Written by: Marnix Pauwels, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
If you don’t know who you really are in a metaphysical sense, emotions and worries will always trump the intellect.
You can have it all figured out, rationally, intellectually, logically, academically, but there’s a huge grey area where we get lost again and again when the shit hits the fan.
When habits strike.
When anger and aggression flare up.
When anxiety creeps in and squeezes our nervous system.
When insecurity floods our perception, crippling our performance.
It is probably the most confusing thing about being human: the notion that knowing a lot doesn’t really help you most of the time.
Carrying a library around in your head doesn’t make life easier, or happier.
Knowledge is not the ultimate way.
And it’s not just true for mundane, daily things: there are MANY spiritual seekers who’ve read all the books, watched all the videos, and are capable of reciting all the cliches while assuming the namaste-position, but still feel lost most of the time.
It’s cute, but just not enough.
(Or too much, depending how you look at it.)
The world of emotions and ideas, the crazy world of thoughts and more thoughts and thoughts about thoughts, is way too unreliable and powerful and seductive to be sufficiently suppressed or dealt with by the things we know.
Most of the time there’s just too much temporary overwhelm in the mind, too many tidal waves ready to strike and fuck you up like yesterday and the day before.
So we need an anchor.
We need to know, to feel, to truly GET that all the turbulence is not who we are, and than find what’s always there.
We need to have a deep and unwavering recognition of and connection with that which never changes, and which is therefore the single thing we can truly be.
It is the ONLY reliable, the only perfectly stable phenomenon within every human experience possible.
We need to get beyond or before or at a distance from the personal experiences, all of them, to directly recognize the impersonal nature of consciousness.
That’s it, that’s all.
We might not realize it, but that is what we are all looking for.
All of us.
This magical thing we were actually born with or in, the thing that makes all life and all of its experiences possible, and the ‘thing’ that got gradually and diligently covered up by the anxious arrogance of the mind.
Consciousness is the hopelessly subtle but unimaginably powerful helpline that is always there, but because it is, we don’t normally appreciate it.
We overlook it.
We go beyond it, constantly, and get lost in imagination.
But we CAN acknowledge it.
We can melt back into it.
And we have to.
Because if we recognize it directly and without a doubt, not as an interesting concept but more like what happens when we suddenly know how to ride a bike without falling over, we can start losing ourselves in life again.
You need the anchor.
Just find the one thing that is always here.
Marnix Pauwels, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Marnix Pauwels is a Dutch transformative coach and author of eight books -mostly- about mental health, living in Amsterdam with two cats. He has worked in advertising as a copywriter and Creative Director for 30 years, is a singer/songwriter and has extensive knowledge of addiction/compulsive behavior, depression, and anxiety, deepened by personal experience. Marnix has always been fascinated by what drives people, and more in particular, what drives them crazy. He’s read over 5.000 books on self-development/improvement, life-hacks, and spirituality viewed thousands of videos on the topics and kept on exploring the depths of the human mind and how to navigate our psychological storms with grace and respect. As a transformative coach, Marnix has helped thousands of people find a more playful, exciting, creative, and liberated life, living from a clear mind and a deep trust in their personal resilience. Marnix is a curious world traveler who loves to meet new people, write, wonder, and keep fit and happy.
