Beyond the Circle of Our Everyday Life
By
Payam Ghassemlou, Ph.D.
As human beings, we need shelter, food,
safety, emotional support, health care, human connection,and many other
basics. In the circle of our everyday lives, we are busy taking care of these
basic needs while accomplishing our life goals. Many years of our lives can be
devoted to meeting goals like graduating from college, getting married, buying
a house, rearing children, having a successful career, and staying healthy. The
rest of our lives can be spent maintaining our achievements, building on them
with more accomplishments, or coping with changes and unexpected losses that
can happen to us.
This circle of everyday life, our daily
routine, is the plane of existence that most people are familiar with. It is
the outermost circle enclosing the inner circles in the continuity of
existence. Many people, not awake to anything beyond day-to-day existence, can
let life happen to them as if they are in a trance. To be in the trance is to
live life in such a way that one is completely identified with her or his
social role and status. This kind of over identification can prevent people
from living an authentic life and going beyond the mundane.
Life in a trance gets shaken up when an
unexpected loss happens. For example, a number of individuals who lost their
high profile jobs in the recent US economic recession became seriously
depressed. Since they completely relied on external circumstances like wealth,
privilege, and class to define their personal identity, the humiliation of
losing this status made them feel worthless.
During the same era, there were others
who were gainfully employed but they felt discontented. People in this category
believed they did not climb the success ladder high enough. They developed
tolerance to the highs of external accomplishments and then needed more success
to feel the same high. In addition, these people could not feel good about
themselves when they compared their successes to others’ which seemed more
impressive. Such comparing can cause self-imposed suffering. A whole lifetime
can be spent on a roller coaster of feeling accomplished versus discontented on
this plane of existence.
Luckily, we have other choices. Some of
us are exploring another plane through a journey of self discovery. We can
embark on this journey through deeper psychological and spiritual work, which
will enable us to experience the numinous in everyday life and transform our
suffering into the gold of consciousness. When we work on knowing ourselves and
bringing this consciousness to our day-to-day living, we are transforming our
lives.
One need not abandon the business of
navigating the circle of everyday life in order to participate in the journey
of self discovery, but we need to navigate with a quality of consciousness that
not only helps to fulfill our responsibilities but also get closer to our “True
Essence.” There is nothing wrong with making money and enjoying the fruits of
our labors, as long as we are not doing it for the purpose of covering up our
inferior feelings or falling into a trance of over identification with a
certain status.
On the journey of self discovery, the
progression into the core of the circle, our True Essence, is a circular
motion, not a ladder. We go around and around the circle of existence, and we
can get stuck in one track if we don’t do the inner work of understanding
ourselves. It is like walking a labyrinth only a little way and staying on the
periphery, not going to the middle to receive the spiritual and psychological
gift given there. To move to the next track and journey toward the core of the
circle, we must make a commitment to knowing ourselves. Each moment of growth
and insight can help us journey closer. The more evolved we become the closer we
are getting to the truth of who we really are.
Everyone can find her or his own unique
approach to a meaningful existence. My initiation to this journey happened at a
young age with the realization that I was different in being gay. My attempt to
understand the meaning and purpose of my gayness pushed me out of the
collective into a journey of self reflection and understanding myself. At the
same time, this journey empowered me to stand up to homophobia. For others,
this change can happen when they turn losses and tragedies into transcendent
experiences and as a result become evolved human beings.
To know ourselves we need to encounter
the unconscious. Having a guide in this process is essential. We need support
in understanding what we might encounter. There are parts of us of which we are
not completely conscious. We could think of them as layers of our personality
that impact our interaction with ourselves and the world. How these layers
impact us depends on our relationship with them. Progress toward our True
Essence is difficult if we don’t have a conscious relationship with different
parts of ourselves. Also, working with the unconscious is important because
within our unconscious reside creative potentials and answers to many of our
life mysteries.
Writing is one of the simple and yet
valuable tools we can use for self discovery and to build relationships with
different aspects of our personality. I find it very helpful to write in my
journal about the way I handled certain life challenges without being hard on
myself. Journaling helps me learn more about myself and become more aware.
Also, journaling can be a place where we record our dreams. In working with our
unconscious, we are helped by paying attention to the images that manifest in
our dreams. By analyzing our dreams with the help of a trained person, we can
learn about the content of our unconscious.
On our journey toward our True Essence,
we need to develop a quality of attention that focuses on the present moment
despite all the distractions. One way we develop such presence is by paying
attention to our breathing. Awareness of breath is a simple practice that helps
us to be in the moment and develop a deeper relationship with ourselves. We can
also bring our awareness to the present moment by paying attention to our
bodily sensations. For example, sitting on my office chair, I can notice the
comfortable experience of having my back supported by the chair. Such a
sensation of comfort can only be noticed in the present moment.
Reflecting on our life experiences and
discovering their meaning not only gives our lives a sense of purpose, but also
enriches our life journey. The journey of knowing oneself is a very personal
experience for each traveler. The goal is to have an ongoing connection to our
True Essence.
Arrival at such a connection is not the
end of the journey. It can be a doorway to an even stronger, more conscious
connection to something greater than ourselves. It can be imagined as a drop of
water merging with a Divine Ocean where one can experience Oneness. Each
traveler can experience her or his unique merger with the Divine Ocean of
Oneness. There is no end to the journey of knowing oneself for the sake of
union with a power greater than oneself. The path is infinite, and it starts
with a willingness to wake up, depart from the outside periphery, and step
inside.
For more articles by Dr. Payam, please click on the following link: https://drpayam.com/articles_and_book
For more articles by Dr. Payam, please click on the following link: https://drpayam.com/articles_and_book
© Dr. Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D. is a Licensed Marriage and
Family Therapist (Psychotherapist), in private practice in West Hollywood,
California. www.DrPayam.com
He is the author of Fruit Basket: A Gay Man’s Journey. In his
book, Dr. Payam Ghassemlou writes about the psycho-spiritual journey of a gay
man named Javid, in which he struggles with homophobia and having a life
purpose. Available on Amazon
