Empowering Our Own Lives

By Sarah Perrott

The brain is the computer for the body. The senses allow us to communicate with the outside world. There are continual external expressions and we react to them like puppets. Yes. I wake up and it is sunny - I smile and feel good and then turn to put my feet in my slippers on the floor and the cat has been sick in one and I feel cross and then I go downstairs and little Taffy, my dog, runs towards me with the paper in his mouth and I feel lucky. My dog is so cute; no-one has a cuter dog that I do. I sit at my breakfast table and the maid brings me my breakfast and I feel deep contentment. I read the paper and see that the stock exchange is down and my investments will suffer; I feel sad, annoyed and concerned but then the maid brings me my mail and I open an invitation to a great man's house and I feel elated. How lucky I am to be invited to his house with other important people. Now I feel full of myself again.......

You see the pattern. We are a body - it is true - the brain is the central computer in charge of it all, including our emotional responses and thoughts. We have five senses taking in information all the time and we react through chemical exchanges happening in our body and have thoughts and feelings, opinions and woes, all from this same system that we call man.

9 times out of 10, that is all we become. There is nothing wrong with that. Nature's cycles take care of it all. We will be born and live in a variety of different ways - all within certain parameters - until the day we die. That may be sooner or later.

However, there are some of us who have maybe not had such an easy time of it and/or been vulnerable to other influences that have caused us to stop in our tracks. They have not been able to settle for those things that make people accept their lot, i.e. co-dependent relationships, substance addictions and philosophical ideas and belief systems. Some of us have stopped and asked... "Hang on, what is going on here? How come things are the way they are? What am I even? What is this place that we live in? Are we here accidentally or is there some kind of purpose?" Some of these people have looked further and spent time with others who have gained some knowledge through spending their whole lives, looking for answers to these questions. For most of us, we say, "What's the point in that, we can never really know?"

But for others of us, we have asked and asked and those questions have become the most important focus of our lives. We have not wanted to stay 'scraping the bottom,' behaving and believing we are important and valuable somehow, whilst knowing that we do not REALLY know a single thing. These people become more than just puppets here. More than just physical beings dependent on their environment. These people have experienced that there are realities beyond the physical realm. That we are not just bodies (i.e. very complicated machines).

Through questing and constantly challenging reality - we find new horizons.

We take too much blame - we all suffer from the same, it's just that some of us manage better than others. The more sincere we are, the harder it can be - because we aren't happy with just acting a part - we want REAL communications.

Don't take others responses to you as an accurate gauge of who you are and what you are about - through your own self-questing you will find a different and reliable measure. People are people - my Gran used to say "there's nout so weird as folk" and it's true. The people around you will carry on in their relatively unconscious and irresponsible manners - it doesn't mean you have to be the same. Try and see that they are not intending to be that way - they simply don't know any way to be, other than what they are being. Don't take it personally.

There are billions and billions of people here - mostly scared and out for themselves - but all in their heart of hearts, hoping for better days, for a kinder world... one where they can relax and be as they really are - to be able to stop acting and still be accepted. The only way this can happen is if there are a few of us that can take the strain and can take these people with a pinch of salt and make a fuss out of their good points. This way, we can bring enlightenment and harmony to our planet.

Is enlightenment a real possibility? I ask this because not everyone is going to change and be themselves, as they are so caught up in surviving their lives.

Each one of us has a 'ripple effect'. People meet for the first time and there are subliminal (unconscious) messages being given and received. You don't just effect the people you notice - your influence is far wider. If there were 500 people and 5 maniacs within them - if all the people didn't try, there would still be chaos. Now take the same scenario and imagine 5 conscious people. Can you imagine the impact?

This is what is going on: there are people waking up and realizing that as long as we all behave so helplessly, waiting for there to be proof before we make these greater efforts, then nothing will change. For me, I have a way I want to be regardless of whether I am one in a hundred, a thousand, or the only one.

When you go out, experiment with it. Do it consciously. One night go out and decide up front to be depressing and another, to be uplifting. You will see that the hardest thing about that is to remember and the second hardest thing about it, is to be able to keep your own desires and repulsion's out of it. But if you can do that, you may learn something new and it may even change your life.

By the way, thinking about doing that - is not the same as doing it!

If we want to reclaim the power in our own lives, that is where we must begin. With ourselves. Once we are free of fears, illusions and subsequent constraints, we interact with our environment in a positive and encouraging manner and we start to recreate our lives.