Where am I going? Who am I doing all of this for? What is God? Where do
I go when I die? Is there more to life than “success”? What is happiness?
What does all this mean? What is love? Do I love myself? Do I love anyone
else? And the soul begins to wake up....
These types of questions begin to occupy the mind because we see
through the illusion and suspect that nothing outside of us can ever make us
happy. Some of us ultimately realize that nothing in our environment is
going to “fix” the way we feel. We also recognize the enormous amount of
energy it takes to keep up this projection of self as an image to the world,
and how exhausting it is to keep the mind and body constantly preoccupied.
Eventually we come to see that our futile attempt to maintain an ideal for
others is really a strategy to make sure that those impending feelings we’ve
been running from never capture us. How long can we juggle, keeping so
many balls in the air, just so our lives don’t come crashing down?
Instead of buying a bigger TV or the latest smart phone, these people
stop running from the feeling that they’ve been trying to make go away for
so long, face it head-on, and intently look at it. When this happens, the
individual begins to wake up. After some self-reflection, she discovers who
she really is, what she has been hiding, and what no longer is working for
her. So she lets go of the façade, the games, and the illusions. She is honest
about who she really is, at all costs, and she is not afraid to lose it all. This
person stops expending the energy she had been putting into keeping an
illusory image intact.
She gets in touch with her feelings and then turns to people in her life and
says: You know what? It doesn’t matter if I don’t make you happy any
longer. I’m through obsessing about how I look or what other people think
about me. I am finished living for everyone else. I want to be free from these
chains.
This is a profound moment in a person’s life. The soul is waking up and
nudging her to tell the truth about who she really is! The lie is over.
Change and Our Relationships:
Breaking the Ties That Bind