Walking Dead
Here’s something life insurance people don’t want you to know – dead people don’t care. That’s why they have to sell you when you’re alive.
People who are emotionally dead don’t care either. They suffer from the activated indifference of the ego.
They don’t care about you and they don’t care about them. They are the walking dead.
They get so absorbed with self that nothing else exists for them. They are marooned in a mental prison that seemingly offers no escape. Others attempt to spur them on by encouraging them change the wallpaper in their cell, but they still remain imprisoned no matter what the internal decor.
Here’s The Grasshopper‘s key that unlocks the door:
If you are emotionally dead, you have to get out of your head.
Your thoughts have managed to numb you. You head is so crammed with thoughts, that there is no room for the escape plan to get in.
Sandra Maitri recounts an old Sufi parable in her book, The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram that provides the solution. She writes of the parable,
“It tells of a tinsmith who was unjustly imprisoned and who, seemingly miraculously, made his escape. Many years later when he was asked how he had done it, he replied that his wife, a weaver, had woven the design of the lock to his prison cell into the prayer rug upon which he prayed five times a day. Realizing that the prayer rug contained the design of the cell’s lock, he struck a deal with his jailers to get tools to make small artifacts, which the jailers then sold and profited from. Meanwhile, he also used the tools to create a key, and one day made his escape. The moral of the story is that understanding the design of the lock that keeps us imprisoned can help us fashion the key that will unlock it.”
The key is to becoming emotionally alive is to quiet the mind. That means you have to get out of your head in order to enter your body where all your aliveness registers.
I’ve counseled enough anorexics over the years to know that they have no sense of their body – only distorted mental images crammed in their head. Once they begin to access their body, space shows up in their head and keys begin to be fashioned.
The discovery of your body and its power of feeling alive is the key that gets you out of your head.
If you’re stuck in your head and emotionally dead, begin to focus your attention on your body. Feel what’s going on with it. It’s your connection to reality. Find activities that involve moving your body and feel those movements. It’s no accident that participation in yoga, tai chi, and other body awareness classes is growing at a rapid rate. People are discovering the way to peace of mind is through their body.
When you spend more time in your body, you’ll spend less time in your head. It’s the key to escape from the walking dead.
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
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