Travelling is so much easier when you carry a lighter load. In this journey through life, your baggage becomes your burden.
Whatever you drag around with you will only weigh you down and get in your way.
Allow yourself to be more agile and nimble. Choose to stroll through life carefree, rather than being so heavily burdened. You will be so much less bothered by the little things when you don't have to struggle with needless, awkward luggage. At first, everything you’ve packed will appear absolutely necessary. “How can I get by with out all of my essentials?” you might think to yourself. But once you’re out exploring the world, too much baggage will become impossible to manage as you navigate the winding streets of life. Your heavy load will put you off balance, it will cause you to stumble and fall. Your bags will become an absolute nuisance as they get in other people’s way, bumping into them and knocking them off their feet. Your excessive baggage creates so many unnecessary problems for you, including endless stress, regret and grief. To make your life journey more enjoyable, lighten your load. Luckily however, there is only one bag you need to drop to make all of your travels easier, because onto it all others are attached. Once you let go of this one centrepiece, all others will then drop as well.
It is your sense of self that makes you feel so heavy.
This is the only thing you need to give up. Yes, it is your very “self” that gets in your way. Not your body, not your person, but it is the very idea of yourself that needs to be let go of. From this, all other “personal” problems are grown. All emotional anxiety is attached onto your sense of a personal self, which you so carefully try to manage, maintain and protect.
This “self” of yours, is not you. It is only a projection of mind.
Trying to maintain an illusion such as the "you” you’ve created, takes great effort and constant attention. You always need to be on guard to defend it. Once you no longer feel the need to manage, maintain and protect this identity you’ve so carefully created over the years, all of your anxieties and troubles will disappear. Because your sense of self is not real, anything you attached onto it will disappear along with it.
Once the illusion of self is gone, so too will all of the problems it created.
Let go of the baggage-of-self that you insist on lugging around with you everywhere—it is empty and serves you not! Quit taking the world so personally. Quit creating spinning stories of personal drama and tragedy around everything you encounter. Quit putting your self at the centre of all that you experience! See your self for the creation of mind that it is. Whenever you notice your false sense of self arise, let go of it immediately and take one step beyond it—to that place of boundless awareness within you, that empty space of pure being.
With no more false self to constantly babysit, your mind becomes free and clear.
With no more false self to continually manage, your true self is able to emerge as the calm, peaceful, loving, compassionate and happy being that it is. Make no mistake, this is who you've always been—it’s who we all are—we've simply lost our true nature underneath all of those empty and useless bags of self. Stop thinking about yourself so much—that self-centered world exists only inside your head. It is not real. Focus your energy, awareness, attention and effort onto the vibrant, alive and exciting world around you instead—without inserting your sense of self into all of the things you experience and perceive. Your world will be much freer without having to constantly watch out for the fictional character you’ve created. You must realize that "you" are not an image created by mind—you are the awareness that perceives it.
Immerse your entire awareness into everything you perceive—not your personal opinion of who you believe yourself to be.
It is this preoccupation with our self-centeredness that is the root of all our discontent and unhappiness. Uproot the self—end the suffering. by Brian Thompson
