We are looking out there all the time, and not at ourselves.
Charlotte Joko Beck
The fact that all the news channels around the world devoted significant airtime to the announcement of the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton shows that we have not lost our fascination with fairy tales. Most fairy tales, including those about the noble prince marrying the princess for love, can be seen as symbols of inner experiences and provide insight into human longings. Our choice of stories says a lot about us. When we identify with characters in a story we strengthen those aspects in ourselves. The British press is already looking forward to the wedding as a moment to help the nation look beyond its problems, have its spirits lifted and its wounds healed. It is as if the nation believes in this before-and-after story, looking to a hero to transform their circumstances, from inner poverty to riches. By what, you may ask. By just a wedding, or a wedding that has to carry all the hopes and dreams we all have for love and for life?
We too have a huge capacity to look outside ourselves for something to fulfill us. Most fairytales are quests to find out if there is a place elsewhere that has the something else that we feel we need. The biggest difficulty with this approach is that it divides the world into me and everything outside of me. And this gives rise to the tendency to look outside for something or some change in circumstance to respond to and heal the unease inside of us. We can look for a career, or a inspiring teacher, or a religion or a practice……..something, someone, to whom we can hand over the confusion and lack of direction we find inside ourselves. And often the place we do this most is in the relationships we seek to establish. We look to another person to fulfill us, to soothe the feelings of anxiety we find inside. We frequently place upon the other a wish to make our own lives more meaningful, more rich. We see the other person as the one who will fulfill our lacks, and often expect them to be able to heal our deepest wounds also. And yet relationships do go a long way to touching the core parts of our being, especially when we find someone capable of deep sensitivity and selfless caring. However, drawing close to another inevitably brings our wounded places into sharper focus, and it can be quite a challenge to keep opening up the heart and allowing another person into our deepest self.
In my experience, I find that trying to live my life in a way that leads to my deepest happiness is something that requires constant attention. I do not know if I get the balance right between outer and inner. I know that this fulness of life has something to do with living from my deepest inner capacities for loving and all that means. But often my experience is that I stumble and fall in my attempts at full expression of that capacity. Despite the desire to connect, to relax with others, I frequently hold back and check to see if they can actually hold my heart and my fears. I often pull back. I know that I am not alone in this: in my work I also encounter people who do not know how to show the love that they feel, or request the love that they need, the love whose absence makes a wound of this world and of so many lives.
Real life is more complex than enchanted fairy tales. It demands in some way that we become disenchanted, not necessarily in a bad sense, but in the sense of being freed from the spell which promises some magical saving from outside. We have to discover that there are no perfect people, perfect job, perfect set of circumstances in which to live. We have to be disenchanted in order to realize where true happiness lies. Happiness is an inside job, as a book reminds us, based on us looking inside rather than looking out., without however using that as a way of running from our need for love. The original root of the word nobility comes from the greek word gnosis, meaning knowledge or wisdom. Our true nobility does not come from some outside prince, but from knowing how to live in harmony with an open heart.
The way to true happiness isn’t through trying to make everything right and pleasant on the external dimension, but to develop the right understanding, the right attitude towards ourselves.
Ajahn Sumedho
When we consider that Helen Keller was blind and deaf, her words on how to make the most of life are reminders to all of us to look beyond the difficulties that come our way each day. Her focus was on what she could do for others and on not what the thoughts in her mind or others’ minds said she could not do.
Mindfulbalance 