In my last post, I gave my readers way too much information about my personal life, the high and low of why I found myself needing help while surrounded by a self help collection.
Just to review, I spent nearly a third of my life *reading* about how to live a full life instead of actually experiencing it. I was successful in my career but nowhere else – including my relationships, family, health or happiness, and I lacked an overall sense of well-being.
I’m reminded of a story that I recently heard about a wealthy family man. This man was so plagued by a desire to better know his creator that he abandoned his family and worldly goods in search for the house where God lived.
For years he searched the world, asking everyone, “Where is the house in which God lives?” Yet, he never met a soul who seemed to have any clue where God lived.
Finally, his journey took him to Tibet where he happened upon a monk tilling a field. He called to the monk, “I have been on this quest for years. Do you know where the house is in which God lives?” The monk answered pointing towards the horizon, “Everyone knows that the house of God is right over that hill.”
The man was elated! He thanked the monk and ran off quickly. As he crested the hill, he could see that, indeed, the house in which God lived was in plain view. His journey was complete. He took one look, and nodded satisfactorily, turned on his heel, and left.
Now, as my intelligent readers, you already know that the house is really your heart and the journey is your “self development”. And the point is, a lot like me, this man lost himself in his journey. He identified himself as a seeker, and not a finder. Like him, I had forgotten that the point was not self development, but self realization.
The purpose of self development is to create a life experience of yourself. Other than that, the stuff you are reading is just information. We want to experience a certain way of life and not just information and the only way to experience something is to do it. We’ve all seen the “Bucket List” there is a reason it wasn’t called “The bucket of information list.”
People call the process: self development. However, it would be better described as self renovation. The very qualities we possess at birth are the very qualities we are seeking in death. That is to say, that the authenticity, joy, openness, and faith, these are all innate to a newborn, and now, as adults we realize, hey, I’m gonna die! So we rush to reclaim what’s essentially already ours.
The only way to experience something we are missing is to do it. If you want to experience being confident, then you have to do something that’s going to scare the bejeezus out of you. If you want to experience adventure, then you might have to cut in line at the post office.
It’s not about losing 30 lbs, starting your own business, writing that novel, or reading those 10 books a year. It’s just about that one split second where you actually decide to take the next step and then doing it. Remember, writing a novel doesn’t start with writing a chapter – it starts with writing a word. Apply that to your life. The simple, succinct law of action.
On the subject of how children already have this figured out, check out this post from Upgrade Reality.
