Our present level of Self -- with its accumulated fears, compulsions, and doubts -- knows only one way to deal with the disturbances that upset its precarious balance. It thinks about them. It calls on the body of its collected past experiences, compares them to its current situation, and then concludes both the nature of the problem and what must be done to "deal" with it...
There is no consumptive negative state in the consciousness without resistance being the "goo" it grows out of -- something black and dark pulling and pushing on you. And in the moment that dark state starts to swallow you, when you're starting to feel sorry for yourself, or you're trying to figure out what to do about something because you're asleep to yourself, all you know to do is to push back...
All of our life experiences have been trying to teach us a certain grand lesson: Liberation from our captive condition (whatever that may be in the moment) cannot come by further deliberating it. We can see the wisdom in doing nothing toward our own troubled thoughts and feelings when we realize that the only way not to be dragged under by these negative states is to stay...
We're not meant to see life through our thinking. We don't need to think about what is. In fact, why do I need to tell myself what just happened? Wasn't I there? Are you jumpy? The minute that a shadow approaches, we can't see what it is, but we think something is coming based in fear, and we dive for cover! What would it be like to never have to wonder or worry about whether or not...
What's the first thing that any of us do when trouble comes? The first thing that happens when we get into trouble is that we start thinking. Our little think machine just gets geared up, and it starts to go. And it goes. Now, what is it thinking about? It's thinking about the trouble it's in and it's thinking about ways in which to get out of trouble...
We are deceived anytime we find ourselves busily considering all the possibilities in a fearful moment. The only possibility those busy thoughts hold as we anxiously consider fearful options is which one of them is going to make us its prisoner. And it doesn't matter which fearful thought you choose... You plant a fear seed; you will grow a fearful tree...
Whatever form your resentments may take, they wreck only you... not the one you resent. So, here's a key thought to help you release this self-wrecking inner state: Holding onto some hurt or hatred -- over what someone may have done to you in the past - makes you that person's slave in the here and now. If you're tired of being a slave to a painful relationship out of your past, this study an...
The "hard" part of this practicing of presence in the now is that our habitual mind, the false self, wants to know itself through one thought or another.
Question: I not only stiffen up sometimes before speaking to someone who intimidates me, but sometimes I feel like my throat is choking up with so much tension I'm afraid I'll lose the power to even speak! I'd very much like to get past this debilitating, sometimes humiliating, state of self. What can I do? Guy's Response: If we're ever to outgrow the predicaments that we face, we mus...
Learn to look at all difficult moments as opportunities to come awake to yourself and a place from which you can practice stepping outside of the attending circle of negative thoughts.
Your awareness of troubled thoughts and feelings roaming through you is the power that keeps their harmful and self-limiting influences from having control over you.
The things we put first in our life, our moment-to-moment choices in life, are a direct reflection of what we value most in that moment.