Your angst is your liberation

I know, it sounds whacky:

"What, you mean I've literally got to go to the edge [and sometimes beyond] to move forward with my life?"

Yes.

You see the thing is, we all have a map of the world. Mostly (if you study the AQAL model of Ken Wilber) it's rooted in one of the four quadrants. I'd hazard a guess, it's in the quadrant devoted to the materialist, i.e. the person who makes sense of their life by trying to order the outside world.

But it never works.

For a start, our reality doesn't work that way -- it's an inside-out job in case you hadn't noticed. Not just that but even the most determined and or deluded person in the world (except Donald Trump of course) can't order their circumstances so that none of their outside-in plates drop out the sky.

Where does that leave you?

In a bad place; namely, you keep going round and round in circles where unless you're able to wake up your state of consciousness towards something more non-dual, you'll continue to play the same internal monologue, i.e. I can't make sense of this world.

You might be one of the lucky few -- the very few -- who wake up to samadhi or True Self but it's unlikely. Of course, you might deliberately decide to place yourself in even more harm's way in the hope of making your angst so bad that you immediately manifest a non-dual state. Trust me, I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, I think it's stupid to try to engineer an even worse fight or flight response. Worse still, it might be fatal!

No, if there's one thing I'd do is accept that the unexamined life is your life's work and by enquiring within you may not wake up to True Self but you might live with more equanimity in a world that's intent on crushing your soul.

Blessings,

Julian

Photo by Joshua Sortino