All human beings inherently want to be in a state which is free of stress, anxiety and struggle. There is a deep knowing within us that life is supposed to be good, it’s supposed be joyful, peaceful and loving. However, our day to day experiences seem to indicate otherwise in that there are always things to worry about and struggle with. How can I be peaceful and be in a state of relaxed joy when I have a “life” to deal with, is a question most people seem to be asking within themselves. The secret lies in the simple instruction of “let go” that most spiritual teachers point to. Here are a few pointers on how to attain peace and joy in our day to day life.
Let Go of Your Argument With Life
It’s important to understand that life works in “totality” or wholeness. A human mind can only look at life in the form of “events”, which are usually out of context from the bigger picture of life. It’s not possible for the mind to figure out “why” something happened the way it happened. Let go of arguing with life, because you will never win the argument. Life belongs to life, not to the mind.
Don’t Resist Change, Allow It
It’s quite normal for the mind to become attached to familiar circumstances, and it’s always afraid of change. This habit of the mind to cling to circumstances is also the reason for its constant fear of loss. Life by its very nature is in a state of expansion or movement, always. Nothing remains the same for the long, everything changes. If you don’t resist this movement of change and you will notice that it’s all working for the better.
Find Happiness Within, Not Without
If you want to be in a peaceful state of being, you need to find the peace which never leaves you, the peace which is the very nature of the being that you are. Stop trying to find peace from external objects or circumstances. Everything physical is bound to change and hence can never give you a sense of peace if you are attached to it. The being that you are is always the same, it’s not changing, and it’s always at peace. Find your inner peace, by knowing who you really are.
Stop Trying to Succeed
Success can never be attained through struggle. If you achieve something through a lot of struggle, and effort, you can be sure that the end result will bring forth more struggles into your life. It’s an illusion to believe that you can attain happiness by “working hard” at achieving something. True abundance comes when you let go of struggle and allow life to bring you the circumstances that are most natural to you.
Let Life Create Your Reality
The root of all suffering is the desire for life to work the way you “want” it to work. The mind always wants to control life and hence it’s always living in conflict. If you want to attain a peaceful state of being, you need to let go of this “need” to manipulate life, and let life move the way it wants to move. The mind can never win against life; it can only struggle with life creating suffering for itself.
Surrender to the Well-Being that Life Wants to Bring You
Minds are very afraid of the word “surrender”. The truth however is that you realize your true freedom when you surrender your personal will and let life’s will operate through you. Life is a stream of well-being and by its very nature it always moves towards love, joy and peace. You are not surrendering to something terrible, but to something extremely loving and benevolent.
Let Go of Your Need to Know
The mind always wants to “know” how things are going to work out. Since there is no way of knowing it, the mind then starts to find means of securing its future through “pseudo” means of security. The paradox is that you come to deep security when you embrace, or surrender, to the inherent insecurity or uncertainty of life. Let go of trying to know, and let life bring you the knowing as and when it’s truly needed in the now.
In Conclusion
If you want to be peaceful you have to let go of being driven by the mind’s will. The mind is a conglomeration of external conditioning, and it operates purely through fear of survival. Life on the other hand is pure intelligence and works in wholeness. When you surrender to the movement of life and let your body be moved by this energy, you will experience peace, love and joy every moment of your existence.
Hi Sen,
Can you please explain little more about ‘let life create reality’
Every day every moment we have to take the decision and according to that the future unfolds. So who is taking this decision. Me or the life?
If i am taking the decision, how can the life create the reality. What I mean by ‘I am’ is the thoughts and the mind.
For example: I am not happy in my current job, i feel i should change. So i have got opporutinites for joing 2 different companies in 2 different countries. Now my thoughts and mind are anlaysing which one is good for me along with anxiety insecurity etc.
So here i am the one who is making the decision then, how life creates the reality and takes its own course? But after the decision is made i agree, life takes its own course, things will not take off the way I had thought while making the decision and then i find it quite appropriate to submit myself to life than again trying to change or to dabble in a constant conflict.
But at the juncture of decision making I feel life just allows us to take the lead. I think i am confusing your point with Am i the creator of my own destiny but anyway i am confused and i know that you would guide me.
Thank you
Neema
The human mind has a very limited vision because it can only analyse or project on the basis of the limited analytical data available to it. Your mind can write down the pros and cons of the options available to you, it can get all the statistics and analytical data about both jobs/countries, and do a lot of analysis to come to some conclusion about what’s the right decision to take. Inspite of all these calculations, you do understand that you can’t ever know for sure if the decision you make will work in the direction of your happiness or if it will attract some undesired circumstance in your life. How can the mind know for sure what’s the decision that would be in the direction of your happiness? The answer is that it “can’t”, it’s not possible for the calculating mind to ever know if a decision is in the direction of happiness or in the direction of attracting an undesired situation. So if you are only focused on the “calculating” mind to give you the right decisions, it may be a very mediocre and limited way of moving through life, and this way of living is usually ridden with a lot of anxiety.
A different way of living is when you allow the intelligence of the totality of who you are (the wholeness of your consciousness) to guide you and inspire you to the next step. You are not just a “brain”, but the wholeness of life itself. The universal consciousness that is manifested as everything and which stays as the un-manifest space, is your true “body”. This consciousness is deeply intelligent because it has the picture of the “totality” (because it is totality itself), contrary to the limited vision of the calculating mind – some spiritual teachings infer to the intelligence of this wholeness as your higher mind or inner being. Essentially, it’s about taping into the guidance of your wholeness, rather than depending solely on the limited analysis of the calculating mind.
So how does one tap into this guidance? The vibration of life, or your wholeness, is “pure positive” akin to feelings of joy, love, peace or happiness. This is the reason why fear, hatred and unrest feels bad in your body, because these vibrations pull away from the natural vibration of life which is always pure positive. So if you want to tap in to the intelligence/guidance of life you need to be “in tune” with its vibration, just like you tune in to radio station by tuning into its frequency – if you want to listen to 98.9 fm you need to tune your radio’s antennae to 98.9 fm frequency. To tune into the frequency of life, you need to tune in to the frequency of joy/love/peace. When you are in tuned in to this frequency you will feel guided by the intelligence of the wholeness of life, the wholeness of who you are – for example, when you are tuned into the frequency of life (tuned to feelings of joy/love) you will be guided to meet the right people, open the right websites, read the right information, get the prudent insights and experience synchronicities, that cause you to make the right decision – a decision that takes you in the direction of joy, well-being and abundance. It’s true that it seems like it’s the mind who makes the decision, but the question is what are the insights, guidance and inspiration that it’s getting? When you are tuned out of the frequency of life (when you are hanging out in the vibration of fear, hatred or unrest), the type of insights, perspectives and information you have access to is completely different from the insights, information and perspectives you get when you are tuned into the vibration of life.
In simple words, when you find a way line up with life’s frequency you will always be guided/attracted towards realities that bring well-being and joy. It’s upto you how you line up with the frequency of life – simple things you can do are, focus on being relaxed, focus on doing things that make you feel good/joyful, focus on thinking thoughts in the direction your desired reality, visualize images that put in you a state of being happy, joyful and positive. Doing this will keep you in the frequency range of your “wholeness” and thus you will have access to guidance/insights that will be in the direction of your well-being. Taking decisions from a fear based or lack-based mindset, is quite counter-productive because the vibration of fear keeps you disconnected from the intelligence of your wholeness.
When I say “let life create your reality”, I just mean, line up with your natural vibration, which is the vibration of joy, love and peace (this the vibration of life itself, because life is pure positive energy in its essence), and thus allow life’s movement to guide you towards your desired reality – it will do so by creating the right inspirations, ideas, insights and synchronicitys. When your mind is tuned to the vibration of joy (or positivity), it has access to a higher intelligence, the intelligence of the wholeness of life, which will always take you in the direction of your well-being. When your mind is tuned to fear, doubt or other negative feelings, it’s disconnected from the intelligence of the wholeness at that moment, and actions coming from such a disconnected state of being are always counter-productive towards your happiness.
Thank you Sen,
I liked the explanation, happy with that…need to practice the tuning.
Neema.
Dear Sen, I just want to say that your teachings and this site have made a tremendous impact on my thinking/my life and my movement closer to living a life free of the negative imprisionment of the mind. What you are offering here with your writing/teachings is the key to real freedom, that which we are all looking for. Thank you for this wonderful resource that has come into my life at just the right time.
Special Thanks
Hi Sen,
Speaking of letting go, not resisting change. What do you do when life presents you a choise in such a manner that you can’t just accept what comes your way, but have to take active role in what definitely brings misery and pain to those you love and care about, when your actions would be pure selfishness, at the expense of somebody who is weaker and depending on you? If it’s not just fear of change, but about right and wrong?
I might surrender to uncertainty of it for me, but there is no uncertainty about the devastation my actions would bring to others.
How do you deal with conflict between your selfishness, presented opportunity and your crying conscience?
Andreas, when you are moving purely from the perspective of the mind (the egoic perspective) your actions carry an energy of lack, fear or hatred. Rather, if you allow yourself to release the force of negativity in you and just stay allowing of letting life bring forth the required circumstances, you will see how everything falls in place in a harmonious manner without requiring any dramatic actions on your part. If your conscience feels out of sync with your actions it’s an indication of deep inner conflict. So the best option right now is to not force an action, rather just stay open to allowing life to create the right circumstance and move from an inner inspiration. Always sense within to see what’s the energy that’s motivating your actions, if the energy is fear/lack/hatred it’s an indication that it’s purely an egoic movement. If you sense yourself moving from a place of deeper inspiration which feels like wisdom or inner guidance, you know you are moving in sync with life. Take the time to relax, let go of the focusing on the frantic negativity in the mind (don’t suppress it, but don’t stay identified with it) and just stay in an space of openness for a while, the inspiration will come through at the right time.
Don’t believe the deluded thinking of the ego that if you just battle it out of this situation your life will fall in place, because that’s not how it works, when you battle it out from a place of fear/lack you just end up attracting realities that reflect the same dysfunction.
Yes, deep conflict, energy of lack, weight of my past/present. My conscience was against the opportunity and I didn’t take it because this seemed the only right thing to do. So I’m in sync with my conscience, but not my heart. The battle was inside my heart, it was pulled in opposite ways and I broke something in me while holding onto doing the right thing. My mind went in stupor from unsolvable situation and anticipating the unacceptable consequences. I’ve always felt intuitively that what life presents me is somehow good for me, and it has always been so. But this time I felt intense fear of doing wrong. I did not fear breaking my heart, I feared breaking many other hearts, many lives, and breaking my soul. I waited for the circumstance to give me the answer, but it never came. I endured for 2 years and this made me weak, damaged my health, sucked the life out of me. Eventually I started questioning my approach and decided to investigate what pulls me so hard, but absolutely everything went wrong, and felt wrong. So I pulled back and earned hatred, hurting someone I really cared about. It feels like life is just punishing and taunting me and I see no purpose in this. Nothing good would have come from taking the opportunity, nothing good has come to me now, I have only damaged myself, my life, and have a very long way to go before I would recover.
I believe I did the right thing, intuitively refused to move from a place of fear/lack, but it has damaged me so badly that I am questioning my choices. It has left me totally confused and with no strength left whatsoever. This very strange encounter has made me think alot about my life and myself, and ultimately is what brought me here. I need to find peace, figure out what I was supposed to do, to at least learn from this, but answer has evaded me for nearly a year.
You’ve given me some reassurance that I did right, but how on earth did I earn this kind of suffering, this kind of impossible choise? If there ever was a lesson in this, it didn’t work. I have no idea what I should do if this ever happens again. And I’m terrified to think that I’ve myself attracted this to me, that this would infact happen again.
Andreas, at some point in our life we do start realizing the limitation of living purely through brain’s conditioned perception of reality, or what can be called a pure “egoic” perspective. Sometimes when we start living in a strong shell of ego, we attract certain “wake up” calls that help break through this shell to open us up to a deeper way of living. It’s not about “repairing” the ego force again, but about letting go of it, to allow yourself to connect with your wholeness – obviously the ego does feel scared when it realizes its helplessness and limitations, but in truth the ego or brain’s perception is always highly narrow and limited, and it can easily start standing in resistance to the pull of your inner guidance. The opportunity right now for you is to start letting go of this force of ego so that you can be more aligned with your inner wholeness and inner guidance, you can read this post for more insight on this – beyond brain’s perspective. Don’t try to repair the ego, just let it dissolve in force – your ego won’t disappear but it will no longer have a vice like grip on your being, and hence it can simply serve it practical value without being a source of resistance to your life stream.
Sen , In the above article you say that life is a stream of pure and positive energy…But there are also posts that say about light and dark nature of lie energy. So is life energy pure positive inspite of its light and dark nature.
Amit
Amit, dark nature does not mean negative and light nature does not mean positive. What I call positive is a state of balance, and what’s negative is a state of imbalance (towards dark nature or light nature). I’ve explained this in this post – http://www.calmdownmind.com/a-deeper-understanding-of-wholeness/
this is the only article you need to read . . . if you get it, if not, keep reading. And come back to this article from time to time and check if your understanding has changed.
Agree with you Jim.
Hi Sen. Very much enjoying your articles. I thought I would go back to your earlier articles and read them from the beginning, which feels more organic.
I have always had a very strong connection to the wholeness of life. I was a very innocent, joyful, loving, sensitive open being. But that can sometimes attract/be a very strong magnet for other less innocent, more fearful energy that can cause you trauma. The problem with being such an open bundle of childlike joy is that I had weak boundaries.
As a result as I got older, I started to argue with life. I withdrew more from open-ness to life, in defence and forgot to see the wholeness of life because an undeveloped mind confuses the perpetrators of darkness with life itself. You cannot see the bigger picture.
But it seems that eventually conscious awareness is life’s natural reward for those who confront the darkness and integrate the conflict between extreme opposites. And it is conscious awareness that leads us to balance/wholeness.
I have been very arguementative in the past with people who I now realise were just not as consciously aware as I was. Now I realise that this is a waste of energy. It is part of my old ego patterns of defensiveness as I had weak boundaries and was always struggling not to absorb other people’s ‘dark’ energy by arguing with it!
Is it a case of developing stronger boundaries and seeing the bigger picture, you no longer have this general defensiveness towards all of life but realise the simple truth that everyone is different and your wisdom is able to understand that no-one is a threat, they are all just living out their own life energy? I think you have called it innocent selfishness. When you stop fighting these people you feel so disconnected with, your wisdom then leads you to those who are on a similar vibrational level to you?
You say: ‘Let go of your arguement with life. It is not possible for the mind to figure out ‘why’ something happened.’ I do this alot. Analysing why people did, said certain things that caused me pain. Is this what you consider arguing with life? I suppose it is futile because we can never really know why. The people who hurt us sometimes don’t even seem to know why, and even if they give you an answer, it may not be their truth, but a defence mechanism, manipulation or some such other untruth.
My question is, doesn’t it serve a purpose trying to understand why, figuring out how a person ticks so for example so you could avoid a similar situation in future? Or trying to understand how that person really perceived you in order to better understand yourself? Or is arguing with life?
Are you saying that sometimes people don’t know themselves why they do things because people who are disconnected from wholeness and are imbalanced in mind will not know their own truth anyway? So trying to figure out why or truth from an imbalanced mind to an imbalanced mind is futile?! You’ll end up driving yourself and others crazy and into more fearful thinking? What about trying to find out why or the truth from a balanced mind to an imbalanced mind? Or a balanced to balanced mind?
Does the mind stop being confused and always analysing and asking why about other people’s behaviour and words when it is around more balanced people who are more connected to their own truth? I do get so very confused by people, because I always know why I do everything. It bewilders me that others often can’t say why they do or say things!
Bonyg: “I do this alot. Analysing why people did, said certain things that caused me pain. … I suppose it is futile because we can never really know why.”
You answered your own questions… Futile? Yes, though it may serve the purpose of helping you be compassionate.
I know someone who spends too much energy analyzing WHY others do/say or do not do/say this or that. In the end, it usually becomes clear that all the analysis is just a castle built on sand. It is based on assumptions about another’s motives or reasons. And assumptions about others are often off, as they are formed by one’s own experience and views and imbalance – not the other’s.
Maybe it’s better to focus on why you felt hurt in these situations – you can let go so that the past no longer hurts, so that similar situations do not arise again. There is nothing futile about that.
Dear Sen,
I’m tired of being a prisoner of my fears ..I’ve sinned a lot in my life..I want to change this but the tendency to do wrong things remains. For last five years I’m suffering this pain of fear and resentment. Please help me.
Dear Arjun,
I know you were looking for Sen to respond to your comment but I felt compelled to share something with you. There are times in our lives where we reflect on what we have done. Some things for the good, others perhaps not. Although you may not feel at this moment that you can move on with out the unwavering guilt that seems to block your happiness and joy; please know that you can. Our ego loves and wants to remain in Control of every aspect of our lives; dictating our emotions and thoughts. Guilt is housed in the ego and it will take a what I like to call a Divine breaking process that will occur when you forgive you!
You must not hold on to your past. You must let the past do its job by being learning lessons for not reminders of how horrible you think you are. Sins are nothing more than errors which comes from bad decision making. Forgive ” you “, start living your life in the way you know is best for you. Healing will occur when you do this differently.
To constantly call yourself a sinner only keeps under the rule of sin . You will never be able to move beyond your fault a become a better being.
Make peace and you will have peace.
Joy , love and light to you,always!
Thanks for this post. Sometimes you feel so stressed, esp when making a decision. And you want to know and figure out everything before hand.. how it will turn out. How things will be. And its so much important, as you mentioned, to let go your need to know. and surrender. I remember there was this poster my mom pasted in my room when I was a kid. “God has a plan for my life, and thats all I need to know”
Follow the direction of your deepest desires and everything will be fine!