Why I Left My Comfort Zone

When you see this clear as day, you'll let go of all mental blankets...

I don’t believe comfort zones actually exist.

I believe once you wake up to this truth and embrace the terror of your situation with raw openness, you’ll be fuming with rage for all the days, months, years you’ve wasted living in fantasy land.

And with that rage, you’ll find strength. The strength you need to confront the rawness of your situation with open arms as you set sail on the adventure of a lifetime.

But how do we get there (and do it quickly, so we no longer waste time living in a comfort zone that actually doesn’t exist)?

I don’t know.

But here’s how I see it…

When a child is uncomfortable, he clings onto his blanket. With the blanket, he feels safe, protected, and comfortable. Without the blanket, he feels lost, scared, and vulnerable.

Yet if you look at the situation objectively, you’ll see that this is nothing, but a mind game. A delusion.

After all…

Objectively speaking: Does clinging onto the blanket actually protect the child from the terror of the situation he finds himself in?

Well, let’s think about it. Suppose the child is afraid that a monster is going to attack him as he sleeps. He feels scared and uncomfortable. Then he reaches for his blanket for comfort and safety. Now he no longer feels afraid, but protected and safe. Yet if there actually was a monster present, would the blanket do anything to protect the child?

Of course not. The monster would still attack the child whether he has the blanket or doesn’t have the blanket.

As a result:

Objectively speaking: The situation is STILL full of discomfort, but the child tricks himself into thinking he’s safe and protected when he’s really not.

In other words, he takes the uncomfortable situation and creates a fake comfort zone that actually doesn’t exist.

Then he lives inside this comfort zone, thinking he’s safe and protected — not realizing that he is just playing mind games with himself (and he is still at severe risk!).

But of course, a child is a child. And at that stage of development, it’s perfectly okay for the child to cling onto a blanket for safety and comfort (nothing wrong with it).

It’s a normal response.

Issue occurs when this child grows up and turns into an adult.

As this happens, he obviously ditches the blanket with age. No longer does he need it for safety and stability. But this doesn’t mean he goes unprotected now. Nope. Far from it.

Instead of the physical blanket, the grown adult now finds comfort in his mind. In his familiar ways of behaving. In his usual tendencies. In his mental delusions and ideas. In his familiar idea of self. All these, in return, serve to create a fake comfort zone for the man. They create safety and stability for him. They create comfort and reassurance.

Yet the situation itself? It remains unchanged.

When you open your eyes fully and stop hiding behind your mental blankets, you see that life itself is STILL full of discomfort and the great unknown (which can be terrifying).

We’re constantly alone. We don’t know why we’re here. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are always happening. Death can get us at any moment. And we’re forever at the mercy of life.

As you sincerely ponder this, you quickly realize…

The underlying situation is always full of great vulnerability. There is no such thing as comfort for a human being. Life is always full of discomfort and the great unknown for life is mysterious and spontaneous. Yet the man uses his mind’s ideas, beliefs, and stories of himself to create a fake comfort zone to protect himself from this underlying terror…

But does it really protect him?

Just like the baby who tries to cling onto a blanket to fight off the monsters, the adult clings onto his mental ideas, stories, self image, and beliefs to protect himself from the wrath of life.

But again, does it work?

Of course not. Whether you’re living in the objective ocean of discomfort and mystery or the fake comfort zone inside your head, the wrath of life can and does still get you. As a result, the safety, comfort, reassurance you think you gain from being in your comfort zone doesn’t actually exist, does it?

Nope!

Yet you think it does, so you waste your entire life holding onto these false stories/mental blankets in an attempt to protect yourself.

But you can never protect yourself because to live is to be vulnerable.

There is no hiding. There is no getting away from this fact. For life itself is full of discomfort and unknown(s). As a result, you go through your entire life living in an ocean full of discomfort yet you trick yourself into swimming in a smaller body of water that you deem comfortable and safe.

You do this because you think it protects you and keeps you safe.

But all it really does is keep you on the sidelines of life, forever afraid and miserable. Cut off from the magic and mystery that comes with embracing the terror of your situation with open arms. And what a shame that is because whether you’re in your fake comfort zone or you’re in real life, the situation is still the same…

Life is full of discomfort and the great unknown(s) - the shark of life can still get you in your little pool just like it can get you in the open ocean.

Therefore:

There are no advantage(s) to creating a fake comfort zone. In fact, holding onto mental blankets doesn’t protect the adult, but actually cages him in and ends up costing him his life and potential, so there are severe disadvantages in doing so.

Once you truly see whether you’re in your comfort zone or not, you’re still at the mercy of life, you usually feel rage. For all this time when you thought you were comfortable, you thought you were safe, you thought you were protected as you clutched onto your mental blankets, you actually weren’t. At all. Instead, you were still naked in the face of life. 100% vulnerable and at its mercy. For this is always the case for us humans.

Including this moment right now. You may think you’re safe and protected, but are you really or are you just using your mind to create fake stability and protection that actually doesn’t exist?

If you sincerely sit with this question, you’ll usually start seeing the truth of your situation (that you’ve tried to cover up for years) and start feeling some level of terror, fear, and vulnerability. For today you realize that all this time you’ve actually been naked in the face of life with no objective blankets, but have been using your mind to create fake mental blankets that actually don’t exist.

This is good!

Feel this fear fully. Feel your vulnerability. Feel your openness. Feel your nakedness. Feel the fact that life can sting you at any moment and wake up to the fact that there is no such thing as a comfort zone. Only mystery and the unknown is.

As you feel this raw vulnerability truly and sincerely and open up to it, you’ll quickly realize that…

It’s not so bad. It’s not overwhelming. It’s not so dangerous. In fact, it’s very empowering for discomfort is not a negative. To have no safety net is not a negative. To have no protection is not a negative (unless you are sleeping w/ thots! Lol couldn’t resist). To have no mental blanket is not a negative.

It’s actually a positive.

For now you can actually experience great thrill, freedom and space from having done away with the mental blankets.

You can now embrace the unknown with great openness and bathe fully in the mystery and raw potentiality of life. And as you do, you start to come fully alive. The parts you put to sleep, reawaken. And as they do, something weird and a little bit interesting starts to happen...

You go from taking yourself to be this mortal being that must be protected and guarded by the force of life…

… to merging with and becoming ONE with the flow of life.

And as you open up to life fully and let go of your mental blankets, the lines (that actually never existed, but were created through your mind in an attempt to create safety) between you and life dissolve.

And you become one.

Now you wake up to the truth of how there is nothing left to protect (never was actually anything to protect)… nothing to safeguard… nothing to hold onto… you’ve become one with life… and now you can truly live and create and fuck and explore and dance with reckless abandon and great flow and spontaneity…

Because you and life are one in the same.

Ironically enough:

This now creates a TRUE FELT-SENSE OF SUPPORT AND TRUST (felt through the belly) that stays with you every moment because now you’ve woken up to the fact that nothing can actually touch you.

(If the index finger was the only thing that existed, could it harm itself? Of course not, for there is nothing else that exists that could harm it. Same goes for life. Only life is. So can life harm life? Life is just one thing, there is no other/duality so it cannot. This life is you. All this time you’ve been protecting yourself with mental blankets from not another, but yourself! This is why comfort zones bring great misery and frustration.)

As a result, you can now spend your days with great openness, confronting the unknown, jumping into the abyss of discomfort, taking great risks and embracing a life of mystery because this is what you truly crave.

Always have. Always will.

For the mystery of life is You.

But of course, you’ll never believe it until you experience it...

As of right now, you still think this entire email is a bunch of BS (and rightfully so… maybe it is, who knows haha)... so you cling onto your mental blankets for the same reason the child clings onto a physical blanket:

Because you think you need it. But in actuality, you really don’t. The real objective world is not one of fear, but love.

And the more you can let go of your mental blankets, the more you can tap into and experience this real world.

So the objective of this email is simple…

Practice letting go of your mental blankets (i.e. beliefs, stories, familiar ways of behaving that create a false sense of safety/protection) and embracing the rawness/vulnerability of life (this is all you have to do).

Then see what happens/unfolds for you?

The more you do this, the more you’ll melt into Life and become One. Once this happens, you’ll experience TRUE FREEDOM AND SAFETY which (from my experience) are ironically the same thing. And when this happens, the adventure of your (real) life will begin.

Cheers & have a blast :-)

Your friend,

/tej

p.s. My life changed when I stopped being a pussy. How do you stop being a little pussy? By letting go of your mental blankets. Most of us exchange physical blankets for mental blankets and think we’ve grown up.

But you don’t truly grow up until you learn to live with no blankets.

This is already the case objectively, so why resist it? Why not embrace this truth, let go of the blankets, embrace the discomfort that you’re hiding away from, and truly live for we have no other choice.