🦁 A lion doesn’t suffer its own claws. It doesn’t scratch itself to death.
🐍 A snake doesn’t bite itself and die from its own venom.
🐊 An alligator doesn’t clamp its jaws around its own tail.
But we humans are so often, our own worst enemy.
🧠 We are tortured by our own thoughts and imagination. Our powerful mind, our amazing, advanced consciousness, the very tools we are gifted with can cause us such suffering and self harm:
– A single negative thought can send your whole body into a state of anxiety.
– A scary, imagined scenario can fill you with literal dread.
– A fearful vision in your mind can put you off taking any action.
It’s all imagined. It’s not real. Yet it can direct and destroy you.
It’s pretty bizarre, really. For us to function in this way seems to go against the wisdom of nature. Why would nature make a being that cannot handle itself, it’s own faculties and can turn on itself in such a way?! Strange.
Alas, let’s focus on the task in hand – to master our minds so that we don’t have to suffer them.
To learn how to reduce pessimism and fearful imaginings, so that we can experience more lightness, optimism, health and wellbeing.
There are three main ways I’m starting to do this:
1. Practicing presence
When troublesome thoughts and worries about the future take hold, I get out of my head and become present. I start noticing what’s actually going on around me, in reality. The room I’m in, the people around, the sights, the sounds and the general life situation that I find myself in.
This is about being mindful and recognising that in this very moment, more often than not, everything is actually OK. All the worries and fears are merely projections in my own mind. They are not real. What is real is that right here and now, I am safe, I am well and I can relax.
2. Non-judgement of what is
This is a good general practice but it’s especially helpful during challenging times. This is about refraining from making stories about what’s happening.
Things just are. Or as Werner Erhard puts it: “What’s so is always just what’s so.” It’s our interpretation of ‘what’s so’ that causes us suffering. A job loss is a job loss. It’s us who may decide it means people are bad and don’t care about us. A failed project is a failed project. It’s us who may interpret this as a reason to give up on our dreams.
To further quote Erhard: “The chatter in your head is more interpretation, and it has nothing to do with what’s so. There’s nothing wrong with the chatter, it’s just you listening to a fantasy.”
Choose to live in objective reality rather than in the concepts and stories you make up about it. This alone will massively reduce mental suffering.
3. Using my imagination for good.
I think it was Neville Goddard who said “Imagination is the language of God.” Those words reverberate through my soul.
Imagination is the source of creation. It is our creative tool. Everything made by humans first existed in someone’s mind. Everything starts there, both our dreams and our nightmares. And thus, it makes sense to imagine what’s good, what’s wanted and desirable, rather than what is feared and undesired.
It can feel difficult to imagine a brighter future especially if you’re struggling right now. But once you practice directing your imagination it gets easier and is incredibly powerful. You can also try imagining more accessible things like memories of loving times, heartful experiences, joys and success.
If a negative and fearful thought can flood your body with stress and anxiety, then surely a positive one can do the opposite and flood you with endorphins, peace, vitality and love. That’s got to be worth mastering your mind for.
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Mastering our mind takes continual practice over time, much like regular exercise and working out. Each of us will experience it differently, based on our past, our present, our psychology, mental health and so on. It’s important to honour our own, unique experience.
And whatever your experience, consider that if we can be imprisoned by the mind, we can be set free by it too. If it can hurt us, it can heal us. The choice is ours. We just have to practice making that choice, consciously, as often as we can remember to do so.
We can be our own worst enemy or our own greatest ally.