No rest for the living

Tzu Kung grew weary of study and told Confucius, "I want to find rest."

"There is no rest for the living."

"Than shall I never find it?"

"You shall look forward to the lofty and domed mound of your tomb and know where you shall find rest."

"Great is death! The gentleman finds rest in it, the mean man submits to it!"

"Tzu Kung, you have understood. All men understand the joy of being alive, but not its misery; the weariness of growing old but not its ease; the ugliness of death but not its repose."

How often do you allow negative thinking to shape how you view your circumstances? The main barriers to perceiving your life for what it is are the words you hear and use, the theories you hear, and the conditioning you have been given. In different settings, authority figures in charge have taught you what they think is acceptable or unacceptable behavior. Have you evolved in your own life experience to see beyond their prejudices?

For example, you have learned to work, to devote time and energy to a task or a cause. You have come to realisations about your physical, emotional and other limits. This usually happens when you surpass them and become injured or, when you overstep someone else's boundaries. Each of us has been trained to listen and interpret words. We all have to take in theories about what's acceptable in a given place at a given time with particular people. If you reflect on all this conditioning, how do you evolve to discern your truth? Do you ever rest?

At times, as you sort through your dilemmas, you may borrow answers from people as a strategy to resolve the matter, and move on faster to something else. Yet, over time, you may come to believe other ways of perceiving and judging are not your own, and be left unsatisfied. Thinking may enable this reality to reveal itself to you. At some point, your inner voice must go silent. At this time, you'll know no barriers to improving yourself and realize they never existed. Uncover the truth about your mindset in order to recognize why you head away when answers lie right here.