“Thoughts are powerful, they make people suffer, they make people sick.”
It is often thought that thoughts have evil or good power and can create psychological problems. This is a favorite idea of many psychologists, so they try to change patterns of thinking (such as in Cognitive Behavior Training, or CBT).
However, thoughts are more of a symptom than a cause. When we have trauma, mental dysfunction, unhappiness, and limitations, it is natural for unwanted thoughts to arise. These are not the cause of our suffering! Unwanted thoughts are the results of a malfunctioning nervous system, not the cause of any malfunction.
Changing our thoughts is at best a waste of time, and at worst a path to greatly increasing our suffering by increasing effort (effort is always unnatural) and focus (focus on the mind makes suffering worse).
Find out who you are (that you are actually infinite consciousness) such as by abiding in the inner peace of the Self, and this experience of discovery will begin wiping out problems and changing our thoughts naturally. In a natural way we begin to let go of obsessive thoughts and move toward thoughts that are pleasant and expressive of love, joy, and satisfaction.
Many people believe in “daily affirmations”, believing that repeating life-positive thoughts will make us life-positive. It really works the other way around: becoming more life-positive generates more life-positive thoughts.
Find a teaching and practices that resonate with you, that lead you toward peace and happiness, and all else will follow. “Good thoughts” and dogmatic nonduality are a waste of time.
These are my opinions, not proven fact, based on my insights, my experiences, and my training.
Trying for the experience of witnessing, which is what we naturally and effortlessly do when we are independent of body and mind, is effort to get somewhere we are not. As such, it cannot work. It can make us feel frustrated, but effort is not good preparation for real awakenings. Everyone discovers their own path, so that they enjoy what they are doing and where they are “going” and the speed at which they “travel”. That’s the real value of having so many different teachers around; you can keep sampling until you find what works best for your own path.
These are my opinions.
David, the trap, the temptation with many teachers is maybe to switch prematurely, as soon as the good ol’ me feels uncomfortable; thereby delaying what would be simply the recognition of our true nature.
I heard the term “church hopping” some decades ago.
“Die (psychologically) before you die” is something the separate-self tries to avoid at all costs.
Yes, praise and thanks are as natural as happiness and love when we are connected with our source. In ignorance we conceive of a personal God who exists separate from us who expects or demands praise in return for favors; later we see that impersonal God is all that exists, and that praise and thanks are natural expressions of life.
Yes, it is interesting that one line that hints of universality intrudes in Shelley’s poem that is otherwise attached to the individual concept of love for another individual.
“Attention can be focused on ….. or nothing in particular.”
Trying to focus on Consciousness is turning awareness into an object, which it isn´t! It is the one and only subject there ever is and will be. But that is only my experience. Every mind has to find it for itself to finally get lost in joy and wonder.
Who am “I” to say that?
The one who knows that you are the same “I”
Nothing special!
Just a blue hippo. 🙂
I don’t see a good reason to be so critical of this analysis of relative existence. I think it is quite a good analysis. The only criticism I would have is that it appears to leave out consciousness, which is the observer of all of life and of which all of life and all human lives are composed. While it is true that everything in the relative springs from pure consciousness, a full life maximizes functioning both in the relative and in the Absolute pure consciousness. By repeatedly “visiting” or relaxing into our true Self the false falls away, eventually leaving the true. Then the one true Self returns to being fully functional, both in its Absolute unchanging nature and in its dream-like changing relative nature. At first we trust our path as leading to this goal because we trust our teacher and the teaching, but later we find confirmation in our own experience and we become our own best teacher. (All of this is just my opinion; who knows, I could be wrong.)
I don’t see where your “I don’t see a good reason to be so critical of this analysis of relative existence” fits in.
Who could leave out Consciousness, the cause, substance and witness of everything subtle, gross, unnamable?
Who talks about the canvas when looking at a painting?
Who talks about silence in a music performance?
Who talks about the stage in a theater play?
Who talks about inner space?
Relative, absolute and even “consciousness” are concepts, but nothing in itself; we overlook the obvious, and all words fail because they are only pointers.
“Everything in the relative springs from pure consciousness” is itself a dream model, a concession.
Thank you David for your contributions, your love for truth.
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