The journey continues

Once in a while I get to a place where I feel peace and I am peace and there is no distinction between who I am and what I feel. The who I am is what I have after many years cultivated through my own ideas and societies ideals of what I should be. These distinctions between how I feel and who I am is different. How I feel is difficult to describe in words but simply put, I am here. There is usually silence in my mind. I am not thinking about what I need to do or how things will turn out or running through my mental checklist. I am just sitting or standing, or washing dishes but not thinking. Just doing. In those moments, I feel happy and free. These moments are short lived – at least for now. Then the dreaded switch goes on and I begin to worry about things that have not even happened, things that might happen, things that happened. When the switch goes on, I am no longer here. In those moments of silence there is clarity but I have no need to solve possible situations or lament on things that happened. In this place of silence, there are no problems. When I think during these moments, it is because I have taken my mind and used it as a tool to do something. My mind is not running wild, it’s more like a computer and my true self, the peaceful me, is the user. I use my mind to execute what needs to be done and I do it and finish. The work created when I am in this space is often splendid. In that space, I know the answers to whatever questions I have – not the logical questions, the questions that plague me in life. Am I doing the right thing? Am I happy with my job? Should I move? Am I doing what I was meant to do. In that space I know the answers and when I remember, I take the opportunity to answer those questions. The problem is after the dread switch goes on, I forget the answers and I forget all the solutions and its back to worrying and lamenting. The worrying doesn’t normally seem “bad” but it’s tiring. I am often exhausted after a full day of worrying about what people think of me, how important I am, how so and so did me wrong and all the rest of the time wasting thoughts yet I rarely make the connection between my exhaustion and how I arrived at my moment of tiredness. I just get home and think – jeez – what a long day – yes, of course it was long. Time flies when you are having a good time, paying attention to what you are doing and doing it to the best of your ability. The day is really really long when you are not present and constantly look at the clock, meaning you are not paying attention to what you are doing and you’re probably not doing something you enjoy. If you pay attention to what you are doing and do it to the best of your ability even if you don’t enjoy it per se, time will go by and that means you will be present in what you are doing and not worrying about possible problems or past resentments. The journey of getting back to myself, peaceful self continues…