Again, I got stuck in a cycle of being resistant towrds making content here. I was thinking that I'm not into writing, and that I'm not writing about what I most genuinely want to write. However, I decided to keep going, with whatever pace, not cherry-picking the topics and words, just laying down my spiel on the ground. Here is something I've been thinking and considering a lot for the past 8 months or so.
I would like to get this blog a little nuanced, and that's by adding an emphasis on the use of thinking, analyzing, researching, experimenting, being scientific to an extent.
And it's not because I want to put the reasoning and thruth-seeking above being, but I would like to use them as a tool to enhance and assist our being, because some people, as me, need to hear things elaborated and wrote down directly, rather than reading stories and sayings of wise people which can be interpreted in many different ways. Although I'm slowly starting to understand the language of metaphors.
For example, in spiritual community, people are constantly spinning around, because some of the advice heared is actually making them feel good about wherever they are with life. And that's a really good thing! But it should not be used as an excuse to stay the same, it should be used to embrace where we're currently so that we can freely act upon our highest ideals in life.
Taking in spiritual advice can be a double-edged sword. If people are alone, they can hear how happiness is not to be found in other people and feel good about their zero-friends life.
If they're broke, they can hear how pursuing material goods is a no way out of misery, and they feel good about it and don't reach out for their full potential which would instead make them feel amazing in the long-run.
They may not have a good job, or be unemployed and then hear about how a NEED to do something is wanting to get away from the present moment and being blinded by the abundance of your current situation.
And while all of those sayings hold some thruth, they're in no sense absolute, or complete instructions on how to live your life. They are just different advices made for people with different struggles, in the context of certain life situation. That's why I think it's important to express, to a certain extent, their real meaning so that people can not use it only to justify their comfortable behaviour and keep living small, in the clear face of suffering.
Hearing spiritual advice, only to reinforce and feel good about where you're currently at and to free yourself of not having to go outside your currently confined world is called spiritual bypassing. And it's actually opposite of what spirituality is trying to offer.
For me, spirituality should not be giving people a safe space, and approve of everyones life situation and problems, but it should rather question the reality of why the person got to certain problem and life situation to begin with. It's directing the person towards facing his real devlis and difficulties, watching them dissolve and then continue with the process.
Here again, you might fall into a desperate hole of trying to find your "symptoms" and making yourself suffer because you think you deserve. Don't look at a given advice as an extreme truth, it's not black and white. Advice is there for the use of it, so use it for it's purpose and pay it forward. It's a tool with which to grapple with reality, not the reality itself.
So remember, it's not finding the right saying to approve of your miserable and toxic life, it's questioning and seeing what has drawn you to that misery and toxicity. Then facing it straight ahead!
This is an important topic in need of adressing. There is this doctrine in the spiritual community that's trying to fight thoughts and quiet the mind. But if we zoom out a bit, and look at the evolution of a cell up to a human, we can clearly see that it took us a looooooooong way until one key element that seperated us from apes came into play.
That element lies in the prefrontal cortex, with whose massive development we became able to replace real, concrete elements in the world, with a label, so that we could store in our brain and make it into a tool of abstraction, with which we could then play in our heads and come up with different uses or imagine different properties of it, or to extrapolate categories which have something in common in order to group in the things that have relations to each other.
So we passed all that way, and came up with one of the greatest instruments in this universe that got us all the way here to write on this beautiful platform, and we're now considering to dispense that instrument? SO WRONG!
This is summed up perfectly, but let's however extract the wisdom out of it.
Thinking is a brilliant tool.. But so is the pickaxe! In other words, while thinking can get us far and make us answer questions to which we didn't know the asnwer before we asked, like everything, it has to be used in moderation and applied only to a certain context.
There is a stage where thinking is needed, but there are also stages where we need to drop our effort to think-through altogether. For example, while talking to a new person, you can't just think about what to say, you kind of have to let yourself of the hook and the words will come out. It's good to think-through a project, but there is a time where thoughts need to get implemented.
It's okay to ocasionally examine who you are portraying as a person and what you stand for, but it's counter-productive to mis-identify who you are with the thoughts and beliefs about yourself, especially ones that make you feel bad and resentful to change your situation because you'll want to reinforce that misery.
I really like to think, it's what dragged me to apply for a physics college, but I overused it because I had no other tools to rest upon. In fact, I still like to think, and solving problems brings me a great pleasure. Currently I'm trying to pursue a job as a programmer, because it's rewarding to me trying to figure out how to write and implement the code. Thinking is a great tool for creating applications other people will use.
You can't do it without thinking! But you have to know when to detach from it, and that's what so many sources are trying to teach, because thinking will only get you so far.
When I first started experimenting with mindful meditation and listen to the people that talk about it, I picked up on belief that it's coming from a bad place, and any attempt to think is trying to escape this present moment. I thought I should get rid of all the thinking and only then will I be able to enjoy the bliss that is life. That was very naive and extreme.
I can comfirm now that this belief was dellusional, as I'm currently living a happy life, without being a no-minder :)
And now I want to stand for, and encourage people to think, analyze and be sceptical about things, other people, and most importantly, themselves! However, to do it for the right reasons and the benefit of their well-being.
