If we can’t be alone with ourselves in quiet, we feel inadequate. Life feels inadequate. If we can’t sit quietly and breathe, what does it say about us and how we function? When we spend the precious moments of our lives in busy distraction, we can’t know ourselves, the only person we can know. We actively avoid ourselves, perhaps scared by this confusion about who we are.
Self-knowledge is only accessible through quiet. It is through awareness that we experience life, and if our awareness if focused outside, then we can't exert self-control, self-mastery, or self-realization.
We soak in images and ideas through media, and our minds are programmed with negative, fear-inducing, harmful, and even traumatic information. Media reflects the worst of an unhealthy greed-based society. Even the more positive programming creates an experience of life that isn't ours. It's someone else's story. The information doesn’t disappear when we’re done exposing ourselves to it. It rattles around, unexamined and unnoticed, but tainting our experience.
We seek the company of others, the comfort of drugs, alcohol, shopping, and other distracting activities, to avoid the mental and emotional damage and confusion that has accrued. Perhaps we think we are that damaged and confused entity. We're not.
When we lose touch with ourselves, we're unable to make choices that better serve us. If we aren't consciously making choices, the choices are made in default. The default choices make us. Our lives are insufficient, less than our aspirations. We can’t take good care of our bodies, minds, and emotions when we're disconnected. We’re bouncing around in reactivity because we don't know better. We think less of ourselves, and we're scared we aren't enough. We are ignorant. Life is a blur, and soon over.
It is only through quiet that we can discover our true Self--that wise, courageous, kind, and thoughtful person that we are. We discover what serves and supports us, and what doesn’t. Quiet helps us tend to ourselves, our lives, and the only moment that is. Then we have the ability to implement our creativity, courage, and control. It is through quiet we discover satisfaction, authenticity, and ease.
It’s hard to break the addiction to distraction, to choose quiet. But the good news is that we can only make that choice in this moment. We don’t have to concern ourselves with any imaginary future moment.
In this moment, there is nothing to do, nothing to fix, nothing to change, nothing to become. It’s simple. A slow, deep breath in. A slow, deep breath out. Return the focus to this simple, complete, and easy breath.
This breath and this moment are where the Supreme version awaits. In quiet.
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