Alignment

(Read this and liked it. Copy and pasted from an advaita fb group

WHITE LIES

“I am struggling to make much sense of my life these days. I feel out of alignment with it and there is a strong desire within me to realign. Curious as to how you were able to achieve that alignment with your life…”

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The problems we encounter often lie in the perspectives through which we frame our circumstances.

“Alignment” implies that there are two separate objects or experiences that require your energy, attention or manipulation to bring together. But are there?

What is this “my life” you are referring to? Is there some experience of yours that exists independent of your presence in it? And what is this “I” that feels out of alignment with life? Do you have any recollection of an “I” that exists outside the boundaries of ‘a life’?
The fact is “I” and “my life” are infused within one another seamlessly and can only be spoken about in abstraction as separate entities. In reality, there is only the experience of BEING ALIVE – however you choose to dissect that experience.

What is out of alignment, however, is your perspective. Yet perspective is a fickle thing – it is an abstract point of view. Your social conditioning, your thoughts, your opinions, your beliefs, your emotional states, your biases, your prejudices, your hopes and fantasies all inform and shape your perspective. And so, EVERYONE’S perspective is bound to be distorted in one way or another by these various influences. Mine is too. We are only human after all.

Yet, the misconception you are under is clearly evident. You are convinced that you ARE your perspective. In other words, this “I” you are desperately wanting to align with “my life” IS your perspective. You have identified yourself with that universe of thoughts, ideas, conditioning and biases and are calling it – “ME”.

Here is the kicker – you will never fully achieve alignment between your perspective and your reality.

Why?

Because your perspective is fundamentally designed to distort reality. It is the mother of all distortions. Its job is to filter reality and manipulate it in a manner that increases your chances of survival – biologically and socially. Your thoughts, emotions, ideas, beliefs and conditioning don’t exist to align with the reality of life. In fact, it’s quite the opposite – they exist to skew your perception in order to give you a survival edge.

You will never fully align your perspective with reality. Nor is there any need to. Rather, the root of your dysfunction is related to where your sense of identity resides.
You asked me how I achieved “alignment with my own life”?

I didn’t.

I simply came to realize that there is no such thing as “my life” that is separate from “me”.
In other words, my focus of identification shifted away from this mental world of abstracted thoughts into the reality of everyday experiences that I had previously called “life”.

It’s like weather patterns above the surface of the earth. The weather is perpetually changing, and it creates various seasonal and climactic changes upon the earth. Your perspective - this world of thoughts, ideas and beliefs are like weather patterns – perpetually changing and constantly impacting your experience of living.

You are like a person who, standing on the earth, imagines themselves to be in control of the weather. You want to “align” the weather with the needs of the earth – or in other words, you want to manifest purely favorable weather patterns. You want it to be balmy and sunny at all times. You don’t want any more thunderstorms or typhoons, snowstorms or blizzards. You want this weather-system you are identifying as “me” to be aligned with the earth-surface reality you are identifying as “my life”.

But you cannot control the weather, nor should you. For all weather patterns are necessary – the snowstorms and the typhoons serve their purpose. And most importantly, you are not the weather.

In short:

- That which is out of alignment with life can never be fully aligned. (i.e., your perspective)

- And that which you are seeking to align with life was never out of alignment in the first place. Since there is no separation between the two except in your perspective! (i.e., the self)

That’s the real catch-22 here that you must learn to make peace with. There is no escaping it.

Yet, just like a child learns to recognize that the mirror distorts reality by flipping their image and that the “right hand” they see in the reflection is really their left hand, so too is it possible to recognize that our perspective is a distorted reflection of who we are but not who we really are.

Then, the question of ‘aligning with’ life becomes moot, even absurd.

Today, I live in a manner in which I cannot see myself as being anything separate from life. Does that mean my perspective is fully aligned with what happens? Hell, no! My perspective is still full of conditioned points of view, hidden biases, bizarre ideas, unconscious prejudices and untested beliefs that continue to bubble up to the surface as and when circumstances are ripe to trigger them.

Yet, I no longer lose any sleep over what is going on in my mental world. To me it is as circumstantial as what the weather will be like today.

I am fine with sun or rain, balmy weather or blizzards, fair winds or tempests. I am just as ok with clarity or confusion, happiness or depression, acceptance or anger.

I am acutely aware that although my perspectives on life are perpetually changing, I am not my perspectives.

I am the life that those perspectives are based upon.

I am the truth in the rainstorm of little white lies.


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