I recently posted the photo above on this blog’s social media and it struck me as being particularly relevant right now. There are various terms in society that people use or run into without really thinking about them, yet examining those concepts are important meditations to undertake.
Yes, some people can go routes like Transcendental Meditation and that does help the mind clear. But for many people that is not their favoured route to our shared, central truth. Fortunately, there are many paths up the mountain.
For many in the West particularly, our subtly Socratic society means we are often more comfortable approaching wisdom or clarity by disassembling ego. This is generally done with a guide, by studying the language –the labels– that shape the conversations our egos conduct with us.
As an example, when I work with a group of women who have organized themselves into a lunchtime workplace, spirituality/self-help group, the aim of the ten week course is to guide them to experience epiphanies that relate to their personal definitions of Self.
Each of them will be unique people, but they all get healthier by doing the same thing; we simply challenge the value and necessity of achieving their individual desires, yet we do it in ways that do not threaten the vitality they live life with.
This is not the sort of self-examination most people are practiced at, hence my role. It takes some explaining to help people understand how it’s not a paradox to have a motivating goal and yet not have an attachment to it.
If we were watching ourselves more closely, we would know that when times are good, most of us can be pretty good about non-attachment. But when they’re not, if we err, it will often be through our attachments to what we perceive as necessary outcomes that may not be viable, whether they feel ‘fair’ or ‘deserved’ or not.
Our desire for an answer is itself not an answer, so there is no point in adding to our pain with voluntary psychological suffering. If we’re conscious, the pain of that mistake is usually what gets us to redirect our thoughts into some form of action, even if it’s a bit feeble or incapable of providing our desired answer. Even feeble action feels better than worried rumination or speculation.
Attachments and desires. The Buddha was right, they generate suffering. In those groups of women they each find hidden attachments they have held that were framed in ways they simply could not see before. And once those attachments and their meanings get exposed in a profoundly deep ways through our dialogue, their own understanding leads them to a natural process of bunny-hopping to greater peace and mental health.
Once we have see how they are created and how they function, conscious people win increasingly more battles with their desires until they reach the point of total surrender. It’s a beautiful, empowering thing and the journey’s a joy as well.
There are ways out of the tangle of our own thinking. It’s a form of self care to take action to untie the knots that we carry in our psychology. And asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness shown toward others, it is a sign of strength shown to ourselves.
If we’re really ready, we needn’t suffer longer than we have. We can learn to understand.
peace. s
Following a serious childhood brain injury Scott McPherson unwittingly spent his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and the self. This made him as strange to others as they were to him. Seeing the self-harm people created with their own overthinking, Scott dedicated part of his life to helping others live with greater awareness. He is currently a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB, where he finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.
