You Paint Your Experience of Life

Imagine that the world is the most delicious and beautiful fruit you could possibly envision and is encased in a very pretty, albeit strong, shell. Imagine if you never cracked it open but instead continued to bite and bite at the strong, inedible shell.

This is what it’s like when we stop living according to our inner truth and what’s really important in life and focus more on the material than on the spiritual, more on “who you know” than on authentic relationships. This is the shell of the world, a fear-based reality in which we think our dreams will come true if we just do what the world says. When you live in the shell of the world, you live as a shell of yourself. To live in the shell is to live in a man-made hell. When you make the decision to drop the shell and go within, peace will be yours.

We all look up to someone, and somewhere inside, we may have decided that we have to be like them to be successful and worthy of love or acceptance. This is an agreement, an invisible contract that we make between ourselves and the Universe. We’re convinced that this must be true because these people represent success, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual prowess. Nevertheless, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Our mentors and those we look up to are not destinations; they are guiding lights pointing us in the direction of ourselves. You won’t ever become your mentors; you will only ever become yourself. They lead the way by being themselves. The most important lesson we learn from the great teachers of the world is that whatever they were teaching, they were doing it as themselves.

The root of the Hebrew word for believe (emunah) is amen, which means “I agree.” Your beliefs are your inner agreements with reality. You can, however, reprogram the way you experience your life. You can crack the shell and begin to taste the wonderful fruit of life. When you are stuck in the shell, in the nightmare, it’s because you have forgotten your power to create your life. You are the dreamer of your life, so dream a good dream. When you can see the truth of this and drop all of your limiting beliefs, you will be one major step closer to freedom.

Excerpted from The Three Conditions: How Intention, Joy, and Certainty Will Supercharge Your Life by Moshe Gersht.