come out of it

You have to realize, deeply, that there is no reality to the things you see and hear in your mind. There is no substance to your thoughts. They have become your reality, but they are not real.

What is the mind? Essentially, the mind is a calculator. A computer whose function is to solve problems and to get the things you want.

Your mind gives you the ability to generate images and sensations so that you can experience this problem solving in real-time, as if it were really happening. This can be a great gift, but you have lost control of it. You can't stop thinking. It has become compulsive, and painful, and it has taken over to such an extent that it now obscures what's real.

It may seem like there are always problems in your life that, if you could only solve them, your life could be made perfect, or at least better than it is now. But it is not in the nature of the mind to be satisfied by any situation for long. It's not really that your life is continuously problematic, it's that the mind continuously creates new problems to solve, new desires to fulfill. And unless you become aware of this tendency, it will continue to pull your attention and cause you to suffer needlessly.

Your life passes you by while you're consumed by thinking in this way. Trying to solve problem after problem, as if doing so will make you happy. The vast majority of your attention is being given to these projected false realities. You live within them instead of living in what's real, what's outside of the endless machinations of the mind, just beyond the kaleidascopic screen of your worries and interpretations.

And why do you have the thoughts that you have? Your thoughts are mainly the result of conditioning, things that happened to you in the past that were out of your control. Things you experienced as a child, as a teenager, and so on until now. Things you've learned, things you've absorbed without even noticing, all of it has programmed this machine that continuously generates the words you hear and the scenarios you experience.

Some of you have minds that have been programmed by childhoods that felt unsafe, and as a result, your life as an adult now feels unsafe. When you were a child, being rejected by your parents could have meant death. You needed them to love you and to care for you, so this fear was, in a way, justified. So you learned to adapt, to exist in a way that pleased them to continue to receive their love, to survive. And this conditioned your mind.

Because of the mind still working to keep this and similar fears at bay, the adapted behaviour has continued well beyond necessary. You are now capable of sustaining yourself, but you can still be crippled by the same fears of a child. They just take new forms, new disguises. Those things that seemed so threatening then still seem threatening now. They go on in your mind as if you were still that child who needs to be protected, but now you project them onto different people and situations.

Some of the scenarios you're projecting may happen in some capacity; a difficult talk with someone important to you, an impending loss. Some of it may happen. But the reality when it comes will never be as projected, and all the time and energy spent thinking and worrying won't change the outcome. All it will do is drain you, and take away from your ability to respond to each moment fully as they actually occur.

When the moment arrives, you will act. Your body will move, and words will come. Consider all the times you thought you wouldn't survive something, that you were consumed by fear and worry over something that simply happened, passed, and is now just a memory, or, never ended up happening at all. Despite all the fear, you are still here, and you are fine. Trust yourself and allow yourself to relax. To be.

Realize this; your projections have never come to pass, and if you feel they have, it's only that you are so identified with your mind that you believe it's narrow interpretations of events. You believe the labels and boxes the mind creates. But the reality of any situation, any moment, any human being and anything they do is always infinitely more complex than the mind could possibly comprehend. Whatever your mind concludes will never be what actually occurs, it will only paint over it and obscure the truth.

Stop believing all of it. Thank the mind for trying to protect you, but realize that it is all ultimately false, unhelpful and self destructive, and come out of it. Come out of all of this constant compulsive thinking. Come out of the mind, and into your life.

Realize that all of the anxiety and fear and restlessness and worry is just the mind continuously working to create and solve what are now imaginary problems. Come out of it. But don't come out of one stream of thoughts and dive straight into another. Just be where you are for a while. Enter your body. Be your senses. Look around you. See what's there. Feel what's touching your skin. Listen. Just be there. Attend to what's directly at hand. Relax. The longer you can be present and aware in this way, the less emotional charge these thoughts will sustain in you.

Realize this continuously, again and again and again, each time you get pulled into the projections, into the films in your head, until they no longer have so much power over your life. A thousand times a day you may still be pulled into projections of the past or the future, but soon you may find that you can start to see them for what they are and come out of them. And little by little they'll start to fade, and you'll start to experience less and less of the mind, and more of life.