Digging through our Roots and Planting new Trees in New Landscapes

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“There exists a different state of mind beyond our cultural conditioning and programmed assumptions”.

 This quote is from Buddha’s four noble truths. It originates from the 6th century BC when cultural conditioning was different and yet was, it seems, as rooted in our thinking as a frame of everyday unconscious reference as it is today. People viewed their current experience and thoughts through the lens of their historical understanding and experience.

 We don’t know what we don’t yet know. We live most of our lives taking our assumptions as the basis of our understanding and living out our experience through the limits of our repeating patterns. We learn these repeating patterns from our own child and adult experiences and those of the people around us. Their stories, rituals, mythology and experience of the world has influenced not just our experience, but our thinking about that experience.

 This means that sometimes we do things, think things, say things and interpret things out of habit. We assume that we know how a situation will play out, what others think, what they will likely say in response to us, and how others in our life will respond in a given set of circumstances. We don’t. We are assuming these things based on our past experience or more likely, the experience we remember which may not be accurate.

 If we get rid of our assumptions and just come to situations with an open mind and a sense of possibility. From a calm, accepting place of whatever happens and whatever comes is fine. From within that space, go create some new stories.

 “There is a path to this different state of mind, whereby we let go of an old identity, and realise our own perfect nature.“

 So, check where things are not going well for you at the moment and ask yourself, what am I assuming here?

How are my old learned patterns showing up?

If these are not useful to me, what will I choose instead for the future?

Running and Ruminating on the Basement Steps of Suffering

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Are you making it all too difficult by ruminating with the room mate in your head?
 
 “The primary cause of our suffering is not our experience, but our response to our experience; what we think about it.“ Buddha. 6th century BC.
 
Stuff happens and I think if the Buddha was looking at our lives today he would suggest we stop thinking about the negative. That we might change the locus of our or focus away from sense making that upsets us or causes disharmony in the head. We choose how we respond to life situations be they problematic or not.
 
Part of that choice is in how we think about what has happened, is happening or may happen. The way we think about and interpret that experience is what affects us most rather than the experience itself.
 
So, if I audition for a role in a play and I don’t get it. I can choose to feel rejected by the experience, can see it as a learning opportunity for next time or can make decisions about whether I want to go to any other auditions.
 
If I focus on the rejection, the mere use of that word or words like rejected, dejected and affected may cause a reaction, may move my focus to not feeling good enough. It may encourage me to feel “less than”, may encourage me to consider myself as a failure, may leave me feeling like a victim. It may encourage me to consider that I have a stamp on my head saying “reject” and every time I go for a part I will likely get the same rejection response because it’s so obvious that I am not good enough. After all, the marking on my forehead is there for all to see is it not? Do you feel sorry for poor me yet?  Have I suffered enough do you think?
 
Let me illustrate……If I focus instead on the fact that I live in a city of possibility where there are hundreds of plays staged every week. If I focus on the fact that I have secured parts in plays before, that I love the auditions and the experience of going to different theatres and meeting other actors. If I see not getting a part as a blessing, because I get to go and explore what else may be out there, my life moves on and I am the one saying “next!” Would you see me as someone who suffers or someone who has had more positive experiences in life than the average actor?
 
Same circumstances, different focus. Same experience, different  thinking.
 
It’s just a choice and we are only ever one interpretation of our circumstances away from delight or towards it.
 
Marie x

The wheel of tortuous thinking

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lighteningAre you torturing yourself in your head?
 
“All our desires, disappointments, negativity and fear, are a torture chamber of our own cognitive creation”
 
This quote is from Buddha’s four noble truths. It originates from the 6th century BC, so, I think it safe to say that it falls in the category of ancient wisdom.
 
To my fallible mind this tells us that anything unhelpful is our own head creation. We desire the undesirable and seemingly unattainable in an attempt to create our own self-fulfilling prophecy of torment. We make appointments with the “dissing” of ourselves and others by gossiping and engaging in negative self talk. We see the negative and sit in the state of victim moving in a downward spiral like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole. Then, just when we consider that there is a possibility of experiencing things differently, we go find the fear and stick it in our heads anyway.
 
We create the thinking that torments us. Sometimes we can do this to the extent that it sits with us like a familiar foe. We may even fool ourselves into thinking that this thinking is our friend. It can look like a friend because it becomes familiar. The more we think about it, the hamster wheel of thinking keeps racing.  Before we know it, we have created and collected other negative thoughts. The hamster wheel of negative thinking is so full it becomes heavier and heavier as we travel faster and faster running with this pile of similar thought types hitting us like mind lashing, head clashing pains in the proverbial.  
 
We created it, we fed it, we ran with it, we made it our cognitive credo. The good news is, we can just learn to stop the wheel of tortuous thinking. It starts with noticing, and from that place, slowing down the head and experiencing the absence of thinking. Experiencing a space for great thoughts to come in as invited guests who we will nuture, love, feed and sustain.
 
It’s all a choice. It’s your choice.

What choices are you making about thinking that are making your head spin and spiral ?
 
Marie x