Читать книгу Satori - Keeping a Peaceful Heart in Chaotic Times - Jill LLC Slane - Страница 4

CHAPTER ONE

The Best Things in Life Are Not Things

“I had it all, at least according to the American dream…a beautiful home, an adoring spouse, loving children, offices in the United States and Europe and a respected career. My friends always commented, “You must be so happy”. But I had a dirty little secret that I shared with no one. A secret I kept closely guarded, because I knew it had the power to destroy those whom I loved most. I had seen it happen before in my life. I was not happy, and I couldn’t get happy.”

Our storyteller’s life sounds magical, at least to those on the outside looking in. Who wouldn’t be envious of such a fairy-tale life? Yet appearances are not always truths. The truth is, none of the story equated to happiness, because of hidden stress.

There is no one else more familiar with your stress than you. While you might appear to others to have the perfect marriage, job, or material items, your heart knows your true feelings. If you feel dissatisfied, regardless of how many “things”, or people, you have amassed, these are your true feelings. Satori asks that you begin to view things not from your intellect, but from your heart. Satori is about getting in touch with your feelings. It is about doing your hearts work. Because no one else can truly know your heart, they therefore cannot determine or define your happiness. So often we are all guilty of deferring our emotions to adapt the opinions of others. Whether this is the result of people-pleasing or a lack of self-confidence, the final result is the same. Your life does not actually belong to you. Your heart may long for something else. Listen to your heart’s voice. If you listen long enough, it will reveal the underlying cause for your stress and unhappiness.

What is Satori?

Satori is the antithesis of stress. It refuses to get caught up in the madness that has taken over our streets and our cities. It rejects the idea that there is nothing that can be done to alleviate the chaos in our lives. It promises the courage to overcome obstacles and settle your thoughts. It makes sense when nothing else does.

Don’t We All Suffer From Stress?

There has never been a time in history that is more stress-filled than today, when technological advancement and progress supersedes our ability to keep up with innovation. The world is spinning at a dizzying rate, and yet we continue to fall in love, marry, procreate, raise children, and have much of the same worries that have kept generations of people awake at night. We worry about the safety of our children, our financial security, and our health. Yet we are often alone, in the sense that extended families no longer reside on the same property, and the wisdom handed down from generation to generation is often lost.

Even in the age of technological ease and immediate gratification, we have, in many ways, lost our ability to communicate and establish personal rapport with others. Take a look around. Choose anyone, in any location, be it friend or stranger, neighbor or co-worker… each and every face has been tattooed with a roadmap of stress. It seems that it was only yesterday that we crawled underneath the covers in anticipation of sweet dreams and comfort. Nowadays, we are lucky to be able to fall into our beds at all without collapsing in states of exhaustion, pleading for just one night’s sleep without the torment of nightmares and ruminating worry.

How Are People Struggling To Survive Stress?

There are some who have simply given up and live lives of solitude and quiet isolation. There are others whose buttons have been pushed to the limits, triggering acts of aggression aimed at their spouses, children and even perfect strangers. Then there are the rest of us, trying to make it through somehow, waking up each day with a desire to get back to basics, still holding onto the belief that there is a solution to unravel chaos, a way to find peace, and a desire to reconnect with our families and loved ones. We begin each day with the optimistic hope that today will be different.

We are besieged with lights, noises and gadgets. With the staggering amount of external stimuli, it is little wonder that our senses have become overly stimulated and frazzled. Because of magnified stress levels, we no longer take the time to notice simple beauty, feel the comfort of harmony or even think clearly. Instead, in every walk of life, individual brains are malfunctioning, edging toward overload. Masses of gray matter are short-circuiting all over the world, and yet, either by fear or default, we continue to push harder, faster, longer until it is nearly impossible to keep up with our own expectations.

If ever there is a time to seek solace, peace and harmony, it is now. We are not machines. We are not designed to function under stress without emotional and physical consequences. In order for our minds and bodies to function properly, we need clarity of thought, concentration, and focus. Yet, existing in a world of relentless, unreasonable demands evokes the polar opposite. It is time to make a change.

We Know We Deserve Happiness, But How Do We Find It?

Our instincts initially are to stand firm and fight. We know we don’t deserve to be bullied into sacrificing everything we hold dear, to perform for those who regard us as nothing more than an extension of their demands, but we have families to feed, rent to pay, mortgages, car payments, alimony checks and a million other responsibilities that remind us to swallow unspoken words, crumble and take whatever is dished out. We can’t afford to buck the system, so we give in, disappointed in ourselves, but believing that there is no other way.

Misery was never the intention of life. We were born with a predisposition to be happy. One only needs to notice the quick smile on the face of an infant to understand that happiness is not learned… it is innate. Why then, do so many of us wake up one day and wonder what happened? Where did the reckless abandon of our youth go? The joy that could be aroused by nothing more than a simple thought, or even a smell. When did it go away? The answers to those questions vary with each of us. But almost invariably, the culprit is the same. It is called stress.

Stress is the robber of dreams, the thief that enters through an unlocked door, stealing happy moments and disrupting inner peace. Stress strips away the protective coating that insulates the hard wiring of our brains until there is nothing to stop us from short-circuiting. This is not the way life is intended to be lived. It has become a way of life after turmoil takes control and dictates the manner in which we think and behave, replacing carefree moments with anger, pessimism and criticism.

How Does Stress Define Us?

Stress defines us unfairly, placing importance on not who we actually are and the attributes we possess, but by who we have become underneath the cloak of negativity cast upon us. Unfairly, we are defined as successes or failures by societal standards implemented by those with often unscrupulous histories, and yet their judgment of us becomes the new standard by which we begin to judge ourselves. Our worth is no longer measured by kindness, patience, compassion and love. It is now measured by wealth and material possessions. The square footage of the houses we own and the neighborhoods in which we reside seem to determine our status. The number of people we consider to be our friends determines our popularity. Our job titles determine our importance. Using those standards of measure, most of us are worth very little.

Who Can We Trust?

The role models of honorable, hard-working, honest individuals have all but been replaced by those who use manipulation to swindle unsuspecting and trusting individuals. They do so without conscience and without care for the impact of their behavior upon others. Instead they find nothing wrong with stealing people’s property, jobs, spouses, and human dignity.

Haven’t you had enough?

If you find yourself unable to sleep, or awaking in the middle of the night with your heart pounding in your chest, you are not alone. Stress has caused sleep distress of great magnitude, where exhaustion follows sleeplessness, and dulls the mind as well as the spirit. You have only to take notice of your friends and co-workers to see the stress they wear across their faces like masks, their dull eyes dazed, staring at nothing at all. Jaws muscles are clenched in anticipation of more unhappiness, more turmoil, more criticism and more stress.

This stress is not only found in the workplace. It accompanies shoppers as they walk through the aisles, attempting to further stretch already tight budgets, calculating those groceries which will have to be returned to the shelves for another time. Stress lives in your home, sits along side you on the couch, and comes through your television set and radio with news of impossibly unthinkable acts of violence and loss. Stress sleeps in your bed, grows in your garden, and waits for you at your doorstep.

Is There Hope?

Emotionally, we are a world numbed with sadness and horror. Tear-stained faces collectively wonder if there is anything left to be done, if there is anything left for which to hope.

The answer is not complicated, but just as the obvious is often overlooked, we have been searching in all the wrong places. We are the hope! Each one of us carrying our hope forward, initially alone, but then joined by others, their hope linking into ours, forming a group and then a crowd. United we can spill onto the streets, a mob that comes not in anger, but in peace. We can decide that enough is enough, and all of us together can stop this insanity. Someone has to begin with one step. Will it be you?

How Did We Come to This?

So much of how we spend our time daily is in direct conflict to those things that are important individually. We sacrifice our needs and instead line up like laboratory rats, following each other through the maze on our way to work and home again, believing that we are doomed to spend the rest of our days living a life of terminal sadness. We have been promised that if we work hard, we will earn more money, and if we earn a certain amount of money, we will become happy. We are taught that hard work is its own reward, but after decades of working, people are still being laid off or demoted, especially now.

The pride that once pushed individuals to never give up has been lost. As well, self-respect and respect of others has been all but forgotten in the quest to forge ahead. It is no wonder that those of us who continue to do the right thing are mired knee-deep in the muck of stress.

Stress is running rampant through the streets. It comes up with the sun and shines with the stars. It pours down on you in a rainstorm and chokes you in the heat. Stress can only win if there is no opposition. It will not win if you decide to reclaim what is yours.

Believe There is Something More Waiting for You

There is still something to believe in. (Believe. v. To accept as true, genuine or real.) There is still you, the true you who owns your thoughts, philosophies, hopes and dreams. You still possess your opinions and judgments, your creativity and talent, and regardless of the opposition, those things cannot be taken away. So the problem is not that you have lost your integrity, dignity, and self-respect, but that you have become complacent to the power of stress. There is nothing as resilient as the human spirit, and so long as you have that, you have the ability to turn things around.

Our Brain: A Quick Explanation on a Complicated Issue

Most people understand the concept of intellect, that some individuals are smarter than others. Most think of the human brain as nothing more than a system of memory cards in which information is stored. In fact, our brain is much more than that. Our brain has been taught to recognize danger, to evaluate situations, to make instant, life-saving decisions relying upon stored information, reacting spontaneously in situations requiring immediate action. More importantly, our brain can be trained to rest, recharging its mental and emotional resources for a sustained period of time while refueling. This rest is essential in making good decisions, using good judgment, and perceiving situations accurately. Yet our brain is often deprived of that much needed rest because we exist in a state of continual stress.

The Good Old Days

Several generations ago, with no electricity and nothing else to do, families spent evenings in front of a roaring fire, sharing stories, solving problems, and planning for the future. There was a shared camaraderie and kinship to shoulder the bad times together, while reveling in the good times in celebration. In today’s world we are lucky if we spend five minutes with each other, eating fast food, tossing out disposable utensils and racing to take the children to baseball practice or piano lessons. At night after they are tucked safely in their beds, we unpack our briefcases to finish the work that has spilled over from the office, until with bleary eyes, we fall into bed.

When is the last time you pulled up a chair under the stars and just sat still, in awe of the great universe in which we live? When was the last time you picked up a good book and delved into the pages with utter abandon? It is likely that unless you are retired, these simple acts are going to be put off for quite a few years. Progress has robbed us of simpler times. As recently as three decades ago, children came home from school, ate a snack, completed their homework and stayed in for the night. There were no shopping malls, no nighttime school activities, and no held-over dinners. Dinner hour was considered sacred. Schools and employers alike understood the need for the dinner hour, and arranged schedules accordingly. It was the rare family that didn’t sit down together to a hot, home-cooked meal.

The Association of Societal Change and Stress

Families were steeped in tradition. No one questioned the gender-role relationships and for better or worse, everyone seemed to work together with synchronicity. Then there were dissenters, claiming gender bias, and unfair opportunities for women. Men balked and women protested for equal rights and equal pay. They were no longer happy in tradition. The changes did come, but unfortunately the anticipated happiness was not without some much unanticipated stress with the restructuring of traditional roles.

Families began splintering, and the single-parent household was born. With the new wave of divorce, blended families, and male and female workers outside the home, children began acting out in confusion. Right or wrong, there was no turning back. The only thing left to do was to take inventory, accelerate damage control, and try to sort out the disorder of life.

Am I Alone in My Feelings?

Let’s break this down in simple terms. You may feel alone, but you are not alone. In this vast ocean of stress, everyone is treading water over their heads. They are all caught in rip currents, being tossed one way and then another, in fear of drowning. You may want to stop swimming, to give up, but you cannot. When everything inside you wants to scream, “enough!” there is the whisper in your ear that reminds you that there is still hope. Listen to life’s whisper. It is the voice of Satori.

One day it occurred to me. All my life I said, “If only I had a (successful career…a supportive spouse…a glamorous house…etc) I could be happy. But I had all those things, and I still was not happy. Not only that, but I couldn’t recall the last time I was happy. I mean there were fleeting moments…the thrill of finishing a big project at work, or lying on some exotic beach during a vacation, but the happiness I was searching for was the happiness that comes in the form of unbridled joy, childlike enthusiasm, deep gratitude, and the satisfaction of a life lived to its fullest.

Like our storyteller, most of us tend to keep a foot in the past, holding on to a time when life seemed simple and happy, regardless of the lack of material possessions or wealth. It was a time that had unending opportunities, true friendships and no limit to dreams. In today’s world, it seems the pressures of everyday life have a way of blurring happiness, even in the most ideal situations. When you admit to feeling stress, there is no longer a stigma to the admission. Stress has come out of the closet and is now openly and publicly discussed without embarrassment or isolation. Stress has fallen on the shoulders of the population like a fashionable new coat, draped as a badge of honor on the bodies of adult and child warriors in battle, fighting for their right to peace and tranquility.

Before Satori

You are not alone as you struggle to maintain your composure while navigating the maze of your stress-filled environment. The twenty-first century has bombarded the human psyche with so many demands that we are racing from overload to burnout at an accelerated rate of speed. The days of spending a lazy afternoon talking to a neighbor over a backyard fence are nearly non-existent. Instead, we exist in households of one or two-income workers who cannot keep up with their financial demands. Some families have homes they cannot afford, as others dare not ever dream of being a homeowner.

Those who are fortunate enough to live in beautiful residences are not home long enough to enjoy them as they become secondary to the amount of time spent within the four walls of the office. It seems that there is no end to the amount of money needed to afford the homes that cannot be enjoyed! Even the miracle of birth has given way to overly taxed parents feeling burdened by the responsibility of the children they love. Rather than being able to enjoy and share in their growth and development, many parents are scrambling to hand off their kids to complete strangers as they go to work, make money and begin the vicious cycle all over again. In fact, many couples are deciding not to have children because they presume, often correctly, that raising a family will only add to existing stress.

Adult stress is difficult enough, but to be a child, helpless to accurately express their feelings and emotions, stress robs them of their childhood and sculpts out their upcoming adulthood in a very unpromising manner. Stress spreads. In families, children quickly adapt their own lives to mimic the turmoil they have experienced. Their parent’s stress trickles, imprinting an emotional roadmap that incorporates stress passed down from generation to generation.

The Life-long Effects of Labeling

By the age of five years, children are adopting the labels placed upon them by their families. They begin as blank slates, but they don’t remain pure for very long before they are covered in societal graffiti, each mark formulating self-worth. Some of the more fortunate children may be applauded for their intelligence, their beauty, or their winning personalities, while others wait for their turn to be special. Yet as each day passes, their self-esteem falls away until they come to the realization that their turn may never come. Their stress is marked by isolation, sadness, complacency. If we fast-forward ten or twenty years, these children become adults with difficulties in social, personal, occupational and legal situations. Stress has defined their future.

Satori and the Human Spirit

What can be done? Fortunately, the human spirit perseveres. It begs for another chance. It begs for Satori. Satori is actually the “ah-ha” moment when you finally “get it”. It is the moment when you come to the realization that whether you have done your best or not, every situation is a life-lesson from which to learn before moving on. It is the process that retrains your brain to listen to the intelligence that resides in your heart, rather than the programming that resides in your mind.

Satori is the moment when you can forgive yourself for being human, and replace unrealistic expectations with those that are more reasonable. Satori is not unlike a loving mother nurturing her child, hugging him, protecting him, righting him when he stumbles, and setting him carefully back on his feet. It is the moment when all is once again right with the world. It is never too late to change the manner in which you raise your children, connect with your spouse, or mesh with your co-workers. It is never too late to like the person you are. If today is the day you have dedicated to being the first day of making a change, tomorrow will find you better off because of it.

Living up to the façade of the perfect life had been easy. I appeared to be happy because the loss of my happiness was so gradual, so insidious, that for the longest time I didn’t realize that the joy I felt in my heart at one point in my life had dissipated to the point that I almost couldn’t remember it. Furthermore, I couldn’t even pinpoint the exact decade that I stopped experiencing those feelings of inner happiness. I simply woke up one day and realized I was living a lie.

Like our storyteller, most individuals set aside their awareness of their feelings to master life’s tasks. Then one day, they wake up and realize that the person they once knew, themselves, is missing. This loss causes anxiety and profound sadness. There are many public smiles masking private sorrow. Take off your mask. You are about to reconnect with yourself, and reclaim your life. You just have to believe.

Satori awaits you!

*