Escaping From Yourself

To accept yourself as you are is such a relief because the only real misery is wanting you to be in some other way. When it’s realized one has only been trying to escape from themselves, there is peace.

When one awakens the secrets of the Universe aren’t revealed, although in a way they are, what really happens is you stop needing to escape from yourself. To me the main attribute of waking up from the sleep of unconsciousness isn’t figuring out what life is all about, it’s not being concerned with what life is all about. The escaping, searching, reaching, and need to do ceases as it’s realized what you have been escaping from is yourself. It’s a great relief to accept yourself exactly as you are because the only real misery is wanting you to be in some other way. When this is seen the need to escape subsides as does the need to be right, and the need for things to be different, especially yourself. This doesn’t mean you don’t move forward to change, but it’s done so in a way that it doesn’t cause the very suffering that one is trying to avoid. When you stop escaping from yourself, you stop reaching, this occurs naturally. I had to escape from myself for forty nine years and it nearly killed me.

This was my awakening; to see that I was always escaping from myself. It was revealed that I could stop this and I was going to be okay. This is a beautiful space to be in, it’s the space where the peace that passes all understanding arises. It’s not a magical place for a select few, it’s a place where everyone’s heart dwells, one just has to stop trying to escape to experience it. The possibilities when one stops escaping are endless, there are no blocks here so creativity arises. No one knows what exactly may arise, but I can tell you this, when you stop escaping, reaching for things stops and life is lived in the peaceful state of accepting yourself as you are and nothing more is needed.