“I want to live the real life. I want to live my life close to the bone,” are the lyrics from a song by John Mellencamp which I am currently listening to. He describes how there comes a point in life where we realize that time is passing, and that we have been wasting it instead of living real life. That happened to me in 2021, after 57 years of conforming to social norms and values left me feeling exhausted, depressed, lost, and sick. I watched my marriage spiraling and everything I worked so hard for crumbling as my own psyche seemed to be splintering down a deep fault line. Brene Brown describes the process well in her piece, ‘Midlife Unravelling’, where everything that used to make sense, no longer does. It’s a skin-shedding moment for our spiritual evolution, and to deny or ignore it is to sign your own premature death certificate.
I believe that in the dance of life, we are all trying to make the most of life, and yet life is also trying to make the most of us. To be here, alive and kicking, is something of an honor and privilege, never mind miracle, which millions of years of evolutionary history have prepared and equipped us for. We are the present carriers of the unfolding expanding energy of a universe that is five billion years old, formed from the very stardust that coagulated into our beautiful mother earth. She still sustains us thanks to the interdependence of the orbiting stars and planets that support our uniquely balanced ecosystem. And we are but one of the many creatures that depend on her and each other for our mutual coexistence. This is real life. More lyrics come to mind like REM’s in Loosing my Religion “Life is bigger than you, and you are not me”.
So, what has this to do with you and your life? Well, I hope you will experience it as a personal clarion call, that what you are feeling in terms of fear, sadness, disappointment, exhaustion, and anger, or even numbness, is life saying you are more and there is more. And not surprisingly, real life is not to be found in all the places you have been looking. When it comes to ‘hide and seek’, we are all rather cold. So, what is it and where is it? Well, in my humble opinion, real life is peace, freedom, and joy. And it’s not on the outside, but deep down inside of you. It is waiting for you right now. It was there from the very beginning of your life, something you probably knew and experienced long ago, albeit briefly. It watched you leave, and it’s waiting for you to come back. Real life is simply being. Being with your body and all your sensations. Being with your heart and all your feelings. Being with your head and all your thoughts. Being with your soul and all your sacredness. You cannot really experience real life on the outside, without first experiencing it within you.
What stands in the way of us experiencing real life is conditioning. We have all been conditioned away from real life, not towards it. We have become a species of ‘human doings’, in order to have, but in the process, we have lost our ability to be. All other earth creatures are still instinctively being, whilst we have seemingly been disabled by our own evolutionary advancement. I think there was a time when we were a species of being and doing, but that was over five thousand years ago under a matriarchal, spiritual culture. The pendulum has since swung towards patriarchy and materialism, trapping us in a culture of consumerism, competition, and conflict, instead of consciousness, collaboration, and coexistence. When we consciously take time to nurture our own natures by practicing being*, the balance of masculine (doing) energy and feminine (being) energy will be restored in our own lives, and ultimately within our culture. Peace, freedom, and joy is real life, and we will finally play our part in being it.
*Morning Pages – Julia Cameron; Conscious Breathing – Breathwork Africa; Emotional Regulation – Brian Blem; The Work (Mental Flexibility) – Byron Katie; Meditation – TM; Cold Water Exposure – Wim Hof.