Our lives are busy, brimming with daily obligations and endless thoughts – but why?
Is it because the more we seek for, the more we think we get? But aren`t we experiencing less when we experience so much all at the same time? We want to experience every single experience immediately and profoundly, but could it be possible that we simply experience too much, not discerning between what is actually good for us and what is not? Perhaps if we would experience less, we would not have to experience it all differently, nor so much of it, but would only experience what we have? Is it possible that our lives now are tweaked around sensation, frenzy and euphoria? Is it perhaps true to say that such life is only to escape from obstacles and challenges? In all fairness, can this all be good to us or for us?
Often we only see the complications of life, things we have not yet achieved. In fact, we have lost reality as we no longer understand that actually our complex life smothers the real essentials of life. We are all interested in a satisfied life but we constantly do anything and everything else other than cultivating a balanced life.
We focus our efforts on other people’s opinions, our valuations, our beliefs, our ideas, our influence and our power, which ultimately does increase our recognition. A sort of attention we never experienced, attention we never got from the ones we should have in the first place. But this is why we are incessantly struggling, constantly out of balance with ourselves. What is wrong with us? Why are we doing this to ourselves?
It seems that there is a perpetual struggle for survival since we have been taught that it is necessary to aspire, to be ambitious and to strive for the highest levels of success. Today, we use all our available forces to over-achieve in our doings and insist that goals and intentions must be reached within the shortest period possible. However, we can never be sure of success because everything is constantly in motion, because everything is changing continuously; the cards get reshuffled every day, so to speak. Today we are successful and tomorrow we may fail, even with the same sort of approach we cultivated for years. Unexpected events catapult us out of balance; we allow ourselves no other way to achieve our goals, to manifest with high aspiration and tremendous ambitions.
So what do we do? We increase the pace and intensify, the enormous complexity of life, believing that under different circumstances we may be able to turn the ship around. To the contrary, we can’t put with up with this all. As much as we strive for more – further, higher, better, faster – there is always something that seems to be missing: our self-knowledge, our empathy and our intuition. This is kind of reaction we are so convinced is needed when we are faced with the unknown and the unexpected.
Surely we do achieve a great deal under such circumstances, but we always come to a certain point when we realise that we are stuck with ourselves; we become helpless and hopeless and something feels disorientating, as if we are puppets being manipulated by this overwhelming complex globalisation. And because we remain in such a state, we can’t extricate ourselves from such circumstances and therefore stay dependent on these circumstances.
It is shocking that the global community does not seem to recognise the warnings of immense hardships for future generations. Under enormous pressure, we seem hardly able to realise this, as we continue to vehemently defend our saturated Western lives. We are not properly acknowledging the many injustices being perpetrated by an absolute minority who, perhaps unwittingly, are leading society towards serious, global turmoil. We have, in fact, been brought to a crisis point, which may just be the necessary catalyst of transformation for of a better tomorrow.
We are inadvertently destroying everything our next generation needs, which begs the question as to how ‘civilised’ we actually are. This process is now unmanageable and exponentially out of hand. It is utterly illusory to assume we can continue functioning within the prevailing dominant value system.
The alternative approach is to create an economy where a mindful process is fully utilised. This brings purpose and meaning and allows for fair access and fair distribution; undeniably a better framework for a model of success. Society needs a new leadership model for the 21st century, a model which should come in the form of Empathic Prosperity. We have to wake up and realise that new potential must be generated that will easily allow competitive individuals and organisations to accept this empathetic process. True success depends on working from intuition rather than influential external factors. This powerful process can enable each individual and each organisation to prosper and flourish in an environment that is sustainable because it is of the mind, and as such, has been proven to have endless possibilities.
Until now, we have been convinced that what we have been taught is reality. Thus we believe that information we receive is valid, which unfortunately creates a restricted and artificial method of mental reasoning. Somewhere along its journey, society has lost the ability to think ‘naturally’. To work towards regaining the power of intuitive and mindful reasoning would truly be an infinitely powerful process. Soon we would make conscientious decisions for our lives that would satisfy our profound insights rather than social expectations. Dissatisfaction and perceived unhappiness should be addressed in a proactive manner, asking fundamental questions, and then working through issues relating to what is going wrong. We should address, for example, how we would want to live or work and why we persist in our ambition to attain that which does not serve us well.
We see obvious ramifications of societal unease, as indicated by global mass demonstrations and the complex problems therein. Yet decision makers continue to make drastic decisions using austere measures which ultimately are not bringing solutions. People, realising that quantitative achievements are putting society at risk, are uniting across the globe, demanding better leadership for the future. The fact of the matter is that injustice simply cannot be a model for success; it will resist against itself, as society realises and then rejects its empty promises. Due to the effects of greed-fuelled economic decisions, we are witnessing ever-increasing serious illness, great disparity between rich and poor, as well as violent crime perpetrated by rich and poor alike. Ignoring these warning signs will be catastrophic, as people are surely realising that competition is a sin; for the first time in modern history, society is now awakening to what really matters. More voices are being raised for social and public welfare based on justice and fairness. What we need is a mindful resolute response.
For far too long, we have merely amended external conditions, as they correspond so beautifully to what we want to believe and see, what we call at the end of the day – reality. This now comes with great consequences, as it seems, so far, to disrupt, until life turns again and leaves us feeling that things really just don’t work. From the surface, life may look passable, but if we are honest with ourselves, we know that it is no longer enough because this is really not what we are seeking after.
Because current paths have brought us precisely to the point where we are now, if we keep focusing on external factors such as image, status quo, prestige, and other superficial behaviour, and adapting ourselves to these, we will repeatedly fall into this same trap.
It becomes increasingly difficult to explain this to our closest environment, because we are losing more and more credibility, slowly losing our true selves. Nevertheless, we still don’t know what is missing: what could it be? After endless searching, we realise even when we divulge in endless discoveries, expeditions, reading clever books and listening to lectures by self-claimed modern gurus, yogis and meditations teachers and other spiritual scholars, there is something terribly wrong with us. Is it because we still have not quite found what we are lacking?
We know only just what we know, but we may never know exactly what we do not know. Our knowledge is therefore exceedingly limited. We need to learn how to learn differently, allowing ourselves to deal with the unknown and the unexpected. Our ignorance is so open, this should make us think. If the great scholars of modern time and the world renown faculty theorists still believe that they know, by far, more than the rest of us, protecting their theories and knowledge, they most probably realise that they actually know so very little.
Perhaps it may be that the only long-functioning path begins with self-knowledge and self-awareness, with the cultivation of silence within us. This is the point where everything starts. We must realise then that we can actually do much less, admitting that we are no longer ourselves, allowing moments of inner silence, recognising this peace and serenity as a quality from which deep satisfaction and inner balance show us the purpose of life.
Is it possible that less might be a better strategy than more for all of us? It is time to re-think the way we live and do business and educate and teach.