Experiencing life on surface values

What is surface value?  How do most people see the world?  Imagine that you are proceeding along in life and all that you consider within your mind is your daily activities that you either experienced within the last couple of days or hope to experience in the days to come.  Your life consists of what physical activities you have planned mostly involving outward communication and spending moments where you do not have too much time to yourself.  If you were to have time to yourself you would get bored and find it hard to feel comfortable within doing nothing.  Does this sound like you?

Most people are walking along in life this way.  Looking at life on surface values and only taking in what needs to be experienced at a very simple level.  Most things involve activity and keeping busy with the mind focusing on tasks at hand.  There is very little time for this outward person to think about their life and experiences let alone consider that there is more to life than what is only based on physical and surface structure.

How is the weather today?  Did you pick the children up from school yet?  Is the food ready?  What time are you coming home?  Are you ready to leave?  Get up it is time for work….

Our fast pace world today does not allow for thinking beyond what we need to do in our physical daily lives.  We go to work, we do sport, we spend time with friends and family, we keep up with our body grooming, do an excessive amount of shopping, we walk the dog, talk on the phone, watch television, play on the computer and go on the internet.  Yes our minds are consumed with doing things.  Physically focused existence is getting so refined now that even children have their own agendas just to keep up with all that they have to do in their daily lives.  They have band practice, and sports lessons, singing lessons and play groups.  They are constantly being made to participate in activities where their mind has no time to think but only to participate.

What is thinking in our world today?  Does it involve solving problems or coming up with inventions or new experiences?  Or does it involve only repetition, replication and discipline?

Surface life really just involves a person keeping busy in their life, enough that they never have to face their inner world within their minds.  Most consider this inner world of the mind to be a place people only go when they are experiencing a mid life crisis or having drama in their life with stress and over emotions, people in crazy houses, and people who take drugs and drink heavily.  Thinking is considered bad for you and if you think too hard it is feared that you might just go insane.  The mind is a place only for people who are serious and deep; strange people who have too much time on their hands and do not know how to experience life.  This really does sum up a physically surface minded person and how they would consider life when asked if anything else exists.

Have we ever questioned that the reason why people go through odd events of stress within their lives is because they have never stopped to think or ever reasoned their own state of being?  If a person never deals with how they feel or ever delves into self expression and creativity, they often find times in their life that things do not fit.  They might find that they are emotional at certain events and experiences, and they do not enjoy certain things.  Maybe they find their life boring or too systematic and that they long for fun and enjoyment.  When it comes to dealing with these feelings they do not know what to do so they turn to things to help keep their mind off it all.  They drink and smoke, they party, they take all to excess and even take drugs to numb the feelings that they have inside.  Anything to avoid having to face something that the person has never been taught to consider, that which is their mind and their world of inner thinking.

The more we only focus on our physical lives the less we will have time within our minds to ponder on life and experiences.  Creativity will fall to only a small handful of people who are seen as crazy and strange and not at all set into the rules of life and structure.  Our lives will become robotic and ordered and we will have no space for conceptualizing on expression and experiences.  Once these things go by the wayside, we will also have no time for creating jokes or stories, or playing with people.  All will be based on what we have to do, how it has to be done and when it has to be done by.  Structured ordered surface value existence.

Can you imagine how life would be without humor, fun, laughter, play, new experiences, experimentation, development, creativity and inner expression?  One might as well be a robot without a mind in order to think.  To only live life on what to do and how to do it. 

Life does not have to be experienced only on surface value.  That is the most wonderful thing about this creation for all the things we have been given, that not only do we have a physical body but we also have a creative element mixed into the framework, that which is called the mind.  The mind can do so many things.  It can think of things to do, it can explore, discover, reason and create.  What it can also do is give balance in life between itself and the body and allow for inner understanding, resolution and resolving of issues, feelings and experiences.

We should not have to go to doctors in order to think and express, in order to know what is wrong with our thinking patterns and our feelings.  It is not a science just to think, when we all do it quite naturally.  Our minds are always there with us and we can access them at all moments of our lives.  Most importantly it is our own inner separate world, our own hiding place from all the events we have to participate in our lives.  It is a place we can take time out and think about what is going on in our lives and to contemplate our own inner desires. 

It will not matter how much a person tells you what to think or how you should think.  The responsibility is on the individual to delve into their own realm of mind existence, to discover a new place inside of themselves where they are given the chance to reason their own beliefs and truths without the impact of others.  It is a private space where time is a person’s own and life has no need for order or strict regimes.  It can be anything that you make of it and it can become a retreat and place of refuge when all is becoming too much to experience physically.

If you still do not know what this place is then just close your eyes and hold your hands to your ears and there you have it.  When all physical senses are taken away from the body, there is the mind.  It is a place of emptiness with only your thoughts filling the space.  You can bring up images there of what you want, you can delve into feelings, and also into experiences.  You can create in there, explore memory of the day and even the whole of your life if you so please.  It is also a place to create, to imagine, to dream and to live all things out that ever wanted in your life and explore how you can achieve them.

Imagination is not just for a child, it is for all of us.  We all have a mind as well as a physical body in order to experience life.  It is a big part of us and even if we try to ignore our inner self, that which is our mind, we will only be made to face it when physical life becomes too much for us to bear.   When you find the mind you will realize that is you, it is your identity, your personality and the whole of your deep inner nature.  It is part of you and it will always be your identity, not just your surface value body and physicality, but also your inner deep mind. 

By Stacey T Pollock