Yep, I lived there for a really long time. About pretty much everything! I seemed to have this head that just manufactured emotional facts that I then completely believed and would defend until my death, almost literally.
And as much as this whole life view really never got me anywhere that I wanted to go and caused me and those about me a great deal of suffering, it was oddly comforting. It was like my mind could just make shit up to fill in the large and glaring holes in my life. Those large reality pools that I was so deft at avoiding.
But 25 years ago, I committed to attempting to see things honestly. About you, about me, about everything. I didn’t realize it at the time but I made a decision to give up the comfort of delusion and live with the pain of clarity.
Boy, has that been a hard deal at times. I never realized how much I could miss my little delusional world. And how many times I would return to it, completely unaware that I was doing it.
I guess what has happened is that when I made a commitment to find truth and to see reality for what it is rather than what I would like it to be, I somehow damaged my delusion-making mechanism in my mind. Every single time I chose to believe what was happening over how my head wanted to recreate reality, that part of my mind and heart that was so adept at creating emotional facts got a little weaker.
As that part of me got weaker, there was kind of a void at first. I didn’t have a good replacement coping mechanism and that is where things were super painful. It was very, very hard to deal. But my willingness to feel the pain of reality and allow the clarity of truth to set in, helped me live more comfortably in my own skin over time.
It was a process and still is today. But I do believe that I see more reality today and can spot when that tricky delusional thinking creeps in...most of the time anyway.
So today I give a shout out to all of you who are trying to shake the comfort of delusion for the pain of clarity. The struggle is real...no lie. Picking up this cause doesn’t provide you a more comfortable life, but it sure does a lot of good for the soul. Today I know that I am committed to being open to the truth. I know that my head lies to me and makes shit up all the time. I still fall for it sometimes and have accepted that I probably always will. And that is ok. Because I am sure as I am sitting here typing right now that there are at least ten things that I believe true that are total BS. And today, that makes me laugh at myself and that is a good thing.
I love my life today...all of it. The parts that are hard to accept and the parts that are easy. I love knowing that I am completely full of shit about some things and can really see the truth sometimes. Most of all I love having the clarity to know that my life will forever hang in the balance of the two extremes: clarity of reality and comfort of delusion. It makes me feel safe that I know that I can count on myself to get it wrong and get it right and to never really be sure which pole I am on...or heading to. I know that the more time I practice just trying to see what is going on, the more time I get to see myself as close to who I am really as I can.
For me, choosing the pain of clarity beats the comfort of delusion because it is authentic. And the older I get the more I need authenticity over anything else. I am not sure who I was trying to be all those years and I can see how my efforts to become something and someone I wasn’t were futile...it really is a full time job just owning who I am. So just trying to do that now seems so much less work than I was doing fighting with myself trying to become someone I wasn’t.
I hope you notice just once today when you are presented with this choice, to take the easy comfort of delusion or make the harder choice to pick the pain of clarity of vision. I promise that the later reaps better, longer lasting rewards...short term pain for long term gain. Those are the deals I am trying to cut today. May you find yourself in a place where you can see yourself more clearly and find some soul peace in that. Namaste.
