Ask Lewis: 4 Simple Tips For Understanding Your Problems
The truth is that there is no problem
In life, when we are a bit stuck, we tell ourselves that some person, place, or thing is keeping us from doing what needs to be done. From the perspective of the Wisdom Path, part of your daily practice needs to focus on the organizing of what you perceive to be problems or specific obstacles so that each one can be effectively addressed.
An easy and effective way of doing this is to divide problems into four primary groups or classes. They are not all problems. Let’s distinguish between, these challenges and problems.
- Challenges Of Limited Personal Resources: These reflect your lack of skill. A key example is the inability to use the best tool in a particular situation.
- Challenges Resulting from Internal Obstacles: These reflect genetic or biological factors that are beyond your control. These can include height, gender, or some genetic predisposition.
- Problems Resulting From External Factors Beyond Your Control: These types of obstacles are often tied to a situation or environment and on a micro level might limit your ability to find like-minded people or a quiet place to meditate. On a larger level, such factors might even influence global warming. Few obstacles are insurmountable and a clear-thinking person with clear intention can usually transcend them.
- Belief-Based Obstacles: Any belief can influence virtually every aspect of your life. It is your beliefs that create the rules you choose to live by. Many of these beliefs are misguided and may interfere with your productivity and effectiveness in utilizing the resources that are readily available to you. Not all Belief Based Obstacles are negative. I certainly do not want to discard the power of faith. However, many misguided religious beliefs can prevent you from transcending an obstacle, you might easily transcend without this misguided belief. The most common belief-based obstacles include acting without assessing your motivations, a fear of failure, surrounding yourself with unsupportive people, believing what authority figures tell you is or is not possible, and ignoring important details.
Some individuals are mentally frozen when confronted with external circumstances that are beyond their control. These individuals feel overwhelmed and may genuinely feel victimized by circumstances. More often than not, they have made some decision that has created the obstacle that they feel imprisoned by.
This happens for many reasons. It may be that they focus on the wrong resources at the wrong time, delegate ineffectively, lack essential skills, have poor time management, priority planning, or organizational skills, or are attached to some false belief. Applying the five pillars of the Wisdom Practice will help you to transcend this state of paralysis.
The Ecstasy of Solution
When you live life in tune with natural law, in time you will likely come face to face with the essence of your authentic self. This primal, authentic self has two seemingly oppositional qualities. First, it exists in a place that is lonely, isolated, and private. And second, it is an ecstatic expression of how we are all one — connected to all others through the core reality of what it is to be a human being.
At the moment that you integrate these two unique and interconnected states, a breakthrough takes place. A sense of awe, ecstasy, and wonder arrives — a personal revelation, an illumination. At this moment, you will taste what it is to be self-actualized. At this moment, you will experience overwhelming love and a myriad of positive qualities. This is what is called Wisdom Mind. This is an authentic peak experience.
When such an experience takes place, it needs to be experienced as it “Is” without self-congratulation or expectation. When you are in this state, you will have an awareness of some higher truth, a connection with a transcendental unity, and a sense that you can see the world in a way that is humbling, awe-inspiring, subtle, and deeply profound.
There is also a narcissistic element to any spiritual practice that reflects a desire to have a peak experience — a state of ecstasy, usually of a transpersonal nature that exudes interconnectedness, unity, and harmony. I call this narcissistic streak a “Pseudo Peak Experience Obsession.”
An authentic peak experience is seldom a spontaneous occurrence. It often arrives through a unique event, circumstance, or occurrence that is built on self-knowledge, consistency of practice, and detachment from the idea of having a peak experience. Very few individuals have a peak experience while remaining unchanged. Often this change becomes life-enhancing and deeply positive. It will likely affect your intellectual view of the world, your attitudes, and how you function emotionally day to day.
The Takeaway
When you are in alignment with your authentic self, you will experience a sense of harmony — a softness of spirit and absolute flexibility. This is an authentic peak experience. Whenever you experience unnecessary struggle and resistance, you can be assured that you have turned your back on your authentic nature and your Zen Mind.
©Lewis Harrison, all rights reserved.
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I am Lewis Harrison, an award-winning author of over twenty books on personal growth and strategic thinking. For over a decade I was the producer and host of the show “What’s Up” on NPR-affiliated WIOX FM in New York.
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