A Reason to Live

An acquaintance took her own life. She was young, beautiful and talented.

When I learned of her passing, I felt great compassion for what she went through. Because you see, I have been there. I have been at that place in myself where I totally believed my desperate self-deprecating thoughts that told me there was no way out. I came to a time in my life when for a while, I actually believed that the people I loved would be better off without me.

I didn’t go all the way and did not attempt suicide. I got a second chance at creating a new life. What is so sad about death is that it so final. From the outside of any kind of upset, it is obvious to anyone else that there is a way out, that all is required is a shift of perception.

But from the inside of one’s own mind, it’s almost impossible, unless you train yourself vigilantly. I have become very suspicious of my own mind, and when I hear myself saying to myself : “I have nothing to say”. “I don’t make a difference”. “It’s too silly to talk about” or the flip of the coin, the defensive self talk of “I am not that upset, I am doing really well” I remind myself I am listening to an internal radio station advertising pain and suffering and that I have the power to switch the dial.

I ask you to take a look inside or to lend an ear to your internal dialogue and start becoming aware of these thought patterns we take for granted. What do you say to yourself when you are upset? What do you say to yourself that brings you down? Start recognizing your own radio station, start disengaging from it.

I still get trapped by my mind, for little silly things and something big things. Anything that I still identify with and haven’t yet recognized as just a “radio station program” still gets me. In the case of this young woman’s passing, I did see that she was very sad and asked her a few times about it. But I believed my thought that I didn’t know her well enough to have the right to prod and sit her down and ask her what was wrong. I believed that I wouldn’t make that much of a difference in her life, that I was just a newcomer.

Writing this, it dawned on me that when I was depressed, it didn’t occur to me once to say to myself “Ok, I’m done, I’m just going to stop feeling bad about myself!” We have not been taught to realize that we have an option out of suffering.

Maybe we have been conditioned since childhood to take in pain, and we consider it normal. We’ve all heard “take it like a man” or “be tough.” but we’ve never been told “How much pleasure can you take?” “Feel your feelings.” “How good are you willing to have your life be?”

Maybe also, we have an addiction to pain. An actual, physical addiction to pain. It produces a rush in our bodies. Like the runner’s high, or the rush produced by sugar, cigarette or alcohol. We are addicted to the rush produced by negative emotions and self deprecating thoughts. Our bodies are moved by our emotions and our emotions are moved by our thoughts.

Anger, for example, produces a physical high, when energy and blood rushes up to our face and arms, making us ready to fight. Fear, all the same, produces another kind of physical high, where energy and blood rushes down to our legs, preparing us to run away. We’re used to it. We seek it. We don’t have amusement parks with love trains. We have thrill rides, horror and action movies and extreme sports.

Love does produce a physical high, it is a diffuse sensation that warms us all over and we are not accustomed to seek it when we want a rush of emotion.

What is the point of life anyway? Maybe we are here on earth to learn how to love all the parts of ourselves, maybe we are here to learn how to dissolve the barriers that we erect inside ourselves against love.

But “It’s selfish to put yourselves first!” How many of us have heard that growing up? If you don’t love yourself first... you can’t truly give love. I am learning to embrace all aspects of myself, all self deprecating thoughts, all judgments and one by one, little by little, they’ve started leaving me alone, and I’ve started feeling more at peace, more loving with myself and all others around me. This is what I offer you.

The reason I get up every morning is that I want to go through all my resistances and my habitual addiction to suffering to make my life a masterpiece of beauty and love. At each moment I do my best to choose which internal radio station I listen to and I challenge myself: How great am I willing to be and have my life be?

I will leave you with one question that psychic children have been asking around the world:
How would you act and what would you do if you realized that you ARE a Messenger of Love? BEGIN NOW.