Are We Living a Rat Race or a Life?

Without considering our spiritual nature, living in the world of form can feel like an endless, self-defeating, pointless pursuit. 

It’s hard to believe this at first. Believe me, I know. I lived in this rat race for most of my life, up until 5 years ago.

I did it all.

Got the degree, got married, sustained what I thought was a stable home, had a child, and achieved a well-respected salary and career. 

Each desire led me to want to reach a different goal, which then led to another and another.

Many of you know that I’m a self-employed event designer. Our company, Suhaag Garden, caters to and designs some of the most luxurious South Asian weddings and events in the Southeastern United States. It’s a business that was birthed out of deep passion and a love for colors, details, flowers, fabrics, fashion, culture; you name it, all the art around it drew me in.

Don’t get me wrong, it still does – only now I engage from a more purposeful part of me.

It was my ultimate dream for Suhaag Garden to not only work at, but to become a preferred vendor at the five star resort The Breakers Hotel in West Palm Beach, Florida. And then we did.  Amongst some of the most prestigious event designers in the country, like Preston Bailey and David Tutera, stood our company name, the only South Asian wedding designer on their vendor list.  

I remember, walking to our car after we officially signed the contract, I turned to Jigar and said, ‘Wow, we did it!’

But now what?

What I experienced then was the deep realization that there is no end to this rat race.

I still felt unfulfilled. What did I want now?  

Believe me, I’m super proud of our accomplishments, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t have goals or dreams. We absolutely should. But when the goals and dreams come at the expense of our own well-being – because we think that a certain experience will achieve the fulfillment we are after – it creates an illusion that this state of success or achievement is real.

It’s not. This illusion only leaves us wanting more.

What if there was a way to transcend this illusion of form? A way to have dreams and goals for ourselves(as well as for our children), and still stay connected to our limitless and boundless spiritual nature in order to avoid feeling like we need more and more and more?

It’s the art of living in both that I’m after. In going through this journey for the past 5 years, I’ve experienced many glimpses of this possibility.  

It looks like freedom without being so attached to my goals and desires.  

It looks like a deep passion without needing to know if the desire will be realized.  

It looks like staying in the process, and being okay with not knowing.

It’s freeing. There is no duality between the needing to achieve and achieving. Knowing the achievement is a possibility and the act of working towards that achivement; both states exist because of each other. They’re not exclusive.

What I’m talking about here is the art of realizing our desires in a surrendered state of action.

In other words, learning how to live in a way where we can achieve without suffering.

This requires that we process who we are, why we are the way we are, why we feel the way we feel, why we make the decisions the way we do, what our patterns are and where they stem from, and who our patterns connect to. We’re basically learning how to connect all the dots to understand and see our conditioned selves clearly, and it’s amazing work!

But we need to do the other piece as well. We need to marry our spiritual, limitless, boundless self with the psychological processing we’re doing, so that we can engage in and play with the world of form without identifying with it, and allow the process of the play to give rise to our goals or dreams.

Learning how to walk this path is where the ultimate freedom lies.

Traditionally, we are taught gratitude, compassion, determination, and living in the present moment are skills that need to be cultivated. But what I’m experiencing at this point in my life is that these aren’t skills we need to learn; nor do we need to teach our children these skills. Our innate nature already embodies these ways of being; they are just buried under the layers of conditioning.

What we really need to do is unravel our patterns, and these states will arise from there. We need to understand our thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, and memories, because underneath them lies our limitless creativity and ability to stay present.

I remember when I used to think that I didn’t have empathy. I would see others around me who reflected deep feelings for those around them, and I would think there was something wrong with me. That perhaps I was just born this way. I viewed myself as determined and passionate, but not empathetic, and I actually believed I would never be able to learn this skill.

But that’s because I was led to believe that empathy was a learned skill. Therefore, as a parent, I  believed that I needed to teach Jian these skills. But that in itself was a conditioned belief.

We need to deconstruct our beliefs, the ones that are running our lives. Our attachment to them has us caged. In this unraveling, we will find presence, and in that presence we will learn how to stay focused on the process.

Our true desires and goals in life will arise from that process.

What is your deepest desire for yourself? 

Which belief(s) holds you back from progressing towards that desire?