Change Your Mind, Too

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I'm sitting at the kitchen table munching on salad, sipping miso soup, and stirring natto. There is no coffee in the house so I need to busy myself with other things. The sun is out, it is a wonderful Saturday morning. I'm doing laundry, airing out the futon, washing the sinks and tub, vacuuming the floor. Everything is peaceful, everything seems to be flowing smoothly. At this current moment of NOW the only problem I perceive is that of the absence of any coffee in the house for three days. But that's not such a big deal. However, as NOW moments change from step to step, different perceived problems come into our minds and affect us to varying degrees.

 

All problems are perceptions of incidents created by our minds which can only see current events based upon the filters and the experiences of our past. And we DO have the power to change how we see things, so we do have the ability to change our minds. To learn more about this, please visit Stefnee's blog, "Change Your Mind".

 

 

It takes time and practice, and it is necessary to learn how to still your mind and be the observer of your thoughts. The ego often tries to resist these changes because it invests itself heavily in all those good and bad ideas running around in your mind, and often that stuff leads to fear and inability to move forward into new challenges today. But you do have the ability to change your mind, and give up the old for the new. Giving up the old way for the new way means giving up that which you have been comfortable with, that which has defined you for a very long time. But it also means giving up the negative payoff outcome which is fear, discomfort, pain, sadness, grief, and often paranoia or SPINNING that can go with a great many problems that we as thinking and reasoning mammals PERCEIVE.

 

Here is something I have recently begun to do whenever I perceive a problem - any problem - in my life.

 

Relaxing my mind and breathing deeply is key to the success in this exercise.

 

Whenever I meditate using one of the Processes that I have been using for the past year and a half (purchased when I went to Asheville, NC for a leadership convention), "P5", or "Change Your Mind", I envision myself at the river, in a boat, floating from right to left. I visualize this river down to the tiniest of details, watching the minnows swim around the bigger fish. I see the twigs and branches and the trash swirling in the eddies, caught in the bushes and trees to the side of the river. I feel the wind on my face, the cooling breeze in the summer as it refreshes me and dries the sweat from my chest. I can feel the hard concrete tetrapods beneath my feet, my buttocks, my thighs as I move over the pilons, and sit quietly watching myself approach on the river.

 

I am the observer of me, and in this case, I am not my mind, but I observe my mind, and my mind is envisioned as me in the boat with my problem....

 

In the boat are the problems that I perceive as problems. As the boat floats by, I take time looking "up the sleeve" to find out what the real source of my perceived problems are (they are never what we say they are, or originally think they are).

 

Once I identify the source of the problem for me, I create a new image with a positive outcome so the problem no longer looks like a problem in my mind.

 

Once that is done, the chemistry of the body responds by emitting chemical responses to my thoughts and emotions known as peptides which flow through my body and rewire my neural net.

 

In so doing, if I repeat this several times, I am able to rewire my neural net so that what I once perceived as a problem is no longer seen as a problem to me.

 

And once that is achieved, the negative payoff outcome that is usually associated with problems fades away, just as the boat laden with non-problems continues to flow past me along the river and into the distance.

 

I have changed my mind.

 

And so. can. you.

 

I love you!

 

Cam