All of you want real meaning in your lives, to be connected to something greater than yourself and you suffer when you feel you are just going through the motions. You long for unconditional love and purpose and have few examples of people who have found them. So, you just keep pushing through your daily life in hopes that somehow, someway, you’ll awaken to the astonishing beauty that your life holds for you. That you’ll wake up and become present in time to understand your purpose and experience your true potential.

Your culture does not support you in our search for meaning and wisdom; it has replaced real meaning with superficial doing and wisdom with self-promoting fictional facts that are meant to manipulate and control you. Your culture has become neurotic in its quest for bigger and better, valuing form over essence and distraction over presence, selling violence as entertainment and manipulating you with fear. It takes a conscious effort from you not to buy into this collective neurosis. In today's society you are taught to leave your intrinsic qualities behind. You are conditioned to learn to present yourself outside of your natural essence. These socially accepted forms (self-image) can dictate to you what your life and your purpose for living should be. On a more subtle level form/self-image can dictate your values, judgments and with whom you’ll be relational with and with whom you won’t. Self-image is seen as having greater value then self-awareness. Although the right self-image may seem to open the right doors, the path of awareness opens a world of wonderment and beauty that empowers you in your ability to be present and fully understand the truth. So, your choice is do you want to look successful or be successful, look healthy or be healthy, look happy or be happy, look like a good parent or be a good parent.

The question is not why most of you buy into the cultural neuroses and settle for a life of discomfort and distraction. The question is how are some of you able to step outside the cultural neuroses and become present and live a life of passion and purpose. What are they doing that you’re not? If you can answer these questions and you have the commitment to follow-through and do the moment-to-moment work, then you can move from a State of Survival to a State of Ease where your journey of self-awareness takes on new and effortless healing dimensions.

– Walker McDonald
State of Ease