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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Friday, September 14, 2018

Choices


“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
                              Albert Einstein
___________________________

I admit it
I can be inflexible
Rigid

Perhaps the right word is stuck

I get stuck in my opinion
Stuck in old patterns
Stuck in behaviors

I suffer all too often from psychological inflexibility
I am not present in the moment
It’s all about the past
It’s all about the future

Its all about me
Not the me that really is
But the me that I create through my thoughts, feeling, experiences, memories
All my self-definitions and judgments

From this place of self-absorption
And preoccupation
I find my head filled with thoughts and feelings
That don’t work

The stop me
Freeze me
They make me immobile, unable to act
They stop me from being who I want to be

But I’ll be damned if I’ll un-fuse
Not way, will I let go, become open

No way will I listen
Move to another perspective

Nope
I’ve created my story, and I’m sticking to it
I’ve developed my self-image, and I’ve made it who I am
I’ve got my mental scripts set
My ideology fixed

I am one stuck dude
I have company of course
All those people who love Trump
All those who worship Bernie
Right wing evangelicals
Left wing snowflakes
And most of us in between, who regular find ourselves
Unable to move toward the things we most desire

Yep.
Stuck
Stuck
Stuck

And inflexible

But when it comes to psychological health
Flexibility is the game

When we are flexible it is not all about the past
Nor all about the future

Is about this moment
And it is about the “me” experiencing this moment

But that “me” has to stand a little apart
from the place of self-absorption
And preoccupation
It has to step away from those thoughts and feelings

A little apart from those mental scripts that
Stop me and freeze

“I can’t do this”
“I am not good enough”
“It is hopeless”

My head screams

But is just my brain (a bully) telling me stuff

So I have to say, “My brain is telling me I can’t do this, it is time to step away from the brain”
And let the thoughts, and fears, and scripts go…
De-fuse
And then, remember who I want to be
And what I want to do
And who I want to be close to

And then, I have to act
I have to choose
In the presence of fear, of pain
In the echo chamber of my disappointments and errors
In the face of my ideology

Then I have to choose to move toward
Whatever, whomever is important to me

What thoughts keep me stuck?
What behaviors, move me the wrong direction/

Can I notice when I move away from kindness
From inclusion
From openness

Into defensiveness, isolation and rigidity?

And can I choose to listen to my better angels?

That is the question for this, and every day

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