7 Reasons to Meditate

I have meditated on and off and to varying degrees for over 10 years now. On average, I meditate once or twice per week, about 10-20 minutes per session. I don’t view myself as an expert on meditation, but I have had some interesting experiences from it that may help you or that could make you curious enough to try it.

These are 7 reasons to meditate, based on my experiences practicing it.

1.     Separate your Thoughts from Yourself

I have come to understand on a deeper level that I am not my thinking. In fact, through meditation, I have been able to separate myself from my thoughts. The thoughts are there, but I do not cling to them, and in practicing this, I no longer see the thoughts as my true self. I can reflect on the thoughts and interpret them if I wish, but sometimes I decide that they are not so important, and they are not me, so I do not need to focus on those particular thoughts.

2.     Be Relaxed and Mentally at Ease

Now, if someone gives me a list to remember, I can do it more easily because I am not experiencing thoughts like “don’t forget this, it’s important” and “sometimes you struggle to remember lists, maybe you should write it down” and “if you forget this, you’re going to make them mad – so you better not forget.” Strangely, I don’t “feel” more focused – I feel relaxed like it’s all okay. If I forget or misunderstand, it’s fine. In that relaxed mode, I can comprehend more without needing to verbalize and picture everything in my mind. The information is absorbed more readily.

3.     Remember More Dreams and Experience Them More Vividly

This is good and bad. I have had some dreams where loved ones died, and of course, this was troubling because I experienced it very vividly and realistically, and then later, I was able to remember the dream fully. However, I find it interesting to remember precisely what happens in my dreams - sometimes, I use this to reflect on my life path.

Ultimately, meditation has helped me to be mindful, present, and aware, and so it makes sense that by doing this in my dreams, I can experience them more vividly and remember them better. Rather than just dreams, I believe that my memory has improved in general through meditation. I believe this is because my mind is not considering all of the unimportant - and can focus fully on what is actually relevant at any given time.

4. Understand Your Dark Side

In meditation, if I am anxious or overly worried, sometimes dark thoughts or visualizations pop up, “interfering” with the meditation process. This used to worry me, but now I believe that rather than being an interference, it is a necessary part of meditation. Rather than dwelling on these dark thoughts or visualizations, I can see them and observe them without needing to fear, worry, or even react to them. I can see them without needing to allow them to affect me.

If this happens to you and you find it disturbing, you can always take a break from meditation or pursue an expert that can help you to work through this and benefit from the experience, rather than getting stuck at this point.

5.     Enter a Mode of “No-Thought.”

Many people may think this means thoughtlessness or mindlessness, but they are not the same. We tend to believe that those who think more are smarter or more capable somehow, but this isn’t necessarily the case. The more time I spend in no thought, the better I can accomplish my goals in life. The mind naturally runs wild and goes all over the place, thinking of things that are irrelevant or unhelpful or even harmful to us. I am more at peace in no thought, and I feel free not to be concerned with everything that the world focuses on. When I need to or choose to engage in thought, I can accomplish what I need to in a highly efficient way. Through meditations, I can produce the least amount of thoughts to meet my objectives – that seems to be the goal, anyway.

6.     Free Yourself from Negativity (or Negative Thinking Patterns)

Sometimes during meditation, I actually visualize or imagine that my neurons or neural networks are being freed from needing to create certain harmful or irrelevant pathways. For example, if I had a negative experience with someone in the past, does that mean my brain should forever associate that person with negative things? Perhaps it is better for my brain to literally rewire and stop needing to connect that person to certain negative ideas. I will imagine myself being released from these harmful patterns. And I think it works. I’m not sure if it works because I imagine it this way or if it works as an automatic feature of the meditation process. In time, I have spent very little energy thinking about things that I perceive as negative. I am aware of the negativity when it is there, but I do not create extra negativity in my mind by dwelling on it or cycling through it.

As a side benefit, I can often see through the negativity of daily life, and I find myself laughing at it - sometimes only mentally if it is inappropriate to actually laugh out loud. Many of us in this life get stuck in needing to react to the negativity around us. In doing so, we generate and spread our own negativity. Sometimes all you can do is laugh at the irony that people tend to react to negativity by spreading more of it. When your faucet is leaking, do you react to this by pouring extra water on top of it?

I am grateful that meditation helps me to avoid needing to repeat negative thinking cycles and negative behavioral patterns that I may have committed in my past. I can be free.

7.     Feel Interconnected with Everything

When I fall deeper into meditation, which is not always easy to achieve, I can reach a point where I do not sense my own body or mind. Rather, I may feel as if I am one with everything around me. This is not so easy to explain, but rather than being an active being with a goal or needs to accomplish something, I become just another point of awareness. I can still hear and feel, but I will manage to at least temporarily extinguish thought, the desire for thought, the desire to extinguish thought, and the desire to interpret thought.

This means that for any sensory experience I have, it seems as if it is important just for the sake of the experience itself, not because of how it relates to a self or a prior thought. I lose the sense of self, as I lose my ego. The experience may be or sound scary to some, but when you get there gradually through deeper meditations, it is a pleasant experience. If you reach this stage enough, some of the insights gained here will transfer to your daily life.

Final Thoughts

As a caveat, I cannot be certain that I have had all of these experiences due to meditation. However, sometimes I meditate to help me work through a problem, and the more I meditate, the more quickly I tend to work through those issues. I do not take any medicines regularly, so this has been my regular dose of healing in my life. Also, keep in mind that I generally practice mindfulness and work on improving my awareness. I view these as all related to meditation. To me, mindfulness is just about practicing meditation in your daily life and actions, rather than only practicing it alone and in silence (as traditionally expected).

Overall, I think meditation helps to have greater and deeper insights into life that cannot easily be put into words. You can read I. C. Robledo’s Thoughts (this site) and intellectually understand certain ideas. But some things need to be experienced directly to truly understand them on a level deeper than the intellect allows.

For example, how much does the intellect help you to understand love? How much does it help you to understand a beautiful sunset? How much does it help you to understand cruelty? Some things cannot be figured out intellectually and must be experienced to see it for what it truly is.

Meditation can provide some of those types of experiences. However, keep in mind that I have meditated for many years. If you need to see rewards immediately, then this may not be a useful path.

I believe we should all have some form of meditative experiences, but some people may prefer other routes – physical exercise, yoga, spending time in nature, mindfulness, or journaling. If meditation doesn’t work for you, try something else.

As a final note, if you are not familiar with the meditation process, countless books and sites explain it. There are many different types and ways to practice meditation. Since you can find this information easily anywhere, I have decided not to go through it here.

The Paradox of the Model Citizen

The paradox of the model citizen is that he has to know all the rules (e.g., laws, ordinances, regulations, etc.), and these rules are constantly growing, adapting, and changing – making it impossible to know them all. Then he has to obey all these rules unless it is more appropriate not to follow the rule. Rules that may be broken are those that are completely trivial or those which are unjust in their purpose. For example, the model citizen should not follow a trivial rule that gets in the way of his ability to be a productive model citizen. He should try to follow the trivial rules, but only within reason.

Also, if a rule is unjust, such as a rule that is prejudiced against some people, he has the right to defy that rule in as civil a manner as possible. However, by the nature of the rules themselves, he will likely be punished if he is caught violating a trivial rule or violating an unjust rule.

At times, the model citizen may be confronted with a situation where he must break one rule or another. In such cases, he should break the more trivial rule rather than, the more severe one. Other times, rules from one entity may conflict with the rules of another. Either way, he is in a paradox because he must choose to break a rule nonetheless. And model citizens should choose not to break any rules.

The model citizen is placed in paradoxical situations where he must defy some rules at least sometimes, meaning that he is not the model citizen. However, the model citizen that does not defy the rules is not a model citizen either because he is the fool who follows all the rules and gets in the way of society operating properly.

For example, imagine a citizen who refuses to leave a store until he receives his 12 cents in change from the cashier, even if the cashier has explained that he ran out of change. In this case, a person would be within his right to demand his change, but it is completely unreasonable. This would be especially unreasonable if this person were holding up a long line behind him.

As another example, consider a citizen who goes to the bank and wants to open a new account. The banker may say that he must sign a 25-page document to open the account. If he were actually to read it, though, the banker and surely everyone who works there would consider him a complete fool. Who would even consider wasting so much time reading this document? A model citizen may consider it, but that is the model citizen paradox, where the model citizen actually accomplishes nothing and wastes time by being the model citizen.

The true model citizen probably does not demand his 12 cents and probably does not read the 25-page document at the bank, even though such actions defy the rules or allow them to be defied.

The true model citizen values his time and ability to accomplish some good in this world. And that cannot be done if he is obsessed with every minor rule that can be used against him. The unfortunate part is that model citizens will be most concerned and worried about breaking every rule. They don’t want to tarnish their record of always following the rules. Yet, to get anything done in their lives, they must occasionally defy those rules.

Thus far, I have not even factored in all the social, implicit, unwritten rules of society.

For example:

• How many times is it appropriate to go to the restroom during the day?

• How often should you go out with friends?

• How much money should you make?

• How many friends should you have?

• How many decorations should you have in your home?

• How should you greet an acquaintance?

• How much time should you spend talking when you are in a group?

If we are overwhelmed by the official written rules, there are plenty of unwritten ones as well. Popular or likable people tend to follow these social rules well. Likewise, the model citizen will wish to follow these rules, as he values the general idea of rule-following.

The model citizen values rule-following because it helps to keep order in society. Order is good because the better you behave, the better outcomes you receive. For those unwilling to follow or obey rules, they will receive worse outcomes typically. The model citizen also values rule-following because he does not want to get in trouble for disobeying a rule. When you follow the rules, you avoid unwanted consequences. Lastly, the model citizen values rule-following because this allows him to have a more respectable and higher level in the social world. People who do not follow the rules tend to be viewed as less intelligent, troublemakers, and possibly criminals.

The problem here is that the model citizen who is too rule-focused will lose his identity. He will become obsessive about needing to follow every rule, and those rules will dictate his behaviors. He may avoid doing much because the more you do, the more likely you will break some rule, even if you were not aware of that rule.

The model citizen, in time, may lose his personal will or energy. His motivation becomes to avoid breaking the rules rather than to be his true self.

The reality is that there are so many rules at so many different levels that it would be almost impossible to avoid breaking them all – there are city, state, and federal laws. There is international law. There are rules and regulations at your workplace and every other building or organization you interact with. If you live in a gated community or apartment, they will have their own rules and regulations. If you have kids, their school has rules. And as already mentioned, there are countless unwritten social rules and expectations.

The model citizen will, of course, realize that the most critical rules are usually obvious: such as not killing, stealing, causing damage to property, drug dealing or drug use, or causing the most obvious forms of trouble.

But we should be aware that if we focus too much on rules, we may lose who we are. Rather than being who we are, we will come to avoid being who they don’t want us to be. Being who you are is different than avoiding being.

Consider the social rules that may dictate much of human behavior. Of course, etiquette is valuable in society, as this helps us to avoid being rude and hurting feelings. However, if everyone followed etiquette perfectly, where would we find personality? Isn’t personality in the nuances of how we choose or do not choose to follow etiquette?

Ask yourself: are you being you, or are you avoiding being something else?

Rules tell us what we should not be. And while these are valuable limits, especially when it comes to serious crimes or misdeeds, I don’t think we were meant to be shackled by rules everywhere we go.

For example – it is a basic social rule that we should be considerate of others. Yet, the rules are not human and not considerate of us. At some point, there are so many rules, and some of them trivial or not well known, that the rules themselves become an inconsiderate imposition on our lives.

Also, becoming obsessive about too many rules may end up creating a self-limiting mind, always focused on what we can’t and shouldn’t do, rather than on what we can and should do. If you focus on what you can’t do every day, that ends up being all you can see. Your creative abilities end up being used only for thinking about what you can’t do, rather than actually being used for their true creative purposes of coming up with new and interesting possibilities.

We need the rules – that is not in debate. However, we have so many rules that we create the paradox of the model citizen. The model citizen cannot be the model citizen. We cannot find the model citizen because he defies himself by trying to be one.

What can we do about this? Ignoring or disobeying the rules is not the answer. Rather than becoming obsessive about the rules, however, we could develop our own conscience, our sense of truths and values, and what is right. I’m not sure that we need written rules to know what is right from wrong. Thoughts or actions can actually feel wrong in your body, such as the “gut feeling.” We should listen to those to help us avoid what is wrong and move toward rightness. Do not give way to impulse – rather, listen to the deep-seated human feelings from within.

Ultimately, we should aim to take more right actions. This means that when we are presented with options or choices, we aim to do what creates more good for ourselves and the world. In this way, we can operate beyond rules and the idea of the model citizen.

The model human may be the one who knows his truth best and who demonstrates this through every action. He would not focus on not doing (e.g., obeying rules). Rather he would focus on being who he is and needs to be (e.g., doing what is true to yourself and right becomes the most worthy path).

The Value of NOT Thinking

I find it valuable to think – it helps us identify problems and find ways to resolve them. But oddly enough, there may be a great deal of value in not thinking that most of us are unaware of.

Have you ever had an experience that was supposed to be fun, but you got caught up in thought? You were busy wondering if this was as fun as something else you had done if the hot weather was ruining the experience, if you had too much work to do, and should not even be having fun in the first place.

The thoughts rolled on and on, as you almost forgot you were even having this so-called fun experience. The experience that seemed to be so much fun actually turned into a series of thoughts in your mind. Your thoughts pounded in your head, and the experience faded into the background.

Many people go on yearly or periodic vacations. And I think what we often want is to get away from our lives, ourselves, and thoughts. But what do you do when the same old thoughts you always had follow you around everywhere you go?

Can we take a vacation from thinking?

Even if you master your thoughts and don’t allow them to interfere with your experience of being and living, how will you react when people around you are bombarded by thoughts? Meaning well, they may feel the need to avoid uncomfortable silences and constantly talk about the weather, their kids, their lives, and their plans. And communication is a wonderful thing, but just as with thoughts, sometimes communication can get in the way of the experience we are having.

What if someone near you asks: Are you enjoying yourself? Do you need more of something? What do you think of that thing that just happened, that was wonderful, wasn’t it? We should take a picture – let’s pose for one here. Etc.

This sort of behavior will, of course, take us away from the experience. And we cannot always control our own thoughts, let alone the thoughts and actions of the people around us.

The first step here is to figure out if your constant thoughts are getting in the way of truly experiencing your own life. Is the analysis of everything that happens to you actually holding you back? Do you have to find meaning in everything you do, or are you let down by the fact that something was just a normal life experience that didn’t result in anything useful?

The topics I discuss on this site are not meant to cripple us in thought and anxiety over whether we are making improvements in our lives. That would be counterproductive. If you become depressed or anxious over your inability to improve in your life, then we need to reset your expectations and perhaps take a break from thinking.

Sometimes our thoughts hold us back, even if they appear to be useful or positive. This is a strange thing for many of us to realize. Our own thoughts that seem to be trying to help us can actually get in the way. Even seemingly good thoughts can get in the way of experiencing something to the fullest.

We are not our thoughts.

This is something many people fail to realize. Some people have a very dark thought, and they become distraught. They think this means they are a bad person because they have had this horrible thought. The thoughts are not just coming from us. They are produced by all of our life experiences and all that we have seen. We have all seen darkness – in ourselves, in some behaviors of the people around us, and most certainly in the news, movies, and other media. Many thoughts are not our own. Rather they are created by our experiences with the outside world.

When I have thoughts that are not especially helpful, I pretend that there is an iPad in front of me, and the sole purpose of this iPad is to record all of my thoughts. It records every single thing that happens in my head, line by line. When you see it that way, you see your thoughts as separate from yourself, and you can select the ones that are useful and forget about the rest.

The main tool I have used not to allow thinking to interfere with my experiences is to meditate. Everyone has heard about this now, so it is nothing new. To explain briefly, when you meditate, you sit quietly and observe your thoughts passing through you. You do not need to hang onto them or dwell on them. If you wish to begin, start with a few minutes of meditation per day and gradually work your way into it more deeply. Over time, this can create radical changes in the way you think or don’t think.

Mindfulness can also be useful. With mindfulness, you train yourself to be more aware of nature and what is happening around you. Rather than get lost in thought, you aim to immerse yourself in the environment around you.

The more you think, the more those thoughts crowd out the whole experience you are having. The more you focus on the experience fully and the physical sensations it causes, the less room you will have to obsess over your thoughts.

Experience more. Think Less.

As much as I think deeply, this is counterbalanced because I spend much of my time in a non-thinking mode. For example, as I write now, my mind is only on what I am doing. I have trained it not to worry about any other problems or goals that I have in my life. This is my sole focus. So I am thinking, but only on what is necessary at the moment. In anything I do, I aim to immerse myself into it, only focusing or thinking about what is necessary. Even if I have other thoughts, I don’t focus on them. I don’t give them extra attention.

These patterns are a daily practice. If you find that you have a huge log of thoughts piling up in your head every day, holding you down rather than helping you, it will help to practice meditation or mindfulness. Yoga, martial arts, or other physical exercises may produce similar results for some people as well. You can also consider having a professional massage or going to the sauna.

Whatever it is, find something that will help you to have a vacation from thinking (or perhaps a mini-vacation). This can be used as a tool to refresh and reenergize your mind to make your thinking more clear and powerful.

From Inner Focus to Outer Focus

I am extremely self-reflective. You may notice I reflect about myself, society, and even the universe.

However, at certain points, I have created so many problems that self-reflection couldn’t fix them.

When you don’t know what path to go on in life, and you’ve had limited experiences, can just thinking it through truly solve this? Instead, you may need to seek out new experiences to learn more deeply what you truly want to do.

When you have constant troubles with your spouse or significant other and every day is like walking on eggshells, is self-reflection going to resolve these issues that have built up over the years? Instead, you may need to communicate more effectively.

When you are drowning in your own self-created misery, anxiety, depression, guilt, or whatever it may be, is thinking through the thoughts that created that misery going to help? Instead, you may need to find ways to get away from your own toxic thoughts and participate more fully in the real world - get physically active, spend time with friends, or take up a hobby.

The great challenge of helping yourself or even helping others is that there is no one solution that works in all cases. I am a great proponent of self-reflection and learning about ourselves. But sometimes, the solutions to life’s troubles don’t come from within.

Sometimes we have to pay attention to what is happening around us. We have to become more in tune with what is outside of us and beyond our own small corner of the universe.

Many of our self-created problems come from assuming that we are much more important than we are. In such cases, focusing more deeply on ourselves may create more problems rather than helping to resolve them.

There are two primary forms of focus that we can employ in this life. There is Inner Focus and Outer Focus.

Inner Focus

With inner focus, you are aware of your thoughts, problems, how everything affects you, and your feelings. This can be good so that you are aware and conscious of how you are living your life.

But if your inner focus becomes too powerful or extreme, this can become like a gaping black hole that sucks you deep into yourself, to the point that it becomes difficult to escape from yourself. You can reach a point where you are stuck in your own thoughts and feelings, unable to perceive anything beyond your own miseries and problems. This is clearly counterproductive.

The trick is to catch yourself sinking into yourself deeper and deeper like quicksand and to do something about it before you truly get stuck.

Outer Focus

With outer focus, we are attuned to what is going on around us. You can see the nature around you, whether people, birds, squirrels, insects, or even plants and trees. You wake up to the fact that there is so much going on all around you. Birds are feeding their young. Bees are pollinating the flowers. A child that scraped his knees is calling for his mother.

Despite that your mind focuses most of its energy on yourself, you are not the center of the universe.

In seeing deeply into what is happening around you, it helps to diffuse your own personal problems. The more your focus is on what is happening outside of you, the smaller you and your problems seem by comparison.

I used outer focus to overcome a great fear of mine. In graduate school (a decade ago), I needed to deliver presentations regularly. Usually, every month or two, I needed to do this. But I had stage fright. As a child, I sometimes skipped school on days when I was expected to present. As an adult, I realized that skipping out was not a real option. This would not help me or anyone.

In trying to overcome my fear of public speaking, I examined myself more and more closely. What will people think if I mess up? What if I forget what I wanted to say? What if I don’t know the answer to someone’s question? I could easily fail and look stupid, and people could laugh at me. To make matters worse, possibly, I was a fairly shy, quiet individual.

The way to resolve this thinking was so simple that I was surprised when I realized the solution. The solution was to put my focus on others, not on myself. If I’m about to present, and I think, “Don’t mess this up,” then this is setting things up horribly.

Of course, I learned my material and studied it carefully, and I practiced my presentations several times. But what truly made the difference was that I changed my frame of mind.

I stopped thinking about how I was going to look. I developed a mindset where I no longer cared about myself. I focused instead outwardly on helping others. I viewed my presentation as me teaching my classmates something new. I was there to help them understand a new topic. I wasn’t there to scrutinize my every thought and move. The more I focused outwardly, the better I was able to present. I became concerned with them and their learning process, not my own appearance. After a few presentations thinking in this way, I no longer feared it.

Self-reflection is a useful skill to have. We must be cautious because it can become a harmful habit if we reach the point of Self-obsession.

I have heard of some people who were very ill – they suffered daily with fragile health. They took medications or treatments that were so strong it left them feeling weak. Yet some of these people worked intensely and performed at such a high level that people were amazed at what they could accomplish - the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg comes to mind.

Some of the world’s highest performers have this figured out. It isn’t about themselves - it’s about what greater good they can do for others.

Perhaps we will surprise ourselves when we stop getting sucked into our own daily pains and problems and instead focus outside of ourselves on helping those around us and the solutions we can provide.

Today, open your eyes and truly see what is happening around you. Let go of the pains and problems within, and focus on what is happening outside of yourself, beyond your small corner of the universe.

Thinking Styles to Perceive the True Nature of Reality

There are perhaps an infinite amount of thinking styles that we could employ to think about the world. Today, I want to highlight the most common form of thinking that we tend to use and then point to alternative thinking styles that can help us perceive reality more fully and accurately.

Categorical Thinking

This is the thinking that we begin to learn and use early on in life. For example, a young child may learn that a particular object is called a peach. The child may quickly learn that “peach” is not the name for this unique peach – such a name does not exist. Rather, “peach” is the name for all fruits of this type. The term “peach” is just a category.

This form of thinking is quite powerful because it allows us to learn and understand very quickly. Perhaps you have never heard of lychees, but these are just a type of fruit. Due to your familiarity with the category, we call fruits, you can immediately form a basic idea of what the lychee is.

When we think in categories, we are not thinking of one particular object in the real world. Rather, we are thinking of a general class of objects (or beings) in the world.

Socrates referred to the idea of forms. For example, we have an ideal conception of what a dog must be, even if that dog does not exist in the real world. These forms or ideals that we hold in our minds help us to better understand the world around us. If I see a 3-legged dog, I can understand that this is still a dog, even if it does not fit the ideal that is in my mind.

Although categorical thinking has many uses, we should understand that it is flawed because by thinking of the category, our idea of what the category must be then influences what we see. We are likely to see what we expect to see rather than what is actually in front of us.

This becomes problematic when it comes to prejudices and biases. Someone who has had repeated negative experiences with individuals of a particular ethnicity may come to assume that this whole category of people is somehow bad. Every time he sees such people, he will become angry, scared, or worried, possibly avoiding such people or treating them with contempt.

Our prior experiences shape how we see the world, so we can sometimes make the mistake of improperly categorizing something. In Into the Wild, Chris McCandless made the fatal mistake of thinking a plant was edible when it was actually poisonous. He mistook two similar-looking plants for each other, only realizing his mistake after he had eaten the poisonous one.

Of course, most mistakes that we make will not be fatal, and most of the time, we will likely be correct in our categorizations. But because we are correct most of the time, we may be overconfident in the categories we form. And we may be overconfident in thinking that our categories are meaningful when they are not always so.

Bacteria may be something that has led to many deaths. Yet, now we know that there are good bacteria and bad bacteria. Most people will have a balance of both in their bodies. Just because bacteria can lead to deaths does not make them all bad. Yet, this is the kind of assumption we often make. Something bad in one case will be assumed to be bad in most or all cases.

We intuitively think if one bacteria is bad, they must all be bad. This is because our intuition is based on categories, and those categories are often based on faulty assumptions.

Categories are useful, but other modes of thinking may help us see reality more clearly.

Essential Thinking

We can look at a sunflower (or anything in nature) with essential thinking and see it clearly for what it is. We can let go of our need to categorize everything, at least for a moment. We can stop perceiving this sunflower as just a type of sunflower – since such thinking will cause us to not see the sunflower right in front of us, but rather to see all the sunflowers we have ever seen inside of the one we are looking at. Is it more of a real experience to perceive the general idea of something, which is the concept of something in your mind based on all prior experience? Or is it more of a real experience to perceive what is right in front of you right now?

If you can perceive what is in front of you without needing to grasp all your old ideas, then you will be free to see what is indeed there. You will see that sunflower as if it were the first time you ever saw one, and you may have a magical experience.

We do not need to abandon categorical thinking, as this is probably our default mode of thought. However, we should introduce more essential thinking into our lives. There is something powerful about meeting someone from any race, background, and of any quality or feature, and then allowing your mind to melt away all those superficial qualities of a person. I say superficial because how much can you truly know about a person based on their height, weight, clothes type, and skin tone? We may just be led into making a variety of faulty assumptions based on this.

I have met people dressed very plainly who were quite wealthy. I have met people with brand new cars who were in immense debt. Some tall people feel very small on the inside. Some white people relate more to blackness, and black people who relate more to whiteness. Whiteness and blackness as words express our preconceived notions of these groups and are likely quite flawed – how can we generalize to such massive groups?

To continue, some men feel like women on the inside and vice versa. Some people of a group, ethnicity, or religion feel quite strongly about their identities, and others do not feel that it is a significant feature of them. How ignorant can we be to see that someone belongs to a category of beings based on external categorical features and then make assumptions about who they are on the inside?

I have a Hispanic skin tone and features (since I am indeed Hispanic). Thus, when I am in Mexico since my Spanish is not perfect and I have an accent, I am often seen as the American or the gringo. Yet when I am in the US, sometimes people ask me where I am from, as if they are caught up in my superficial form or my physical appearance. In being caught up in the superficial, they have failed to observe that I speak well-educated English, as you would expect a professional writer and someone with a master’s degree to have. Also, I have no foreign accent. I am just as American as any other American since I was born on this soil.

I often sense that people have identified me as not being one of them before they have had the chance to know me. I am sure I have committed this mistake with people in my past too. It is quite an easy mistake to make. We think we know something about people by seeing them at a glance, but often, we really don’t. Subconsciously, a part of us always seems to be thinking this when we meet someone new: “Is he one of my kind, or not?”

In Mexico, people can often tell that I am not from there before I even speak. Recall that I have an accent in Spanish, and I speak it imperfectly – so if I speak, the natives know I am not from there. Physically, I appear Mexican, so how would they notice that I am not from there so quickly?

Sometimes I think I am too tall. At 5’11, most Mexican men are somewhat shorter than me (at about 5’5), and I have only seen a woman taller than me once (while on average they are about 5’2) in three years of living in Mexico. Sometimes I think that perhaps we Americans dress or walk differently, or we are not in tune with some basic mannerisms and customs of the area. All these things may immediately signal to some people that I am not from there, despite my skin tone and physical features being common to the area.

So in Mexico, I am the American or gringo, and in the US, I am the Mexican American or Hispanic American. Both viewpoints are calling attention to where I am not from. Somehow in my life, I have come to feel at home with not appearing to be from wherever I happened to be at the time. I mention this feeling because I am sure all minorities have this feeling to varying degrees. And it can be difficult to process and understand this feeling even when you live it, so I imagine it is not easy to grasp when you do not have to live it.

I took us down a winding path here, but the point is that we need to learn to see the essential features of the person, or animal, or plant, or even the thing in front of us. We can lazily revert to thinking:

I have seen one dog, so I have seen them all. I have seen one tree, so I have seen them all. I have seen one apple, so I have seen them all.

But if we do, then eventually we start thinking:

I have seen one Native American person, or white person, or black person, or Hispanic person, or Asian person, so I have seen them all.

We start to see our preconceived notions of a group of people when we see a person rather than to see the particular person in front of us.

Learn to guide your focus to the essence or spirit of things. See what is actually there, not what is not. Focus on what is, not on whether some quality is lacking.

Interdependent Thinking

With interdependent thinking, we will see that the essence of people or things does not exist on its own. I am who I am, but only because of my interactions and interdependencies with the rest of the universe. For me to be here, the sun had to be there, the Earth had to be there, my parents had to be there, and the neighborhood I grew up in had to be there. For these things to be there, my parents’ families and ancestors had to be there, countries had to be there, and governments had to be there. For these things to be there, nature had to be there, ecosystems had to be there, and dinosaurs and all organisms that led to our evolution had to be there. For those things to be there, some first mover, or Creator, or big bang, beginning, or eternity had to be there. I don’t exist outside of all these other interdependencies.

We see the essence of people and things with interdependent thinking, but we move beyond this and take it a step deeper. When we study the essence of things, there is a point where there is the absence of essence. My matter is the same matter that has always existed. At one point, it was a part of the stars, at another point, a part of the seas, at another point, a part of the dinosaurs, at another point, a part of the air, and so on. The essence of things is that they are always here, and they are always flowing from one form to the next. I am a temporary form that the universe was leading up to. You are also a temporary form that the universe was leading up to. But we are not the end. The universe and its forms move on, before us, through us, after us, beyond us.

I’m not sure that we ever came to be. Perhaps we were always here, and our consciousness cannot access that because we were a part of different forms at that time (e.g., a part of the stars, the air, the water, other living organisms, etc.)

Categories are temporary classifications of things. They are impermanent. For example, did dogs exist a billion years ago? No. Did humans? No. Will we exist in our current form in another billion years? It’s quite unlikely.

Categories are impermanent. Essence is absent (or perhaps also temporary). And so, interdependence is the truth that we are left with when we chisel away the falseness of categories and essence.

Categories are truer than random or disorganized thought. Essence is truer than categories. And interdependence is truer than essence.

When you see the daisy at this level of thought, you don’t see it at one point in time, but you see it at all points in time. When you do this, the daisy is soil, water, fertilizer, a seed, sunlight, and a part of the Earth and the air, and intermixed with everything for all time. The daisy is not just the daisy we see it as now. The daisy is a temporary form, and that form will change and become a part of other forms of life and nonlife.

A Summary

With categorical thinking, we learn to perceive the general idea of things. The problem is that these categories we form can give us an incorrect picture of the thing in front of us. We focus on the categories and how we have defined them or how society has defined them that we stop seeing what is actually right in front of us. Categories can blind us to reality and the truth rather than enlighten us to it. When we have mastered how to think categorically, it is time to seek a higher form of thinking and understanding.

With essential thinking, we learn to perceive what is actually right in front of us. Categories can blind us to the reality, so essential thinking forces us to be in tune with the present, the here and now, and to experience reality to its fullest as it actually is rather than responding to our ideas of what we thought a person or thing was supposed to be. Essential thinking helps us live according to what is, rather than to what we thought was supposed to be. When we have mastered how to think essentially, it is time to seek a higher form of thinking and understanding.

With interdependent thinking, we learn that categorical thinking focuses on the temporary, essential thinking focuses on something absent, and interdependent thinking is what we are left with. This is a principle that is not bound by time. Nothing exists as a theoretical category – since these are just abstractions. And nothing exists as a pure essence of itself – since nothing exists independently on its own. Everything exists as part of a relationship with the rest of the universe. In physics, there are four forces: gravity, electromagnetism, weak forces, and strong forces. Other forces (or emotions) in the human world, such as love, happiness, anger, and fear, similarly guide the way humans move, act, and interact. All of these forces guide our relationships and interrelationships and keep us working as interdependent forces upon each other.

Be More, Do Less

When you get up in the morning, and you prepare yourself for the day, most of us probably think, “Today, I am going to do A, B, and C, etc., tasks that I have on my to-do list.” And there is something about this that becomes exhausting. Everything on the to-do list is something that we tend to resist. If we didn’t resist it, why would we have to write it down?

Do you write down that you will eat, go to the restroom, love your significant other and kids, watch TV, and so on? Probably not, but you probably do all of these things. This is because these things are in your natural state of being.

Reflecting on these ideas helped me to come to a simple yet powerful realization. We should aim to do less and be more. The amusing thing here is that as far as behavior goes, it’s all the same. Being and doing end up in you performing some actions, usually. Someone who is observing you may not be able to tell the difference, whether you are being or doing at any given moment.

However, there is a clear mental difference. Any time I am doing, I am resisting something. Perhaps it is me that I am resisting. Perhaps it is society and the fact that it makes demands on me. Perhaps it is my family who has given me these extra tasks. Whatever it is, I feel that resistance. Maybe you do too.

And so, I have learned that a key goal of life should be to be more and do less. I still have to-do lists, as there are some things which must be done. But if your whole day constitutes trying to check items off a list, something is seriously wrong. Items to do are done mostly with the purpose of completing them, so most of your life will become a series of events that you were busy completing. This appears to be joyless, and strangely enough, purposeless.

If your purpose becomes to complete tasks, you will always feel that you are not fulfilled. This is because we create endless streams of tasks to complete. Every day you will wake up feeling de-energized, as whatever you accomplished in the past seems not even to matter. All that matters is this towering list of new stuff you have to complete, so you can then move on to the next series of stuff you have to get through.

By trying to have goals and impose purpose in your life, you have actually run away from it. It’s as if our purpose in life has become to have purpose through completing tasks. And somehow, paradoxically, this is the worst way to achieve true purpose in our lives.

Then, how do we accomplish our true purpose? Not through doing tasks, but through being who we already are. Purpose is about self-discovery and then being what we have discovered ourselves to be. And through being ourselves, we learn more about ourselves, which helps us be more centered with who we already are.

Unfortunately, when we become too task-focused, those tasks are usually not for ourselves, to begin with. Some tasks are because of the boss, the significant other, the kids, the neighbors, organizations we belong to, taxes or debts we owe, etc. And when we work on tasks for others as a big part of our day, we tend to feel as if our life is not in our hands. We are doing tasks not even for us, but for other people. And so we feel exhausted and drained because we are not being for ourselves, but we are doing for others.

Obviously, as you may be thinking now, real-life does constitute many tasks that most people don’t want to do. And for many of them, there is no good way around them. My point is that we may have more control than we think. If we consciously thought through our daily rhythms, we would find that no one is forcing us to go through certain tasks. We have made it up in our minds that we needed to do them and stress about fulfilling our own need to accomplish tasks endlessly.

Every day, ask yourself: How can I be more and do less?

Trust me when I tell you that every task on your to-do list does not need to get done. And trust me when I tell you that if you are resisting yourself and exercising all your willpower every day to get through your tasks, then something has gone horribly wrong.

An overnight life change may not be practical for you. But at least search for small ways to be more and do less.

For example, I used to have to-do lists for my business that were 4-5 pages long. This was reoccurring every week. Every week, I would check some things off and add some new items, and so my list was always 4-5 pages long. It always felt overwhelming, and through the years, I realized that I had a lot of resistance. I resented this list, and I had no one to blame for it because I happen to be my own boss.

Several months ago, I realized that most of the list was not that important, and I aimed to simplify my professional goals. Currently, I only have 1 page maximum of to-dos for my business. This has helped me focus more on being who I am rather than doing an endless set of tasks.

To be more and do less means asking yourself what the most important thing in your life is. Perhaps you have many important areas in your life – such as family, a career, hobbies, etc. You should ask yourself which areas of your life are most important. And perhaps, which sub-areas of your life are most important. When you know what truly matters, you can focus on being in the moment for those parts of your life.

When you focus on being, you will be more energized, fulfilled, and more in line with your true purpose in life. You may find that being so task-focused was robbing you of your own life, and you will be more committed to avoiding getting sucked into doing so much.

Most of us have to-do lists, but I have never heard of someone having a to-be list. This is because we naturally want to be beings. We are beings, not doings. So our natural state is to be who we are, and no one needs a reminder to be who they are.

To focus on being, aim to create situations where you can be yourself more comfortably. Or aim to surround yourself with people and settings that help you to be yourself. Strive to be with people who value you personally for who you are, rather than just for the number of tasks you can accomplish per day. I realized that most of my childhood friends were just people with whom I felt comfortable being me around – and I was shy, so this was not always easy to find. As a last note, if you have the power, you may consider creating systems or settings that allow others to focus more on being rather than just doing.

There is a big difference in how we live when we are being versus when we are doing.  I find that when I am being, I am focused on being mindful. I want to savor what is happening, I want to live the moment as deeply as I can, and I am enjoying the journey of being rather than needing to have an endpoint. Rather, when I am doing tasks, I often allow myself to enter into a mindless state. This means that I become okay with doing the task to get it done, just to get to the next task so I can get it done, and so on until everything is done.

So we have to ask: Are we meant to live mindfully or mindlessly? Are we meant to be or do?

Approaching Higher Levels of Consciousness

Our consciousness needs to be ready before we can expand ourselves into higher levels of seeing, being, and doing. There are so many problems most of us are dealing with in our personal lives and with our families that most of us do not have the mental bandwidth to seriously consider problems on a higher level than our current consciousness.

It is not practical to expect anyone to jump levels, from worrying about their survival, for example, to suddenly being concerned with world peace. How can anyone expect to influence world peace if they have not been able to accomplish their own personal peace?

One of the most fruitful things we may do in our lives is to identify what level of consciousness we are at. When you know your level of consciousness, you know what types of problems you are capable of tackling. It is also useful to be aware that certain goals or problems may be above your current level of consciousness.

Here is a brief summary of some levels of consciousness:

Survival Mode

At this level, you are mostly concerned with having some basic needs met, such as food, water, and shelter. Since your life itself is possibly under threat, you face the challenge of doing the right thing and living a humble, difficult life or doing the wrong thing and receiving quick benefits from it.

For those in survival mode, the primary goal is to move out of this phase. Unfortunately, some people may become desperate and get into drug dealing or other crimes, find themselves in prison, and then become unable to escape this mode of consciousness.

At this level, hard work may not be rewarded. In fact, it may be punished, as the people around you may view you as a threat when your diligence makes them look bad. Otherwise, a boss who knows you need your job may use this knowledge against you, refusing to give you a deserved raise.

Ironically, in order to escape this level of consciousness may require you to be an especially knowledgeable, conscious, organized person. But because you are at this stage, you may not have good models to help teach you this. Also, you may be at this stage because you lacked opportunities to acquire these qualities in the first place.

The Chase

Perhaps you know what it is like to be hungry or to be without your basic needs, and so now you have been given the opportunity to chase a better way of life and you are happy to do it. You may have just completed a certification program, or a degree, or been offered a job that seemed out your league. Now, you are ready to commit and work to get that dream life you wanted.

At this point, you may find that you are actually able to save money and build up your bank account gradually and work on making life improvements such as eating better or exercising. Alternatively, through seeking a better way of life and buying more things regularly, many people will find it hard to save money when they enter this phase of consciousness. Likely, you will have the goal of moving into a better home or community, getting a car (or upgrading it), or educating yourself to pursue a path that will help get you there.

Perhaps you have lived the hard life, and are eager to enjoy the little things in life. For example, you may wish to be able to turn on the AC in the summer without worrying about how much it costs.

At this stage, we find that our good and positive actions generally lead to good and positive results. You have reached a point where the harder you work, the more rewards you tend to gain from it.

Although you may not have attained it yet, you are generally on the path to achieving what you wanted.

The issue is that as long as you are on the chase for more money, more things, more people to network with, more sales to close, and so on, you may find yourself locked into this phase, always chasing, even after you have already surpassed your goals and dreams.

Keep in mind that for some people, the chase can be for something highly maladaptive, such as alcohol, drugs, or sex – and such forms of the chase are likely to keep one stuck in this form of consciousness, or possibly even lead you back into survival mode.

Self-Understanding and Growth

Here you will be focused on understanding who you are and how you can improve yourself, not just to meet goals like getting a job or a date. Rather, you want to grow as a person at this phase because you recognize this as an important goal on its own.

You may find that you didn’t know yourself as well as you thought. Perhaps you will question things you always took for granted. You may have been born surrounded by people of a certain political belief or religious belief and now find yourself questioning it all. Everyone thinks they are right, and every belief system thinks it is right. So do you believe what you do because you are following others, or have your personal reasons for believing?

This phase will be marked by many life questions that leave us feeling conflicted:

• Who am I?

• What do I value above all else?

• Have I done something good in this world?

• Were some of the things I always thought actually wrong?

• Am I in control or just being led by outside forces around me?

• Why am I here?

• Do I matter?

• What do I believe in?

• Were the goals I set for myself the right ones?

• How can I do better?

• What will be my legacy, or what will I leave behind when I’m gone?

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If you enjoy thinking through questions such as the ones above, you may be interested in reading a book I wrote with co-author Dave Edelstein: Question Yourself: 365 Questions to Explore Your Inner Self & Reveal Your True Nature

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We may go through periods of turmoil and unrest, feeling that we don’t even know ourselves. This can happen at any point in life. We may turn to others to help us figure out who we are, and find that all we hear are what they perceive us to be. Other people have their own beliefs about who we are, but all of that is based on their perceptions and prior interactions with us. While their perceptions may help guide us to understand ourselves, they will ultimately be limited in what they can reveal to us.

We will have to decide if we will be defined by who other people think we are, based on who we have always been. Will we be limited by others, and our past, or do we want something greater for ourselves?

As a final part of your self-growth and understanding, you may come to the realization that you get to define who you are, and you get to create who you are. These are powerful ideas that when fully realized, will aid you in being your best possible self.

Becoming Your True Self

We become our true self by actualizing our self-chosen highest values.

While in the prior mode of consciousness, you probably identified some of your highest values in your life. Perhaps you will even realize that you have not been properly living out your values. You may have gotten so caught up in The Chase mode of consciousness, that you forgot what really mattered to you. Or perhaps, you never properly thought through what truly mattered to you. You allowed others to guide you toward what they valued, rather than consciously thinking through your own values.

When you have identified your highest values, you will see that all that truly matters is living by them. To live against your values is to live in falseness, and to be a hypocrite, and to cause your psyche and soul to be in pain and disorder. Every time we go against our values, we are actually going against ourselves. This leads to the inhibition or even destruction of the better parts of ourselves, which is not the way to the fruitful life.

My primary life value is truth, and I think this should be on everyone’s list of primary values. This value is so important to me because it allows me to always have a voice. Many times in my life, I felt scared to say what I truly wanted to say. I assumed that it was not important or people wouldn’t care or they would ridicule me. Now, I see that anything that comes from my heart is always worth saying, because it is my truth. Truth is actually a part of my life’s quest. I am always on the search to learn something that will help me to understand our entire universe, and our place in it.

My highest values are Truth, Balance, Love, Knowledge, and Transference. This is what I aim to live by in every thought, word, and action.

When you know all of your primary values then you can aim to live your life congruently, where your thoughts, words, and actions, and your whole self becomes one with itself. You will be a harmonious person with a clear vision for who you are, living by it every day, and people around you will come to see this too. You will represent something worth representing and not be a person who trivially pursues his impulses and desires without being connected to a greater purpose.

A powerful realization you may have at this point is that your self is connected to everyone else in the world. Your thoughts, words, beliefs, and actions are not just your own, but they ripple throughout the rest of the world. When you are lazy and do nothing for a day, that is a day that the world suffered by not gaining the best from you. When you help an elder across the street, that is a day that you, one part of the universe, is helping the elder, another part of the universe across the street. We are all parts of the universe, and not outside of it. We are all therefore interrelated with everyone and everything else. So at this stage, you will feel a compelling motivation to think better and do better not just for you, but for as many people as you can.

Your self is not just your self. Every person who has ever spoken with you or engaged with you in any way has shaped you into becoming who you are, just as you have shaped them into becoming who they are. We are all an interplay on each other, and not separate and distinct islands on our own. With these thoughts, you cannot help but focus on improving the world (the next phase of consciousness).

At the highest levels of finding yourself, you may found your own personal philosophy (or your own interpretation of it), even if this is just a mixture of other philosophies. Strictly speaking, it may not be a philosophy, but rather a religion for some people. You may grow spiritually, attaining insights that are not easily put into words. Some people may take ideas from various philosophies, religions, or spiritual traditions, to come up with their own unique path.

Improving the world

After you have surpassed survival mode, made it through the chase, figured yourself out, and then become your true self, you will be ready to aid others fully with your consciousness. Do not misunderstand, you have probably been helping others since you were on The Chase. But perhaps, when you were on The Chase, you didn’t care if you helped others. You were mostly concerned with making sure that you benefited from everything you did.

In this stage of consciousness, you are deeply concerned with everyone and everything. In reality, this mode of consciousness may happen in stages. You may find yourself more concerned with your community, then your country, then your part of the world, then the whole world. That is fine, this mode of consciousness happens in different ways for different people. Importantly, this level of consciousness involves a deeper connection with larger communities. Most people are naturally concerned with their families and close friends, almost as an extension of themselves, and so those types of connections are intertwined with our earlier stages of consciousness.

When you arrive at this level of consciousness, you may learn about physics, and realize that this domain relates to biology, which relates to your heart, which connects to all hearts, which connects to all lives. You see that physics is fundamentally important.

Then you read about history, and you realize that these stories connect to patterns in all of human history, and that currently we just happen to be in our own part of the human history. All history interrelates and interconnects, and the same themes happen over and over. So when you know your history, you know the present day, and even the future.

At this stage, with everything you learn, you can extrapolate it to mean something greater than what it was intended to mean. Everything is an analogy or metaphor or pattern from which you can absorb more understanding than was intended. You observe a bird fly outside your window, and see that humans want to be the bird, free to go anywhere they want, and free from concern.

Your seeing that the world is acting on you, and you are acting on the world, motivates you to find ways to impact the world for the better. You may pick any kind of world problem and see what you can do to make it better. For example, hunger, domestic violence, income inequality, lack of literacy or education, racism, sexism, pollution, global warming, misinformation, overpopulation, endangered animals, or improving human consciousness. There is no shortage of big problems to work on. The challenge is choosing the most important ones and then committing to them. The most important ones for you will likely be based on your most important values.

Someone who values truth above all else may choose to focus on tackling misinformation, miscommunication, poor literacy and education, and helping people to identify common personal biases (e.g., logical fallacies and cognitive biases).

As far as actually making improvements, you may decide to do this in different ways. Your daily actions may work to improve some world problem. For example, you may work in a field that works on these problems, or you may volunteer in one, or you may simply choose to speak to people about these problems and raise awareness. Another option is to donate to different causes. There is no one path for all. You will get to choose how you wish to improve the world.

A challenge at this phase is to keep ourselves grounded and remember the fundamentals. We should stay true to our core values and continue to help the most important people in our lives such as family and close friends, even though we have now come to see the greater importance of everything and the world at large. Also, we may cause ourselves new sufferings, as we see that no matter how much we do, and how much we try to change things for the better, there are limits to what we will be capable of accomplishing alone. For that reason, many people will find it useful to join organizations that can work on a greater cause together.

There are even higher levels of consciousness, but those will need to be explored at a later time.

The Cosmic Interrelatedness of Everything

I have come to have this feeling of cosmic interrelatedness with everything. This is the realization that none of us are who we think we are. Many of us think of ourselves as individuals, as having our own will, as having our own personality, and of course, this is a valid perception.

But just as it is valid, it is equally invalid.

We have such an elitist view of humans in this world, thinking that we are all that matters, and all other creatures, trees, and plants are just background scenery. We are the stars of the show, and ultimately all that matters – at least, this is how we conduct ourselves. Once long ago, we were the stars, literally the stars. We are made up of the same matter as stardust, and then once long ago, all we were was fungi, and then once long ago, all we were was aquatic animals, and then hominids, and then here we are. When we discriminate and cause harm to other species and treat them as irrelevant, we treat the very process of that which became us as irrelevant. We undermine our own evolutionary history and its importance when we undermine these living beings. Thus, we must engage the minds of ourselves and our young ones in activities that allow them to see the common thread that weaves all life together. We need to find ways to profit together collectively rather than profit off one another, ending up stuck in bringing a net increase for one and a net decrease for the other.

We are not an island to ourselves – we are interrelated with everyone who has ever touched our lives. Without every person in your life and the environment and the planet, along with the sun and universe that keeps our planet in its place, you could not be who you are now. So we are just one tiny piece of a larger puzzle piece, of a larger puzzle piece, of a larger puzzle piece. And without you, you certainly cannot exist. Yet without every other piece of the universe falling as it did, you could not exist either.

Keep this in mind. Your personality is not yours, but a fusion or collection of all the personalities around you, especially those you spend more time around. Your desires are not all your own but rather a fusion of all those desires you see around you. Your individuality is not all your own, but again, a fusion of all the individualities around you. Even if you are the rebellious type and rebelled against everything you ever saw, everything the people around you did and believed, then your being is still a reaction or a sort of output to the input that was the rest of the world acting on you.

Don Miguel Ruiz (author of The Four Agreements, one of my favorite books) says that we are domesticated through our upbringing. We learn that it is good to behave in this way and not in that way. Most of those teachings have some reasoning behind them, but some may be arbitrary, contradictory, or even poorly reasoned or based on faulty information. The teachings of domestication guide our lives and our neighbors' lives, so it is difficult to escape.

You probably eat with a fork and knife, chopsticks, or some instrument in your culture. Well, some cultures eat primarily with their hands. To you, it may seem strange and off-putting to eat with your hands, yet to them, it may seem just as strange and off-putting to eat with an instrument. Your surroundings, context, and environment helped make you who you are. We all know this, but we tend to give too much credit to who we are as unique individual beings. Just keep in mind that who you are as a unique, individual being cannot be examined as something separate from the society that has helped create who you are.

Sometimes I feel that I am directly connected to some great individuals throughout history, many who are well known and respected by most people. Perhaps this is not as crazy as it seems. Such great individuals and many others have shaped this world so much that their ideas have personally impacted what we see and the people we interact with. And so it makes sense in a way that I can see these individuals in others, in the life around me, and even in myself. I respect and revere such individuals highly, and I learn about them and live by the best of their words and actions, and so in some ways, I am them. I aspire to be them, I dream of them, and in a way, I am these great individuals and more. As a simple example, I often draw on their words and quotes, and I consider what they would have done when I have to make a decision. Then, I aim to do just that.

If one day anyone ever looks to me and asks what I would have done and tries to emulate that in their lives, I would say that they have succeeded in drawing on my life energy and that I have become a part of them.

Think of this. There is a limited amount of water on the planet. There is a limited amount of oxygen. Yet, these compounds, or at least the atoms that make them up, will circulate on this planet over and over and over. Thus, on the atomic level, any of us at any given point have the same matter in us that anyone in history may have had – from powerful or famous individuals to plants, to animals already extinct (e.g., the dinosaurs), and so on.

At the material level, all of consciousness is relying on the same elements – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc. At the material level, we are all literally interrelated. We forget this because at any point in time, I am me, and you are you. But at another point in time, the matter that was in you may have cycled on to other lifeforms, and the matter of other lifeforms may have cycled on to become you. If you need a bit more elaboration, remember that we eat and go to the restroom every day – the matter that makes us up is not static.

Here is a quick story. The other day, I was arriving home after a walk, and I saw a small rock on the sidewalk. I just walked past it and went on home. Then I began to reflect on what I had done. I was operating on the assumption that this rock didn’t have much importance to me during my day. That was true, as this rock was never going to cause me any problems. I am still on the young side and healthy, and even if I tripped on it, I would probably be fine. Then I began to think of the interrelatedness of everything, and I realized that this small rock on the sidewalk could cause an older person to trip, fall, and fracture their hip. I realized that this small rock was connected to everything. Just as I’m connected to everything, so was the rock. Nothing escapes the nature of interrelatedness.

If someone yells at me without reason, calls me names, and tells me I’m good for nothing, this might affect my whole day. I might be put in a bad mood, which might ripple into spreading more bad moods to the people around me. That, in effect, may ripple out further and further in ways that are difficult to calculate.

Let’s go back to the rock. If I trip on that rock and fall and break my wrist, that may have all kinds of unwanted aftereffects. I may choose to drive even with a broken wrist, and then I may get into an accident and injure someone else. You see, one small rock can cause big, big problems.

Incidentally, on the universal scale, Earth is just a small rock.

The point is, we should remember that the little things matter, too. There is no such thing as a small rock. The rock is small in size but has the power to change lives, for better or worse.

If the rock stays out of the sidewalk, it is perfect. It is ornamental, it looks beautiful among all the other little rocks, it helps to delineate where the sidewalk ends and begins, and everyone is happy.

Don’t worry. The next time I left the house, I saw the same little rock at the same spot I had left it, and I put it out of the way.

We are all interrelated, affecting each other’s lives. Everything that impacts me ripples out and affects everyone near me, and then near them, and then near them. Everything that impacts even a small rock ripples out and affects everything near it, and then near it, and then near it.

Because we live in the internet and social media age, where information can impact people across the globe in seconds, there is great power in even the smallest of actions to ripple out and affect us all.

Sending a positive thought or comment to one person or doing something good can ripple out quite far. You may not see all those aftereffects of your thoughts or actions. But you have to imagine that they are happening because they are.

Live more consciously through all your actions and see that they affect all that is around you.