And that makes me happy.<\/p>\n
I feel stupid for seeing something that I already knew and have known for a long time, and happy because I see it much, much deeper than ever before.<\/p>\n
Stupid!<\/p>\n
Happy!<\/p>\n
I\u2019m gonna share it with you because of the slim possibility that in a moment, you might feel stupid and happy too.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of those things you probably already know, just like I did, but have somehow stored with all the other things that are a bit helpful and quite obvious but don\u2019t automatically pack a punch.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a big habit, a general mental process we\u2019re used to simply doing all the time.<\/p>\n
But if we become aware of it, I mean really, really, REALLY aware, as if we\u2019re seeing someone else doing it, it has the power to eventually stop most of the shitty shit we encounter.<\/p>\n
So here we go.<\/p>\n
The reason most of us have lives that are so complicated and heavy and torturous is not the everyday pain and sorrow and resistance we experience.<\/p>\n
All those things, all those thoughts, by themselves, don\u2019t bring the endless worrying and suffering.<\/p>\n
Pain, either physically or emotionally, is simply a happening.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an experiential event, like a bubble of air surfacing in a pond.<\/p>\n
Everything is actually like that.<\/p>\n
Anger, frustration, confusion, doubt.<\/p>\n
It just happens.<\/p>\n
Judging happens, worrying happens, hate happens.<\/p>\n
Frustration and fear and nervousness happen.<\/p>\n
A funny thought happens, and a superior thought happens.<\/p>\n
And although all of these things have an inherent energetic quality, they still don\u2019t force us to be caught in it forever.<\/p>\n
If we could only leave it there, in the happening itself, in the mere occurrence of the thing, it would never become bigger than it actually is or has to be.<\/p>\n
It would just be the normal stuff of life.<\/p>\n
The ever-changing stuff.<\/p>\n
Painful, boring, gripping, scary: sure, all of that.<\/p>\n
But not the endless, agonizing rabbit holes they mostly turn into.<\/p>\n
The problem is: we take whatever we don\u2019t like in our experience, whatever we\u2019re opposed to, whatever we believe shouldn\u2019t be there, and blow it up straight away.<\/p>\n
And the blowing up is the REAL problem.<\/p>\n
The stories about it that arise and grab our attention.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not wanting it and hating it and despising it and fighting it where it gets out of hand, all the time, every time.<\/p>\n
Pain is just pain if we have no opinion about it.<\/p>\n
And this is true for everything else.<\/p>\n
Maybe the real insight I had is that I have no obligation to run with any of the life stuff.<\/p>\n
Maybe I realized what I deeply want out of life (autonomy and peace), instead of what just keeps happening all the time.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we need to see how impersonal it actually is, how utterly fleeting and compact, to step out of the stupidest habits.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t have to try and understand it, fix it, make it go away, or believe it into more and more sorrow and confusion.<\/p>\n
Becoming aware of what is without getting lost in the follow-up our mind effortlessly creates, is tremendously satisfying and liberating.<\/p>\n
Pain is just pain.<\/p>\n
Anger is just anger.<\/p>\n
Thoughts are just thoughts.<\/p>\n
Bubbles.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Just watch them burst.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Photo by @pictures102, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I feel stupid. And that makes me happy. I feel stupid for seeing something that I already knew and have known for a long time, and happy because I see it much, much deeper than ever before. Stupid! Happy! I\u2019m gonna share it with you because of the slim possibility that in a moment, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34854,"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":[102,97,117,100,116,113,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34853"}],"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=34853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34855,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34853\/revisions\/34855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}