FINDING WHAT WE LOST: THE ART OF BEING

Life is infinitely richer than the version that nearly all of us are brought up to accept. This is true whether we are privileged, gifted and successful, or challenged by circumstances to settle for less than we wish for. In either case, there is a way of being and living ourselves that has over many centuries become lost. We have manufactured a highly developed world in which we are brought up to forget some of our most precious human attributes. We learn to neglect and even reject our nature, feelings, heart and soul and to live according to the agendas of our mind and body. These are severely limited when they function without the other attributes that we have lost. Then, no matter how earnestly we chase after the life we long for, we can never live it because we lack the qualities that make it possible. All we can do is find compensations for what we are missing in ourselves; our hi-tech civilization is designed to supply them. But it cannot sell us happiness, self-awareness, love, playfulness, integrity, warm-heartedness, grace, compassion, creativity, trust, spiritual awareness, soul-consciousness, courage, authenticity, and all the other beautiful attributes that come with being fully present.

Our civilization should indeed give every one of us all of these attributes as we grow up, so that as adults we can live with an unshakeable grounding in our own being. This is what education really is. It should give us the self-awareness and presence that inspires us every day of our lives to celebrate our personal gifts and to honour everyone else’s. Instead, it feeds us agendas of success and failure, and drills us to perform who we think we should be. Instead of loving the gift of being, beginning with our own, we function competitively, trying to look good in the eyes of others, to come out on top, to not care because we don’t feel good enough, or to punish ourselves or others for failing. These are just a few of the agendas that our personalities devise, simply in order to survive, when we are missing the gifts of our real being.

For thirty seven years I have been learning how to bring this real education back into people’s lives. It began with my own experiencing of all that this means. It is too much to tell here. It is the essence of my forthcoming book. Over twenty years ago I gave this work a name: The Art of Being®. As many of you who are reading this know, Art of Being workshops and courses invite people into an astonishing transformation of existence that happens whenever we come fully into our being. The Art of Being® is a journey of deep inner opening and awakening to all that is, within oneself, in one’s relating with others and in one’s connection with existence. The essence of the journey is befriending along the way all that you are not in friendship with in yourself. This is the only way that it is possible to come fully into your whole being. Anything that you judge, reject, diminish, deny in yourself becomes a closed no-go area. As long as there is anything within you that you cannot embrace, you can never be fully yourself. Then you can have all the intellectual understanding in the world, but you can never experience the real magic of being fully present.

Throughout all these years my life has been uncompromisingly devoted to making Art of Being experiences richer, deeper, more beautiful. Yes, and more acceptable too, because, if you really mean finding your whole being, you sometimes have to travel through difficult and scary terrain in your psyche – always to find gifts that make it infinitely worthwhile. Throughout these years the journey has kept on deepening. That is inevitable because it leads us eventually into the most mysterious and enlightening realm of all, where our being becomes one with our soul and through this awakens to the spiritual essence of all that is. Once this happens we don’t need religious beliefs or priests or gurus; we have our own understanding borne of our own experience, and our whole life is lived in communion with the infinite source that gave birth to all the religions in the first place! Our own life becomes a prayer of gratitude and the celebration of what we are grateful for. Being!

The longing to live every day what people experience together in Art of Being workshops is why I have carried in my soul for 25 years the vision of an Art of Being community. Now it is on the brink of being born. Here you can find out more about Shanti-Alegria Cz!