Life Is Not Supposed To Fulfill You (Self-Quarantine Lesson #2)

We all want to feel fulfilled. It's a basic human need and a fine one. The Life Coach Training Institute that I attended and the life coaching movement itself is based on the idea of not just surviving, but of thriving. It's intended to help you live and create "your best life." Again, this is a fine intention and there's nothing wrong with pursuing it. I am grateful for how it has helped me create this life that's such a good reflection of my essential self.

The question becomes, To what degree am I expecting Life to suit my particular needs and desires, so that I can be happy, feel loved and secure, feel good about myself, or be at peace? To what degree am I expecting outer conditions to be set up in such a way that I feel good for good? It's a common illusion and one that's perpetuated by our culture. When ____ happens, or when I achieve such and such, then I can relax and rest and be happy.

This sense of postponing a feeling of fulfillment or happiness, this sense of waiting, is so much a part of us that we often don't notice that we're doing it. But, you will know this to be true if you watch your mind carefully. You'll notice how often your awareness is on some elusive, future experience, and less on the present. You'll notice how challenging it is, especially as you're performing fairly mindless tasks or while driving, to keep your thoughts on what's happening right now.

Part of this future-oriented waiting is mere habit, our mind's need for constant stimulation, the ego's need to feel that it's doing something, accomplishing something, getting somewhere. But another aspect of this is a conditioned pattern of looking for fulfillment outside of us, in all the wrong places. The fulfillment we seek is not out there. Outer life conditions can only bring temporary, fairly shallow fulfillment.

When life's not working to my liking, when I'm not feeling as fulfilled as I think I should be, it's helpful to ask myself, What am I trying to get to - feeling-wise? What am I hoping to experience or feel that I'm not feeling now? And then I let myself feel the discomfort of not having what I want, not having it the way I want it. I let myself feel the perceived lack of what I want to feel or the sense of not enough of it. I might let myself have an inner tantrum. I might let myself write out, uncensored, my tantrum-like demands and feelings - why it's unfair, why I deserve better, and so on. And I breathe and stay with it, until it settles and dissolves.

And once that happens, a deeper sense of Beingness emerges. I then let go, quite naturally, of waiting for some future out-there to fulfill me, and rest instead in deep Presence, the always available source of true and lasting fulfillment. And I have everything I need, everything I ever wanted, right here, right now.

Maybe that's what Jesus meant when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth.

Much love to you all,

Shelly