Taking Life Less Personally

Why Do We Take Life So Personally?

What does a KitKat have to do with taking life less personally?

Well, nothing, obviously!

But also kind of everything as well, and I'll get to that in a moment.

In order for us to take life personally, there first has to be a sense that we are at the centre of whatever's going on around us.

We have to be identified as being the subject to which life is happening.

In other words, there has to be an ego that sees itself as a self that's separate from everything else, making it feasible for things to be personal.

Now this is the conditioning that we all have.

It's the easiest thing in the world for us to take life personally because we have egos.

But when we start to investigate - and I mean really investigate - what the ego is - where the ego is - experientially, then things start to get a little bit weird.

It turns out that the longer and the harder we look, the less there is to find.

And this presents us with a bit of a paradox.

There's nothing there.

And yet, this thing that isn't there governs so much of our lives.

We could say that the ego is an illusion, but that the illusion is real.

KitKat Mindfulness

Okay, so where does the KitKat come into play?

You're going to have to bear with me on this.

When you think of how a KitKat is put together, it's essentially two bars of chocolate covered wafer biscuit in parallel to each other, joined together by a thin strip of chocolate down the middle.

And I think this arrangement represents perfectly the Buddhist philosophy of the Two Truths, where one bar represents what we might call Conventional Truth, and the other representing Ultimate Truth.

Conventional Truth

Conventional Truth is the one that feels most familiar to us.

It's the game of life in which you are an individual that has a name.

And you're located in your body, and you have a good sense of who you are as a person.

This might include having a profession or a job title, and various roles that you play in your family and social groups that you feel are a big part of your identity.

You have a particular standing in life and a financial net worth.

You own lots of stuff. It's yours, nobody else's.

And you pay taxes.

You have a national insurance or social security number because you have a nationality.

And the country that you were born in has clearly defined borders, making it distinct from any other country.

You organise your life with the help of clocks that count hours, minutes, and seconds, and calendars that mark years, months, and days.

You're able to look at objects and know exactly what they are.

That's a tree, that's the sky, those are my shoes, this is a KitKat, you are you, I am me, they are them.

You get the gist.

There's something that it feels like to be navigating the world as one of several billion other individual separate human beings.

This is the feeling of living in Conventional Truth.

Ultimate Truth

But the other side of the Kit Kat represents Ultimate Truth, where life, the world, the universe, and all things contained within it don't exist in the way that our human minds perceive them to exist.

Ultimate Truth is free of all the concepts and notions of names and labels, status, borders, units and scales of measurement, past, present, future, the differences in the value of things.

Far from this being a world of numerous separate objects, where people and things stand in isolation of each other, nothing can exist independently by itself. Including us.

Everything is intricately interconnected as part of an indivisible whole.

And the idea that things do have their own separate identities is a construction of the ego.

We don't come into the world as separate beings.

We come out of the world as part of it.

We are literally made of the stuff.

You are a part of everything, and everything is a part of you.

And it's because we're each inseparable from everything else that life can't be personal.

There's nothing to be personal.

Other than the illusion that we exist as independent, isolated, separate selves.

Picking Sides?

So in short, Conventional Truth and Ultimate Truth appear as though they're in direct competition with one another and opposed to each other.

And we might be left feeling a kind of pressure to have to pick which side of the Kit Kat we want to be on.

But picking sides isn't the answer here.

If we live our lives exclusively on the side of Conventional Truth, then life will start to feel as if it's personal.

It can become about us working hard to prove our worthiness and earn our place in the world.

And we can carry that sense that life is something that happens to us and that our well being is at the mercy of whether things are going in our favour or not.

And that can feel really hard.

So it might feel like it's better then to pick the side of Ultimate Truth, where you can let go of it all and be at one with the universe, feel deeply connected to everyone and everything around you.

Because surely, if nothing has any meaning other than the meaning we give to it through conventional perception, then all the pressure's off.

It doesn't matter what you do, you can just float along on this peaceful stream of existence.

I mean, it sounds like there's a lot more freedom on that side, right?

And there is.

The problem is that is that there's only so much being at one with the universe-ing you can do before the bills start piling up on the mat.

Or to quote the brilliant title of a Jack Kornfield book, "After The Ecstasy, The Laundry".

Now, while Conventional Truth could be considered the game of life, the game still has to be played.

We still have to interact with each other as individuals.

We have to continue to communicate in conventional ways.

We've got to get up and go to work.

We've got to cast our votes.

We've got to pay for our shopping.

Two Truths Working As One

So how do you choose which side of the KitKat to be on?

Well, you don't.

The most important part of the KitKat is the point at which the two bars are joined together in the middle.

And the healthiest place for us to be is in that groove between them, where you can throw yourself into life fully in the conventional way.

While at the same time having full awareness and appreciation of and connection with the Ultimate Truth of who you really are and what this is all really about.

It's where you can play the game of life without having to take it all quite so seriously and quite so personally.

Now, this is a really wild ride for the ego, so if you want some help finding that balance between Conventional Truth and Ultimate Truth, then get in touch.

I would love to help you.

If you've ever wondered where the phrase "being in the groove" comes from....

It's not this!

It's from vinyl records.

But wouldn't it be cool if it was this?

Anyway, be well, please take really great care of yourself, speak soon.