Optimal grip
The word meditation scares a lot of people. People always tell me “oh meditation isn’t for me, my mind just races too much” , and I say that’s exactly who meditation is for. Meditation doesn’t mean to just sit there and all thoughts go away. Meditation isn’t just sitting in a certain position and being in bliss the whole time. A lot of times it is the opposite. The point of meditation is to observe what is going on. Resting into the place of awareness within our being, instead of following the narratives we so often follow. Or trying to force thoughts to leave. So it’s okay if your mind is all over the place. That’s the first step. To realize “wow, this thing never shuts up”. The mind always has something to say. It’s always analyzing, judging, worrying, and making up scenarios that don’t even exist. But we continue to buy into the mind. We follow the thoughts. We play out the bad what if scenarios. Until we are living in a world made of thoughts. A world of illusion. Meditation is about observing and not letting the thoughts pull you away from the awareness that is beyond all thought. Even if a thousand thoughts pop up during meditation, that’s okay. They will. But each time one pops up, we have the choice to follow it and buy into it, or let it go and come back to awareness. And the more we practice coming back to awareness, the less our thoughts will have control over us. We will start to be able to live from that place of awareness instead of in the never ending thought patterns we have been living in.
instagram.com95% of “overthinking” is unprocessed emotion wearing a rational disguise.
You don’t need more logic. You need to feel the discomfort you’re avoiding.
Wisdom: the ability to drop all perspectives; to go beyond whatever perspective you are currently in or holding
Love: the capacity to see the world from another’s perspective
Power: the ability to get others to see from your perspective
Daniel Thorson, on Daniel Kazandjian’s podcast. He was speaking on the three trainings at MAPLE.
The reason to strengthen your ego, ultimately, is so you can best align it with (or get it out of the way of) the universe's preferences, as you can discern them, moment to moment.
What greater peace of mind could you ask for than knowing that what happens is what God wants?
A strong ego is tight, lean & small, with lots of space and mobility. Doesn't fly all over the room and identify with people and things, is easy to move from side to side when it's in the way.
The way to strengthen it is to face the scariest truth you can handle, over and over
Anger felt without resistance is a very different sensation than what many folks think of as “anger”
It feels like clarity, focused action, or a sense of “This is unacceptable.”
We are constantly representing people to ourselves in self-serving ways, in ways that gratify our egos and serve our ends. We stereotype and condescend, ignore and dehumanize. And because we don’t see people accurately, we treat them wrongly. Evil happens when people are unseeing, when they don’t recognize the personhood in other human beings.