Me, myself and I

When are we really alone these days? I mean completely alone, not just physically but psychologically.

Even when we are in a room without people, we either have our mobile phone in our hand or are haunted by thoughts that distract us and prevent us from really finding peace.

We are showered with influences without really having the time to process them and come to terms with them. So, these thoughts circle in our heads, resurface again and again and haunt us like evil spirits.

So how do you find the peace to process these thoughts and come to terms with yourself?

Many religions and ways of life show us how. Buddhist meditations teach us how to clear our minds and simply switch off our head.

Christianity with prayers offers a kind of dialogue partner to process what has happened. But conversations with people can also help us to process things or to become aware of them in the first place.

In conversations about yourself and about others, you feel much closer to the person and to yourself. You unconsciously enter into a closer relationship with yourself. By recognising and accepting one's own faults and strengths, one is perhaps less plagued by questions of why.

Why did I do this? Why did I act this way? Why did I allow that to happen?

These are usually the questions that keep us awake at night. They don't let us close our eyes and rob us of our concentration. And you can't do anything but find the answer within yourself. It's not about forcing answers, but about letting them come.

Sometimes a walk is enough, maybe even immersing yourself into a picture. You have to detach yourself from you and gain distance in order to find yourself.

When you are standing very close to a wall, all you will see is grey. With each step you take back, you see more and more colours until you have the whole picture of yourself. Paradise. Whereas the small grey dot we were staring at in the beginning was a mouse in the grass.

Only with the necessary distance can we understand the whole picture and thus ourselves.

But sometimes it also helps to write. Just to let go, not to think about it more deeply, but to let the thoughts come. Maybe put them on paper, like an external hard drive, to deal with them again later, when you feel ready to face the thoughts.

It is incredibly important to face these questions and thoughts. Even if in reality you are just running away, it is something you have to confront. If you don't, you are standing in your own way of finding yourself.

Because how can you meditate when you have the feeling that you are overwhelmed by thoughts as soon as you close your eyes? How to pray when what needs to be said cannot be said?

So the first step has to come from yourself, then you can go further.

Meditating is a way to go to your own limits. Not physically, as we do regularly and sometimes unabashedly in sports, but mentally.

Because in our mind, there are limits that we sometimes cannot or do not want to cross. When I meditate, I often feel like I'm drowning after a while. I can breathe freely, I could open my eyes and still I would feel powerless to escape this feeling. The ability to immerse oneself as a completely passive process requires a lot of training and patience.

This training is, among other things, the process of "coming into order", because if we were satisfied with all our choices and never asked ourselves why, then we wouldn't ask ourselves about the self.

In the end, it is not about universally right answers, but about answers that are right for ourselves. Answers that we can live with and that make it possible for us to live with ourselves.

I, I myself with me.