We all have things that blind our eyes from seeing our true selves. What would we be if all that is taking up so much space in the head or heart, making it too heavy to possess, evaporates? What would we be without guilt, fear, anxiety, worry, sorrow, grief, wounds, and finally the 'I' that is responsible for all this? What would we be without an 'I'?
Our consciousness began developing at some point after birth when we started associating random meanings to our external circumstances. When you were in school, probably a girl body-shamed you, or another girl just saw you as a pushover and treated you in such a way that accentuated your flaws for you, flaws that had never been 'flaws' earlier, or a guy probably made a stupid comment about your social standing. Just imagine other examples of people making you hate yourself for being you; it must be an easy task for the several of us, I'm sure.
How exactly did the meaning-making ego perceive all this? By ego, I mean the narratives surrounding your 'I'. The narrative that makes you, you. The story that you identify with, the narrative that is constructed by you yourself, the narratives through which one's self-image is formed. She saw me as a pushover hence I must be a person who is lowly valued by people, or that he called me a fat cow hence I must have an appearance that people always dislike. Subconsciously we begin to believe these meanings. Our egos are so creative when it comes to finding meanings. While we consciously absorb the contents of self-help books, underneath we still believe that we are nothing but a pack of crap that ought to be walked over by people.
Whenever anyone asked me to introduce myself, I would stutter and say, "I don't think I can define myself." I said so because I was scared that if I said I liked painting and ended up disliking it some day, or if I said I disliked a movie star and started liking them at some point, then it would be inconsistent with what I said to them. Now I realize that I don't have to define myself and that I do not have to stay consistent with any identity. The narratives keep changing; this indicates the transience of the same. So coming back to the question, what would we be without these narratives or 'I'?
This question cannot be answered because it has to be experienced by each of us. You cannot feel what I feel, and I cannot feel what you feel, yet it is the same substance fitting into different moulds of experience. Imagine a crack in the ground with lines wide enough for water to flow in. Now consider that these cracks are filled with tiny stones, and a magical stream of water flows into the crack. There is a tension between the stones and the water. Eventually the water flow, with its force, sweeps all the stones out and fills in the crack lines, and imagine that it can make these cracks vanish. In the end only water remains. Cracks can appear in any form and through any means, but it is the same water that heals it. Our experiences of experiencing this water flow might be different, but it is the same water filling in our cracks. Forgive my poorly constructed metaphor, but I do believe you get it.
Every adversity is constantly trying to sweep the stones away and heal us, even the worst of the worst ones. Every adversity is an externalization of this tension between the stones and water. The force of the water trying to clean up the crack lines and heal. So just let the water do its work; all that you can do is try to stop the meaning manufacturer from creating more stones by not taking him/her seriously. The question to focus on during an adversity is, what is this trying to teach me? What illusions are keeping me from realizing my inherent wholeness?
Questions like "Why is this happening to me? Whatever did I do to deserve this?!" is a phase, and no matter how evolved you are, you might spiral down, and it is okay; it truly is okay! Because evolution does not end anywhere as long as we live, we keep evolving and seeing things differently. It is essential to remember that every tiny little thing that happens to us is propelling us towards spiritual growth, towards God, towards the ultimate, towards a state of neutrality or nothingness, towards love—a love that is beyond our limited intellect's comprehension, a divine love.
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