Words. All day long they cycle through your head. They are the Elements of Ego. We assemble them into sentences which act as the fundamental chemical formulas for our ego’s experience. So if you organize words into a sad story, you will experience the chemistry for sadness. If you organize words into a happy story, you will experience the chemistry for happiness.
Individual words carry little meaning. But assembled into formulas/sentences, they are powerful generators of ego experience. They are like prescriptions for specific drugs that will affect your brain. Their assembly creates the emotional experience that you later describe as “your day.”
So you essentially have two choices: you can think an ego’s day into existence with words, or you can witness your spirit’s day into existence with your awareness. One is output, whereas the other is more input. Your ego is more like a child chasing a toy, where your spirit is more like a balloon that expands its total area of understanding by taking in direct experiences and making them its own. One is growth by addition, one is growth by realization. One expands you by giving an individual you more ideas, whereas the other expands your sense of understanding by more profoundly connecting you to more and more of what’s around you.
All day long you make this choice. You invest the energy of your consciousness in one or the other, whether you do it consciously or not. So living a profound and meaningful life isn’t hard. It’s simply a matter of applying your consciousness toward absorption and expansion versus collection and individualization.
Pay attention to your words. The ones you say to yourself and the ones you say to others. Because if every smoke break at work is you complaining about another employee, then you are literally feeding little word-pills to yourself that will combine to create an unpleasant experience and then you will blame the person contained in your word formula! Do you see how crazy that is? How can you possibly be blaming them for what you’re choosing to think?!?!?
You say you’re angry because of this person or that situation. Let me be blunt: if you want to feel better, then get more spiritually mature. Because there are no co-workers that dictate what you think. There are no friends or former friends than can reach inside your brain and squeeze your hypothalamus. Your chemistry is always within your control. The only question is; are you staying aware of the fact that you have that choice?
We all waver in and out. Without an out there could be no in. But out doesn’t feel good. That’s why it doesn’t feel good. It’s encouraging us to think differently. By delivering pain, it’s asking us to think other things. The only problem is, we usually don’t listen to this incredibly clear signal because we’re too busy blaming someone else for how we’re feeling
Here, let me be as clear as possible: if you’re upset because someone did something, then you don’t understand how your consciousness works. Period. No excuses, no buts… you just don’t get it. I’m not saying that even if you were healthy that you’d never think thoughts like that—of course you will. Your culture unwittingly taught you to. But just because you got tricked into thinking unproductive thoughts for yourself, that doesn’t mean you go blaming the person contained in your thinking. They’re involvement isn’t the issue. What matters is what chemical you requested with your story.
So it doesn’t matter if your husband left you for a younger woman. What hurts is your unaccepting thoughts about that situation. It doesn’t matter if your boss fired you for something you didn’t do. What hurts is your unaccepting thoughts about that situation. And it doesn’t matter if that girl insulted you, because what hurts is always and only your unaccepting thoughts about that situation.
Take your power back in life. Stop using words to create the illusion that other people’s behaviours affect your personal chemistry because that is obviously impossible. Your thoughts are yours. You choose them. So start paying more attention to how you feel, and start connecting those feelings to the thoughts you chose. Because like a chemist, you assemble chemicals all day long, but it is important you stay conscious of your moment-to-moment choices, because it’s entirely your responsibility to ensure that you assemble the ones for enjoyment.
Happy choosing.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.
