Flying Beyond Neurotic Labelling

Sometimes letting go is simply changing the labels you put on an event. Looking at the same event with fresh eyes.
Steve Maroboli


What holds us back from experiencing the Ultimate Reality?  Many things do including our insane compulsion to judge and label everything in us and around us instead of just experiencing it.

Through our conditioning as human beings we develop a false sense of self and see the world/Life through that narrowed and limiting perception.  We therefore  judge and label everything in  it.  Oh "this" is "good"...that is "bad.  That is a  whatever...putting a very limiting noun on the 'beingness' of something that diminishes it to the word we use to label it with. Avoid that...go after this. This is 'right' and that is 'wrong'. This makes us completely neurotic, does it not?

Labelling is not Living

We live with distorted perceptions because we limit our understanding to what our five senses determine as real and most importantly because we live in a world of judgments and labels. We don't 'experience' the full essence of Life when we' label' it.

I like this analogy Eckhart Tolle and other masters use to describe our limited perceptions and how that leads us to miss the bigger picture.  Imagine that you are flying in an airplane  through a storm.  You are in the midst of heavy clouds and turbulence and the plane is reacting to that turbulence.  Scary, right?  In those moments you are only aware of what your body is telling you.  You see only cloud, hear and feel only the bumpy ride and your own fear. You think this is all there is.

Turbulence?

That turbulence can be like the stuff that is going on around us...Life being Life.  It can come when we least expect it. What our mind does is label it as "frightening", " dangerous", "Terrible"...and focuses only on that which cause fear.  Not a pleasant way to live, is it?  Very neurotic?

Yet most of us live this way...seeing only the clouds and turbulence that are right in front us. Judging Life because of it.  We label this experience  as Life...when it is nothing more than some momentary turbulence in Life.  We might even decide to stop flying all together.  We fail to see what exists beyond the clouds.

As long as we are stuck in our thinking minds; as long as we are judging and labelling what is going on around us...we are not aware of what Life really is. We forget that there is more to this experience than the clouds and stormy flying.

What we may not know is that we can actually learn to fly above the turbulence...to take the planes we are in in ( our minds/ our awareness) to the place in which this temporary storm exists.

Fly above the clouds.  Fly above the storm and what do you find? Unlimited clear sky and space.  This is consciousness.  This is who we really are. The cloud, the storm was just something in that space.  It did not define our life...because Life is so much bigger than that.

So what do we do to cope with the turbulence?


The first thing we need to do when we experience the turbulence and storms in our lives is to put away our labels.  Put away the right and wrong of it, put away the good or bad of it.  It just is...accept it...it just is.

 Our minds and our bodies will react to storms and passing clouds, especially at first until we  master it and learn to fly above  That's okay.  Just allow...allow the turbulence, allow the reaction.  Don't resist it. Resistance only adds to and prolongs the discomfort. And it is the labelling that leads to resistance.

Practice!  Then we must begin a committed practice of training the mind to firstly sit with the turbulence without reacting ...without judging...without labelling...  and at the same time know that it is not all there is nor is it all you are. It is temporary. That blue sky beyond the turbulence  never goes away, it just gets covered from time to time by heavy clouds of life circumstances. Be aware of that space as you practice. 

At first the thoughts and the labels and the judgments will persist.  Just be aware of them.  Be aware of them as clouds or turbulence. Also be aware of the space in which they exist.  As you progress, you will eventually be able to get beyond your thinking more and more until you can  fly above it into that clear, blue infinite space.

It is all good!