You Cannot Both Experience Life and Live Life

When we go into experiences as feelings and emotions within ourselves, we subconsciously seek to validate the experience through interpreting situations and events in our environment. It is by no chance or luck that our interpretations will exactly confirm our experience. 

Let us look at an example:

If we are feeling confident in a moment, we will act in certain ways, gaining certain feedback from our environment, or simply interpreting situations and events in our environment that will confirm that yes, I am confident, I am for example: loud, boisterous, direct, hold a certainty in what I say, people like me, agree with me and I have influence over others-  or however one has defined confidence and being confident throughout one’s life. 

I’m speaking here of confidence as an experience and not a living expression of confidence. A living expression of confidence as Self would be where one stands regardless of one’s internal experience, whereas an experience of confidence is one where one feels confident in a moment, and for that moment one changes and acts out confidently, but when the experience changes, to one of insecurity, uncertainty or doubt for example, one will also change and now live out this new experience.

This may all seem well and fine, even normal in fact; but have a look at what it is we are accepting and allowing through this seemingly simple or normal participation in experiences and experiencing:

We are actually accepting and allowing an experience to direct us, to be the director of our thoughts, words and deeds. An experience of ‘confidence’ may fly under the radar as it is a positive experience that one may enjoy, but the point remains that we have given away our self-responsibility as our ability to direct ourselves in thought, words and deed, we have given it away to an experience. 

This implies that this is our protocol when it comes to experiences, which then implies that this is how we will behave within both positive and negative experiences. 

Let us now have a look at the flip side of the coin – the negative. 

An example of a negative experience would be one of insecurity, jealousy, unworthiness, feeling left out, or any other such negative experience. Now we will look to confirm and validate this experience by acting out in certain ways or interpreting situations and events in our environment that will tell us that yes, we are not secure, we are less-than, we are not worthy, we are left out. We will, for example, not speak up, participate less in an interaction, or self-isolate depending on the negative experience, and by our own actions make the experience real in physical reality, thus confirming our experience (and eventually, over time, manifesting the experience as the reality of who we are).

What is happening here is that we are actually manipulating ourselves and manipulating our realities to generate internal experiences through acting and interpreting situations and events to confirm and validate the very experiences we have created within ourselves. The question to ask here is, what would happen, what would reality be if we were to instead direct ourselves to be present in the moment as it is? Another question to ask is, why do I trust this experience over and above trusting myself as the director and the decision-maker of my life?

The interesting aspect of this entire play-out is that we have in fact designed it for and as ourselves – it is pre-programmed, for and by us. We do this over time and throughout our lives, where we decide how we behave when we are confident, jealous, insecure etc… for example: when I am insecure, I become quiet, defensive and push people away, when I am confident, I become loud, boisterous and certain. 

The question to ask here is: what is it that we are creating ourselves as over time? I would answer here that what we are creating is limitation – self-limitation where we limit ourselves to certain pre-determined scripts. These scripts evolve more and more into themselves until they become who we are in fact, as we are the creators of ourselves. Within this, we end up closing the doors on the vast potential and opportunities Life has to offer, and stick to our pre-programmed paths, bouncing back and forth between seeking out positive experiences and avoiding negative experiences. We will chase positive experiences, avoiding situations, events or people that do not confirm our positive experience – situations, events and people that could have been keys for us to develop, grow, overcome and transcend our limitations, but instead we chose to trust and follow the desired experience and remain on a fast track to nowhere. Conversely, we even go so far as to fear the negative experiences we accept and allow ourselves to create, going into an anticipation of them and thus creating and generating degrees of anxiety as we fear repeating the negative script we have written for ourselves. 

Within all of this, what we are in fact doing is experiencing life, and not Living Life. We are choosing by our acceptances and allowances to, instead of living in real time, real reality in the moment, live in a very small experience that takes place in isolation inside that tiny kingdom between our two ears – our mind. 

What we tend to miss within all of this is the fact that the entire play out, both positive and negative, is us seeking out to fulfill our own self-interest as a constant confirmation that we are right and correct – wether it feels good or bad, “at least I am right (righteous)”/”at least I am in control”/”I knew it!” (at least we are god/all powerful somewhere) – but to what end?

We are trying and attempting to experience something more than what is Here. In this, we are making the statement that Life, as it exists, is not enough. I am not enough. There must be something more. I must be something more. This is the effect experience has upon us, where the self-aggrandizing and self-diminishment has us existing as experience only, and not Life, not Living. And not only are we not actually Living, but we are missing reality – the reality that is playing out on this earth. We are too preoccupied in our own minds and experiences that we can overlook abject poverty, environmental atrocities, disregard our neighbours and our fellow man as our tunnel vision blinds us to focus on but ONE thing – our experience. 

It is like living in a movie or a story book where regardless of if self is the hero or the victim – self is the main character (one that lacks substance or any REAL character).

What is the alternative?

An alternative can be that we stand up as Self-Trust in and as Who We Are, letting go of our addiction to experience to instead live moment-by-moment, breath-by-breath as we accumulate moments of self-direction to now create ourselves as the directive-principle of Who We Are. Within this, we are not missing out on Life unfolding before our very eyes – where our participation in reality now becomes constructive, our interactions become open and dynamic, we see what is really in fact Here and what needs to be done. We open ourselves up to face and walk through situations and events as they are – thus allowing and in fact placing the foundations in for self-growth, self-expansion and self-development, challenging our limitations and proving to ourselves what we are capable of. In this, becoming someone that honours, respects and regards Self - where one actually Lives Life in such a way that now Honours Life, because once you see Life and yourself as a participant, the responsibility becomes undeniable, as it is you, and you are it. Life is Us, and We are Life, One and Equal.