Imagine this for a moment –
You are given two options to choose from your next three months vacation. Which would it be?
- A tranquil, serene one, where you will not do much, but just relax on a sandy beach, drinking colorful cocktails throughout the day and dine next to fancy tables each evening; you will meet the same people all the time, people whom you will get to know thoroughly; the occurrences will be familiar to you, nothing will shock or surprise you; the days will pass with ease and content and generally you will feel satisfied and secured.
OR,
- An adventurous vacation, where each day will be different from the other, where you will not know what will happen next. You will see various places and meet different kinds of people. Sometimes you will be happy and other times sad due to loneliness or fear (of the unknown). Sometimes you will indulge yourself in excellent food and drinks and other times you will starve. Your feelings will fluctuate throughout the whole three months; that is, there will be days when you will experience joy, excitement and happiness and other days when you will be frustrated, aching and miserable.
Is your choice difficult to make? Think about it for a while.
Credit: Daniel Kordan at colossal
The path to realization is the second kind of vacation. Few people choose it and even fewer manage to keep their choice throughout life; Nothing noble about that. It doesn’t make you better or more special than your fellow human beings. It simply marks you as someone who has great inner strength and capability to endure some hardships and uncertainties. And again, those capacities do not make you a better person! It is simply a choice .
Those who walk this path of life experience great emotional chaos, mostly in their early years (the first 3-4 decades). They fall in love time and again only to have their hearts broken and shattered into pieces. Then, like the legendary phoenix, they gather the pieces and build up a newer, more expanded conscious being. They do not fear the challenges that life brings to their doorstep, they travel when needed to wherever requested and hence master their trust in life.
Many of these people remain single until relatively late age; they have few to none long romantic relationships and if asked they would confess that they actually need the lonesomeness. They have a group of people (friends/family) as a reference, an anchor, to the physical world to which they refer to whenever they require immediate comfort and understanding.
The prominent character of those who run such life is the emotional upheavals that they experience. It takes them a long time and some extremely difficult experiences to go through until they reach an emotional balance, free of drama. One day they can be nice and quiet and the next stormy and fanatic. They are very sensitive to life in general and humans in particular. This sensitivity causes them much hurt and might even make them clamp and close down. But not for long – life will hear the sound of their initial choice and create another event to cause them to open up. It happens very often that they shed tears over a lost love and their miserable life; "oh, why can't I be like the other people?", they cry out.
And before I answer, it is important to remind again – it is just a choice. If you find the above describing familiar patterns in your life, remember that you don’t have to live it. You can always say – I had enough – and choose the steady path.
But would you as well bear the consequences ...?
Credit: Nicolas Bouvier at colossal
The chord of emotions
If you have chosen the path of realization then consider yourself gto be very lucky.
Indeed, it may be fun to have a tan-sun kind of vacation and many people would have that kind of life in which the fears and concerns are permanently taken away. However, they are not as lucky as you are.
Your emotions are your connection to the other dimensions where your true identity resides. Each time you feel something, every experience that causes your heart to beat faster and your mind to be confused or numb, know that you are being infused with doses of energy from your true self. You are being transformed in order to prepare your body/mind/spirit for the reunion with your true self.
Not many choose to dedicate their lives to the reunion with their Self and among them, not few choose, in the midst of the journey to take the other road. They can't suffer the loneliness and the uncertainty and require a steady, more common life. All are honored.
You, my fellow brothers and sisters who walk the path of realization, choose to feel your life in its glorious and desperate sides. And for that I say - you are not alone!