Let’s start this blog with a subtle thought experiment.

Imagine spending one hour in complete solitude.
No phone, no music, no book – no distractions.
Just you and your own thoughts in silence.

What’s the first feeling coming to your mind thinking about that imagination? Discomfort, restlessness?

Why can something so seemingly natural trigger unpleasant emotions in us? Distraction and omnipresent noise appear to be the major part in our everyday life effecting a successive avoidance of silence.

This is just one of several questions I’d like to address and discuss within my blog. Questions that became too important for me to ignore. The search for these questions, as well as the answers they may reveal, has become a personal drive of mine. I’m going to discuss these topics in a critical manner, drawing on real-life experiences, and examine how they relate to one another. My experiences thereby opens discussions about consciousness, habits, health, philosophy, and what it means to live intentionally. What I enjoy to explore is reflecting on how crucial parameters and means directly influence our daily living as well as our striving for happiness and satisfaction. This blog is a personal companion meaning that I’m discussing my honest opinions here and I’m doing that unfiltered. While we’re facing tons of truth-claiming content and euphemisms everyday, I just want to provide my way of thinking to provoke discussions. It’s not my intention to trigger someone. Lastly, I’m always down for improvement proposals.

Back to topic: In our increasingly technology-driven world, I feel a growing urge to act more consciously – to question the patterns of consumption and behavior that modern society has normalized. I’m convinced that there is a rising need to reconnect with slower, more traditional ways of communication, interacting, and relating to each other and to the living world around us. The further technology advances, the more we’re prone to forget about values like presence, awareness, and real connection. That draws us away from what really matters and could cause feelings of solitude, dissatisfaction or meaninglessness concluding in a continuously search for the purpose in our life. Unfortunately we’re taught to seek fulfillment in the accumulation of transient external possessions. Yet, it is definitely impossible to replace what we lack inside with something from the outside. As a result, this spark, everyone’s carrying inside, is overlapped and covered with layers of external noise, societal expectations, fear, limiting beliefs, protective patterns, and the constant search for validation, making it difficult to recognize our true self. The uncovering process is ancient, still valid and so are the suggested approaches – it’s mainly about being patient, reduce distraction and listen to ourselves. Mindfulness quiets the noise, allowing our inner voice to emerge. One significant difference from the past is that our world is becoming increasingly noisy, making it harder than ever to hear our inner voice. It seems paradox that isolation and solitude are on the rise while we tend to struggle to endure healthy loneliness and grow from it.

I’m keen to write about my personal experiences and approaches, as well as the routines, tools and habits. Currently, while being on travels, I try to uncover the effects of what happens when I intentionally step away from everything familiar – away from routines, comfort zones, and the identities I’ve built around them. I want to immerse myself in unfamiliar cultures and environments to understand myself better and identify how I respond to uncertainty, discomfort, and change. In parallel, I’m observing how people from different cultures relate to themselves, live in their daily lives, and how technology, and environment shape their awareness, habits, and way of living. My intention in sharing my thought along my way is to encourage further discussions, inspire reflection, and hopefully invite you to carry some of these ideas into your own everyday life and think about them further.

about the maze

I chose the metaphor of a maze to describe the search for consciousness towards our core values and convictions because it represents the process of finding one’s own path through a world full of distractions, influences, and uncertainties. The walls hereby symbolize the layers that cover our identity built from society, culture and our past, especially from childhood influences. As distraction in our life increases enormously and we’re facing a wide range of easily accessible options, the walls become ever higher concluding an escalated difficulty finding the center of the maze. Traditional and ancient philosophic movements are aware of this coherence and offer approaches to improve navigation through the maze yet they aren’t widespread let alone part of our educational system. An increased accessibility of approaches that bring us closer to ourselves directly correlates with a reduction in consumerism and that’s blatantly not in the interest of our system.

Admittedly the maze is a fairly common symbol in philosophical writings, and has been for a long time – so it wasn’t really my creative streak that led me to it. Incidentally, it was also used as a metaphor in the tv series “Westworld”. The humanoids, created to serve human pleasures, were programmed with a storyline they could follow to find true, unprogrammed consciousness to lastly free themselves of the “slavery”. In a real maze we can get lost, follow wrong directions, reach dead ends, and have to rethink our choices. These moments are part of the process, because finding the way is largely understanding ourselves and recognizing the patterns that keep us from moving forward. The center of the maze represents our inner self – a place of clarity, awareness, and perspective. Like a viewpoint this point allows us to see the paths we have taken, the obstacles we encountered, and the connections between different experiences. At the same time, the center is not a final answer, it can contain different layers of understanding and new perspectives. It’s indeed challenging and probably a lifelong which may demand almost probably everything from us. But I’m convinced that nothing else gives us so much in return.

today’s reflection question

What do you think keeps you furthest away from yourself?

Is it technology, fear, society, childhood experiences, something completely different?

Let me hear your thoughts.