Eating is an instinctual thing.
You don’t need to teach a baby how to eat. That natural/infinite Intelligence within it works it out pretty quickly and does it well.
But, managing its eating is a whole different thing that initially its mother does for it.
Later, as it gets older, it will have learned – well or poorly- how to manage its eating.
What do I eat? When do I eat? How much? What’s good for me? What isn’t and so on.
If you don’t do this well, you end up with all sorts of trouble.
THINKING is no different.
Like eating, it is instinctual.
But managing your thinking is a whole different thing.
Initially, your parents do a lot of your thinking for you.
Then, your teachers, peers, society tend to try and do it for you.
But the true science of MANAGING your thinking is not something that anyone has ever really taught you.
You have to figure it out for yourself.
And yet, if there was one VITAL skill that every human being needs to master, it is this one.
For haven’t we all experienced how our thoughts can make or break us?
How, what we believe individually and collectively can take us to war, can ruin relationships, can cause us to discriminate against others, can destroy the planet, can drive us to hopelessness and despair?
And all because of our thinking.
Fortunately, there have been mind masters and spiritual traditions and some insights in psychology that have helped us understand the importance of managing our thoughts.
Buddhism does this particularly well, making the distinction between right thinking and wrong thinking.
Wrong thinking has resulted in EVERY problem humans have suffered.
Right thinking on the other hand has saved us from suffering, from the mildest forms to the most extreme. And it has given rise to extraordinary innovations and acts of kindness and compassion.
Fortunately also, there have been indivduals in our human history who have demonstrated so admirably what rigjt thinking can achieve even and especially in the most dire and desperate circumstances.
I’m thinking of people such as Nick Vuyicic, Gandhi, Victor Frankel, Mandela as well as people who have suffered and recovered from so called terminal illness including Ian Gawler and Stephen Hawking or from a history of abuses such as Alice Cooper, Russell Brand and Eric Clapton…
And the fact that, at least for some of these people, having such public lives could have arguably made it more difficult for their recovery. It could, equally, have helped them sustain it. Which it is, I am in no position to say. Perhaps, as is often the case, it may have been a case of both.
Schools boast about training kids to think critically.
But who has deliberately and systematically taught us to intentionally and consistently
Think Lovingly (especially toward ourselves)?
Think kindly (especially toward ourselves)?
Think compassionately (especially towards ourselves)?
Think widely, think freely, think joyously, think peacefully?
Think powerfully?
We are left to figure it out for ourselves.
And that would be okay if it weren’t for the fact that from the earliest age, most of us have been trained to
*Doubt our ability to think for ourselves.
*Identify with our body (I AM…. short, fat, ugly, good looking, old…)
*Identify with our thoughts (IAM… a bastard, bipolar, rich, poor, stupid, smart, guilty, smarter than you…)
*Identify with our feelings (I AM…anxious, depressed, lonely, angry,…)
*Identify with our past actions (I AM… a bastard because of what I did, a failure because of what I didn’t achieve…)
*Obsess about our future ( I AM …doomed, never going to forgive myself, never going to be forgiven, never going to br happy and fulfilled if A, B, C does/doesn’t happen….)
*Feel guilty
*Feel we deserve to be punished
*Feel unworthy
*Feel we must compete and outdo others
*Distrust others and ourselves…
*Undermine and dismiss our overwhelmingly more numerous acts of love, kindness, thoughtfulness, generosity…
In short, we’ve been conditioned to be in a constant state of conflict/tension within ourselves and with our world.
And this severely threatens our ability to do Right Thinking.
So, managing our thoughts has become something that most of us need to learn and often from experts in religious, spiritual or secular contexts.
But, without this most vital skill, we will never be able to free ourselves from suffering, intense or mild.
Let’s get serious about becoming expert managers of our thoughts and their associated emotions.
You see, either we manage them or they control us.
If you’re looking for help with managing your thoughts and feelings, I invite you to contact me here
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