Step one, are you? Is there something about your life that you
want to change? Are you happy in your working life?
Are you happy in your job? Are you happy with your body?
Are you happy with your perception of self? Are you happy with your attitude towards others?
Are you travelling through life feeling content, at ease,
and at one with the world, while still managing of course to accept
and understand that you are subject to bio-chemical impulses and you may be a bit
jealous or lustful or fearful and dealing with your own memories,
your personal ossified memory of who you are.
Now, I would say most of us are at some point gonna need to take a step one,
the acknowledgement that there is a problem. Something that needs to be changed.
Done it many times in my own life, I’ve admitted, of course,
that I had a problem with drugs and alcohol, and then through the care and education of
other people with more experience than me, I learned how to live one day at a time,
abstinent from drugs and alcohol. Anyone can do this.
I’ve also had to change my behaviour around promiscuity,
my behaviour around food, my behaviour around pornography
and I found this to be effective. Also, my attitude towards work, something
that perhaps everyone can identify with.
I would work kind of obsessively, unconsciously and expect work to make me feel better about
myself, like wanting to be in bigger films or
perform in front of bigger crowds, get more approval,
be negatively impacted by what was written or said about me.
This is a form of attachment to the material world that cannot abide
if you want a serene and happy life. And here is a crucial component of step one,
awakening. Becoming aware. We are encouraged, we are drawn to unconsciousness
in our culture. Our unconscious impulses are cultivated.
I’m talking about how sort of natural, libidinous flows
continually hosed onto commodities have desire continually stoked, our fear perpetually
provoked. Step one is acknowledging that this is problematic
and that you want to change it. So, take a moment to scan the horizon of your
life, your relationships with others, your family,
the people you’re in love with, your children, your parents,
have a little 360 look around the sphere that surrounds you through relationship.
Part of relationship within, part of relationship without
that constant confluence between the inner and outer worlds.
Where do you sense problems? Because once you acknowledge the problem,
perhaps it’ll be an obvious thing like, “I’m drinking all the time before breakfast”
or “I can’t control the amount I eat” or
“I’m not eating enough” or “I don’t engage in self-care,
I’ve stopped washing myself”.
It could be something obvious or it could be more subtle and insidious
“Wow I really can’t cope with being alone, I really feel like I need other people’s
approval to be okay with myself”, why haven’t you acknowledged that?
We’re ready to look at the second step. Could you not be?
Is change possible? Is there room for hope? And I believe change is possible,
because I’ve experienced it in my own life. I’ve been transported due to the care and
education that I’ve been given by others, from a place where I’m a hopeless despondent
drug addict to a person that’s completely drug free.
The second step, “could you not be?” is about change.
About inviting a power that is not yet being present in your life to enter your life.
All that power need to is take you from one state to another.
Say, you drink, can this power take you from drinking to not drinking?
Can this power, if you are unhappy in your working life,
take you from being unhappy to happy, if you’re unhappy in your personal life
can this second step, this willingness to believe that it’s possible
to not be fucked, is that something you’re willing to do?
All you need to do is say yes. Increasingly, I find myself occupying a space
where I feel, well, if there were god, if there were god,
how would god want this person in front of you to be treated now.
This person that’s suffered, this person has been in pain,
the inevitable pains of life, the disappointment, the heartbreak, the fear that comes with being
human, how would god behave now to that person?
Would they think that they were a resource to be exploited,
that their vulnerability might make them someone that you can use in some way,
or do you feel that you have a possibility to give now.
A possibility of making that person feel well. And what happens when you do that, is that
person, their gratitude fills me up.
Yes, a new sweater may make you happy, some new sneakers may give you a buzz for
a while, some pan of affluence may temporarily thrill
you, but it will pass, but the gratitude of another
person, this is true restoration. You feel it.
You feel that, like is if it were a string on a harp being strummed,
you feel it run through you. You feel your own limitlessness,
you feel your connection to the eternal, you realise it.
These rituals allow us to inhabit the sublime. The sacred becomes vivified.
“Oh life’s just life init? You live then you die”.
You get away from this mundanity, from this low expectation, from this low ceilinged
world. And now you inhabit the mystery.