I have a framed picture of Planet Earth, taken from outer space, hanging on my office wall. I love looking at that picture, especially when my mind is caught up in something that feels personal and up to me to figure out.
From up in our spaceship, “me” and “my problems” disappear. Concepts like good and bad, and right and wrong disappear. Categories like black, white, and brown, man and woman, us and them disappear. Labels like depressed, stuck, confused, and anxious disappear.
From outer space, we see that everything is always changing. But down on earth in our tiny corner of the planet, with the tiny subset of people we know, seeing through the fifty tiny, biased bits of information that our me-centered brain shows us each second, we don’t see that life is always changing. Things look static and serious.
Down on earth, my world revolves around me, and yours revolves around you. We hear the narrator as if it speaks the truth. Down on earth, our happiness, peace of mind, and survival look fragile and like our responsibility.
One of the most amazing things about being human is that we get to experience life from both extremes and from every point in between. We’re constantly sliding along the continuum, shifting perspectives, experiencing different realities.
We get to play down on earth, in the me-centric, separate-self, physical-world, psychological, black-and-white, cause-and-effect, close-up view of life.
And then, even while still planted firmly on earth, we get to transcend the game of life and see things from the outer space perspective where we are one, formless energy taking temporary, revolving form. As we blast off into space, we travel away from labels and buckets and categories to see that there’s just life, energy, God, oneness.
-Excerpt from Just a Thought: A No-Willpower Approach to End Self-Doubt and Make Peace with Your Mind available for pre-order now
