Author: josephsacco

Root of suffering according to the Buddha

This little graphic above is a quote I shared on Instagram. In my previous post, I wrote about the Cause of Suffering from my own experience. Here I would like to discuss the root of suffering as spoken by the Buddha from the Pali Canon one of the earliest discourses on what the Buddha actually said.

The backdrop to this discourse occurred when the Blessed One was dwelling in a town of the Malans named Uruvelakappa. The Bhadraka the headman approached the Blessed One and he said to him “It would be good, venerable sir, if you would teach me about the origin and passing away of suffering.”

The Buddha goes on two provide three examples that illustrate how desire is the root of suffering:

  1. The people of Uruvelakappa
  2. The headman’s son
  3. The headman’s wife

The premise here is for those that the headman holds desire and attachment, will ultimately cause suffering if they were executed, imprisoned, fined, or censured. For those where there is no desire or attachment, there is no suffering. Here is an excerpt from (SN 42:11; IV 327-30)”

“What do you think headman? Before you saw your wife or heard about her, did you have any desire, attachment, or affection for her?”

“No, venerable sir.”

Then was it, headman, only when you saw her or heard about her that this desire, attachement, and affection arose in you?”

“Yes, venerable sir.”

“What do you think, headman? If you wife were to be executed, imprisoned, fined, or censured, would sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair arise in you?”

“Venerable sir, if my wife were to be exectured, improsoned, fined, or censured, even my life would seem futile, so how could sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair not arise in me?”

“In this way too, headman, it can be understood: ‘Whatever suffering arises, all that arises rooted in desire, with desire as its source; for desire is the root of suffering.'”

In this example from the Pali Canon, the Buddha is posing the question to the headman what if one of those terrible things (execution, imprisonment, fined, or censured) happened to people of his town that he knew and cared about, his son, or his wife. So, in this case, the word desire is also synonymous with people that the headman is attached to.

This desire or attachment may also be applied to material things, status, or power. Think about it for a while. Our whole society fosters desire, claiming that desire is necessary for achievement whether it be a new home, a new car, or a new business or job. We are told that desire equates to achievement, but never to suffering. People with great desire are put on a pedestal and celebrated for the desire that drives their work ethic and attainment of material things.

The Buddha was not wrong, desire begets attachment and attachment will only lead to suffering. What happens when the new car gets damaged in an accident, your son is killed in a war, and your parents die. Even the mere fact that you desire immortality due to your attachment to your life and others will ultimately lead to suffering. Understanding that desire will cause suffering is the first step in the abandonment of suffering.

Namaste

Reference: In the Buddha’s Words, An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, edited and introduced by Bhikkhu Bodhi

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Cause of Suffering

I think we can all agree that there is much suffering in the world. I have yet to find someone that doesn’t feel this to be true. However, as a practitioner of the Dhamma, it is important to realize the cause of suffering. Why are we suffering? Once we understand the causes of our suffering we are in a better position to address the causes. You already know there is the potential to end suffering by walking the Noble Eightfold Path. I like to look at suffering not just from Buddhist definitions, but also from a personal perspective. I would hazard to guess that most of the things I consider the causes of suffering are pretty universal and will resonate with you.

Suffering is caused by:

  • Craving – It’s pretty obvious that all those things you crave only bring suffering in the end. You might be craving material things, sex, alcohol, drugs, money, status, or any number of stupid things. Time spent craving something inherently brings you pain, feelings of unease, a focus on the future, and dissatisfaction with what you have. For most of us, craving is the #1 cause of suffering and encompasses other causes.
  • Ego – For me, this means a sense of self that craves recognition because I have some inflated view of myself. We all want to be special, but a life that is driven by ego will forever feel disappointing. We create an image of ourselves based on what we do for a living or how talented we think we are. This is a false self, one we create for this world we live in, not our true nature.
  • Envy – To some degree, we are envious of others because we crave what they have. We perceive their life to be better than our own. Envy often manifests itself in resentment. We resent that the others have it so much better than we do. They are more successful, have more money, are more attractive, have more leisure time, and the list goes on and on. Instead of being grateful for the small things in life we are envious of someone or some group of people and this causes suffering.
  • Death and Aging – We realize that someday we or someone we care about will die and leave this earth. This fact alone causes us to suffer, knowing that our time is limited and that we have wasted much of it. As we age we experience pain and the inability to do what we did when we were young and healthy, thus causing more suffering. Sometimes it just comes down to the underlying fear of death that hovers over us every day of our life.
  • Attachment – “If you observe yourself and others then you will see that people crave for pleasant experiences, crave for material things, and crave for eternal life. We are attached to sensual pleasures, wealth and power but also to ideas, views, opinion, and beliefs. Taken together, the four types of attachment are the main problems that Buddhists need to understand. The four types of attachment are 1) sense objects, 2) opinions and views, 3) rites and rituals, and 4) self-hood.” Buddhism seeks to break this attachment to these things and ideas.

There are possibly dozens of other causes of suffering, but recognizing that any of these causes may be the root of your dissatisfaction is really a good thing. Without understanding the cause of suffering all the meditation in the world will not lead to its cessation. This is maybe the most fundamental truth that Buddhism seeks to address. Life is suffering, there are causes, there is a solution, and the end of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path.

You will never change your behaviour by changing the way you think until you realize what are the primary causes of your own suffering. These defilements or taints you suffer from must ultimately be addressed and eradicated. There is no Nibbana for someone that does not address their issues with ego, craving, envy, and their own mortality. In my next post, I will make a case for moving your thinking from ego and craving to service, which is another key tenant of Buddhism.

Namaste

Reference:

Guide to Buddhism: Step 5 – Eliminating Attachments

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Mediation Experiences – Cuatro

This is the fourth installment “Cuatro” in my series on my meditation experiences. The previous installments included:

Meditation Experiences – Uno where I covered some of the basics of meditation and how I began my own practice.

Meditation Experiences – Dos was targeted at a discussion on some of the benefits I have received from my practice.

Meditation Experiences – Tres is where I tried to make the case for having no expectations from your practice.

Ok enough about the past, but if you haven’t read these posts I recommend you do so, as this has been a journey for me, and you get a better context for what I have experienced if you start at the beginning. During the time that I have written this, I have been meditating on a daily basis for about 3 months. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but my practice has also included studying Buddhism, which I have been doing for maybe around the last 10 years or so. So when I talk about my practice it is comprised of meditation and Buddhist studies.

All of human history has been turbulent, but we are living in a strange era with this pandemic and technological advances that have brought so much prosperity to the world and at the same time caused so many people to be displaced. If there was ever a time that we needed something to provide a lifeline or an anchor in our world the time is now.

As I went beyond just studying and dedicated myself to daily meditation, I feel that this might be an answer to living a meaningful life amidst all this craziness. In fact, it may be the only true way out of this situation. The Buddha spent years coming to the realization that suffering exists as a natural state for human beings and that there is an end to suffering. His prescription was developing a practice of meditation and following the Eightfold Path. You might be thinking this is bullshit, how can I benefit from studying an applied philosophy created 2,500 years ago. I would argue that Buddhism has survived so long because it was relevant in the past and is relevant today and will be relevant in the future. The basic premise of Buddhism that life is Dukkha (suffering), is as true today as it was yesterday.

As I have become consistent with my practice and specifically the meditation component of it I have found it to be the lifeline that I so badly needed. I won’t kid you there are times when I sit down on my cushion and have trouble tuning out the world around me, thoughts about my work, or other things become so prominent that I have trouble staying present. While some sessions seem better than others, all of the time spent meditating is a respite from the insane world we live in. This daily practice starts out as somewhat of a challenge, but as you persist it becomes a habit, and you will start to look forward to it. You become your practice, you become compassionate, and ultimately you become Buddha. Your practice will soon become the most important thing in your life because all good things result from it. You might just become a better spouse, parent, or friend. You might even start seeing the world as it really is and you will start seeing the good in people.

I will leave you with this somewhat funny quote from the Dalai Lama:

Namaste

 

Note: I wrote this post using Grammarly, which really helps. Give it a try, it works with WordPress and Google Docs.

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Meditation Experiences – Tres

Nice quote by Edgar Cayce

This is the third post on my meditation experiences. In Meditation Experiences – Uno, I spent some time discussing how I started meditating and the technique that works for me. In the post Meditation Experiences – Dos, the focus was on the benefits that I have received from my practice.

In this blog post, I will make the case that you should expect nothing from your practice. I know this seems contrary to all that we are taught during our life, which normally revolves around if I do something I should get some benefit from it, or in the opposite case maybe it detracts from my life in some way. For your practice to be pure and lasting you must not fill your head with expectations. The very fact that you expect something becomes an ego trip of sorts, where you say to yourself if I meditate then I will become enlightened or I will become calmer, or whatever you might expect from your practice. Before too long, you begin thinking you are superior to the rest of humanity because you have become more spiritual or by virtue of your discipline. I’m not saying that there won’t be benefits that come to you from your meditation practice, but I am asking that you leave the expectations at the door.

Here is the thing with expectations they will make your practice more difficult and may result in you quitting altogether. Let’s say that you expect your practice to make you calmer, more empathetic, or maybe more compassionate with the rest of the people on this planet. The next thing you know someone runs into your car and you start screaming profanities at the other driver, or thoughts of why does this shit always happen to me. Stop expecting your meditation practice to turn you into the Dali Lama and when you stop with all these expectations your practice just becomes something you do. Maybe your practice is actually part of a bigger picture on the road to becoming a more spiritual person who embraces Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. I would guess for many of us that meditate it has become just a part of our spiritual practice, and not a thing we do to satisfy some expectation of what we get from it or who we will become.

After I got over the idea that my meditation practice should give me something I dropped all the expectations and it became a habit. What I mean by that it has become like eating, sleeping, breathing, yoga, or any other thing you regularly do. Once your practice becomes a habit, something you just do, you can quit thinking about what is it doing for me. Will you benefit from your meditation practice? Absolutely, but beyond what you might expect is a realization that your practice helps you develop the Buddha-nature that is buried deep within yourself. Maybe what I call Buddha-nature will for you be, Jesus Christ, God, or Mohammed.

This is one of my favorite quotes and I feel is very applicable to your meditation practice:

“I expect nothing and accept everything” Gary John Bishop

Take this to heart as it applies to your meditation practice and all will be well with you.

Namaste

 

Note: I wrote this post using Grammarly, which really helps. Give it a try, it works with WordPress and Google Docs.

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Meditation Experiences – Dos

In my prior post Meditation Experiences – Uno I wrote about how I started meditating and to some degree why I decided to try meditation. In this post, I would like to make a case for meditation, the benefits if you will at least from my own perspective. Some of you may have tried meditating in the past and found it difficult if not almost impossible to just sit and count breaths. You may have been so busy thinking about what you need to do, that the whole process was just painful and seemed very unproductive. Here is the problem, it takes time to create a habit of meditating and the first 5 or 10 sessions may seem difficult at first, but like any good habit, you will need to make the investment before seeing any returns. You may feel like nothing is happening here and I am still letting my monkey mind dominate my meditation session and then something begins to change and you start to both enjoy and benefit from the experience. Mind you it might have taken a month or longer to get to this point, but it does happen.

Why did this seemingly simple thing, just sitting and breathing suddenly become enjoyable? Here are a few benefits I have received from meditating:

  • Being Present – I began to understand that my monkey mind and drive to be always doing something that supported my goals was preventing me from just enjoying the process of meditating. I was so anxious that I was spending all of my time recalling the past and then at the same time thinking about what I needed to do in the future. So instead of looking at meditation as just another thing to check off my to-do list, I began looking forward to it because it helped me be in the present. In fact, I often tell myself while meditating “You are present” or “You are here”, this often helped to drown out the thinking about the future, which often dominates my thoughts. What I’m really saying here is you are fucking yourself over by thinking you need to be productive all the time. This was part of my problem, I was looking at meditation as a kind of goal or thing I had to do, instead of just appreciating how it was helping me live in the present moment.
  • Discover Your True Self – As I continue to meditate I have begun to realize that there are things more important than my job or who I thought I was. Meditation helps you get in touch with who you really are. This doesn’t happen immediately, but over time you begin to realize there is the actual you, not some role you play. Maybe it is your true self, you know the compassionate, introspective, and loving person you actually are. For me, meditation is helping to peel back the layers of responsibility and anxiety that dominates much of our lives as we spend our time trying to live up to everyone else’s expectations.
  • Calms the Mind – Meditation is one of the few things I have found that breaks the monkey mind pattern of thinking and calms the mind. When I finish a session I feel renewed and free if even only for a while. You might get a similar feeling from walking on a nice day when you are not bothered by cars or loud noises. While I love a good long walk and find it very relaxing it feels different than meditating. The aftereffect of meditation is more like a reset or rebooting of the mind to a state of calm and clarity.

I know that there are many other benefits that could be attributed to meditation, but for me, these are the ones I have noticed a couple months into the practice.

 

So is it worth it? 

My answer is a resounding Yes! 

 

Final Parting Shot

The mistake I made in the last year or so is that I would start out very consistent and then my practice would fizzle out. I simply did not put a high enough priority on it, missing many days, stopping and starting. Those benefits of being present, discovering yourself, and calming your mind come from daily practice. I’m not saying I never miss a day, but it has become pretty rare now, and if something prevents me from doing it at my regular time, I fit it in later in the day.

I would love to hear about the benefits you attribute to your own meditation practice, leave me a comment.

I hope to write another post soon as this wonderful journey continues.

Do good and stay safe.

Namaste

 

Note: I wrote this post using Grammarly, which really helps. Give it a try, it works with WordPress and Google Docs.

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Meditation Experiences – Uno

This is my first (Uno) post regarding my recent meditation experiences. `It is not so much my intention to teach about meditation, but I am more interested in explaining my own journey. However, with that said there are a couple basics that you may want to consider such as the sitting position and the benefits of having some kind of seating cushion often referred to as a Zafu. There are a number of different sitting positions, but I would say most of the world uses either full lotus, half-lotus, or Burmese. These are pictured below:

Full Lotus

Note both feet are resting on the thighs, this takes a fair amount of flexibility and is not for everyone.

Half Lotus

In the half-lotus only one foot is on the thigh, this is easier than full lotus for most people.

Burmese

Another popular position and probably the easiest when first getting started.

When I started meditating I tried the full lotus position, but I’m not that flexible and was unable to get into the correct position, so I used the half-lotus position most of the time and even tried the Burmese position. One thing I like about the Burmese sitting position is that your knees are at the same level, where when sitting in half-lotus one is higher than the other. This comes in handy when you put your hands on your knees, you feel that your arms are completely balanced.

If you already meditate, you are probably saying stop you are boring me to death. Ok enough about sitting positions, just choose one that works best for you and get on with it.

Once I got serious about meditating, meaning doing it every day the question was for how long should I sit? I started out with sitting for 10 minutes, then 15, and now I am sitting 20 minutes at each session. With each successive increase in time came benefits as it seemed like the first 10 minutes or so was still a battle of fighting with my monkey mind, which was mostly focused on challenges at work. So while 10 minutes of meditation was better than nothing I didn’t really get a whole lot of benefit out of it, but when I moved to 15 and then 20 minutes things started to change. I’m speculating that I could probably get even more out of my practice if I extended the time to say 30 or 45 minutes, but I’m not there yet. Most of my meditation sessions occur fairly early in the morning after I have completed my yoga practice, which by itself takes about 30 minutes, so, all in all, I’m spending about 1 hour in the morning practicing yoga and meditation.

I have tried Zen (Zazen) meditation with your eyes open and the mudra hand position (see below). I did this for some time but was never really comfortable having my eyes open and eventually changed to meditating with my eyes closed, but I still use the mudra hand position from time to time.

When I started meditating about two months ago, I used the technique of counting breaths, which helped me drown out the monkey mind a bit, but I rarely do that now. Most of the time I will focus on just watching my breathing and trying to stay present.

If you are not currently meditating you might ask, why in the hell are you doing this? For me the answer was easy, I was very unhappy, experiencing a lot of anxiety and worry in my life, and I knew if I gave meditation a fair try I might be able to alleviate some of this angst. I will be honest I was fucking miserable and dreading each day and knew this was no way to live. In my next post, I will explain what meditation is doing for me and cover some of the benefits you can also expect during your own journey.

Namaste

 

Note: I wrote this post using Grammarly, which really helps. Give it a try, it works with WordPress and Google Docs.

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You Care too Much

I contend that most of the anxiety and unhappiness you experience comes from giving a shit about things that don’t warrant your attention. Every day you agonize over whether I will get that project done on time, or will I accomplish that ever-growing list of to-do items. Let me be clear, I’m not saying you don’t need to accomplish things in your life, but you’re playing this game as if it were life and death and it’s eating you up inside. You give all this shit that you feel must get done a high priority, in effect you care too much. Every project, every endeavor you undertake is not intended to be done as if it were some kind of death march. You not someone else is sucking the fucking joy out of everything by taking it all too seriously. 

We perceive what we do as so important when in the grand scheme of things the shit we are doing is just stuff that we feel needs to be done and we are going to bust our ass to make sure it is accomplished regardless of how it affects our well being. I work as a consultant and on a daily basis, issues are being escalated. The end result is that 90% of the work that needs to be done is considered high priority and only 10% can wait. These escalations are not self-imposed but instead, the priority is being dictated by the customer or my leadership. Is it any wonder that we care too much?

Listen whether this sense of urgency is self-imposed or being imposed upon you, really doesn’t matter, either way, you are screwed if you continue to react in the same way you always do. So what can you do about this overwhelming avalanche of high priority shit on your plate? There are several things to consider:

  1. Choose carefully from the list of things everyone thinks must be done right now and prioritize 3 to 5 things you can do today and defer the rest. This may not make you more popular, but it will improve the quality of your life by providing some much-needed focus and strangely enough your productivity will actually increase. Not being burdened by a list of 15 things and instead focusing on just a few things allows you to be more present and take back a little bit of control over your life.
  2. While those around you will think the world will come to an end if this or that is not done you can rest assured that this stuff they deem so important just isn’t and not nearly as time-sensitive as everyone makes it out to be. Sometimes you have to push back and ask for more time to accomplish something or even ask why in the fuck are we doing this in the first place? Stop believing in this insane idea that working more is a badge of honor, or makes you more productive. Don’t buy into all the memes that say you won’t achieve anything unless your working 18 hours a day, it’s is just bullshit and unsustainable. 
  3. Finally and this is maybe the most empowering, which is why I wrote the quote above. You cannot and should not take all this shit so seriously, hell you shouldn’t even take your own life so seriously. You can’t spend your life making everything a high priority, in fact, this thing you call your life is really just a journey, yet we make it into some fucking project. Once our life has become a project it is just a series of milestones and tasks that get checked off, never stopping to enjoy the process. I love this quote by Kurt Vonnegut “We are here on earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different”.

This thing you call your life is not a series of goals to achieve or some fucking death march. Start today by taking things less seriously, living in the moment, and stop making all things you are compelled to do of equal priority. Years from now you will thank yourself.

Namaste

 

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Yoga + Meditation = Mindfulness

Do you ever feel like a hamster running on a wheel in a cage? Of course, you do we all are running a fast as we can to do all the things required to make a living, take care of our families, and just survive on this earth. The problem is we are full of anxiety about getting shit done on time and in the end we are just plain tired out. Years ago I started doing yoga, primarily to help me function better physically and to cope with the demand of sitting all day to accomplish my work. Over time I found yoga practice provided much more than just improved flexibility, but also allowed me to relax and approach my day in a more calm state.

More recently I started meditating after my yoga session and I found the combination of the two provided an even higher level of awareness. At first, I found it difficult to meditate, but by performing my yoga practice first, it made it easier to sit for meditation. One of the reasons for doing the yoga first is that it made it easier to sit for meditation because I had stretched my back and hips, which just made the physical part of sitting much easier. The second reason was that the yoga relaxed me, and made it easy to move into an even deeper state of awareness as I began to meditate. When you put them together Yoga + Meditation you have this powerful combination that helps you become more mindful and ultimately jump off the hamster wheel.

This new-found mindfulness allows you to approach each day with a positive mindset no longer filled with anxiety and worry. You now have an opportunity to look at your work more realistically. As you increase your level of mindfulness you begin putting your work and obligations in perspective and they no longer torment you. The increased awareness of the world allows you to look at your work as just one aspect of your life, in effect it becomes less important than your peace of mind.

Change your paradigm and make the investment of an hour or so every morning. Make this a priority and this investment will pay tremendous dividends that will enrich all aspects of your life.

 

Yoga + Meditation = Mindfulness

Namaste

 

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Forgive Yourself

There are many philosophies and religions where the practice of forgiveness is extremely important. We are taught to forgive others for their sins against us, errors in judgment, or even crimes they have committed, but are we equally forgiving of ourselves?

If you are an egomaniac you wouldn’t feel bad about what you have done in the past and forgiveness would not even be a consideration. Fortunately for you, there is an awareness of how you fucked up, and you feel bad. Maybe what you did just hurt yourself, but most likely it also affected others and you are experiencing a guilt trip. You become angry with yourself, condemning yourself for being so stupid. All this guilt and anger does nothing for your current state of mind and prevents you from apologizing to yourself and others. It may be something where you physically harmed yourself or someone else, and a certain amount of guilt is warranted because as I said before you are not an egomaniac, you have some sense of empathy at least for others. It may be that you just can’t forgive yourself for the unsavory shit you did, but nothing will change if you continue to be weighed down by this guilt.

Here is the thing we are all just humans, well most of us anyway, and we are flawed as hell. There are two courses of action for you at this point:

  1. Stop doing the shit that is making you guilty. This could be some destructive habit or behavior, but you need to stop doing it. There will be some relief coming your way as you have quit doing the stupid thing that makes you feel guilty.
  2. Forgive yourself and move on. Every one of us has messed up our lives in various ways and it is very easy to keep blaming ourselves or worse yet someone else. Walk away from it, that shit you did that is tearing you apart is now in your past; bury it!

 

Many of us have an uncanny ability to forgive others, but when it comes to ourself we just can’t seem to be as gracious. You are terrorizing you, and can’t seem to come to grips with the imperfect version of you.

Let go of the guilt trip and walk away!

 

Namaste


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If you would like to support this blog, check out the awesome selection of eBooks at:

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Only one imperative

Why is it so difficult to just be yourself? I think there are two impediments to being you:

  1. We don’t know ourselves. We have spent so much time playing a role whether that be in your family or at work, we have completely lost touch who we really are.
  2. The second impediment is that society, in general, wants to categorize us by race, gender, ethnicity, profession, political party, and wealth just to name a few.

Impediment #1

We don’t know ourselves – If you are like me, you spend countless hours agonizing over what you do for a living, which means you become a role that you play for the majority of your waking hours. You become so focused on excelling at this role that your whole identity becomes wrapped up in it. Now if this role is aligned or a by-product of who you really are then you have hit the jackpot, but sadly for most of us, this just isn’t true. Instead of figuring out who we really are we just assume the role and spend the rest of our life living our life in that paradigm. Instead of pursuing our dreams we just assume the role of Doctor, Nurse, Data Scientist, Software Developer, Uber Driver, Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, or whatever. Most of our life is then spent living up to the expectations needed to fulfill that role.  It’s fucking madness and we do it day after day until we die. At some point, we realize this and become unhappy with these roles and begin looking inside ourselves for an answer.

Impediment #2

Society – In the United States, we like to think we are all born equal, with inalienable rights, to life, liberty, and happiness. Nice sentiment, but it’s mostly bullshit. Our society like the societies in most countries tries to categorize us by political affiliations like left or right, black or white, male or female, rich or poor, and so on. As people, we begin associating our identity to these groupings. I can say I am a Democrat or a Republican and as such, I believe this or that. You don’t even have to think about it just assume some group identity and you are set for life, and most people don’t think about it. Once you have been categorized you are more easily controlled and can be marketed to. Yes, you become a target audience for whatever propaganda the government or a corporation wishes to sell you. You might think I sound like some paranoid anarchist at this point, but hear me out. Look at your Instagram feed for a moment, notice how the advertisements are targeted at you based on your browsing history or Google searches. You, my friend, are a target market and Facebook or Google have already categorized you as someone who needs to see these particular ads.

The Door

What if there was a door that you could open that would help you find your true self and start living a life free from assumed roles and identities. The door is your own rational mind, your freedom of choice if you will. To begin exercising this freedom of choice you need to stop doing a few things:

  • Stop thinking of yourself as only a role – Yes, you may play roles, but don’t let those roles overtake a huge amount of your conscious mind. You are not a role, but you may perform a function related to a role, just remember you are not a fucking role.
  • Stop being categorized – People will try to categorize you as liberal or conservative, but don’t fall for that trap. Use rational judgment when it comes to any issue versus groupthink. I know it’s easier to just follow the herd and adopt their ideology, but if you make that choice you are abandoning yourself for the group. I don’t label myself as liberal or conservative and can still exist in this world. The more you affiliate yourself with these groups the less independent you become.

For me, you can’t just stop living as a role or allowing yourself to be affiliated with society’s categorization of you. If you don’t take action you will be pulled back into the Vortex or at the very least spend the rest of your life rebelling against it, and neither of those fates will help you know yourself. Finding yourself then requires you to start doing some things:

  • Spend time by yourself – Finding yourself often means that you need to be alone. This might mean you take long walks, practice yoga, read books, or try meditating. This time you spend with yourself allows you to think and also isolates you from outside influences. I started both meditating and doing yoga in the morning before work and it has had a profound influence on how I see the world, for you it might be just taking a nice long walk, listening to music, running, or whatever you can do by yourself.
  • Value your time – You can’t really become introspective and think for yourself if you spend countless hours watching YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu. The same thing applies to scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Let’s say you work 8 hours a day or more, then you spend the next 8 hours watching cable news, or one of the other forms of media I just mentioned. Each of these forms of media seeks to influence the way you think, and you know dam will that it does. You won’t learn anything about yourself watching all this shit, it will only detract from your goal of being yourself.

You are not a role, you are not some category, you are a unique individual that deserves to pursue things that interest you. Think for yourself, make decisions in your best interest. Do something today that will help you understand who you really are.

Namaste


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