How shall I live, knowing I will die? Part 1

Knowing that the duration of life is limited, that we are going to die, an important question to ask is “do we want to live habitually, mechanically, automatically, not questioning—in many ways being “a chip off the old block?” Carrying old ideas about who we are, the ways we are supposed to be, or not be, drive us to live stale and stagnate lives. We are strongly influenced by family, church, school, community and culture and it is difficult to sort out who we really are versus who we think we are when we try to fit into society. So the question “how shall I live” begins to examine all the unquestioned assumptions that drive or motive our choices and lifestyles. Our acquired personality, the one we arrive into adulthood with, is built around sets of expectations and assumptions about how we are supposed to be as men and women. We can most easily access these subconscious forces by addressing the shoulds of our lives.

If we want freedom and more capacity to be responsive and creative with life, we need to open up the layers of the personality that cover or mask our true nature.

Shoulds, Musts, Ought to’s and Supposed to do’s are internal rules that govern our sense of who we are and how we are to think, feel and act. They come from the past and are internalized aspects of our conditioned mind.

• They are static and become unconscious.

• They limit, define, contain, and regulate what we can and cannot think, feel, do, and who we can and cannot be.

• They repeat and recreate who we were at an earlier stage of life, especially childhood.

• They become the encapsulated story we convince ourselves that we are. “I am this kind of a person.”