Why It Is Going Awry
We are seemingly oblivious to the fact that our natural
life is different from our perceptions of it. In fact, the
more we uncover our own lives, the more we see that
we base our very existence on being unaware of truth:
truth about what drives us, truth about what we want
with our lives, and truth about things that don’t make sense.
In short, we are seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents
in our lives. Thus, we don’t live up to our
potential—our natural lives.
Our Factor-x Patterned Lives
When we stop long enough to look at our lives, we almost always find that we’ve carved out lives that aren’t really working for us. During our lives, as a matter of course, we usually stop and look when there are big decisions or changes in the usual pattern of our day-today lives. One example of such a change is when we leave school and either start working or pursuing advanced studies. Another example is when we reach the stage where our children have grown up and leave home. Suddenly we find we have more time on our hands. Other examples of these big transitions are when we have near-death or traumatic experiences. If we choose, we could also stop at any time to take stock of our lives.
How we get to the point of stopping and looking at our lives isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that we stop, and that when we look, we’re brutally honest with ourselves. If we are, we’ll invariably see that we have a life that doesn’t work for us, and possibly hasn’t worked for us for many years, especially if we’re older when we stop and look at our lives. That our life isn’t working might be because of many different things.
……Perhaps we’ve spent months or years studying a craft or academic path that doesn’t really interest us.
……We might be married to or in a relationship with someone who doesn’t suit us, or we don’t suit them.
……We might be working long hours and have no life outside work.
……We might be living a life our parents wanted for us, not one we chose.
……We might have notched up huge amounts of debt for whatever reason.
……We might have turned out to be cheats, or thieves, or drug abusers, or promiscuous.
……We might have a life of continuously fighting with those we meet in our daily lives.
……We might not be on speaking terms with our parents or close family, even though we want to speak with them.
……Our lives might just not work for a reason we can’t even begin to figure out.
……And the list could quite possibly wrap around Planet Earth several times.
Figure 4: Exposing why things are the way they are
The point is, if you stop long enough and look carefully at your life, you might see that your life turned out different from what you’d have preferred. In fact, almost anyone who stops and looks will have the same realization.
And why is this? Have we been on a roller coaster ride with our lives, for a short period or possibly for our whole lives, even at the point that we already have grandchildren?
If our lives to this point developed in a direction that wasn’t what we envisaged, why did this happen? Is it possible that Factor-x crept in and we gave our lives away to it? Could it be that we didn’t exercise our freedom of choice? Were we not free to steer our lives in the direction of our choice? Has our life ended up as a second-choice existence?
When you stop long enough to look brutally honestly at your life, has it turned out to follow particular patterns dictated by your Factor-x? Have you lived a life of proving that you aren’t what you feel you are when your Factor-x kicks in? If you feel you are living a second-choice life, is the influence of your Factor-x why you ended up with a life that isn’t your first-choice existence? That rather than living a first-choice existence, you ended up with a life of following a quest or a pattern of continuously wanting to disprove your Factor-x?
Here is the no-brainer. All this time, it’s highly likely that you were oblivious of the existence of either Factor-x or this pattern governing your life. If this is the case, then you likely haven’t lived your life as a free, independent individual, but governed by the existence of your Factor-x: meaning that you molded your life from your desire to disprove the feelings created by your Factor-x.
Consider this: that most of us, for as long as we’ve been alive, haven’t been ourselves, but rather caught up in a pattern of disproving something.
Consider further: Whenever we have inner conflict or get strained, is it possible that those inner struggles result from this pattern: where on one side we just want to be ourselves as free, independent individuals, and on the other side we’re in total conflict and compromise ourselves by having to disprove these feelings created by our Factor-x? How is that for a realization?
And to crown it all, all this time, we were probably oblivious to the dynamic taking place, and to why it was taking place!
Fortunately—yes, you and I are very fortunate indeed—Factor-x was created as a figment of our imagination, albeit from a very real feeling underlying that imagination: so real, we didn’t realize that it’s devoid of any truth or substance.
Why fortunately? Because we “created” our Factor-x, so we can “uncreate” it and take back our lives.
This is easier said than done, of course. It takes brutal honesty and courage, beyond what we usually are accustomed to and need. But yes, it’s possible to take back our lives and live as free individuals. As a result, we break out of our patterned lives.
Be forewarned. This pattern and Factor-x are devious, and seek any and every opportunity to reenter our lives. But when we become friends with it, thus not fighting Factor-x, its power is diminished and we can live almost entirely free of Factor-x’s unwanted interference.
