The Thinking Mind holds the heart hostage and is threatened by our emotions and feelings. It is terrified because it cannot control them. However, if we can use the Thinking Mind in a creative way and put it in charge of awareness, then the Thinking Mind can start to work with and for us. Let us look at the benefits of using language and awareness versus language and justification.
LANGUAGE AND AWARENESS:
When you become aware of being emotional you can ask yourself: What is this emotion I am feeling and where am I feeling it in my body?
The Thinking Mind is then busy naming and describing where in the body these feelings and emotions are felt, rather than defending the validity of the story that triggered them! We are then using language, the incredible tool of the Thinking Mind, to help bring awareness to the present emotional situation.
The basic premise of this line of questioning is:
1. If I am having a strong reaction to something someone did or said then the first thing I want to find out is exactly what the trigger is. It will be a word or simple phrase, a tone even or maybe a behavior or certain body language that they used. Maybe it is because they didn’t say or do anything that you were expecting. Then I must ask a very difficult question of myself, if I really want to find out the truth of my reaction. Do I do or say this too? – have I ever done or said something similar? Keep asking the question over and over again even if your first answer is a definitive “no” – be patient here, also don’t be too literal.
If after a while the answer is still “no” then ask yourself, the second question:
2. If this bothers me so much I must have been taught to judge this behavior harshly, so where and from whom did I learn that?
Is it a family belief, a cultural belief, a religious belief or a personal belief?
This type of questioning engages the Thinking Mind in awareness and it opens the Thinking Mind to possibility and understanding.
LANGUAGE AND JUSTIFICATION:
When we don’t question our thinking the mind gets caught up in the “story.” It wants desperately to hold onto the “story” and validate it – to prove itself right. The Thinking Mind loves the blame and victim game because it needs to be right. So it invests itself more and more into the story and realizes that it can now add the emotions and feelings to its advantage. It becomes the terrorist. The feelings now are there to prove it right. If I am feeling this strongly about what happened I must be right. See how upset I am? Obviously I am right as I am reacting so strongly to the injustice of the situation.
Remember to keep it simple. Simplicity is always most profound. Long-winded explanations belong to the unquestioned mind and illustrates the degree of involvement with the story. The Thinking Mind loves embellishment to feel worthy, valid and self-important. So be aware of its nature to use language as a smoke screen — this is not the realm of open communication and intimate relationship. The more we can recognize that we are all prisoners of our own mind, the more human we can become.
Do we want freedom or do we want to be right? The uncomfortable truth is that the latter rules the programmed Thinking Mind. When the Thinking Mind is deep in its story there is no openness, the mind is in lock-down mode and the Thinking Mind has hidden the key!
“The mind is like a parachute, it can only work if it is open!”
Paradoxically, the good news is that the Thinking Mind does hold the key, so if we can realize this when we are not in the lock-down reactive mode, we have built a bridge to use the next time we become aware of this shut-down state. This awareness can start to grow before the next event and with practice will become more and more available in a shorter length of time.
Using the Thinking Mind to unlock itself from its own grasp is the path to freedom. This has a huge impact on how life is then experienced and transcends the blame and victim game. It doesn’t mean we won’t feel our feelings and emotions, in fact we may feel them more, but they will be more honest and spontaneous.
And it doesn’t mean that conflict won’t arise, because it will, until we have no more arguments left with “what is.” Conflict then becomes a “welcomed”, or at least an accepted experience, because it shows us that we have more misperceptions to unravel on our way to more peace and joy. Conflict is the path to wisdom and part of the natural world also.
When you engage the Thinking Mind in this creative questioning way you will start to see a whole new world at play. A whole way of being and living that shows up, that is much more relaxed and magical. You start to become a witness of life living through you. seo websites . The more we align to “what is,” the more freedom we experience.
Questions are more valuable than answers, not knowing is often more helpful than knowing. Be open to going beyond what you think you know. Believing our stressful thoughts is what breaks our connection with the Tao, with oneness and is what keeps us in pain and ignorance.
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