Find your heart again.
As children, we didn’t think about where the journey was going. We just lived. We were constantly on adventures, formed gangs and detective clubs, and built tree houses. There was a purpose to it all, of course. Crime had to be stopped and tree houses were always good to survive the coming apocalypse… or just to hide from our parents.
I quickly lost this lightness of being in school. I was good at school, I just never understood why I had to go there. I didn’t want to be a fireman or a doctor. I knew I would do something that I didn’t need school for. Of course, I didn’t have a choice. This feeling continued in college. I simply studied because I didn’t know anything better to do with myself. The feeling of being able to trust my intuition had long since been stifled at that point. The pressure of expectations to make something special out of my life was too great. Pressure that I made all by myself.
Later in my career, I saw occasional flashes of enthusiasm at work, but these very short-lived experiences were due to the internalization of classic values such as career and success and did not lead to the long-lasting motivation I so longed for. More and more often I asked myself “what’s the point?” and sank my disillusioned heart, with each day of meaningless work, a little more into the depths of my being. Plagued by severe anxiety, after years of journeying through this darkness, I increasingly came to the point that the solution to the problem rested within me all along. Of course. Where else.
Sometimes in meditation, I feel like the racing thoughts finally calm down and I enter a state that feels like lightness and joy in my heart. A state of inner peace. Something that can’t be forced. It feels like I’m coming back to a natural state. These moments make me feel like life doesn’t have to be hard. Quite the opposite. The lightness of heart brings the lightness of mind and suddenly it feels like everything is crystal clear. Even if the mind can’t explain it or believe it. Being receptive and open to what is and has always been leads me to indescribable joy. Being is not easy in this world of doing. I have forgotten how to just be.
Again and again I thought that I can save myself from the anxiety with my mind. But the eternal belief that I can solve the problem on the outside led to the pain growing bigger and bigger. Healing is not a straight line and you fall into the same hole so many times until you finally take another road. Over the years I have learned what anxiety is trying to tell me and paradoxically it is the same thing my heart has been telling me all along. Be brave. Do your own thing. Speak your truth. Be good. Help others. Fuck the money.
It has taken 4 years now to accept these simple truths and decide for me, myself and I. For my heart and the simplicity of being. Sometimes it’s a simple decision that changes everything and sometimes it’s just you allowing yourself to do the things you care about.
Trust your heart. Even if that means your mind is yelling at you cause it can’t tell you where the journey is going. Fully committing to your inner truth and trusting that life happens for you is part of the journey. A state of simplicity that doesn’t cost you much less than anything else. It’s hard to be simple, because that means giving up all the things that gave you supposed security. We’ve learned that only complex things are valuable, so we’d rather be complex. But complexity and concepts block the view on the ultimate path. Only simplicity will do.
