Do you wish to solve your problems instantly? Be careful what you wish for, because “problems cannot be solved at the same level where they were created” (Albert Einstein). It means that you’d have to step into a higher level instantly and accept all that such a step implies.
Although the majority of people have grown more and more sceptical of instant solutions (even instant coffee tastes weird, so how could other kinds of immediate solutions be any better?), we are often still hoping to find it someday somewhere, convinced that it would solve all our problems. Win the lottery, find the perfect job or house, find the ideal partner, etcetera. By doing this, happiness and joy are usually postponed until all problems are solved. Of course, by then you will have new problems to solve because nothing has changed in you, and you are the main character in your life.
The difference between knowing the road and walking it
In the movie ‘The Matrix’ Neo chooses the red pill that will show him what The Matrix is, partly because his life up to that moment was not really a life anyway. Just before he takes the pill, Morpheus warns him, saying: “All I am offering is the truth”. Neo still chooses the red pill, but the truth is not always what we expect it to be from where we are standing when we want it. That is why it’s not until the end of the movie that Neo starts accepting the truth, while the most significant part of his journey is marked by doubt and inner resistance (which is an essential part of the hero’s journey).
In real life, people often choose the safer blue pill that takes them back into the familiar. In Spain, there’s a saying: Better the bad but familiar than the good yet to be known. That is generally the attitude, and it’s not surprising, because the unknown often doesn’t mix well with expectations. But, times are changing. New energies have entered our time, and more people are opening up to the new possibilities that are becoming available to us in these turbulent times.
For those who are opening up, the first step of choosing the red pill is usually not the issue anymore. They are interested and eager, but they often don’t know where to start or what to look for. On top of that, they are looking for immediate solutions, which makes them extremely vulnerable for manipulation, deception and disappointment. After all, it’s the new and unknown that they are looking for (which is one of the reasons I wrote “You can be the Guru!”) and it takes time and effort to get to know and understand the new. But what happens if you do ‘take the red pill’ at some point?
The doors of perception
The red pill only shows you the entry, and as Morpheus so accurately states, “You’re the one who has to walk through it”. No one can do that for you. Most people will feel a natural inner resistance, provoked by a fear of the unknown, when approaching something new. The result is that they start doubting, resisting and rejecting what is offered, even before they know enough about it to get a clear picture of it.
Some will even still be unable to grasp and accept the new after having tried it for a while. In The Matrix, the character called Cypher is deeply disappointed with ‘the truth’ outside the Matrix and wishes to be plugged back in again. He is even willing to sacrifice all his crew members to achieve it. That means he was never open to the new and unknown in the true sense of the word(s). He was unable to let go of his expectations of what ‘the truth’ would look like and what it would (or should) bring him according to his beliefs.
Growing your very own ‘Tree of Beliefs’
The mind grows new ideas and interpretations on top of, and connected to previously obtained ideas and keeps growing on top of those unless it finds something that forces it to correct one or more of the ideas it has grown in the past. Our thoughts and ideas about ourselves and the world over time become our convictions and beliefs. With them, we create an entire ‘Tree of Beliefs’ throughout our lives, in which all ideas (even contradictory ones) are connected to the same root-beliefs.
What happens when an idea enters your awareness, is that you try to ‘plant and grow it’ on the ideas that are already in your existing Tree of Beliefs. However, trying to attach radically new and different approaches to your Tree of Beliefs will often not work right away. An inner revolution needs to take place before that can happen because many of your existing beliefs are threatened to be found untrue by such a revolution. Those beliefs could become obsolete, but our ego is emotionally attached to them and will try to defend them as if our life depends on it. In those situations, we need to let go of a part of what makes up our ego, and that can hurt like surgery without anaesthesia. So, do you still want an instant solution for all your problems?
When life shook my tree
I have lived through several situations that shook my Tree of Beliefs to a point where I had to let go of many of those almost hardwired beliefs in a short amount of time. At first, I was devastated, but soon after it felt great for a while, because of the immense inner freedom it offered. In time though, all of the ‘inner space’ those wiped out branches from my Tree of Beliefs left behind, created a vacuum of sorts, and back then I was not yet able to use that space for a higher level of consciousness.
As a consequence, I slowly started growing more and more replacing beliefs on to the ones I still had, so that space would be filled up. The egoic mind doesn’t like inner space or silence, and many people who break through one or more important beliefs will automatically start filling the void it creates. It is evident that just breaking through is not enough for lasting change. We have to find an alternative solution, preferably with as little inconvenience as possible, and there is one. It can offer inner freedom which you can experience instantly, but it also has a long term component or process to, for example, clean up the ‘mess’ in your Tree of Beliefs at your own pace.
Radical idea number 1: Starting the inner revolution
The first radical idea that has to shake your Tree of Beliefs is that most problems you have, are created or made much more significant than they are by your own mind. Your problems may seem to come from outside of you because at your current level of awareness you are yet unable to identify how most problems come to exist. Looking back, how many times in your life were you actually unable to somehow deal with the life situations you were confronted with? For many people that number is close to zero.
Eckhart Tolle points to the difference between a challenge in the present moment and a problem that depends on repetitive mind activity. For example, we often start calling something a problem when we think of all the negative consequences this thing might have. ‘Might have’ is the key to unravelling this repetitive mind activity, because all these consequences haven’t happened yet, but our fear of them becoming a reality in the future is already activated. We are not just worried and pre-occupied. We are pre-scared as well, and our fear of something that might happen is often much worse than the reality that we eventually face and deal with.
Even if our worst fears became a reality, we can still only face that reality when it arrives, and it becomes the here and now. We tend to picture our problems as unclimbable future walls within our mind, but they usually come in little steps that we deal with in the here and now. Those small steps are far more manageable than this one big problem we worried so much about. And why is your mind focussing exclusively on this one pessimistic and gloomy outcome anyway, instead of dealing with the present moment?
“You are not suffering yesterday or tomorrow. You are only suffering your memory and your imagination.
Fears and insecurities are unconsciously created by you. If you do not create them, they do not exist.
If you know how to handle your thoughts and emotions, there will be no such things as anxiety, stress or tension for you.”
— Sadhguru
Radical idea number 2: Focussing on the Here and Now
Whenever you want to prepare for something, because you believe that it is going to happen, there are two things you need to realise. The first is that you can only prepare yourself in the present and if you want to do it right, you cannot also be focussed on the future in your mind, because whatever it is you are preparing right now will lose quality if you do. But what is equally important to realise, is that you will only bring yourself unnecessary suffering over something that may or may not happen by focussing on your worst fears.
So, the first thing is to always start with the present moment, even when you are preparing something for the future. However, before you dedicate time to preparing something or thinking about solutions for a possible future event, you must first make sure that you are not under the influence of mind-induced fears. If you are, you may well be imagining a future that will never happen, and your preparations will turn out to have been a waste of time, energy, and well-being in the present.
Video’s, books and articles on ‘being in the now’ can easily be found online, especially if you search for Eckhart Tolle, for example. He offers a lot of practical advice on how to stop worrying and start living the present moment and the challenges it presents. Practising this will provide peace and reduce stress, and you will get better results when facing your challenges. You may also find that this is not always enough and it is often easy to slide into your old ways where you lose control over your worries because of insistent mind activities. To face that particular challenge, you will need to brave what is probably the most radical idea of the three.
Radical idea number 3: The real obstacle
Most people are convinced that they are quite self-aware, but they are only aware of a false self-image in their mind. A person who believes that his false mirror image, or idea about themselves and their history in their mind (‘ego’) is who they truly are, does not realise that if there’s a mirror image, there must also be a real Self or Consciousness that perceives this mirror image. They cannot be the real Self or Consciousness ánd be the reflected image in the mirror at the same time. The real Self is the one listening to the voice in the head. The real Self ‘looks’ at the images within the mind. The mind and ego are therefore something (semi-)external to the real Self.
So, in a way, the problems in your mind are also outside of your Self or Consciousness because the mind itself is, in fact, a semi-external tool at the disposal of your true Consciousness. Unfortunately, by fully identifying with the content of your mind (which is what we are taught to do in modern society), you are putting your true Self or Consciousness at the disposal and mercy of your mind. In this upside down situation, you subdue your true Consciousness to the limitations and distortions of the mind as if you were walking around with blinders on. This turns the mind into the inner Matrix or virtual reality that has you enslaved and makes you believe things that may not even be true or real.
In a state of complete identification with the mind (the state in which most people currently still find themselves), we get a false and distorted sense of self that we call ego. The identification with this false sense of self keeps the real Self in a state of relative unconsciousness and lack of true Self-awareness. In this state we are aware of our ‘surroundings’ in the form of the mind and the world around us, but we are unaware that there is a real Self in which we actually experience these two surroundings, which is the Self or Consciousness in which we become aware of everything since our birth and even before that.
Leaving the Matrix of your mind behind
Focussing your attention on the present moment is a first step towards becoming aware of your true Self. When that happens, you get the opportunity to free yourself little by little from the identification with what your mind tells you and that is a revolution all by itself.
Most problems we create in our minds through repetitive thinking, are initiated and promoted by the fears that form the roots of our Tree of Beliefs (for more on the Tree of Beliefs, also read: “You can be the Guru!”). We seem to have little or no control over the thought patterns that originate from those fears until we learn how to let go of our identifications. What this shift (see also: “The One Shift that changes Everything”) of attention does, is separate the emotion from the thoughts, taking away its fuel. And without fuel, the worry-machine in your mind won’t get very far. The only ‘problem’, especially with this truth, but also with the other two truths, is that you haven’t experienced them yet, so they probably don’t fit into your current Tree of Beliefs right now.
Can you handle these truths?
I have found that most people cannot fully comprehend the real consequences of just those fundamental shifts in perspective when first confronted with them, let alone having to experience instantly all of the mind-boggling truths they would need to face to solve every problem they have. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with that because there is no need for an instant solution. Life will teach every one of us at our own pace. But wouldn’t it be great to at least give this faster option a fair chance by actually trying to adopt and integrate these red pills?
If you want to give it a try, start with Eckhart’s advice. Focussing on the challenges in the present moment is a much easier and less stressful way to work on your personal growth and development than turning them into problems in your mind. Many problems will dissipate or be avoided altogether once you start focussing more on the challenges of the present moment and less on what might happen in the future. After all, without the constant and repetitive mind activity, you will still encounter challenges in the present, but you can avoid turning them into supposed problems of the future with unnecessary activity in your mind.
Conclusion
Solving all your problems instantly is not a reasonable suggestion, but it is possible to make significant changes in a relatively short time. For that to happen, you will need to find a higher perspective, because problems cannot be genuinely solved at the same level at which they were created. You will need to integrate, experience and put in to practice at least these revolutionary ideas and for some that will turn out to be a considerable challenge.
Revolutionary idea number one offers a view on how problems come into existence. Problems are not the same things as the challenges you face in the here and now. Problems are stories in your mind which you create over time by repetitive thinking and the automated use of thought-patterns. With this repetitive thinking, you postpone any possible joy and happiness in the present moment. You ‘ruin’ the present moment by fantasising about a worst case scenario that might happen in the future.
“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.”
— Dan Zadra
Revolutionary idea number two is that problems dissipate once you start focussing on the here and now, facing the challenges of the moment. Even if your worst fears became a reality, you could only meet them as challenges in the here and now. Now is the only moment you have to live your life.
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
― Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now)
Revolutionary idea number three is that in modern society we are taught to identify with the content of our mind. We identify so much with it that we believe we are the mind. But who is listening to the voice in the mind? Who is watching the images in the mind? That is your true Self. Your true Consciousness. By experiencing your true Self, you become free of the restrictions of your mind. Free of the stories you tell yourself about yourself, your life, your ‘problems’ and about the world and people around you. Free to see things with new eyes.
Can you handle, integrate, experience, and live these radical ideas? Then you have all you need to (dis)solve your problems and face your challenges…
