“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?
