Where do your problems go at night?
While playing the Ungame with a 9 year-old girl, she picked a card that asked, “When do you feel happy and content?”
She thought for a few seconds and said, “When I’m asleep.”
Kids naturally have a way to say something profound.
In deep sleep, there are no worries.
No deadlines. No emails. No difficult people.
Your mind is quiet.
The moment you wake up, the world rushes in.
Problems, obstacles, and challenges.
You see them. You hear them. You read about them.
You think about them.
Then you react.
Sometimes with calm. Sometimes with frustration, anger, or worries, creating more problems.
Drama happens in the mind.
Night comes. You fall into deep sleep again.
The mind disappears.
The problems disappear.
What remains?
Peace.
Happiness is your natural state.
Thoughts come and go.
Problems come and go.
What comes and goes isn’t who you are.
Happiness is already there.
It never left.
Turn inward.
Every life experience evolves around one thing:
“I.”
The “I” who sees, hears, senses, thinks, reacts.
It is “I” who experiences life.
Without “I,” what life experience is there?
To understand life, start with the most important question, “Who am I?”
Michael James, who translated our deepest love, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, said attention and observation are the foundation of knowledge.
Think about scientists:
How do they find atoms?
Detect germs?
Discover distant planets?
They observe.
Observation is their greatest tool.
To discover who you really are, your greatest tool is also observation.
Turn your attention inward and observe:
your thoughts.
your feelings.
your experiences.
The clearer you observe yourself, the clearer you understand yourself.
Unlike distant planets, you don’t need a telescope to discover yourself.
Turn inward.
Pay attention.