Reincarnate Yourself In Your Own Lifetime

The older I get, the more I realise we can become someone new as many times as we need.

Not someone completely different. Not a manufactured new identity.

Perhaps simply someone less burdened by all the things we’ve accumulated along the way.

Habits. Reactions. Vices. Comfort zones. Defences. Stories about who we are. Ways of coping that once helped us navigate life but may no longer serve the person we’re becoming.

We picked these things up.

Which means, perhaps, we can put them down.

That sounds simple. It isn’t.

Because what we repeatedly do becomes familiar. And familiarity has an extraordinary ability to disguise itself as us.

“I’m just impatient.”

“I’ve always been a big drinker.”

“I need something sweet at night.”

“I’m an anxious person.”

“I’ve never been disciplined.”

“I just need to switch off.”

Repeat something for long enough and a behaviour can become an identity.

But our vices, propensities and habitual reactions are not necessarily who we are. They are things we have practised.

Sometimes for decades.

And this is where becoming someone new gets interesting.

Because becoming new often requires deliberately letting go of the things that keep recreating who we used to be.

What keeps recreating you?

It’s a question worth sitting with.

What do you continually return to when you’re tired, stressed, lonely, bored, uncomfortable or overwhelmed?

Food? Alcohol? Drugs? Your phone? Shopping? Gambling? Work? Anger? Validation? Control? Procrastination?

Where do you seek immediate relief?

None of this requires judgement.

It requires curiosity.

Because buried inside our less helpful behaviours is often some of the most useful information available to us.

Our wisdom can sometimes be found by examining our wisdumb.

Crude, perhaps. But true.

Our impatience can teach us patience.

Our reactivity can teach us equanimity.

Our excess can teach us restraint.

Our avoidance can show us what needs facing.

Our dependence on comfort can reveal where discomfort might help us grow.

Different sides of the same coin.

This is why I’m increasingly interested in auditing not simply what we should add to our lives, but what we might need to relinquish.

We’re very good at addition.

Another supplement. Another routine. Another book. Another promise that Monday will be different.

But sometimes the next version of ourselves doesn’t require more.

It requires less.

Less negotiation with the habit we already know isn’t serving us.

Less returning to the same comfort zone and wondering why our life continues to look remarkably similar.

There is kindness in this.

Not the indulgent version of kindness that always gives us what we want in the moment, but the deeper self-kindness that asks:

Is this actually good for me?

And perhaps more importantly:

What am I repeatedly doing to myself that I already know isn’t?

But if we are addressing behaviours we have rehearsed for twenty, thirty or forty years, we cannot expect them to disappear simply because we’ve decided we no longer want them.

Change requires discipline.

But it also requires patience and compassion.

Some of our behaviours are deeply conditioned - entangled with old experiences, fear, insecurity, hurt or ways we once learned to protect ourselves.

We don’t need to eradicate every uncomfortable part of ourselves.

Sometimes the practice is simply to understand it.

Sometimes to embrace it.

And sometimes to notice it without immediately obeying it.

There you are.

The anxiety arrives without requiring us to pacify it.

The anger appears without becoming an argument.

The loneliness doesn’t automatically become a bottle of wine.

The stress doesn’t have to become food, drugs, shopping, gambling, scrolling or whatever our particular method of escape happens to be.

The feeling can be present without dictating what happens next.

Over time, what we stop continually feeding can begin to loosen its grip.

And something else happens.

The better we understand our own foibles, propensities and reactions, the easier it becomes to recognise the same humanity in others.

Their impatience. Defensiveness. Anger. Fear. Need for comfort.

Perhaps rather than immediately judging or reacting, we can extend some of the patience and compassion we had to learn to extend to ourselves.

Not excusing harmful behaviour. Not abandoning boundaries.

Just recognising another imperfect human being underneath it.

To understand ourselves more deeply, and have that understanding soften the way we meet another person, might be one of the most powerful expressions of our shared humanity.

To me, this is also an integral ingredient in what it means to age powerfully.

Because becoming acquainted with our own imperfectness gives us another wonderful opportunity:

To laugh at ourselves.

To recognise our contradictions, peculiarities and the ridiculous seriousness with which we can sometimes take ourselves and think:

Oh, there I go again.

What a relief.

We can still practise. Still grow. Still hold ourselves accountable.

But we can let go and lighten up while we’re doing it.

Perhaps this is what the sages, philosophers and spiritual teachers have been pointing towards all along.

Wake up.

But do we ever fully wake up to ourselves?

I’m doubtful.

It’s an aspiration, an ideal. And like most ideals, perhaps impossible to fully realise.

Inevitably, we fail.

We fall asleep again.

We react. Retreat. Reach for the familiar. Repeat the very behaviour we thought we had finally understood.

Especially those messy, deeply conditioned parts of our psyche and heart.

And then we practise again.

Perhaps that is the path.

Because striving towards an ideal inevitably brings us face-to-face with our own limitations.

And some of the greatest challenges in life - and perhaps our greatest teachers - are found precisely there.

Our impatience gives us somewhere to practise patience.

Our fear gives us somewhere to practise courage.

Our compulsions reveal where we remain tethered.

Our failures expose the distance between the person we imagine ourselves to be and the imperfect human being standing here right now.

And gradually, perhaps, we arrive not at perfection, but at something far more useful.

Acceptance.

Acceptance of the human condition.

Our condition.

Not resignation. Not carte blanche to behave however we please.

Acceptance that allows us to see ourselves clearly, laugh occasionally, and keep practising.

I’m not particularly interested in becoming “awakened.”

I’d rather cultivate a way of life that continues to wake me up.

Because the alternative is also a practice.

We can practise distraction, avoidance, excess, resentment, reactivity and comfort. We can repeatedly default to behaviours that create enervation, confusion and dis-ease.

We can practise keeping ourselves asleep.

Or we can cultivate a way of life that keeps bringing us back to awareness, choice and vitality.

Perhaps vitality isn't something we need to endlessly chase.

Perhaps vitality naturally returns when we stop using so much of ourselves fighting, pacifying and escaping ourselves.

So notice when you’ve fallen asleep.

Wake up.

Laugh when you catch yourself doing the same ridiculous thing for the thousandth time.

Practise again.

Let go again.

You are not required to remain loyal to a version of yourself you’ve outgrown.

Nor do you need to hate that version of yourself in order to leave it behind.

Perhaps reincarnation doesn’t require another lifetime.

Perhaps it begins every time we stop recreating the person we no longer need to be.

Not awakened. Awakening.

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Until next time — Think. Choose. Thrive

Luke

Recommended Reading:

Wake Up To Your Life by Ken McLeod

What Are Your Doing With Your Life by Krishnamurti

Calvin & Hobbs. Vol 1 by Bill Watterson