yes periods of great suffering and loneliness. Not unlike what you are probably experiencing in life right now.
Life contains both joy and suffering. No one escapes this ultimate condition unless they can transcend the meaning and, therefore, the experience of it. To reach this level of spiritual maturity, we must first embrace the transformative process as a positive and awe-inspiring path that leads us to our greater self.
Toward a greater understanding
Each state of following the other towards a greater understanding of our lives. In this understanding, we are allowed to grow and transcend beyond the limited perspectives that have kept us chained to our fears and negativity.
I believe that we are here to learn and become who we wish to be – and that is entirely up to us. To create as the creator creates, to become self-making beings of unlimited potential. To be whatever it is we wish to be.
This is the gift of transformation. Shakespeare understood this profound truth when he wrote, “To be or not to be, that is the question…”
So who exactly is it you wish to be? I believe this is the question you face right now as you go through the personal challenges that confront you.
You are deep in the transformation process, my friend, and what you need to keep remembering is the truth of who you are and then reclaim this great truth as your own.
