Why Does A Simple Life Take Immense Courage?
A simple life may on the surface appear like the easy option to choose when life is difficult and stressful. It comes across as being an escape from a busy, demanding, and overworked society. People will often see it as a running away from our responsibilities, expectations, and desires for the spotlight and great success. It may appear as if those that choose the simple life are lazy with a lack of ambition, who do not have the discipline to strive for perfection and grandeur. However, the reality for those who choose a simpler life is further from this reality than one might assume. The truth is a simple life takes immense courage, vulnerability, and strength for us to become an authentic version of ourselves, that embodies our true nature.
When my partner and I finally decided to take the plunge and follow our dreams to move far north to the tropics, we experienced enormous setbacks along the way. It felt as if we were needing to move mountains to prepare, plan, and relocate our possessions and lives from one location to another. Many years of pre-planning, arguing, envisioning, letting go, and finding new solutions to encountered problems. When we finally moved and began to build our new home to start this simple life of sustainability and freedom, we would have presumed we had made it, the hardest part was now done, so we can now relax. However, the obstacles were only just beginning and we were being tested relentlessly, every step of the way. Once we had progressed and overcame a milestone, a newer and larger problem would replace it. What was really happening here we wondered? Have we made the biggest mistake of our lives?
The truth is we were so focused on the external and the physical realisation of our dreams, that we were neglecting the underlying barriers we were still holding onto to achieve them. There were no more distractions now that we weren’t living in the city any longer. There was nowhere left for us to hide living remotely in the tropics. We were forced to face ourselves and each other. We were grasping onto aspects of ourselves still stuck in the past, still caught in the conditioning and trauma, that were not ready for this new life. We were mirroring these aspects in each other to the extreme, where every small expression would be a trigger that would set the other off. Eventually, experiencing this intensity and instability for over a year, going through long delays with our house being built and financial setbacks, we began to discover what was really occurring here. We were hiding these deeper aspects and wounds from ourselves and each other, and our protective barriers were preventing us from sharing them.
Although we could not take it any longer, it was a make-or-break definitive moment for our relationship and dreams. Through immense courage and strength, we slowly began to reveal a deeper layer of our innocence with each other, our vulnerability, our conditioned beliefs, and core fears. We took the other as a part of ourselves, creating a safe space to shed these past beliefs, release these trapped emotions, and heal our hidden wounds, through many tears and laughter. The experience was liberating to say the least. We felt lighter and more alive, the deeper we entered these layers together. We were now simply free and in a timeless state in the present moment, where we could feel the pureness and the eternal flame of love. The love we had for each other, and yet also the love we had for ourselves. The love we felt for how far we had come, and how much courage we both had to change, every step of the way. We were so proud of our progress and achievements of being so patient, holding the line, holding onto our dreams, and choosing love, despite all of our obstacles. We were grateful for what we had been through to get to this feeling, moving full circle on our journey. We were thankful for our very own growth and evolution. We had finally arrived. By becoming conscious to our hidden barriers and discovering a way through them, for the first time our envisioned dreams were being felt and experienced in the moment with each other, with all their intensity and truth.
Underneath all of our ancestral, cultural, religious, familial, and societal conditioning of what is expected of us, and the path that we are pressured to take, there is our essence and the truth of who we really are. This is where the truth of our desires, passions, creativity, and dreams are created from. They are our truest, most real, innocent, and raw aspects, that make us who we really are. We are programmed to betray these aspects within ourselves and our essence, for someone else’s expectations of us. To follow the collective unconscious of humanity’s abandoned dreams, and instead choosing a rigid path already pre-determined by modern society, which in truth can be quite toxic and damaging to our Spirit, our health, and well-being. Embodying our truth, sharing our passions, and creating our dreams, will trigger those who have abandoned their own. You will be faced with incredible resistance and opposition by an unconscious collective humanity, due to the fact that the light of your truth will expose the areas where others have forsaken their own. Nothing can express this fact more than the voices of the dying collected from a palliative care nurse revealing the top five most common regrets in life expressed from those on their death bed, as shared in The Guardian:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Living our lives in accordance to our true selves, allows us to let go of striving for external perfection. It helps us to let go of any wounded shame coming from a manipulative, conditioned form of love, by not following somebody else’s expectations for us. We are able to realise what is important in life. The golden friendships, the real connections, the true intimacy we have with life, and the happiness of being in balance and harmony with it all. When we are connected to our Eternal Nature and begin to embody this essence in the physical, we experience synchronicity. Synchronicity is really the magic of being fully present to life and all of who we really are. We experience synchronicity when we make choices in life that are in complete alignment with our essence. Synchronicity comes to those who are ready to glimpse beyond the veil of this physical reality, to see a deeper truth to life. It is beyond coincidence or chance, it is rather a meaningful event, and is a wink of encouragement from your Soul and the Universe, to keep walking your path home to your Eternal Nature. Where you can experience more passion, curiosity, creativity and presence in your life, so you can cultivate your own unique knowledge, truth, and wisdom from within to share to the world.
The more we shed the many layers of conditioning, programing, and expectations from our past, the more we live a life truer to our nature. We are able to express our boundaries clearly to those closest to us. Though we are also able to build a bridge of compassion with others differences, and be open to let go and evolve our past beliefs and boundaries at the same time. When we are able to live a simple life and connect with our essence, we can clearly see challenges and obstacles in our way as a catalyst and opportunity to face another layer of the deeper aspects of our shadows, fears, and wounds, to bring more light to these parts, so we can grow, and become more integrated and whole. No longer distracted by only material and egoic pursuits. No more blinded by our addictions, barriers, coping mechanisms, fears, and projections. Instead, we become more connected to our heart and the deeper truths of life. We feel the liberation, freedom, and the joy with living in harmony with all of life in the present moment, and with all of the light and dark aspects within others. The simple life is the realisation of our truth and what really matters in life. It is a testimony of having the courage to living life to the full, in accordance to this truth, and with all of who we are, so we can simply experience all that life has to offer in its entirety.
