1.
Understanding why you want answers
NOTE:
This is an excerpt from the book The
Least You Should Know About Life.
This book is for people who know they want answers to the fundamental
questions of life. Yet why do you want answers? There are two basic
reasons:
-
You recognize that you
are a spiritual seeker, meaning that you have an inherent drive
to find answers, to expand your understanding of yourself and life.
-
You are not satisfied
with your circumstances in life and you want to learn how you can
change those circumstances.
The first reason might seem
more philosophical, whereas the second is more practical. In reality,
both reasons spring from the same drive, namely the sense that there
must be more to life, which gives rise to the desire to improve your
life experience. What exactly is your life experience?
Consider two people who are both exposed to very similar outer circumstances,
such as losing a job and facing the need for a career change. One responds
by feeling like a victim and blaming it upon the employer, luck, fate
or God. This person goes into a downward spiral and later looks back
at the situation as the one thing that ruined his or her life. The other
takes the situation as a wake-up call, an opportunity to rethink life
and make some changes. This person later looks back at the situation
as the best thing that ever happened because it prompted a change that
put his or her life on a better track.
Both people faced similar outer circumstances, yet their inner experiences
were almost diametrically opposed to each other. Your inner circumstances
– the way you look at and respond to outer circumstances –
form your life experience. Yet how come two people can experience similar
outer circumstances while one person has a positive life experience
and the other has a negative life experience? The reason is that the
two people responded differently to outer circumstances. What caused
one person to have a negative life experience while the other was able
to turn the same circumstances into a positive life experience? Could
it be that one person understood something that the other person did
not know about? And because of this insight, he or she was able to choose
a better life experience. One person was able to master his or her life
experience while the other became a victim.
We now see the real reason why people want answers to the fundamental
questions of life—they want to improve their life experience!
How does this relate to the reasons mentioned above:
You have an inherent drive to find answers. There is value in knowing
more about yourself and life. Knowing who you are and why you are here
can give you a deeper sense of purpose. Life takes on a deeper meaning
and you also see a specific purpose for your own life. This obviously
improves your life experience, even if nothing changes in your outer
circumstances.
You want to improve your outer circumstances. Knowing more about yourself,
about life and about how you interact with life can empower you to make
positive changes to your outer situation. This will obviously improve
your life experience.
With this in mind, let us look for the one thing you need to know before
you can begin to change your life experience.
2.
Understanding the struggle for freedom
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Copyright
© 2007 by Kim Michaels |
