Arguing with life, stressing out over what’s here and what’s not, makes you and everyone around you miserable.

Most of us look for ways to make life better, but what if there is no way? How many years have you been at it, trying to win the unwinnable game? You win one and lose two. You gain control over one thing, and ten others slip through your fingers. You’re playing a game of whack-a-mole and something inside of you knows it, but you don’t seem to be able to stop. God knows you’ve tried.

Stopping isn’t in the game’s rulebook. It’s not part of the movement around the board of life. From the beginning you’ve been taught that stopping is as good as dying, that if you slow down at all you’ll be left behind. It’s kind of funny that the name of the end-times book series is called, Left Behind. It’s brilliant marketing. It plays on deep seated fear.

You can’t stop, so you have to keep moving.

You find a new technique, a better teacher, a retreat to attend, or you dive deeper into your meditation practice. Maybe you take up running, change your eating habits, or start a budget, one that you really intend to follow. It’s kind of like New Year’s Eve on steroids, complete with a new resolution every few months …. until you get bored, or frustrated, or sick, or just say the hell with it.

If all that effort could bring you to a full stop it would be worth whatever it cost, but it likely won’t, not this time anyway.

The dream is attractive, a siren beckoning the dream player. So instead of really stopping, you take a time out, a little breather, gain a little space for a reset, making room for a new story to start the cycle all over again. It’s a different dream, maybe only slightly so, but it’s still a tale of win and lose, of wants and desires, of magnetic pulls and impulses of rejection in dreamland.

Being asleep in the dream isn’t a bad way to live. It’s just painful, more so than is required by a long shot.  

What if you really stopped?    

Stopping, your argument with life drops away.

You’ve lost; you’ve won; oh well. It doesn’t really matter when you no longer are moving to the beat of more-better-best. Not moving at the speed of desire, you can see what this is, what life is. It’s all small potatoes. Here today, gone tomorrow. Everything is changing. Even if you appear to win, tomorrow you may just lose.     

Where did that stress go? Stopping is the ultimate stress release. Stress is caused by wanting what you don’t have and worrying that you won’t get it, getting it and worrying that you’ll lose it, or worrying about getting something you don’t want. Awaken, truly awaken, and all that worry and want drains out of you, maybe not all at once, but once this is seen for what it is, the plug is already working its way out.

Judgement? What’s that? Judgement slips out of your way of life too. All the time and effort you put into judging yourself and others, those nasty voices in your head, contrasting what is, with what should be, all of it, every last story, loses its punch. Self-acceptance goes hand in hand with the acceptance of life. You’re finally off the hook and so is everyone else.

How do you know if you’ve stopped, or if you’re still dreaming?

It’s pretty obvious when you’re willing to pay attention. You may not like life as it is, but you aren’t hustling around trying to drive change, making yourself crazy with plans and schemes. You know whatever it is will change; everything does. You can’t do stopping. That would be forcing change now wouldn’t it?

You can notice you are not stopped, that you are caught in the dream. Seems simple. It actually is. Noticing, you quite naturally, ever so organically stop, even if just for that moment.

Feel you body’s sensations, the hairs on the back of your neck, your feet on the ground, your tongue in your mouth, the beat of your heart.

Pay close attention to what you perceive. Let your focus relax all the way to no focus at all, all the way to simple awareness of experiencing.  

Just notice, feel, see.  That’s all.   

Like this and want more? An in-depth deconstruction of all the stories that keep us asleep in the dream? Check out my latest book, Actuality: infinity at play https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY

Image: Josephine Wall