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2.29.2008

Redeeming drama triangles

In situations frothing with mutual contempt, the people involved take on very predictable roles. A drama triangle is formed out of their fears, suspicions and mistrust. Interactions take the shape of vicious cycles which prove to be draining, dreadfully perpetual and ever-more-convincing for everyone involved. Bullies engage in cycles of abuse with their victims and in power struggles with any rescuers of their victims. The rescuers and victims get entangled in commiseration. Each take a position against the others' positions and dish out disrespect. Each makes a thing of being right so as to make the others wrong.

Drama triangles persist endlessly. They cannot redeem themselves from their misery, heavy burdens and endless guilt. All the evidence produced by these interactions necessitates further drama. There's no way out while living in fear of more hostilities, contempt and dread. The fears become prophetic and show up as living proof of how accurate, realistic and reliable those particular fears really are.

Drama triangles are very tempting to join in, take sides and fuel the false ambitions. They bait our sense to be partially helpful, make the noble sacrifice of an admirable martyr and feed the problems with our "do-gooder" conceits. Drama triangles bring out our worst inclinations if we've not cleaned up the dark residue from painful episodes in our own lives. They invite us to step off of our solid ground onto the shaky ground of who said what to whom and what's wrong with the other players. Redeemers refuse these temptations and proceed with an inner sense of direction and self respect.

Redeemers bring a soulful presence to these soulless torments. They introduce a harmless, yet cunning, approach to the situation. They restore a sense of what's really happening in spirit amidst these dispirited illusions. They see through the presenting problems to the underlying solutions, opportunities and transformations. They provide visionary leadership to those who are wallowing in their regrettable loss of mission, purpose and direction.

Drama triangles disappear in the presence of a redeemer. The players in the drama no longer stand their ground when the foundation for all the interactions gets transformed. The convincing evidence is called into question from a different premise. The basis for jumping to the same conclusions is dismissed. The ways the other people are seen gets cast in a different light.

Redeemers see that drama triangles are not really happening. We are already one in spirit and totally in love with each other. Nothing needs to be different from what's already occurring behind the scenes in love forever. These hostilities cannot be true or regarded as legitimate with such deep common interests and connections beyond the limits of life spans. The obvious misunderstandings need to be cleared up by how deeply we all understand what we're really here to experience amidst such illusions. The evil at work needs to be put out of business by our shared intention to find freedom in every moment. The benign background of eternity needs to come to the fore and enter into the tormented experiences of the captivated players.

2.28.2008

Presence of soul

We are one in spirit and each a one-of-a-kind in our souls. When we offer the world the presence of our souls, we appear as misfits. Our uniqueness makes us defy conformity pressures. We cannot be like others expect because we feel we have to be true to ourselves. We feel our inner nature deeply and the compulsion to live our truth.

When we are being true to our souls, we get along easily with other authentic beings. We have a keen sense of shared commitment to our uniqueness that gives us implicit permission to persist in our deviance from conformity. We both feel oriented by our inner-directedness and self confidence, instead of the usual human emotions (hatred, anger, envy, self pity). Our apparent freedom from approval seeking, people pleasing and neediness for others -- makes is easy to live passionately in each moment. Our desires lead to deeply satisfying experiences with a freshness that defies categorization.

Meanwhile, inauthentic beings cannot relate to us, understand us, learn from us or trust our inner guidance. We appear to be poorly adapted, unrealistic and unresponsive. Those who have "gained the world but lost their soul" or joined a self-replicating system of abuse, are living in fear of being deviant. They are haunted by anxieties, paranoid scenarios and past episodes in their lives. Their desires lead to dissatisfaction, disappointment, self-doubts and desperation. The presence of soul in another shows up as their worst nightmare. This evidence of "lived uniqueness" reveals what they are passing up, excluding with a vengeance and opposing with their rigid opinions. They cannot handle their own souls' demands and inclinations. They blame the deviants in their face for "making them feel" inadequate.

Offering our presence of soul shows others how to stand on solid ground and be true to themselves. The self-respect we found within tells others to feel the same about their unique way to deviate. We show what's it like to love ourselves, trust our inner guidance and go with our own flow. We give each other the space and freedom to deviate as I'm doing with you right now.

2.27.2008

Dismantling systems of abuse

My mentoring this week has brought on a barrage of insights about the ways a system of abuse collapses. While these insights are obviously applicable to family systems and interpersonal dynamics, there are many connections to the abuses of students, employees, citizenry and the natural environment.

Ordinarily systems of abuse self replicate and cross generational lines. The child of an abusive parent identifies with the mistreatment, internalizes the negative feelings and acts out the behavior in other contexts. For this to occur, the abuse must force a "loss of soul" in the victim so the identification with the abuser becomes possible. The feeling of a "hole in the soul", insatiable neediness or terrifying abandonment -- sets up the self-replicating dynamics. The victim feels powerless to intervene and takes the abuse lying down, only to dish it out later in life.

Systems of abuse break down when there is no "loss of soul". The victim does not feel victimized or abused. Rather the system is disrupted by his/her persistent presence of love and indifference to disrespect. There is no identification with the abuser or subsequent acting the same way.

When this occurs, the "unvictimized victim" infuriates the abuser. The abuse escalates as the abuser's worst nightmare becomes real. The appearance of "powerlessness being more powerful than tyranny" torments anyone taking pride in their abuse of power. The presence of love amidst the flood of hatred, envy and fear is extremely disruptive. The system of abuse has no way to self-replicate, jump to the next generation and maintain a culture of fear. Justice is served effortlessly. The system of abuse gets what it deserves and ends it's reign of terror.

2.26.2008

Troubles with our past history

Our past history rarely sits pretty with us. It usually gets us into more trouble than we think we actually bargained for. We either are living out repeats of our personal history or running from our past while still trapped inside it. There's no escape until our past history no longer exists for us. Until then, disregarding past history looks irrational, reckless and extremely unrealistic.

When something happens to us or we do something that overwhelms us at the time, we store the incident away as emotional baggage. We keep the overwhelming feelings out of our rational thought processes where they bog us down every time we try to reason with the memories. We live in fear of repeat incidents, alarming accusations, dangerous exposure or drowning in guilt. We keep the entire mess in denial where it is unthinkable, unmentionable and unrelated to others in our lives. We live confined by very strong feelings that tell us we cannot change, we will fail when we try, we must stop hoping and we already know what happens every time this comes up.

As we go on new adventures, explore other avenues and change our immediate situation, we get a different sense of our past. We can face it with some power, confidence and resolve. We find we can accept it as simply what happened and let it define who we are for now. We take the convincing evidence of the incident to establish the facts of our life. We identify with how we survived it. We predict were we can succeed and where we will hit a wall.

We're now in a position to look forward to the future, to set goals and make plans. We can put our past behind us and move into our life that awaits us when we steer carefully. We get a sense of destiny and direction in our discoveries. We see something on the horizon to chase after with new found ambition. We know we are more than what has already happened to us.

As these pursuits unfold, we succeed at superficial pleasures. We find we can win at other's expense and take advantage of others without immediate consequence. We enjoy all the problems to solve, people to fix and changes to make happen. We get ahead, make progress and take pride in our accomplishments.

In the midst of all these advances, we will be haunted by our past history once again. Our baggage will be opened at the worst times. Our hot buttons will get pushed when we are trying to be cool. Those lingering ghosts from our past will darken the sunny situation. Our superficial pleasures and shallow victories will turn against us like a storm of bad karma. It appears we cannot put our past behind us for good until we completely let go of what happened and how it defined us. We feel very heavily burdened by so much to take back on ourselves, to take responsibility for and to take to heart.

When these changes happen, we realize we are not running the show here. Something larger is orchestrating the timing, sequence and content of our lives. We begin to go through a change of identity, like a caterpillar getting enveloped by a cocoon. Previous facts of our life are highly suspect and likely to be thrown out entirely. We're finding there's more to life than meets the eye. We start adding an unforeseen dimension to our experience. We begin to live deeply.

In the depths of our past history and continual reenactments, we claim our prize. We find our saving grace. We discover buried treasure at the bottom of our sea of despair. We realize we been cultivating gifts that were there all along, hidden for safe-keeping and blossoming with perfect timing. We open our baggage and find the wealth we will give the world. We realize how to make a gift of ourselves.

Upon these realizations, our past history is decidedly unreal. It appears like a bad dream we've awakened from. We have no more use for the fears, limitations and assumptions that our past history imposed on us. We see how living in time is an unfortunate situation and living in the mysterious now is delightful.

2.25.2008

As we're so inclined

When we're inclined to take things lying down, we do our best work flat on our back. We're the best "ho in the hood" for every predator, power tripper and egomaniac. We tell victim stories and throw pity parties because our misery loves company.

When we're inclined to take things as a game to win, we do our best work with opponents and enemies. We get in their face and on their case to win at their expense. We give others a hard time while they do time in our prison made just for their misery. Our idea of justice is get even as we play them for losers in our wicked game.

When we're inclined to take things as a lesson, we do our best work calling timeouts. We get what we're being shown, change our mind about what's too obvious and see beyond the facts to their significance. We give others our attention to receive the gifts they are bringing our way. We sacrifice our ego-trip to get tripped out on deeper insights.

When we're inclined to feel totally connected to each other, we do our best work with no ambition of our own. We act free to be whatever the situation calls for. We bring what is missing, overlooked or ruled out -- for those who are overly: committed, responsible, productive or captivated. What's next is a big mystery to us. Our idea of a good time is this, right here, right now.

2.22.2008

Under two impressions

At any given moment, we are under some impression of what is true about life. We expect something to happen and can explain what already happened based on the impression we are under. Something previously impressed us so much that we believe it is extremely true. We internalize it as a fact of life or our particular fate, curse, blessing or destiny. We operate under this premise with such a commitment, we dismiss any contrary evidence.

Whatever impression we are under, it appears we cannot change it. Impressions happen to us, We seemingly don't create them or have access to revise them in order to live under a different impression. Anyone of us who tries to change core beliefs or deeply held convictions has experienced the futility of revising these. That's the bad news.

There's also some good news in this. We are living under two impressions. One clouds the other and makes it seem like we are living under only one impression. The impression that precludes the other is intended to be removed. Once the second impression is in the clear, our life feels like clear sailing in the flow of one good thing after another.

The first impression comes from our lived experience. We got this impression from what happened to us that's different from what we wanted, intended or acted to make happen. We may get impressed that we can succeed at anything we set our mind to. We may be under the impression we fail at anything we try to accomplish. We may be impressed by how kind people are or how cruel they are to us. We may impress others with how generous or needy we are. They may become impressed with how powerful or helpless we appear to be.

All these impressions obscure the second impression. We live in fear, recurring past history and confining limitations. We see no way out that succeeds at getting out from under this impression. We learn to endure our struggles, accept our fate and turn down opportunities that we already know won't work out for us.

On occasion, we will get glimpses of the other impression. Things will go unexpectedly well. Timing will work our perfectly. We enjoy a string of good luck, delightful coincidences and reassuring turns of events. We'll get a sense from these other impressions that our first impressions are not totally true. We suspect we have been duped or overly boxed in. We may regard those impressions acquired from what happened to us as no longer valid. We may welcome a change and dismiss what always happens to us.

Once we become disenchanted with living under the first impression, we can choose otherwise. We start to regard our past history as "so what", "irrelevant", "not here and now", or "nowhere to be seen in this experience". We get a much bigger sense of the now moment. We stop prejudging, expecting or knowing what to think. We live in a "time out" and see what comes of it.

When we take ourselves out of time, we live under the other impression. When we call a time out we are out of time and into the other fate for us. When we give ourselves freedom from our past and present circumstances, we experience new, different and enlivening changes.

2.21.2008

Offline Online Inline

Back before we could go online, everything was offline. We didn't call it offline because there was no online to create a context of off and on. Right now, online is the be all and end all. Offline is almost unreal it's so far from our familiar experiences of getting instantaneous, 24/7, interconnected, subscribed and continually feeds for us. Offline has snail mail, 7/11, disconnected constituencies and traffic jams.

Just as we could not conceive of any significant use for telephones before we started making calls regularly, we had no concept of online as a way of life before we began living with the Internet as constant companions. Just as we cannot conceive of being without telephone access for long, we need our feed from the online world too. But if there's something beyond online, it's inconceivable.

Marshall McLuhan was fascinated by our inability to discern what's coming to change our lives significantly. He understood how we were blinded by our success and mistook big changes as a variation on more of the same thing we've already got going. Nowadays, we assume any new connectivity would be online in one way or another. We stick to our familiar sense-ratios, frames of reference, labels and story lines.

I foresee an "unforeseen change" beyond online connectivity. It won't show up on radar until our disenchantment with online connectivity takes hold. (I'm already there!) There's a kind of connection our minds can make on their own that surpasses what we can get online. For now, I'm favoring the term "getting inline" to follow "going online". I've been experiencing this intensely for the past two months.

Our minds are the ultimate search engines. Perhaps we have access to a "universal mind". Maybe the quantum field is conscious of absolutely everything and we can tune into any of it. Getting inline seems like a paradox: by being unknowing, we get into all-knowing. When we get inline, answers to our questions come to our minds. We get inspirations we had not conceived of previously. We receive intuitions about timing, a better approach or a different definition of the problem.

When we're inline, we feel safe in this dangerous world. We feel like we're being guided to stay out of harm's way, crossfire and dead ends. We are continually being shown where the freedom is in our situation. It's revealed to us which offers are true or false and valid or bogus. We're given everything we need to make wise choices, effective decisions and successful moves.

To get inline, we go within. We silence our "monkey mind" and be still in our "mountain mind". We chill out and get into receiving mode. We let go and go with what comes out of the blue. We go into the dark and wait for what dawns on our mind. We empty out our fears, worries and agitation. We suspend our "already knowing the answer" to get an even better idea. We welcome feeling innocent, unassuming, trusting and humble. We hang in suspense about what will come out of the mystery next. We break our habit of jumping to conclusions. We discover how much it pays to not know and receive what to know inline.

We learn to do this by our success at it, just like we learned everything we do online. It cannot be learned from a book or a teacher. Getting inline is realized by getting it to work or getting the hang of it. There's nothing to it and everything to get from it.

2.20.2008

Imploding into homeostasis

Four decades ago, Marshall McLuhan imagined the implosion from electric technologies would extend our nervous systems worldwide. We know more now about how our bodies regulate all it's internal functions and how planet earth does the same with the biosphere. We also have the Internet and cell phone grid giving us a "nervous system" that encompasses the entire globe. Rather than extending our nervous system, I find it's more apropos to consider extending our internal, self-regulating abilities.

Our bodies maintain an amazing complexity of balancing acts. We continually demonstrate a dynamism of self regulation that boggles the conscious mind. There's no way our thinking could manage all the internal functions which are kept in harmony, mutual accommodation, collaborative interactions and compatible levels of activity.

The way we humans live on this planet demonstrates almost none of this self regulation. We are given to excess, ruin and devastation. We appear to be exploitative, parasitic and cancerous -- from the perspective of other species and whole systems. We don't have the sense to integrate, balance and cooperate with the vast web of interdependencies in the natural world. We've been cast out of the garden for our insolence, incompatibility and inconsiderate attitudes.

It now appears to me that the Internet is a training ground for us humans to live as one with all natural systems. We are cultivating the consciousness to conduct ourselves in the totally interconnected dynamism of the biosphere. We are seeing how to lose our sense of isolation, disconnection and arrogance over other portions of the web of life.

When we extend our body's natural ability to maintain homeostasis, the planet will be transformed. Humans will join in all the ecologies that maintain the robust, thriving diversity on earth. We will process enough consciousness of the whole to contribute without excess, ruin and devastation. We will have the sense to fit in, accommodate others, balance responsively and self-regulate compatibly.

When this occurs, The Internet will appear as a perfect developmental stage. We will look back on all that online connectivity as "where we learned to give up the heroics and join the biosphere". We'll realize how blessed we were to get familiarized and practiced in a playground based upon infinite interdependence. We'll consider the Internet to have effectively modeled a significant portion of the functionality of the biosphere. We will be grateful that cyberspace gave a way to return to the garden we were expelled from when we got too smart to live in homeostasis with all living things.

2.19.2008

Emergent global implosion

In the second paragraph of Understanding Media The Extensions of Man (1964) Marshall McLuhan wrote:
After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.
Forty four years later, it seems more accurate to say the entire globe is imploding, not only the Western world. McLuhan believed there is a big difference between technologies that extended our five senses or muscle power and those that extend our consciousness. Mechanical technologies take up time and space, use up resources and impose on us in physical ways. Instantaneous technologies, like electricity and light, free us from those technological burdens. They change our sense of what's possible, real and/or meaningful.

During the past month, I've been experiencing several indications that the Internet is a passing phase. We are transitioning to the implosion that McLuhan foresaw. Cyberspace seems like training wheels on a bicycle or a cocoon for a forthcoming butterfly. It's a developmental necessity that will fall by the wayside once we are functioning effectively in the emergent global implosion. The Internet gets us comfortable and competent with everything taking "no time" and defying "distance between us in space". Going online gets us out of the vast evidence of being separate meat puppets, living mortal lives in peril of very real dangers. We now have a place to go where we are very connected, pretending to be mortal and gaming each other with apparent threats to our survival.

In the slow, difficult and scary world of physical organisms, things stay the same too long. Nearly everything lacks fluidity, spontaneity and passion. Almost nobody appears to be doing what they feel like doing. Everybody is making themselves do things out of necessity, ego trips or fear.

Online everything is immediate, easy and playful. Things change all the time with great fluidity, spontaneity and passion. Everybody is doing what they feel like doing. Necessity, ego and fear all appear to be bogus contrivances deserving no respect.

Once our global experience has imploded, offline will be as immediate, easy and playful as online is now. We will live physically like we live in cyberspace. Online will seem as unreal to us as offline does to cyber-citizens immersed in interconnectedness today.

2.15.2008

A lesson to us all

Each of us is living a life that is a lesson to us all. We can look upon each other and see what to replicate and what to dismiss. The way other lives appears to us can show us a lot about our freedom in our immediate situation. We can learn to tell the difference between captivity and liberation. We can see a way out of whatever traps us into more of the same old story.

Each of us is getting offered gifts from another of us. Some of these are gifts of gloom, fear, guilt or anger. Some of these are gifts of permission, acceptance, validation and peace. We can watch for what comes of accepting any particular gift. We can also observe what happens to the giver of each gift. How is justice served? What comes back to haunt or bless the giver? What comes about in subsequent occurrences that reflect what was given in the first place?

Each of us is getting results. Some of these results are unfortunate. Others results appear to be delightful and worth exploring deeper. We can wonder where those results came from? What brought about that outcome: how they were feeling, what they were seeing or which gift they were giving? When we see misfortune, are we doing the same and can we learn from their mistakes? When we see delightful results, can we replicate that in our own lives?

Each of us is learning all the time. Some of us are dreading what we are being taught as if it's a cause to feel more fear and guilt. Others love to learn from everything that happens as if the learning is a source of expanding freedom. When we learn from each other like we are lessons to us all, we are close to seeing perfection in everything that happens.

2.08.2008

Cultivating a global mind

Todd left a insight-packed comment on my most recent posting: Creating valuable experiences. I've broken it up into sections to add to what he wrote last night.
Growing up through the ranks of engineering, I can certainly understand the complexities in making the most of our experiences. Rolling from the left brain toward the right didn't come easy.
To be aware of the challenge of making the change is impressive in itself. There are many professions which set up a difficult transition like you describe. Doctors are groomed to make rational diagnoses and shy away from trusting their intuitive insights. Financial planners are quick to crunch the numbers and slow to expand their horizons into more complex appreciations of changing markets, economic trends and shifting consumer moods. Policy analysts working for legislators can track the emails, graph the constituencies and monitor the budgets, but hesitate to speculate on visionary leadership possibilities and trend setting maneuvers.
Academia, unfortunately, thrives on a linear presentation of information which essentially shuts down the global learners in our heads.
Academia is at it worst in this respect when it relies on a factory model - mass producing graduates with diplomas in hand. The machine graded exams and enormous class sizes reduce the cultivation of unique cognitive processes. The farming of global learners is a labor intensive practice that appears to not be scalable so far. The mentoring I'm doing now is much more effective than the classroom teaching I did for years at getting logical thinking to be balanced with creativity.
Once a neocortex man, I'm transforming myself into a whole brain learner by learning to really focus when the parachute is open.
I think you're right to use the analogy of the parachute here. Left brained reasoning appears fear-based to me. The mind is closed our of apprehension of taking too much time to decide, considering too many options and responding to an excessive proportion of the panorama when we are in mortal danger. Logical reasoning assumes our survival is in jeopardy and processes data accordingly. It also appears that we cannot get creative when we are afraid, panicking, or stressed. We need to get out of survival and into self expression for the higher orders of consciousness to kick in.
Now I break the old bad neuroassociations and use my full capacity to generate new good ones. Through much repitition and practice, I've found reflection to be a constant and never-ending improvement.
Well said! Unlearning is often a prerequisite to deeper learning. When our mind is made up, we cannot take on disturbing contradictions without unmaking our convictions. Acts of creativity call for some destruction of status quo, established explanations and presumed categories to apply to unfamiliar situations.

2.05.2008

Creating valuable experiences

When we're thinking, we have no sense of creating valuable experiences. What shows up simply happens to us. We don't control how we take it in. It's a fact to face and a reality to deal with. We are hard wired to our circumstances. If things are good, we feel good. If things aren't so good, then we're not so good. We think we cannot change the facts. There's no way to have a positive experience of a negative situation without becoming delusional, unrealistic and subject to scorn.

We get a sense of being able to create our experiences when we begin to reflect on what happens. We get inspirations for other ways to see what is obvious. We get questions we had no considered about what something means to us in particular. We notice how we block out most things and dwell on what troubles us. We realize how there's more than one way to see the facts and let in the situation.

When we become powerful creators of our experience, we suspend our thinking. We reverse several assumptions that legitimize thinking:
  1. We were thinking we are not delusional or kidding ourselves when we face the facts. We now realize we really are delusional when we are realistic.
  2. We were thinking we have no choice but to react to how good or bad things are. We now realize that choices abound once we stop thinking.
  3. We were thinking we know what to make of what appears. We now realize we are making ourselves miserable by what we know and switch to being innocent about what appears.
Once it appears we know nothing about what has appeared, we are free to create a valuable experience. We can make of it what we will and enjoy the fruits of our labors. We can turn the seemingly bad thing into any of a list of options:

  • a lesson we are ready to learn
  • a change from the same old routine
  • a different diagnosis of what the real problem is
  • a revelation of what's been overlooked or forgotten
  • a sign of a need for more communication and reciprocation
  • a gift of freedom from what felt like an impossible burden
  • a turnaround from what was being dreaded or avoided
  • an answer to a lingering question about what to say "no" to
  • a reminder to reconsider our position that was totally in favor or against
  • an inspiration to revise our goals or plans
  • a better way to consider the big picture that ties everything together
  • a disclosure of the opposing point of view and underlying motivations
  • a display of the missing half of the whole deal
  • a wake up call to develop a more inclusive solution
With so many options for how a bad thing can be good,(and there's many many more) thinking would crash from the overload. The only way to process these options is to go within. The regular use of reflective practice brings clarity to overwhelming options like these. Whichever choice we make, that is our created experience of the moment.

2.04.2008

The high cost of thinking

Thinking is designed for our survival and success. We think in order to prolong our life spans and expand our good fortune. Thinking, like any activity, embodies an implicit strategy. It assumes it will be successful by making particular assumptions. Thinking presumes we are dealing with particular dangers, threats, and enemies, both known and unknown. Thinking also presumes that success follows our being right about what we see. We exercise our right to be right regardless of how it impacts others' rights. We think our free will get us where we want to go.

When we think, we are categorizing complex circumstances. We are dealing with the facts of a situation. We are simplifying things into clear cut distinctions. We are drawing the line, telling things apart and sorting things out. Thinking is dichotomous. The binary logic of thinking compartmentalizes what may not be so easily boxed, labeled and finalized. Thinking enables us to be right about what we see in ways that preclude further questions. Our comfort zone is defined by how we already know what's what.

When we fall for thinking, we pay a terrible price. We're usually so busy thinking we don't recognize the price we're paying. We assume the result of our thinking merely calls for more thinking. We maintain our thinking at all cost and think we got off easy compared to not thinking.

Thinking gives other's the wrong impression. They get defensive when we think. Just because we think we're in danger, they think we regard them as a threat or enemy. Just because we need to be right, they think they've been wronged, shot down, overruled or dismissed. Just because we're thinking about the situation, they think we're being mean spirited and selfish.

Thinking also influences what happens. We attract more to think about as if we're in danger and need to be right. We get what we fear to appear in our circumstances. We get proven right by the evidence of our thinking in what appears before us. We live in a bubble of our own conclusions with no contradictions coming to mind or through our co-conspirators.

When we think about what happens, we cannot close it out. We dichotomize it into good or bad without a way to take it all to heart. The part we dismiss becomes lingering ghosts fro the past. We are then haunted by the unthinkable alternative that sabotages our best intentions. We pay a huge price for relying on thinking.

When we drop the drama and abandon thinking, there are many better ways to use our minds:

  • reflecting on different possibilities and futures that could come of this
  • realizing more connections to, significance of and parallels with this situation
  • re-conceiving the definition of the perceived problem, the frames of reference to apply to this and the basis for evaluating this
  • receiving better ideas, answers to troubling questions, inspired changes in ways to see it, intuitive guidance of how to proceed
  • regarding the situation from different vantage points, within different scenarios, with different objectives in mind
  • retelling the story of what happened with more closure, completion and appreciation for the experience

Ready to quit?