Most of us spend our lives replaying the painful parts and calling it realism. That habit is a large part of why so many of us feel numb — and this is how the feeling comes back.
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A photographer can walk into a junkyard and come out with something people pay real money to hang on a wall. A photograph of a broken-down car. The beauty was already there. The eye was the thing that had to be trained. We can all train that eye.
Most of us live in our worries, our fears, our stress, our traumatic past. It is equally natural and equally true to spend that time on the good memories, the pleasures, the people we are grateful for. The word ignorance is the right one, because we are ignoring more than half of what is happening.
There is no wisdom in overthinking what already happened or what might. There is only wisdom in what we do with this moment.
Numbness isn't the absence of sensation. It's the loss of the ability to notice subtlety. When we stop feeling the small things, we start needing the extreme ones — and that is where craving, adrenaline and addiction begin.
We are present for the first bite of a meal, maybe the second, and then we stop tasting. The same is true of a sunset, a cup of tea, a conversation. When we stay with the whole experience instead of a slice of it, we stop needing more of it. That is what equanimity means — a steady peace that doesn't depend on which sensation shows up next.
And when we hold a magnifying glass over our worries and never over our blessings, our view of our own life becomes distorted. We end up making negative propaganda about ourselves.
We are the camera. What we point it at is a choice, and it can be changed at any moment.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The photographer in the junkyard
0:22 Why we live in the painful part
0:58 The other half we never visit
2:05 Ignorance means ignoring
2:55 We lose presence to pleasure too
4:05 What numbness actually is
4:33 Why we start needing the extreme
5:00 Savoring every bite
6:36 The magnifying glass
8:56 We are the camera operator
9:40 Negative propaganda about ourselves
10:37 In pain there is pleasure
11:19 Nothing outside us holds the meaning
13:18 Equanimity, the steady kind of happiness
15:13 Why unhappiness spikes with inequality
18:28 What kind of movie do you want to live in
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#mindfulness #presence #gratitude #equanimity #spiritualawakening
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