Enjoy the light

I saw a fascinating reel on Instagram the other day. Troubled actor Will Smith shares a lesson he's learned from the fallout of his recent controversies. Here's a transcription of the interview:

People talk about rock bottom, that when you hit rock bottom is when you’ll make a change. But there’s a corresponding place that I call ‘cliff top’ […] where you get so high that you realise literally none of this stuff can make you happy. You can get to the end of the material world. You get to the end of money, you get to the end of sex, you get to the end of fame. You have so much, and then you go off a cliff into the same kind of abyss that you’d be scared of slipping into at rock bottom, where life loses all of its ability to sustain and please you. And then, the only thing that’s left – the same thing that’s at rock bottom – […] is you have to find what you are actually looking for and what you are actually looking for is you. You’re looking for you. When you like a woman and you like being with a woman, it’s because you like how you feel, you like what’s happening inside you. When you have money – yeah it’s cool to buy things – but it’s not the money. You like how you feel […] it’s unleashing a feeling inside. At rock bottom and at cliff top what you have to learn to do is just generate that feeling without anything external. You have to learn how to like you so much that you like being alive so much that you bring positive energy that is not generated by stuff. Because stuff is coming and going. People are coming and going. Everything you have and everybody you love is going to rise and fall in your life. The place that we have to find is a spiritual place where we are good with us. We trust us, I trust myself, and I trust God and I trust life, that whatever happens I’m gonna make happy out of it. I don’t need anything specific to happen.

The interview reminded me of something actor Jim Carrey once said:

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.

The idea of searching for something outside – in other people, in places, in money, in things – only to realise it’s the Self – the divine spirit within. Our purpose on Earth is to try our very best to recognise this inner divine essence, and enjoy it.