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When I first started down the path of wanting to understand myself, my soul, so that I could help others, my mind was a mess. I had no concept at that time that I was responsible for what went through there.
No one teaches us in our society that we are responsible for the contents of our souls. Religion teaches us what to do and what not to, an example being the Ten Commandments, but it doesn’t really teach us why. As far as we are led to believe, we do good so we can go to Heaven and steer clear of Hell.
Heaven and Hell exist right here right now. This, that we live in, this is both Heaven and Hell. It’s what we make of it. Heaven and Hell are also the contents of your mind or soul. When we see a baby smile or children play, Heaven, when we feel overbearing guilt, Hell.
Guilt is your subconscious way of communicating with you. When we hurt another, we experience guilt as our subconscious, soul’s, way of communicating with us. Guilt is a way of us learning what to and not to do. It’s a way of learning from our mistakes.
If we refuse to look within for whatever reason, dreams and nightmares can be another way that our subconscious or soul uses to communicate with us.
Religion sort of did us a disservice by removing our ability to understand our souls. Because we are told, “if you just follow the rules, everything will work out,” we lack a fundamental understanding of how that part of us works. It’s not wrong that following the rules help, if you do good things, etc. you will experience Heaven, but at the same time it might be better for us to know why.
We are not meant to think. It’s unnatural. It’s also just a byproduct of living in this society, and of us not understanding how we work.
Take Humanity back to a time before speech, language or society. Would we have needed to think? If we’d have heard a bird chirp, we would have known it was a bird, but not had to think to ourselves the word “Bird.” We would have been just like we are now, curious, and if we heard a noise we didn’t know, we would have still wanted to know, we just wouldn’t have needed the thought “bird.”
Our thoughts are a byproduct of our ego, and our ego is this…
When we are young, we’re taught to communicate, “Mom, Dad, TV. etc.” We’re taught to communicate because it helps us interact with the world. We technically don’t need to speak or understand language, but it is helpful in the way things are set up. At some point, we use the language that we learned to form an inner dialogue. This dialogue can help us learn by batting ideas off ourselves. From using it for so long, we forget the time that it was not needed. We ask ourselves questions, “Do I look pretty,” “Will they like me,” etc. and it develops into what we know as the ego.
I haven’t needed to think in maybe over 5 years and it’s because I simply don’t need thoughts. It doesn’t mean I can’t have them, I can choose to run a conversation through my mind to see how it comes off, for instance, but it’s a choice nonetheless.
This is our natural state of being: thoughtless, and at peace. Awareness is a natural result of not being caught up in your mind.
So what are thoughts? Unprocessed feelings, emotions, worries, etc. How do we get rid of them? Process them. How do we do that? Quiet moments to ourselves.
I consider meditation an act of spiritual maintenance. There is no right or wrong way of mediation, the purpose is in the doing. When we do it, we become aware of what needs to be processed. You can meditate on going for long walks, washing the dishes, sitting comfortably on the couch, or listening to wordless music. The methods are endless.
If you had no regrets of the past, worries about the future, and you did not need to know everything or anything, what would you spend your mental energy on? You wouldn’t, you would have no need for thought. From this point, it’s easy to process emotions as they come.
“How does that make you feel?” Right, that psychological question, but the truth is that one question is the basis for learning to understand yourself. How does that make you feel?
The truth is that you have no control over what happens outside of you. You only have control over what happens inside of you. You have influence over what happens outside of you, but not control. Why was Jesus’ message so strong? He walked in the light of who he truly was. He didn’t tell people to be like him. He told people to find that light that makes them them and shine that light for all the world to see.
He was right. It’s become kind of diluted by this point, but the best thing that any of us can do for ourselves or the world is to simply be ourselves and enjoy life. When we enjoy our lives, those around us tend to enjoy theirs as well.
Let’s talk about control for one second. When we create expectations about others or how a situation will turn out, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Even if the situation is good, if it doesn’t come out how we expected, we can feel a sense of disappointment towards it.
Going with the flow is about letting go of that control. Without expectations, we have the ability to enjoy life as it happens. It doesn’t mean we don’t do things, it means that we do things with the understanding that we don’t know how they will turn out. That way if we make progress, we don’t have to compare that progress to our expectations. Works the same with our expectations about people.
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Thanks for the warm welcome Catherine! 🙂
I was trying to keep it concise because I can get a little carried away when I try to explain things. I feel I should elaborate a little on the thoughts part though.
Since we’re not exactly taught about how our inner worlds work, we’re also not taught how to effectively process our emotions. Many times throughout our lives we may learn to suppress what it is that we feel. This can even happen to us as adults, our workplaces may ask us to ignore our moral inclinations in order to “get the job done”, or we may learn to bury things in relationships to, “keep the peace.” We obviously experience similar situations throughout our lives as well.
The point is that suppressing emotions and not dealing with our inner worlds can lead us to a sort of mental disorder where our minds become clouded with things we haven’t dealt with. I’m not saying, “Don’t think” I’m more saying that your thoughts are speaking to you. When you address all of the thoughts that are bouncing around that have something to say to you, you can get to the point where thoughts are not necessary.
It’s easy enough to say to people, “Live in the present and don’t worry about the past and future,” but in reality, it’s a lot harder for most people to accomplish or even grasp. If your mind is a mess and filled with regrets and worries, it’s going to be hard to focus with ease on the present.
However, if we take the time to find out what those thoughts have to say to us, we will find that we have less and less of them floating around in our minds as time goes on.
I know it’s a steep jump for most to believe that thoughts are unnecessary because we wholeheartedly believe in the mind and it’s necessity. It’s not that we don’t have feelings and emotions, we simply don’t need to associate them with thoughts. The same is true for our sense of knowing and understanding reality.
Thoughts are kind of a distraction. Without thoughts it is easier to be aware of what’s happening around you, the birds chirping in the background, the sounds of the streets, a plane overhead. Much of this is drowned out when you’re distracted by your inner world.
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You’re most welcome, Rick! Thank you for expanding on your thoughts on thoughts.😘
The way you discuss examining our thoughts it sounds a little bit like dealing with emotions that have been trapped. If we don’t acknowledge that they are there, they can create blockages.
I enjoy your posts, hope to hear more.😃
Xo💓💞🌈💞💓 -
Np! (Love the puns! Lol) 🙂
You are exactly right, it is like dealing with emotions that have been trapped, and if we don’t acknowledge them, they do create blocks.
It’s because we are not taught about the mind/soul that many of us become trapped in a state of “anxiety,” where rather than processing our inner worlds, we let it build up to the point where it causes mental chaos. Without knowing, we even tend to distract ourselves so we don’t have to address what’s going on within, by bouncing from one thing to the next.
Again, thoughts themselves are not real. They are ego, nothing more. They are a conversation we are having with ourselves. If we say to ourselves, “I’m not pretty, or smart, or good enough,” it’s not the words said that matter, it’s the feelings that cause the words.
In that example the feeling is something like, “not meeting the outside world’s expectations.” The truth is, that for the most part the outside world does not have expectations about us. Everyone is generally consumed with their own lives. It’s an expectation we have about ourselves that suggests that we have to look or be a certain way. Sure your parents or people that are close to you may have expectations, but honoring yourself is much more important for everyone than trying to please another.
Even if someone has an opinion of you, that is their opinion. It doesn’t have to bother you and it shouldn’t. If it does, it suggests that those feelings have something to say to you.
Sometimes people make a critique of us. In that moment, when they say it, if it elicits a strong negative emotion, it’s possible that we believe what they’re saying.
Let’s say someone calls me lazy. If there is any inkling within me of me feeling myself to be lazy, and they call it out, I may subconsciously get mad at them because I know they’re right and I’m not ready to deal with it.
It’s all about feelings, but the thoughts themselves can point to feelings that you may be unaware of.
Let’s say that I have a belief about something, and I share that belief with you. You don’t instantly accept my belief. You believe something else. You didn’t insult me, or offend me, but the fact that you didn’t accept my belief as true can make me mad. Why is that?
It’s similar to the way I may subconsciously see myself as lazy and get angry when someone calls me out for it. If I don’t believe something with absolute certainty, I can get mad at someone else if I subconsciously need them to validate my belief. If they don’t, it does not necessarily mean that they’re wrong, but their unwillingness to accept my belief can cause doubt within because of that lack of certainty. That can lead me to becoming angry with them.
Often, the debate ends here. There is sometimes an unwillingness to try and see things from the other point of view.
Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. Free will and all that. That doesn’t make the beliefs correct, and that doesn’t mean others have to agree with them.
The truth is that people find it difficult to accept that they may be wrong, but being wrong is actually good for us. It’s how we learn and grow.
When we learn a new subject, we don’t have all the answers when we start. We have to look them up, try things out, get things wrong, and figure things out. If we don’t understand things we may look for another point of view.
When we refuse to seek answers elsewhere and refuse to see things from another’s point of view. We limit our ability to effectively see the world. We see reality as we “believe” it to be, not as it actually is.
It’s often a difficult skill to try and see from another’s point of view. It, like everything else, gets easier the more you do it. That’s not really how the world was created though. When you look at society, we’re all individuals. We’re meant to pick a specific path and do that path. We’re meant to focus primarily on what is ours to do.
To see things from another’s point of view requires willingness and that is what we’re collectively finding difficult right now.
We’re at a place where, “If I’m right, you must be wrong,” but that’s not really how things work. It’s more likely that either: both of us are wrong, neither of us are wrong, or there are different ways of looking at the situation.
That being said, I would like to point out that there is nothing wrong with being lazy. It’s not the laziness itself that may bother us, it’s the belief that laziness is somehow bad.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the ego likes to justify things. If someone does not believe what we believe and we get mad, the ego may convince us by suggesting things like, “They are just uninformed,” reinforcing the belief, “If I am right, they must be wrong.” Preventing analysis and creating distance between us and those that “attacked our belief system.”
The ego can do much more harmful things to us though using the same tactics. It can tell us things like, “we need the money,” and “no one will find out,” to convince us to take actions that will have negative consequences.
In these circumstances the ego doesn’t have a feeling associated with it, it is trying to override your feelings or get you to ignore them.
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Thank you, Rick!
This reminded me of learning Spanish, something I was thinking about the other day:
“When we learn a new subject, we don’t have all the answers when we start. We have to look them up, try things out, get things wrong, and figure things out.”
I developed an excellent accent because I was willing to sound less than perfect in order to learn. We all had to practice out loud in class, and I made a conscious effort to not care how “bad” I sounded compared to the teacher.
And eventually, I spoke with as natural an accent as those who taught me.
Xo💓💞🌈💞💓
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