We always make the same mistake.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s this huge and widespread misconception that knowing something will change our feelings about it, or our behavior.<\/p>\n
If we only knew which childhood event caused our adult anxiety, we could start living without fear.<\/em><\/p>\n If we only knew how to come across as a confident person, we\u2019d BE that person.<\/em><\/p>\n If we only knew why we smoke\u2026 we could finally give up the fags.<\/em><\/p>\n Or if we only knew what Steve Jobs did or didn\u2019t do, we could be filthy rich and creative.<\/em><\/p>\n We deeply believe that our intellect will be the key to freedom and success and fortune and happiness.<\/p>\n Well guess who (or what) claims all of that?<\/p>\n Duh.<\/p>\n Time and time again I talk to people who are totally lost in this idea of \u2018information is power\u2019, people who are utterly frustrated that it doesn\u2019t seem to change anything for them.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not just the mainstream self-help crap I\u2019m talking about, but also non-duality and Taoism and the inside-out understanding and all the other ways that the essence of wisdom is being spread and talked about.<\/p>\n \u2018I KNOW how this works, it makes sense, I understand it, I\u2019ve read hundreds of books about it, so how come I STILL feel like shit!\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Why don\u2019t I get it?!\u2019<\/p>\n Well, here\u2019s the thing: \u2018getting it\u2019 is not the same as being able to reproduce it or use it in a nicely crafted Facebook-comment.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the same as hoarding facts and figures.<\/p>\n It\u2019s only when the intellect shuts the fuck up for a moment, when the personal story we so deeply connect with quiets down a bit, that we can have an embodied experience of what all spiritual teachings point to.<\/p>\n It\u2019s when we drop out of the fixation on our minds that we suddenly and immediately know what we\u2019ve been looking for all the time.<\/p>\n The staggering simplicity of presence.<\/p>\n But don\u2019t try to understand that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n —<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (Photo by @impatrickt, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We always make the same mistake. There\u2019s this huge and widespread misconception that knowing something will change our feelings about it, or our behavior. If we only knew which childhood event caused our adult anxiety, we could start living without fear. If we only knew how to come across as a confident person, we\u2019d BE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30854,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[99,97,117,100,116,107,103],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30855,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30853\/revisions\/30855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}