Why My Life is So Great

In my government training job, we were asked to watch a 25-minute video about emergency situations that could affect the entire state, such as a possible global flu epidemic.

That is not why my life is so great, by the way.

I surfed to the video website. I closed my door and put an “in training” sign up. I got my headphones all ready.

And I pushed play.

That’s when something unusual happened.

The spoken audio track was exactly what you’d expect: a dry, unexcited voice reading statistics about death and suffering in monotone.

But the background music was something else.

My teacher Tom Best sometimes puts together beautiful movies of the footage he takes on his international adventures, particularly his extended shamanism explorations. If you’ve ever been the recipient of one of his videos, you know how powerful it is to receive video of the sights, sounds, people, and teachings of a life-changing experience. It’s a strong anchor for the feelings and new states of consciousness you experienced on the trip.

For a particular Peru trip video that I’ve seen many times, he used a unique, upbeat acoustic piece of music for the background to a series of photos. That music is indelibly linked, in my mind, to this series of heartfelt snapshots of happy, contemplative trip participants and the people of a particular Peruvian village. The colors are bright and vivid, the people peering directly at you through the movie. I’ve seen the video many times.

Whenever I watch this segment of the movie and hear that piece of music, I feel very open and happy and full of life.

Here’s the unusual thing: the global flu epidemic movie had that same piece of music in the background.

So when I clicked “play,” that familiar upbeat, acoustic music started. Before I could even make sense of the familiar music, I noticed that the background of the global flu epidemic movie looked a lot like the “filaments of light” that Tom talks about connecting us all.

I heard the flu movie monologue, too, for sure. But I couldn’t help but imagine the smiling, full-of-life faces of the children from those portraits, superimposed over the bulleted slides.

I felt open and happy and full of life… while I was listening to the death statistics from the early 20th century flew epidemic.

I felt my breathing deepen and slow like it would during deep meditation, while I was watching the required supplies for an emergency kit fly across the screen.

This had a strange affect on me. Somehow, I was able to make room for these grim facts along with feeling really good.

In this life, it seems that we will always have our own feelings and states of mind to contend with, and we will always be surrounded by others who have their own maps of what to say when and what makes them feel happy.

When we can choose exactly how we feel and take in the information that is presented by others, we’re doing something worth doing. We’re doing the work of making peace in the world by holding two different possibilities in consciousness at the same time.

To start, all we need to know to begin this work is that it’s possible to hold two opposites in mind at the same time.

To continue, it requires practicing these internal, positive states so much that they become as easy as doing something from the external world, something as simple as pushing the play button.