Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate.
Norman Vincent Peale
Michael A.Singer explains that there is a way to free ourselves from all the damaging thinking our mind does...we change it!
As I have mentioned so many times, we have up to 60,000 thoughts looping through our minds on a given day and 80% of them are negative. No wonder why we are not okay inside. Those thoughts come from the programming we put into the mind to get it to protect us from pain and therefore from reactivation of those old samskaras we have stored inside us. Our demands on the mind are just too great. We broke it with our unrealistic expectations that more or less said, "Make reality go my way. Protect me from everything I don't like. Stop the world from hurting me!"
The mind, wanting to do what it was programmed to do, really, really tries to oblige. It tries to keep us happy but in order to do so it has to square off against reality and, of course, it can't win that battle. Reality is always going to be what it is no matter what the mind does.
Here we are in our unawakened states asking a now broken, neurotic mind to save us from reality...It, in turn, tells us what is going on and what to do about it and we listen, failing to realize that nothing can save us from reality. Still... there it is spouting off 60,000 thoughts a day, mostly negative, and we listen to it as if it knows what it is talking about until we feel terrible inside.
The mind knows nothing. It is just programming.
We need to change the programming. We can't change the programming, however, until we are aware of what the mind is doing and how we are listening to it, Michael Singer reminds us, in the podcast listed below. We need to put down the mind, thinking and feeling and just observe it from a distance. (We are not our minds, remember, we are the one 'in here' observing). We need to notice what types of thoughts are in there and how they are affecting us. Then we need to replace that negative thinking with something more Life affirming: positive thinking.
When I was 18 years old and heavily addicted to my negative narrative, I came across a book that changed my life and set me on the path I am now on. It was The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. I suddenly realized that I was thinking negatively and could see how that negative thinking was impinging on my desire to be happy. I was allowing my thinking to control me. I could also see some light...there was a way out of this mess I created in my head. That realization has spurred me onto a journey that has led me here to where I am now.
Of course, I have learned that it is all much deeper than that but by changing our thinking to something more positive, we are taking control where we have control. We may not be able to control reality, nor can we control the "automatic" thoughts the mind generates, but we can control and change our willful thoughts.
Say someone doesn't accept your friend request on Facebook ( not sure why I used this example...I am not a fan of social media so I seldom accept requests lol)...our sick and overprogrammed and neurotic minds may begin right away with the negative thinking in response to that fairly neutral experience. It may begin to say things like, "Oh. Oh Something is wrong. Why isn't she accepting? Did I do something to offend her? Maybe she doesn't like me. Maybe she thinks I am weird. They thought I was weird.too.[activation of an old samskara]. I guess I am weird. She is not accepting because she thinks I am weird. Everyone thinks I am weird. They were right...I am weird. I should not be putting myself out there just to have people remind me how weird I am"...and on and on it goes while we fall into a pit of despair.
Now these are reflex thoughts that the mind automatically comes up with because we have programmed it to do so, based on our samskaras. The thing is, we do not have to pay attention to them. We might not be able to stop them but we can distract from them by covering them with a layer of positive thoughts, like, "Hmm! I really do not know why she is not accepting. She may have a thousand things, unrelated to me, going on in her life. Even if she is not responding because she thinks I am weird and doesn't want to have anything to do with me...that's okay. I will survive that. I can even grow stronger because of it. This could be one of the things that are going to help me to grow, to assist me to let go of all the unwholesome tendencies inside me. Bring it on! I will be okay whether she accepts my request or she doesn't, whether she likes me or doesn't like me. It's all good."
The negative thoughts may continue to chirp in the background but we are no longer listening to them. We are listening to thoughts that bring a sense of acceptance and peace rather than those self-deprecating ones that leave fear, insecurity and sadness.
In order to get here, though, we needed to distance ourselves enough from our minds and thinking so we could observe and become aware of what was going on in our minds. In our practice, we do not seek to stop the mind from doing what it is doing nor do we seek to punish it or ourselves for causing so much pain. We simply become aware of what is going on up there and we become kind and compassionate with the mind we broke, understanding why it is the way it is, just as we remain kind and compassionate towards ourselves. We don't stop thinking, and we don't try anymore to stop reality from being what it is. We just change our focus of attention. We can do that by focusing on the positive thinking, we willfully add to the mind stuff, as we tune out the negative.
All is well!
Norman Vincent Peale (2003) The Power of Positive Thinking. Reprint Edition. Touchstone.
Michael A. Singer (2022) living untethered. New Harbinger/Sounds True
Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe (January 30, 2023) Learning To Work On Your State of Mind. https://tou.org/talks/
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