Inside the Great Mystery that is,
we don’t really own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?
Rumi

Even though at times we find daily work a challenge, life itself is the deeper reality flowing through us. Have we become too numb to notice this?
Though we strain
against the deadening grip of daily necessity, I sense there is this mystery:
All life is being lived.
Who is living it, then?
Is it the things themselves, or something waiting inside them,
like an unplanned melody in a flute?
Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?
Is it flowers interweaving their fragrances,
or streets, as they wind through time?
Rainer Maria Rilke

All Eastern traditions agree that constant striving for a future state is the root of our unhappiness. No surprise then that the West, with its focus on achievement, has such high levels of anxiety and depression.
.Our society is very result-oriented, that’s why we are so competitive. That’s why we are always stressed, because we are always looking at something in the distance.
If you are always looking at the top of the mountain you are climbing, you cannot be aware of the grass and flowers growing at your feet.
We are always looking ahead, aren’t we? And then the actual thing, the actual living, passes us by. We are locked inside our brains, cut off from the present moment, always centered on something beyond our reach.
Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake
What holds us back is rarely life itself, but the narrative which we cling to. When the story falls silent, movement returns.
One cannot individuate as long as one is playing a role to oneself;
the convictions one has about oneself are the most subtle form of persona and the most subtle obstacle against any true individuation.
One can admit practically anything, yet somewhere one retains the idea that one is nevertheless so and so and this is always a sort of final argument which counts apparently as a plus ; yet it functions as an influence against true individuation.
Jung