mar20

"We think there's something wrong with us, but the only thing wrong with us is our thinking."

This came to me while listening to others sharing some of their experiences and problems. It occured to me that underneath our judgmental thoughts about ourselves is pure neutrality. The essential "problem" isn't who we are but only the thoughts themselves, or more specifically how we relate with our thoughts.

If my mind is conditioned with thoughts that identify me as shameful, guilty, helpless, ugly, incapable, insufficient, etc, and I give these thoughts attention, validity and power to influence my feelings, perception and behaviour, then naturally I'm going to be a "bad" person - or at least THINK I'm one and react in various ways depending on other conditioned ideas. The same may occur in reverse too.

Ultimately it's completely subjective. Who I really am has nothing to do with my thoughts about myself or others' thoughts about me, whether in the past or present. Those are an entirely self contained phenomenon - thoughts interacting with thoughts. Judgments interacting with judgments. Words interacting with words, feelings with feelings. We are not these judgments, thoughts and feelings. We are having them, they're occuring in us, but we are not them. Everyone has some of both - experiences, memories, thoughts that indicate goodness or badness, and even these judgments depend on the individual's conditioning. Some are just conditioned/programmed/compelled to focus more on some things than others. Some are conditioned to see the same things that another would find bad as good, and vice versa. So what's the truth?

This is similar to what I realized upon my first big awakening - that the only thing wrong with me was that I believed that something was wrong with me. It's the same basic idea. Believing that inaccurate thoughts about myself are true. It produces so many delitirious effects and feelings. It ruins me, my feelings, my experience, my relationships and interactions. Believing in these thoughts ruins my experience of life.

And it's still happening. So I'm going to start consciously redirecting my attention again, out of my thoughts and into the body/present moment. Practicing mindfulness, basically. I let my attention linger on thoughts far too much. It's basically an addiction to a form of stimulation - mental stimulation. I'm stimulated by my own thoughts, sometimes pleasurably and sometimes painfully. But they're all essentially unreal. It's not a good habit to stick with. It would do far more for me to rest in open awareness rather than the confined corridors of thoughts and judgments. Otherwise I'm essentially at their mercy to influence my choices, feelings, and overall experience.