Beyond What We Thought We Were
After we reach a certain point in our development, one of our greatest tasks is to question how we can become something beyond or greater than our current selves. By this, I don’t mean the incremental next step, but I mean the next breakthrough of our lives. We shouldn’t wait for that breakthrough to come to us, but rather, we must make it happen.
The task then is to look at all of our personal histories: how our parents raised us, the habits we’ve formed, the perceptions we’ve built, the factions that we’ve had thrust upon us such as our race or geographic location, and the factions we’ve purposely chosen, such as our political affiliation or possibly our religion.
We must take all of these things that make us who we are and set them aside.
Yes, we must set aside all of which has made us what we are at the present day. Why? If you continue along the path of all that made you what you are, then there is only one possible path to move forward on, and that path is what you have been conditioned to perceive, think, and act on through all of your upbringing and past. If you pursue that path, then there is no choice to be made. You are like a robot adhering to its preprogrammed nature. You can already hear the voices of your parents, peers, friends, colleagues, naysayers, and so on, and all those voices dictate what you will do next, because these are all the people who have always been in your life, and you can no longer imagine them not being in your life. They are you, and you are them, fused into one organism.
This can be good if you consciously choose to go in that direction. But I want to encourage you to consider all options, not just the convenient next steps that have already been laid out in front of you.
Just because a carpet is rolled out in front of you doesn’t mean you need to walk on it.
So again, to rise above and become something beyond yourself means to set aside everything.
Let everything go.
Entertain this idea for just a moment:
Perhaps everything you were ever instructed upon, led to believe, led to think was important, led to think would make a difference, led to think that was building upon your education and making you better or leading you toward societal views of success, well perhaps this was all just misguided, or wrong, or even a distraction along the path you were truly meant for.
Just entertain that idea for a moment now, and then set it aside. It’s okay. It’s a scary thought. It’s so absurd, in fact, that the thought itself must be wrong, somehow. But don’t shy away from the thought. Perhaps it isn’t wrong. Perhaps there is some rightness in it, and that is what you are afraid of.
Hold this thought in your head that perhaps everything you ever thought, perceived, were taught, and were guided toward, was all wrong.
When you are ready to let go of everything you ever knew and thought and were and are, then you are ready to die, be reborn, become something new, and rise as if the Phoenix from its own ashes, incapable of being decimated.
This is the way to move beyond yourself and work toward becoming something greater.
The point here is not to make you think that everything you know is wrong. The point is to make you realize that there is wrongness and rightness in everything. You should think and reflect on the wrong parts of what you have been taught in your life.
How can you identify those things? How can you accept them? How can you stop making the same kinds of mistakes over and over? You must release yourself from at least some parts of your life, history, and what you were taught to move beyond yourself.
This is not just about you and your personal life. As humans, to move beyond where we are now and reach higher states, we cannot pursue the trajectory that led us here. We cannot pursue the same thing all of humanity has pursued for all time, which has gotten us into these dire straits. We must release ourselves from our prior trajectories to pave new, more fruitful, better paths for all.
