Here’s the deal, I’m wired to try to make true what I already believe. So are you. This has some advantages and it has some real shortsidedness. Many spiritual and philosophical frameworks are meant to explore the “nature of the mind”. The idea that our brain can run wild with it’s own ideas should be alarming and a practice to examine that be a priority.
“This wouldn’t happen if I had a different job.” or “People ALWAYS do this to me. It’s been this way my whole life.”
The problem with this powerful force to substantiate the way our life currently is can stop us from ever changing and most of the time it does. Especially when we think we’ve already changed enough and now we’re done with that. I’m woke, I’ve learned about being a good person, done deal, game over…
We spend a large quantity of energy curating an environment where our lives reverberate in an echo chamber where we can predict the next phase of the cycle and in doing so we can also be right. But are we…
We have a bunch of stratus of needs and each layer is often built on the other compounding the energy of the other until we have an aligned front that keeps us stuck.
For example, I’ve worked my ass off to fulfill my base needs. I have food, shelter, certainly around where I’ll sleep and to have mortal safety. After all that work if I want to be comfortable and feel good in my physical layer of needs then if I’m not careful my brain/cognitive layer of needs will bring in a really good, pragmatic reason why we shouldn’t workout or eat better or anything else that would be uncomfortable. Your brain will get coopted into making true that you should stay on the couch (or whatever version of staying the same is) and not do what’s difficult.
This is where we send in critical thinking. Your mind is a computer that does what it’s programed to do. I’m an apple guy so I’m going to speak in apple terms… sorry if your text bubbles are green. Your iOS needs to be updated all the time, software and sometimes hardware updates are needed to work out the bugs.
We’re propaganda machines. We say and do things all the time to promote a narrative, we’re all guilty of buying into our own propaganda and when that happens we’ve lost touch with the attachment to a certain outcome and that any attachment to a certain thing will keep us trapped in the current version of ourselves and inhibit change.
Just because it feels true, doesn’t make it true.
The opportunity:
What are you doing to separate your beliefs from your thought?
How can you recognize that distressing thoughts are the product of your perceptions rather than them being the truth?
Do you have a practice of finding an objective reality?
Thanks for your time, have a great day!