Mirror mirror, tell me, what potential do I have in the world?
What am I really? As a human being, what am I capable of?
Just like in a car, there are three kinds of seats that we can sit or intend to sit in life:
1. Driver’s seat
2. Back seat
3. Co-pilot seat
In the driver’s seat, we pretend to be God. We think everything is under our control and we try to manage every single detail. We feel as if we have to make all the decisions about ourselves one by one, from scratch. That’s why it feels like the whole weight of the world is on our shoulders.
We are in such a time that people think they can be anything, or create everything from scratch, regardless of what they really are. Although one has no such disposition, he determines what he will become according to the person or profession that is most in demand. In fact, at this point, women think they can be men and men think they can be women, regardless of the very biological reality. With the motto “Because why not?”, all this is glorified in the name of freedom.
Thinking that one can be whatever he wants is not a sign of freedom, but of the degree to which one has lost touch with himself.
On the other hand, a very, very large part of the personal development field provides answers on how we can become our “idealized selves”. Especially with the movement started after the book “The Secret”, everything we want to be and have is being wildly “manifested” and miracles are being summoned with “777”s.
We either become modern-day witches, or slaves of the modern world that has adopted the motto “If you want it, you can do it!” as if it was the only criteria, or science believers who worship their minds and have vowed to find immortality by “hacking” life.
In the back seat, on the contrary, what we accept is the victim role and helplessness. It feels like everything is out of our control and we take a passive attitude towards life.
In this seat, one completely ignores his own part in life happenings; not only his fault, but also his power and volition. He confuses self-destruction through self-sacrifice with service to others, and unconscious submission with faith. We go through life being surprised by what happens to us and what we do, and then, as Jung said, we call it “fate”.
When we are stuck in the world of opposites where the mind operates, we think that we only have these two options. If we are not in full control, it feels like we will have to unconsciously surrender ourselves to fate. Most of the time we go back and forth between these two options.
In fact, there is a third option: the co-pilot seat. This seat is not directly obvious to us, because it becomes visible only by ascending to Reason and making the mind work in harmony with Reason.
When we sit in this chair, we first listen and then act. Instead of trying to get ahead of others in the lane marked by the ruling powers, we all focus on the lane that is special to us, so that we don’t feel that we have to compare ourselves to anyone else or get ahead of anyone else in order to survive.
A river flows through all of us, and it is not our job to direct it. On the other hand, it is not an option for us to abandon ourselves to the current like a dead fish and ignore Reason and volition that being a human requires. Especially not, to glorify helplessness by associating it with surrender to divine destiny. On the contrary, it is only by sitting in this seat that we can live in true surrender to the divine.
In short, the universe is not a cosmic catalog from which we can order whatever we want, nor are we hollow and rootless virtual avatars. We all have a disposition and a seed knowledge, so we cannot be “whatever we want to be”. Our task is to understand how to live by becoming able to listen to the sound of the river flowing within us.
Being a whole human being is the adventure of being able to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. It is to feel the deepest connection with everyone and everything through the heart while maintaining individuality and independence through Reason, at the same level.
Which seat do you intend to sit in?