Day Shift — Take a Moment to Just BE

"Fulfillment isn’t out there—it’s in here."

Most of the way we feel on a daily basis is a habit. We wake up with a certain reset, a certain feeling throughout most of the day. We have ideas of what needs to happen in order for us to feel better. It rarely happens—it never happens the way it’s supposed to. We have this idea that our fulfillment, our happiness, is just on the other side of some accomplishment, some as soon as. But fulfillment isn’t “over there.” Fulfillment is in here.

According to the ancients—the rishis, the seers, the wise women and men of antiquity who felt deeply into the movement of the laws of nature—fulfillment is the truth of what I am. It’s not my job to build it; it’s my job to discover it, and to discover it where it is, which is in here.

Now, if it’s the deepest truth of me—if fulfillment is the truth of me—sat-chit-ananda is the Sanskrit term: existence, consciousness, and bliss. Ananda—that’s the truth of me. If it’s the truth of me, why am I not feeling it?

The answer lies in the fact that everything in this world tells me that I am this nervous system. I am this history. I am this gender, this sexuality. I am this ball of needs and wants and desires, despairs, guilts, shames, and hopes. I am all this. And every one of those needs, wants, desires, shames, guilts, and hopes has been layered into the cells of my body by my experiences in the world. Experiences where I wanted something to happen and it didn’t, where I desperately needed love in a moment and didn’t get it, where someone said something to me that hit me just the wrong way and I took it as a message that I’m unworthy.

These experiences—these mini-traumas, if you will—got layered into the cells of my body so that every time anything similar to that experience occurs, I go into that same feeling, that same litany of “What’s wrong with me?” I am at the effect of these stresses constantly throughout the day.

By the time I’m 18 years old, those who know how to count such things tell me that I have some 200,000 of these so-called stress triggers stored in the cells of my body. What that means is that I’m seeing the world through the lens of “It’s not good. Might be good for someone, but it’s not good for me.” It’s like I have orange sunglasses on. It doesn’t matter what color the world is—it’s all orange, various shades of orange. Except the sunglasses I have on are the glasses of “not me.”

I have to have some way of getting free of these stresses. This is why meditation, why the movement of psychedelics, why trauma recovery is so alive in our Zeitgeist today. Because we’re meant to be happy, joyous, and free. And we are happy, joyous, and free underneath this shell of habituated thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the world.

I can choose away from these reactions again and again and again. But meditation is the thing that, twofold: number one, begins to soften up the field in which all these stresses are stored; and number two, offers me a glimpse of—and sometimes an entire feeling of—what I am absent all these stresses. Sat-chit-ananda—the truth of me, bliss itself, the feeling of “Ah, everything’s okay.”

So I offer you the idea that just once today, you can give yourself that feeling. You can allow yourself that feeling. Let go of all these stories of hopelessness and despair, take a breath, and know that you’re meant to take that breath—and meant to enjoy it.

Find a meditation practice. Offer yourself 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes a day where you’re not worried about anything.

Thanks for listening. Have a beautiful day.

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Jeff Kober is an accomplished actor, photographer and vedic meditation teacher. He has had regular roles in notable series like The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, and NCIS: Los Angeles, and has appeared in numerous films including Sully and Beauty Mark. Kober is also a writer and artist, and has previously penned screenplays and authored the book Embracing Bliss.