Gift or Curse?

 Mind can be the greatest gift, or the greatest curse.

Michael A. Singer

How is your mind treatin ya? Is it a gift you use to explore, in awe, the miracles of this world? Or is it a creator and source of great suffering for you? 

My mind has been a great source of suffering for me for most of my life. Much less now that I have discovered it is the cause of the suffering and have backed away from its stories, its lies, its crazy mixed up tales of reality. I have backed away but I must admit it still pulls me back in from time to time.

Just this morning, for example, I woke up focusing on the fact that this human I call "me" has been through so much crap in her 61 years on the planet. I was questioning why things were so difficult for this "me" and heard myself actually uttering the very same words Singer used in his podcast,

"Nothing ever happens that is good for me."

I knew as soon as those words came out of my mouth that that wasn't true but the thought did enter my mind. It is true that, for some reason I do not understand completely with this limited mind, this human has encountered one situation after the next that put it in survival mode. And it got stuck there. In this mode there is little room for fun, joy, adventure, growth, and expansion in terms the outer world would deem as such. The focus in on "How do I survive?"  More importantly, "How do I assist and ensure the others around me stay alive and survive?" 

Say what, crazy lady? You were never in a war zone or living on the street. How can you say that?

 That's true. It is. I have been so blessed in many ways but a lot of the circumstances I encountered, despite the  culture of abundance, ease, and comfort in which I grew up...  threatened survival, in one way or another, of the body (mine and others), of the householder "me"- I came very close to losing everything after I got sick, and right now I am just clinging to what I have left of a material life, and of of the psychosocial me. If I wrote a list and shared it... about the things this human dealt with throughout this life span to date...people would shake their heads and say, "Oh I don't want to hear that.  I don't want to know about that. You are being dramatic!You are focusing too much on the negative and feeling sorry for yourself" or "That's just fiction. Those things don't happen around here." 

Oh, they do and they did. Life circumstances, for this "me", were more than a bit bizarre and accumulative. 

I, therefore, lived with an overworked amygdala and still do. My fight or flight reactions, though sometimes overexaggerated, are getting plenty of opportunity to do the job they were designed to do. They had plenty of opportunity for practice. This constant "practice" of my body's alarm system  left me either in active emergency response or languishing in stuckness when there was no crisis to deal with.   This is certainly not a mentality built on "flousrishing", is it? It is not a healthy mind.

So, yeah I often catch myself saying, in a moment of extra weakness, "Nothing good ever happens to me."  Sometimes my frame of reference is so tiny, focusing only on survival.

We often define our frame of reference into tiny nothings...we limit it to the few personal experiences we as seperate humans have in life

So, it is true my mind has been a curse...when I got lost in this tiny frame of reference...but it has also been a gift.

I think I personally (though there really is not personal in this) have an amazing mind. It is this mind that allowed this human to survive as long as she did.  It is this mind that made "me" extra perceptive and I developed an amazing survival intelligence.  I learned, early on, what others might be feeling or thinking based on their outward language.  I became very perceptive. I learned to discover what was going on in my body when others were too often telling me that "nothing was going on"...keeping it going. I learned about the suffering in the world and how maybe I could help a bit. I learned how to survive with so little and remain loving and giving. I learned about what was truly important and what wasn't.

This mind we all share is a compassionate mind. It showed me how we are all inter being so I connect with the world in a gentle, loving way.  It allowed me to see and apprecaite all the little intricate details of nature, of human behaviours, of expereince and of Life.  It opened up creativity to me, and the magic of words...As if it handed me a canvas and amazing colours (words) and said , "Go paint!" . It made me a questioner of everything...it offered me so many big, beautiful questions which left me exploring some amazing mysteries in my attempt to answer them.

 It allowed me to experience "awe"...not just the "Awe!! Not again. Why do I have to deal with  yet another crisis?" but..."Awe!!! Oh My God, This world is Absolutely Amazing!!" 

Use your mind for something greater than you-the personal self. 

So, though my mind is still operating on survival mode as Life dances in front of this human, dropping off at its feet whatever it drops off...so many challenges and so many blessings, though it still creates a convincing tale of suffering that still has the capacity to draw me in from time to time...I am grateful for my mind. I am learning to transcend judgement and practice compassion no matter what Life enfolds in front of me. 

Afterall,

It is not personal! It's just Life!

All is well!

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe/ Sounds True ( May 29, 2025) Expanding Beyond the Personal Mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N30LfzR2J1c&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=1