I’ve tried to hold these elemental truths close since I first coming across them:

Life is hard
You are not as special as you think
Your life is not about you
You are not in control
You are going to die.*

You may wonder, what’s left if we submit to or embrace these ways of thinking?

Paradoxically, they help us find ourselves, the True Self or identity which comes from deep within – more than what others think of us, more than what we have, more than what we are able to influence this way or that.

Life is an great experiment towards fullheartedness, the ability to increasingly appreciate our life within this universe – an idea, an inquiry, an attempt, a failure, a reflecting, an unlearning, a relearning, an idea, an inquiry, an attempt, a failure, a reflecting, an unlearning, a relearning, an idea … .

Life is hard
You are not as special as you think
Your life is not about you
You are not in control
You are going to die.*

Funny how these result in more, not less.

‘I believe this deeper self is what most traditions were referring to as “the soul” or True Self, and what some might call “the collective unconscious,” because when you live there you are somehow sharing and living in Something Larger.’**

(*From Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)