You Are Not Important
wake up to stay alive
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. — Henry David Thoreau
I’m surrounded by a sea of inspirational self love and positive affirmations on Instagram; they call on me to love myself. It’s all very nice and warm, but actually my favourite affirmations are a bit emo. To forget myself is freedom, to remember and hold onto my feelings and problems, my little human tragedies, is oh so boring! Sometimes I want to grab myself by the shoulders and shake myself. I don’t say, ‘you’re doing amazing sweetie’, I say: ‘hello! anybody there? Wake-up, wake-up, you’re missing the party!’
These are my top affirmations that help wake me up. They have the effect of getting me out of my thoughts and existing in the moment, right here, right now.
#1. I am not important
The spin on this, is that when I say ‘I’, I mean the person I have identified with, Madalin the person, my problems, my achievements, my beauty, my ugliness… It’s not spiritual bypassing. It’s recognising that all that stuff is not truly ‘me’. Unhappiness stems from over identification with all that is ‘mine’. Being unattached doesn’t mean being detached or disconnected from emotion. To be unattached it to be aware of one’s attachments; to look upon all that is ‘mine’ but not to identify with it. Reminding myself of this allows me to fall into everything, to lose myself in love, to hold myself in nature, to feel a deep belly laugh, to make fun of my problems; to be truly present in the moment.
#2. Nothing really matters
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. — Henry David Thoreau
When I say this I mean, all the things that I place importance on, all the things that I cling too, which give my life ‘meaning’: money, youth, enemies, anxieties, all of it, it doesn’t matter. It’s not real. So, what matters? What is real. What’s not real? That’s easy. You will start to name them as soon as they pop into your head. Thoughts? Not real. Arguments? Not real. High grades? Not real. So what is real? That’s easy. Laughter, tears, sunshine, rain… everything mundane and totally ordinary is everything that matters. Anything that takes us away from the perfect moment right here, right now, is not real. Slow down and pay attention to details.
#3. You’re going to get old (if you’re lucky) and die
These three phrases are all just different iterations of each other. They all mean the same thing, but when I need a bit of spice, I tell myself this corker. I like it especially when I’m having a bad body image day or contemplating my under eye wrinkles. Nothing will stop my body, my skin, my face from ageing. Eventually, I’ll either look like a grandma or a bit weird (if I start messing with my face). When I’m feeling particularly morbid, I’ll visualise my body decomposing and turning to dust. This gifts me a great sense of relief, peace, and gratitude. Life is impermanent and that’s what infuses every moment with beauty.
Samurai Zen master, Suzuki Shosan, said, "How idiotic, nobody from a hundred years ago is around today. All traces of them have vanished. But forgetting this, we desire trivial things and become planners and schemers. How stupid!” How stupid indeed.
Something to think on…
What’s the difference between daytime thoughts and nighttime dreams?*
After much contemplation, thinking, questioning, meditation, mulling over, reading, podcast listening and research, I’ve come to the deep conclusion that thinking is:
In Fact, Over-Rated.
We think too much; we think ourselves into knots and could be’s and might be’s and maybe’s and has beens. We forget who we are, we don’t know who we are.
You’re getting a massage and you realise you only have 5 minutes left. You panic. You come back into your body and you make a conscious effort to really focus on the fingers gliding over your skin, the dimmed room, the lavender scent, the soft music. You realise you were somewhere else the entire time, somewhere make-believe, stuck in a thought that was taking you away from this beautiful nowness.
Don’t live your whole life missing the massage. The party is here, right now, just waiting for you to snap out of it and join the ride. You don’t need to find it, you don’t need to gain it, attain it, buy it. It’s there. Do you want to be happy? Drop everything and be happy, it’s here right now.
It’s in the nature of imprisonment to believe we are our thoughts. — John Tarrant
Suffering is still there, but attachment to suffering is no longer there, and when attachments are dropped we are able to recognise and feel it all; the joy, the love, the beauty of this life. The anguish in a stranger’s eyes, the piercing heart, the mask slipping, the beauty of this little silly perfect human life. Without the little voices in the mind or at least with respectful pauses, with hushed voices; that let us love this life, deeply. What a joy.
So reminder. Nothing matters! Don’t think, just do — problematic babe Tom Cruise in Topgun.
With lots and lots of hugs,
Madalin
*There is no difference. Thoughts are as not-real as our dreams. They have the same qualities. Our thoughts are made up by the mind; a tale, a dream, a smoke story about the past or the future, what we perceive will happen, may happen, might happen, has happened. When we wake up from a bad dream we say, ‘thank god that was just a dream’. Our thoughts are the same. When we wake up from the belief that our thoughts are ‘real’, we are grateful thoughts are dreams.
Probably the only newsletter I actually read! Makes me laugh, makes me think and always leaves me comforted.