In the search to find yourself and for a new direction, you take a look at your “life map” only to discover X marks the spot. If your surroundings seem familiar and you find yourself dealing with the same problems, how far have you progressed? Where has it lead, but to the same place, a return to the last place you left. You’ve come full circle. You are here, again!
Some where along the way you’ve lost your Self. No where there, but now here...again! What to do! To find oneself in a maze of trails running into dead ends, turning around, only to face another wall cannot be the right way, or a way that’s right for you. We may believe we are on our way out, but on it goes, going nowhere else, and finally we wonder: what’s going on… and on…and on? Suppose we stop in our tracks and find ourselves right where we need to be to make the right turn.
The turning point begins with a stop! No more going in circles on the beaten path that has only beaten you up over and over, a trail of betrayals. At last, you tire of being here…again!
Some of us have “been there and done that," but there-in lies the problem, as some of us are still there doing that! The turning point in one’s life doesn’t mean we turn around and return to the “same old, same old.” The “there” needs to be something different and we can begin with being in the here and now. However, we must want the difference so strongly to make the difference our reality. This requires nothing less than a personal revolution—a "coup de etat of the false self-ruler.
A revolving door turns, but if we don’t exit, we only go in circles. Returning to the same place, over and over, is not a way out. There is no merry in this go-round of the circle of self!
A personal revolution of the self is a turn for the better, a change of way, and another door for opportunity. We have to get to the turning point and step out— the point of no re-turning. Freedom then is found in stepping out of the cycle of captivity, from the revolving to the evolving.
The turning point is when we make up our mind to change our mind. We come to realize as Einstein described, the not so merry go-round of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" only produces the same. If you want a new thing, think anew, and then do!
The After Thought
There is an ancient concept for self-transformation called metanoia. Metanoia is a Greek word that describes a process to think anew, the ability to change our mind. Metanoia then can be considered an after-thought, different from the thought-before; a change of mind that makes possible a change of behavior for a new act. A metanoia can be your personal revolution through a revelation, a mind’s eye-opener, a turn for the better, and a new way. It requires us to examine our tried, and often tired, living principles that may not be so true after all. And only then do you know the new. Hence, in order to act that way, we must think that way. This metanoia, or new mindset, means a new order of thinking previously unknown to us. And as the head (mind) turns, so follows the body (movement), as we are then moved to do (behavior). This new mindset requires us to break the tradition to make the transition from the thoughts that keep us going in circles, like the revolving door. We can begin by tearing up the mental map of mindless misdirection and instead start over with a redirection of the mind. Rather than a mind set in its ways, we seek a new mindset for a new way of thinking.
Finally, we have had it! We crumple up and toss our old mindset map into the wastebasket, and reach for a fresh clean slate to re-mind ourselves that we not only desire, but deserve something better. We don’t want to find ourselves here again! In a word, this is a quest for freedom. Freedom, in this endeavor, is liberty from the tyranny of invading negative thoughts, energy-draining emotions, and fears that turn into self-defeating behaviors created by a false nature. This imitative part of us desires only to inhabit in order to inhibit our True Self, and stifles the calling of an original authentic nature of pure potentiality awaiting release. The False Self left unattended, will take hold of the mind’s helm to set the course and rule your life along its way of thinking, and so its destination remains the same: “the not so merry go round of insanity!”