Thoughts
Notice we all have thoughts. What we may not notice is we have the same ones over and over again – the same top 10.
It’s interesting to actually catalogue your mind at work. There are a couple of techniques worth mentioning to do this. One comes from a book called THE ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron and the other comes from who my friend, Mark Ryan calls a “Spiritual Regular Guy,” Jerry Stocking.
Cameron uses a technique called “Morning pages.” Stocking recommends putting your internal auditory on external speaker. Either way, you get to observe your mind at work, and more.
The purpose is to either write down, in long hand, your thoughts as they come to you or speak them aloud. (I highly recommend if you choose the speaking method that you do it where no one can hear, otherwise men in white coats will come looking for you.)
You do this unloading without editing anything. You just record or recite what comes down the stream of consciousness. If you do this on a regular basis, you will find out two things about your thoughts.
- They are the same ones coming back around for visit after visit.
- Observation of them produces spaces between them where new thoughts find their way in to you mind.
Both are valuable occurrences.
Noticing that you get the same thoughts time after time puts your mind in a new perspective. You now know for sure that your mind runs you and you don’t run it. You begin to notice what an automatic record and playback device that it is. Translation: Our thoughts, for the most part, have no value and contribute very little to our life, yet we spend most of our life ascribing value to our thoughts. We define our personal identity from our thoughts – one of life’s largest mistakes.
We have assigned our personal worth to a robotic machine that can only crank out the same tired diatribe we’ve been hearing in our head for years. Once you discover the automatic pilot function of your mind, you get a new lease on life. You finally figure out that your mind isn’t you but a mechanism that you happen to have – one that works methodically your entire life.
Observing the thought process by either of the methods described has an interesting byproduct. You get bored writing down or speaking aloud the same thoughts day after day. You may say “what’s the use of writing down or saying aloud the same stuff ad nauseam?” When you have the presence of mind to ask that question, a space shows up. In this space, you make room for you.
The new novel thoughts are you, not a recording device spitting out old messages. You discover you when you observe your mind at work. It’s quite the discovery.
If you think about it for a moment, just about every suicide is a result of people mistaking their thoughts for who they are.
I intuitively did this exercise before I even knew of its existence during a dark, heavy period in my life. Things were falling apart and my mind was in overdrive. I began writing every morning until I ran out of thoughts to write. I did this for a month. The result was a peacefulness that I cannot describe in words. There was a burden lifted, and the only heavy lifting I did was write down my thoughts.
I highly recommend that you formally dedicate some time to observing your mind. It’s a commitment worth your time and the results are, as they say in the credit card commercials, priceless!
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
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