Have I cured my opinionitus? hell no! The habit of getting attached to ideas, rather than letting them up date or slide by completely is not so easily broken. So long as any insecurity about anything remains, I will look for angles to control what is going on.
I expect I will end up needing a daily practice of getting to know what normal feels like, so that I can notice when I am wondering off the reservation, heading into town for another showdown.
** Peace as a Base-line**
Perhaps I need to practice what calm acceptance feels like, get comfortable checking in to that, so that becomes mine normal? I suspect that will give me a better chance to recognise what stress feels like, before I let it colour my communications.
What is and what I prefer
All the information coming to me through my senses, are of course sensations.
(Pure undistllled reality for those cowboys, tough enough to take it neat, straight up).
How I feel about those signals, creates another layer of impression.
So we could say, there is what is, and there is how I feel about that.
Through observing myself, I see that how I feel about a situation, depends upon a great big list of conditions. Some I have chosen, many I have picked up like chewing gum on my shoes while walking through the carnival of my life.
Slow down the showdown
So what is it that upsets me?
Is it reality or is it how I feel about the way reality "ought to be"? (that's my opinion for those new in town)
Sometimes reality is upsetting, but there are not so many wild angry bears or clear and present dangers as my ancestors had to deal with. What is upsetting me usually, is what other people are doing, saying or the way they are saying it.
When their behaviour does not match my idea of what would be better, I have taken it personally. I have compared their action to my big list of conditions. Of course, much of this happens at the subconscious level, by the time I know about it, it is already a biochemical reaction in my brain and a tension in my body.
I have made their reality, my reality, neither was probably very close to pure undiluted reality to begin with lol..
Rather than getting involved with trying to update someone else's conditioning with my "clearly better" conditioning, I would dearly love to come back to reality as it is without my opinions.
Reality minus the opinions = reality?
47 years of accumulating opinions, memorising little "facts" and strategies, that end up playing me like a cheap guitar. That is not just going to disappear because I write or read a few blogs.
Meditation masters spend years working on this stuff, so do mums, CEO's, school teachers and anybody who works with people.
Notice how it is people that stress us out?
Or is it the way we deal with people that stresses us out?
Now here is the key.
This key is new to me, I have not mastered it yet, sometimes I drop it and it takes me weeks to find it, polish it up and remember what it is for again.
The key for me is Appreciation
Its like gratitude but where gratitude sort of implies separation between a giver and a receiver, appreciation is more like a growing in value simply through attention on what is, exactly how it already is.
How much stress does that remove?
No need to alter anything,
No need to think about how to do that
No need to remember or compare
Just being able to sit comfortably in our senses, in that undiluted reality without needing to grit my teeth.
Anyhow, you may of worked all this out years ago, me, I'm a bit slow see.
Have a play with it, let me know what you find if you like.
You all be good now :)