At a certain point, perhaps the pinnacle of boredom with life or the pit of despair, or even the height of ecstasy, you may see that all you have been doing, one way or another, is avoiding yourself.
Every activity has been a dodging of who you are. You may have been keeping yourself busy while your life passes you by.
Sometimes you exhaust all avenues and end up with nothing fulfilling enough to satisfy your sinking spirits, nothing real enough to keep you going, nothing convincing enough to overcome the enormous argument that something inside you is having with the way you are living.
Those avenues are all avoidances, beautiful, beguiling and businesslike, and that something inside is who you are.
It knows something that you don't but are bound to find out, even if it is only in your dying moments. It can be put off for a lifetime but eventually you will sit with it.
Perhaps and preferably, you will face it sooner rather than later. You will sit somewhere silently and just let it be.
You will not reach for the TV remote, not get up to work, not drink, smoke or have sex. You will not bury yourself in a book, not clean the house, and not tackle that endless to-do list again.
You will not shop, eat or even listen to music. You will stop talking, stop pushing, stop trying. For once, you will just sit.
Sit with yourself. Let yourself be. Let life be. Do not run away, do not resist.
Do not act on the urge to get going again. Do not. Just sit.
It can feel like hell at first but when you have avoided so much that avoiding feels worse, sitting is all you have left. Then even hell is a welcome relief.
It is the doorway to life that you have turned away from, now opening.
Sitting with yourself is the start.
Every activity has been a dodging of who you are. You may have been keeping yourself busy while your life passes you by.
Sometimes you exhaust all avenues and end up with nothing fulfilling enough to satisfy your sinking spirits, nothing real enough to keep you going, nothing convincing enough to overcome the enormous argument that something inside you is having with the way you are living.
Those avenues are all avoidances, beautiful, beguiling and businesslike, and that something inside is who you are.
It knows something that you don't but are bound to find out, even if it is only in your dying moments. It can be put off for a lifetime but eventually you will sit with it.
Perhaps and preferably, you will face it sooner rather than later. You will sit somewhere silently and just let it be.
You will not reach for the TV remote, not get up to work, not drink, smoke or have sex. You will not bury yourself in a book, not clean the house, and not tackle that endless to-do list again.
You will not shop, eat or even listen to music. You will stop talking, stop pushing, stop trying. For once, you will just sit.
Sit with yourself. Let yourself be. Let life be. Do not run away, do not resist.
Do not act on the urge to get going again. Do not. Just sit.
It can feel like hell at first but when you have avoided so much that avoiding feels worse, sitting is all you have left. Then even hell is a welcome relief.
It is the doorway to life that you have turned away from, now opening.
Sitting with yourself is the start.
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