The mind is complex. The heart is simple. Appreciating the difference between mind-based simplicity and heart-based simplicity can mean the difference between a lifetime of struggle or one of happiness and inner peace.
In our daily lives mind-based simplicity can have many meanings: decluttering our home, cleaning up e-mails, eliminating “stuff,” consuming less, trying to stop multitasking, incorporating technology to replace manual tasks (only to have to deal with technical problems). On and on. All of these are worthy endeavors. Yet as time goes by, we find ourselves working more and more in the attempt to do less and less. How ironic. You can’t downsize your way into True Simplicity. I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work for long.
True Simplicity has a much more profound meaning, one that is commonly overlooked. True Simplicity is heart-based, living from the place of inner peace despite the outer goings-on. Heart-based simplicity is peace amidst the storm. Christ spoke of Simplicity as being child-like. I understand that to be the uncomplicated simplicity that originates from our child-like heart. Until human conditioning takes hold, the child lives in a place of non-judgement, a simple heart. Simplicity is our True Nature.
So what happened? How did we lose sight of our True Nature? Because we grew up living in a world where love was not always present … a world where people hurt each other the same way we were hurt. We were left with psychological and emotional wounds. Our child-like simplicity of the heart became veiled as we joined the collective human condition. We kept searching in the material world for permanent happiness, hoping to find peace.
Our culture provides us with ample distractions that feed the mind, keeping us in separation from our True Nature, our child-like heart. I knew I had to heal the wounds of my conditioning to release my emotional pain. For years it became my focus. My anguish began to fall away as my wounds continued to be released. I began seeing the world from a softer place inside. My life was no longer a struggle to make the world conform to my set of beliefs so that I could be happy. I have come to realize how much the complex mind distances us from True Simplicity.
True Simplicity is not taught. It does not come about by re-training the mind. Rather, it is uncovered. This happens when we release the emotional imprints that veil our child-like heart. When the veil is lifted the Simplicity that is our True Nature radiates.
Through the simple, child-like heart, there is an awareness of the unseen consciousness that unifies all things. The mind-made divisions dissolve. Struggling to be at peace no longer exists. We allow others their choices. Our mind is no longer a battlefield. We begin to live more in unity. This is True Simplicity.