I remember one of the insights I got when I was doing my yoga teacher training in India.
In addition to the obligatory yoga and meditation classes, we used to have an optional meditation hour on the evening.
When it was time for these optional meditation hours I would head to the roof of our ashram with an intention to do my meditation practice.
But what I most of the time ended up doing instead, was just to lay there on the roof and gaze at the stars.
Instead of sitting in a lotus position with a focused mind, I found myself slipping into that state of meditation simply by allowing my mind to relax.
I was experiencing a calm mind and my own inner wellbeing, then and there.
The direction to look at
This is what I’ve come to see — In life there’s two directions we can look at.
One is to look to the direction of our wellbeing, and the other one is to look away from this wellbeing of ours.
Whenever we mistakenly believe that our experience is coming from something outside of us we innocently look to the direction that takes us further away from experiencing wellbeing.
The more we walk towards this direction the worse we’ll feel. The more stress we begin to experience and if we keep on going we’ll also eventually create disease.
However every moment we have the possibility to wake up again back to the reality and back to experiencing this wellbeing of ours.
For us to experience this wellbeing we need to look to a 180 degrees different direction and recognize the true source of our wellbeing. Recognize that only we have the power to take ourselves away from experiencing this wellbeing of ours. And that our experience is always coming from within us.
The role thought plays in our reality
What allows us to look to the direction of wellbeing is to recognize the role thought plays when it comes to creating our reality.
When most of us we recognize that our thinking plays an important role when it comes to the way we see life — We fail to see that thought is 100% responsible for our experience.
When we feel like another person hurts our feelings, we feel stuck in an unfulfilling job or otherwise just long for more happiness when it comes to our lives, we fail to see what is there behind our experience.
Our experience is always coming from within us — 100% of the time. It’s coming from our own way of seeing life, our perception of work, relationships and life, or whatever we focus on in the moment.
Behind every feeling there is a thought, that is brought alive with the help of our consciousness — ability to be aware of our thinking. And the source of our thinking is the formless energy behind life.
— The energy we are all part of.
Recognizing this and looking to the direction where our experience is really coming from allows us to let go of so much noise and thinking that doesn’t serve us in any way. So that we can come back to the present moment to experience this wellbeing of ours again.
Letting go of what doesn’t serve us
In those moments when it looks like we couldn’t be further away from our own wellbeing, letting go of our thinking in the moment will change the direction of our experience.
Whenever we feel sad, angry, stressed, lost or any other negative emotion, we are caught up in an illusion. It looks like our experience is coming from something else than a thought in a moment.
Awakening to see how this is not true will allow us to wake up back to the reality. It’ll allow us to remember how whenever we experience negativity in our lives it’s a sign of our thinking being off.
A sign that if we want to experience more happiness and feel good again we need to let go of the thinking that creates that stressful feeling. That kind of thinking will never take us where we want to go in life.
Simply by seeing how this is true and letting go of the thinking that doesn’t serve us we will allow our mind to calm down. When our mind clears we automatically become aware of the wellbeing that is already there and get to experience the kindness of the design.
Wellbeing as a natural state of our being
Our wellbeing is always there, waiting to be discovered by us.
It can be covered by our negative and stressful thinking in the moment, creating us an experience of distress, but it can never be lost.
Because as soon as our thinking clears and our mind calms down every single one of us experience wellbeing.
We might be so used to swimming in the waves of our negative emotions that we have lost touch with this inner wellbeing of ours. We don’t recognize those moments when we get to have some awareness of our wellbeing because we are so used to the noise of our thinking.
Yet, as soon us we get a sense of it, as soon as our mind calms down even for a second, it is there for us to experience. To become aware of.
The more we begin to see how this is true, the more we begin to become aware of this wellbeing of ours. And the more aware we become of it and the more we begin to appreciate it, the more we begin to see it in our lives.
Wellbeing is that natural state of our being, and the only thing that can ever take us away from experiencing it, is we ourselves getting too caught up in our thinking.
Wellbeing from within
Our wellbeing lies beyond our thinking.
We can innocently get lost in our thoughts taking ourselves to the direction where stress, disease and unhappiness is created, but as soon as our mind clears, we become aware of the well of wellbeing that we all have within us.
We are all mentally healthy from within.
We can become aware of the formless energy we are all part of, that is the source of our wellbeing. — That is our wellbeing.
And there’s nothing we need to do to experience it, to get a sense of this true nature of ours. In fact it is the less we do, the easier it is for us to experience.
The less thinking we create and the more quiet is our mind, the more we are able to see with clear eyes what is true and become aware of this energy.
It is our birthright, our heritage, always available for us and only one thought away.
We just need to stop looking to the wrong direction and that is all that is required for us to experience our own inner wellbeing.
And the more we notice and respect this feeling of wellbeing when we get to experience it and be aware of it, the more we’ll begin to see it in our lives.
Heidi Paavilainen
Sharing an understanding that allows us to connect more with that deeper part within us, so that we can find our own answers from within, find that greater sense of wellbeing and have relationships that feel good.
Receive my weekly emails about love and wellbeing and learn more about my downloadable audios and one-on-one coaching program here.
