It has been a while since I have written something. I think that this is because all my posts are rooted in my own personal revelations and realizations. I share things my life is showing me and lessons I am learning.
I guess…sometimes it takes me a while to learn something. 8-)
But I have come to understand something about life and I am glad to be sharing it with you.
Active Life
The active component of life is your level of activity and intensity in the real world. It is a measure of how intensely you live. It takes into account how you spend your energy with each day that passes, and how you physically work and exist in this world. It is concerned with how you allocate and use the resources you have. It is about your physical body – do you keep your body filled with energy and vitality, or are you tired and lethargic?
Your active life is about the creation process and what you create on a daily basis. How do you express your talents? How useful are you to society? Are you a giver or a taker? Do you tend to give (create) opportunities and resources for others, or do you prefer to take them?
Having a strong active life is important if you want to exist and be happy in society.
Emotional Life
Our emotional life is the level of which our life is centered around how we feel about life. How we feel about people, relationships, situations, ourselves. Our hopes, our fears, our regrets, our compulsions and desires.
Our emotions are a wonderful thing and I think we chase them because we feel that they add more depth to life. But if depth is what we desire, I believe that strengthening our inner life adds so much more dynamism to life than intensifying our emotions.
Our emotions are the waves.
But you are the ocean.
The problem with emotions is that we often live at the mercy of them. One minute we feel ecstatic and life is wonderful, and then a moment later, someone can say a bad word to you, and your entire day is ruined. Today you love somebody and they love you and it feels like bliss, but tomorrow they don’t love you anymore and your life is falling apart.
When we live at the mercy of our emotions we act out of compulsion, not out of consciousness. We do something because we feel compelled to do something because that is how we feel, and doing it might be pleasurable/ reassuring/ release the tension/ ease guilt/ comfort us. Often the benefits are short lived too.
I think most people, and I include myself in this, live life in an emotional+active combination. Or perhaps an emotional life with out much action. The problem with this is that we are usually run by our emotions. We act based on how we feel, and how we feel about anything, situations, relationships, people, things, changes constantly. When our actions in our active life are so influenced by our changing feelings, you can imagine the mess we can leave in our path.
I noticed that when I live life focused purely on how my feelings at any given point, I can make my life extremely dramatic. When I live a strong emotional life and a strong active life, sometimes I make an messy trail wherever I go. And if I live a strong emotional life without action, I can become withdrawn and and emotionally self-indulgent.
This is not to say that emotions are “bad.” I don’t believe anything is inherently bad. In fact, I believe that emotions can be extremely valuable. Emotions serve a purpose and to live with intelligence means to be able to use your emotions to enhance your life, and not be used by your emotions.
Inner Life
And then comes your inner life. And this is what spirituality is – it is your relationship with your internal life, your relationship with everything that is going on within you.
It isn’t how you feel about what is happening. It is who you are about what is happening.
It is an internal contract you have with the powers of life (God, energy, the universe, mother nature, grace – whatever it is to you) that you are here for a purpose. It is an understanding that who you are is more than your personality. Who you are internally, when you are quiet and still with yourself, that buzzing of energy, from that everything else is created – that is truth. To understand that what happens on the inside is more important that what happens outside of you. That you can live life WELL no matter what circumstances are handed to you. Developing your inner life not only creates pleasantness and peace, but it also builds resilience.
I believe that when you do certain things, and live in a certain way, you can create the right conditions and the right environment for the relationship with your inner self to happen.
I have come to understand that spirituality is not an activity that you do a few times a week. It is not a product you can buy, a trend you can follow. What spirituality is to me is a certain atmosphere in life.
Yoga, meditation and Kriya are just some of the tools that I have found help create this atmosphere for me.
The only goal of your inner life is to bloom in every way possible, and to live from the inside out.
I believe that the yogis and sansayis that choose to live in the mountains are those who have a very strong inner life, and thus have chosen to retreat from society as they have no desire to be active in society.
But for those of us who continue to be active in the world, I believe that living with a strong inner life and a strong active life, while knowing how to use your emotions and not be used by your emotions is a powerful way to live.
You can live with clarity, peace, strength, happiness, dynamism creation, movement, and power.
A reflection on my life
Personally, I want to develop my active life. The last 6 years of my life have been a completely mental-energy driven process. I spend the majority of my day reading, learning, trying to absorb information. I love medicine and I am definitely enjoying the process of learning because I know that this is knowledge that will help me in my life’s work. But man, I miss reading for pure pleasure. I miss reading for the stories, for delicious words and sentences, and not only to gather information and try to trap that information in my mind so that I can make good decisions. Honestly, sometimes when I pick up a book to read for pleasure now, it feels weird to not have to try to retain and memorize every sentence.
I also love to create. I have a lot of ideas inside of me. But most of my creations and interests are things like writing poetry, prose, and my blog, reading, creating music, yoga, photographs, meditation, contemplation. It involves a lot of internal and quiet work. I know this is a big part of who I am and I am glad for it. But lately I feel a strong desire in me to really BE in this world. To get out and get comfortable with this earth. To engage physically in life. To be active, to create, to build community. To use my hands to make something special. To learn new skills. To always keep creating. To live more human and less digital. I love and respect the part me that is internal because I know that it is sacred and true. But there is a part of my spirit that also wants to burst into LIFE!
And these are my thoughts this evening. Thank you for being here.
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