Wellbeing

The Paradise Paradigm

By Zain Saraswati Jamal

Imagine if you were suddenly struck with the realization that you have spent your entire life searching your external reality – places, relationships, experiences – in the efforts to recreate the moment where your fundamental core values took root into your psyche.
That single moment, usually very early on in your childhood – no matter how heavenly or horrendous your childhood was – exists for each of us. It was in this moment where life, presence and the experience of truth, anchored into your blood, bones, heart and spirit. Into your cellular structure.
While many of us can probably list our core values at an instant prompt…my go-tos being truth, freedom, love, vitality, radiance, peace. I mean naturally, what else would a Bohemian, gypsy, yogi, wild woman, goddess value? These values are reflected in my identity, my relationships, in the ways in which I dedicate my life force and where I draw my creative inspiration aren’t they?
But something didn’t feel quite right. It was all a little too pretty and perfect, a little too beauty pageantesque. Of course I valued these things inherently; however, they didn’t illicit the emotional connection that I expect core value should when I felt deeper into each one of them.
These values are what I have sought after, yearned for, strived to create in my reality. This realization inspired me to become curious. Curious as to what my core values really are and that very first experience of them in my life. What I discovered quite literally shook me to my core. I was brought back to a very early memory in my life – a summer in Maui, when I was five years old, spent with my parents and sister in a beautiful beachfront house. I recall timeless days wearing only my bathing suit from sunrise till sunset, hands and hair sticky from adventures with my sister in the sugarcane fields and a very special moment of being with my family in the pool. It was this day, when I experienced my very own paradise, the day my core values took root.
And thus, the paradigm – I have spent my entire life, every encounter, recreating the combination of those feelings but the reality is, that few people, experiences, events actually synergize to bring those values, in that specific and unique combination into existence. What remains, is a perpetual state of striving and the cycle of expectation and disappointment. I consider myself to be a conscious and aware woman, yet I never fully grasped this concept and as I sit with the stark realization of it all, I understand two things:
My authentic core values serve as the barometer of my intuition. When I can feel those values present, I know that I am living my life fully and that I am on the right path.
When I am in constant connection with my core values, I am honouring myself and offering the highest of myself to my external reality, which inevitably, attracts more of the same.
How many of us are constantly creating a paradise paradigm, consciously or unconsciously?
How willing are you to take a deeper look into what you truly value as a means to deconstruct a possible preconceived paradise and authentically live moment by moment from the most fundamental values that emanate from the most intimate place in your spirit?
I invite you to go on a journey with yourself. Take some time to bring forth some of your most vivid – and oldest – memories, recalling the sensations and emotions that made you feel most alive. There will likely be one memory in which your fundamental core values live and you will connect to them through a sense of deep knowing. Write these core values down and acknowledge times in your life where you have intentionally or unintentionally tried to recreate them in your experiences, relationships and circumstances. This may bring up a plethora of emotions – sadness, grief, joy etc.
Once you have established your core values and are clear on your personal connection to where they reside in your body and align with your intuition, you can start using them as a gauge for further exploration and creation of your present paradise.