I don’t know about you, but I personally never gave two Fs about if I would be able to live life on my terms and paint reality with the vision burning through my pupils.
As long as I:
Picked the right opportunity vehicle (with massive growth potential)
Focused on mastering the fundamentals
Committed to showing up day in and day out for decades
While learning from my blunders
And keeping a “you don’t understand, I can make anything happen” type of attitude
Then it was really a foregone conclusion.
The end was already written.
(No need to stress.)
What I did give two F's about is the art of laughing my way to the top of the world.
In other words: If the end is already written and I know how the movie of life ends, then how do I want to experience the scenes of this movie as I’m living it out in real time?
Do I want to wear my forehead in knots the entire time and experience the scenes through the filter of anxiety, stress, irritability and tension?
Or do I want to laugh at the odds, take the punches of life on the chin with a grin, and artistically surf the waves of life?
If it’s the latter, then how do I go about:
Waking up in the morning
Completing my to-do list
Running a meeting
Dealing with setbacks
Interacting with others
Closing out the day
Do I infuse each and every moment with aesthetic beauty or do I just sleepwalk through all the scenes?
Is the entire purpose of the day to just wake up, complete my to-do list, and go to sleep or is it to do it in a way that turns the actual living of life into a work of art?
In the end, what matters more:
Where you ended up or how you got there (and who you became)?
I don’t know about you, but the ‘how’ and ‘who’ has always been the more interesting part because it’s relatively easy to reach the top of the world in a robot-like manner (boring AF tbh).
It’s much harder to reach the top of the world while living in an aesthetically pleasing way.
And that’s because you’re really taking on two jobs in one:
You’re focused on improving the contents of life (getting more $$$s, happy relationships, good health, fun adventures, nice material possessions – nothing wrong with this and it’s fun to show your character a good life) while also paying attention to the fabric of life aka the ‘container’ that houses all the contents.
The latter is just as important (if not more) as the former.
I know because I made all the blunders. F'd up in all the ways I could. And prioritized the contents at the expense of the container for the vast majority of my life.
Then I found myself at the top of the world with everything I wanted and I thought to myself:
“This is really F'ing cool, but the very fabric of life doesn’t really feel any different.”
I could’ve left it at that and spent the rest of my life partying away the days and nights (thinking that’s as good as it gets), but something told me to push on as it felt like I was on the brink of a major breakthrough.
And I was right.
The breakthrough was:
All the juice from life comes not only from what you do, but how you do it and what you infuse your daily tasks with. In other words: “You are the task.” And what you bring to the moment is what you get from the moment. These are the fruits that provide nutrition for your being. The more nutrition you consume, the more your actual felt sense experience of life transforms and the entire act of living becomes a creative act that produces fruits of gold.
How you walk.
How you talk.
How you write.
How you conduct a sales call.
How you stack millions of dollars.
How you talk to a friend.
How you handle a break up.
How you do a push up.
How you handle devastating news.
How you walk into the doctor’s office.
How you order a drink at the bar.
How you look at the body of a loved one in a casket.
All these actions (and everything in between) can be done in a dignified, graceful, aesthetically pleasing and nourishing way or in a robotic, checked out, nobody is home and I’m just going through the motions type of way.
If you do it in the former way, then the actual experience makes contact with your presence and produces fruits that your being ‘eats’ to grow into a greater being – resulting in real growth and transformation on all levels (no end to how good this experience of life can become).
(From this vantage point, all experiences regardless of good or bad are fruits for greater evolution)
If it’s done in the latter way, then there is nothing there to make contact with and you remain the same old you with the same old dull experience of life.
Such is the difference between living like a king/queen and living like a peasant.
A peasant has nothing. Full of lack. And inner poverty. His only hope is to collect external riches in an attempt to cover up the inner poverty.
So he loses himself entirely in the contents, but no matter what contents he accumulates he forever remains a peasant at heart because his orientation to life is based on falsehood.
A king/queen, on the other hand, has everything. Full of abundance. And inner riches. His natural orientation is to overflow and touch all that he comes across with beauty, honor, integrity and power.
So he does and becomes more of a ‘painter’ of experiences as opposed to a ‘receiver’ of experiences.
This, in return, leads to a completely different life.
I know because I’ve lived both. I’ve been the bruised and battered peasant with internal holes full of lack. I’ve also been the honorable and powerful King.
And between me and you, I’d choose being the King every single F'ing time.
So, the question now becomes:
How do you make the jump from peasant to King?
Who the F knows (we’re all just winging it).
But here’s what you can test:
Focus less on what you have to do.
Focus more on how you go about doing it.
Lace your actions with the qualities that you want to experience. Become principled in the way you live your life. Allow your external life to be a reflection of your internal values.
If you want to experience a life of beauty, walk through the world in a beautiful way. If you want to experience a life of love, color everything you touch with love. If you want to experience a life of power, bring power to your daily actions.
The more you do this, the more you will realize one of the greatest secrets of life:
The Source of all that you seek is not out there, but inside you.
Right now you probably think that in order to feel endless and overwhelming love, you need to get into a relationship with a beautiful person that you adore with all your heart.
And maybe you do. I don’t know.
Or maybe you’re just putting ‘conditions’ on the Source and looking for ‘permission slips’ before allowing yourself to experience the love that is already here.
Maybe you think that in order to feel powerful and free, you need to make billions of dollars and buy a private island.
And maybe you do. I don’t know. (Some days I do lol)
Or maybe you’re just putting ‘conditions’ on the Source and looking for ‘permission slips’ before allowing yourself to experience the power that is already here.
Conditions and permission slips are what give rise to a peasant-like existence. Living aesthetically, on the other hand, means you cease taking cues from your current reality and start painting the moments of your life with who and what you fundamentally are (an extension of Source).
In other words:
You go from taking from life to giving to life (and you cease waiting for anything. Instead, you start creating indefinitely).
This makes all the difference.
I’ve seen it so many times now that whenever somebody comes bitching and complaining to me about how life is treating him/her unjustly and nothing is working…
It’s almost always because they’ve stopped giving to life.
Fallen from King/Queen to Peasant.
This is the downfall of far too many people, but not for you, my friend. Not for you.
As long as you remember to live aesthetically and become a painter of experiences as opposed to a receiver of experiences.
In order to paint, you need a brush which is who you are (body/mind/spirit) and colors which are the qualities, values and principles that you touch the brush with.
Start touching the brush with the colors of beauty, awe, strength, resilience, freedom, power and the canvas of life will have no other choice, but to become an external symbol of beauty, awe, strength, resilience, freedom, and power.
I’ve seen this play out for so long now that I would be doing you a huge disservice by not sharing it with you.
So test it out for yourself and see what happens.
Thanks for reading!
Your friend,
/tej
p.s. “But how can I experience x when I don’t have y?” Because the source of x is inside you and it can arise without condition. Call upon it and you will feel it because you are it.
True to the core!
What a brilliant read, Tej.