feb1

Thoughts are dreams, phantoms. Memories are dreams too - remnants of past incidents colored over and reinterpreted by whatever thoughts and feelings are present while remembering. There's no substance to them - thoughts are self-contained projections being overlaid onto reality.

I've spent so much of my life in thoughts. I'm thinking right now. My thoughts separate me from life - make me afraid to fully live. Because that's my conditioning, aka the thoughts that were passed down to me. Fear, guilt and shame-ridden thoughts. So I, like many others, stay stuck and small and feeble while others feel free to live and fully enjoy the riches available to us. It just depends on the conditioning. And as I go through life, immersed in thinking and absorbing the thoughts of others, I just get heavier and dumber and slower and smaller and more confused and weak and malnourished while life continues to pass all around me.

Life is as it is. Fear is an idea, based on premises based on compulsive conditioned interpretations and extrapolations. It has no fundamental basis except in a fleeting thought, at least when there isn't an imminent threat to the body, which is rare. Psychological/thought-induced fear is common; real fear is rare. I suffer from an overabundance of psychological/thought-induced fear. And guilt, and shame, and today, regret. And it's all thoughts. It's all nonsense - unreal. Just a play of words and images floating across the inner vision and unnecessarily stressing the body. It's quite normal, and it's insane.

How do I get out of its cage? I keep trying to solve it in various ways. Reading, eating, exercise, various practices. And maybe they are helping. But while doing all these things I'm still thinking all the time, which is the fundamental issue. Thinking thinking thinking, all the time thinking. Or rather, watching thoughts go by, swimming in them, engaging with them. I'm not the thoughts, and the thoughts don't represent reality, but they consume my attention. I'm lost in them, and I continue adding to them, making them more and more dense, elaborate and labyrinthine. Life is barely perceptible beyond them anymore. I'm barely perceptible beyond them. All I see and know are the thoughts.

I have to get beyond them. Not only mine but the thoughts of others, because we're constantly pouring our thoughts into each other. I'm doing it now, but at least this way I'm not passing them onto anyone (probably). And if I do, at least it's with a disclaimer that this is all nonsense. Hey, you -- don't listen to me, or anyone! We're all full of shit (thoughts)! Just do what you want! Enjoy growing from it, enjoy being alive, enjoy being yourself!!

But it's not that easy, is it? Because the thoughts swarm about, constantly creating confusion.

I don't want to die without ever having lived beyond the confines of this conditioned mind. And I will if I stay trapped in its cage of thoughts, feelings and judgments. This life is flying by. Soon it'll be over. My thoughts are getting me nowhere. Other peoples' thoughts are getting me nowhere. I need to go beyond them. I'm waiting beyond them, and Life is waiting too.

Life communicates directly - thoughtlessly, wordlessly. One way it communicates is through desires, and all desires are temporary - they just need to be experienced with awareness to be transcended. This is how we grow beyond - through experiencing, not through thinking-about. Otherwise the unexperienced desire lingers and festers in the unconscious. Thoughts, feelings and judgments come from the mind, but Life is beyond thoughts/feelings/judgments. It just is. What I want is what Life wants through me, because I'm a creation/extension of Life like everyone/thing else. And what I want is constantly floating into my mind. I'm just so heavily programmed, distracted and unaware that I barely take notice of it. I've gotten so used to dismissing and ignoring what I actually want in favor of the habitual and programmed behaviors and judgments. But what I want keeps coming back. Desiring means that there's something there to be experienced, to be transcended. It's not that attaining or accomplishing something will make me happy. The initial attainment of desires always feels sweet, and eventually it turns bitter and falls away. Still, there's something in the desire to experience and move into, and eventually to move through and on from. But I can neglect to explore them because of judgmental thoughts that induce anxiety, guilt, shame, worry, doubt, etc. What if I mess up? What if I fail? How would it make me look? What would they think? What would they say? What if it's too tiring, too hard? What if I suck? What's the point/benefit? What will I gain/lose out of it? All these thought-based calculations. It's a paralyzing way to navigate life.

Experiencing itself is It! And the growth that comes through experiencing is It. Everything else is like dust.

I gotta be smarter than this. I have to see through this shit. It's just programming, mine and others'. Life is as it is. Life wants what it wants/what I want. Life wants me to be as I intrinsically/naturally am, because Life created me as I am. What more needs to be understood? The programming came after and was largely detrimental, and simply not based in truth.

The only enemy I've ever had are my own thoughts, turned against me. Not only against me, but against others too. Just nonsense, complete nonsense. Amazing how this intangible, invisible process can wreak so much havoc upon reality.

I'll continue with the mindfulness, meditation and emotional processing. Mindfulness to detect when I'm lost in thoughts/feelings/mentalized interpretations (aka conditioning/programming/delusion), meditation to still/silence/transcend the stream of thinking/feeling and rest directly in Self/Life, and emotional processing to release the suppressed energies that continue to affect and limit the full expression of the body/mind. I'm also going to make more of an effort to transcend the force of habit by being more alert while engaging with others/the world. Rather than reacting habitually (aka via my programming), I'll try to respond freshly and honestly in the moment. It will likely be challenging and awkward for a while but that's the way to connect to and bridge my true/present moment Self/Life rather than staying caught within the walls of the old programming/false self/delusion. It's the way to make the real grow in power/significance and the unreal shrink.

I hereby release myself and others from the conditioned spells of fear, worry, anxiety, guilt, shame, regret, sorrow, and other judgments collected within this body/mind! I will take responsibility for feeling and releasing the accumulated emotions and their accompanying judgments rather than allowing them to infect and spread through myself and others (aka making the unreal real). I will notice when they're active, detach my attention from the thoughts they're generating/are being generated by and allow the feelings to work their way through and out. Then I will continue moving and exploring from a place of acceptance and clarity, knowing that Life knows no judgments of myself and others - only the conditioned mind of man does. No more validating and cultivating these through attention, no more believing the lies. Life wants me and others to live, as we are, which includes how we've been and will be. I accept this and release the rest. I accept forgiveness, compassion, authenticity, freedom. I accept myself as I am, I accept others as they are, and I accept Life as it is, beyond all thoughts-about.

Ganbatte!!