What Kind of Life?

What kind of life are we living?

Pause for a moment and let this question cross your mind. What comes to mind when you consider the “how” of your life?

What determines the kind of life we lead? Our family, job, home, environment, career, material wealth, where we live… Is that all there is to it?

If I’m being honest, my own focus often revolves around the things listed above, how to maintain them, maybe even improve them. I suspect the same is true for many of us, judging by what I’ve observed in people around me.

But sooner or later, especially in those moments when things in my life aren’t going well and I find myself compelled to turn inward, I’m reminded over and over again that there’s essentially just one question about “how” we’re living that truly deserves our attention:

“In what state of being am I in this very moment?”

What this ideal “state of being” should be can be expressed through various perspectives, different life philosophies or spiritual/religious viewpoints.

Some might call it “awareness”; some might call it a “state of connection with God.” I’ll use the term “awareness” here for simplicity. (And I realize yet again that I should write a separate post about the subject of God, some other time.)

As long as we can’t look at life with a sense of trust and surrender, so long as our ego-driven impulses push us to control everything, to tilt every situation in our favor, and to evaluate and judge everything through the warped lens of our conditioned mind, we can’t consistently maintain awareness in each moment, nor can we stay meaningfully connected with life.

We need to remember, in every moment, that the only thing we genuinely control is how we perceive life, how it’s reflected in our mind and heart.

Yet we almost always direct all our attention outward, toward external circumstances that we can never fully grasp or control. Eventually, we collide with the hard truth of our lack of control, and we find ourselves looping through the same cycle, until it hurts enough to force us inward.

From this perspective, we can see how the things that go “wrong” in our lives are actually trying to wake us from that cycle, to make us look within, recognize the traps of the ego, and break free.

In this light, Niyazi Mısri’s words below might hold deeper meaning:

I sought a cure for my pain; yet my pain became my cure

Generally, those who truly pursue the truth and are on a path of spiritual or existential seeking often deal with constant challenges and hardships. From this viewpoint, these difficulties can be seen as blessings on the path to the ultimate goal.

That’s because whenever our ego is in control, whenever our attention is aimed outward, everything that goes “right” merely reinforces the ego’s belief that it’s on the right path, making it harder and harder to overcome the ego later on. We end up viewing life from behind the ego’s ever-thickening shell and ever-warped lens.

Recently, I was reading A’mâk-ı Hayâl by Filibeli Ahmet Hilmi. Near the end, in one of his dreams, the narrator finds himself a member of a community of ants that have achieved a high level of civilization, possibly even surpassing humanity in science, art, and education. One day, the ants gather for a conference where experts attempt to explain a mysterious natural phenomenon.

During the conference, a sudden flood of hot liquid sweeps through, killing thousands, including the narrator. In the dream, he can see the event from both an ant’s and a human’s point of view, witnessing how the ants had built their community near two horses. At one point, both horses urinate simultaneously, and that liquid effectively becomes a flash flood for the ants.

Days pass, and ant scientists attempt to offer a scientific explanation. Ultimately, they conclude that the area has an intense electrical field that, under certain conditions, triggers this natural phenomenon. Knowing the real cause, the narrator can’t help but laugh at their conclusion.

That story made me think about how shallow and limited our perspective can be; both in what we call “science” and in our individual views of life.

In truth, we know next to nothing about the reality of nature, the universe, even our own bodily processes, let alone the truth behind what happens in our lives.

The explanations we devise often resemble the ants’ attempts at scientific reasoning. They’re all derived from our limited knowledge and our ego-centric point of view.

We want to understand everything so we can control it, leaving no room for uncertainty. But in doing so, we often create more suffering for ourselves and the world.

Without trusting life, no matter what comes, and surrendering to it; without reaching a level of maturity that maintains awareness in every moment, we can never truly find peace or happiness.

As always, the path forward is to turn inward and continually ask ourselves how firmly we can hold on to this awareness, moment by moment.