|
The thinking brain . . . I call it the thinking devil. It dangles a carrot in front of us saying, "Come over here and sit in the corner. I'll bet if you sit and think about this long enough, chew on this hard enough, you'll arrive at an answer that's satisfying." But it's a trick. It never happens.
There's only one way to tame the thinking devil and it doesn't come from trying to control him. He actually loves that. It gives him something to push against. The best way to deal with the thinking devil is to learn how to watch him and see him for who he is. Watching the thinking brain strengthens your awareness of the truth of who you are and who you are not. You are not the thinking brain. You are the one who can watch it. In time and with practice, you might get so good at this that you will catch yourself laughing at his/her antics - the way you would laugh at the "acting out" of an unruly child. Even better, you might begin to feel compassion for his/her desperate attempts to be important and valuable to you. Once you are able to watch your thoughts, you can respond to them saying, "I love you. Is there more?" Then let your thoughts respond with whatever comes. Respond to what comes next with, "I love you. Is there more?" And so on. In time your overactive thinking brain will run out of ideas and give up - at least for a little while. In the process, you will have strengthened your identity as the watcher - and a compassionate, non-reactive one at that! This is a great way, by the way, to respond to worry thoughts. Instead of trying to control or tame your worry thoughts, allow them to come up and respond to them with the I-love-you-is-there-more technique. Have fun with this and as always, please let me know if you need any help.
0 Comments
Space. The final frontier. No, I’m not talking about the Starship Enterprise. I’m talking about the space that lives inside each and every one of us. It's the space that holds all that we desire and the answers to all of our questions like, Who am I? What is the meaning of life and what is my relationship to it? and What happens when we die? It’s a place that's ever-present, yet one we seldom visit. As a counselor and personal growth facilitator for almost three decades, I have had the privilege to sit with Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Agnostics, Atheists, and people who say that they are spiritual but not religious. Some come with a diagnosis, given to them by a medical professional or a counselor who files insurance. Some do not. The stories they bring with them range from mildly stressful, dysfunctional childhoods, to accounts of some of the most horrendous things that human beings do to one another. And yet, despite the disparity in their beliefs, diagnoses, or life experiences, they all want the same thing - to feel better. By the time they get to me they've generally started to realize that what they're looking for doesn't live outside of them. They've exhausted their search for it in food, relationships, sex, alcohol, or drugs. They have done their best to use their good, logical minds to try to figure out what needs to happen. They've prayed, used affirmations, positive thinking, willpower, and mind-over-matter strategies to make changes in their perspective or behavior. They've consulted books by experts, self-healing practices, personal growth workshops, yogis, gurus, and clergy. Doing something normally makes us humans feel better. There is a sense of safety in thinking that we know or are at least on our way to knowing. And this is understandable. The problem is that as soon as we latch onto any of these practices and/or teachings as the truth, we become identified with them. What I believe, becomes linked with and ultimately confused with, Who I am. And anything the human mind identifies with as me, has to protect and defend it and feels very threatened by anything that seems contradictory. And while it seems that our beliefs provide a certain sense of safety, in my experience, this sense of safety is an illusion. Life seems to have a way of shattering our illusions. For example, as soon as the devout believer in life after death is faced with a terminal diagnosis, they are terrified. And all of the doubt and questions and fear that’s been covered over with comforting, staunchly-held beliefs are brought to the surface. This is not a criticism. It's understandable, and seems to be part of the human condition, because most of us humans are addicted, regardless of the differences in our beliefs, to thinking. I consider an addiction to be anything we can’t stop - at least not for very long. It seems to have a force of its own and tends to run our behavior and our lives behind the scenes. And, while it offers the promise to make us feel better, and does so temporarily, it ultimately makes things worse. I don’t know about your mind, but mine, when allowed to run amok, doesn’t normally have great things to say about me or much else. If I watch closely enough, I can notice how it makes me feel bad, which gives me more to think about and more to figure out, which tends to fuel more thinking and the illusion that, "If I think about this long enough, I'll figure it out and then I'll feel better." There is a way to be free of the compulsive, addictive nature of the thinking brain. Beyond thinking and beyond the suppressed emotions that are often driving our thinking, is the space on which it all appears. The very nature of this space is peace, compassion, safety, and well-being. You can’t access it by thinking about it. And you can’t skip over the feelings that might come up once the thinking brain is quiet. The feelings must be met with the same quiet observance with which you meet and thereby quiet the thoughts. It’s not a journey for sissies. But it’s well worth the exploration. Please don't take my word for it. Just try it out for yourself. But I can tell you, in my own personal experience, as well as witnessing, being with, and guiding this process with clients, maybe over a thousand times, this seems clear: no religion, spiritual belief, or lack thereof has any better access to this space than any other. There is no emotional state, long-standing or temporary, that cannot be converted within and by the space. And, there is no amount of trauma in the bodymind too horrible, no nervous system too traumatized, that can’t be restored to balance, healing, and wholeness by the alchemical nature of this space. Please understand that I am not suggesting an end to religion, belief, diagnosis, or the thinking brain. I’m just suggesting an exploration of what lies beyond. And I guess I’d like to close with a poem I wrote several years ago called, Who You Are. Who You Are You have all that you need. You have all that you need within you to feel what you want to feel. You do not need a partner who loves you to feel unconditional love. You do not need a good job or money to feel secure. You do not need a symptom-free diagnosis-free body to feel well. Dig deep! The kingdom of heaven is within you! But first you must navigate the pearly gates - only the gates aren't so pearly. They have names like resistance and fear and are meant to distract you and block you from the kingdom and the truth of who you are. They masquerade as busyness and doing Facebooking and emailing obsessing and worrying blaming and opinionating picking a fight with your partner making somebody wrong defending your position watching television, reading a book, eating, exercising, drinking alcohol, any addiction at all, anything you can't stop. But the sneakiest, most insidious habit of all? Trying to figure it out. Oh, it seems innocent enough. You have a good mind. Surely if you think hard enough you can figure it out, whatever your it seems to be. So you're seduced into spinning round and round in your head convinced that a satisfying answer a solution is just around the corner, but it never is. The satisfaction never comes. There's just more spinning and the endless hook of trying. (Mental masturbation I call it). If you have the courage and I know that you do to stop spinning for a moment then take a deep breath and wait - in the scary groundless nothing-to-hang-onto wide-open space of not knowing. Just wait. Breathe. Be still with yourself hold your own hand and comfort yourself in the wide-open space of not knowing. Be patient. With practice I think you will find as I have that there is peace there is freedom there is comfort and wellbeing in the still quiet land of not knowing. And, there is love . . . Love that's so pure and so bright that you know in your unknowing that this is why you've been running this is what you've been scared of because this love is so big and so vast so all consuming so unfathomably deep. This must be God, you say and then you realize, Oh shit. It's me. Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. Shelly M. Smith. Related Post: The Key To Heaven |
Archives
April 2024
Categories |
RSS Feed