What you Believe, is your Reality

Have you ever been terrorized by a thought that has set you on a worrying spree?  A powerful negative thought that set you to lead a lifestyle to avoid bringing the thought into reality. A thought that controls your life and made you dysfunctional in your relationship with yourself and others. Your pre-occupation with the thought becomes so real that you end up living with it to say, “My worst nightmare has come true” or “I am living what I dreaded the most”. It could be a fear of losing loved one, divorce, a cheating spouse, children getting into bad company or some terminal illness such as cancer.

Let’s take the example of having the fear of cancer affecting you or your loved one. It is a thought that is like the thought of a monster a child fears will come for him someday. How does the child know that the monster exists? – through books and stories he has heard. The child believes that the monster is real and lives with the anxiety of facing the monster when he is alone in the room. The thought that controls us is similar to the thought of the monster the child holds in his mind. How do we know cancer exists? – Through experiences someone had or an articles we have read. Has the child ever seen the monster? – Maybe through images on books or videos. Have you ever experienced cancer? – Maybe through a family member or friend in the past. But right now it exists in your memories of the past just as it exists for the child in his mind from what he has seen or read in in books or videos.

If the child believes in the monster and someday it is going to get him. Then, he will continue to live in worry. Similarly, if you believe that there is cancer and someday it will affect you or your loved one, you will be living your life dreading it, worrying about it.

But what is the real fear about? Is it about cancer or is it about “Death”. But then how can we fear death, when death is the only guarantee we have in life. We know that our body is not eternal and that death will free our body from the eternal soul. Everything else in life is unpredictable – who is our life partner? How many children or grandchildren we may have? How long will we live? But yes, we all will die is a reassurance life gives us. The other reassurance we have is that we are breathing in this moment and till the end of living in this body. So breathe believing in what you have. If the child believes there is no monster, the thought of its existences will cease. The fear will leave his mind. He will experience the freedom to explore his living space. Similarly, there may have been people affected by the disease. But it’s the story of someone else’s past that we allow ourselves to be affected by. It does not exist in our reality. What exists in our reality is our good health. Make the best of the fact that you are breathing, your heart is beating and you can use your body to bring better health by exercise and meditation.

The fact that we are breathing is for us to know that we are just a small drop of this marvelous nature. Our heart beats to the rhythm of nature, to remind us about our purpose and contribution to the nature. You are here not for yourself but for the world you belong to, the world that made you who you are. You owe to this world a commitment to make a difference to it. Make a positive difference for others to continue it after you have made your exit. We all have that gift to give back because we all have to inevitably play the role as a parent, sibling, professional or community member irrespective of the money, education or influence we have. We all have a ROLE to play.

Even if you or someone you knew, had the dreadful disease, or another painful life situation such as a divorce. There are have been survivors. People surviving terminal illnesses or painful separations. The reason they survived was because they had not fulfilled their purpose for living.Unless we play our role, we cannot exit. The unfortunate situations exists for us to play the role better and different from others. 

Like the child who abandons thoughts of the monster, abandon the thoughts that terrorize you. Out there is what is in here. So start from yourself. Let kindness, trust, love and compassion flow out of you and that is what will flow back to you. You are the creator of your own experiences. What you experience, creates your belief and what you believe, is your reality.