''Paradise Is Not A Place: It’s A State Of Consciousness''

''Close the door of self-explanation. Open the door of self-examination. '' ~Sri Chinmoy

Happy Monday loves! 🌞
I hope the new week ahead will bring you happiness and love! 💗

While building a utopic world is slightly impossible, building a paradise in our own mind is truly achievable.
I don’t know how much time left I have on my little happy island of consciousness, but for the past months as you guys have seen from my posts, I have had so much clarity in the depths of my own mind.
Sri Chinmoy’s quote is interesting in a way because for some, paradise is a state of consciousness, but one which is attained through artificial means, such as drugs and alcohol.
However, that is not the kind of paradise I will be referring to.
In my eyes, a paradise found through expanding our consciousness, is not a way to freeing ourselves from the problems we face by being attached to our mind.
It is rather a state of mind that we deliberately choose to access to live our lives differently.
Why differently?
Because when you look beyond your conceptual mind, your inner and outer reality changes.
When you let your ego die, which you can almost feel physically, you realize how much of a waste it is.
When you take off all of the layers and masks you have put around you, you come to see your true essence.
The real you.

Imagine living in a space of mind where you don’t need to take vacation from?
A mind that does not deplete you as the day goes on?
We tell ourselves internal narratives in order to remain sane, but it’s ironic as these internal dialogues often stem from insanity themselves.

I remember reading one of Ram Dass book and he was talking about his ego and so he was stating that he imagined his ego and his old self dying and putting it inside a coffin, as he was choosing to no longer honor his ego.
I think it is brilliant.
And true also, because when you choose to no longer honor your ego and agree to his impulses and desires, you literally feel as if you were physically dying.
This little bad boy has conditioned the way you have behaved until now.
It is a huge thing!

When we live by our thoughts and by the rules they impose on us, we get caught inside an internal prison.
Each one of us has the key to escape the prison of our mind.
Meditation is a powerful technique to escape it.
And the craziest part when I think about it, is that nothing changes in the external world.
It’s only what’s within us that changes. But that alone is enough to change the outer reality.

You can make a heaven of hell just like a hell of heaven.
And the one human that proves us that is no other than Viktor Frankl.
As a survivor of a Nazi death camp, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, he describes it so well:

''Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and freedom. ''

We all have the ability to either make our mind our own paradise, or our own hell.
By meditating, it can help us become more flexible with our own thoughts, with the chatter that goes on inside our minds.
Would you like to access a new state of being? 💫 🔮 💫