It was a beautiful spring day in Nottingham. The sky was blue, the air fresh but warm, the birds were singing their songs brightly to each other.

I remember this day so clearly for it was the day my mum died. In her private room in the hospice, moments after she had taken her last breath, I asked my husband to open the patio doors, to let some air into the room, and to let my mother's soul find her way home.

It was a euphoric moment. A sense that I was witnessing something powerful unfold. Seeing the life leave her body, her soul, seemed to evaporate into the air - from form back to formless.

Losing someone close to you can be a defining moment. For me, things didn't change on a dime, but something happened that day. It was subtle, and small, but it shifted the trajectory I was on. It turned my attention away from the material world, to begin a journey of looking for more meaning in my life.

When someone dies it can give birth to deeper questions. What is the point of all this? Why are we here?

In reality, I wasn't consciously asking myself those questions, but they colored my lenses on life. I looked at my situation, my work, how I was living, and I became intolerant of a lot of things I had been tolerating. I knew the life I was living wasn't right for me anymore. It didn't make sense to me to be working so hard, earning great money, but being desperately unhappy and unfulfilled. I knew there must be something more to life, something I wasn't seeing or understanding, but I didn’t know what I was looking for at the time, I just felt a yearning for more meaning and depth.

The Invisible Side of Life

As I sit here today, it's hard to put into words just how much my life has changed since that spring day in 2014. It's easy to list all the visible changes that have occurred in the past nine years: Adopting our little girl Pickle, moving out of the city to Pawling, a new job, followed by a new career, more wrinkles and grey hairs than I care for, but it's the invisible changes that have been most profound. Over the past 9 years, I have started to see there is a deeper current to life, a deeper purpose and meaning to it and that has radically changed my whole experience of life and the way I relate to it.

What Do I Mean?

I have come to realize that life is not about career success, money, or material possessions, it's not about the quality of your circumstances or who you are married to, and where you live. If anything the physical world is really just grist for the mill. What life is really about is waking up.

Being Asleep

When we live solely in the physical, material reality, we tend to react to our circumstances, and to other people. We judge, blame, project, we battle with life, and feel defensive, awaiting the next crappy thing to go wrong.

We use the only tools we know to try and feel better, to try and feel safe. We change our physical reality, we lose weight, we move house, we change our jobs, and we innocently try and control the uncontrollable. We worry in order to feel secure against the unknown. Despite our best efforts to manipulate our circumstances so we can feel safe and at peace, there we are, still disgruntled, still insecure, still caught up in an abundance of habits that make us feel enslaved to our minds and our lives.

And it's meant to be that way, I suspect. Because without the suffering, there would be no learning, and without learning there would be no growth, and without growth, there would be no transformation beyond what you already are and what you already know. And that at its core is the process of waking up, it's an evolutionary process that is fueled by insights and realizations, that take you beyond what you know to sense what you don't.

What is it We Are Waking up From?

It's helpful to consider our experience of life in layers.

**The Physical Layer**
The physical layer is our external reality, it’s everything we see with our eyes. This is where we tend to spend much of our time and energy, paying attention to the physical world, managing it, navigating it, and being consumed by it.
**The Psychological Layer**
This layer is internal to us - it's our thoughts and feelings. This layer is exceptionally distracting, consuming our attention, and plays a pivotal role in creating our reality. We think we are experiencing the physical world through our senses, in reality, we are experiencing our psychological interpretation of the physical world and we react and act upon that interpretation. This is the layer that keeps us asleep. We are so entranced by it, that we don't even perceive it. It's this layer that is our biggest obstacle to waking up.
**Spiritual Layer**
The last layer is the spiritual layer. This is the source of life and is the energy that fuels everything. It’s the inner, quiet space that precedes thought. When you connect to this layer through a quiet, open mind, you will tune into the qualities of this energy - peace, perspective, love, understanding, and wisdom to name a few. When those qualities flow through you, life gets easier and more fulfilling and you find a deeper meaning.

Zooming Out On Life

When I see astronauts looking down on Earth, I wonder if it must be a deeply spiritual experience - to zoom so far out on the physical world and see it in a broader context. They must gain a greater appreciation for the intelligence behind life and the creation of all things.

Thankfully you don’t have to travel light years to get the same perspective, it's actually a reverse journey of going deep within yourself.

If you are willing to look within yourself you will find it. It’s more apparent when you are quiet, calm, and settled. You feel those wonderful qualities of peace, perspective, and understanding naturally flow through you. Problems melt away with each insight and realization that bubbles up and unfolds, bringing with it a vast array of new understanding and awareness.

The more you ponder those unfathomable questions of “why are we here?” and “If I am not my thinking, then what am I?” the more likely you will realize those answers for yourself. As you step toward the invisible side of life, you will see how fulfilling and wonderful it is when you are not caught up in trying to manipulate and manage it.

You will begin to appreciate that life is really about awakening and growth, then you will see that everything that happens in the physical world is in service to that purpose. That shifts how you relate to your circumstances and events because you stop seeing everything as another problem to solve and start to look for the gift in all of it.

The best thing of all, is as you tune into this spiritual side of life, you realize without doubt how the universe is on your side. You align with a deeper wisdom that guides you, you cultivate a connection with your soul and listen to it, nudging you, bringing you a perspective when you feel lost and unsure.

Waking up is not for everyone, a lot of people love the game of life and enjoy playing it without ever going beyond their psychological experience, but there are a few brave souls in this world who want to know more than they do, who are curious to see beyond their psychology. Why? Because like me, they know their psychology keeps them small, contained, imprisoned, and riding a never-ending roller coaster of emotions.

I want to get beyond my insecurities, beyond the things that keep me small. As I stretch my mind beyond what it knows, I find answers, peace, confidence, and an abundance of potential. Anything is possible when you are awake and free.

There is far more to life than meets the eye if you are willing to look.

If you would like to find freedom from your insecurities, your stress, and frustration with life, please do get in touch. I would love to hear from you: melanie@therestorativecoach.com

Over To You

What do you think the point of life is, if not to learn and grow?

If you engaged with life as if it were a journey of growth, how might that change how you respond to your circumstances and other people?

What are you curious about?

How do you cultivate a connection to the spiritual layer, and when you do, what value does it bring you, and what difference does it make to how you perceive and interpret life?

There is More to Life Than Meets the Eye