Stop Chasing - Start Experiencing

Is it possible that we are blocking half of our life experiences due to labeling and blinded perspective?

I often find myself contemplating “happiness”. What does it really mean? It is the emotion we are all seemingly endlessly bound to. Everything we do in life, supposedly, is done in order to achieve a state of happiness, right? Example: I want to have a big house. Why? Because I want to provide a great place for my future kids to grow up. Why? Because I want them to be safe and happy. Why? Because as a parent their safety and happiness will be my responsibility. Why? Because I made them; I brought them into this world. Why? Because I want to be a parent. Why? Because I want to see what it’s like to be nurturing to a tiny human. Why? Because I think it will make me happy.

I honestly believe almost every “desire” comes from this nagging need to be happy.

However, where does that desire actually come from? Does our soul truly only crave happiness? If that were the case, then why do we torture ourselves with watching the daily news which is ridden with murder, theft, inequalities and atrocities? A conversation with my inner voice might go something like this.

I watch the news because I want to be informed.

Really? You’re telling me you have to inform yourself of all the horrible things going on in the world?

I pride myself in being an educated person in society.

Being educated and incessantly consuming depressing news stories every day are completely different.

Ever consider that it’s not our actual soul who craves happiness? Maybe it’s simply our ego who craves it. Our ego tells us if we are happy, then that must mean we are safe. Anything that threatens our safety, threatens our happiness. Not only our physical safety, but the safety our of mental and emotional states as well. If we become angry, it must mean that someone is trying to hurt us. This is bad. Shut it down right now. If we become sad, it must mean big changes in life are occurring. Change to the ego is very, very bad because change brings in the unknown and we can’t predict the unknown. The ego persists that anything which is not creating happiness will most likely be a bad change. Shut. It. Down.

I’ve recently listened to “Existential Kink” on Audible, written by Dr. Carolyn Grace Elliot

and let me tell you, a side effect of her book is that I have a very different perspective on happiness now. Her concepts are unlike anything you’ve ever heard before and it might just blow your mind like it did mine. The basic premise is this. What if we have an equal desire to crave both amazing, happy and joyous things as much as the horrible, sad, fearful things? After all, life here on Earth is simply about duality and why would we choose to come experience this reality as souls if we didn’t want the full experience? What could we possibly learn from a life only filled with joy? In fact, if heaven or other dimensions and realities are anything like I’ve heard they are, why would we ever leave such a perfectly lovely place?

A life void of hardships is a monotonous life. The quickest way to learning something is through experiencing difficulty.

Carolyn suggests, what if we were to not only accept our desires for things labeled as wrong or bad, such as scarcity, jealously, feeling used etc, but actually get fully “turned on” by them? Which could mean sexually get turned on by it, feel good or accepting about your bad feelings or just love your kinky desires to be wrong or “bad”.

Since listening to her book and interviewing her with the guys on the Mormons on Mushrooms podcast, I wonder now if our approach to life is all wrong. What if we are literally missing HALF of what life can give us because we are so focused on labeling all of our experiences as good, bad, awful, amazing, or whatever perspective we choose to give it that day?

What if we are so tunnel visioned into having a “happy” life that we don’t actually allow ourselves to have a “full” life.

That is not to say to go out and hurt people because it makes you feel good. It just means allow yourself to enjoy your painful moments, angry moments and scarce moments just as you enjoy your happy ones. Feel through every emotion and even more than that, feel through it with a sense of neutrality instead of judgement. Don’t label it good or bad, just allow it to be.

Emotion is energy-in-motion. When we block our emotions by disregarding them, shutting them down, pushing them away or avoiding looking them in the eye, we create energetic blocks in our system. Then we wonder why we get sick, feel run down, or what I tend to do, fill up so far with emotions that eventually I just blow up one random Tuesday on someone who probably didn’t deserve it.

I’m going to make a conscious effort not to label my day first thing in the morning. Rather than exclaiming, “Today is going to be an amazing, happy, positive, day,” then later feeling disappointed if it doesn’t turn out that way, I’m going to say this instead. “Today is going to be a full, emotional, teachable, expansive and perfect day no matter what experience comes my way!” See the difference? If every single day we are only satisfied when perfectly happy results are produced, we get discouraged, frustrated or upset when things don’t go as planned. We oddly set the happiness bar so incredibly high in a world where duality and balance have to exist.

That’s like saying, I only want to live in a place where the sun shines. Not the moon. I

hate the moon and I refuse to be hit by the cold darkness of it! Okaaaaay but that’s literally not possible. Not to mention, you’d probably get sick of the sun real quick. Eventually you’d want to sleep in peaceful darkness. You’d want to enjoy the stars and watch the tides draw in and out from its pull. You’d come to fully appreciate the days when there was a separation of day and night. You’d actually thoroughly enjoy the sun and all of its nuances as it rose in oranges and reds each morning.

Bottom line, we need balance.

But I’m not just talking about the tired ole saying of “we wouldn’t know the good unless we experienced the bad too”. I’m talking about LOVING the “bad”. Enjoying the “bad”. Seeing each experience as simply an experience and moving through it without resistance. Learning the lessons that every single emotion brings to us and leave it at that. No judgement.

Maybe, just maybe, we should stop chasing happiness and start chasing full, present and limitless life experiences.

Signing off with love,