A client once told me about one his greatest acts of heroism: he accompanied his teenage daughter to a Taylor Swift concert.
😳
And while there, a funny thing happened, that he said it was ok to share with you.
The tickets got bought ages in advance, and naturally, there was quite a lot of thinking about it in the intervening months – thinking that intensified as the day of the gig approached. What on earth was it going to be like?!
(This is natural and normal, indeed the ‘day dreaming’ that occurs in the lead up to such momentous occasions can be almost as much fun as the event itself!)
But, as he related to me, every bit of future imagining-what-it-was-going-to-be-like placed him—his identity, let’s call him Alex—at the centre of it.
Again, totally normal. I mean, I think it would be really difficult (maybe impossible) to picture yourself at a future event, without you being there, yeah?
🧐
In all this daydreaming, he said he instinctively knew it wouldn’t be anything like he expected when he was there (he’d deliberately avoided watching the Eras Tour movie in advance) but he couldn’t really say how.
And then they day came. They were there, him and his daughter, and they had an absolutely fantastic time together.
It exceed all expectations.
🎵👩🎤🎤🎸🎶😲🙌🏻💃🏻🕺🏻
And in figuring out why, retrospectively, he noticed something curious.
That was what differed from the day dreams. That’s why it exceeded expectations.
Of course he'd had the odd moment of insecurity & self-consciousness (just read those words, with fresh eyes):
- ‘self’ – a creation of thought,
- was brought into ‘consciousness’
…where the mind got to work commenting on Alex being possibly the oldest person there! 😆
But mostly there was music and people and lights and sound and smells and vibrations and energy and dancing and singing and joy and Taylor frickin’ Swift, man!!!
But there was an absence of ego; a lack of personal thinking.
‘Alex’ was not required, for this awesome experience.
And when the Alex Ego Construct 📦 wasn’t running the show, distracting from the fact of oneness, there was the experience of oneness.
Oneness that is always there (that’s who we are) 100.000000% of the time.
You’ve experienced the fact of oneness yourself, countless times, and at a gig it’s more obvious (I reckon it’s why we hand over our money so willingly!) but it’s really just the fundamental experience of being (of ‘Innate Health’) that’s available to us, 24/7.
It’s completely brilliant, and when you get an eye for it, you’ll experience it all the more.
You’ll see how few of life’s experiences even require the creation of self-identity.
🤷🏻
So lose your self.
Lose your mind.
Do it as often as you can!
Because, as they say, ‘No self, no problem’.
😌
Giles
p.s. the illusion of self might be the stickiest story the mind tells, but—by a long shot—it’s also the most freeing, when seen through. So if you feel like you're ‘stuck’ at a certain point on your journey, where you’re doing all the things you’ve been told to do but are still feeling rubbish a lot of the time, then it’s almost certainly got ‘self’ at the heart of it.
It's where having a trusted guide to help you through this stuff really comes into its own, to question, observe and point, so that you can have the insights that are just right for you, in a safe, non-judgemental space.
If you know it's time now for that change, get in touch with me here:
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Giles P Croft