We may not always realize it but there are many people around us who lack a general feeling of contentment, happiness, and freedom.
Very few of us have real peace of mind because we carry around pockets of pain in our heart.
These pockets of pain, related to earlier negative experiences in our lives, make us develop specific fears and obsessions. When triggered, these fears and obsessions re-surface alongside repressed feelings of hurt. We thus build psyches of avoidance in order to deal with our emotional pain.
For example, a failed career or a failed relationship can lead to the pain of rejection. Although the traumatizing events may have been infrequent or may have occurred in the distant past, we may continually have to deal with the resulting feelings of rejection.
The repressed pain starts ruining our life. It ends up affecting all of our thoughts and feelings in the process.
Any behavior pattern we adopt to avoid the hurt simply risks deepening the pain itself. When we carry around several pockets of pain, our lives become miserable, as if we are always skating on thin patches of ice.
We eventually no longer directly focus on healing from our original pain of rejection. Suddenly it’s all about how to fit in, what to wear, how we talk, or what we drive… how to cope with the pain while keeping it buried.
We become further and further removed from the core pain although it is actually the motivation behind proving ourselves each day. In the case of rejection, the motivation becomes to fit in and be acceptable to avoid rejection.
But since avoiding the pain of rejection is why we’re trying to prove ourselves, we end up bringing the potential for pain into everything that happens in our lives and we are unable to live normally. To get some distance from this, you first need to get some perspective.
Walk outside on a clear night and just look up into the sky. You are sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
Though you can only see a few thousand stars, there are hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone. In fact, it is estimated that there are over a trillion stars in the Spiral Galaxy.
And that galaxy of trillion stars would look like one star to us if we could even see it. You’re just standing on one little speck of dirt and spinning around one of the many stars out there. And imagine your entity on that little spec of dirt.
From that perspective, do you really care what people think about your clothes, your accent, or your car? Should we really lose our peace of mind for what people merely think about us? And how do we develop these pockets of pain in the first place?
Advancements in science and technology have secured unimaginable levels of luxury and prosperity for us. However, these materialistic advancements have not been able to provide us with a peace of mind, much less spiritual contentment. The more strongly we embrace and sanctify material well-being, the deeper we go down into a mire of unhappiness.
The void we feel in our lives is because of this spiritual emptiness which magnifies insignificant things and events and turns them into our pockets of pain. The materialistic approach to life has sidelined our spiritual health.
We deny the existence of our soul and Creator and even the thought of being accountable for our deeds. We never think about the purpose of our existence but, like a candle in the wind, are always afflicted with worry, confusion and insecurity.
As part of its mission to create healthy communities and address intolerance in society, PeaceQuest also covers topics for those who are genuinely searching for the tranquility of the mind and soul.
Abid Ullah Jan
Abid Ullah Jan’s work here is intended to help overcome feelings of emptiness in us that leads us to adopt unhealthy habits, join a bad company and going to the extremes.
In this context, some of the questions we will explore are:
- Who are we and why are we here?
- What is life?
- What is death?
- Are we blind to our soul OR are we aware of its goals?
- What is happiness?
- How do we achieve tranquility of soul and avoid extremes?
- Stay tuned and please subscribe if you are interested in answering these questions and seeking contentment in your life.