In order to suffer less, if you ask me, the miracle of awakening has to happen.

Not the power of the intellect.

Not the accumulation of facts and second-hand knowledge.

Cognitive activity is simply deeply incapable of producing or grasping the space that is beyond and around (and even within) everything.

We can only Know, not understand.

We can only feel, directly, and not arrive at it with our minds.

This notion is not very much appreciated.

We live in a world where thinking rationally is absolutely revered and regarded as THE way to get anywhere and solve stuff, and it’s often looked upon as the only way to live a good, successful life.

And even though we deeply believe in the tremendous power of our personal minds, the computer-like intellect, we still haven’t figured out life.

We haven’t really arrived at more sustainable happiness and fulfillment, yet we keep looking in the same direction, over and over again.

Science is supposed to make it all happen.

It is there, we believe, the answer to our well-being is to be discovered someday, probably somewhere in our DNA.

We hope for methods, tricks, and pills.

We trust that working hard will be a big part of the solution.

We look at happy and accomplished people and try to distill their secret power, their solution, their magic formula.

But when we copy that, the results are very poor.

More and more self-help books are published.

More and more stuff is acquired.

And more and more time is spent running away from the pain we feel when the personal mind is running the show.

We seem to know more than ever before, but doesn’t it feel like the people in this world are also more confused than ever before?

Now there are definitely many benefits deriving from the evolution of technology and science and invention.

And this is not an accusation.

It’s merely a simple illustration of how hard we try to become happy, how much we do to just feel good and safe and appreciated, and how sadly we don’t seem to get there.

So….

Do we simply need more science, more methods, more dissolution of trauma, more acceptance of our inner child, more meditation, more books and courses and gurus?

My answer to that question is probably obvious, but it most certainly doesn’t have to be yours.

I started this little story with the only real, powerful, universal solution as I see it.

After trying all the thinking, the science, the doing, the changing, the drinking, the working hard, the meditating, the wishful thinking, and all the other solutions that the intellect came up with, it seemed that nothing really resulted in more freedom and joy.

And yet eventually something changed, radically.

Somehow the content of the mind became less relevant, the search felt rather useless, and every worldly solution lost its initial appeal.

There was really nothing to do.

But I guess you have to find out for yourself.

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(Photo by @3dparadise, for Unsplash)