Boodaism
Author’s Note: Nothing that I’m about to suggest is fact, it’s a framework to see life from a different perspective.
Before you were born, you were nothing. You existed without a body, a mind or a life. You chose to come to Earth because you wanted to experience this thing called “life”.
Before you arrived, you watched what happened on Earth, and it wasn’t pretty. People killed each other, got broken hearts, experienced depression, lost loved ones, violated and used each other, and were destructive toward the planet, other creatures and themselves.
There was also a lighter side. There was deep love in the sadness, joy after the pain, celebration after hardship and profound beauty underneath everything.
You watched the people of Earth live each day through the good times and the bad, and from your perspective, it seemed exciting and romantic. The beautiful moments were made possible by struggle, the relief was made possible by fear, and the highs were made possible by the lows.
You signed up for a body, with the expectation that you were going to get to experience everything life has to offer. You arrived on Earth and in the instant you emerged from your mother’s womb, you forgot everything.
This is where your story begins.
Now you go through life and it’s hard. It’s hard because you only want some of the experiences. Joy, fun and excitement are good, while pain, hardship and loss are bad.
The problem is, when you came to Earth you signed up for life, not vacation. You had a vacation, and that was you before you were born. You were nothing. No bad days, no good days, no hardship, no triumph. Now you are here in this thing called life, and life is a carnival of experience.
It’s the best amusement park in the world, and in it there are all sorts of amazing rides. Some are scary, some are relaxing. Some rides go fast, and some rides go slow. Some rides are predictable, some rides are a mystery. So let me ask you a question, and before I ask it, I want you to remember where you came from, and why you as a formless essence, choose to have a life on Earth.
If life is a carnival of experience, do you want to experience every ride?
I would bet you do. Even the scary ones. Even the mysterious ones. Now consider how most of us live. We strive for comfort, we live in fear of pain, we do all we can to keep everything cool so we can glide our boat nicely and peacefully into the finish line, all the meanwhile forgetting why we came to Earth. We came to experience life. We came for the heartbreak, we came for the joy. We came for the loss, we came for the connection. We were born into this body so we could leave it thoroughly use it up, so that when it’s all done we will have truly lived this thing called life to the fullest.
Resist as we may, at some point we go on every ride in the carnival, so by remembering that it was this full experience that we signed up for, it changes our relationship to everything that life gives us.
We slow down, we allow, we welcome each experience as the gift that it is. We witness the beauty in everything, especially the things that are hardest for us to swallow.
By remembering what we came here for, we can relax into the knowing that life is exactly as it should be and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
