Posted by Jim TAKE BACK YOUR MIND When you stop suppressing, you wont know what to do with the feelings that come up. When you first felt that feeling, you didn't know what to do with it so you grabbed a smoke or whatever and pushed the feeling down. Every time you reach for that cigarette/log on to the net/spit/chew gum, you are re-enacting the moment when you first stuffed that uncomfortable feeling that you didn't know what to do with. The thing that people don't know is that when you have a difficult or uncomfortable feeling, the thing to do with that feeling is NOTHING. You must do precisely nothing because anything you do will be a suppressing action. Most people think that yelling is a good way to express or process anger. Yelling is a way to externalize the feelings and so avoid the internal discomfort. Doing nothing forces you to feel and therefore process your anger. It will feel weird not acting out when your insides are on fire. You will feel like you must do SOMETHING, because you learned somewhere in the past that you were not allowed to have that feeling and not do anything about it so you made it go away by DOING something. You just have to let the weird thing happen which is to feel it and do nothing. To me it feels like squirming in a straightjacket, moving and not-moving at the same time. Stop moving......... ......exhale... .................................. ....just stop......relax ............ ...ok ... ... ......................... .....just settle down and stop moving. ... ......... put your actions to rest ... ........ ...let go of tense muscles.................ok ............. ..........ahhhhhh........... .............. ..................... ......that's nice isn't it?......... ............. .............. Stop thinking in words..........let the flow of words through your brain settle down and end....... ............ ............... put your thoughts to rest......... ............ ..stay like this for a moment... relax in this state ............ then begin to notice sensory input ...... What do you hear?........crickets, birds, maybe a distant garbage truck..... Now try to let go of the mental images of the sources of these sensations. I heard a circular saw just a moment ago and got the mental image of a man in a green flannel shirt holding a saw. If I let go of the image of the man and pretend I do not know about circular saws and then try to describe just the sound, a cool thing happens which is that suddenly I actually hear it. Realize now that we assign imaginary words and pictures and concepts to all of our sensory inputs. Living in this world of pre-conceived notions is the antithesis of enlightenment. When you stop seeing the man in his backyard, when you stop seeing a pansy and start seeing an intriguing colorful presence in your visual field, then you are truly seeing for the first time since you were a baby, before you learned the names and concepts for everything. This seeing is the Seeing that Bhuddas talk about. This state of mind, without all the names and pre-concepts, is called New-Mind and is the state of enlightenment. This is the state Buddha called AWAKE. When you are no longer stuffing your experience, when you are processing your entire experience as it happens, you are awake and you are enlightened. This simple state of mind, when you are relaxed and not thinking in words is a pure state of consciousness. All the rest of the stuff that occupies our heads, all the rushing and worrying and general upset, is added in by ourselves. All that crap exists only in the imagination and lives only when kept alive, by rumination and by acting out. Positive changes will take place in my life because I am taking control of the thing that has been in my way; my mind. It is like taming a stallion. A wild unruly beast becomes a flowing and graceful thing of beauty that will take me where I want to go. And I won't even need to tell it where to go because it's my mind instead of a horse, it already knows what I want. I just found out that I can be enlightened whenever I want and I found out how to do it, and I did it! I just learned a technique for taking back my mind and I tried it and for a few breathless moments I was in charge and it was light and easy and nice. One thing that no one seems to know: Realizing your potential does not have to be hard work. Some things take hard work, but self-realization (self-actualization) can happen without too terribly much effort. Actualization is not about goals or careers or relationships. It is simply what happens when proper use of the mind is practiced.
on 7/5/2005, 4:42 pm
4.255.34.228
Something I wrote, reposted:
Hopeless to enlightened in 5 minutes
When you have something to make yourself feel better constantly at your fingertips, you will use it to avoid feeling the feelings that are stuffed inside you. You may spend your whole life keeping at bay exactly what you most need to feel and experience. They are the feelings and experiences that will teach you everything you need to know to realize your potential for true happiness. Those soothing things you keep at your fingertips are the actions you take periodically, regularly, throughout each and every day. Smoking is a perfect example, but it could be the phone, tea, sleep, or getting attention/creating some sort of drama. Some people chew their nails or pick at sores. Some men may not go more than 15 minutes without making a sexual comment. Anything can be an addiction.
Whatever it is you use, just stop for a moment, if you will, ... stop long enough to find out what happens inside you when you stop pacifying yourself. For me it usually feels like unbearable boredom, but other times it's a squirmy, uncomfortable feeling. You may get irritable and angry. Whatever your particular brand of stuffed feelings is, that is what you will feel because those feelings are the ones you suppress each time you reach for your pacifier.
All day every day you work to keep the lid shut tight on your feelings by practicing your habits and it is exhausting and leaves you unable to realize your full human potential because your energy is being used for something else.
Meditation/sitting is the stopping of all this grasping for our addictions, and all this need to keep a lid on our stuffed feelings. Just sit there and Burn. Feel it baby. You wanna get up, you wanna do something, you want to grab that game controller/french fry/lip smacker/cell phone but you just stand or lay or kneel or sit; and feel it; squirm and not-squirm.
Try this excercise when things get sucky or any time you are anxious, in a hurry, upset or any kind of not feeling good, plus any time throughout the day and night (read slowly):
............what do you smell?...........is there a breeze, is there air moving across your skin ever so gently?..............can you feel it?
When I decide to rouse myself from meditation, from this pure state of mind, and begin action and thought, it is my choice whether I bring the crap and problems and hurries back to life. A moment ago, when I was feeling the gentle breeze on my skin, that craziness that fills my days had ceased to exist. Is the anxiety coming back to life even now as I come out of meditation to join the world, as if I had no control over it? Maybe, but I just found out I do have control.
Hey,.....that is VERY SIGNIFICANT. I just learned and exercised control over my own mind by relaxing and listening to the birds. It is very easy and I can do it whenever I want.
To have no control over your mind is like being a ship adrift at sea. To periodically meditate, taking control, is like being a ship that makes stops along the way to refuel and check the lines. As you can see these 2 ships have very different lives.
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