8. Understanding the Equation of Life

NOTE: This is an excerpt from the book The Least You Should Know About Life.

Happiness is an inner condition; it is an experience that takes place inside your mind. If you are making unconscious choices, you are refusing to take command, to take dominion over your mind. You are leaving the door unlocked, and anyone with aggressive intent can walk right in and take over your state of mind, your life experience. The alternative is to realize that you can choose to accept your responsibility as the gatekeeper to your mind.

By making conscious choices, you can set up a screening process for what is allowed to enter. And you can also learn how to take command over what is going on inside your mind. You will then discover that there is no direct connection between your outer circumstances and your inner circumstances. Unpleasant outer conditions do not have to automatically make you unhappy. On the contrary, it is possible to be happy regardless of outer conditions. In fact, you will never be truly happy until your happiness is independent of any and all outer conditions.

To reach this state, you need to realize that there is meant to be a protective shield between your outer circumstances and your mind. The gatekeeper is you—when you accept your responsibility to make conscious choices. To fully accept this responsibility, it is essential, to realize that what makes you happy or unhappy is not the outer conditions you face but how you face those conditions.

Happiness is an inner experience, and it is the conditions inside your mind that determine how you experience life. In every situation you encounter, there are two elements that affect your experience of the situation:

• The actual, physical circumstances you encounter.

• The inner circumstances, namely what takes place in your mind, in your psyche.

There is life, meaning what goes on outside your mind. There is your life experience, meaning what goes on inside your mind. What makes a situation pleasant or unpleasant is your experience. Suffering is a condition that occurs inside your mind. Happiness is a condition inside your mind. Most people have been brought up to believe that if something “bad” happens to you, your only option is to feel bad about it. This is a lie, and all true spiritual teachers teach that you can learn to control your reactions to life.

The key to taking control over your life is to start by taking control over your life experience. Only when you start smiling at the universe, will the universe start smiling at you. To do this, you must come to understand the equation of life. Most people have been brought up to think the equation of life looks like this:

Outer circumstances + Other people = Your life experience

In reality, the equation of life looks like this:

Outer circumstances + Other people + Your inner circumstances = Your life experience

When you understand this, you can see how to begin changing your life. What makes your life a happy journey or a struggle is your life experience, which is to the right of the equal sign. In order to change the result of a mathematical equation, you only have to change one of the factors in the equation. For example,

2 + 4 + 2 = 8

can be changed by changing just one number to the left of the equal sign,

2 + 4 + 10 = 16

The message is simple. You cannot always – at least in the short term – change your outer circumstances or other people. Yet you always have the option of changing your inner circumstances. And when you do, two things will happen:

• Your life-experience will change. When you understand more about life and about yourself, you will begin to see everything in a different light. Your present understanding and beliefs form a box – a mental box – around your mind. When you look at life from inside that box, life will seem very limited, it will seem like a struggle. When you step outside your mental box, you will gain a deeper perspective and your experience of life will become more positive. If you don’t believe this, be willing to look at the lives of the many people who have faced incredible adversities yet have met them with a positive approach that helped them handle the situation with greater peace of mind.

• Your outer situation will change. It is a law of nature that the universe will reflect back to you what you send out. So when you change what you send out, the cosmic mirror will inevitably reflect back a different reality—in due time. The universe has a built-in delay factor. It protects you from instantly destroying yourself but it also delays a positive response, as will be explained later. Thus, persistence is required. In your patience possess ye your soul.

Your mind has been programmed to reject this truth, yet it is a truth that has been stated – in different ways – by all true spiritual teachers. Thus, we might call it the Secret of Life.

9. Understanding the Secret of Life

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Copyright © 2007 by Kim Michaels